BBC Henry Wood Promenade Concerts

Never a composer known for half-measures, Robin Holloway has written a number of large-scale symphonic works over the course of his career though, apart from a solitary Symphony (premiered at...
It says much for the consistently excellent performances that graced this Prom by the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra and Donald Runnicles that the music survived the startling amount of coughing...
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It is fifty years since Percy Grainger died, and following Sir Andrew Davis’s ebullient contribution to the commemorations, this gem of a late-night Prom opened with the striking quality of...
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One thing that the Percy Grainger suite made clear was the revelation, yet again, of the superhuman virtuosity of Edward Elgar’s and Richard Strauss’s orchestrations. This isn’t brilliance for brilliance’s...
Making his final appearance with the BBC Philharmonic as its Chief Conductor, Gianandrea Noseda directed a lengthy programme of meaningful contrasts. Beethoven’s Fourth Symphony (1806) is not so often given...
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There were two principal aims to this highly attractive lunchtime recital from Les Talens Lyriques and its artistic director Christophe Rousset – to bring forward a lesser light from the...
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On paper this Prom was enticing: the rarely performed Vesna (Spring), the Russian Songs, and a powerful choral symphony, all by Rachmaninov, one of the great tunesmith composers of music...
It’s not often that one is invited to listen to Dance of the Seven Veils immediately after the roof-raising conclusion of Alexander Nevsky. Of course, behind the drawn curtains of...
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I had no idea what to expect from the latest BBC-branded Prom, morphing the free family Prom into a CBBC spectacular based on Horrible Histories. I've caught a couple of...
This BBC Prom went through various changes, but the resulting programme was still a cohesive and intriguing one. A brace of Honegger’s most familiar orchestral pieces provided contrast in itself...
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Thierry Fischer’s second Prom was a flute sandwich, with Emmanuel Pahud’s golden flute in two 21st-century concertos as the opulent filling, and the musical equivalent of echt-pumpernickel in the shape...
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When it launched last year, the ingenious BBC Radio 3 World Routes Academy flung together astounding partnerships of mentor and mentee. At last year’s equivalent Prom, I had the pleasure...
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Following his recent Proms debut, Pascal Dusapin had little time to wait before the follow-up. Hinterland (2009) is the sixth in a sequence of seven (to date) string quartets with...
The pairing of Kodály with his better-known compatriot and friend Bartók was an unsurprising line-up for the first’s half of the London Philharmonic’s Hungarian Prom. However, as the success of...
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And so it was goodnight from them, and goodnight from him. The ‘them’ were the members of the Stuttgart Radio Symphony orchestra; the ‘him’ was Roger Norrington. This BBC Prom...