Neville Marriner conducts leader Kenneth Sillito and the Academy of St Martin-in-the-Fields in a performance of Mendelssohn's Italian Symphony. They are joined by tenor Anthony Rolfe Johnson in Britten's Les Illuminations. Introduced by Richard Baker.
Dame Kiri Te Kanawa makes a rare appearance at the Proms to sing two romantic arias by Massenet, and octogenarian Russian pianist Tatyana Nikolaeva, making her Proms debut, plays Shostakovich's sparkling Piano Concerto No 2. The bicentenary of Rossini's birth is celebrated with the overture to his best-known opera, The Barber of Seville, and with Soirees musicales, a suite of some of his most beguiling music orchestrated by Benjamin Britten. Andrew Davis conducts the BBC Symphony Orchestra.
Wynton Marsalis, In this House, On this Morning, Part 3, Pot Blessed Dinner, In this House, On this Morning, Part 2. Wynton Marsalis Septet
Gabriel Fauré, Pelléas et Mélisande, Suite, Op 80, Ballade, Op 19 (version with orchestra); Maurice Ravel, Piano Concerto for the Left Hand; Jean Sibelius, Symphony No 1 in E minor. Jean-Yves Thibaudet piano, Yan Pascal Tortelier Conductor, BBC Philharmonic (pre-1983, BBC Northern SO; 1983-91, BBC Philharmonic Orchestra)
Sir Arnold Bax, Overture to a Picaresque Comedy; Malcolm Arnold, Symphony No. 2, Op 40; Carl Orff, Carmina Burana. James Bowman counter-tenor, Janice Watson soprano, Donald Maxwell baritone, Waynflete Singers, Bournemouth Symphony Chorus, Highcliffe Junior Choir, Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra, Richard Hickox Conductor
The BBC Proms season opens at the Royal Albert Hall with a live transmission in simultaneous broadcast with Radio 3 of Haydn's The Creation, the first of ten concerts screened this summer.
The first of four Proms especially recorded for BBCtv and featuring interviews with the performing artists. Introduced by James Naughtie. American soprano Dawn Upshaw celebrates the range and vitality of the music she grew up with. Accompanied by the London Sinfonietta, conducted by Eric Stern, and American pianist Fred Hersch, she performs music by Bernstein, Copland, Weill, Gershwin, Rodgers and Hart, and Sondheim.
First broadcast: Sat 10th Aug 1996, 19:30 on BBC Two England Live from the Royal Albert Hall , London, and in a simultaneous broadcast with Radio 3, the National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain performs a programme of 20th-century classics. Opera star Sally Burgess joins the orchestra, conducted by Paul Daniel , to sing a selection of George Gershwin 's best known tunes, including Someone to Watch over Me and Slap That Bass. The concert opens with Ameriques by Varese and ends with Stravinsky's Rite of Spring, on the 25th anniversary of the composer's death. Introduced by Sarah Walker.
Second of four Proms recorded especially for BBC television. James Naughtie introduces a programme of Bach and Handel, bringing together the choirs of Winchester Cathedral, New College, Oxford, and the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment. Featuring an interviewwith Belgian Rene Jacobs who makes his Prom debut conducting excerpts from Handel's opera Julius Caesar and two of Bach's most popularworks, Suite No 3 in D-which includes Airon a G String -and the Magnificat. Bach: Suite no.3 in D Handel: excerpts from Julius Caesar Bach: Magnificat in D major Performers:- Andreas Scholl (Caesar) - counter-tenor María Bayo (Cleopatra) - soprano Choir of New College Oxford Winchester Cathedral Choir Susan Gritton - soprano Peter Kooij - bass Jamie MacDougall - tenor Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment René Jacobs - conductor
Live from the Royal Albert Hall , London, in a simultaneous broadcast with Radio 3, the new Principal Guest Conductor of the BBC Symphony Orchestra, Jiri Belohlavek , makes his debut at the Proms for a programme featuring a trio of pieces from his Czech homeland. Dvorak's TeDeum, written for the composer's visit to America in 1892, opens the concert, sung by soprano Judith Howarth , baritone Ivan Kusnjer and the BBC Symphony Chorus. It is followed by works with military associations from the two greatest Czech composers of the 20th century: Martinu's Field Mass and Janacek's Sinfonietta. The evening is completed by the last of Mozart's piano concertos - No 27 in B flat, K595 - performed by American pianist Richard Goode. During the interval, host Michael Berkeley delves into the life of the Royal Albert Hall beyond the Proms and finds the celebrated concert hall, in its 125th year, hosting a wide range of events.
The first of two Proms featuring youth orchestras being televised this year, presented by James Naughtie. The European Union Youth Orchestra is caught both off and on duty on the last night of a six-country tour. Some of the 140 musicians selected from European Union countries talk about their rehearsal and tour period. Led for the first time by conductor Sir Colin Davis, who is known for his interpretations of Jean Sibelius, they play the composer's Symphony No 2 and complement it with Richard Strauss's portrait of a lover, Don Juan. Sir Colin says: "I wanted to give the orchestra something challenging so they can show what they've got in them. Don Juan is a good showpiece but the Symphony No 2 is not as straightforward as it might seem. There's age-old suffering embedded in Sibelius - how will these gifted young musicians respond to that?" Director Simon Broughton; Executive producer David Willcock
Pianist Andras Schiff performs two of Mozart's lesser-known masterpieces, No 19 in F and No 22 in E flat, with the English Chamber Orchestra conducted by George Malcolm. Introduced by James Naughtie.
he Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra, making its British television debut, is conducted by Valery Gergiev in a programme of Russian and French music. The concert is introduced by Christopher Warren-Green , leader of the Philharmonia Orchestra, and begins with Prokofiev's Symphony No 6, the composer's most tragic, emotional and structurally complex work, written during the last years of the Second World War. This is followed by the European premiere of an orchestration by the contemporary Russian composer Edison Denisov of Musorgsky's The Nursery, sung by the young Russian soprano Anna Netrebko. The concert finishes with a performance of Debussy's atmospheric evocation of the sea, La Mer. During the interval. Christopher Warren-Green's travel diary records his bike trip to the Netherlands.
Live from the Royal Albert Hall in London. To mark the centenary of the death of Anton Bruckner , a sequence of his choral music makes up part one of tonight's programme. The BBC Singers are conducted by Jane Glover and organist John Scott opens the concert by playing the Prelude and Fugue in C Minor. Beethoven's Ninth Symphony in D Minor, The Choral, forms the second half of the programme, with Sir Georg Solti conducting the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the BBC Singers and the London Voices. During the interval, he talks to James Naughtie about the two decades he has spent as Music Director of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.
The BBC Proms season opens at the Royal Albert Hall with a live transmission in simultaneous broadcast with Radio 3 of Beethoven's Missa Solemnis, the first of ten concerts screened on BBC TV this summer. Guest conductor Bernard Haitink returns to the Proms to conduct the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Chorus and BBC Singers, with soloists Karita Mattila (soprano), Catherine Wyn-Rogers (mezzo-soprano), Herbert Lippert (tenor) and Anthony Michaels-Moore (baritone). Introduced by James Naughtie.
The BBC Proms season continues tonight from the Royal Albert Hall in London with this live transmission, introduced by Michael Berkeley. Principal guest conductor Jiri Belohlavek conducts the BBC Symphony Chorus and Orchestra in Johannes Brahms's Song of the Fates and Franz Schubert 's Mass in Flat Major. The soloists are Rosa Mannion (soprano), Stella Doufexis (mezzo-soprano), Toby Spence (tenor) and Nathan Berg (bass baritone). Between these two pieces, the French pianist Jean-Yves Thibaudet plays Chopin's folk-inspired Piano Concerto No 2 in F Minor. The interval film documents the last six years of Viennese composer Schubert's life. Dr Anthony Storr comments on his depression while Elizabeth Norman McKay provides biographical detail. Tenor John Graham Hall , accompanied by lain Bumside , performs excerpts from the great song-cycles.
In the first of four Proms recorded for BBC television, James Naughtie introduces a concert performance of Gilbert and Sullivan's operetta, given at London's Royal Albert Hall last Saturday. Their last great collaboration, The Gondoliers tells a story of baby-swapping, kidnapping and mistaken identity in exuberant and colourful style, and remains one of their most popular works. Including songs such as Take Pair of Sparkling Eyes and Dance a Cachucha. Featuring the BBC Singers and Concert Orchestra conducted by Barry Wordsworth.
First broadcast: Thu 14th Aug 1997, 22:50 on BBC One London In the second of four Proms recorded for BBC television James Naughtie introduces Beethoven's Symphony No 6 in F (Pastoral), recorded at the Royal Albert Hall on 30 July, and David Attenborough talks about the enduring relationship between music and nature. Mark Wigglesworth conducts the BBC National Orchestra of Wales in Beethoven's sensitive portrait of the countryside, integrating birdsong, peasant dancing and storms into a highly sophisticated symphony that has become one the favourites of the concert repertoire.
First broadcast: Thu 21st Aug 1997, 22:55 on BBC One London In the third of four Proms recorded for BBC television, James Naughtie introduces two popular pieces of musical storytelling, Tchaikovsky's Overture: Romeo and Juliet and Rimsky-Korsakov's Scheherazade, recorded at London's Royal Albert Hall on 14 August. Valery Gergiev conducts the Kirov Orchestra which is making its first appearance at the Proms.
The BBC Proms season continues with this live broadcast from the Royal Albert Hall. Tonight's concert features the Dallas Symphony Orchestra on its first European tour, conducted by Andrew Litton, the new music director. The orchestra performs Roy Harris's Symphony No 3, Samuel Barber 's beautiful Violin Concerto, featuring the charismatic young soloist Joshua Bell, and Tchaikovsky's Symphony No 5 in E minor. The interval, filmed in Dallas, shows how the orchestra has made its mark on this all-American city.
The last of four Proms recorded for television at London's Royal Albert Hall, introduced by James Naughtie. One of the most popular and challenging pieces in the concert-pianist's repertoire, Grieg's Piano Concerto in A minor, is performed by Leeds International Piano Competition winner Ilya Itin, with the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Vassily Sinaisky. As a contrast to the Scandinavian folk themes of Grieg's work, the concert also includes Capriccio italien, Tchaikovsky's portrait of a trip to Southern Europe.
Michael Berkeley introduces a live broadcast from the Royal Albert Hall , London, featuring the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, conducted by their music director Riccardo Chailly. The orchestra performs the UK premiere of Three Preludes by Tristan Keuris , a leading Dutch composer who died last year, and Rachmaninov's popular Piano Concerto No 2 in C minor, with the talented young Russian pianist Arkady Volodos in the spotlight. The evening concludes with The Dance of the Seven Veils from the Richard Strauss opera Salome, preceded by Bartok's Miraculous Mandarin. The interval, filmed partly in Budapest, explores the background to Bartok's spectacular ballet score.
The BBC Proms season continues with this live broadcast from the Royal Albert Hall. Georg Solti , one of the world's greatest conductors, returns to the Proms to conduct Verdi's Requiem, with soloists Michele Crider (soprano), Olga Borodina (mezzo-soprano), Frank Lopardo (tenor) and Rene Pape (bass), the London Voices, the London Symphony Chorus and the London Symphony Orchestra. Introduced by James Naughtie.
James Naughtie hosts the annual classical-music celebration live from London Royal Albert Hall. In this first instalment there are traditional favourites by Wagner, Handel, Brahms -the centenary of whose death is this year- and Messiaen. Scottish composer Judith Weir's choral work Sanctus is also premiered.
James Naughtie with live coverage of the second half of tonight's concert. The BBC Symphony Orchestra under Andrew Davis perform Fanfare for Orchestra by John Adams, Gershwin's Variations on "/ Got Rhythm Britten's Irish Reel, and an aria from Weber's opera Der Freischutz. Then it's the traditional finale including Elgar's Pomp and Circumstance March No 1 in D, Sir Henry Wood 's Fantasia on British Sea-Songs, Arne's Rule Britannia! and Parry's Jerusalem before the National Anthem brings the night to a close.
Katie Derham introduces another stellar performance from the BBC Proms archive, this week from the National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain under the baton of Sir Simon Rattle in 2002. No fewer than five choirs as well as soloists including Christine Brewer, John Relyea and Jane Henschel join them on stage for Mahler’s colossal Eighth Symphony, his ‘Symphony of a Thousand’. National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain Rosemary Joshua soprano Christine Brewer soprano Sir Simon Rattle Conductor John Relyea bass David Wilson-Johnson baritone Jon Villars tenor Soile Isokoski soprano Birgit Remmert mezzo-soprano Jane Henschel mezzo-soprano City of Birmingham Symphony Youth Chorus London Symphony Chorus (pre-1976, London Symphony Orchestra Chorus) Toronto Children's Chorus Sydney Philharmonia Choirs City of Birmingham Symphony Chorus
A concert version (by William Hammerstein) of Rodgers and Hammerstein's seminal musical masterpiece Oklahoma! performed live at the BBC Proms on Saturday 17 August, 2002.
Hector Berlioz La damnation de Faust, Op 24 Marche hongroise Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart The Marriage of Figaro Aria 'Voi che sapete' Act 2 Gaetano Donizetti L' elisir d'amore Aria 'Una furtiva lagrima' Act 2 Leonard Bernstein West Side Story I feel pretty Ludwig van Beethoven Fidelio, Op 72 Aria 'Jetzt, Schätzchen, jetzt sind wir allein' Act 1 Sergei Prokofiev Peter and the Wolf, Op 67 Façade, Suite No. 1 No. 1 Polka No. 2 Valse No. 3 Swiss Yodelling Song No. 4 Tango-Pasodoble Façade, Suite No. 2 No. 5 Popular Song Façade, Suite No. 1 No. 5 Tarantella Sevillana Ralph Vaughan Williams The Lark Ascending Benjamin Britten Folk-Song Arrangements (voice & orchestra) The Plough Boy Folk-Song Arrangements (voice & orchestra) O Waly, Waly Folk-Song Arrangements (voice & orchestra) The Salley Gardens Folk-Song Arrangements (voice & orchestra) Oliver Cromwell Aram Khachaturian Spartacus, Suite No. 2
Jean Sibelius Violin Concerto in D minor Performed by violinist Viktoria Mullova, Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen, conductor Daniel Harding Also Jean‐Philippe Rameau (Hippolyte et Aricie, Suite of selected dances), Ludwig van Beethoven (Symphony No 7 in A major), Anton Webern (Five Pieces, Op 5)
Herlin Riley, Evolution of the Groove; Charles Mingus, Mexican Moods (arrangement of 'Dizzy Moods', 'Tijuana Gift Shop' & 'Los Mariachis' by Mingus); George Shearing, Lullaby of Birdland, La espada de la noche; Billie Holiday, Fine and Mellow; Ornette Coleman, Peace; Duke Ellington, Black, Brown, and Beige, Symphonette (from Beige) – Encore; Wynton Marsalis, Free to Be, Encore, Ron Westray Music Arranger, Jennifer Sanon vocalist, Wynton Marsalis Music Arranger, trumpet/director, Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra
Simon Rattle conducts the Berliner Philharmoniker. Arnold Schoenberg, Variations for Orchestra, Op 31 and Ludwig van Beethoven, Symphony No 9 in D minor, 'Choral'
Dvořák - Overture 'Carnival' R. Strauss - Concerto for Horn No. 1 in E flat major, Op 11 Vaughan Williams - 5 Mystical Songs Barber - Toccata festiva, Op 36 Sir Peter Maxwell Davies - Ojai Festival Overture Puccini - Madama Butterfly Rodgers - Oklahoma! (arr. Robert Russell Bennett) Cole Porter - Kiss Me, Kate Sullivan - The Mikado John Philip Sousa - March 'The Liberty Bell' Elgar - Pomp and Circumstance March No. 1 in D major ('Land of Hope and Glory') Henry Wood - Fantasia on British Sea Songs (with additional Songs arranged by Stephen Jackson) Parry - Jerusalem Anonymous - National Anthem (arr. Henry Wood)
Hector Berlioz - Overture 'Le corsaire' Felix Mendelssohn - Concerto for Violin in E minor, Op 64 (Janine Jansen, violin) Edward Elgar - Overture 'Cockaigne (In London Town)' Michael Tippett - A Child of Our Time
Sir Arthur Sullivan, The Yeomen of the Guard, Overture, Pineapple Poll (suite), HMS Pinafore, Proms premiere. Maida Vale Singers, Peter Sidhom Dick Deadeye, Felicity Palmer Little Buttercup, Stephen Richardson Bob Becket, Neal Davies Captain Corcoran, Timothy Robinson Ralph Rackstraw, Sally Matthews Josephine, Richard Suart Sir Joseph Porter, Owen Gilhooly Bill Bobstay, Tim Brooke Taylor narrator, Wendy Dawn Thompson Cousin Hebe, BBC Concert Orchestra, Charles Mackerras Conductor
In his Proms debut, Plácido Domingo joins Bryn Terfel, Lisa Gasteen and Waltraud Meier in a concert performance of Wagner's Die Walküre. The Orchestra of The Royal Opera is conducted by Antonio Pappano. Broadcast hosted by Charles Hazlewood. Performance of July 18, 2005 at Royal Albert Hall. Siegmund Plácido Domingo Sieglinde Waltraud Meier Hunding Eric Halvarson Wotan Bryn Terfel Brünnhilde Lisa Gasteen Fricka Rosalind Plowright Gerhilde Geraldine McGreevy Ortlinde Elaine McKrill Waltraute Claire Powell Schwertleite Rebecca De Pont Davies Helmwige Irene Theorin Siegrune Sarah Castle Grimgerde Clare Shearer Rossweisse Elizabeth Sikora Orchestra of the Royal Opera House Conducted by Anthony Pappano Act I: Sieglinde (Hunding's wife) is disturbed by a stranger (Siegmund). They are mysteriously drawn together. Hunding challenges the stranger to a fight. Sieglinde drugs her husband and takes Siegmund to the ash tree in which Wotan embedded the sword Notung. Siegmund extracts the sword and they flee. Act II: Wotan sends Valkyrie Brünnhilde to protect the couple against Hunding. Fricka, goddess of marriage, insists on Hunding's right to vengeance. Brünnhilde protects Siegmund. Wotan causes Notung to shatter, leaving Siegmund defenceless. After picking up the fragments of Notung, Brünnhilde rides off with Sieglinde. Act III: Brünnhilde sends Sieglinde away to give birth to her son, fathered by Siegmund. Wotan confronts Brünnhilde who defends her actions. He spares her life but consigns her to a magic fire.
First transmitted in 2005, the BBC National Orchestra of Wales - conducted by Richard Hickox - performs a new concerto by Michael Berkeley. Soprano Susan Gritton sings four songs by Benjamin Britten, and there is a performance of Vaughan Williams' 1913 work 'A London Symphony'. Live from Royal Albert Hall. (2005) Michael Berkeley - Concerto for Orchestra Benjamin Britten - 4 Chansons françaises Ralph Vaughan Williams - A London Symphony (original 1913 version)
Tippett - The Vision of St Augustine Shostakovich - Symphony No. 10 in E minor
Alexander von Zemlinsky 1871–1942 The Mermaid Also known as: Die Seejungfrau Johannes Brahms 1833–1897 A German Requiem Also known as: Ein Deutsches Requiem Simon Keenlyside baritone Marie Arnet soprano Philharmonia Chorus BBC Symphony Chorus
Debussy - La Mer. Mark-Anthony Turnage - From the Wreckage. Sibelius - Luonnotar. Ravel - Daphne and Chloe, Suite Nos 1 & 2. Mother Goose – suite. Jean Sibelius - Lemminkäinen Suite, Op 22. Håkan Hardenberger trumpet, Solveig Kringelborn soprano, Crouch End Festival Chorus, Esa-Pekka Salonen Conductor, Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra
William Walton, Overture 'Portsmouth Point'. George Frideric Handel. Serse, HWV 40, Aria 'Ombra mai fù' Act 1 Scene 1, Rodelinda, regina d'e' Longobardi, HWV 19, Aria 'Dove sei, amato bene?' Act 1, Giustino, HWV 37, Se parla nel mio cor Proms premiere. Joaquín Rodrigo, Concierto de Aranjuez. Constant Lambert, The Rio Grande. Erich Wolfgang Korngold, The Sea Hawk, Main title, Reunion, Finale. Simon Bainbridge, Scherzi, Proms premiere. Trad. Down by the Salley Gardens. Henry Purcell, King Arthur, Z 628 (arr. Julia Simpson), Fairest isle, all isles excelling Act 5 Scene 2. Edward Elgar, Pomp and Circumstance March No 1 in D major, 'Land of Hope and Glory'. Sir Henry Wood, Fantasia on British Sea Songs (with additional Songs arranged by Bob Chilcott), Proms premiere of this version. Hubert Parry, Jerusalem. Unknown, National Anthem (arr. Henry Wood). BBC Symphony Orchestra, Paul Daniel Conductor, Andreas Scholl counter-tenor, John [Christopher] Williams guitar, Paul Lewis piano, Karen Cargill mezzo-soprano, BBC Singers, BBC Symphony Chorus
Alfred Garyevich Schnittke, (K)ein Sommernachtstraum; Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Violin Concerto No 5 in A major, K219 'Turkish', cadenzas by Joachim; Dmitri Shostakovich, Symphony No. 4 in C minor, Op 43, Janine Jansen violin, Vladimir Ashkenazy Conductor, European Union Youth Orchestra (before 1995 European Community YO)
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Violin Concerto No. 2 in D major, K211, Proms premiere, Sinfonia concertante in E flat major, K 364, Violin Concerto No. 4 in D major, K218, Symphony No. 29 in A major, K 201, Maxim Vengerov violin/director, Conductor, Lawrence Power viola, UBS Verbier Festival Chamber Orchestra
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart Concerto for Piano No. 23 in A major, K 488 BBC Symphony Orchestra Richard Goode piano Jiří Bělohlávek conductor Anton Bruckner Symphony No. 9 in D minor BBC Symphony Orchestra Jiří Bělohlávek conductor
Dmitri Shostakovich Festive Overture, Op 96 Alexander Borodin Prince Igor Aria 'No sleep, no rest' Act 2 Giuseppe Verdi Ernani Aria 'Gran dio!...Oh de' verd'aani miei' Act 3 Proms premiere Anton Rubinstein Nero Epithalamium 'I sing to you, Hymen divine' Proms premiere Colin Matthews Vivo Sergei Prokofiev Violin Concerto No 2 in G minor Richard Wagner Tannhäuser No. 12 Ankunft der Gäste Act 2 Scene 4 Proms premiere Eric Coates March 'Calling all Workers' Proms premiere Georges Bizet Carmen No. 12b Aria 'Votre toast, je peux vous le rendre' Act 2 Vasily Pavlovich Solovyov-Sedoy Moscow Nights Sonia Posetti Bullanguera World premiere Edward Elgar Pomp and Circumstance March No 1 in D major, 'Land of Hope and Glory' Sir Henry Wood Fantasia on British Sea Songs (with additional Songs arranged by Bob Chilcott) Hubert Parry Jerusalem Unknown National Anthem (arr. Henry Wood)
Two memorable performances of Mozart concertos from the Proms in 2006, the year which marked the 250th anniversary of the composer's birth, played by two outstanding soloists. A teenage Julian Bliss deftly delivers a virtuoso display in the Clarinet Concerto, and American pianist Richard Goode gives an insightful performance of Mozart's dramatic Piano Concerto No 23. Accompanying both soloists is the BBC Symphony Orchestra conducted by Jiri Belohlavek.
Suzy Klein introduces les Musiciens du Louvre, Grenoble, under their founding conductor Marc Minkowski in an entirely French programme Gabriel Fauré: Shylock Hector Berlioz: Les nuits d'été, Op 7 Georges Bizet: L' Arlésienne Anne Sofie von Otter, mezzo-soprano Les Musiciens du Louvre-Grenoble Orchestra (formerly Les Musiciens du Louvre) Marc Minkowski, conductor
Katie Derham introduces another extraordinary Prom from the BBC archive. This week she's joined by the conductor of what has been described as the greatest Prom of all time, Gustavo Dudamel. Together they look back at his debut Prom in 2007 with the Simon Bolivar National Youth Orchestra of Venezuela, who dazzled the music world with their performance of Shostakovich’s Tenth Symphony, Bernstein’s Symphonic Dances from West Side Story and a feast of musical gems from Latin American composers Márquez, Ginastera and Gutiérrez
George Frideric Handel - Concerto a due cori No. 2 in F major, HWV 333 Purcell - Sett of Favourite Airs, Fantasies and Dances (devised Catherine Mackintosh) George Frideric Handel - Ode for the Birthday of Queen Anne, HWV 74 George Frideric Handel - Acis and Galatea, HWV 49 George Frideric Handel - L' Allegro, il Penseroso ed il Moderato, HWV 55 Georg Philipp Telemann - Overture (Suite) in G minor, TWV 55:g8 George Frideric Handel - Music for the Royal Fireworks, HWV 351 Georg Philipp Telemann - Overture (Suite) in D major, TWV 55:D19
John Miles Overture Proms premiere Callum McLeod conductor Michael Ashley Ball singer BBC Concert Orchestra Martin Williams arranger Frank Wildhorn Jekyll & Hyde This is the Moment Act 1 Proms premiere Michael Ashley Ball singer Callum McLeod conductor BBC Concert Orchestra Jule Styne Funny Girl Don't Rain On My Parade Act 1 Proms premiere Callum McLeod conductor Michael Ashley Ball singer BBC Concert Orchestra Leslie Bricusse The Roar of the Greasepaint, The Smell of the Crowd Feeling Good Act 2 Proms premiere Callum McLeod conductor BBC Concert Orchestra Michael Ashley Ball singer Arthur Sullivan Patience Am I alone and unobserved? Act 1 No. 6 Callum McLeod conductor BBC Concert Orchestra Michael Ashley Ball singer Arthur Sullivan Patience If you're anxious for to shine Act 1 Alexander Borodin Kismet Stranger in Paradise Proms premiere Callum McLeod conductor Richard Balcombe orchestrator BBC Concert Orchestra Michael Ashley Ball singer Alexander Borodin Kismet And this is my Beloved Proms premiere Bizet Les pêcheurs de perles Duet 'Au fond du temple saint' Proms premiere Michael Ashley Ball singer Callum McLeod conductor BBC Concert Orchestra Alfie Boe tenor Ernesto Curtis Torna a Surriento Proms premiere BBC Concert Orchestra Alfie Boe tenor Callum McLeod conductor Stephen Schwartz Godspell Prepare ye the way of the Lord Proms premiere BBC Concert Orchestra Michael Ashley Ball singer Callum McLeod conductor Andrew Lloyd Webber Jesus Christ Superstar Gethsemane Proms premiere BBC Concert Orchestra Michael Ashley Ball singer Callum McLeod conductor Andrew Lloyd Webber Sunset Boulevard Suite Proms premiere BBC Concert Orchestra Callum McLeod conductor Martin Yates arranger Michael Ashley Ball singer Andrew Lloyd Webber Sunset Boulevard Song 'As if we never said Goodbye' Proms premiere Andrew Lloyd Webber Sunset Boulevard Song 'Sunset Boulevard' Act 2 Proms premiere Benny A
London Symphony Orchestra Conductor: Valery Gergiev Piano: Alexander Toradze Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky Fantasy Overture 'Romeo and Juliet' Sergei Prokofiev Piano Concerto No 2 in G minor Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky Fantasy-Overture 'Hamlet' Sergei Prokofiev Symphony No 7 in C sharp minor
Gustav Mahler, Symphony No 7 in E minor. Michael Tilson Thomas Conductor, San Francisco Symphony
Sir Arnold Bax: The Garden of Fand Gerald Finzi: Intimations of Immortality, Op 29 (Proms premiere) Edward Elgar: Violin Concerto Johann Sebastian Bach: Violin Partita No 3 in E major, No. 1 Preludio - encore BBC Concert Orchestra Paul Daniel Conductor Andrew Kennedy tenor BBC Symphony Chorus Nigel Kennedy violin
Murray Gold - Doctor Who Copland - Fanfare for the Common Man Mark-Anthony Turnage - Three Asteroids Holst - The Planets Wagner - Die Walküre, WWV 86b Prokofiev - Romeo and Juliet, Suite No. 2, Op 64b Ron Grainer - Doctor Who Theme (arr. Murray Gold)
Francis Poulenc - Chansons françaises, S 130, No. 6 La bell' si nous étions Proms premiere, No. 2 La belle se siet au pied de la tour Proms premiere, No. 4 Clic, clac, dansez sabots Proms premiere, No. 3 Pilons l'orge Proms premiere, No. 7 Ah! mon beau laboureur Proms premiere, No. 8 Les tisserands Proms premiere. John McCabe, Scenes in America deserta, Proms premiere. Orlande de Lassus, Dessus le marché d'Arras, Proms premiere. Pierre Passereau, Il est bel et bon, Proms premiere. Orlande de Lassus, Toutes les nuitz, Proms premiere. Clément Janequin, La guerre. Sir John Rogers, Hears not my Phyllis, Proms premiere. John William Hobbs, Phillis is my only joy, Proms premiere. Trad. The Little Green Lane, Proms premiere. Frederick Bridge, The Goslings, Proms premiere. Trad. Greensleeves, Proms premiere of this version. Blow away the morning dew, Proms premiere of this version. The Turtle Dove (arr. Philip Lawson), Proms premiere of this version. Widdicombe Fair, Proms premiere of this version. Sir Arthur Sullivan, The Long Day Closes, - encore. Samuel Ernest Lovatt Music Arranger, Bob Chilcott Music Arranger, Gordon Langford Music Arranger, The King's Singers
Sara Mohr-Pietsch introduces a concert in which Pierre Boulez conducts two of Janacek's greatest non-theatrical works, Sinfonietta and the Glagolitic Mass, and the quirky Capriccio for piano (left hand only). Organist Simon Preston and pianist Jean-Efflam Bavouzet join the massed forces of the BBC Symphony Chorus, the London Symphony Chorus and the BBC Symphony Orchestra.
A trio of works from America. Copland's great Third Symphony - with its portrayal of the wide, open spaces of North America - includes a striking reprise of the classic Fanfare for the Common Man at the start of the last movement. The symphony dates from the end of the Second World War and captures something of the sense of optimism of the American people at the time. From 25 years earlier, though sounding far more recent, comes Edgard Varèse's Amériques, whose title, he claimed, was 'symbolic of discoveries, of new worlds on Earth, in the sky or in the minds of men'; the first work that the Frenchman completed after arriving in New York, this still strikingly original score was premiered in Philadelphia by Leopold Stokowski. So too was Rachmaninov's Fourth (and last) Piano Concerto, also composed in the USA, where the composer had settled after leaving Russia in 1917. Rachmaninov himself was the soloist at the 1927 premiere; tonight it's the fearlessly virtuosic Boris Berezovsky.
