BBC Henry Wood Promenade Concerts

Berliner Philharmoniker/Rattle – 1 … Tristan & Turangalîla
Having missed last year’s Proms season, Sir Simon Rattle returned to Kensington Gore for the first of two Proms with Berliner Philharmoniker, as part of a short European tour which...
Nishat Khan & BBC Singers
This late-night Prom began with the BBC Singers performing plainsong and music from the French Renaissance with improvisations by Nishat Khan on his sitar. The Singers seemed dominant of most...
Gustav Mahler Jugendorchester – Nikolaj Znaider & Colin Davis
Just over 20 years old (it was founded in 1986 at the initiative of Claudio Abbado) the Gustav Mahler Jugendorchester draws its players from as far afield as Russia and...
Samuel Coleridge-Taylor & Ralph Vaughan Williams
The classical scholar A. E. Housman remains famous mainly for his poetry cycle “A Shropshire Lad”, a collection of short poems on themes of love and death in romantic evocations...
Verdi Requiem
With pieces as popular as Verdi’s "Requiem" expectations of a performance are often unrealistically high and can lead to disappointment. With this piece in particular, the need for a vocally...
Lang Lang & Marc Yu
Chinese pianist Lang Lang at age 26 remains something of a musical prodigy. Hearing at age two Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapsody No.2 on the soundtrack of the Tom & Jerry cartoon...
Oslo Philharmonic Orchestra
Magnus Lindberg’s reputation as one of the leading composers of his generation and the most influential since Sibelius in his native Finland probably wasn’t the main reason most people turned...
New York Philharmonic/Maazel – 2
A capacity house, a great orchestra, no television lights and no clapping between movements. If conditions seemed ideal, the results were less so.It is not easy to say why, but...
New York Philharmonic/Maazel – 1
This Prom programme seemed rather short measure in terms of length (barely 80 minutes of music). Yet, for all the perceived brevity there was lots of music for the packed...
Cantus arcticus … The Whale
As a celebration of its 40th-anniversary year the London Sinfonietta revisited its very first concert, which included the world premiere of John Tavener’s “The Whale”, conducted by David Atherton.Atherton was...
Seven … The Lark Ascending … Daphnis et Chloé
Whether through unforeseen illness or merely fatigue (he is conducting his new opera “Love and Other Demons” at Glyndebourne throughout August), Peter Eötvös had to pull out from this Prom...
Ralph Vaughan Williams
Musically speaking the climax of Ralph Vaughan Williams’s anniversary year came in June with Richard Hickox’s revival of “The Pilgrim’s Progress” … or more precisely Roderick Williams’s sensational performance in...
Romeo and Juliet … Tchaikovsky 5
Fêted abroad and under-funded at home, the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra’s carefully rationed appearances in the capital’s bigger halls have often been devoted to standard repertoire. If that might be thought...
Les Talens Lyriques
In this day and age, when we often told that “classical music is dying”, it was good to see a nearly full Cadogan Hall, especially as it was lunchtime on...
Bach Day – 3: Cello Suites/Jian Wang
The best music-making of “Bach Day” was heard at this third and final instalment: a late-night recital featuring the first three of Johann Sebastian Bach’s (six) Suites for unaccompanied cello,...
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