BBC Henry Wood Promenade Concerts

Bach Day – 2: St John Passion
The main event of “Bach Day” was this performance of the “St John Passion”. John Eliot Gardiner’s idiosyncratic direction did not always best serve the score; but this is one...
Bach Day – 1: Simon Preston Organ Recital
The three-Prom “Bach Day” celebrating the genius of Johann Sebastian Bach, each concert dedicated to a different area of his extensive output, began with an organ recital by veteran Bach...
National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain
On its traditional mid-Prom-season Saturday evening and (also traditionally) shown on BBC2 Television (at a later time, so why this concert actually had to start at 6.30 p.m. was a...
Gürzenich Orchestra – Mahler 5 … Punkte … Leonore No.3
You can’t accuse Markus Stenz and his Gürzenich Orchestra of short-changing the audience. A programme lasting just under three-and-a-half hours (including two intervals) of music-making of the highest quality is...
Slavonic Dances … Osud
The effective sabotaging of one's career in the wake of major success is discernible throughout the arts in all eras: one of the most striking modern instances is that of...
The Sleeping Beauty
Although concert performances of opera are an established fixture at the Proms, those of ballet are a comparative novelty; how else to explain that The Sleeping Beauty is only now...
Tombeau de Messiaen … Speakings … Déserts
Jonathan Harvey’s three-year tenure as composer-in-association with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra has gradually yielded a trilogy of orchestral works based on what the composer calls “the Buddhist purification of...
Soundings … Pastoral Symphony
A most-stimulating Prom, that had as its curtain-raiser a first UK performance.Elliott Carter’s Soundings was written in 2005 to mark Daniel Barenboim’s departure from the Chicago Symphony Orchestra music directorship,...
Jordi Savall & Rolf Lislevand
A real rarity on these shores, Jordi Savall made his Proms debut, with fellow Hespèrion XXI player Rolf Lislevand, with a perfect gem of a lunchtime recital that traversed not...
City of London Sinfonia
The symphony’s opening ceremony misfired; the brass was rather tubby even if the City of London Sinfonia generally gave a clean, clear account of the opening movement, its forward drive...
Messiaen – Jennifer Bate
The Proms continued its celebration of Olivier Messiaen's centenary with thisprogramme given by Jennifer Bate who enjoyed a close workingrelationship with the composer. She has recorded much of Messiaen's organmusic...
Handel’s Belshazzar
Written in 1744 – two years after “Messiah” – George Frideric Handel’s oratorio “Belshazzar” takes its story from the biblical account of the fall of Babylon at the hands of...
Boulez conducts Janáček
Janáček's music is a comparatively recent absorption into Pierre Boulez's repertoire (although he included Sinfonietta in New York back in the 1970s). As with everything he does, Boulez has thought...
Mémoriale … L’histoire du soldat
A mere 50 minutes after wrapping up the evening’s ‘main’ Prom, Daniel Barenboim and members of the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra continued to make music in the Royal Albert Hall with...
West-Eastern Divan Orchestra
The humanitarian intentions behind the founding of the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra by Daniel Barenboim and the late Edward Said can only be most warmly applauded. One might hope that the...
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