BBC Henry Wood Promenade Concerts

11318 1
This Prom promised more than it delivered. With an attractively traditional programme, an experienced soloist and a full house, expectations were high. The end result was distinctly uneven. Youth orchestras...
11314 1
A time there was, back in the 1960s and early 1970s, that the English Chamber Orchestra was as synonymous with Benjamin Britten as the Academy of Saint Martin in the...
11309 1
This enticing Prom from the Warsaw Philharmonic Orchestra (Orkiestra Filharmonii Narodowej w Warszawie) and its long-serving if here outgoing conductor, Antoni Wit – familiar folk from numerous Naxos recordings –...
11308 1
The World Routes concert is now a regular feature of the Proms. This one drew on the music of two very contrasting economies – the oil-rich Azerbaijan, hosts of the...
11307 1
There was a time when everything Yannick Nézet-Séguin touched turned to gold, but this was not the case with his Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra Prom, at least not in the first...
11306 1
Sakari Oramo’s second Prom as Chief Conductor of the BBC Symphony Orchestra proved a substantial affair, opening as it did with a new work by Param Vir. Best known for...
11305 1
It’s fair to say, I’m sure, that when Sir Colin Davis passed away on April 14 at the age of 85 something irreplaceable was lost to us. Certainly for regular...
11304 1
Ilan Volkov’s Proms have latterly become something of an odyssey through the more experimental realms of music – witness his diverse tribute to John Cage last season – and this...
11303 1
In his concerts and recordings with the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, Robin Ticciati has shown an affinity with the music of Berlioz. Here one of the composer’s more elusive but ultimately...
11302 1
This blend of French and English music was largely well chosen, though the suspicion lingered that many would have preferred to end the concert with The Curlew rather than the...
11299 1
The Proms is certainly a unique institution. With around two-thirds of seats occupied, an unlikely mix of tourists and trumpet enthusiasts enjoyed or endured the demanding centrepiece of this concert,...
11297 1
On the surface this Prom appears unremittingly doom-laden and despairing, but any performance that plumbs all the dimensions of Brahms’s A German Requiem should also find much that is consoling...
11296 1
Chemistry between an orchestra and conductor is difficult to predict but when present it can produce extraordinary results. Andris Nelsons, music director designate of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, has been...
11294 1
Tortured innocent he may have been yet a hundred years after his birth Benjamin Britten seems as much a fixture of our national life as that other great survivor of...
11289 1
This year one of the BBC Proms themes is Polish music, and this concert marked the 80th-birthday of Krzysztof Penderecki, alongside more familiar Charles Dutoit repertoire. Stravinsky’s Fireworks was lithesome,...