BBC Henry Wood Promenade Concerts

Karl Amadeus Hartmann
Ingo Metzmacher's Proms are rarely less than arresting in terms of repertoire and performance, and this concert promised to a be a rewarding one. Certainly there was no lack of...
snagS & Snarls
A Prom with its own brand of subtly pervasive Romanticism – opening with an account of the overture to Weber's “Der Freischütz” which evoked Mendelssohn in its formal security and...
Songs of the Sea & Enigma Variations
A truly dismal evening redeemed – just – by Philippe Graffin's fine advocacy of the more-or-less forgotten Coleridge-Taylor Violin Concerto (1911) which is currently enjoying something of a revival in...
The Planets Plus Pluto
A capacity audience heard some of the finest works composed by three 20th-century English composers, united by a love and admiration for Tudor music. Indeed Vaughan Williams used a tune...
Proms Chamber Music – 4 (Felicity Lott)
Felicity Lott is the doyenne of French song and this recital, including the encores by Poulenc, encapsulated the genre. Pascal Rogé cancelled and was replaced by Eugene Asti, and a...
Das Klagende Lied
Berg and Mahler are frequently juxtaposed in concert programmes these days, though the former's Opus 6 and the latter's effective 'Opus 1' would seem to be a previously untried pairing:...
Bobby McFerrin & Friends
Bobby McFerrin is the best music teacher you never had. Seated in front of the African Children’s Choir, he prompts its members to copy his vocal licks, and in seconds...
National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain
Under the right circumstances things happen with youth orchestras which seldom occur with professional groups – bringing the freshness and excitement of first-love to repertoire which in more experienced hands...
Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra
The start of this concert was delayed by nearly an hour due to some technical problems that were causing a variety of noises to emerge from loudspeakers. Whilst we were...
Akademie für Alte Musik
The 'other' Water Music, Telemann's, and Bach’s D major 'Ouverture' with its attendant dances: two Baroque suites of remarkable invention framing two duets which in turn framed two arias in...
Huw Watkins Premiere
One of the many things the Proms does well is to provide a sympathetic context for new music. I am not referring to the audience, usually disposed toward the unfamiliar...
Ravi & Anoushka Shankar
Having bagged Plácido Domingo for the first time, Nicholas Kenyon’s second debut-coup of this year’s Proms season was to present Ravi Shankar, along with his daughter and protégé Anoushka, in...
Coro
I am tempted to stick my neck out – only a third of the way through the season – to say that this was the Prom of the Season. Yes,...
Water Music
The San Francisco-based Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra under its conductor Nicholas McGegan, making its UK debut, offset the often outlandish rhythms and scoring of Rameau’s music by counterpointing it with some...
Hans Abrahamsen
Sandwiched between Sibelius and Brahms, the Danish composer Hans Abrahamsen's Four Pieces for Orchestra received its UK premiere to a reasonably full house. There was a slight irony to this...
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