Johann Sebastian Bach St John Passion, BWV 245 Matthew Brook bass Monteverdi Choir Sir John Eliot Gardiner Conductor Peter Harvey Christus Mark Padmore Evangelist Katharine Fuge soprano Robin Blaze counter-tenor Nicholas Mulroy tenor Jeremy Budd tenor English Baroque Soloists (pre-1977, Monteverdi Orchestra)
Petroc Trelawny presents a concert in which 26-year-old Chinese superstar pianist Lang Lang performs works by Mozart, Rachmaninov, Debussy, Chopin and Liszt. For Schubert's Fantasia in F minor, Lang Lang duets with the prodigious nine-year-old California-born pianist Marc Yu, whom he has dubbed little Mozart. Includes: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Piano Sonata in B flat major, K 333; Sergei Rachmaninov, 10 Preludes, Op 23 No. 2 in B flat major, No. 5 in G minor; Fryderyk Chopin, Andante Spianato in G major, Op 22a; Franz Schubert, Fantasie in F minor, D 940; Claude Debussy, Préludes Book 1, No. 8 La fille aux cheveux de lin, Préludes Book 1, No. 5 Les collines d'Anacapri; Trad. Moonlight Reflections, Spring Dance; Franz Liszt, Hungarian Rhapsodies, S 244 (solo piano version), No. 2 in C sharp minor; Fryderyk Chopin, 12 Études, Op 10, No. 3 in E major - encore; Trad. Two Horses, - encore. Marc Yu piano Anon. Music Arranger Vladimir Horowitz Music Arranger Lang erhu Lang Lang piano
Prom 05 - Folk Day 20 Jul 2008 Bella Hardy - Young Edmund Bella Hardy - Searching for Lambs Bella Hardy - Three Black Feathers Bella Hardy - Down in Yon Forest Bella Hardy - Dog and Gun Martin Simpson - Little Musgrave Martin Simpson - Bachelor's Hall Martin Simpson - Kit's Tune/When a Knight Won his Spurs Martin Simpson - Never Any Good Martin Simpson - Come Down Jehovah (Chris wood) Bellowhead - Fakenham Fair Bellowhead - Sloe Gin Bellowhead - London Town Bellowhead - Roll Down the Bay to Juliana Bellowhead - Frogs' Legs and Dragon's Teeth (Bellowhead - Pickle Eye Bush - encore)
Roger Norrington is master of ceremonies for the traditional festivities of the Last Night of the 2008 Proms season. Star turns are provided by bass-baritone Bryn Terfel, who brings operatic heroes and villains vividly to life, and French pianist Helene Grimaud, soloist in Beethoven's Choral Fantasy. The celebrations also include Anna Meredith's nation-hopping commission, entitled froms, as well as a lyrical work from anniversary composer Ralph Vaughan Williams (Text: BBC)
Stravinsky - Fireworks Chabrier - Ode a la musique (version with orchestra) Tchaikovsky - Concerto for Piano No. 3 in E flat major, Op 75 Poulenc - Concerto for Two Pianos in D minor Berio - Polka Elgar - In the South (Alassio) Brahms - Rhapsodie, Op 53 Bruckner - Psalm 150
Gustav Holst - First Choral Symphony, Op 41 Frederick Delius - Brigg Fair Edward Elgar - 'Enigma' Variations Concluding the weekend marking the 75th anniversaries of the deaths of Delius, Elgar and Holst, David Atherton conducts the first Proms performance of Holst's ecstatic choral setting of poems by Keats. Holst: First Choral Symphony. Susan Gritton (soprano), BBC National Chorus of Wales, BBC Symphony Chorus, BBC National Orchestra of Wales/David Atherton
John Wilson and his hand-picked Orchestra celebrate 75 years of MGM musicals with songs from unforgettable movie classics, including The Wizard of Oz, Meet Me in St Louis, Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, High Society, Gigi and Singin' in the Rain. Amazingly, although all the original orchestral parts were lost when the studio destroyed its music library to make way for a car park, Wilson has succeeded in reconstructing the scores by painstakingly transcribing each soundtrack by ear. He is joined by starry singers from the classical and musical theatre worlds, as well as by the elite Maida Vale Singers
Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky - Concerto for Piano No. 1 in B flat minor, Op 23 Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky - 6 Romances, Op 6 (arr. Stephen Hough) Witold Lutosławski - Concerto for Orchestra Ottorino Respighi - Roman Festivals
Solomon No. 41 Sinfonia: Arrival of the Queen of Sheba Act 3 Coronation Anthem 'Let thy hand be strengthened', HWV 259 Semele, HWV 58 Overture Aria & chorus 'Endless pleasure, endless love' Act 1 Scene 4 Aria 'My racking thoughts' Act 3 Scene 2 Recitative & aria 'O ecstasy of happiness!...Myself I shall adore' Act 3 Scene 3 Coronation Anthem 'My heart is inditing', HWV 261 Coronation Anthem 'The king shall rejoice', HWV 260 Salve regina, HWV 241 Concerto for Organ in F major, HWV 292, Op 4.4 (original version with 'Alleluia' chorus) Coronation Anthem 'Zadok the Priest', HWV 258
Handel: Samson Susan Gritton Dalila Iestyn Davies Micah Mark Padmore Samson Neal Davies Manoa Christopher Purves Harapha Lucy Crowe Israelite woman/Philistine woman/Virgin Ben Johnson Israelite man/Philistine man/Messenger The Choir of The English Concert The New Company The English Concert Harry Bicket conductor
Liszt: Les prÈludes Wagner: Tristan and Isolde - Prelude and Liebestod Berlioz: Symphonie fantastique West-Eastern Divan Orchestra Daniel Barenboim conductor
Ludwig van Beethoven - Overture 'Leonore' No. 3, Op 72b Ludwig van Beethoven - Fidelio, Op 72 Concert performance; sung in German, with English narration by Edward Said Waltraud Meier Leonore Simon O'Neill Florestan Gerd Grochowski Don Pizarro Sir John Tomlinson Rocco Adriana Kucerov· Marzelline Stephen R¸gamer Jacquino Viktor Rud Don Fernando BBC Singers Geoffrey Mitchell Choir West-Eastern Divan Orchestra Daniel Barenboim conductor
Rebecca Saunders - Traces Chopin: Piano Concerto No.2 in F minor Encore, Chopin: Ètude, opus 25 No. 1 Richard Strauss - Eine Alpensinfonie, Op 64 Lang Lang piano Staatskapelle Dresden Fabio Luisi conductor
Stravinsky: Agon Tchaikovsky: Concerto Fantasia in G major, Op.56 Tchaikovsky: Tchaikovsky - Variations on a Rococo Theme, Op 33 Tchaikovsky: Francesca da Rimini Stephen Hough piano Steven Isserlis cello BBC Symphony Orchestra David Robertson conductor
The Tonhalle Orchestra Zurich under conductor David Zinman plays music by Schubert, Mahler and Golijov. American soprano Dawn Upshaw is the soloist in the UK premiere of Golijov's acclaimed new work 'She Was Here' based on four Schubert songs, and Upshaw returns at the end of Mahler's Fourth Symphony to give the angel's-eye view of Heaven. The concert begins with Schubert's overture written as incidental music to the play Rosamunde. This live prom from the Royal Albert Hall is introduced by Clive Anderson.
György Ligeti - Atmosphères Gustav Mahler - Kindertotenlieder Arnold Schoenberg - Five Orchestral Pieces, Op. 16 Richard Strauss - Also sprach Zarathustra
Oliver Knussen - Flourish with Fireworks, Op 22 Purcell - Suite for Organ & Orchestra (Purcell/Wood) Purcell - Dido and Aeneas, Z 626 Joseph Haydn - Concerto for Trumpet in E flat major, Hob. VIIe:1 Gustav Mahler - Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen Hector Villa-Lobos - Chôros No. 10 'Rasga o coração' Malcolm Arnold - A Grand, Grand Overture, Op 57 Albert Ketèlbey - In a Monastery Garden George Gershwin - Shall We Dance? Astor Piazzolla - Libertango Julia Barbour - Fanfares for the Last Night George Frideric Handel - Music for the Royal Fireworks, HWV 351 Hubert Parry - Jerusalem Edward Elgar - Pomp and Circumstance March No. 1 in D major ('Land of Hope and Glory') Anonymous - National Anthem (arr. Henry Wood) Traditional - Auld Lang Syne (arr. unknown)
Mahler Symphony No. 8 in E flat major 'Symphony of a Thousand' (82 mins) Mardi Byers: soprano Twyla Robinson: soprano Malin Christensson: soprano Stephanie Blythe: mezzo-soprano Kelley O'Connor: mezzo-soprano Stefan Vinke: tenor Hanno Müller-Brachmann: bass-baritone Tomasz Konieczny: bass Choristers of St Paul's Cathedral Choristers of Westminster Abbey Choristers of Westminster Cathedral BBC Symphony Chorus Crouch End Festival Chorus Sydney Philharmonia Choirs BBC Symphony Orchestra Jirí Belohlávek conductor
Wagner: The Mastersingers of Nuremberg An Opera in Three Acts Concert staging, sung in German Bryn Terfel: Hans Sachs Raymond Very: Walther von Stoltzing Amanda Roocroft: Eva Christopher Purves: Beckmesser Andrew Tortise: David Anna Burford: Magdalene David Soar: Nightwatchman Brindley Sherratt: Pogner Simon Thorpe: Kothner David Stout: Nachtigall Paul Hodges: Schwartz Rhys Meirion: Zorn Andrew Rees: Eisslinger Stephen Rooke: Moser Arwel Huw Morgan: Foltz Geraint Dodd: Vogelgesang Owen Webb: Ortel Chorus and Orchestra of Welsh National Opera Lothar Koenigs conductor
Schumann - Manfred, Op 115 (orch. Gustav Mahler) Rachmaninov - Piano Concerto No. 2 in C minor Tchaikovsky - Manfred
Beethoven Overture - 'Egmont' Piano Concerto No. 1 in C Major The Creatures of Prometheus Overture Piano Concerto No. 4 in G major
Britten: Sinfonia da Requiem Prokofiev: Piano Concerto No. 1 in D flat major Alexander Toradze, piano Shostakovich: Symphony No. 7 in C major, 'Leningrad' BBC National Orchestra of Wales Thierry Fischer conductor
Doctor Who returns to the Proms with a new show hosted by the stars of the series - Karen Gillan (aka the Doctor's companion Amy Pond), Arthur Darvill (aka Rory Williams) and featuring a special guest appearance by Matt Smith (aka the Doctor). The concert features Murray Gold's music for the television series, including his latest re-imagining of Ron Grainier's classic theme tune performed by the BBC National Orchestra of Wales, the London Philharmonic Choir, soloists Yamit Mamo and Mark Chambers, and conducted by Ben Foster. With exclusive behind-the-scenes access, specially-edited sequences from the most recent series, a host of monsters laying siege to the Royal Albert Hall and a new scene written especially for the Proms by Steven Moffat and featuring the Time Lord himself, this is an intergalactic musical adventure like no other.
Wagner - Rienzi Overture Beethoven - Piano Concerto No. 2 in B flat major Dvorak - Symphony No. 9 in E minor
Brett Dean: Amphitheatre (London premiere) (10 mins) Mahler: Des Knaben Wunderhorn – selection (23 mins) Ekaterina Gubanova mezzo-soprano Shostakovich: Symphony No. 10 in E minor (50 mins) The Australian Youth Orchestra Sir Mark Elder conductor
Marking the 80th birthday of one of Broadway's great innovators, the first ever all-Sondheim Prom at the Royal Albert Hall. The concert includes excerpts from hit shows A Little Night Music, Sweeney Todd and Into the Woods performed by a starry cast of leading figures of the opera and theatre worlds with Bryn Terfel, Maria Friedman, Simon Russell Beale and some special guests. Also on stage is the BBC Concert Orchestra conducted by David Charles Abel. Introduced by Katie Derham.
Mahler: Symphony No. 3 in D minor (100 mins) Karen Cargill: mezzo-soprano Edinburgh Festival Chorus (women's voices) Royal Scottish National Orchestra Junior Chorus BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra Donald Runnicles conductor Sung in German, Fixed subtitles in English, commentary in English
Mahler Symphony No. 5 in C sharp minor World Orchestra for Peace Valery Gergiev conductor
Foulds - April England Op. 48 No. 1 Beethoven - Piano Concerto No. 3 in C minor R. Strauss - Ein Heldenleben
Paul Dukas - L' apprenti sorcier Julian Anderson - Fantasias Berlioz - Symphonie fantastique, Op 14
Chopin: Piano Concerto No. 2 in F minor Encore - Gluck, transcribed Sgambati: Excerpt from Orfeo et Eurydice Nelson Freire: piano Ravel: Daphnis and Chloë – Suite No. 2 BBC Symphony Orchestra Lionel Bringuier conductor Katy Derham, Hostess
Verdi: La forza del destino – overture (8 mins) Dallapiccola Partita (27 mins) Sarah Tynan: soprano Bruch: Violin Concerto No.1 in G minor (25 mins) James Ehnes: violin Encore - Paganini: Caprice 16 Schumann Symphony No. 4 in D minor (revised version) (38 mins) BBC Philharmonic Gianandrea Noseda conductor Vocals with fixed English subtitles Commentary in English Interval cut
J. S. Bach, orch. Stokowski: Toccata and Fugue in D minor, BWV 565 (10 mins) J. S. Bach, orch. Henry Wood: 'Suite No. 6' - Prelude; Finale (6 mins) Tarik O'Regan: Latent Manifest (5 mins) (BBC commission: world premiere) Walton: The Wise Virgins – suite (21 mins) Royal Philharmonic Orchestra Andrew Litton conductor During interval: Brandenburg Concerto No. 2, recorded earlier in the day English Baroque Soloists Sir John Eliot Gardiner conductor Grainger: Blithe Bells (4 mins) J. S. Bach, arr. Sargent: Orchestral Suite No. 3 in D major, BWV 1068 - Air (6 mins) Alissa Firsova: Bach Allegro (5 mins) (BBC commission: world premiere) J. S. Bach, arr. Bantock: Chorale Prelude 'Wachet auf, ruft uns due Stimme', BWV 645 (5 mins) J. S. Bach, arr. Respighi: Passacaglia and Fugue in C minor, BWV 582 (13 mins) Royal Philharmonic Orchestra Andrew Litton conductor Commentary in English
Arvo Pärt: Cantus in memoriam Benjamin Britten (7 mins) Britten: Four Sea Interludes from 'Peter Grimes' (17 mins) Huw Watkins: Violin Concerto (BBC commission: world premiere) (20 mins) Alina Ibragimova: violin Shostakovich: Symphony No. 5 in D minor (50 mins) BBC Symphony Orchestra Edward Gardner conductor
From the Royal Albert Hall and introduced by Suzy Klein, the BBC Symphony Orchestra under Edward Gardner perform Shostakovich's iconic Fifth Symphony (A Soviet Artist's Reply to Just Criticism) which found huge favour with the Stalinist authorities in the 1930s and has since become internationally established as one of the great popular masterpieces of the 20th century. The programme also includes the Four Sea Interludes from Britten's opera Peter Grimes, and the world premiere of a new violin concerto by young British composer Huw Watkins, performed by Alina Ibragimova.
The Philharmonia Orchestra play Mosolov's The Foundry, Pärt's Symphony No. 4 "Los Angeles", Ravel's Piano Concerto for the Left Hand & Scriabin's The Poem of Ecstasy.
Oklahoma: excerpts (13 mins) Carousel: excerpts (26 mins) South Pacific: excerpts (17 mins) The King and I: (arr. Edward B. Powell) Overture (6 mins) Flower Drum Song: excerpts (11 mins) The Sound of Music: excerpts (12 mins) Cast includes: Kim Criswell Sierra Boggess Anna-Jane Casey Julian Ovenden Rod Gilfry Maida Vale Singers John Wilson Orchestra John Wilson conductor
Mark-Anthony Turnage: Hammered Out (BBC co-commission with LA Philharmonic: world premiere) (c15 mins) Barber: Violin Concerto (25 mins) Encore: J. S. Bach: Gavotte en rondeau from Violin Partita 3 Gil Shaham: violin Sibelius Symphony: No. 2 in D major (40 mins) BBC Symphony Orchestra David Robertson conductor Commentary in English
An evening with the British singer-songwriter Jamie Cullum, as he makes his debut at the Proms. The Heritage Orchestra, one of the most exciting new young orchestras to emerge in the last decade, joins him onstage at the Royal Albert Hall for a wide-ranging programme that promises both new arrangements and some special guests.
Hindemith: Symphony 'Mathis der Maler'. Hindemith’s Symphony ‘Mathis der Maler’ (‘Mathis the Painter’) is often said to have been extracted from his opera of the same name. Certainly the same music appears in both, but the symphony was the earlier work. In 1933, the year of the Nazi seizure of power, Hindemith accepted the suggestion of his publisher Willy Strecker that he should compose an opera based on the life of the Renaissance painter Matthias Grünewald (c1475/80–1528), whose real name was Mathis Gothart Nithart. Grünewald’s masterpiece is the set of paintings executed at the beginning of the 16th century on the altar for the hospital of the monastery at Isenheim in Alsace. Now preserved in Colmar, near Strasbourg, this Isenheim altar-piece is well known in Germany as one of the supreme treasures of late German medieval art. Mahler: Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen (17 mins). Christian Gerhaher: baritone. The Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen (‘Songs of a Wayfaring Lad’), composed between 1883 and 1885, left a particularly strong imprint on the roughly contemporary First Symphony. The first verse of the second song, ‘Ging heut’ morgen über’s Feld’, forms the main theme of that symphony’s first movement – and a fair amount of its continuation; while the final verse of the fourth song (beginning ‘Auf der Strasse steht ein Lindenbaum’ – ‘Upon the road there stands a linden tree’) reappears as the Trio section of the First Symphony’s sinister Funeral March. This connection emphasises something the casual reader of the Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen texts might miss: that the linden tree under which the wandering boy finds peace is a symbol of death. In the song, we have just a couple of bars of the opening funereal tune to cloud the quiet ecstasy of the singer’s final words: ‘All was well again! All! All! Love and sorrow, the world and dreams!’ That opposition – warm, soothing hope one moment, cold emptiness t
Rameau: Dardanus – suite (18 mins) Canteloube: Songs from the Auvergne – selection (25 mins): Pastourelle Deux Bourrées: N'ai pas iéu de mio Une jionto pastouro Té, l'co té! Bailero Malurous qu'o uno fenno Anna Caterina Antonacci: soprano Martin Matalon: Lignes de fuite UK premiere) (18 mins) Mussorgsky, arr. Henry Wood: Pictures at an Exhibition (30 mins) BBC National Orchestra of Wales François-Xavier Roth conductor
Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra/Rattle. Rattle conducts his orchestra, still rated top in the world, in Beethoven's Symphony No 4 and Mahler's Symphony No 1, then the following night soprano Karita Mattila sings Richard Strauss's Four Last Songs in a concert that includes Wagner, Berg and Schoenberg.
The Royal Scottish National Orchestra and its French-born Music Director, Stéphane Denève, join Paul Lewis as he rounds off his cycle of the five Beethoven piano concertos with the last and most proudly majestic of them all. Taking up this afternoon's Italian theme, they play spectacular orchestral showpieces by Berlioz and Respighi, inspired respectively by Rome's lively street life and its imperial past; while, cementing Celtic connections, they introduce a recent symphonic suite drawn from the Scottish composer James MacMillan's opera The Sacrifice, inspired by the medieval folk tales of The Mabinogion and premiered to great acclaim by Welsh National Opera in 2007. * Berlioz Overture 'Roman Carnival' (9 mins) * Beethoven Piano Concerto No. 5 in E flat major, Op. 73 'Emperor' (38 mins) * interval * James Macmillan The Sacrifice – Three Interludes (London premiere) (15 mins) * Respighi Pines of Rome (23 mins) * Paul Lewis piano * Royal Scottish National Orchestra * Stéphane Denève conductor
Tradition meets high jinks as Jiří Bělohlávek conducts his second Last Night, while the spirit of Henry Wood presides, as always, over the grand finale of the Proms. Renée Fleming lends her lustrous soprano to music by Strauss, Dvořák and Smetana. Former Radio 3 New Generation Artist Maxim Rysanov gives Tchaikovsky's popular cello variations a new voice, and loyal Prommers can spot the last traces of the season's Wood, Parry, Wagner, Rodgers and Hammerstein and opera themes. A festive new piece by Jonathan Dove opens the evening; a contemporary hornpipe forms an upbeat to anniversary composer Arne's Rule, Britannia!; and audiences around the UK can join the Royal Albert Hall crowd in singing along to excerpts from Lohengrin and Carousel in a climax to the BBC's opera season
New British music, Brahms, Liszt and a lavish choral work blaze a trail for some of 2011's Proms musical strands. Benjamin Grosvenor made his Proms debut, and there's Janáček's extraordinary celebration of Slavic culture, the Glagolitic Mass. Friday 15 July 7.30pm – c. 9.40pm Royal Albert Hall Choral music and singing events, Piano music Judith Weir Stars, Night, Music and Light (c4 mins) BBC Commission, World Premiere Brahms Academic Festival Overture (11 mins) Liszt Piano Concerto No. 2 in A major (20 mins) INTERVAL Janáček Glagolitic Mass (45 mins) Benjamin Grosvenor piano Hibla Gerzmava soprano Dagmar Pecková mezzo-soprano Stefan Vinke tenor Jan Martiník bass David Goode organ BBC Singers BBC Symphony Chorus BBC Symphony Orchestra Jiří Bělohlávek conductor
In the first half of his second Prom Myung-Whun Chung pairs works by German Romantics from opposite ends of the 19th century, including the meltingly beautiful Brahms Double Concerto with Renaud and Gautier Capuçon. After the interval comes a piece with French connections which swept away that old order. A sensational succès de scandale in 1913 for Diaghilev and his Ballets Russes, The Rite of Spring not only prompted the most famous riot in musical history but sounds sensational still, rediscovering rhythm as music's primal driving force. Tuesday 19 July 7.00pm – c. 9.00pm Royal Albert Hall Classical for starters Weber Oberon - overture (9 mins) Brahms Concerto in A minor for Violin and Cello (Double Concerto) (32 mins) INTERVAL Stravinsky The Rite of Spring (33 mins) Renaud Capuçon violin Gautier Capuçon cello Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France Myung-Whun Chung conductor
Thursday 21 July 7.30pm – c. 9.45pm Royal Albert Hall Piano music Sibelius Scènes historiques - Suite No. 2 (19 mins) Sibelius Symphony No. 7 in C major (23 mins) INTERVAL Bartók Piano Concerto No. 3 (24 mins) Janáček Sinfonietta (24 mins) András Schiff piano Hallé Sir Mark Elder conductor
Basque-born Juanjo Mena, recently named Chief Conductor of the BBC Philharmonic, makes his Proms debut with this dazzling Franco-Spanish evening. Debussy's three orchestral Images are interspersed with evocations of an idealised South filled with the rhythms of Gypsy dancing and the scent of jasmine. The brilliant showpieces of Ravel are complemented by Falla's Impressionistic Andalusian concerto, in which the orchestra is joined by pianist Steven Osborne. Friday 22 July 7.30pm – c. 9.50pm Royal Albert Hall Classical for starters, French music concerts and events, Piano music Debussy Images - Gigues (7 mins) Ravel Rapsodie espagnole (15 mins) Debussy Images - Rondes de printemps (9 mins) INTERVAL Ravel Alborado del gracioso (8 mins) Falla Nights in the Gardens of Spain (24 mins) Debussy Images - Ibéria (20 mins) Steven Osborne piano BBC Philharmonic Juanjo Mena conductor
Music composed by Nitin Sawhney for the Human Planet television series, and performances by artistst including Ayarkhaan (Sakha Republic), Bibilang Shark-Calling Group (Papua New Guinea), Khusugtun (Mongolia), Rasmus Lyberth (Greenland), and Enock Mbongwe (Zambia). BBC Concert Orchestra, Charles Hazlewood (conductor) and Paul Rose (presenter).. Big-screen video projections and excerpts from Nitin Sawhney's score for the acclaimed landmark BBC One series Human Planet, alongside artists heard in BBC Radio 3's accompanying Music Planet series. Saturday 23 July 7.30pm – c. 9.45pm Royal Albert Hall For families There will be one interval
The ultimate in dramatic intensity, this extraordinary work speaks of heaven and hell, fire and earth, darkness and light in music that is as much theatrical as devotional. The Requiem is always a special event - the more so when we have on the podium a Verdi specialist whose recent Cologne recording, which also featured Ferruccio Furlanetto, has been much acclaimed. Tonight's stellar line-up also includes Marina Poplavskaya and Joseph Calleja, who both sang alongside Furlanetto in last year's Simon Boccanegra. Sunday 24 July 7.00pm – c. 8.40pm Royal Albert Hall Choral music and singing events Verdi Requiem (86 mins) Marina Poplavskaya soprano Mariana Pentcheva mezzo-soprano Joseph Calleja tenor Ferruccio Furlanetto bass BBC Symphony Chorus BBC National Chorus of Wales London Philharmonic Choir BBC Symphony Orchestra Semyon Bychkov conductor
Sir Roger Norrington has chosen Mahler's last completed symphony for his final concerts as Principal Conductor of the Stuttgart Radio Symphony Orchestra, a post he has held since 1998. Written at a time of personal crisis, the Ninth begins with what some have heard as the irregular rhythm of Mahler's own failing heartbeat and it ends with a long fade to eternal nothingness. In between comes perhaps the greatest, certainly the most cathartic, of all late- Romantic symphonies. Sadly, the composer did not live to hear it. Tonight's performance promises to be both a moving occasion and a revealing one, taking up the faster pacing and purer orchestral sonorities of the composer's own time. Monday 25 July 7.30pm – c. 9.00pm Royal Albert Hall Mahler Symphony No. 9 (73 mins) Stuttgart Radio Symphony Orchestra (SWR) Sir Roger Norrington conductor
Vladimir Jurowski's Hungarian Prom kicks off with Kodály's effervescent Dances of Galánta. Bartók's more acerbically ebullient First Piano Concerto will give pianist Jean-Efflam Bavouzet a chance to use both hands: his previous Proms appearances, in 2008 and 2010, both involved pieces conceived for the left hand alone! In tonight's second half, an influential masterwork from one of this year's featured composers, born 200 years ago. Liszt's A Faust Symphony 'in three character portraits, after Goethe' will be played in the version that concludes with a grandiose setting of the 'Chorus mysticus' unheard at the Proms since 1967. Tuesday 26 July 7.30pm – c. 9.55pm Royal Albert Hall Choral music and singing events, Piano music Kodály Dances of Galánta (16 mins) Bartók Piano Concerto No. 1 (24 mins) INTERVAL Liszt A Faust Symphony (62 mins) Jean-Efflam Bavouzet piano Marco Jentzsch tenor London Philharmonic Choir (men's voices) London Symphony Chorus (men's voices) London Philharmonic Orchestra Vladimir Jurowski conductor
Anyone who has split their sides laughing at CBBC's hit television series Horrible Histories now has the chance to see and hear the cast perform some of the most popular songs from the show, ranging from the Savage Stone Age and the Vicious Vikings to the Gorgeous Georgians and the Vile Victorians. Backed by children's choirs and the Aurora Orchestra, the songs will be interspersed with some great music by composers such as King Henry VIII, Lully, Mozart and the prolific 'Anon'. Horrible Histories, based on the best-selling books by Terry Deary with illustrations by Martin Brown, has proved a massive success. Children love the series, and the songs (music by Richie Webb) have proved among the most memorable elements of the show. Come to see the stars and sing along! Following the success of the first-ever signed Prom last year, Dr Paul Whittaker, Artistic Director of Music and the Deaf, returns to guide you through this free Prom. Saturday 30 July 11.00am – c. 1.00pm Royal Albert Hall Choral music and singing events, For families Louise Fryer (presenter), Horrible Histories cast, Choirs from The Music Centre, Kids Company Choir, Aurora Orchestra and Nicholas Collon (conductor). There will be one interval.
