BBC Henry Wood Promenade Concerts

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Prom 68: Cameron Carpenter plays Bach & Mahler on the Royal Albert Hall organ
Twenty-four hours later, here we were again. Cameron Carpenter, 31, returned for his second BBC Prom with more music by and inspired by J. S. Bach, and what proved a...
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Prom 67: Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra/Chailly – Mendelssohn Originals
Mendelssohn’s capacity to surprise is not the first feature one associates with his music, but this Prom was full of the unusual emerging from the familiar. Of the four works...
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Prom 66: Cameron Carpenter plays Bach on the Royal Albert Hall organ
Often organists do not make much of a splash in the music world, hidden, as they often are, high up in a (dusty) organ loft. The great American virtuoso Virgil...
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Prom 65: Martin Taylor & Guy Barker – The Spirit of Django
The Proms has given rise to a fair number of jazz (or jazz-related) concerts during recent years. Only two weeks ago the National Youth Jazz Orchestra presented an impressive showcase,...
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Prom 64: Berliner Philharmoniker/Rattle – Brahms and Lutosławski
This second concert of Berliner Philharmoniker’s latest visit to the Proms comprised two works that were completed in just over a century of each other. Whether there were any more...
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Prom 63: Berliner Philharmoniker/Rattle – Ligeti, Wagner, Sibelius, Debussy and Ravel
This scintillating, stimulating and often coruscating Prom was one of two halves. The first contained music that revealed interior (often uncomfortable) truths; the second created no less terrifying emotions but...
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Prom 62: Eric Whitacre
There can’t be many occasions when the very mention of the name of the featured artist results in whoops of excitement from the audience and a pop-star welcome. Such greeted...
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Prom 61: Herbert Howells’s Hymnus Paradisi & Elgar’s First Symphony
The programme book described Herbert Howells’s Hymnus Paradisi (first heard in 1950) as “an established fixture of the English choral repertoire”. If only that were the case – this wonderful,...
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Prom 60: Le nozze di Figaro [Glyndebourne Festival Opera]
For his return to the Sussex Downs following an inspired yet conservative Billy Budd in 2010, director Michael Grandage has transformed Mozart’s sublime comedy of musical manners into one of...
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Prom 59: The Broadway Sound/John Wilson
In the balmy hazy days of August, when the searing heat of the summer sun cracks the flagstones, we in Britain have been reminded of California and Hollywood from John...
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Prom 58: A Journey To Far Corners Of Our Musical World
There can’t have been a tougher audience this season: not least a young girl who, at the top of her voice, decided that she’d had enough within seconds. However this...
PCM7: Schoenberg’s Pierrot Lunaire with Christine Schäfer
The penultimate Proms Chamber Music recital of the season consisted of two pieces written three years apart yet separated by a seemingly vast cultural gulf.With its intuitive fusion of cabaret...
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Prom 57: Gustav Mahler Jugendorchester/Gatti with Frank Peter Zimmermann
Although Daniele Gatti, Proms regular since 1995, directed a previous generation of the Gustav Mahler Jugendorchester on a tour in 1998, this was his first collaboration with the young musicians...
Prom 56: Oliver Knussen conducts Goehr, Grime, Debussy and his own Third Symphony
Maybe Oliver Knussen’s annual Prom with the BBC Symphony Orchestra was not best suited to this Saturday-night slot, but the programme was as substantial and well-planned as ever. The first...
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Prom 55: English National Opera’s Peter Grimes – Stuart Skelton, Amanda Roocroft, Iain Paterson, Edward Gardner
Edward Gardner is quoted in the programme for this Prom as finding Peter Grimes “very un-English”, and his collaboration with the American director David Alden on the 2009 English National...