BBC Henry Wood Promenade Concerts

Thomas Tallis
It was appropriate for the majority of the music in this Prom to be composed by Thomas Tallis whose 500th-anniversary we celebrate during 2005, although there is some doubt as...
Royal Concertgebouw – 1
Mahler is not the great composer many take him to be; rather, he’s an average one, promoted beyond his merits. Already I anticipate there are some disconcerted readers out there,...
Cleveland Orchestra Missa Solemnis
Since the days of George Szell, the Cleveland Orchestra has been one of the world’s greatest. Its sound combines warmth and refinement with rich concentrated string tone, transparent brass and...
cummings ist der Dichter
The original version of 1920 – as opposed to the 1947 revision – of Stravinsky's Symphonies of Wind Instruments opened this most interesting and generally well-performed concert.Written in memory of...
Cleveland Orchestra Mahler 3
The Clevelanders haven’t been to the Proms for a number of years – Christoph von Dohnányi’s last visit with the Orchestra was back in the 20th-century. So this was the...
Zurich Tonhalle Orchestra
The Swiss have long held efficiency and precision as watchwords of their character. In musical terms the Tonhalle Orchestra, Zurich under its chief conductor David Zinman has taken these qualities...
Proms Chamber Music – 7 (I Fagiolini)
2005 marks the 400th anniversary of both Giacomo Carissimi’s birth and the publication of Claudio Monteverdi’s Fifth Book of Madrigals; his ground-breaking Fourth Book had emphasised the primacy of the...
Verdi Requiem
It was the Royal Albert Hall which housed the first London performance of Verdi's Requiem on 12 May 1875, where it was received less enthusiastically than it had been elsewhere.Since...
World Orchestra for Peace
On paper, this programme might appear somewhat puzzling, given that the first half consisted of 'overture-type' pieces – in actuality or by implication – followed by a work which is...
A Faust Symphony
Brahms and Liszt make for a pertinent coupling even outside the domain of cockney rhyming slang, and so it proved. Not that the performance of Brahms's Violin Concerto was exactly...
Strip
The BBC Symphony Orchestra was back at the Proms, not with Conductor Laureate Sir Andrew Davis, who was unwell, but Joseph Swensen. Morgan Hayes graduated from the Guildhall School of...
Symphony of Sorrowful Songs
Post EUYO concert, with the vehemence of Walton’s First Symphony cooled by Elgar’s Sospiri, the Royal Albert Hall filled again – as many people, if not more, in the Arena...
European Union Youth Orchestra
The glossy brochure explained to the audience all that needed to be known about the make-up and aspirations of the European Union Youth Orchestra. On the assumption of the brochures’...
Handel’s Julius Caesar
Something for everyone in this Broadway-to-Bollywood, all-singing, all-dancing "Giulio Cesare" direct from Glyndebourne? Well, almost. Once you get past the colonial India costumes, excessive choreographic demands on the vocalists and...
Grimaud & Haitink
As I looked through the programme for this concert, I had a disconcerting sense of déjà vu. Surely Haitink isn’t conducting Shostakovich 8 again already? Haven’t the LSO played it...
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