Strauss at his most passionate (and lascivious!) bookends a concert full of spectacle and panache. At its heart is the patriotic cantata Prokofiev drew from his music for Eisenstein's epic film about a medieval Russian hero's defeat of the Teutonic invader. That score had quite an impact on Walton's own wartime work for the cinema but it is the subtler brio of his Violin Concerto that is heard before the interval. Midori is one of relatively few international superstars to have taken up a piece whose formidable technical challenges were actively encouraged by Jascha Heifetz, its original soloist, but whose lyricism is all pervasive too. Saturday 30 July 7.30pm – c. 9.55pm Royal Albert Hall Choral music and singing events R. Strauss Don Juan (17 mins) Walton Violin Concerto (32 mins) INTERVAL Prokofiev Alexander Nevsky - cantata (40 mins) R. Strauss Salome - Dance of the Seven Veils (12 mins) Midori violin Nadezhda Serdiuk mezzo-soprano CBSO Chorus City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra Andris Nelsons conductor
Tasmin Little and Sir Andrew Davis tackle a favourite concerto which the violinist has only recently felt ready to commit to disc. It is preceded by one of Elgar's most radical part-songs, notated in two keys simultaneously in a manner which might be said to parallel the incorrigible experiments of Percy Grainger. To mark the 50th anniversary of that composer's death, his In a Nutshell suite receives a first outing at the Proms, reaching its popular march finale by way of some unpredictable and darkly complex invention. Once considered dangerously radical itself, Strauss's perky symphonic poem documents the adventures of a purely mythical rascal. Tuesday 2 August 7.00pm – c. 9.15pm Royal Albert Hall Choral music and singing events, Classical for starters Elgar There is sweet music (4 mins) Elgar Violin Concerto (50 mins) INTERVAL Grainger Irish Tune from County Derry (4 mins) Grainger Suite 'In a Nutshell' (20 mins) R. Strauss Till Eulenspiegels lustige Streiche (15 mins) Tasmin Little violin BBC Singers BBC Symphony Orchestra Sir Andrew Davis conductor
Grainger is celebrated in a special Late Night sequence as star Northumbrian smallpiper Kathryn Tickell and friends take a fresh look at the prodigious activities of this wild colonial boy. A pioneering collector of folk music from around the globe and arguably the world's first crossover artist, Grainger explored new worlds and invented new sounds, by turns touching, funny and provocative. Special guests, including the distinguished English folk singer June Tabor, place his achievement in its folk-music context. Tuesday 2 August 10.15pm – c. 11.30pm Royal Albert Hall Choral music and singing events Grainger Green Bushes (9 mins) Grainger Molly on the Shore (5 mins) Grainger Shepherd's Hey - medley (12 mins) Grainger Early One Morning (5 mins) Grainger Shallow Brown (8 mins) Grainger Scotch Strathspey and Reel (9 mins) Interspersed with traditional and contemporary folk music, including material which formed the basis for Grainger's arrangements June Tabor singer Wilson Family BBC Singers (men's voices) Kathryn Tickell Band Northern Sinfonia John Harle conductor
Returning to the Proms for the first time since 1988, cellist Lynn Harrell celebrates the 95th-birthday year of Henri Dutilleux with a performance of one of his best-loved works, nocturnal, mysterious and beautifully coloured. Debussy's languorous reverie fired up a stylistic revolution and gained notoriety when Nijinsky choreographed it for Diaghilev's Ballets Russes. The same company commissioned Ravel's sumptuous evocation of Ancient Greece, embracing the most atmospheric sunrise in all music, but before that there's room for his notionally Hispanic experiment in writing 'orchestral tissue without music' - the ever popular Boléro. Wednesday 3 August 7.30pm – c. 9.55pm Royal Albert Hall Choral music and singing events, French music concerts and events Debussy Prélude à L'après-midi d'un faune (8 mins) Henri Dutilleux 'Tout un monde lointain...' (27 mins) J. S. Bach Suite for Solo Cello No. 3 in C major, BWV 1009 - No. 5 Bourées 1 & 2 (3 mins) (encore) Ravel Boléro (15 mins) INTERVAL Ravel Daphnis and Chloë (50 mins) Lynn Harrell cello Edinburgh Festival Chorus BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra Donald Runnicles conductor
Now Music Director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Gustavo Dudamel - known by his own musicians as 'the Dude' - joins his old friends in the Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra and some mightily distinguished guests to tackle a colossus of the standard repertoire. Writing for vast forces including offstage brass, two solo singers and a large choir, Mahler takes listeners on a spectacular journey through the entire gamut of emotions. Beginning at the graveside, he remembers happier, busier and (spiritually) emptier times on the way to an apocalyptic revelation of the Day of Judgement. The promise of eternal life is then renewed in some of music's most uplifting pages. Friday 5 August 7.30pm – c. 9.10pm Royal Albert Hall Choral music and singing events Mahler Symphony No. 2 in C minor 'Resurrection' (85 mins) Miah Persson soprano Anna Larsson mezzo-soprano National Youth Choir of Great Britain Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra Gustavo Dudamel conductor
The music of Sergey Prokofiev looms large in this fascinating collaboration between Vladimir Jurowski and the National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain. First, an esoteric offering from the master's London-based grandson, a crossover artist in the best sense, determined to find new audiences and to reconfigure the classical tradition by way of Minimalist grooves, dancefloor beats, club nights and remixes. The influence of the senior Prokofiev is plain in the sizzling keyboard writing of Britten's early Piano Concerto, which gives BBC Radio 3 New Generation Artist Benjamin Grosvenor another chance to shine, following his First Night Proms debut. In the second half, Prokofiev's ballet music recounts the doomed love of Verona's most romantic couple. Saturday 6 August 6.30pm – c. 9.05pm Royal Albert Hall Classical for starters, Piano music Gabriel Prokofiev Concerto for Turntables and Orchestra (21 mins) Britten Piano Concerto (35 mins) Gould Boogie Woogie Etude (2 mins) (encore) INTERVAL Prokofiev Romeo and Juliet - selection (50 mins) Benjamin Grosvenor piano, New Generation Artist DJ Switch dj (turntables) National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain Vladimir Jurowski conductor
When in 2008 Nigel Kennedy came back to the Proms after an absence of 21 years, his Late Night concert with his own quartet followed an early-evening performance of Elgar's Violin Concerto which he capped with a solo Bach encore. Tonight's special event confirms that JSB continues to mean a great deal to him. The man dubbed 'the people's violinist' has recorded Bach concertos with the Irish Chamber Orchestra and with members of the Berlin Philharmonic. Discovering something new every time he explores the composer's music, Kennedy points up the parallels with jazz. Bach loved the dance forms of his own day and his music benefits from being played with emotional freedom and a keen rhythmic sense. Saturday 6 August 10.00pm – c. 11.00pm Royal Albert Hall J. S. Bach Partita for Solo Violin No. 3 in E major, BWV 1006 - No. 1 Preludio (4 mins) J. S. Bach Partita for Solo Violin No. 2 in D minor, BWV 1004 (36 mins) J. S. Bach Das Pendel (arr. Kennedy) (7 mins) Waller How can you face me now? (arr. Nigel Kennedy) (7 mins) (encore) Waller Honeysuckle Rose (arr. Nigel Kennedy) (7 mins) (encore) Waller Viper’s Drag (arr. Nigel Kennedy) (5 mins) (encore) Nigel Kennedy violin Rolf Bussald guitar Yaron Stavi double bass Krzysztof Dzeidzic percussion
Assisted by guest star Chloë Hanslip, Keith Lockhart and the BBC Concert Orchestra bring the silver-screen excitement of music associated with the cinema, from Pinewood to Hollywood, from Psycho to Star Wars, with a special tribute to the late John Barry. Friday 12 August 7.00pm – c. 9.20pm Royal Albert Hall Classical for starters Herrmann Music from The Man Who Knew Too Much, Citizen Kane, and Psycho (18 mins) Ennio Morricone Cinema Paradiso - theme (7 mins) Walton Henry V - suite (arr. Muir Mathieson) (21 mins) INTERVAL John Williams Music from Star Wars, Schindler's List and Harry Potter (14 mins) Jonny Greenwood Norwegian Wood - suite (arr. Robert Ziegler) (10 mins) BBC Commission, World Premiere Sir Richard Rodney Bennett Murder on the Orient Express - suite (8 mins) Barry Out of Africa - Love Theme (7 mins) Various Music from the James Bond films (10 mins) Ennio Morricone The Good, the Bad and the Ugly - Main Theme (3 mins) (encore) Chloë Hanslip violin Rory Kinnear narrator BBC Concert Orchestra Keith Lockhart conductor
The five inventive multitaskers of the Spaghetti Western Orchestra have their own way of presenting film music in concert. Fascinated by the scores of Ennio Morricone, they have devised an unclassifiable entertainment in which his epic soundtracks for film maker Sergio Leone are recreated with extraordinary virtuosity on instruments both conventional and rather less so. 'We really embraced the absurdity of a bunch of Aussie guys trying to do what Morricone did with a cast of hundreds and so we went about listening to the music and exploring the idea that every sound is equal and giving equal importance to all sounds.' Expect a loose narrative, new uses for the asthma inhaler and the cornflake packet, and a rich harvest of post-modern laughs. Friday 12 August 10.15pm – c. 11.30pm Royal Albert Hall Spaghetti Western Orchestra There will be no interval
Musician, actor, comedian and rock 'n' roll superstar Tim Minchin hosts a Proms first - the Comedy Prom. Joined by guests including BBC Two Maestro winner Sue Perkins, musical cabaret duo Kit and The Widow, soprano Susan Bullock and rising star British pianist Danny Driver (making his Proms debut), Tim will weave his way through a spectacular evening of comedy, musical fun and surprises. Also appearing Beardyman, The Boy with Tape on his Face, Doc Brown, and the Mongrels. Marking the centenary year of Franz Reizenstein, one of the highlights is sure to be his Concerto Populaire, a whistlestop tour through competing favourite piano concertos. The programme offers a fresh, accessible and funny take on the Proms, accompanied on a grand scale by the ever-versatile BBC Concert Orchestra under Andrew Litton (guest conductor) and Jules Buckley (music director). Saturday 13 August 7.30pm – c. 9.40pm Royal Albert Hall Classical for starters There will be one interval
The Chamber Orchestra of Europe is celebrating its 30th anniversary with two years of Brahms under Bernard Haitink, and brings a pair of concertos and a pair of symphonies to the Proms. Haitink describes the COE as 'a group of exceptionally talented musicians. As true chamber musicians, they are used to listening to each other, without being exclusively focused on the conductor. This matches exactly the idea I have of conducting an orchestra.' After Brahms's relatively mellow Third Symphony, one of the world's best-loved pianists performs a work boiling over with youthful passions. The same musicians return with more Brahms in Prom 49. Friday 19 August 7.00pm – c. 9.00pm Royal Albert Hall Piano music Brahms Symphony No. 3 in F major (38 mins) INTERVAL Brahms Piano Concerto No. 1 in D minor (45 mins) Schumann Fantasiestücke, Op 12 - No. 1 Des Abends (4 mins) (encore) Emanuel Ax piano Chamber Orchestra of Europe Bernard Haitink conductor
Angela Hewitt picks up the Brahms thread from the early evening Prom and launches this Late Night Prom that takes in an unjustly neglected score by Brahms's mentor, Robert Schumann, before observing the composer through the prism of an admirer, Arnold Schoenberg. Andrew Manze, conducting his first Prom as Associate Guest Conductor of the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, sees Brahms as a misunderstood figure, full of warmth. He will bring his own insights to an increasingly popular arrangement in which Schoenberg incorporates some surprising 20th-century effects. Don't miss the Gypsy-style finale! Friday 19 August 10.00pm – c. 11.20pm Royal Albert Hall Piano music Brahms Three Intermezzos, Op. 117 - Nos. 1 & 2 (7 mins) Schumann Introduction and Concert Allegro, Op. 134 (13 mins) Brahms Piano Quartet No. 1 in G minor (arr. Schoenberg) (42 mins) Angela Hewitt piano BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra Andrew Manze conductor
The Chamber Orchestra of Europe's second pairing of Brahms masterworks opens with a work long central to Emanuel Ax's repertoire which he has recorded with tonight's conductor. Brahms's Second Piano Concerto is even bigger in scale than the First and just as technically demanding. After the interval, the composer's astonishing final symphony, where the balance between expressiveness and iron structural control is most perfectly maintained. It ends with an imposing set of variations, Brahms's late-Romantic take on the Baroque-style passacaglia, which uses material borrowed from J. S. Bach. Saturday 20 August 7.30pm – c. 9.40pm Royal Albert Hall Piano music Brahms Piano Concerto No. 2 in B flat major (50 mins) INTERVAL Brahms Symphony No. 4 in E minor (42 mins) Emanuel Ax piano Chamber Orchestra of Europe Bernard Haitink conductor
A celebration of the Golden Age of Hollywood film musicals featuring Annalene Beechey, Charles Castronovo, Matthew Ford, Sarah Fox, Caroline O'Connor, Clare Teal, the Maida Vale Singers, John Wilson Orchestra and John Wilson (conductor). The appearances of John Wilson and his hand-picked, high-octane orchestra have been among the most sensational Proms events of recent years. Joined by a formidable line-up of today's vocal stars, they give what one critic has described as 'the auditory equivalent of a steam-clean' to another cache of show-stoppers. 'Hooray for Hollywood' takes us from the dawn of the talkies and the birth of the movie musical through to the 1960s. An extended sequence pays special tribute to the RKO films of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, who was born 100 years ago. Monday 29 August 7.30pm – c. 9.35pm Royal Albert Hall Choral music and singing events, Classical for starters There will be one interval
Sir Colin Davis tackles a work whose uncompromising nature makes it as great a challenge as anything in the choral repertoire, whether you regard it as a statement of the composer's belief in the spiritual potential of man or his faith in a supreme being. 'A musician must make affirmations,' says Davis. 'If a musician cannot believe in music as a universal ideal, what is he left with? We may be encircled by gloom but music gives us a chance to throw what Meredith calls "that faint thin line upon the shore". ... Beethoven is a man at war with himself but a man who is determined to win.' Sunday 4 September 7.00pm – c. 8.40pm Royal Albert Hall Choral music and singing events Beethoven Missa Solemnis (90 mins) Helena Juntunen soprano Sarah Connolly mezzo-soprano Paul Groves tenor Matthew Rose bass London Philharmonic Choir London Symphony Chorus London Symphony Orchestra Sir Colin Davis conductor
One of the world's great orchestras comes to the Proms with a programme of familiar classics that takes in Rachmaninov's bracing swansong, written for Philadelphia. A regular visitor in recent years, Janine Jansen joins the orchestra for the ever-popular Tchaikovsky concerto she recorded recently in fresh and unashamedly romantic style. These works are bookended by Sibelius's patriotic rallying cry and Ravel's apotheosis of the waltz, a piece whose unstoppable whirling may have been intended as a metaphor for the fate of European civilisation. Jean Sibelius: Finlandia(8 mins) Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky: Violin Concerto in D major(35 mins) Sergei Rachmaninov: Symphonic Dances(36 mins) Maurice Ravel: La Valse(12 mins)
Tradition meets high jinks once again as Edward Gardner conducts his first Last Night of the Proms. For this grandest of grand finales there are two very special guests. Since her first Proms appearance in 1995, Susan Bullock has emerged as Britain's leading dramatic soprano, specialising in what she calls 'the large ladies' of the repertoire. None is more challenging than Brünnhilde, whose Immolation Scene concludes Wagner's epic Ring cycle. Also featured is a classical music superstar, as popular in the West as in his native China. Lang Lang plays Liszt at his most dazzling on this, his sixth visit to the Proms. Bartók's thrilling suite provides a blast of exotic orchestral colour. Arne, Parry and Elgar bring down the curtain in traditional fashion. But first the Master of the Queen's Music pays tribute to the Promenaders' fundraising efforts on behalf of the Musicians Benevolent Fund in his new work. Saturday 10 September 7.30pm – c. 10.45pm Royal Albert Hall Choral music and singing events, Piano music Sir Peter Maxwell Davies Musica benevolens (c4 mins) Musicians Benevolent Fund commission: World Premiere Bartók The Miraculous Mandarin - suite (20 mins) Wagner Götterdämmerung - Immolation Scene (18 mins) Liszt Piano Concerto No. 1 in E flat major (19 mins) INTERVAL Chopin Grande Polonaise brillante, Op. 22 (9 mins) Grainger Mo nighean dubh (My Dark-Haired Maiden) (4 mins) Britten The Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra (20 mins) Rodgers The Sound of Music - 'Climb ev'ry mountain' (arr.Robert Russell Bennett) (4 mins) Rodgers Carousel - 'You'll never walk alone' (arr. Jackson) (3 mins) Elgar Pomp and Circumstance March No. 1 in D major ('Land of Hope and Glory') (8 mins) Arne Rule Britannia (8 mins) Parry Jerusalem (orch. Elgar) (4 mins) Traditional The National Anthem (2 mins) Lang Lang piano Susan Bullock soprano BBC Symphony Chorus BBC Symphony Orchestra Edward Gardner conductor
Mark-Anthony Turnage: Canon Fever (3 mins), World Premiere Elgar: Overture 'Cockaigne (In London Town)' (15 mins) Delius: Sea Drift (25 mins) INTERVAL Tippett: Suite for the Birthday of Prince Charles (16 mins) Elgar: Coronation Ode (33 mins) Susan Gritton: soprano Sarah Connolly: mezzo-soprano Robert Murray: tenor Gerald Finley: bass-baritone Bryn Terfel: bass-baritone BBC Symphony Chorus BBC Symphony Orchestra Edward Gardner: conductor (Canon Fever, Coronation Ode) Sir Roger Norrington: conductor (Cockaigne) Sir Mark Elder conductor: (Sea Drift) Martyn Brabbins conductor: (Suite for the Birthday of Prince Charles) Introduced by Katie Derham
R. Strauss: Also sprach Zarathustra (32 mins) R. Strauss: Four Last Songs (22 mins) Kaija Saariaho: Laterna magica (22 mins), UK Premiere Sibelius: Symphony No. 7 in C major (23 mins) Anne Schwanewilms: soprano BBC Philharmonic Juanjo Mena: conductor Making his Proms debut as the BBC Philharmonic's Chief Conductor, Juanjo Mena explores Strauss the impatient visionary, whose Also sprach Zarathustra was famously used on the soundtrack of Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey. Strauss's Four Last Songs exude a sense of calm resignation suffused with autumn light. After the interval, a major UK premiere from Kaija Saariaho, whose own music is lit by atmosphere and mood. Inspired by the autobiography of Ingmar Bergman, the Swedish film director, Laterna magica includes sections in which players whisper extracts over an instrumental murmur. To conclude, the hard-won luminescence of Sibelius's (unintended) symphonic farewell. Introduced by Petroc Trelawney
Hervé Niquet and Le Concert Spirituel make their Proms debut in this free Late Night Prom, giving Handel's three Water Music suites and Fireworks Music the big-band, period-instrument treatment. Niquet directs an expanded group of up to 80 musicians to evoke resplendent royal occasions on the River Thames and in Green Park, offering a new slant on London's favourite part pieces.
Daniel Barenboim directs his first Beethoven symphony cycle in London – and becomes the first conductor since Henry Wood in 1942 to survey all nine symphonies in a single Proms season. His dynamic West–Eastern Divan Orchestra – famously bringing together Arab and Israeli players to form less 'an orchestra for peace' than 'an orchestra against ignorance' – goes far beyond the symbolic in its goal of building bridges through music. Expect further fireworks as Barenboim pairs Beethoven's revolutionary classics with music by one of today's senior musical figures, the ever-innovative composer-conductor Pierre Boulez, with whom Barenboim first collaborated in the mid-1960s
Beethoven - Symphony No. 4 in B flat major (35 mins) Pierre Boulez - Dialogue de l'ombre double (20 mins) INTERVAL Beethoven - Symphony No. 3 in E flat major, 'Eroica' (50 mins) Jussef Eisa: clarinet, Proms debut artist IRCAM live electronics West–Eastern Divan Orchestra Daniel Barenboim: conductor Daniel Barenboim and his youthful ensemble relish the energy of Beethoven's Fourth Symphony before tackling the 'Eroica', one of the irrefutable mould-breakers of classical music. Between these peaks, Boulez's Dialogue de l'ombre double introduces another kind of theatre, the clarinet's electronic double becoming more 'real' than the soloist physically present.
Daniel Barenboim's complete cycle of Beethoven symphonies reaches its mid-point, as he conducts his ensemble of young Arab and Israeli musicians, the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra, in a programme that includes both the Pastoral Symphony and that most iconic of all orchestral masterpieces, Beethoven's Fifth Symphony. Alongside, Barenboim programmes two short works by Pierre Boulez - Memoriale for flute and ensemble, and Messagesquisse, which showcases the virtuosity of the orchestra's cello section
Beethoven Symphony No. 8 in F major (25 mins) Pierre Boulez Anthèmes 2 (25 mins) INTERVAL Beethoven Symphony No. 7 in A major (35 min) Michael Barenboim violin IRCAM live electronics West–Eastern Divan Orchestra Daniel Barenboim conductor Listen again BBC Proms: 2012 Season: Proms Plus: 24/07/2012Discover the music More from Radio 3 Beethoven's Symphony No. 7 Delve into Beethoven's paean to rhythm. . -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Beethoven Pierre Boulez Daniel Barenboim -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Beethoven - Symphony No 8 (Excerpt) BBC Proms 2012: Beethoven: Symphony No 7 in A major (Excerpt)Programme notes -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- About this event Daneil Barenboim continues his survey of Beethoven – whose music, he believes, 'speaks to all people'. Tonight, two Beethoven symphonies of dancing athleticism and universal appeal frame one of Pierre Boulez's mesmerising extensions of earlier works: Anthèmes 2 is scored for violin and live electronics and its serenely beautiful expressivity may come as a surprise. Beethoven's ebullient Seventh, famously dubbed 'the apotheosis of dance', was the last piece conducted by Proms founder-conductor Henry Wood.
Beethoven Symphony No. 9 in D minor, 'Choral' (77 mins) Anna Samuil soprano Waltraud Meier mezzo-soprano René Pape bass National Youth Choir of Great Britain West–Eastern Divan Orchestra Daniel Barenboim conductor About this event Daniel Barenboim’s Beethoven cycle reaches its climax with a youthful take on the traditional annual Proms performance of the Ninth, perhaps the richest, most provocative statement in Western art music. An impressive team of soloists joins the National Youth Choir of Great Britain and the West–Eastern Divan Orchestra to project the finale’s inclusive vision of hope, reconciliation and hard-won triumph. What better to mark today’s opening of the London 2012 Olympics than Beethoven’s ultimate hymn to universal brotherhood?
Wallace & Gromit appear in a new Proms adventure, before a screening of A Matter of Loaf and Death – plus classical favourites.
Vaughan Williams - Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis (16 mins) Ireland - These Things Shall Be (22 mins) Delius - The Walk to the Paradise Garden (10 mins) Walton - Belshazzar's Feast (36 mins) Jonathan Lemalu: bass-baritone London Brass BBC Symphony Chorus BBC National Chorus of Wales BBC National Orchestra of Wales Tadaaki Otaka, Conductor Tadaaki Otaka, a notable enthusiast of British music, opens with Vaughan Williams’s much loved classic before revisiting a BBC commission that has fallen into neglect in the half-century since its composer’s death: Ireland’s These Things Shall Be is a mini-oratorio with a utopian text. The massed choirs and the commanding bass baritone of former BBC Radio 3 New Generation Artist Jonathan Lemalu return after the interval to animate Walton’s brazen Old Testament tale, but first we hear from another anniversary composer, here at his most poignant.
Johann Sebastian Bach Mass in B minor (110 mins) Joélle Harvey: soprano Carolyn Sampson: soprano Iestyn Davies: counter-tenor Ed Lyon: tenor Matthew Rose: bass Choir of the English Concert The English Concert Harry Bicket, Conductor - Quote: "One of the greatest pieces ever written". Having restored choral music to the forefront of his ensemble’s recent activities, Baroque specialist Harry Bicket returns to the Proms hotfoot from the 2012 Leipzig Bachfest with one of music’s great milestones. Since its rediscovery by 19th-century Romantics, Bach’s Mass in B minor has been continually reimagined, most recently with an injection of period-style agility and buoyancy. Still the mysteries remain, as befits a testament through which the composer seemingly intended to carve out his unique place in cultural history. Charles Hazlewood, Host Sung in Latin with fixed English subtitles Commentary in English From Pal 16:9 to AVI DIVX 720p HD 16:9 View using any DIVX compatible media player, or, burn the folder as DATA to a DVD5 for viewing on a TV, etc. -------------------------------------- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_in_B_minor The Mass in B minor (BWV 232) is a musical setting of the complete Latin Mass by Johann Sebastian Bach. The work was one of Bach's last, not completed until 1749, the year before his death in 1750. Much of the Mass consisted of music that Bach had composed earlier: the Kyrie and Gloria sections had been composed as a Lutheran Missa in 1733 for the Elector of Saxony at Dresden. The Sanctus dates back to 1724, and the Qui tollis movement was based on a cantata chorus dating from 1714. To complete the work, however, in the 1740s Bach composed new sections of the Credo such as Et incarnatus est. The completed Mass was his last major composition. It was unusual for composers working in the Lutheran tradition to compose a Missa tota and Bach's motivations remain a matter of scholarly debate. The Mass was
Wagner - Siegfried Idyll (18 mins) Interlude Bruckner - Symphony No. 8 in C minor (80 mins) (ed. Nowak, 1955) BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra Donald Runnicles, Conductor In their first appearance this season, Donald Runnicles and the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra present two works by composers for whom he has a particular affinity. Wagner’s gift to his wife, Cosima, is presented in its pared down original orchestration, much as she would have heard it that Christmas morning in 1870. The Royal Albert Hall is an ideal venue for Bruckner’s symphonic revelations. The Eighth Symphony, arguably the greatest of them all, remains a huge and glorious challenge.
Varèse - Tuning Up (5 mins) Nico Muhly - Gait (20 mins), BBC Commission, London Premiere Interlude Messiaen - Turangalîla Symphony (77 mins) Anna Meredith - HandsFree (12 mins) Cynthia Millar - ondes martenot Joanna MacGregor - piano National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain Vasily Petrenko, Conductor Messiaen’s ecstatic, Eastern-influenced celebration of love is framed by a BBC commission from one of America’s rising talents and Anna Meredith’s acclaimed tour de force of clapping, stamping, singing and body percussion, first performed earlier this year by NYO members and commissioned for the PRS for Music Foundation's New Music 20x12 programme as part of the Cultural Olympiad. Varèse’s Tuni
Morten Frank Larsen, Bass-Baritone Julius Foo, Treble Ysgol Gynradd Gymraeg Pwll Coch, Caerdydd Ysgol Gynradd Gymunedol Gymraeg, Llantrisant Ysgol Gynradd Dolau, Llanharan Ysgol Gynradd Gymraeg, Rhydaman National Youth Choir of Wales Aelwyd y Waun Ddyfal Musicians from the Royal Welsh College of Music & Drama BBC National Chorus of Wales BBC National Orchestra of Wales National Youth Orchestra of Wales Kristjan Järvi,Conductor Thomas Kiemle, Stage Director Less a religious work than a theatrical happening, Bernstein’s Mass receives its first complete Proms performance, conducted by one of its most ardent champions, and supported by a spectrum of talented Welsh children and adult musicians. Using a mix of highbrow and vernacular styles, Bernstein created a rich, quintessentially American score that has recently begun to emerge as a modern classic. Petroc Trelawney, Host In English and Latin
Wagner -Tristan and Isolde – Prelude (Act 1) (9 mins) James MacMillan - Credo (c25 mins), BBC co-commission, World Premiere INTERLUDE Bruckner - Symphony No. 6 in A major (55 mins) Manchester Chamber Choir (Proms debut) Northern Sinfonia Chorus (Proms debut) Rushley Singers (Proms debut) BBC Philharmonic Juanjo Mena, Conductor Juanjo Mena presents a major world premiere before offering his acclaimed reading of a sonorous yet dangerously eruptive Bruckner symphony. First though, there’s the emblematic love of Tristan and Isolde, expressed through music dark in sound and revolutionary in harmony. James MacMillan’s works have enjoyed regular success at the Proms since the first performance of The Confession of Isobel Gowdie was given here in 1990. As with Bruckner, MacMillan’s communicative power is often associated with expressions of faith, and the unveiling of Credo, has been keenly awaited.
A celebration of Ivor Novello Remember such time-honoured favourites as 'We'll gather lilacs'? Tonight we acknowledge that patriotic First World War plea to 'keep the home fires burning' in a tribute to a silent-movie actor, West End playwright, composer and star of a string of stage musicals hugely popular in their day. Ivor Novello, the most consistently successful composer of British musicals before the advent of Andrew Lloyd Webber, nowadays tends to be unjustly neglected. Sir Mark Elder is a committed advocate, as is tonight’s master of ceremonies, Simon Callow. Sophie Bevan, Soprano Toby Spence, Tenor Simon Callow, Narrator Hallé Orchestra Sir Mark Elder, Conductor
From the Royal Albert Hall, Mark Armstrong conducts the National Youth Jazz Orchestra, featuring Britain's best young jazz musicians in a wide-ranging set of jazz favourites. The programme includes Duke Ellington's The Queen's Suite to mark the Diamond Jubilee year and a new commission by saxophonist Tim Garland. Presented by Petroc Trelawny.
Dvorák - Symphony No. 9 in E minor, 'From the New World' (45 mins) Interlude Copland - Fanfare for the Common Man (4 mins) Joan Tower - Fanfare for the Uncommon Woman (3 mins) Villa-Lobos - Momoprécoce (28 mins) Ginastera - Estancia – suite (12 mins) Edu Lobo - Pé de Vento from Suíte Popular Brasileira, orch. Nelson Ayres (3 mins) - Encore Nelson Freire, Piano São Paulo Symphony Orchestra Marin Alsop, Conductor Music from both American hemispheres features tonight. First the masterpiece through which the Bohemian Dvorák, resident in New York, sought to establish an American musical identity, a symphony exuding nostalgia for his own native woods and fields. Later comes Copland’s iconic Fanfare and highlights from Ginastera’s best-known score. Joan Tower, whose childhood was spent partly in Bolivia, celebrates ‘women who take risks and are adventurous’, while distinguished Brazilian pianist Nelson Freire returns to the Proms to play one of Villa-Lobos’s most attractive compositions. Katie Derham, Hostess
Symphony No. 4 in F minor (30 mins) Symphony No. 5 in D major (39 mins) Interlude Symphony No. 6 in E minor (31 mins) BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra Andrew Manze: conductor Over the next few seasons Andrew Manze directs all nine Vaughan Williams symphonies with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, of which he is Associate Guest Conductor: "Vaughan Williams is one of those composers some people have fixed ideas about … I’m on a bit of a mission to rehabilitate him in people’s minds as an important figure in the musicmaking of this country." Tonight he tackles three differently powerful works of the 1930s and 1940s, which, whatever their own emotional back stories, may still be seen as chronicling our national life in troubled times.
Weber - Der Freischütz – Overture (10 mins) Mahler - Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen (17 mins) Interlude Tchaikovsky - Manfred (57 mins) Alice Coote - Mezzo-soprano London Philharmonic Orchestra Vladimir Jurowski, Conductor After the overture to the first important German Romantic opera, Weber’s take on the folk legend of a marksman’s contract with the devil, featured artist Alice Coote returns to tackle Mahler’s folk-influenced song-cycle, inspired by the conclusion of an unhappy love affair. Tchaikovsky’s Manfred, a full-length fusion of tone-poem and symphonic form, makes passionate use of Byron’s dramatic poem with supernatural elements which held so many 19th-century artists in thrall. This powerfully driven masterpiece is a favourite of tonight’s conductor. Charles Hazlewood, Host
Sir Arthur Sullivan The Yeomen of the Guard Leigh Melrose baritone (Lt Sir Richard Cholmondeley) Andrew Kennedy tenor (Colonel Fairfax) Lisa Milne soprano (Elsie Maynard) Victoria Simmonds mezzo-soprano (Phoebe Meryll) Felicity Palmer mezzo-soprano (Dame Carruthers) Mary Bevan soprano (Kate) Mark Richardson bass-baritone (Sergeant Meryll) Tom Randle tenor (Leonard Meryll) Mark Stone baritone (Jack Point) Toby Stafford-Allen baritone (Wilfred Shadbolt) BBC Singers BBC Concert Orchestra Jane Glover, Conductor Martin Duncan, Stage Director Recent Proms seasons have seen a liberal sprinkling of complete Gilbert and Sullivan operettas, under such distinguished conductors as Jane Glover and the late Charles Mackerras. With its historic London setting, the grandest, most emotionally engaging of the Savoy operas is a must for 2012.
