BBC Henry Wood Promenade Concerts

The Last Night 2010
Over the years that The Classical Source has been reviewing the BBC Proms the Last Night has undergone a transformation. It used to be said that the real last-night of...
Monteverdi Vespers/Gardiner
There was the Last Night still to come, but the Proms could not have bowed out in finer style than with this majestic performance of the “Vespro della Beata Vergine”....
Unfinished Symphony … Songs of Mary Stuart
Neither performance of the popular symphonies quite hit the mark, their span undermined by vacuous applause between movements (although the delayed burst after Mozart’s Minuet was almost shamefacedly apologetic). Under...
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Penguin Cafe with Kathryn Tickell
When Simon Jeffes initiated what was then the Penguin Cafe Orchestra in 1972, he might not have foreseen that, almost four decades on, its latest incarnation would attract one of...
Lohengrin … Wild Card … Bruckner 7
The integration of popular and classical music is nothing new, especially if you include adaptations of folk-music, but Tansy Davies (born in Bristol in 1973) is one of the first...
Faune … La mer … The Rite of Spring
An enchanted recorder-like flute opened Debussy’s Prélude, and a fruity (finely accomplished) bassoon solo introduced The Rite of Spring. Debussy’s enchantment continued to a rapturous climax, Daniele Gatti keeping the...
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Handel, Porpora, Telemann & Vivaldi
One of the greatest strengths of the BBC Proms is its ceaseless power to surprise and captivate, breathing magic into the most ordinary-looking of concert programmes. This will not be...
Paul Lewis Beethoven (4) [RSNO/Denève]
Things got off to a cracking start with a performance of Berlioz’s Roman Carnival Overture that was bawdy, gaudy, thoughtful, beautiful, and great fun; Stéphane Denève directing an extrovert account...
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Le Poème Harmonique
I’m surprised how strongly I object to being encouraged (this time by the BBC Radio 3 presenter Catherine Bott) to let the music just wash over me. It was the...
Sir Henry Wood (continued)
It was more than Sir Henry Wood day, it was the end of a Sir Henry Wood four days, starting with his extravagant orchestration of Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition,...
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Last Night of the Proms 1910
The idea of presenting the Last Night of the Proms as played in 1910 as a tribute to (Sir) Henry Wood was an interesting one, the first of two such...
Berliner Philharmoniker/Rattle (2)
Simon Rattle's appearances with Berliner Philharmoniker at the Proms have drawn attention to a partnership often tentative in interpretative terms. Following their concert of Beethoven and Mahler, this second-night programme...
Ithaca … Hymn to Cybele … Dum transisset
The final Proms Saturday Matinee of the season brought together six living composers, five of whom were present and who indeed were themselves just five of at least twenty composers...
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Berliner Philharmoniker/Rattle (1)
With this particular programme and one of the world's leading orchestras and its much-loved Chief Conductor expectations inevitably ran high. Had this been politics rather than music, the spinmeisters would...
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Three 300-year-old composers
900 years’ worth of birthdays were collated together in this late-night gem, which somehow worked after the onslaught of just an hour previously as Sir Henry Wood’s sets of pounded...