BBC Henry Wood Promenade Concerts

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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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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Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra
Last year’s electrifying Proms appearance with the Simón Bolívar Youth Orchestra of Venezuela was the sensation of the season; but this rather mixed concert with the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra proved...
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All-Night Vigil (Rachmaninov’s Vespers)
For his second trip to the Proms this year, Paul Hillier (who had previously taken part in a performance of Stockhausen’s “Stimmung”) brought with him the Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir....
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In the South … Scheherazade
Vassily Sinaisky joined the BBC Philharmonic for a concert that seemed, at best, under-rehearsed. Sinaisky is currently the orchestra’s Chief Guest Conductor so unfamiliarity with the English music is less...
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Rachmaninov & Puccini
A rather curious programme combining Rachmaninov’s early First Symphony with the first of Puccini’s one-act operas from “Il trittico”. One might not have really thought the two composers were complementary...
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Harawi
More stunning Messiaen as part of the Proms centenary celebrations: a performance of the song-cycle “Hawari” (written in 1932) by Gweneth-Ann Jeffers and Simon Lepper.Unusually for Messiaen, the work has...
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Night Ride and Sunrise … Gaudete … Enigma Variations
Edward Gardner here returned to the BBC Symphony Orchestra for an enterprising programme.Among the more elusive of Sibelius's tone poems, Night Ride and Sunrise (1907) is never an easy piece...
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Messiaen & Manchicourt
This was an intriguing idea – two pieces intended for liturgical usage for the same occasion intertwined with each other – though I am not at all sure that, ultimately,...
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Porgy and Bess … Progressions … An American in Paris
The classical-jazz 'divide' – real or imagined – was the starting-point for this Prom by the BBC Concert Orchestra. Few composers have so tellingly pivoted between the two as George...
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The Chairman Dances … Harlem
Four American works from the second half of the 20th-century made for an entertaining late-night Prom, conducted with gusto by Kristjan Järvi.Duke Ellington’s Harlem, for large orchestra, was given a...