Wagner - Parsifal – Prelude (Act 3) and Good Friday Music (20 mins) Berg - Violin Concerto (25 mins) Bach - Adagio from Violin Sonata in A minor Interlude R. Strauss - Der Rosenkavalier – suite (22 mins) Ravel - La valse (12 mins) Frank Peter Zimmermann, Violin Gustav Mahler Jugendorchester Daniele Gatti, Conductor (Gustav Mahler Jugendorchester (Gustav Mahler Youth Orchestra) is a youth orchestra based in Vienna, Austria, founded in 1986 by conductor Claudio Abbado.) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gustav_Mahler_Youth_Orchestra http://www.gmjo.at/Home/tabid/39/language/en-US/Default.aspx One of the great youth orchestras is back, and in distinguished company. Daniele Gatti begins with the weighty tread and unmatched radiance of music he has been exploring at Bayreuth. Frank Peter Zimmermann plays one of the 20th century’s most eloquent violin concertos. Strauss conjures up a bittersweet Vienna of young love, mid-life melancholy and abundant waltz tunes, while Ravel’s apotheosis of that dance form may or may not have been intended as a metaphor for the fate of European civilisation as its unstoppable whirling reaches critical mass.
A celebration of the Broadway sound with music from Jerome Kern, Cole Porter, Irving Berlin, George Gershwin, Frank Loesser and Leonard Bernstein performed by John Wilson. Returning to the Proms for a 4th season, he conducts his hand-picked, high-octane orchestra and a line-up of star soloists. Includes show-stopping numbers from Show Boat, On Your Toes, Brigadoon, Porgy and Bess, West Side Story and Fiddler on the Roof. Presented by Katie Derham.
Howells - Hymnus Paradisi (44 mins) Interlude Elgar - Symphony No. 1 in A flat major (53 mins) Miah Persson: soprano Andrew Kennedy: tenor BBC Symphony Chorus London Philharmonic Choir BBC Symphony Orchestra Martyn Brabbins, Conductor Following his triumphant conducting of Havergal Brian’s ‘The Gothic’ Symphony last year, Martyn Brabbins brings another British magnum opus to the Proms. Herbert Howells wrote Hymnus Paradisi ‘for the drawer’ in the wake of the tragically early death of his son. Only years later was he persuaded to release a finished score to the public. After this light-filled memorial from a composer closely identified with Gloucester Cathedral, we revisit the masterpiece that, in 1908 – the year of the first London Olympics – announced a Worcester man’s arrival as perhaps the greatest of British symphonists.
Haydn - Symphony No. 104 in D major, 'London' (30 mins) Interlude Richard Strauss - An Alpine Symphony (50 mins) Encore - Johann Strauss - Voices of Spring Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra Bernard Haitink, Conductor The doyen (edit: dean) of European conductors presents favourite repertoire with an ensemble closely associated with the history and traditions of orchestral music. The last of Haydn’s symphonies, written while he was living in London, proved an instant critical and commercial success. Not so the Strauss, part-elegy for Mahler, part-celebration of the composer himself. Mingling childhood memories of a schoolboy mountaineering expedition with a deeper vision of man’s place on earth, the work was received rather sniffily in Britain until dedicated interpreters such as Bernard Haitink arrived to change all that.
Part 1: Mark Simpson: sparks (c2 mins), BBC Commission, World Premiere Suk: Towards a New Life (6 mins) Delius: Songs of Farewell (18 mins) Verdi: Un ballo in maschera – ‘Forse la soglia attinse … Ma se m’è forza perderti’ (5 mins) Massenet: Werther – ‘Pourquoi me réveiller?’ (3 mins) Bruch: Violin Concerto No. 1 in G minor (25 mins) Puccini: Tosca – ‘E lucevan le stelle’ (3 mins) Puccini: Turandot – ‘Nessun dorma’ (3 mins) Intermission Part 2: John Williams: Olympic Fanfare and Theme (5 mins) Dvorák: Overture 'Carnival' (9 mins) Shostakovich: The Gadfly – Romance (6 mins) Leoncavallo: Mattinata (3 mins) Lara: Granada (3 mins) Rodgers: Carousel – ‘You’ll never walk alone’ (4 mins) Henry Wood: Fantasia on British Sea-Songs (20 mins) Elgar: Pomp and Circumstance March No. 1 in D major ('Land of Hope and Glory') (8 mins) Parry, orch. Elgar: Jerusalem (4 mins) Traditional: The National Anthem (2 mins) Nicola Benedetti: Violin Joseph Calleja: Tenor BBC Symphony Chorus BBC Symphony Orchestra Jirí Belohlávek, Conductor Join us for the year’s biggest musical party with two very special guests. Since taking the nation by storm as 2004’s BBC Young Musician of the Year, Scottishborn Nicola Benedetti has enhanced her reputation as one of Britain’s most innovative and creative young violinists. We also welcome Joseph Calleja, the Maltese tenor who sings with the grace and elegance of the voices of a bygone era. A brace of Czechs acknowledges the sterling work of the BBC SO’s outgoing chief, while contributions from 2012’s anniversary composers include Delius’s valedictory settings of Walt Whitman. More familiar home-grown music brings down the curtain in time-honoured fashion
The 119th Proms season opens with a choir of 450 and two great portraits of the sea: Sakari Oramo conducts Vaughan Williams’s A Sea Symphony and Britten’s Four Sea Interludes as well as the world premiere of Julian Anderson’s Harmony. Pianist Stephen Hough plays Paganini variations by Rachmaninov and by featured composer Lutosławski.
Celebrating the 50th anniversary of the iconic and much-loved BBC series, this special event at the Royal Albert Hall features Murray Gold's popular music for the show, accompanied by specially edited sequences from the Doctor's most recent adventures. Hosted by the Doctor's friends, Madame Vastra and Strax, the concert also includes a look back at 'classic' Doctor Who series and the music created by the legendary BBC Radiophonic Workshop. Featuring special guest appearances by Matt Smith, Jenna Coleman, Peter Davison and Carole Ann Ford, who played the Doctor's first companion and granddaughter Susan Foreman. Plus, the Doctor and Clara drop in to join in the fun. Performed by the BBC National Orchestra of Wales, the London Philharmonic Choir, with soloists Elin Manahan Thomas, Allan Clayton and Kerry Ingram.
François-Xavier Roth and Les Siècles trace the history of French dance music – on period instruments – from the Court of the Sun King at Versailles to the riotous 1913 Paris premiere of Stravinsky’s ballet The Rite of Spring.
Jonathan Nott conducts the Bamberg Symphony Orchestra in Mahler’s Symphony No. 5, whose Adagietto is a tender tribute to his wife, Alma. The Arditti Quartet joins the orchestra for the UK premiere of Helmut Lachenmann’s vast and atmospheric Tanzsuite mit Deutschlandlied.
Inspired by daybreak on the Kent coast, David Matthews’s A Vision of the Sea opens the BBC Philharmonic’s Prom with Juanjo Mena. Nobuyuki Tsujii is the soloist in Rachmaninov’s Piano Concerto No. 2, a passionate upbeat to Nielsen’s life-affirming ‘Inextinguishable’ Symphony.
Thomas Adès conducts the BBC Symphony Orchestra, Christianne Stotijn and Simon Keenlyside in the world premiere of his Totentanz, a work inspired by a mural destroyed in the Second World War bombing of Lübeck. Britten’s Sinfonia da Requiem and Lutosławski’s Cello Concerto complete a programme of remembrance and survival.
Sir Antonio Pappano conducts the Orchestra of the Academy of Santa Cecilia, Rome, in Rachmaninov’s Second Symphony and Mozart’s elegant ‘Haffner’ Symphony. Jan Lisiecki plays Schumann’s intimate Piano Concerto in the first of Pappano’s two Proms.
Sir Antonio Pappano, the Orchestra and Chorus of the Academy of Santa Cecilia, Rome, and soprano Maria Agresta celebrate Verdi’s bicentenary with the Four Sacred Pieces, the original version of the Requiem’s ‘Libera me’, a touching Ave Maria setting and the orchestral version of the great opera composer’s String Quartet.
The newly formed National Youth Orchestra of the United States of America makes its Proms debut under the baton of Valery Gergiev in Sean Shepherd’s Magiya and Shostakovich’s Tenth Symphony. Violinist Joshua Bell is the soloist in Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto.
Juanjo Mena and the BBC Philharmonic present a programme of dance music spanning Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony, John McCabe’s Joybox, Ravel’s Boléro and Falla’s Spanish ballet The Three-Cornered Hat.
Semyon Bychkov and the BBC Symphony Orchestra interrupt the Ring cycle to explore Wagner’s intoxicating tragedy Tristan and Isolde, a turning point in the history of Romantic music. Peter Seiffert and Violeta Urmana are the illicit lovers.
Katie Derham presents a new weekly review of the standout performances, artists and stories from the 2013 Proms season. In this episode, she looks back on the musical highlights of the opening fortnight, including a special report from Daniel Barenboim's Ring Cycle. Her studio guests include conductor Semyon Bychkov, soprano Susan Bullock and pianist Stephen Hough - and there is a special performance from one of the star soloists of the season, young Japanese pianist Nobuyuki Tsujii.
The UK premiere of Colin Matthews’s Turning Point opens the BBC National Orchestra of Wales’s first Prom with Thomas Søndergård. Daniel Hope plays Prokofiev’s Violin Concerto No. 2, the quicksilver antipode to Shostakovich’s monumental Symphony No. 11, ‘The Year 1905’.
The Mahler Chamber Orchestra returns to the BBC Proms with conductor Daniel Harding. Paul Lewis is the soloist in Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 25, its play of light and shade echoed in the same composer’s Masonic Funeral Music, Schumann’s Second Symphony and Sibelius’s Seventh.
Vadim Repin plays James MacMillan’s Violin Concerto with Donald Runnicles and the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra. Threaded with reels and old laments, MacMillan’s work complements the concentrated dramas of Beethoven’s ‘Coriolan’ Overture and Fifth Symphony.
Katie Derham looks back on another week of concerts from the BBC Proms, including a spectacular performance of Ravel's Bolero featuring Spanish dancers. Her studio guests include jazz pianist Julian Joseph, composer Tarik O'Regan, and ballerina Tamara Rojo.
Mitsuko Uchida plays Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 4 with the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra and its Chief Conductor, Mariss Jansons. The opium-fuelled idylls and nightmares of Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique complete one of the festival’s hottest programmes.
Hail, ice, thunder, rain … and the bark of a dog on a sunny afternoon. Iconoclastic violinist Nigel Kennedy plays Vivaldi’s endlessly fascinating set of concertos, The Four Seasons, in a Late Night Prom with players from Palestine and Poland.
A late-night feast of sinfonias, arias and chorales as Sir John Eliot Gardiner, 70 this year, conducts the singers and players of the Monteverdi Choir and English Baroque Soloists in Bach’s Easter Oratorio and Ascension Oratorio
Broadcast live on BBC Radio 1, BBC Radio 1Xtra and BBC Radio 3, Jules Buckley leads the BBC Symphony Orchestra in a collision of Fazer, Henze, Laura Mvula, Mosolov and Maverick Sabre, with guest artists from the worlds of urban and contemporary classical music.
Katie Derham looks back on another week of concerts from the BBC Proms, including soloist Mitsuko Uchida's performance of Beethoven's Piano Concerto No 4. Her studio guests include conductor Vasily Petrenko, and trumpeter Alison Balsom, and we spend 24 hours with violinist Daniel Hope on a whirlwind day.
Vasily Petrenko conducts the National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain and young singers from across the British Isles in Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, Vaughan Williams’s Walt Whitman setting Towards the Unknown Region and the world premiere of Mark-Anthony Turnage’s Frieze.
Brand new sounds from the Proms in Tom Service's modern music series. Tom is joined by Southbank classical music supremo Gillian Moore to discuss a selection of premieres and new commissions from across the season at the Royal Albert Hall. Music ranges from the world premieres of John McCabe's Joybox and Mark-Anthony Turnage's Frieze to Murray Gold's new composition to mark Doctor Who's 50th birthday.
The Fanfare No. 5 from Tippett’s The Mask of Time opens tonight's survey of 20th-century greats with the London Symphony Orchestra and Ian Bostridge, from Tippett’s Concerto for Double String Orchestra and Britten’s Les illuminations to Elgar’s Second Symphony.
Anna Caterina Antonacci sings Wagner’s Wesendonck-Lieder with Yannick Nézet-Séguin and the Rotterdam Philharmonic, a mini Tristan and Isolde. Tchaikovsky’s fantasy-overture Romeo and Juliet and the bright colours of Prokofiev’s Fifth Symphony form a strong contrast.
At the Royal Albert Hall, Clemency Burton-Hill introduces violinist Nigel Kennedy, who returns to the Proms to give his distinctive version of Vivaldi's Four Seasons, the work he recorded to great acclaim 25 years ago. Joined by the Palestine Strings from the Edward Said Music Conservatory, Kennedy also adds improvisation between each concerto with members of his own Orchestra of Life.
The pan-European Gustav Mahler Jugendorchester returns to the BBC Proms with conductor Philippe Jordan and pianist Jean-Yves Thibaudet in a programme of Wagner’s overture to Rienzi, Ravel’s jazz-inflected Piano Concerto in G major and Shostakovich’s Fifth Symphony.
At the Royal Albert Hall, Katie Derham introduces the ever-popular John Wilson and his orchestra in a celebration of the music of Hollywood. Bernard Herrmann's Psycho, Erich Korngold's Robin Hood, Max Steiner's Casablanca and Miklos Rozsa's Ben Hur are among the film scores featured, performed by the orchestra Wilson describes as 'a symphony orchestra with an old-fashioned dance band in the middle'. With soloists Venera Gimadieva, Matthew Ford and Jane Monheit.
Keith Lockhart conducts the BBC Concert Orchestra in Addinsell’s Warsaw Concerto and music by Walton (Battle of Britain), William Alwyn (The True Glory), Leighton Lucas (Ice Cold in Alex) and Richard Rodney Bennett (Lady Caroline Lamb), and a second half filled with the Hollywood superheroes and space travellers.
Arvo Pärt’s Cantus in memoriam Benjamin Britten opens Paavo Järvi’s performance with the Orchestre de Paris. Janine Jansen is the soloist in Britten’s Violin Concerto. Berlioz’s Le corsaire overture and Saint-Saëns’s ‘Organ’ Symphony complete a programme of vivid contrasts.
Xian Zhang directs the Orchestra Sinfonica di Milano Giuseppe Verdi in Tchaikovsky’s symphonic drama Manfred and the overtures to La forza del destino and La traviata. Celebrated Maltese tenor Joseph Calleja sings arias from Rigoletto, Luisa Miller and I vespri siciliani.
Marin Alsop becomes the first female conductor of the Last Night of the Proms. Joyce DiDonato and Nigel Kennedy join the BBC Symphony Orchestra in a concert that runs from Rossini and Handel arias to a mass singalong, and from Vaughan Williams’s The Lark Ascending and rarities by Britten and Bantock to a new opener by Anna Clyne.
The largest classical music festival in the world, the BBC Proms also boasts one of the mightiest venues. The Royal Albert Hall is a monument to the same Victorian pomp and splendour that swells through Edward Elgar’s music. What better way to open this season than with the composer’s biblical oratorio The Kingdom – the beautiful ‘slow movement’ of a musical triptych that started with The Apostles, but that would remain unfinished at Elgar’s death. Celebrated Elgarian and Proms favourite Sir Andrew Davis, a Conductor Laureate of the BBC Symphony Orchestra, returns in his 70th-birthday year, joined by a distinguished cast of soloists.
Britain’s own queen of the trumpet, Alison Balsom, joins the China Philharmonic Orchestra in Shanghai-born Qigang Chen's new trumpet concerto, a work co-commissioned by the KT Wong Foundation, China Philharmonic Orchestra and the BBC, alongside Dutch and German partners.
The China Philharmonic Orchestra makes its Proms debut, launching this season’s global orchestras strand. East meets West in a colourful programme featuring Elgar’s Pomp and Circumstance March No. 4, Liszt’s First Piano Concerto and Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition. Britain’s own queen of the trumpet, Alison Balsom, joins them in Shanghai-born Qigang Chen's new trumpet concerto, a work co-commissioned by the KT Wong Foundation, China Philharmonic Orchestra and the BBC, alongside Dutch and German partners.
Roxanna Panufnik’s Three Paths to Peace, commissioned by tonight’s orchestra, meshes Christian, Jewish and Islamic musical traditions to tell the story of Abraham and Isaac.
The World Orchestra for Peace returns with its conductor Valery Gergiev for its fourth Proms appearance and its only UK appearance this year. This classical supergroup celebrates Strauss’s 150th anniversary with the colourful, fairy-tale soundscapes of his operatic masterpiece Die Frau ohne Schatten. Fantasy gives way to reality in the prescient tragedy of Mahler’s Sixth Symphony, the glorious agony of its final movement foreshadowing the composer’s own personal heartbreaks. Roxanna Panufnik’s Three Paths to Peace, commissioned by tonight’s orchestra, meshes Christian, Jewish and Islamic musical traditions to tell the story of Abraham and Isaac.
From the pastoral landscapes of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 6 to the vibrant folk scenes of Strauss’s tone-poem and Dvořák’s Violin Concerto, tonight’s Prom takes a vivid journey across Central Europe. Celebrated Straussian David Zinman appears in his final concert as Chief Conductor of Zurich’s Tonhalle Orchestra, stepping down after almost 20 years. Strauss appears at his playful, joyous best in the exploits of folk-hero/prankster Till Eulenspiegel, while Julia Fischer makes a welcome return to the Proms in the last of the great Romantic violin concertos – an inventive and idiosyncratic work previously too often neglected in favour of Mendelssohn or Bruch.
World Premiere of "A man from the future" by the Pet Shop Boys - a tribute to Alan Turning.
Moeran’s lyrical Violin Concerto meshes the composer’s English heritage with his love of the Irish landscape. The English theme continues with Elgar’s ‘Enigma’ Variations – his affectionate musical portraits of friends and family – and Walton’s Hindemith Variations, another intensely personal homage and the first work in this year’s focus on the music of William Walton. British music comes right up to date with the shifting soundscapes of David Horne’s Daedalus in Flight.
In the first of two Proms appearances, leading Bach interpreter Sir Roger Norrington – celebrating his 80th birthday this year – directs his Zurich Chamber Orchestra in the St John Passion (bookended later this season by Peter Sellars’s staging of the St Matthew Passion, conducted by Sir Simon Rattle) – a work noted for its dramatic sweep and emotional immediacy in the recounting of events leading to the crucifixion of Christ. It is realised here by a cast led by tenor James Gilchrist, a distinguished Evangelist of his generation.
Following on from the sell-out success of last year’s Doctor Who Prom and 2011’s Horrible Histories Prom, this year parents are invited to join their children for the first ever CBeebies Prom. Take a journey through London with some of your favourite CBeebies characters and explore the sounds of the orchestra, as well as the everyday sounds around us. This morning’s adventure combines live music from the BBC Philharmonic and video action on screens around the hall. The next generation of classical music fans starts here.
Ravel’s La valse turns the Viennese waltz into a darkly tinged rhapsody, while his Valses nobles et sentimentales reflects the iconic dance in softer tones. Duruflé’s Requiem is the musical cousin of Fauré’s more familiar Requiem and anchors its 20th-century harmonies in the same arching plainchant melodies of the past. Flute virtuoso Emmanuel Pahud joins the orchestra for the world premiere of Simon Holt’s flute concerto Morpheus Wakes – written for Pahud himself, who represents the god of dreaming ‘as if slowly waking from adeep, troubled sleep’.
Turbulent mythical love and poised Classical elegance come together in a concert that shifts from Jonathan Dove’s large-scale orchestral work Gaia Theory to the intimacy of the Viennese salon in Mozart’s ever-popular Piano Concerto No. 23. Commissioned by Serge Diaghilev, Ravel’s ballet Daphnis and Chloe is rich in all the colours and rhythms of turn-of-the-century Paris – a masterpiece that announced its composer as a force with which to be reckoned.
Violinist Daniel Hope joins the Borusan Istanbul Philharmonic Orchestra, which makes its Proms debut with a classical celebration of the Orient. Sneak into Mozart’s harem, witness the magnificent Queen of Sheba in portraits by both Handel and Respighi, and enjoy the insistent rhythms and swaying hips of Balakirev’s oriental fantasy Islamey. The concert also features a new violin concerto from Gabriel Prokofiev, commemorating the First World War centenary.
The intense, contrasting moods of Mahler’s Symphony No. 5 – the bitter solemnity of its funeral march, the violence of its second movement and the tenderness of the famous Adagietto – make this one of the great orchestral showpieces. In his Proms concerto debut, French pianist Alexandre Tharaud performs Ravel’s atmospheric and virtuosic Piano Concerto for the Left Hand, and the concert opens with the first of several works at this year’s Proms celebrating Sir Harrison Birtwistle’s 80th birthday – an atmospheric plunge into mossy, melancholic darkness, lightened only by the call of birds.
Two rarely heard works continue our 150th-anniversary celebration of Richard Strauss. Scored for organ and an orchestra calling for no fewer than 10 trumpets (six offstage), the Festival Prelude packs symphonic weight into its brief duration. It is matched for impact by the Deutsche Motette – a concerto for choir by any other name: its vocal lines trace the same expansive arcs and arabesques as the composer’s exquisite, autumnal Four Last Songs. Maintaining the mood of late-Romantic nostalgia, Elgar’s Second Symphony delights in flexible chromaticism, its shifting moods coloured in delicate shades.
The appearances of John Wilson and his orchestra have become one of the annual highlights of the Proms. Following the enormous success of the staged performance of My Fair Lady in 2012, John Wilson returns to perform Cole Porter’s Tony Award-winning musical Kiss Me, Kate in its original 1948 arrangements. He is joined by a cast of leading singers in this irreverent reworking of The Taming of the Shrew – a play within a play.
A major new musical adaptation of the international hit War Horse, created by the National Theatre for the BBC Proms. Simon Russell Beale presents the unique production at the Royal Albert Hall with Gareth Malone's Proms Military Wives Choir, the BBC Concert Orchestra and the Cambiata Choir North West, alongside the National Theatre Ensemble with the astonishing Handspring Puppets. There's even a role for writer Michael Morpurgo as himself. Composer Adrian Sutton's War Horse Suite traces the story of Joey the horse from birth to death, the specially commissioned Some See Us is a haunting tribute to the young men slaughtered in World War I, and his elegiac Only Remembered bookends the show. Interweaved is music from composers influenced by the war, including Holst, Elgar and Ravel.
Donald Runnicles and the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra are joined by the National Youth Choir of Scotland for Mozart’s ever-popular Requiem – the composer’s poignant and prescient anticipation of his own death. Scottish composer John McLeod’s The Sun Dances is a glowing, iridescent work inspired by an Easter folk legend from the West of Scotland. At the centre of the programme is Beethoven’s Fourth Symphony, its muscular, structural elegance wound around a boisterous scherzo.
Spiritual in a secular age, combining silence and sound, simplicity and radiance, John Tavener captured the public imagination like few other composers. The other-worldly atmosphere of a Late Night Prom frames a musical meditation by the English composer, who would have celebrated his 70th birthday this year, as we approach the exact anniversary of Britain’s declaration of the First World War 100 years ago, at 11.00pm. The Tallis Scholars and conductor Peter Phillips are joined by the Heath Quartet to perform two works written especially for them, including the heartbreakingly prescient Requiem Fragments, composed shortly before Tavener’s death.
Leading jazz singer Clare Teal presents a Late Night Prom with a difference as we are transported back to the swing era of the 1930s and 1940s with two of the greatest bands of the day, led at the time by Count Basie and Duke Ellington. With selections including Jumpin’ at the Woodside and It Don’t Mean a Thing (If It Ain’t Got That Swing), and culminating in a bespoke ‘Battle Royal’, the roof will surely be raised as these giants of jazz do battle for the approval of the audience.
The sea lies the centre of tonight’s concert from Sir Mark Elder and the Hallé. The sunshine glitters on the waves of Berlioz’s swashbuckling overture Le corsaire, written while the composer was holidaying in Nice. A celebrated Elgar champion, Elder is joined by British mezzo-soprano Alice Coote for Sea Pictures: Elgar’s only orchestral song-cycle, which ebbs and flows evocatively as it explores the fascination and fear inspired by the sea. While Helen Grime’s Near Midnight explores a nocturnal theme, Beethoven created a storm of human drama in his ‘Eroica’ Symphony – a stirring musical meditation on heroism and valour.
The National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain makes its annual visit to the Proms with a fiery and virtuosic programme of 20th-century orchestral showpieces, conducted by Proms regular Edward Gardner. A Russian first half sees BBC Radio 3 New Generation Artist Louis Schwizgebel take the lead in Prokofiev’s youthful First Piano Concerto. Written while the composer was still a student, it brims with the same audacious energy that pulses through Stravinsky’s great ballet Petrushka. Lutosławski’s vivacious Concerto for Orchestra closes the evening with still more primary-coloured, folkloric brilliance and drama.
Commissioned by Jascha Heifetz, Walton’s concerto extended the possibilities of what could be achieved on the violin, while at the same time maintaining a striking intimacy and emotional directness. Søndergård and the BBC NOW open with a suite from Sir Peter Maxwell Davies’s ballet Caroline Mathilde, in which the English princess is sent to an unhappy marriage in Denmark, and continue with two great orchestral works by Sibelius. A painting of a flight of swans hung on the wall of the composer’s study, and these birds inspired both the majestic ‘swan theme’ apotheosis of Sibelius’s Fifth Symphony and the more serene and mystical tone-poem The Swan of Tuonela.
Butterworth’s A Shropshire Lad reflects a world on the brink of collapse while Vaughan Williams’s Pastoral Symphony is a vision of war-ravaged France. Like Butterworth, both Rudi Stephan and Frederick Kelly were killed in the First World War; the latter’s exquisite Elegy for strings was performed at his own memorial concert. Stephan’s Music for Orchestra (1912) finds a desperate intensity in its Expressionist colours.
This season’s showcase of global orchestras continues with the Proms debut of the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, under its new Chief Conductor, Sir Andrew Davis. Together they explore the musical extremes of passion, despair, love and death. Perhaps the most powerful artistic expression of unrequited love, Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique is a dark, vivid fantasy inspired by the woman who would eventually become his wife. Strauss too had just married when he composed the soaring love theme of Don Juan. Elgar’s last major work, the Cello Concerto, traces more questioning shades of emotion. There’s a beautiful melancholy and tentative yearning to this work, coloured by the First World War: an elegy by any other name.
The West–Eastern Divan Orchestra and Daniel Barenboim return for a colourful Spanish-flavoured evening. We begin just outside Seville in Mozart’s vivacious Figaro overture, before drifting into the dreamy Spanish nights of Ravel’s Rapsodie espagnole. Dreams give way to convulsing, urgent dance as we reach the Rapsodie’s latter movements – a preview of the rhythmic intensity of the composer’s Boléro. Also featuring here are two works newly composed for the orchestra – both exploring the musical junctions of East and West.
Celebrating its 50th anniversary this year, the Monteverdi Choir returns to the Proms with its founder-conductor Sir John Eliot Gardiner for one of the greatest of all choral works – Beethoven’s mighty setting of the Mass. It’s a work the choir has performed throughout its history, most recently in a second acclaimed recording. The unique atmosphere of a Late Night Prom is the perfect setting for this tumultuous spiritual journey, in which we acknowledge doubt and search for redemption.
Marin Alsop makes a welcome return following her triumph at last year’s Last Night, to conduct the BBC Symphony Orchestra in Mahler’s First Symphony. Originally designated a ‘symphonic poem’, the work retains all the programmatic colour this suggests. A young hero travels through life, marvelling at nature and growing to maturity, but encountering the sorrows and conflicts of Fate at every turn. Mahler’s long-limbed lyricism meets its match in the muscular drive of John Adams’s Saxophone Concerto, written for virtuoso soloist Timothy McAllister, and his iconic orchestral miniature Short Ride in a Fast Machine, which pulses with anarchic life.
Stay on after the Berliner Philharmoniker’s evening concert for a special Late Night Prom by Brit Award-nominated artist Paloma Faith, fêted for her sleek vocals and retro style. This Prom sees the British singer-songwriter joined by a 42-piece jazz orchestra and the elite Urban Voices Collective for a performance that includes new arrangements of songs from her first two, double-platinum-selling albums, as well as from her most recent release, A Perfect Contradiction. A one-off performance striking an intimate mood in the Royal Albert Hall.
Cellist and conductor Han-Na Chang makes her Proms conducting debut as Music Director of the Qatar Philharmonic Orchestra – one of this year’s global orchestras, also making its debut. Their concert culminates in Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 5, haunted by its recurring ‘Fate’ theme. Vivid with contrasts and surging climaxes, the symphony is matched for drama by Rachmaninov’s Second Piano Concerto, a Proms favourite whose slow movement burns with restrained passion. Behzad Ranjbaran’s Seemorgh is inspired by the mythical Persian bird of its title.
The Cleveland Orchestra is one of America’s great ensembles. After an absence of almost a decade it returns to the Proms under Music Director Franz Welser-Möst for the first of two concerts. If Brahms’s stormy and intricately structured First Symphony sees the composer at his most serious and structurally ambitious, his Academic Festival Overture is a rare example of his levity – an elegantly constructed musical thank-you-letter to Breslau University, taking its themes from boisterous student songs. At the centre of the programme is a concerto commissioned by the Cleveland Orchestra for its principal flautist Joshua Smith. Rejecting anything too grandiose, young German composer Jörg Widmann has opted for a suite of dance movements – playful, referential and imaginatively disorienting.
On Sir Peter Maxwell Davies’s 80th birthday the Proms pays tribute to this leading figure in contemporary British music with a late-night programme of works selected by the composer. The concert overture Ebb of Winter, commissioned by the Scottish Chamber Orchestra as part of its 40th-anniversary celebrations, captures the rugged, rough-hewn beauty of Davies’s Orkney home. We see a different side of island life in the joyous ebullience of the much-loved An Orkney Wedding, with Sunrise. The fourth Strathclyde Concerto, for clarinet and orchestra, completes the concert – a thrilling tour de force, demanding equal virtuosity from soloist and ensemble.
Sakari Oramo directs his first Last Night of the Proms, joined by powerhouse Dutch violinist Janine Jansen. British patriotism and Strauss's anniversary celebrations combine for the first Proms performance of the composer's extraordinary cantata Taillefer. Ansell's romp of a nautical overture, Plymouth Hoe, and Ravel's gypsy-dance Tzigane add colourful contributions to this musical celebration that culminates, as always, with a mass singalong.
Sakari Oramo conducts this year’s opening concert, in a programme that includes Walton’s pithy choral masterpiece 'Belshazzar’s Feast' and Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 20 with soloist Lars Vogt.
Transferring the magical world of the BBC Ten Pieces film into an exciting and immersive Prom at the Royal Albert Hall. The BBC National Orchestra of Wales and conductor Thomas Sondergard are joined by firebirds and fast cars, magic mountains and mountain trolls, stormy seas and wicked witches, as they take the family audience on a journey through ten pieces of classical music. Presenters include Blue Peter's Barney Harwood, Dick and Dom, and Friday Download's Molly Rainford. They introduce Mozart's Horn Concerto, Mussorgsky's Night on a Bare Mountain and John Adams's Short Ride in a Fast Machine. Also, the dancers of Trinity Laban perform Anna Meredith's striking body percussion piece, Connect It, and a massed children's choir of 450 sing Handel's Zadok the Priest.
Barney Harwood and Dick and Dom join the BBC National Orchestra of Wales to celebrate some of the best pieces to introduce children to classical music – and to inspire a life-long love of it.
Beethoven’s ‘Choral’ Symphony returns to the Proms in the hands of Andris Nelsons and the massed forces of the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra and the CBSO Chorus.
The BBC Philharmonic’s programme spans more than two centuries, opening with Haydn’s ‘La reine’ Symphony and closing with Stravinsky’s fairy-tale ballet 'Petrushka'.
Poulenc’s Organ Concerto raises the curtain on this BBC National Orchestra of Wales Prom which also includes Stravinsky’s 'Symphony of Psalms' and Mozart’s Symphony No. 41.
Mark Simpson performs the Clarinet Concerto by Carl Nielsen, whose 150th anniversary falls this year, in a programme which also includes an alluring suite from Ravel’s 'Daphnis and Chloe'.
Indian singers Benny Dayal and Palak Muchhal, together with British Asian DJ, songwriter and producer Naughty Boy, headline a Prom, featuring special guests Kanika Kapoor, Emeli Sandé and Arrow Benjamin, in association with BBC Asian Network and as part of the 50th anniversary this year of Asian Programmes on the BBC. The event launches a new series of Proms curated in collaboration with six BBC national radio stations – including 6 Music, Radio 1 and Radio 2 – and BBC Music. Bobby Friction presents the very best of South Asian music, from Bollywood to contemporary sounds.
Leif Ove Andsnes continues his survey of Beethoven’s works for piano and orchestra with the Piano Concerto No. 3 and the ‘Choral Fantasy’.
Susanna Mälkki conducts Holst’s masterpiece in a programme which also includes the UK premiere of a new violin concerto by Luca Francesconi, written for and performed by Leila Josefowicz.
Radio 1’s first ever Prom is less concert and more dance-party – a musical homage to Ibiza and its infectious, energetic brand of club music. 2015 marks the 20th anniversary of Radio 1 in Ibiza and this will be a celebration to remember. Celebrated British DJ Pete Tong presents a line-up of live artists, who perform with Jules Buckley and his Heritage Orchestra.
Pete Tong introduces the BBC Radio 1 Prom and the Heritage Orchestra to play a selection of Ibiza classics. The Royal Albert Hall has never seen anything like it! Jules Buckley conducts the orchestra through dance masterpieces by Fatboy Slim, Eric Prydz, Shapeshifters, Robert Miles, ATB, Moby, Frankie Knuckles, Orbital, Inner City, Daft Punk, Faithless, Stardust and so many more, with the help of Ella Eyre and John Newman.
Sir Mark Elder conducts the Hallé in music they have made their own – Vaughan Williams and Elgar. Opening the programme is Debussy’s luscious 'Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune'.
Series of unaccompanied solo performances of Bach at the Proms. Russian violinist Alina Ibragimova, known for her historically-informed interpretation of Bach, performs the first three of the notoriously demanding Sonatas and Partitas. She begins with the harmonically-varied Sonata No 1 in G Minor, followed by Partita No 1 in B minor and closing with Sonata No 2 in A minor. Presented by Samira Ahmed.
Violinist Alina Ibragimova concludes her performance of Bach’s complete Sonatas and Partitas for solo violin in the second of her two Late Night Proms.
The ever innovative Aurora Orchestra returns to the Proms with two ‘Pastoral’ Symphonies – the first by Brett Dean, the second by Beethoven – and a world premiere by Anna Meredith.
The world premiere of James MacMillan’s Symphony No. 4 is paired with Mahler’s monumental Fifth Symphony. Renowned Mahlerian Donald Runnicles conducts the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra.
A celebration of British composers of the early 20th century, featuring Walton, Vaughan Williams, Elgar and the Welsh composer Grace Williams.
Piano and keyboard virtuoso Nils Frahm makes his Proms debut, as does atmospheric duo A Winged Victory for the Sullen, and together they create an exclusive centrepiece collaboration.
Seth MacFarlane and other guest vocalists join the John Wilson Orchestra to celebrate the centenary of Frank Sinatra in this Late Night Prom.
The National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain brings Mahler’s epic Ninth Symphony to the Proms, paired with a brand-new work by Tansy Davies. Sir Mark Elder conducts.
Eric Whitacre, one of the biggest names in choral music, conducts a programme including his own 'Cloudburst', as well as other American Gershwin’s 'Rhapsody in Blue'.
Sir John Eliot Gardiner and the ORR bring their inimitable style to two classical masterpieces: Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony and Berlioz’s Symphonie Fantastique.
Nicola Benedetti is the soloist in Korngold’s Violin Concerto as part of a programme which also sees the Bournemouth SO perform Prokofiev’s Fifth Symphony and music from Britten’s 'Peter Grimes'.
Clare is joined by trumpeter and composer extraordinaire Guy Barker and trombonist and multi-instrumentalist Winston Rollins to tell the story of the birth of swing, including tributes to 'King of Swing' Benny Goodman and the great trombonist and bandleader Tommy Dorsey.
Following 2013's Urban Classic Prom, BBC Radio 1Xtra joins the BBC Proms in a high-octane Late Night celebration of the thriving urban music scene, from hip-hop to grime. Rappers Wretch 32, Stormzy and Krept & Konan join presenters MistaJam and Sian Anderson on stage to set the Royal Albert Hall dancing to new remixes that blend classical and urban styles, with a little help from Jules Buckley and his Metropole Orkest.
Sir Mark Elder conducts the huge forces of the National Youth Orchestra in a performance of Mahler's epic Ninth Symphony. Sir Mark provides an in-depth, movement-by-movement guide to the symphony, written as Mahler was reeling from the death of his young daughter and facing his own mortality in failing health. Sir Mark relishes the challenge of engaging the young players of the NYO with this emotionally vast piece - he says he must "give them the opportunity to let them dig down into themselves, to encourage them, to demand from them, gently, strongly, more and more". Presented from the Royal Albert Hall by Katie Derham.
Daniel Barenboim returns to the BBC Proms to perform Beethoven and Tchaikovsky with the West–Eastern Divan Orchestra, an ensemble featuring musicians from across the Middle East.
The Danish National Symphony Orchestra celebrates the 150th anniversary of Carl Nielsen, performing some of his best-loved orchestral works, alongside Brahms’s Violin Concerto.
Sir András Schiff brings Bach’s monumental work for solo keyboard to the Royal Albert Hall. Join the great pianist on a voyage through this masterpiece.
One of today’s greatest conductors brings Schubert's Ninth Symphony (the 'Great') to the Proms, along with Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 23, performed by the inimitable Maria João Pires.
Kirill Karabits conducts the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra in Sergei Prokofiev's ever-popular Fifth Symphony, composed in a white heat of inspiration at a pivotal moment of the Second World War. Sir Mark Elder provides a movement-by-movement guide to the symphony. Presented from the Royal Albert Hall by Katie Derham.
Celebrate the music of Leonard Bernstein with John Wilson and his orchestra in this Prom which features highlights from 'Candide', 'Wonderful Town', 'Fancy Free', 'West Side Story' and 'Peter Pan'.
Cellist Yo-Yo Ma has the Royal Albert Hall stage to himself for this Late Night Prom as he takes on the challenge of J. S. Bach’s Six Cello Suites.
Part 1 aired on BBC TWO Live from the Royal Albert Hall. Katie Derham introduces the final concert of the 2015 Proms season as conductor Marin Alsop returns to lead the celebrations after her triumphant Last Night debut in 2013. Star tenor Jonas Kaufmann sings a selection of popular arias by Puccini in a programme which also includes Richard Strauss's sparkling tone poem Till Eulenspiegel and Arvo Pärt's Credo, a crashing musical battle between good and evil performed by the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Chorus and the BBC Singers. The remarkable 23-year-old British pianist Benjamin Grosvenor plays Shostakovich's second piano concerto and the concert begins with the world premiere of the new BBC commission Arise Athena! by the Jamaican-born composer Eleanor Alberga.
Part 2 aired on BBC ONE and Katie Derham introduces the celebrations live from the Royal Albert Hall as the world's greatest music festival reaches the grand finale of its 120th anniversary year. Tenor Jonas Kaufmann, soprano Danielle de Niese and pianist Benjamin Grosvenor are the star soloists in a programme which includes popular favourites by Gershwin, Lehar and James P Johnson, as well as a performance of Grieg's Morning from Peer Gynt, which appeared in the first ever Last Night in 1895. Around the UK, Proms in the Park audiences in Belfast, Glasgow, Swansea and London will join the Royal Albert Hall for a medley of favourites from The Sound of Music to mark the 50th anniversary of the classic film. Each of the four parks will also have their moment in the spotlight as part of a UK-wide singalong of Aaron Copland's I Bought Me a Cat, before the traditional climax of Rule Britannia, Land of Hope and Glory and Jerusalem. The BBC Symphony Orchestra and Chorus and the BBC Singers are conducted by Marin Alsop.
Alex Jones and Tim Rhys-Evans present highlights from Proms in the Park 2015 as Welsh stars, soprano Rebecca Evans and West End singer, John Owen Jones, take to the stage in Swansea's Singleton Park for a magical Last Night of the Proms celebration. They are also joined by BBC Young Musician 2014 Jazz winner, saxophonist Alexander Bone, performing some specially arranged music.
Proms in the Park returns from the Titanic Slipways in Belfast with a line-up including Barry Douglas, Riverdance, Rebecca Ferguson, Noah Stewart, Lucy O'Byrne, Charlie Siem and the Belfast Community Gospel Choir.
BBC FOUR presents a stellar line-up of artists across the nations to entertain audiences with a mix of classical, jazz and contemporary repertoire to celebrate the Last Night of the Proms. Presenter Josie d'Arby joins the party at Titanic Slipways in Belfast, where Riverdance are among the artists entertaining the crowd. X Factor winner Alexandra Burke takes to the stage in Glasgow, while in Swansea the internationally-acclaimed operatic soprano Rebecca Evans joins West End star John Owen Jones. And topping the bill in Hyde Park are American music legends The Jacksons.
The Jacksons headline a star-studded concert from London's Hyde Park.
Tchaikovsky’s ravishing 'Romeo and Juliet' overture launches our celebrations marking 400 years since the death of Shakespeare. Argentine soloist Sol Gabetta makes her Proms debut in Elgar’s hauntingly lyrical Cello Concerto, the first in a series of works throwing a spotlight on the instrument. Prokofiev delivered a score of new directness and clarity for his friend Sergey Eisenstein’s patriotic film Alexander Nevsky: the cantata he fashioned from it features the dramatic ‘Battle on the Ice’.
Katie Derham presents the second half of the opening of the 2016 BBC Proms season from the Royal Albert Hall. Sakari Oramo conducts the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Chorus, the BBC National Chorus of Wales and mezzo-soprano soloist Olga Borodina in a performance of Prokofiev's celebrated cantata Alexander Nevsky. Created from the soundtrack Prokofiev originally composed for Sergey Eisenstein's landmark film, the music is dramatic and evocative, including the famous musical depiction of Battle on the Ice.
In a Prom of choral classics the Choir of King’s College, Cambridge, follows intricate sacred works by Mozart and Haydn with the radiant serenity of Fauré, whose Requiem radiates stillness and spirituality. The King’s choristers are joined by leading vocal soloists as well as the period instruments of the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment.
BBC Proms - 2016: Maurice Ravel: Boléro With the Munich Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Valery Gergiev. (from Prom No. 4)
Valery Gergiev and his Munich Philharmonic Orchestra open with Ravel’s hypnotic Boléro and close with a suite from Richard Strauss’s waltz-filled opera Der Rosenkavalier. In between, Galina Ustvolskaya’s Symphony No. 3 pleads for redemption on raw brass and winds. Young Uzbek pianist Behzod Abduraimov – winner of the 2009 London International Piano Competition – is the soloist in Rachmaninov’s soaring Piano Concerto No. 3.
BBC Proms - 2016: Galina Ustvolskaya: Symphony No 3 'Jesus Messiah, save us!' With Alexei Petrenko (reciter) and the Munich Philharmonic conducted by Valery Gergiev. (from Prom No. 4)
BBC Proms - 2016: Richard Strauss: Der Rosenkavalier Suite With the Munich Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Valery Gergiev.
BBC Proms - 2016: Sergei Rachmaninov: Piano Concerto No 3 in D minor With Behzod Abduraimov (piano) and the Munich Philharmonic conducted by Valery Gergiev. (from Prom No. 4)
In the second ever Gospel Prom, some of the best Gospel music is performed by the London Adventist Chorale, the London Community Gospel Choir, V9 Collective and University Choir of the Year Mass Choir conducted by Ken Burton, Karen Gibson, Bazil Meade, and Volney Morgan.
Could this be the glitziest Prom ever? Get your dancing shoes on and join Katie Derham and a whole host of your favourite Strictly Come Dancing professionals as they celebrate the music of dance. The BBC Concert Orchestra, conducted by Gavin Sutherland, embarks on a musical journey from foxtrot and waltz, to paso doble and tango, taking in a wonderful panorama of dancing and some stunning orchestral interludes on the way.
As Europe slipped towards Fascism, Michael Tippett felt solidarity with the downtrodden. Then, in 1938,a young Polish Jew, whose parents had been deported by the Nazis, shot a German diplomat in Paris. Tippett had the central figure for his ‘oratorio of contemplation’, A Child of Our Time – inspired by Bach’s Passions, Handel’s Messiah and American spirituals. Mark Wigglesworth also explores the theme of parent–child relationships in the final scene of Wagner’s opera Die Walküre, culminating in Wotan’s poignant farewell to his daughter.
On the shores of the Attersee in Upper Austria, the hut still stands in which Gustav Mahler set about creating one of the most overwhelming visions of nature in all art. The composer’s Third Symphony harnessed the expanse that surrounded him. Horns bray and trombones growl in the face of nature’s primeval power; human voices move from grief to hope before, as Mahler declared, ‘nature in its totality rings and resounds’. In the 50th-anniversary year of his first appearance at the Proms, Bernard Haitink conducts Mahler’s almighty nature symphony.
A celebration and reinterpretation of the music of David Bowie with the Berlin-based, genre-defying musicians’ collective s t a r g a z e and its Artistic Director André de Ridder. They are joined by guest singers and collaborators – including Jherek Bischoff, Anna Calvi and Amanda Palmer – to re-imagine the Bowie catalogue with fresh settings of classic works.
Shakespeare's influence on the world has been profound, and on no-one more so than Berlioz, who fell in love with the Bard's work in 1827 and so began a lifelong passion for all things Shakespearean. How fitting, then, to mark 400 years since Shakespeare's death with a performance of Berlioz's dramatic symphony Romeo and Juliet, the grandest of his Shakespeare-inspired works. Sir John Eliot Gardiner conducts the Orchestre Revolutionnaire et Romantique, the Monteverdi Choir, the National Youth Choir of Scotland and soloists Julie Boulianne (mezzo-soprano), Jean-Paul Fouchecourt (tenor) and Laurent Naouri (bass), as Berlioz tells his version of this most famous of stories.
BBC Proms - 2016: Richard Strauss: Oboe Concerto in D major With François Leleux (oboe) and the Aurora Orchestra conducted by Nicholas Collon. (from Prom No. 21)
The Aurora Orchestra with conductor and founder Nicholas Collon return to the Proms with another performance entirely from memory. Not a note of music or a single music stand will be seen on the Royal Albert Hall stage as they tackle Mozart's final symphony, a piece packed full of joy and invention. Presenter Tom Service explores the process of committing a complete symphony to memory and, with the orchestra's help, unpicks this great work on stage for the Proms audience, deconstructing the final movement to explore Mozart's compositional genius.
BBC Proms - 2016: Wolfgang Rihm: Gejagte Form (2002 version) With the Aurora Orchestra conducted by Nicholas Collon. (from Prom No. 21)
Tonight’s Prom marks the first instalment of all three of Stravinsky’s landmark ballets for the Ballet Russes company, all performed this weekend by Scottish orchestras. In the vivid folk tale of a puppet springing to life, Stravinsky had the starting point for his stylistic breakthrough, Petrushka, a ballet that would depict Russia with ‘quick tempos, smells of Russian food, sweat and glistening leather boots’. The first part of a new work from major talent Helen Grime (see also Prom 30) prefaces this concert’s arrival in Russia via all the despair, passion and determination of Tchaikovsky’s heart-rending Violin Concerto.
BBC Proms - 2016: Helen Grime: Two Eardley Pictures (Catterline in Winter) With the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra conducted by Thomas Dausgaard. (from Prom No. 27)
BBC Proms - 2016: Igor Stravinsky: Petrushka (1947 version) With the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra conducted by Thomas Dausgaard. (from Prom No. 27)
BBC Proms - 2016: Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky: Violin Concerto in D major, Op 35 Soloist Pekka Kuusisto joins the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra and Thomas Dausgaard. (from Prom No. 27)
Edward Gardner conducts the National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain and the women of the City of Birmingham Youth Chorus in Strauss’ Also sprach Zarathustra and Holst’s The Planets. The programme opens with a new work by Iris ter Schiphorst.
Straddling the boundaries of jazz, pop and rock, Jamie Cullum returns for another Late Night Prom after his sell-out appearance in 2010. This time, backed by the Roundhouse Choir and Heritage Orchestra, he offers his own take on a collection of pop songs, in the spirit of The Song Society – Cullum’s project to create fast and loose covers of favourite tracks. He brings the same approach of new discovery both to his use of the wide array of instruments available and to exploring the distinctive space of the Royal Albert Hall.
John Wilson and his orchestra return to pay tribute to George and Ira Gershwin, one of America’s most celebrated song-writing duos, with favourites including ‘Embraceable You’, ‘Love Walked In’, ‘Fascinatin’ Rhythm’ and the ballet music from the 1951 film An American in Paris.
Berlioz’s King Lear overture was admired by the King of Hanover: ‘How you have portrayed [Cordelia] – her humility and tenderness! It is heart-rending, and so beautiful!’ Continuing our focus on the cello this summer, Colin Matthews’s Berceuse for Dresden takes inspiration from the eight bells of the Dresden church at which it was premiered. In Mahler’s exploration of darkness and radiance in his culminating synthesis of song and symphony, Das Lied von der Erde, he altered the parameters of vocal and orchestral expression for ever.
Katie Derham introduces another chance to see one of the most memorable Proms from the BBC archive. This week, she is joined by special guest Stephen Fry for one of his favourite concerts of all time, from the 2016 season. Daniel Barenboim conducts the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra in Liszt’s First Piano Concerto, performed by his childhood friend, legendary pianist Martha Argerich, along with epic orchestral extracts from three different operas by Richard Wagner.
Jules Buckley and his Metropole Orkest return to the Proms to celebrate the career of composer, arranger, conductor, producer and all-round musical giant Quincy Jones. Recent musical partners of Quincy’s join the longest-established jazz orchestra in existence as special guests to collaborate on new arrangements of hits both old and new – and the great man himself makes an appearance.
This year’s Proms focus on Latin America in the year the Olympic Games go to Rio de Janeiro heats up with a visit from the São Paulo Symphony Orchestra under its charismatic conductor Marin Alsop. Their concert is bookended by infectious, furious dances from Marlos Nobre and Rachmaninov. In between comes music from the doyen of South American composers, Heitor Villa-Lobos, and a performance of Grieg’s Piano Concerto for which the orchestra is joined by Venezuelan pianist Gabriela Montero.
Immediately following the São Paulo Symphony Orchestra’s evening Prom, its string players and Principal Conductor Marin Alsop are joined by members of the São Paulo Jazz Symphony Orchestra for a landmark celebration of Brazilian popular-music from the past 100 years. Few countries can boast such an ingrained and individual popular music tradition as Brazil, and this feel-good Late Night Prom will take you from the Africaninfluenced rhythms and Chopinesque chromaticism of Brazilian street music to the outlandish constructions of the so-called São Paulo avant-garde – all from the best Brazilian players in the business.
The story of Mozart’s last months is almost as remarkable as the string of masterpieces he produced during them. Who was the cloaked figure rumoured to have commissioned Mozart to write the Requiem? We’ll never know, but the deathly tread, furious fight and radiant hope of the music remain unparalleled. Iván Fischer brings his equally exceptional Budapest Festival Orchestra to the Proms, joined by one of Europe’s leading choirs for the Requiem, alongside the autumnal shades of Mozart’s late Clarinet Concerto.
The City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra makes its first London appearance with young Lithuanian Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla, who becomes the orchestra’s Music Director next season. While Mozart’s overture combines infectious energy with Masonic symbolism, Tchaikovsky’s dramatic Fourth Symphony explores the shadow cast by Fate. Hans Abrahamsen’s Grawemeyer Award-winning song-cycle for Barbara Hannigan centres on Shakespeare’s Ophelia, using only words allotted to her in Hamlet.
CBeebies favourites take a musical journey with the BBC Concert Orchestra.
Daniel Barenboim conducts the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra in Liszt’s First Piano Concerto, performed by his childhood friend, legendary pianist Martha Argerich, along with epic orchestral extracts from three different operas by Richard Wagner.
Johann Sebastian Bach, Cantata No 82, 'Ich habe genug' (22 mins). Anton Bruckner, Symphony No 9 in D minor (64 mins). Christian Gerhaher bass-baritone, Gustav Mahler Jugendorchester, Philippe Jordan conductor
Sir Simon Rattle brings his Berlin Philharmonic to the Proms for two concerts, the first falling on the day the festival commemorates the towering genius that was the late Pierre Boulez. Here Boulez’s kaleidoscopic Éclat forms a prelude to perhaps Gustav Mahler’s most radical symphony, a work in which his musical imagination stormed new territories in its fierce harmonies and wild scoring. In the symphony’s celebrated ‘Night Music’ serenades – eerie yet strangely calming nocturnes for orchestra, one hinging on a gently strumming guitar and mandolin – Mahler appears to look to a realm far beyond his own.
Verdi’s shattering Requiem – which began life as a memorial to Rossini – was so forthright in its expression of grief, faith and judgement that many thought it too dramatic for performance in church. In the penultimate Prom of 2016, Marin Alsop leads the period instruments of the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment and the fresh voices of the BBC Proms Youth Choir through all the passion, turbulence and reflection of Verdi’s sacred masterpiece.
Peruvian tenor Juan Diego Flórez is the star soloist in a Last Night that also showcases a hand-picked selection of young singers in Vaughan Williams’s Serenade to Music.
Peruvian tenor Juan Diego Flórez is the star soloist in a Last Night that also showcases a hand-picked selection of young singers in Vaughan Williams’s Serenade to Music. Second part of the broadcast which includes the traditional ending of the Proms Season.
Music from the four Proms in the Park concerts, coming to you from Belfast's Titanic Slipways, Glasgow Green, London's Hyde Park and Colwyn Bay in North Wales.
Proms in the Park travels to north Wales for the very first time. Josie D'Arby and Tim Rhys Evans present this special concert where they're joined by Tony Hadley performing some of Spandau Ballet's greatest hits, celebrated Welsh tenor Wynne Evans, Grammy award winner Amy Wadge and BBC Young Musician 2016 winner Sheku Kanneh-Mason.
Live from Glasgow Green, Proms in the Park celebrates the last night of the Proms with world class musical entertainment. Joining events around the country, the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Stephen Bell, take centre stage in Glasgow. The orchestra is joined by a host of musical talent, including KT Tunstall, mezzo-soprano Karen Cargill, Greg McHugh, Leah MacRae and Collabro. The evening is presented by Jamie MacDougall.
The legendary Last Night, Proms in the Park celebrations from venues around the UK. Diane-Louise Jordan and Anita Rani present a stellar mix of classical and contemporary performances, including Tony Hadley and BBC Young Musician 2016 Sheku Kanneh-Mason in Colwyn Bay; operatic soprano Lesley Garrett, joined by star of musical theatre John Owen Jones at Belfast's Titanic Slipways; KT Tunstall in Glasgow Green; while the sensational sounds of American music legends Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons top the bill in London's Hyde Park. All accompanied by the BBC's acclaimed orchestras.
Proms favourites the John Wilson Orchestra and their eponymous conductor celebrate the music and lyrics of one of the greatest song-writing partnerships in American history - George and Ira Gershwin. Expect hit after hit as singers Julian Ovenden, Louise Dearman and Matthew Ford perform crowd pleasers like Fascinatin' Rhythm, They All Laughed and many more. Classic orchestral numbers, including An American in Paris and a Rhapsody In Blue Overture, complete the line-up in a concert that features a bumper crop of the brothers' best-known tunes.
Valery Gergiev conducts the Munich Philharmonic Orchestra in three popular classics - Ravel's hypnotic Bolero, the ravishing suite from Richard Strauss's Der Rosenkavalier and Rachmaninov's romantic third piano concerto, with the outstanding young pianist Behzod Abduraimov. Also in the programme is Galina Ustvolskaya's searing third symphony, Jesus Messiah, Save Us!, with text read tonight by Alexei Petrenko. Presented by Katie Derham.
The great conductor Bernard Haitink marks the 50th anniversary year of his first appearance at the Proms with Mahler's 3rd symphony. One of the most powerful and expansive musical visions of nature ever created, this is Mahler's personal hymn to the natural world. The London Symphony Orchestra is joined by the mezzo-soprano Sarah Connolly, the women's voices of the London Symphony Chorus and the Tiffin Boys' Choir. As Mahler himself declared, "nature in its totality rings and resounds". Presented from the Royal Albert Hall by Suzy Klein.
Martha Argerich performs Schubert's Rondo in A
BBC Proms 2017 kicks off in style tonight at the Royal Albert Hall. Beethoven's dramatic Third Piano Concerto is performed by star soloist Igor Levit with the BBC Symphony Orchestra and conductor Edward Gardner. This opening concert of the world's biggest music festival also includes a raucous new work by Tom Coult, St John's Dance, the first of 13 world premieres at Proms 2017. Presented by Katie Derham.
The First Night of the Proms culminates with Harmonium, a dazzling choral work from American music titan John Adams, who celebrates his 70th birthday this year. Harmonium is a thrilling and captivating setting of poetry by John Donne and Emily Dickinson, performed by the BBC Symphony Orchestra, BBC Symphony Chorus and the BBC Proms Youth Choir, conducted by Edward Gardner. Presented by Katie Derham.
BBC Proms legend Bernard Haitink returns to The Royal Albert Hall to conduct his beloved Chamber Orchestra of Europe. Acclaimed German violinist Isabelle Faust plays Mozart's joyous Third Violin Concerto, paired tonight with Mozart's ground-breaking Symphony No. 38 (Prague). Schumann's Second Symphony closes the programme.
Inspirational maestro Daniel Barenboim makes his second appearance in this opening weekend of the 2017 Proms season. Conducting his German orchestra Staatskappelle Berlin, Barenboim brings an entirely English programme to the Royal Albert Hall, including Elgar's poignant Second Symphony and the UK premiere of Sir Harrison Birtwistle's Deep Time, a work dedicated to the memory of Birtwistle's friend and colleague Sir Peter Maxwell Davies.
A concert of emotional extremes opens with Sibelius’s tempestuous Symphony No. 7 and closes with the horror of Shostakovich’s Stalin-inspired Symphony No. 10. Exciting young Uzbek pianist Behzod Abduraimov performs Rachmaninov’s Second Piano Concerto.
The BBC Proms celebrates the 85th birthday of the world's favourite film composer, John Williams. The BBC Concert Orchestra and conductor Keith Lockhart perform some of the best-loved music in cinema history, including movie magic from Star Wars, Harry Potter, ET and Indiana Jones as well as lesser-known gems from John Williams's extraordinary back catalogue. Presented by Katie Derham.
The first of three politically charged stage works this season is Beethoven’s only opera, Fidelio – a passionate musical protest against political oppression, first performed in the wake of the French Revolution. At its heart is the stirring ‘Prisoners’ Chorus’, a poignant hymn to freedom and the power of the human spirit. Australian tenor Stuart Skelton stars as the imprisoned Florestan, with soprano Ricarda Merbeth as his faithful and resourceful wife Leonore. Louise Alder, winner of the Dame Joan Sutherland Audience Prize at the 2017 BBC Cardiff Singer of the World, sings the role of Marzelline, the jailer’s daughter.
No symphony pulses more vigorously with the rhythms of political protest than Beethoven's 'Eroica', whose defiant opening chords mark the arrival of the Romantic symphony. In their novel introduction, BBC Radio 3's Tom Service and conductor Nicholas Collon dismantle and reassemble this groundbreaking work, with the help of live excerpts, before the Aurora Orchestra gets under the skin of the work by performing the complete symphony from memory. The concert also includes Richard Strauss's 1945 Metamorphosen. Scored for 23 solo strings, this ecstatic, elegiac work closes with an 'Eroica' quotation that mourns the devastation brought about by another, even darker, political regime.
Sir Malcolm Sargent was the chief conductor of the Proms for two decades, bringing the concerts to TV audiences for the first time. To mark the 50th anniversary of his death, Andrew Davies conducts the BBC Symphony Orchestra and young pianist Beatrice Rana to recreate Sargent's 500th Prom from 1966. Alongside Schumann and Berlioz, there is a feast of English music by composers including Elgar and Holst, with the evening culminating in Britten's much-loved The Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra.
Jarvis Cocker leads an eclectic line-up in this late night tribute to the 60s cult icon Scott Walker. Conductor Jules Buckley has arranged tracks from Walker's four eponymous albums, performed with live orchestral backing for the very first time. Featuring Jules Buckley's Heritage Orchestra and London Contemporary Voices.
Beethoven’s great hymn to humanity joins Sir James MacMillan’s European Requiem, which also makes a plea for unity.
The annual Henry Wood Promenade Concerts, founded in 1895, featuring orchestral classical music and centred around the Royal Albert Hall in London. Richard Strauss's 1945 Metamorphosen is an ecstatic, elegiac work which ends with a quote from Beethoven's Eroica that mourns the devastation of the Second World War.
Described by The New York Times as 'the most admired jazz diva since the heyday of Sarah Vaughan, Ella Fitzgerald and Billie Holiday', Dianne Reeves is joined by virtuoso trumpeter James Morrison to pay a double tribute to Ella Fitzgerald and Dizzy Gillespie in the centenary year of their births. Conducted by Broadway musical and Hollywood movie-score legend John Mauceri, the celebrations contrast the Great American Songbook, which played a key role in Fitzgerald’s live and recording career, with the bebop and Afro-Latin sounds in which Gillespie excelled. Tickets for this concert are now very limited. However we have plenty for jazz-lovers to enjoy this year. On Thursday 24 August you can bathe in Jules Buckley’s celebration of the legendary composer, bandleader and bass-player Charles Mingus with the Metropole Orkest.
Hear some of the UK's finest young musical talent, directed by composer and conductor Thomas Adès, in a bold programme of works that push the orchestra to its technical and sonic limits. Adès's own Polaris, subtitled 'A Voyage for Orchestra', takes inspiration from the North Star, conjuring a vast interstellar landscape that unfolds from a simple piano theme into a massive sonic spiral. Francisco Coll’s Mural, tonight receiving its London premiere, is another richly textured, large-scale work – a ‘grotesque symphony, in which Dionysus meets Apollo’. The concert’s climax is Stravinsky’s ballet score The Rite of Spring, whose frenzied rhythms and provocative harmonies prompted a legendary riot at its Paris premiere.
‘*Oklahoma!* really is different – beautifully different,’ wrote one reviewer of the 1943 musical. Bursting not just with tunes but also with emotions, this first collaboration between Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II brought new dramatic depth to the Broadway musical, creating a smash hit in the process. Proms favourites John Wilson and his orchestra return to bring their signature energy and swagger to this beloved classic.
In tonight’s all-Rachmaninov Prom prize-winning pianist Alexander Gavrylyuk makes his Proms debut in the composer’s demanding Third Piano Concerto (continuing our cycle of the composer’s complete piano concertos), while the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra steps into the spotlight for the mercurial Second Symphony, with its hauntingly beautiful Adagio and impassioned finale. The Latvian Radio Choir complements each work with Russian Orthodox chant, illuminating these blazing orchestral works with the hypnotic sound-world that seeped into Rachmaninov’s works (including, possibly, the opening ‘Russian Hymn’ theme of the Third Concerto). These chants also formed the basis of Rachmaninov’s glorious All-Night Vigil (Vespers), which follows in this evening’s Late Night Prom.
In the mid-1960s a rising star of Western classical music met the ‘Godfather’ of the Indian classical tradition. The result was a collision of musical worlds and – some 25 years later – a studio album that combined Glass’s American Minimalism with Shankar’s sitar and the traditions of Hindustani classical music. A hypnotic flow of sound, blending cello, saxophone and other Western instruments with the glittering pulse of the sitar, Passages is presented here in its first complete live performance. The Britten Sinfonia and Karen Kamensek are joined by Shankar’s daughter, sitar virtuoso Anoushka Shankar.
Gurrelieder is a tale of a love that even death cannot vanquish, of rage against the heavens, and ultimately of consolation in a closing musical sunrise of unparalleled beauty. What started out as a modest song-cycle grew into one of the most opulent musical giants of the 20th century – a cantata of Wagnerian ambition and proportions. The LSO and its Music Director Designate Sir Simon Rattle are joined by an outstanding line-up of soloists.
The climax of the Proms Reformation Day is a complete performance of Bach’s St John Passion. ‘More daring, forceful and poetic’ than the St Matthew Passion, according to Schumann, this is a work of almost operatic vividness that brings both a humanity and a painful immediacy to the Passion narrative. Bach specialist John Butt and his Dunedin Consort make their Proms debut in a performance that offers the audience the chance to join in the chorale-singing, reflecting how the work might originally have been heard in a church setting.
The CBSO perform Beethoven's dramatic overture, celebrating the triumph of truth over tyranny in music of radiant beauty. Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla conducts.
The CBSO and Mirga Gražinyte-Tyla explore the theme of political and artistic freedom. Beethoven’s Leonore overture No. 3, written for his rescue opera Fidelio, celebrates the triumph of truth over tyranny in music of radiant beauty, while his Fifth Symphony rewrites the rules for the Classical symphony. In his new work, maverick composer Gerald Barry is inspired by revolutionary events in Canada’s history, also setting the text from Fidelio’s Prisoners’ Chorus; and violinist Leila Josefowicz amps up the drama in the fierce brilliance of Stravinsky’s neo-Classical concerto.
A giant of jazz, Charles Mingus (1922–79) combined the classic style of Duke Ellington and Jelly Roll Morton with the radical spirit of black music of the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, and has influenced artists from Joni Mitchell and Elvis Costello to Debbie Harry. Following sell-out Quincy Jones and Jamie Cullum Proms last year, Jules Buckley returns – with his Metropole Orkest – to celebrate the life and music of this legendary composer, bandleader and bass-player. The Prom features Mingus favourites including ‘Better Git It in Your Soul’, ‘Moanin’’ and ‘Goodbye Pork Pie Hat’, performed by a starry line-up of artists.
The Proms marks the 70th anniversary of partition and independence on the Indian subcontinent with a concert curated by Darbar Trust producers of Darbar Festival representing the classical music of India and Pakistan. Explore the region’s diverse musical culture in performances celebrating three very different traditions. India’s great maestro, Pandit Budhaditya Mukherjee performs ragas on the iconic sitar from the Hindustani music of North India, while South India’s Carnatic music is more strongly melodic, coloured by the distinctive timbres of the Carnatic violin and veena. The Sufi music of Pakistan provides an ecstatic climax to this Late Night Prom, weaving rich, mesmeric tapestries of sound.
From stomps and shuffles to boogie-woogie and blues, from bebop to Latin, this Sunday matinee Prom presents a slice of musical action from the 1930s and 1940s. Two roaring big bands battle against each other, joined by special guests and led by Guy Barker and Winston Rollins. Singer and broadcaster Clare Teal is our guide on a journey that celebrates the triumphs of big band greats, including Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Benny Goodman, Tommy Dorsey, Jimmie Lunceford, Boyd Raeburn, Machito, Stan Kenton and Woody Herman. Tribute is also paid to a highly respected but unassuming giant of the big band world – pianist, arranger and composer Mary Lou Williams.
Katie Derham introduces another unforgettable Prom from the BBC archive. This week she is joined by one of the brightest young stars of classical music, cellist Sheku Kanneh-Mason. They look back on a Prom that made history in 2017 when Chineke! became the first British majority BME symphony orchestra ever to take to the Proms stage. Including music by Dvorak, Handel and Rimsky-Korsakov, and featuring Sheku himself, soprano Jeanine De Bique and conductor Kevin John Edusei, it was a night that broke new boundaries for all involved.
Founded in 1957, Memphis-based Stax Records was synonymous with Southern Soul – a distinctive blend of funk, gospel and R & B that brought listeners across America together at a time of racial conflict and political unrest. In this Late Night Prom Jools Holland and His Rhythm & Blues Orchestra pay tribute to the pioneering label and celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Stax/Volt Revue’s first tour of the UK, in a concert featuring some of the label’s greatest surviving artists. Stax legends Booker T. Jones and Sam Moore will appear alongside Sir Tom Jones, a longtime fan and interpreter of the Stax songbook. Both Booker T. Jones and Sam Moore were part of the 1967 and join fellow Stax artists William Bell, Steve Cropper and Eddie Floyd. They are joined by Beverley Knight, James Morrison and Ruby Turner.
Following her recent UK debut, American conductor Karina Canellakis now makes her first visit to the Proms, joining the BBC Symphony Orchestra and fellow American Jeremy Denk for Bartók’s ferociously brilliant Second Piano Concerto. Dvořák’s Symphony No. 8, by contrast, is a work of genial lyricism. ‘Melodies simply pour out of me,’ wrote the composer, and the result is a pastoral symphony in all but name. The concert opens with the European premiere of Missy Mazzoli’s mesmeric Sinfonia – music ‘in the shape of the solar system’ that weaves and coils itself in a sequence of pulsing loops.
The two volumes of Bach's The Well-Temperd Clavier together represent one of Western music’s greatest achievements. Once described as the ‘Old Testament’ of the keyboard repertoire, these two sequences of 24 Preludes and Fugues – one in every key – represent a wealth of musical invention, ingenuity and delight. A supreme technical challenge for any performer, they also offer an astonishing experience for every listener. Eminent Bach specialist Sir András Schiff, whose discography includes Bach’s complete keyboard repertoire, here performs Book I – embarking upon a cycle that he will conclude next year with Book 2.
Live from Glasgow Green, Jamie MacDougall introduces the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra and a host of guests as part of the UK-wide Last Night of the Proms celebrations. Conducted by Stephen Bell, the BB SSO is joined by a host of award-winning guest performers, including Scottish folk singer and Capercaillie lead vocalist Karen Matheson, jazz singer and BBC Radio 2 presenter Clare Teal, Irish soprano Ailish Tynan and comedian Jason Manford, plus traditional trio Charlie Stewart, Josie Duncan and Pablo Lafuente. Expect fireworks, musical and otherwise, on a night of fantastic music.
Josie d'Arby and Tim Rhys-Evans present the first half of BBC Proms in the Park live from Singleton Park, Swansea. In an evening celebrating the music of film and TV, they are joined by soul singer Mica Paris who plays homage to jazz legend Ella Fitzgerald (in what would have been her centenary year), Olivier Award-winner and West End star Rebecca Trehearn and BBC Young Musician 2016 finalist, saxophonist Jess Gillam. They perform with the BBC National Orchestra and Chorus of Wales, conducted by Gavin Sutherland.
Join in the Last night of the Proms celebrations in Hyde Park, hosted by Michael Ball, with Proms in the Park favourites the BBC Concert Orchestra under the baton of Richard Balcombe, and special guest Sir Bryn Terfel, headlined by Sir Ray Davies.
The traditional Last Night, Proms in the Park celebrations from venues around the UK. Gethin Jones and YolanDa Brown present a stellar mix of classical and contemporary performances, including internationally acclaimed percussionist Dame Evelyn Glennie and legend of the flute Sir James Galway in Castle Coole, Enniskillen; rising star saxophonist Jess Gillam and soul diva Mica Paris from Swansea's Singleton Park; big band aficionado Clare Teal and Jason Manford in Glasgow Green; while opera superstar Sir Bryn Terfel and the sensational sounds of 60s icon Ray Davies draw the crowds to London's Hyde Park. All accompanied of course, by the BBC's acclaimed orchestras.
BBC Proms in the Park returns to Singleton Park, Swansea, with a show that features some of film and TV's greatest hits, plus all of the best of the traditional 'Last Night' celebrations. Soul singer Mica Paris tops the bill and pays homage to jazz legend Ella Fitzgerald. The BBC National Orchestra and Chorus of Wales are also joined on stage by Olivier Award winner and West End star Rebecca Trehearn and 2016 BBC Young Musician finalist, saxophonist Jess Gillam. Highlights presented by Josie d'Arby and Tim Rhys-Evans.
This year's extravaganza from Castle Coole, Co Fermanagh, features a stellar line-up including Sir James and Lady Jeanne Galway, Dame Evelyn Glennie, Adrian Dunbar, Ruthie Henshall and Anuna.
Highlights from Glasgow Green as Jamie MacDougall introduces the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra and a host of guests as part of the UK-wide Last Night of the Proms celebrations.
Proms in the Park Highlights program for a curated selection of the event's best moments.
The weekly Proms magazine show, presented by Katie Derham. This week's review includes Elgar's Second Symphony conducted by Daniel Barenboim and a trip to the movies courtesy of the iconic John Williams.
The weekly Proms magazine show. This programme focuses on Walton's Facade from the Malcolm Sargent Prom and celebrates the genius of Scott Walker.
The weekly Proms magazine show. Tenor Stuart Skelton, soprano Ailish Tynan and gospel conductor and composer Ken Burton discuss Beethoven's Ninth Symphony.
The weekly Proms magazine show. Harpist Catrin Finch and singer Julian Ovenden join Katie Derham, and the show turns the spotlight on the National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain
The weekly Proms magazine show, presented by Katie Derham. Katie is joined in the studio by baritone Roderick Williams and composer Hannah Kendall. Music featured comes from Rachmaninov's Second Symphony, Aurora Orchestra's performance of Beethoven's Eroica and the Ravi Shankar/Philip Glass collaboration Passages. series 2017.
Katie Derham reviews the sixth full week of Proms activity in this penulitimate episode of Proms Extra. She is joined by jazz saxophonist Soweto Kinch and conductor John Butt to discuss Bach's St John Passion, performed in week five of the Proms by John Butt's Dunedin Consort, and the Charles Mingus Prom, featuring Kandace Springs, Shabaka Hutchings and Christian Scott. David Owen Norris offers another Chord of the Week.
Katie Derham presents the final Proms Extra for the Proms season. On this show, she is joined by percussionist Dame Evelyn Glennie, star saxophonist Jess Gillam and acclaimed pianist Stephen Hough as they cast an eye over Stravinsky's Violin Concerto, The Big Band Prom and the Jools Holland Stax Prom.
BBC Proms 2018 launches with a feast for the eyes and ears in the world premiere of Five Telegrams, with music by Anna Meredith and stunning digital projections by 59 Productions marking the centenary of the end of the First World War. The all-British programme also features Vaughan Williams's pre-war choral masterpiece Toward the Unknown Region, along with Holst's evergreen Proms favourite The Planets - the first piece Mars, Bringer of War, famously anticipates the onset of mechanistic warfare. The BBC Symphony Orchestra is conducted by Sakari Oramo and they are joined by the combined forces of the BBC Symphony Chorus, the National Youth Choir of Great Britain and the BBC Proms Youth Ensemble. An exciting fanfare for the season.
Holst’s ever-popular suite premiered in 1918, composed as a response to The First World War. With the National Youth Choir of Great Britain and BBC Symphony Orchestra conducted by Sakari Oramo.
A star-studded line-up of BBC Young Musician winners and finalists, including Nicola Benedetti, Sheku Kanneh-Mason and Emma Johnson, come together to celebrate the competition's fortieth anniversary. BBC Young Musician has been a launch pad for the careers of young artists since it began in 1978, and the list of performers that have taken part reads like a who's who of British musicians. Over 20 of the competition's leading names join forces for an evening celebrating the competition's rich history, including Michael Collins, Nicholas Daniel, Natalie Clein as well as some of the rising stars of recent years: Laura van der Heijden, Martin James Bartlett and the current title-holder Lauren Zhang. Presented by Clemency Burton-Hill and Josie d'Arby, the evening includes music by Saint-Saens, Ravel and Sir James MacMillan. There are also world premieres by David Bruce, Ben Foster and Iain Farrington, all with the BBC Concert Orchestra conducted by Andrew Gourlay.
Jacob Collier's musical career has been meteoric. Still only 23, the multi-instrumentalist has been hailed as a musical genius and jazz prodigy, picking up two Grammy awards for his debut album last year. And now he has his own Prom. Jacob's solo talents first came to light when he became an internet sensation with his unique covers of songs such as Don't You Worry 'bout a Thing and Fascinating Rhythm. He's since been mentored by some of his heroes, including Quincy Jones and Herbie Hancock, and in 2016 Jacob made a guest appearance at the Quincy Jones Prom. Jacob Collier and Friends sees him team up once again with Jules Buckley and the Metropole Orkest, joined by special guests, including Take 6, Sam Amidon, Becca Stevens and Hamid El Kasri, for a Prom that features songs from Jacob's debut album, new tracks and their unique reimagining of well-known classics.
Romantic titans Schumann and Mendelssohn share the night's bill with a pair of phenomenal female composers who died 100 years ago - two talents whose lives were cut tragically short. Schumann's exuberant Fourth Symphony is the climax of this concert, which also includes sparkling work by Lili Boulanger, the first ever female winner of the prestigious Prix de Rome, and the flamboyant Welsh composer Morfydd Owen. Owen's Nocturne is the perfect way for the BBC National Orchestra of Wales to mark its 90th anniversary year, and acclaimed French pianist Bertrand Chamayou performs Mendelssohn's First Piano Concerto - all under the baton of Thomas Sondergard.
Conductor Karina Canellakis returns with the BBC Symphony Orchestra after her triumphant 2017 Proms debut. Two 20th-century Russian masterpieces lead the bill - the exhilarating Symphonic Dances by Rachmaninov and Shostakovich's much-loved First Cello Concerto, where Canellakis is joined by another young American star, soloist Alisa Weilerstein. The evening kicks off with Beethoven's forceful Overture Coriolan, which Canellakis describes as a 'punch in the face', and a third young American, composer Andrew Norman, completes the programme with the UK premiere of his new work Spiral.
Groundbreaking British composer Anna Meredith presents this special Proms tribute to the godmothers of electronica, the pioneers of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop. The celebration kicks off with music by Delia Derbyshire - most famously remembered for bringing the world the Doctor Who theme in its full electronic glory - and finishes with the premiere of Daphne Oram's revolutionary Still Point, lovingly pieced together from recently discovered archive material and performed by Shiva Feshareki on turntables. Music by artists including Laurie Spiegel, CHAINES and Suzanne Ciani, performed by the London Contemporary Orchestra under conductor Robert Ames, emphasises the power of this legacy.
Exploring light and dark, life and loss, through the music of Beethoven, Brahms and the contemporary composer Tansy Davies, this Prom sees the BBC Philharmonic led by youthful principal guest conductor Ben Gernon. Proms regular Paul Lewis returns for Beethoven's evergreen final piano concerto, the Emperor, having played the complete cycle of five concertos in the 2010 season. And Beethoven's influence is strong in Brahms's sunny, pastoral Second Symphony that follows. Opening the evening in contemplative mode, the world premiere of Tansy Davies's orchestral suite What Did We See? reframes material from her acclaimed opera Between Worlds. Inspired by the events of 9/11 and the ordinary people caught up in it, this is a work of both remembrance and healing.
Three of the most loved English composers, Hubert Parry, Gustav Holst and Vaughan Williams, reflect on a country transformed by war at the beginning of the 20th century. Parry, best known for his setting of national favourite Jerusalem, is celebrated with Symphony No 5, a work full of hope that paints a picture of England before the outbreak of the First World War. This peaceful idyll of England is echoed by another of the UK's most popular works, Vaughan Williams's The Lark Ascending, featuring American violinist Tai Murray. The second half of the evening evokes the shattering effect of the outbreak of the war - Holst's Ode to Death and Vaughan Williams's Pastoral Symphony reflect both composers' experiences of the horrors of the First World War. The BBC National Orchestra and Chorus of Wales are conducted by Martyn Brabbins. Petroc Trelawny presents.
Australia’s leading reggae and dancehall producer Mista Savona (aka Jake Savona) has gathered together some of Cuba’s and Jamaica’s most influential musicians to create a fresh, unifying take on the music of both cultures. Drawing from the styles of roots reggae, dub and dancehall on the one hand and son, salsa, rumba and Afro-Cuban on the other, Havana Meets Kingston sees a top-flight group of musicians come together in an effortless meeting of genres. Energetic and passionate vocals in Spanish, English and Jamaican patois twist and turn over distinctly Cuban rhythms and melodies, while the typically deep bass lines of Jamaica pulse beneath.
Traditional music for modern times as the ever-versatile BBC Concert Orchestra and conductor Stephen Bell collaborate with leading musicians in this celebration of the diverse folk scenes and songbooks of the British Isles. The Unthanks, Sam Lee, Julie Fowlis, Jarlath Henderson and ALAW perform stirring songs and driving jigs in a genre that is constantly renewing and reinvigorating itself. From the Outer Hebrides, multi-award-winning singer Julie Fowlis is a torchbearer for her native Gaelic tradition and famously lent her crystalline vocals to the theme song of the Pixar film Brave. Her co-presenter on the Prom is Mercury-nominated singer-songwriter, nightingale whisperer, song collector and traditional music specialist Sam Lee. The innovative, eclectic approach of Northumbria's The Unthanks has won them fans across the musical spectrum, and here the orchestral setting enhances the widescreen drama of their atmospheric epic Mount the Air. Jarlath Henderson from County Tyrone in Northern Ireland is a master of the uilleann pipes and whistles, and in 2003 was the youngest ever BBC Young Folk Musician award winner. Trio ALAW demonstrate their passion for the traditional music of Wales through unearthing and reimagining gems, and creating original tunes. It's an exhilarating musical journey through the evolving folk traditions of our islands, where innovation and tradition intertwine.
The National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain return to conjure a series of vivid worlds, both real and imagined. The sea roars and shimmers in Debussy’s La mer, Mussorgsky paints eerie visions of a Witches’ Sabbath, while Ligeti’s Lontano summons the ‘dream worlds of childhood’. Ravel’s brooding Concerto for the Left Hand was commissioned by a pianist who lost an arm in the First World War.
Inspired by the death of his mother, Brahms’s tender, consoling A German Requiem couldn’t be further from Verdi’s and Berlioz’s settings of the standard Latin Mass text. It’s the first of three Requiems this season marking 100 years since the end of the First World War. Richard Farnes makes his Proms debut directing the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Chorus, along with soloists Golda Schultz and Johan Reuter. Thea Musgrave’s Phoenix Rising (marking the composer’s 90th birthday this year) also traces a journey from darkness to light, enacting the conflict both spatially and musically in some of the composer’s most dramatic writing.
An eclectic mix of musicians with rich New York roots join Jules Buckley and the Heritage Orchestra at the Royal Albert Hall to celebrate the changing soundscape of the Big Apple. Folk indie rocker Sharon Van Etten, nu-disco dance project Hercules & Love Affair and progressive pop artist serpentwithfeet take us from pagan-gospel and disco-punk to feminist rap and DIY indie in one of this season's most distinctive Proms.
Tom Service presents a performance of Elgar's much-loved Cello Concerto, composed in the wake of the First World War, with French cellist Jean-Guihen Queyras as soloist. The Prom begins with Edward Gardner conducting the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Chorus in a performance of the choral miniature For A Soldier's Funeral by French composer Lili Boulanger. The final piece is Vaughan Williams's cantata Dona Nobis Pacem, a beautiful but heart-breaking exploration of the violence of war, as part of this season's focus on the centenary of the end of the First World War.
Nordic composing giants Grieg and Sibelius anchor this Proms debut performance by the Estonian Festival Orchestra, conducted by Paavo Jarvi. Pianist and former BBC Radio 3 New Generation Artist Khatia Buniatishvili takes on Grieg's much-loved Piano Concerto and Sibelius's soaring Fifth Symphony closes the concert. The curtain-raiser is Estonian national composer Arvo Part's Third Symphony. Tom Service presents.
Performances of two of the best-loved works in the repertoire. Starting with Mozart's ever-popular Clarinet Concerto, written two months before his death, Thomas Dausgaard conducts the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, with the Belgian clarinettist Annelien Van Wauwe as soloist. In the second half of the night, Mahler is the star with his Fifth Symphony and its beautiful Adagietto, arguably his most famous single piece of music.
Hungary's folk rhythms beat through the heart of this concert as the inimitable forces of the Budapest Festival Orchestra and founder and conductor Ivan Fischer return to the Proms with an ode to their homeland. Joining them on stage is a thrilling trio of the country's folk musicians, and together they showcase why these tunes have been such a rich source of inspiration to composers across history. The Royal Albert Hall resounds with a selection of Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsodies and Brahms's Hungarian Dances as they have never been heard before, and concludes with Brahms's dramatic First Symphony.
On what would have been Leonard Bernstein’s 100th birthday, and launching a bank-holiday Bernstein weekend at the Proms, John Wilson returns to conduct his second Bernstein musical of the season. Following the adventures of three sailors on shore leave in New York City in 1944, On the Town was an instant Broadway hit, featuring classic songs including ‘New York, New York’ and ‘Lonely Town’.
Programme to include music by Bernstein, Holst, Rachmaninov and Tchaikovsky, plus the London premiere of a new work by Alexander Campkin. The Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra, in partnership with Royal Albert Hall Education & Outreach and Proms Learning, present orchestral music in an informal setting. Everyone is welcome: family members of all ages, children, young people and adults with autism, sensory and communication impairments and learning disabilities, as well as individuals who are Deaf or hearing impaired, blind or visually impaired, and those living with dementia. There is a relaxed attitude to movement and noise, plus ‘chill-out’ spaces outside the auditorium. The Prom features picture communication systems on large screens, audio description and British Sign Language interpretation. The orchestra is joined by its groundbreaking disabled-led ensemble, BSO Resound.
Marin Alsop, a protégée of Leonard Bernstein, returns to the Proms with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra for a politically charged climax to our bank-holiday Bernstein weekend. The concert culminates in Shostakovich’s ambiguous Fifth Symphony, whose triumphant finale can be heard either as political protest or capitulation to Stalin’s Soviet regime. Pianist Jean-Yves Thibaudet joins the orchestra for Bernstein’s ‘The Age of Anxiety’ – a musical quest for faith in a broken, post-war world – and the evening opens with the boisterous Slava!, a ‘political overture’ dedicated to cellist Mstislav Rostropovich.
The two volumes of Bach’s The Well-Tempered Clavier are a window onto an extraordinary musical imagination – an infinitely varied, beguiling series of musical reflections and questions. Following his complete performance of Book 1 last year, distinguished pianist and Bach specialist Sir András Schiff returns to perform the complete Book 2. Much more than just a musical sequel, this volume pushes harmony and counterpoint further than ever before in its fascinating and uniquely challenging sequence of works.
Tom Service presents a performance of Elgar's much-loved Cello Concerto, composed in the wake of the First World War, with French cellist Jean-Guihen Queyras as soloist. The Prom begins with Edward Gardner conducting the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Chorus in a performance of the choral miniature For A Soldier's Funeral by French composer Lili Boulanger. The final piece is Vaughan Williams's cantata Dona Nobis Pacem, a beautiful but heart-breaking exploration of the violence of war, as part of this season's focus on the centenary of the end of the First World War.
Senegalese cultural icon Youssou Ndour makes his Proms debut in a special late-night appearance. This largely acoustic performance spotlights Ndour’s characteristic soaring vocals and the smooth instrumental colours brought to life by his group Le Super Étoile de Dakar. For over 40 years Ndour has been thrilling audiences around the world with an eclectic mix of Cuban rumba, hip hop, jazz, soul and music of the West African griot tradition. In addition to his prodigious performing career – which has embraced more than 30 albums and a Grammy Award – he has also played a political role, having campaigned for the release of Nelson Mandela, performed at concerts for Amnesty International and served as a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador.
A celebration of the heady, sexually charged Latin American tango, from its origins in the bars of 1880s Buenos Aires, through to Ástor Piazzolla’s Nuevo Tango that emerged in the 1950s. The story also embraces the Finnish tango tradition of the early 20th century – steeped in the themes of love, sorrow and nature – and comes bang up to date with some of the latest tango music. Showcasing Grammy Award-winning pianist Pablo Ziegler along with leading singers, dancers and instrumentalists from Europe, the USA and Argentina, the raw and earthy vitality of the tango is explored, from the sultry intimacy of the bandoneon to the big-band orchestral forces of the Britten Sinfonia
The BBC Proms 2018 season comes to a close with the BBC Symphony Orchestra and their much-loved former chief conductor and Last Night of the Proms veteran Sir Andrew Davis steering proceedings live from the Royal Albert Hall. Long-standing nautical traditions of the evening are extended in Stanford's Songs of the Sea, featuring Canadian baritone Gerald Finley. The centenary of the end of the Great War is marked with a new work from Roxanna Panufnik, which also rounds off the season's original premieres and features BBC Singers and BBC Symphony Chorus. The evening includes music by Hindemith, Berlioz and Charles Hubert Parry, who is celebrated 100 years after his death with a performance of Blest Pair of Sirens. Coverage also includes visits to Proms in the Parks across the Nation, also celebrating this annual great night in classical music. Katie Derham presents.
Katie Derham presents live coverage as the Last Night of the Proms continues from the Royal Albert Hall with the ever-popular Marche militaire francaise by Saint-Saens. Award-winning 18-year-old saxophonist Jess Gillam performs Scaramouche by Milhaud, and baritone Gerry Finley performs the song Soliloquy from Rodgers and Hammerstein's Carousel. To mark 100 years since 1918 there is a nationwide sing-around of traditional First World War songs, with contributions from the Proms in the Park events in Colwyn Bay, Glasgow and Belfast. The 2018 Proms are brought to a familiar and much-loved rousing close with Rule Britannia, Land of Hope and Glory, and Jerusalem. The BBC Symphony Orchestra and Chorus and BBC Singers are conducted by Sir Andrew Davis.
The traditional Last Night of the Proms is celebrated in style with concerts from parks around the UK. Sean Fletcher and YolanDa Brown present a stunning mix of classical and contemporary performances.
Josie d'Arby and Tim Rhys-Evans present the first half of BBC Proms in the Park live from Colwyn Bay. They are joined by Welsh mezzo soprano Katherine Jenkins, West End star and actor Lee Mead, BBC Young Musician 2018 Lauren Zhang and Only Kids Aloud, performing popular classical, musical theatre and film favourites. They perform with the BBC National Orchestra and Chorus of Wales, conducted by Grant Llewellyn.
The BBC Proms in the Park returns to north Wales and Colwyn Bay for an evening of popular, classical, musical theatre and film favourites, plus all the traditional 'Last Night' celebrations. Josie d'Arby and Tim Rhys-Evans present highlights of this special concert featuring the Welsh mezzo soprano Katherine Jenkins, West End star and actor Lee Mead, BBC Young Musician 2018 Lauren Zhang and Only Kids Aloud - all performing with the BBC National Orchestra and Chorus of Wales.
Katie Derham casts an eye over the first seven days of action at the BBC Proms in Proms Extra. In the spotlight this week are Five Telegrams from the First Night of the Proms, the Young Musicians Prom and the one-man-sensation Jacob Collier, while David Owen Norris returns with Chord of the Week.
Joining Katie Derham for Proms Extra are violinist Tai Murray and director of music for the Southbank Centre Gillian Moore. The works of Lili Boulanger, Vaughan Williams and the legendary women of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop are this week's music picks, and David Owen Norris's Chord of the Week focuses on Parry's 5th Symphony.
Join Katie Derham for Proms Extra, the companion guide to the BBC Proms classical music festival. In this episode, the focus is on the BBC Symphony Orchestra tackling Shostakovich and two unconventional Proms featuring British and Irish folk music, and the Havana meets Kingston Prom. Guests are composer Kerry Andrew, soprano Golda Schultz and violinist Pekka Kuusisto, who wowed audiences two years ago with his Proms debut.
Katie Derham hosts the weekly companion guide to the Proms season. This week's guests are violinist Joshua Bell, soprano Nadine Benjamin and cellist/singer Ayanna Witter-Johnson.
Katie Derham hosts the companion guide to the Proms season. Katie discusses Ravel's Concerto for the Left Hand, Debussy's La Mer and Grieg's Piano Concerto. Lauren Zhang performs.
Proms Extra moves into the Royal Albert Hall for one night as an expectant audience gather to hear Bernstein's spectacular On the Town. Katie Derham and guests discuss Mozart's Clarinet Concerto, Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsodies and a world premiere by singer-songwriter Laura Mvula. David Owen Norris offers another Chord of the Week and there is an exclusive performance by Chineke! quartet.
Katie Derham and guests take a look at Bernstein's On the Town and The Age of Anxiety, Simon Rattle conducting Ravel's L'enfant et les Sortileges and Andras Schiff playing Bach.
Katie Derham presents live from London's Royal Albert Hall, as the BBC Symphony Orchestra and choral forces, conducted by Karina Canellakis, begin the season with a brand-new commission by Zosha Di Castri marking the 50th anniversary of Apollo 11's mission to the moon, the first manned mission to land on its surface. Dvorák's fairy-tale tone-poem The Golden Spinning Wheel is also performed.
Soloist Joshua Bell performs Dvořák’s lively, folk-infused Violin Concerto, paired with another 19th-century Czech classic, Smetana’s symphonic suite Má vlast – a colourful celebration of a nation’s landscape, history and identity.
Take a musical trip to the Moon with favourite CBeebies characters and presenters. A brand-new work by Hans Zimmer – film music’s living legend – is the centrepiece of a Prom celebrating this weekend’s 50th anniversary of the manned Moon landing.
Schumann’s mould-breaking Fourth Symphony, moving from darkness to blazing light, is paired with Schoenberg’s revolutionary Five Orchestral Pieces. South-Korean pianist Yeol Eum Son is the soloist in Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 15 in B flat major.
Cult London band Public Service Broadcasting marks the 50th anniversary of the first manned Moon landing with a brand-new orchestral arrangement of its 2015 studio album The Race for Space. The group is joined by The Multi-Story Orchestra.
Explosive energy and enthusiasm are the hallmarks of every performance by the National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain, made up of the UK’s most talented musicians aged from 13 to 18. The ensemble’s annual visit to the Proms is always a festival highlight. This year Mark Wigglesworth conducts NYOGB in a suite from Prokofiev’s passionate ballet Romeo and Juliet and they are joined by violinist Nicola Benedetti for Tchaikovsky’s warmly lyrical Violin Concerto. The concert opens with Lera Auerbach’s bracing symphonic poem Icarus, inspired by the myth of the heroic but ill-fated son of Daedalus who flew too close to the sun.
Described as ‘the undisputed queen of African music’, three-time Grammy Award-winner Angélique Kidjo makes her Proms debut with her nine-piece band in late-night tribute to the celebrated salsa songstress Celia Cruz.
Mahler’s orchestral song-cycle Das Lied von der Erde is a powerful exploration of loss, while Britten’s Piano Concerto overflows with youthful energy. Edward Gardner conducts the BBC SO with soloists Stuart Skelton, Claudia Mahnke and Leif Ove Andsnes.
A ghostly ferryman transports departed souls in Rachmaninov’s Isle of the Dead, while Shostakovich’s bitterly passionate Symphony No. 11 emerges from the violence of Russia’s ‘Bloody Sunday’ massacre. Music by Outi Tarkiainen offers hope and new life.
Turbulent shifts of mood run through both Brahms’s Tragic Overture and the Prelude and Liebestod from Wagner’s opera Tristan and Isolde. Mozart’s Requiem – the composer’s final work, left unfinished at his early death – completes the programme.
The London Contemporary orchestra’s Late Night Prom puts a futuristic spin on the best sci-fi music for film and television. Among the soundtracks featured are those for Alien: Covenant, Gravity, Moon and Interstellar.
Elgar’s ‘Enigma’ Variations provides both model and inspiration for a new set of variations by 14 living composers premiered here to mark conductor Martyn Brabbins’s 60th birthday. The concert also includes Vaughan Williams’s exquisite Serenade to Music.
Join Katie Derham for what has become one of the highlights in any Prom season. John Wilson’s virtuoso orchestra celebrates the music of one of the world's most famous film studios, Warner Brothers. The lush sounds of composers such as Max Steiner and Erich Korngold are among the many pieces played showcasing why this historic studio holds a special place in the hearts of lovers of film music
Sheku Kanneh-Mason joins the CBSO for Elgar’s passionate Cello Concerto. The orchestra marks the centenary of Mieczysław Weinberg – the composer Shostakovich hailed as his successor – with a rare performance of his folk-inspired Third Symphony.
Elgar’s ‘Enigma’ Variations is the inspiration for a new work commissioned from 14 living composers as a special birthday tribute to conductor Martyn Brabbins, who turns 60 today. Elgar’s original set also features, as do Vaughan Williams’s exquisite Serenade to Music and Brahms’s ‘Little Requiem’, the Song of Destiny.
The Proms celebrates the 200th anniversary of Queen Victoria’s birth with a glimpse into the monarch’s musical life. The programme features music by her favourite composer, Mendelssohn, including his lively ‘Scottish’ Symphony and First Piano Concerto, which will be performed by Stephen Hough on Victoria’s own piano, loaned by HM The Queen from the Royal Collection. The concert also includes a suite from Arthur Sullivan’s ballet Victoria and Merrie England, composed to celebrate the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee, as well as songs by Prince Albert.
Sir Simon Rattle conducts a concert of sonic spectacle, bringing one of the great English oratorios together with an American orchestral classic. Walton’s choral masterpiece Belshazzar’s Feast gets the Proms treatment with a 300-strong choir and Canadian baritone Gerald Finley as soloist. More than 10 percussionists are needed to bring Varese’s Amériques – a celebration of the modern city in sound – to life, while Charles Koechlin’s Jungle Book inspired Les bandar-log transports listeners to the primeval forest, where all the noise comes from the monkeys.
Singer, songwriter, arranger and political activist – Nina Simone is a giant of jazz history. She’s celebrated here in all her guises in a concert led by Jules Buckley and the Metropole Orkest, featuring titles including ‘Feeling Good’, ‘My Baby Just Cares for Me’ and ‘I Put a Spell on You’.
The CBSO and Music Director Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla celebrate the centenary of Mieczysław Weinberg the man Shostakovich hailed as ‘one of the most outstanding composers’ of his day – with a rare performance of his Symphony No. 3, a work that combines folk melodies and dances with confessional urgency. That intensity is shared by Elgar’s passionate Cello Concerto, performed here by 2016 BBC Young Musician winner Sheku Kanneh-Mason. The concert opens with Dorothy Howell’s radiant tone-poem Lamia (first performed, like Elgar’s concerto, 100 years ago) and also includes The Way to Castle Yonder, a suite from the much-missed Oliver Knussen’s opera Higglety Pigglety Pop!
Jazz, showbiz swagger and spirituality come together as never before in Duke Ellington’s spectacular Sacred Concerts. Described by Ellington himself as ‘the most important thing I have ever done’, these sacred revues, blending big-band jazz, gospel and Broadway-style melodies, bring all the legendary musician’s originality and energy to Christian subjects, and generated three critically acclaimed, boundary-crossing albums. Drawing on these, the Proms premieres a brand-new Sacred Concert – an exhilarating evening of dance, song and spectacle.
A 150th-anniversary tribute to Henry Wood, founder-conductor of the Proms, featuring works he premiered and arranged, and reflecting his wide musical tastes, from Wagner to John Ireland, Ravel to Percy Grainger.
The Shanghai Symphony Orchestra and Music Director Long Yu make their first appearance at the Proms. They are joined by Eric Lu, winner of the 2018 Leeds International Piano Competition, for Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 23 with its quasioperatic humour and wistful slow movement. The programme also includes Chinese composer Qigang Chen’s evocative tone-poem The Five Elements and Rachmaninov’s triptych of Symphonic Dances: a passionate Allegro, an uneasy waltz and, finally, a ferocious dance of death.
Jonny Greenwood’s talents range from being lead guitarist of Radiohead to writing award-winning film scores. Here he curates a Late Night Prom culminating in the world premiere of his Horror vacui, which explores characteristics of electronically created music and transfers them into the acoustic arena. The programme includes Biber’s almost Bachian Passacaglia for solo violin and Minimalist master Steve Reich’s radiantly throbbing Pulse.
A diabolical witches’ sabbath, a riotous ball, a march to the gallows and an unrequited passion make up the hallucinatory narrative of Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique. Inspired by the composer’s own romantic infatuation with a young actress, the score is a cinematic fantasy full of tragedy and passion, a work teeming with orchestral drama – by turns gorgeous and grotesque. Nicholas Collon and the Aurora Orchestra perform this grandiose work from memory, in a specially devised production incorporating elements of design, lighting and choreography, as well as Berlioz’s own words about his music.
Charismatic American mezzo-soprano Jamie Barton joins Sakari Oramo and the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Chorus to lead the musical celebrations that bring the world’s greatest classical music festival to a spectacular close.
Alex Jones and Steffan Powell present the first half of BBC Proms in the Park 2019, live from Singleton Park, Swansea. Celebrating the end of another fantastic Proms season, they are be joined by Welsh singer, actress and West End star Sophie Evans, saxophonist and BBC Young Jazz Musician 2018, Xhosa Cole, and winner of BBC Cardiff Singer of the World 2019 baritone, Andrei Kymach. They perform popular classical, jazz, musical theatre and film favourites with the BBC National Orchestra and Chorus of Wales, conducted by Robert Ames.
Katie Derham presents the first night of the world’s greatest live classical music festival, with a feast of music including Beethoven’s Third Symphony, Aaron Copland’s Quiet City and a new work by young British composer Hannah Kendall, all brought to you by the BBC Symphony Orchestra and BBC Singers, with conductor Sakari Oramo. Join Katie and special guest Stephen Fry as they celebrate the return of live music to the Royal Albert Hall.
Jonathan Scott takes control of the Royal Albert Hall’s mighty organ for a sonic extravaganza featuring his own ingenious arrangements of symphonic favourites. Works by Rossini, Elgar, Mascagni and Dukas lead to Saint-Saëns’s dramatic ‘Organ’ Symphony.
Sir Simon Rattle conducts the London Symphony Orchestra in a programme ranging from Elgar to Adès and Gabrieli to Kurtág. The climax is Vaughan Williams’s Fifth Symphony, a surprising oasis of serenity written at the height of the Second World War.
Crack open the champagne and don your evening dress as the BBC Concert Orchestra host a night of Viennese operetta marking 150 years since the birth of Franz Lehár. Johann Strauss II and other contemporaries offer their own musical confections.
Contemporary chamber ensemble the London Sinfonietta returns to the Royal Albert Hall, with a programme of contemporary classical works.
In a change to the originally advertised programme, John Storgårds, the BBC Philharmonic's Chief Guest Conductor, joins the orchestra for its 'Proms at ... Salford Quays' concert. The programme opens with Haydn's overture to Philemon und Baucis, a puppet opera written in 1773 for the Esterhazy court, before Britten's Nocturne - one of the treasured song-cycles he wrote for his partner, Peter Pears. Nocturne explores a rich world of night-time images and dreams, setting words by poets including Shakespeare, Tennyson and Keats. The soloist is leading British tenor and former BBC Radio 3 New Generation Artist Allan Clayton. Act IV Entr’acte – Elegy from Hamlet is the first of two Tchaikovsky pieces, before his lush and tuneful masterpiece for string orchestra - Serenade for Strings – brings the orchestra’s live BBC Prom to a close. Live from MediaCityUK, Salford, presented by Tom McKinney.
Violin superstar Nicola Benedetti leads a high-energy evening of baroque music by Vivaldi, Handel, Bach, and little-known English composer Charles Avison. If three double violin concertos were not enough, there is also a double oboe concerto! Join presenter Danielle de Niese and the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, led by Jonathan Cohen, for what promises to be an evening of musical exuberance.
Stephen Hough joins Thomas Dausgaard and the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra in Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 2. Also featured are Richard Strauss's Metamorphosen and a world premiere from Jay Capperauld.
Sitar virtuoso Anoushka Shankar takes to the stage in an evening dedicated to her father and musical guru, Ravi, in what would have been his centenary year. Anoushka is joined in the first half by electronic music producer and performer Gold Panda for a new imagining of Ravi’s music. In the second half, Jules Buckley, the Britten Sinfonia and soloist Manu Delago accompany Anoushka in a selection of her music. Josie d’Arby presents this unique evening from the Royal Albert Hall.
Superstar siblings Sheku and Isata Kanneh-Mason take to the stage for their first Prom together to present an evening of chamber music for cello and piano. Featuring works by Beethoven, Rachmaninov, American composer Samuel Barber and English composer Frank Bridge, the brother-and-sister pairing bring their unique musical chemistry to the Royal Albert Hall. Join Tom Service and guest Joanna MacGregor for a very special evening.
Mercury Prize-nominated artist Laura Marling teams up with pioneering strings-based collective the 12 Ensemble for a retrospective journey through her back catalogue, as well as showcasing tracks from her 2020 album, Song for Our Daughter. Featuring brand-new string arrangements by Rob Moose. In her first Prom as a headliner, Laura will perform an acoustic set accompanied by brand new string arrangements from the unconducted 12 Ensemble. Join Suzy Klein for what promises to be an unmissable evening!
London jazz group KOKOROKO will be making their Proms debut live at the Royal Albert Hall. The 8-piece group, led by Sheila Maurice-Grey, have previously appeared at Glastonbury, 6 Music Festival, and jazz festivals around the globe. Drawing from Afrobeat, highlife and jazz influences, they celebrate West African music greats, and pay tribute to the unique music culture they grew up in. Percussionist Onome Edgeworth says “We love this music and want other people to love it the way we do”. KOKOROKO will perform some of their most popular works, including Carry Me Home, Baba Ayoola, Age of Ascent, Uman, Ti-De and Abusey Junction.
Ryan Bancroft joins BBC NOW as principal conductor at BBC Hoddinott Hall in Cardiff Bay for his first official engagement, his Proms debut and the first Prom from Wales! Martinu’s quirky Jazz Suite complements John Adams’s Chamber Symphony, written in 1992. After the world premiere of a new BBC commission by British composer Gavin Higgins, there are two evocative American classics by Barber and Copland. Acclaimed soprano Natalya Romaniw from Swansea, who represented Wales in Cardiff Singer of the World, joins the orchestra for this unforgettable Prom.
Benjamin Grosvenor performs Shostakovich’s First Piano Concerto with the Philharmonia Orchestra and conductor Paavo Järvi, bookended by Ravel’s neo-Baroque masterpiece Le tombeau de Couperin and Mozart’s titanic Symphony No. 41.
To celebrate Beethoven’s 250th anniversary, Tom Service and the Aurora Orchestra present a unique evening in which conductor Nicholas Collon and the orchestra take apart Beethoven’s popular Seventh Symphony and show us the inner workings of the composer’s creative genius, followed by a performance of the work in the orchestra’s signature style - from memory! Also on the bill at the Royal Albert Hall is a new work by British composer Richard Ayres, whose piece is inspired by Beethoven’s struggle with his loss of hearing.
Katie Derham hosts the climax of the world’s greatest classical music festival, the Last Night of the Proms, live from the Royal Albert Hall, drawing a unique season of live performances to a celebratory close. Soprano Golda Schultz and violinist Lisa Batiashvili join Dalia Stasevska, the BBC Symphony Orchestra and the BBC Singers in a programme that includes music from Mozart’s Marriage of Figaro, a world premiere from Andrea Tarrodi, music by Richard Strauss, treats from Stephen Sondheim’s A Little Night Music, and The Lark Ascending by Vaughan Williams. The night comes to a jubilant close with all the traditional Last Night favourites including the Fantasia on British Sea-Songs; You’ll Never Walk Alone; Rule, Britannia; Pomp and Circumstance March No.1; and Jerusalem.
Joining Beethoven Unleashed, a year-long, BBC-wide marathon marking the 250th anniversary of Beethoven’s birth, a BBC Grand Virtual Orchestra made up of over 300 BBC musicians perform Beethoveniana by composer Iain Farrington, a brand new reworking of Beethoven’s nine symphonies commissioned by the BBC Proms to celebrate the opening of the 2020 Proms season. Farrington describes his work as 'taking Beethoven's music and putting it in a musical washing machine to see which colours run'. Director Toby Amies brings the music to life in this film, premiering exclusively on BBC Four, Choreographed by Cameron McMillan, starring dancers Emma Farnell-Watson and Joshua Smith together in their own lockdown bubble.
Antonio Pappano introduces a new production of Beethoven's only opera, Fidelio, from the Royal Opera House, a story of risk and triumph against a backdrop of revolution. David Butt Philip plays the political prisoner Florestan, and Lise Davidsen his wife Leonore (disguised as Fidelio) who daringly sets out to save him from certain death. Tobias Kratzer’s new staging brings together the dark reality of the Reign of Terror during the French Revolution and the conflicts of the modern age to illuminate Fidelio’s inspiring message of a common humanity.
Join presenter John Toal for a very different Proms this year. Featuring music from Barry Douglas, Gavin James, country star Lisa McHugh and tenor George Hutton, along with a very special performance from Snow Patrol.2
Katie Derham introduces another unforgettable Prom from the BBC archive. This week Katie is joined by soprano Elizabeth Llewellyn to relive her 2012 performance when she joined John Wilson and his orchestra to celebrate the sounds of Broadway including music by George Gershwin, Cole Porter and Leonard Bernstein. Showcasing a glittering array of highlights from this golden age of stage and screen, they were joined on the Royal Albert Hall stage by a host of star soloists including Seth MacFarlane, Anna-Jane Casey, Sierra Boggess, Julian Ovenden and Rodney-Earl Clarke.
Conductor Dalia Stasevska and the BBC Symphony Orchestra kick off a six-week season with Vaughan Williams’s ravishing Serenade to Music and Poulenc’s dazzling Organ Concerto. They’re joined by the BBC Singers and a cast of soloists, including soprano Elizabeth Llewellyn, tenor Allan Clayton and organist Daniel Hyde, for a celebration of the power of music to comfort and lift your spirits. Katie Derham presents from the Royal Albert Hall in London.
Katie Derham presents from the Royal Albert Hall, as the opening concert of the 2021 Proms season continues in front of a live audience. Conductor Dalia Stasevska and the BBC Symphony Orchestra perform Sibelius’s thrilling Second Symphony. They are joined by soloists including soprano Elizabeth Llewellyn and tenor Allan Clayton for the world premiere of When Soft Voices Die, a poignant piece for our times by Scottish composer Sir James MacMillan.
The Scottish Chamber Orchestra and their dynamic new principal conductor, Maxim Emelyanychev, kick off the BBC Four Proms 2021 season with a night dedicated to Mozart. For the first time in Proms history, they’ll perform all three of Mozart’s last three symphonies, which together explore all sides of humanity: the grand introduction of No 39 with its fanfares and dances, the dark drama of the famous No 40 and finally No 41, the dazzling 'Jupiter' Symphony. Tom Service and guests present this much-anticipated evening.
Mirga Grazinyte-Tyla returns to the BBC Proms to conduct the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra in a concert featuring Brahms’s beloved Third Symphony as its lyrical centrepiece. Two British works complete the programme: a London premiere from composer Thomas Adès, celebrating his 50th birthday in 2021, and a Proms premiere from the prodigiously talented but neglected composer Ruth Gipps, born 100 years ago. Petroc Trelawny presents a night of musical delight and discovery from the Royal Albert Hall.
The BBC National Orchestra of Wales present a concert featuring composers who found inspiration in music that came before them. Musical echoes resonate in a programme featuring Brahms’ Fourth Symphony and a string arrangement of Purcell’s timeless masterpiece, Dido’s Lament, as well as a performance of Saint-Saëns’ First Cello Concerto by Guy Johnston. Join Suzy Klein and her guest, double bassist Chi-chi Nwanoku, for an evening that also celebrates the world premiere of a new piece by Elizabeth Ogonek and the 150th birthday of the Royal Albert Hall.
Katie Derham presents a dazzling evening of musical hits from the Golden Age of Broadway, including showstoppers from South Pacific, Oklahoma!, Carousel, High Society and Anything Goes! Stars of the West End and Broadway perform enduring classics alongside the BBC Concert Orchestra, conducted by Richard Balcombe. Neil Brand and Bonnie Langford are Katie’s guests, sharing insight into the glamorous era which rose out of the Great Depression and the Second World War, giving us unforgettable songs such as There’s No Business Like Show Business, Some Enchanted Evening, My Funny Valentine and You’re the Top!
The much-anticipated annual Prom from the National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain returns, this year under the baton of one of the most exciting young conductors on the international scene, Jonathon Heyward. The NYO is joined by superstar violinist Nicola Benedetti, performing Prokofiev’s Second Violin Concerto, in a programme that includes specially commissioned music by Laura Jurd and the UK premiere of Jessie Montgomery’s Banner. The evening comes to a climax with Beethoven’s revolutionary Third Symphony, the Eroica. Presented by Jess Gillam and special guests.
Tom Service, conductor Nicholas Collon and the Aurora Orchestra continue their impressive feat of explaining complex works and then performing them from memory. This year, their biggest challenge yet to the Proms: Stravinsky’s Firebird Suite. Russian fairy tales and folk melodies collide with Stravinsky’s bold modernism in one of the great ballet scores of the 20th century. The concert opens with another Russian classic: Rachmaninov’s virtuosic Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini, performed by former Radio 3 New Generation Artist Pavel Kolesnikov.
Icelandic pianist Víkingur Ólafsson joins the Philharmonia for his hotly anticipated Proms debut. Here his skills are on display in JS Bach’s intricate Keyboard Concerto in F minor along with Mozart’s stormy Piano Concerto in C Minor. Josie d’Arby presents Víkingur's performance from the Royal Albert Hall, which is bookended by two Russian masterpieces – Prokofiev’s bijou First Symphony and Shostakovich’s Ninth Symphony.
An evening of opera excerpts on the themes of separation and reconciliation A host of British opera stars join Ben Glassberg and the BBC Philharmonic for a night rich in emotion and drama. After a year of lockdowns and social distancing, the themes of isolation and loneliness as well as the joy of reunion have particular poignancy in excerpts from much-loved operas including Handel’s Rodelinda, Beethoven’s Fidelio, Humperdinck’s Hansel and Gretel and Puccini’s La bohème.
British saxophonist and composer Nubya Garcia brings her inventive brand of Afrobeat and Latin American-influenced jazz to the Royal Albert Hall. The rising star performs a set drawing on her acclaimed album Source, recently nominated for the Mercury Prize. Her Proms debut is presented by Clive Myrie, and she’s accompanied by a young band drawn from a revitalised London jazz scene. The Royal Albert Hall is a special place for Garcia – she played it as a child in the Camden Schools’ Music Festival and has been a keen Prommer ever since.
The London Symphony Orchestra and Sir Simon Rattle mark 2021’s Stravinsky anniversary with a series of symphonic snapshots. We follow Stravinsky’s view of the symphony from the experimental, colour-blocked ‘ritual’ of the Symphonies of Wind Instruments, through the transitional Symphony in C – reflecting both the composer’s European past and his American future – to arrive at the bold Symphony in Three Movements.
Tom Service hosts a Prom bursting with premieres from around the world, performed by Britain’s foremost diverse ensemble, the Chineke! Orchestra. Pianist Jeneba Kanneh-Mason gives the Proms premiere of Florence Price’s Piano Concerto in One Movement. Samuel Coleridge-Taylor’s Overture to Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast and First Symphony in A Minor sit alongside the Proms premiere of African Suite for Strings by Nigerian composer Fela Sowande. Conducted by Kalena Bovell, the Prom shines a light on rarely heard composers of African heritage who were huge stars in the first half of the 20th century but were subsequently written out of classical music performance history.
American violinist Joshua Bell and the string orchestra of the Academy of St Martin in the Fields mix up the familiar with the unfamiliar, 18th-century Italy with 20th-century Argentina, baroque with tango, as they interweave Vivaldi’s famous Four Seasons with Astor Piazzolla’s The Four Seasons of Buenos Aires. Argentinian musician Guillermo Willis joins presenter Josie d’Arby for this celebration of the centenary year of Astor Piazzolla - and of virtuosic talent, past and present.
Former Children’s Laureate Michael Morpurgo joins star cellist Sheku Kanneh-Mason and his siblings at the Royal Albert Hall for a unique, dramatically staged performance of Saint-Saëns’s much-loved Carnival of the Animals. Katie Derham presents this special Prom for all the family, which also features a newly commissioned companion piece, Revel, by Daniel Kidane, including poems written and read by Lemn Sissay.
The BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra returns for their second Prom of the season under the baton of Principal Guest Conductor Ilan Volkov, with a programme that collides the old with the new. A cutting-edge world premiere from contemporary American composer George Lewis, which blends a conventional symphony orchestra with innovative electronics, is paired with two dynamic works by Beethoven: the dramatic concert aria Ah! Perfido, sung by renowned soprano Lucy Crowe, and his hopeful Second Symphony. Presenter Jess Gillam is joined by special guests Sheila Hancock and Kate Romano.
Genre-defying Ghanaian-American musician Moses Sumney makes his Proms debut with conductor Jules Buckley and the BBC Symphony Orchestra as they perform new orchestral arrangements of tracks from his first two albums. Moses Sumney describes his music as an amalgamation of soul, jazz, folk and experimental indie rock. Presented by Clara Amfo from the Royal Albert Hall, this Prom promises to be a unique trip through the multi-faceted music of this indefinable artist.
Marking his sixtieth appearance at the Proms, Sir John Eliot Gardiner directs the Monteverdi Choir and the English Baroque Soloists in a celebration of the early works of Handel and Bach. Mezzo-soprano Ann Hallenberg is the soloist in Handel’s cantata of praise to the Virgin Mary, Donna, che in ciel, which is followed by Bach’s Easter cantata Christ lag in Todes Banden. The Prom culminates in Handel’s vividly theatrical Dixit Dominus. Presented by Petroc Trelawny from the Royal Albert Hall.
The Sinfonia of London makes its much-anticipated official concert debut under John Wilson, who re-established the ensemble in 2018. Following on from their award-winning recording, this orchestral ‘army of generals’ brings with it Korngold’s stirring, filmic Symphony in F sharp. It’s part of a musical bird’s-eye view of 19th- and 20th-century Vienna that also includes the overture to Die Fledermaus and Ravel’s dizzying La valse.
Bach’s profound choral masterpiece, the St Matthew Passion, transcends eras and faiths with its exploration of courage, compassion, sacrifice and redemption. Here, it crowns the BBC Proms season in a performance by period instrument ensemble Arcangelo, directed from the harpsichord by Jonathan Cohen. They are joined by a double choir and a stellar line-up of soloists, including Iestyn Davies, Roderick Williams and rising star Stuart Jackson. Anna Lapwood presents from the Royal Albert Hall, with musician and broadcaster Hannah French as her guest.
Katie Derham welcomes a live audience back to the Royal Albert Hall for the climax of the world’s greatest classical music festival, the Last Night of the Proms. Latvian Accordionist Ksenija Sidorova and Australian tenor Stuart Skelton join Sakari Oramo, the BBC Symphony Orchestra and the BBC Singers in a programme that includes Malcolm Arnold’s Variations on a theme of his friend Ruth Gipps, a special arrangement of Barber’s Adagio for Strings, Ravel, Piazzolla and Wagner. Katie is joined by special guests Gareth Malone and Maggie Aderin-Pocock. Coverage continues on BBC One.
Katie Derham hosts continued live coverage from the Royal Albert Hall, at the climax of the world’s greatest classical music festival. Latvian accordionist Ksenija Sidorova and Australian tenor Stuart Skelton join Sakari Oramo and the BBC Symphony Orchestra and BBC Singers for a jubilant programme including music by Florence Price, Latin flavours from Piazzolla and Troilo, English folk courtesy of Percy Grainger and, of course, all the traditional favourites including Rule, Britannia, Land of Hope and Glory and Jerusalem. Katie is joined by special guests Gareth Malone and Maggie Aderin-Pocock.
Clive Myrie and special guests present the first night of the Proms, live from the Royal Albert Hall. The eight-week season of exceptional music is kicking off with a bang as conductor Sakari Oramo and the BBC Symphony Orchestra take on Verdi’s monumental Requiem. The orchestra will be joined by two choirs - the BBC Symphony Chorus and Crouch End Festival Chorus, as well as a quartet of superstar soloists: soprano Masabane Cecilia Rangwanasha, mezzo-soprano Jennifer Johnston, tenor David Junghoon Kim and bass-baritone Kihwan Sim. The piece bursts with lush melody, drama and musical fireworks, and the famous Dies irae section will push choirs and soloists alike to their vocal limits.
British conductor John Wilson has long been a Proms favourite, but last year’s debut appearance of his new super-orchestra the Sinfonia of London caused a sensation. ‘Astonishing,’ wrote The Times. For The Spectator, this was ‘an orchestra so thrillingly alive with the sheer glory of it all that hearing them play felt like being a teenager in love’. Now Wilson and the Sinfonia are back, in an all-British programme that pairs much-loved classics by Elgar and Vaughan-Williams with Walton’s kaleidoscopic Partita, Bax’s stirring musical seascape and Huw Watkins’s spirited Flute Concerto, played by its dedicatee Adam Walker.
Celebrating the BBC’s centenary year, the Proms partners with Radio 1 Relax for a late-night wind-down featuring visionary hip-hop and rap artist Kojey Radical and friends, including the pioneering 12 Ensemble. Presented by Radio 1’s Chillest Show host Sian Eleri, who appears onstage to introduce a stripped-back set of collaborations and explorations.
Happy and glorious: the story of British music is inextricably linked with royalty, and down the centuries composers ranging from Handel and Elgar to Walton, Parry and Vaughan Williams have risen to royal occasions with music of breath-taking pageantry, beauty and power. In the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee year the BBC Concert Orchestra and BBC Singers present a celebration of music and royalty in all its splendour: from the music of the Tudor court to Britten’s Coronation opera Gloriana, by way of Handel’s majestic Coronation Anthems, choral music by the current Master of the Queen’s Music Judith Weir, and a specially commissioned new work by Cheryl Frances-Hoad.
‘Behold, the sea itself!’ Vaughan Williams’s A Sea Symphony takes the poetry of Walt Whitman and opens the floodgates to a spring tide of inspiration. Andrew Manze’s Vaughan Williams recordings have been praised for their ‘rare sensitivity and warmth’, and in the composer’s 150th-anniversary year, A Sea Symphony gets the deluxe treatment from two of the BBC’s great symphonic choruses, plus the operatic voices of soloists Elizabeth Llewellyn and Andrew Foster-Williams. But the concert opens the way Vaughan Williams would have wanted: with a surging musical seascape from his Welsh pupil Grace Williams, and an equally nautical opener by Doreen Carwithen, composed in 1952 and receiving its first Proms performance in this, her centenary year.
Life on a French river barge is tough, and for a young wife it can be lonely too. But in this closed and arduous world, even a dream of a better world can spark jealousy. Il tabarro is a side of Puccini that’s too rarely seen – a gritty, red-blooded drama of life on the edge, told with all his flair for melody and suspense. Who better to perform it than Sir Mark Elder, one of our greatest living opera conductors, and the orchestra that he’s directed for over two decades – the Hallé. Natalya Romaniw stars as the lovelorn Giorgetta; first, though, Elder and his orchestra conjure up Dukas’s musical magic spell, and join Respighi amid the glittering Fountains of Rome.
In the first ever Gaming Prom, an electronically expanded Royal Philharmonic Orchestra explores the musical universe of gaming: from the classic console titles of the 1980s to the European concert premiere of a suite from Battlefield 2042.
The newly formed Ukrainian Freedom Orchestra, made up of Ukrainian musicians – some from Ukraine’s major cities, some now displaced as refugees, and others who play in European orchestras – is a special late addition to this year’s Proms. Under Canadian-Ukrainian conductor Keri-Lynn Wilson the orchestra is a symbol of the remarkable resolve and determination shown by the people of Ukraine. They celebrate Ukraine’s leading living composer, Valentin Silvestrov, who escaped Kyiv with his daughter and granddaughter in March. His deeply reflective Symphony No. 7 from 2003 complements Chopin’s ravishing Piano Concerto No. 2. And, after music from Beethoven’s great ‘rescue’ opera, Fidelio, Brahms’s final symphony offers moments of turbulence as well as defiant joy.
When Mozart composed his piano concertos, he had a very specific performer in mind – himself. For Norwegian pianist Leif Ove Andsnes, that’s part of the appeal. ‘When you realise how quickly Mozart developed during the early years of the 1780s it makes you ask: why did this happen? What was going on?’ Tonight, this endlessly engaging, multi-award-winning pianist puts himself in Mozart’s shoes, as he plays two contrasting masterworks from 1785: the tempestuous and tender Concerto No. 20, and the sunny, gloriously playful Concerto No. 22. Throughout, he’ll direct the Mahler Chamber Orchestra from the keyboard, just as Mozart would have done. Expect eloquence, insight and (because this is Mozart, after all) lots and lots of fun.
No prizes for identifying the real hero of Richard Strauss’s Ein Heldenleben. With its swashbuckling self-confidence and self-mocking humour, this ‘Hero’s Life’ is very much the world according to Richard Strauss – an exuberant, off-the-scale showpiece for the Oslo Philharmonic, making its first Proms appearance under its recently appointed and widely acclaimed Chief Conductor Klaus Makëlä. Joining them, in Liszt’s First Piano Concerto is the phenomenal Yuja Wang, who’s said that she ‘feels like a rock star’ when playing at the Proms. Sibelius’s awe-inspiring panorama of the Finnish forests opens a high-octane evening with one of Europe’s great orchestras, and two of the most talked-about classical musicians in the world today.
Three composers, three landscapes. Elgar wrote his Cello Concerto in the woodlands of Sussex; for many listeners, its autumnal colours evoke emotions too deep for words. From his home in Finland, Sibelius created a symphony that has the grandeur and inevitability of a great river – though some have heard it as a stirring song of national awakening. And elemental forces are the very bedrock of Anna Thorvaldsottir’s inspiration. The BBC Philharmonic, under Eva Ollikainen – a Finnish conductor with close links to Iceland – teams up with charismatic soloist Kian Soltani in Elgar’s hugely popular concerto, and gives the world premiere of a newly forged orchestral work by Iceland-born Anna Thorvaldsottir, for whom composition is ‘a natural part of my life’.
‘I think and feel in sounds,’ said Maurice Ravel. So, when he wrote his ballet Daphnis and Chloe, he created a sumptuous musical panorama in which you can hear every drop of dew, every flurry of birdsong and every ray of glittering light. Sounds thrilling? Now hear it performed by the ‘world’s greatest orchestra of teenagers’ – playing with an energy and joy that make even the Royal Albert Hall feel a bit on the small side. The National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain’s annual Prom is always a highlight of the season, and tonight its 150-plus players are working on a cinematic scale: Simone Dinnerstein performs Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue, and there’s a spectacular, specially commissioned opener from Hollywood legend Danny Elfman.
Viennese orchestral playing is a byword for excellence, rooted in generations of tradition. But under its distinguished (and adventurous) American Music Director Marin Alsop, the Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra takes that tradition as a starting point to look outwards – to explore. Bartók’s bloodcurdling ballet suite prepares the way for Prokofiev’s Third Piano Concerto: energising, unsentimental brilliance, brought to life by former BBC Radio 3 New Generation Artist Benjamin Grosvenor. And then, two very different facets of the Central European tradition: the windswept drama and dancing Bohemian melodies of Dvořák’s magnificent Seventh Symphony, and the UK premiere of Heliosis – written specially for Alsop and the Vienna RSO by a young Viennese composer with a flair for drama.
In her 80th-anniversary year – and 50 years since the release of her album Young, Gifted and Black – the Proms pays tribute to the ‘Queen of Soul’, Aretha Franklin. A singer, songwriter, pianist and one of the best-selling recording artists of all time, whose song ‘Respect’ became an anthem of the American Civil Rights Movement, Franklin is remembered in a unique Prom featuring a collection of her greatest hits with a dynamic orchestral backing. Jules Buckley conducts his newly formed ensemble in its Proms debut, joined by American singer-songwriter and Quincy Jones protégée Sheléa.
Cynthia Erivo is a creative phenomenon: a London-born, Tony, Grammy and Emmy award-winning actress, singer, songwriter and producer, whose career has taken her from her childhood in South London to the West End and Broadway, and whose recordings have also thrilled audiences on both sides of the Atlantic. Tonight, backed by the BBC Concert Orchestra she salutes the legendary female voices that have shown her the way: artists such as Nina Simone, Shirley Bassey, Billie Holiday and Gladys Knight. ‘I wanted to pay homage to them,’ she says. ‘Women who have influenced my sound, the music I’ve listened to, and the way I tell my story.’
The end has come, and in the silence after the Last Trumpet, a solitary bird is the only sound heard on Earth. The ambition of Gustav Mahler’s ‘Resurrection’ Symphony staggers the imagination – an emotional odyssey on a cosmic scale that embraces tenderness, rage, dark humour and – yes – the end of the world itself. Sir Simon Rattle was still a teenager when he conducted his first performance of Mahler’s Second Symphony, and it’s been a personal touchstone at every stage of his career. Now, as he prepares to step down as Music Director of the London Symphony Orchestra, he pairs it with a short (but very personal) tribute from the late Harrison Birtwistle, one of Britain’s most distinguished recent composers.
Over a century of public service broadcasting, the BBC has forged a global reputation for its coverage of the planet we call home – from the oceans and mountains to rivers, glaciers, deserts and the infinite wonders of life on Earth itself. Tonight, the Proms hosts a stunning audio-visual celebration of the BBC’s world-famous Natural History Unit, from David Attenborough’s pioneering early adventures through to the landmark series of the 21st century. Expect breath-taking images, natural sounds, spoken words and music by composers including Hans Zimmer and George Fenton, performed live in the spectacular surroundings of the Royal Albert Hall by Ben Palmer and the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra.
Archive footage, dancing astronauts and a flashing, blinking Sputnik right here in the Royal Albert Hall – when cult ‘retro-futurists’ Public Service Broadcasting brought The Race to Space to the Proms in 2019, it’s safe to say that the results were out of this world. So in the year that the BBC celebrates a century of – well, public-service broadcasting – it makes perfect sense to invite them back with This New Noise: a joyously eclectic, album-length celebration of 100 years of BBC Radio, backed by the BBC Symphony Orchestra and delivered with all the wit and showmanship of a band on an ongoing mission to ‘teach the lessons of the past through the music of the future’.
‘Be embraced, all you millions!’ Since the earliest days of the Proms, Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony has had a special place in each season – and with its climactic choral ‘Ode to Joy’, it’s one of those works that takes on a new meaning every time it’s played. This year, it’s performed by Chineke! – Europe’s first majority Black and ethnically diverse orchestra, along with Chineke! Voices. BBC Cardiff Singer of the World Nicole Cabell leads a world-class team of solo singers, and opens the Prom with the haunting Lilacs, the heartfelt song-cycle with which George Walker became the first African American composer to win the Pulitzer Prize for Music.
‘Nicola Benedetti – now, she really can play,’ says the American composer, trumpeter and all-round jazz legend Wynton Marsalis, and after Benedetti gave the world premiere of the concerto that he composed for her in 2015, The Guardian wrote of her ‘sparky performance’. Thomas Søndergård and The Royal Scottish National Orchestra gives its Proms premiere tonight: the big, generous heart of a concert with a spring in its step, that opens with Thomas Adès’s wonderfully sleazy Powder her Face suite and ends amid the headstrong urban energy of West Side Story. In between comes a blast of fresh sea air from Benjamin Britten.
From BBC Proms: Following the very sad news of the death of Her Majesty The Queen, as a mark of respect we will not be going ahead with Prom 71 on Friday 9 September, or the Last Night of the Proms on Saturday 10 September.
Take a whistlestop tour through the very best music from the 2022 Proms season in this one-off special. Eight weeks of world-class concerts become just 100 minutes of standout performances from the countless musicians who graced the Royal Albert Hall stage this summer. The show is packed with tunes we know and love, with something for everyone. Emotional highlights include Elgar’s sublime Nimrod, the Proms’ tribute to the late, great Aretha Franklin, and a spine-tingling performance of the Ukrainian national anthem by the Ukrainian Freedom Orchestra. Along the way, expect favourites like Handel’s majestic Zadok the Priest, Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue, Beethoven’s epic Ode to Joy and Dukas’s Sorcerer’s Apprentice. There’s also fireworks from international soloists Yuja Wang, Kian Soltani, and Nicola Benedetti, as well as numbers from the first ever Gaming Prom and international superstar Cynthia Erivo’s Proms debut performance. An ensemble of this year’s Proms presenters...
Clive Myrie is joined by special guests Sandi Toksvig and Anna Lapwood for the First Night of the Proms, live from the Royal Albert Hall. 2023’s eight-week musical extravaganza launches in style with Sibelius’s ever-popular Finlandia, Grieg’s dramatic Piano Concerto performed by classical superstar Paul Lewis, and Britten’s much-loved The Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra. The concert also includes a rare opportunity to hear Sibelius’s Snofrid, making its Proms debut, and a world premiere from Ukrainian composer Bohdana Frolyak. This musical feast is brought by the BBC Symphony Orchestra, with the BBC Symphony Chorus and BBC Singers under the baton of principal guest conductor Dalia Stasevska.
Electrifying violinist and conductor Pekka Kuusisto rips up the rule book to play Antonio Vivaldi’s Four Seasons like you’ve never heard it before. He is joined by innovative folk musician Ale Carr, and the Scandinavian duo reimagine Vivaldi’s timeless concertos as a magical world of folklore. In a concert led by Kuusisto’s love for the natural world, the renowned orchestra Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen opens with a David Attenborough-inspired work, Birds of Paradise by Andrea Tarrodi, evoking a teeming tropical rainforest. Beethoven’s glorious and groundbreaking First Symphony brings the first half to a rousing close, before The Four Seasons tops the bill. Katie Derham presents, joined by special guests.
The BBC National Orchestra of Wales and their conductor laureate, Tadaaki Otaka, perform perhaps the most famous classical symphony ever written, with its foreboding opening motif, Beethoven’s Fifth. In a concert of lush romantic music that takes us from Europe to the USA, and from Vienna to Croydon, star violinist Elena Urioste joins the orchestra to perform Samuel Coleridge-Taylor’s sumptuous Violin Concerto – a piece that brims with songfulness. And Rachmaninov's Five Études-tableaux receives its first ever Proms outing in gorgeous orchestration by Respighi. Katya Adler presents, with special guests.
Beethoven’s monumental Choral Symphony, with its famous Ode to Joy finale, takes centre stage at the Royal Albert Hall. Ryan Wigglesworth is at the helm of the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra alongside the BBC Symphony Chorus and an all-star team of Scottish soloists - Eleanor Dennis, Karen Cargill, Nicky Spence and Michael Mofidian - for this mighty tour-de-force of musical revolution, a symphonic journey from darkness to light and of triumph over adversity.
Celebrating the musical legacy of Bollywood, the Proms pays tribute to Lata Mangeshkar, the voice behind the hit songs that defined Indian cinema’s greatest films. Superstar singers Palak and Palash Muchhal, plus Indian classical musicians and Bollywood dancers, join forces with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra in a glorious musical fusion that commemorates more than five decades of the late playback singer’s stellar career. On a night when the Royal Albert Hall takes on the spirit of Mumbai, presenter Nikki Bedi and special guests honour Lata’s impact across generations, cultures and continents.
South Korean virtuoso Bomsori Kim makes her Proms debut performing Bruch’s ever-popular First Violin Concerto with the BBC Philharmonic in an evening of music inspired by the folk traditions of Hungary. Katya Adler is joined by composer and cellist Ayanna Witter-Johnson to discuss the enduring power of folk in a concert also featuring Brahms’s Hungarian Dances and Bartok’s Concerto for Orchestra. And after almost a century, there’s a welcome return to the Proms of the piece that launched the career of Croydon-based British composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor.
Grammy Award-winning jazz legend Dee Dee Bridgewater joins trumpeter Sean Jones and Carnegie Hall’s National Youth Jazz Orchestra, comprising outstanding young musicians from across the USA, as they make their BBC Proms debut. Clive Myrie presents an exhilarating concert of big band classics, standards and contemporary works, exploring jazz’s influence on hip-hop, R&B and pop.
Star pianist Isata Kanneh-Mason makes her solo Proms debut with Prokofiev’s thrilling Third Piano Concerto. At just 27 years old, Isata delights in this fiendish work, full of rhythm and romance with rhapsodic bursts of melodic spontaneity. Also tonight, Tchaikovsky’s magnificent fifth symphony which pierces the heart with a stunning exploration of fate. It was a theme that Tchaikovsky grappled with throughout his life, and here that famous horn solo wavers constantly between sorrow and joy, as the composer navigates his own emotions. Both pieces performed by the BBC National Orchestra of Wales under the baton of Ryan Bancroft. Presented by Clive Myrie.
Following their breathtaking performance at last year’s Proms, power couple Yuja Wang and conductor Klaus Mäkelä return to the Royal Albert Hall for one of the most eagerly awaited nights of the season. This time, the superstar pianist and hotshot conductor will dazzle us with Rachmaninov’s Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini – a piece at once both devilish and heavenly that showcases Yuja’s extraordinary talent. Then, baritone Thomas Hampson joins the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Chorus and the famous Royal Albert Hall organ in Walton’s immense Belshazzar’s Feast. Georgia Mann presents with special guests Wayne Marshall and Hannah Catherine Jones. Then, baritone Thomas Hampson joins the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Chorus and the famous Royal Albert Hall organ in Walton’s immense Belshazzar’s Feast. Georgia Mann presents with special guests Wayne Marshall and Hannah Catherine Jones.
Virtuoso horn player Felix Klieser, who was born without arms and plays the instrument with his toes, makes his Proms debut with Mozart’s sunny Concerto No 4. Kirill Karabits conducts the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra as they plot a kaleidoscopic musical journey across Europe with tales of friendship, homeland and the emotive power of music. Bursting with some of his most beautiful and heartfelt melodies, Rachmaninov’s sweeping Second Symphony continues the celebration of what would have been the composer’s 150th birthday. Music by the conductor’s father opens the concert - Ivan Karabits’ first Concerto for Orchestra. Written to mark the 1,500th anniversary of the founding of Kyiv, it’s a colourful orchestral soundscape evoking chiming bells and a city in happier times. Petroc Trelawny presents joined by special guest Hannah French.
Celebrated pianist Sir András Schiff plays Schumann's much-loved Piano Concerto at the BBC Proms alongside the world-famous Budapest Festival Orchestra and their founder-conductor Ivan Fischer in a programme sparkling with dramatic colour. One of the greatest Romantic piano concertos of all time, the Schumann is bookended by the musically mysterious overture to Der Freischütz by Weber - an opera brimming with unearthly portrayals of the supernatural, and Mendelssohn's atmospheric Scottish Symphony, itself inspired by a ruined chapel echoing with the ghost of Mary, Queen of Scots. Clive Myrie presents alongside special guest Joanna MacGregor.
After stealing the show on First Night of the Proms last year, soprano Masabane Cecilia Rangwanasha joins the National Youth Orchestra for a night of joyously defiant music. Strauss’s Four Last Songs, considered by some the most beautiful music ever written, is played alongside Hindemith and Copland, all conducted by the vibrant Carlos Miguel Prieto. As if that wasn’t enough, multi-award winning composer Errollyn Wallen debuts a new piece written especially for this remarkable orchestra’s 2023 summer tour. The NYO annual Prom is a night of joy, energy and friendship not to be missed, presented by Jess Gillam with special guests Alexis Ffrench and Vikki Stone.
Legendary conductor John Wilson and his orchestral supergroup, the Sinfonia of London, continue the 150th anniversary celebrations of Rachmaninov. His much-loved Second Piano Concerto is played by the brilliant incoming BBC New Generation Artist Alim Beisembayev. The concert showcases three composers’ ability to transform their pain and anguish into captivating masterpieces. The Rachmaninov takes centre stage, with its hauntingly beautiful melodies written as he overcame his depression, resulting in one of the most beloved pieces of classical music of all time. In the second half, we enter the emotional world of William Walton’s First Symphony, an intense work charting a tumultuous love affair. And Lili Boulanger was close to death when she wrote her enchanting D’un Matin de Printemps, which nevertheless brings an optimistic spring morning feel to get things underway at this Prom. Petroc Trelawny presents with special guests Wayne Marshall and Hannah Catherine Jones.
The roof of the Royal Albert Hall nearly comes off in this special Prom dedicated to northern soul, curated by Wigan’s Stuart Maconie and Manchester’s Joe Duddell. A celebration of raw, rare American soul music that first obsessed young people across the North and Midlands in 1960s and 70s, inspiring an all-night dance culture. Epic new arrangements of northern soul anthems are performed by the BBC Concert Orchestra, conducted by a dancing Edwin Outwater, and featuring the vocals of six incredible singers led by Vula Malinga of Basement Jaxx fame. A night of freedom, passion and euphoria presented by Andi Oliver, with special guests Clarke Peters and PP Arnold.
Mindful Mix at the Proms offers an evening of exquisite harmonies, tranquil tones and soothing soundscapes from a gloriously lit Royal Albert Hall. The perfectly blended vocals of VOCES8, one of Britain’s leading a cappella groups, seamlessly bring together music from Radiohead, American composers Eric Whitacre and Philip Glass, and 450-year-old English choral music by William Byrd, in a concert designed to nourish the soul - also featuring the world premiere of Roxanna Panufnik’s Floral Tribute in memory of the late Queen Elizabeth II. The Carducci String Quartet, harpist Ruby Aspinall and Norwegian pianist and composer Ola Gjeilo complete the line-up of artists bringing their magic to an evening of restful musical meditation. Switch on and relax.
History is made tonight at the Proms as Sir Simon Rattle takes to the Royal Albert Hall stage for his final UK performance as music director of the London Symphony Orchestra. Together, this renowned and dynamic partnership poignantly mark the end of an era with Mahler’s epic, all-encompassing Ninth Symphony. Known as the ‘farewell symphony’, it is shrouded in loss, complete with a dazzling spectrum of joy and despair, and ending in tranquillity and stillness. It’s a poignant choice from Sir Simon to bid his own farewell to the LSO after a fruitful partnership together. This is paired with another powerfully emotive work - Poulenc’s choral masterpiece Figure Humaine. Sir Simon conducts the BBC Singers in this searing hymn to freedom, a musical beacon of resistance and hope written during the Second World War. Katie Derham presents, joined by special guest Dame Sheila Hancock.
A treat for the senses as Chineke! Orchestra makes its hotly anticipated annual Proms outing, this year conducted by Anthony Parnther. Europe’s first majority Black and ethnically diverse orchestra presents a concert of music from across four centuries and two continents, culminating in Beethoven’s sunny and genial Fourth Symphony. Before the Beethoven, novelty is the uniting factor, with four pieces enjoying their Proms debuts, including the lyrical Four Noveletten by Samuel Coleridge-Taylor. Trumpeter-on-the-rise Aaron Azunda Akugbo takes centre stage to perform Haydn’s joyful Trumpet Concerto, with its famous third movement. Clara Amfo presents with special guests Hannah French and Ayanna Witter-Johnson.
A spellbinding evening of music and magic in fantasy, myths and legends. Immerse yourself in a journey through the realms of beloved fantasy soundtracks from film, TV and gaming, with musical highlights from Harry Potter, Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, Game of Thrones and World of Warcraft. Elsewhere, we experience the drama and intrigue of television’s Good Omens and His Dark Materials, before classical works such as Stravinsky’s famous ‘Firebird’ Suite and Grieg’s heroic battle ‘In the Hall of the Mountain King’ unleashes the orchestra to epic heights. Hosted by Katie Derham and Radio 1’s film critic Ali Plumb, the concert is brought to life by the BBC Concert Orchestra, the Huddersfield Choral Society and conductor Anna-Maria Helsing in this unforgettable night of wands, swords and lightsabers.
Celebrating cutting-edge classical works, presenter of Radio 3’s New Music Show, Tom Service, chooses his standout moments of premieres and commissions from this year’s Proms. All pieces respond to the world around us with joy, beauty and optimism. Highlights include Andrea Tarrodi’s atmospheric Birds of Paradise, inspired by footage from David Attenborough’s Planet Earth, Ukrainian composer Bohdana Frolyak’s spine-tingling Let There be Light, and Errolyn Wallen’s ecstatic new work for the National Youth Orchestra, The Whole World.
A musical mystery awaits at the Royal Albert Hall as Scotland’s premiere baroque ensemble, the Dunedin Consort, led by John Butt, unveil the musical inspiration behind Mozart’s Great Mass in C minor, a colossus of the choral repertoire. The revered work comprises the entire second half of the concert, while audiences are first treated to a series of shorter pieces by JS Bach and CPE Bach, two men who inspired Mozart in the creation of his mighty Mass. The Dunedin Consort is joined on stage by an all-star roster of vocal soloists comprising of Nardus Williams, Lucy Crowe, Jess Dandy, Benjamin Hulett and Robert Davies. Katie Derham presents with special guest Anna Lapwood.
Two great names in classical music come together to host the biggest musical party of the year. Cellist Sheku Kanneh-Mason and soprano Lise Davidsen join conductor Marin Alsop and the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Chorus for an evening of opera arias, songs, spirituals, choral anthems and world premieres, as well as all the traditional favourites by Arne, Elgar and Parry.
It's party time at the Royal Albert Hall, as the 2023 BBC Proms season wraps up in rousing style at the most exhilarating classical music celebration of the year.
Unmissable Moments from the BBC Proms 2023 season. Take a whistlestop tour through eight weeks of world-class music making with standout performances from the spectacular array of superstar musicians who have graced the Royal Albert Hall stage this summer. This special programme is packed with some of the biggest tunes in classical music. Beethoven's biggest hits, memorable Mozart and a celebration of Rachmaninov sit alongside dazzling performances from the likes of Yuja Wang, Pekka Kuusisto and Isata Kanneh-Mason, while northern soul classics, jazz anthems and music all the way from Bollywood to Hollywood are given the symphonic treatment on the Proms stage. There really is something for everyone. An ensemble of this year’s Proms presenters brings us this celebration of the best of the best from the world's greatest classical music festival.
A whistlestop tour through eight weeks of world-class music making from the 2023 Proms season with standout performances from a spectacular array of superstar musicians.
Clive Myrie and special guests launch the 2024 BBC Proms season with Beethoven’s famous Fifth Symphony. A dazzling all-female line-up features pianist extraordinaire Isata Kanneh-Mason, superstar soprano Sophie Bevan and acclaimed conductor Elim Chan.
Proms history is made tonight as Sir Mark Elder conducts The Hallé for the final time as music director after 25 years at the helm, with Mahler’s epic Fifth Symphony.
Katie Derham presents a night of high-octane drama featuring two choirs and the BBC National Orchestra of Wales as Verdi’s masterpiece celebrates its 150th anniversary.
Clive Myrie presents a celebration of one of the most iconic voices of the 20th century. Featuring some of the songs that Vaughan brought to fame, including Misty, If You Could See Me Now and Body and Soul.
The vibrant, electrifying work follows a spellbinding world premiere of Anna Clyne’s The Gorgeous Nothings in the splendour of the Royal Albert Hall. Presented by Petroc Trelawny.
A glittering programme including Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue and Barber’s Adagio for Strings, performed live at the Royal Albert Hall with the all-star Sinfonia of London.
Superstar siblings Sheku and Braimah, with Brazilian guitarist Plínio Fernandes and the dynamic Fantasia Orchestra perform an eclectic and surprising mix from Brahms to Bob Marley.
The brightest young stars in classical music take to the stage as the National Youth Orchestra make their annual trip to the Proms playing Wagner, Mahler and more.
Edith Bowman presents a night for film lovers, with music from blockbusters including Everything Everywhere All at Once, All Quiet on the Western Front and Tár.
The London Symphony Orchestra and their new chief conductor, Sir Antonio Pappano, perform their first Prom together, a heartening memorial with spectacular choirs and vocal soloists.
Mendelssohn’s enchanting music in an exciting semi-staged production of Shakespeare’s masterpiece together with Mozart’s famed Clarinet Concerto performed by Anthony McGill.
A show-stopping concert from this pop powerhouse, including original classics alongside soulful cover versions.
Journey through the solar system with Holst’s imaginative musical depiction of the planets, past mighty Mars and glorious Jupiter. Clive Myrie is joined by Maggie Aderin-Pocock.
Aurora Orchestra marks the 200th anniversary of this extraordinary symphony with a memorised performance, featuring a dramatic exploration of the piece by Nicholas Collon.
Get the dancing shoes on as Andi Oliver invites us to a night of classic floor-fillers by Chic, Sylvester, Gloria Gaynor and many more.
Superstars Yo-Yo Ma, Leonidas Kavakos and Emanuel Ax redefine chamber music in this intimate concert featuring a special arrangement of Beethoven’s Sixth 'Pastoral' Symphony.
The Pink Panther, Moon River and more much-loved favourites in a luscious celebration marking the centenary of one of the greatest composers in the history of film and TV - Henry Mancini.
The Marriage of Figaro, Don Giovanni and more from the Royal Albert Hall in a concert of smash hits celebrating one of the greatest composers of all time.
A celebration of some of the most exciting new classical music premiered in the Royal Albert Hall this summer, chosen by Tom Service, presenter of Radio 3’s New Music Show.
Join us on a journey through 2024’s five-star BBC Proms season, celebrating Mozart, Sam Smith, Beethoven, Mancini, Holst, Bob Marley and so much more.
Katie Derham hosts classical music's biggest party of the year, with soloists Sir Stephen Hough and Angel Blue and the BBC Symphony Orchestra under Sakari Oramo.
Katie Derham invites you to join her for the season's glittering finale, with all the traditional favourites and some exciting surprises.
Huge hits Dog Days are Over and You’ve Got The Love feature in this dramatic reimagining of the groundbreaking album Lungs, with full orchestra and choir.
Mozart's Violin Sonata in G and the 'Blues' movement from Ravel's second Violin Sonata.
Petroc Trelawny introduces highlights from a series of BBC Proms chamber music concerts at Cadogan Hall in London. Norwegian trumpeter Tine Thing Helseth and her all-female ten-piece brass ensemble tenThing perform a virtuosic programme of tangos, habaneras and marches from Piazzolla, Bizet and Grieg, plus a selection from Kurt Weill's Threepenny Opera.
Katie Derham hosts Proms Extra, the weekly Proms magazine show. The spotlight is on Bach's St John Passion and the Proms debut by the China Philharmonic Orchestra. Katie is joined by the leading stars of the musical world for lively conversation about all that the Proms have to offer and David Owen Norris presents Chord of the Week with a nod to Mozart.
As the 2014 BBC Proms season draws to a close, Clemency Burton-Hill and Soweto Kinch take us around the UK to celebrate the best of the performances from the Last Night of the Proms. Across the nations, a stellar line-up of artists entertain audiences with a mix of classical, jazz and contemporary repertoire.
The weekly Proms magazine show returns for a new season with Katie Derham. She is joined by the leading stars of the musical world, including renowned violinist Nicola Benedetti for lively conversation about all that the Proms has to offer. Special highlights and exclusive previews from the week's concerts include Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, the First Night of the Proms and the Ten Pieces Prom. The contrabassoon takes the spotlight and David Owen Norris gets Inside the Score. Plus there will be an exclusive performance by Nicola in the Proms Extra studio.
Join Katie Derham and her studio guests for Proms Extra, the weekly magazine show that takes a look into the past week of the Proms. This episode gets starry eyed over Holst's The Planets and Mozart's last ever symphony is in the spotlight. Plus there is an exclusive studio performance by percussionist Colin Currie.
A celebration of the 80th birthdays of two of the country's greatest living composers, Sir Peter Maxwell Davies and Sir Harrison Birtwistle, whose works changed forever the landscape of British music. Tom Service presents a selection of their music from the 2014 Proms, with Sir Peter Maxwell Davies as his guest at the Royal Albert Hall.
Get into John Adams! Radio 3's Tom Service introduces the composer who wants it all ‒ the 'pulse' of the American minimalists and the voluptuous harmonic sensuality of Wagner and Mahler's late Romanticism. And in his operas he's putting contemporary history on stage and turning it into myth: Nixon in China, Dr Atomic, and The Death of Klinghoffer. Warning: his music is addictive. Have a good time with John Adams!
Get into Beethoven! Radio 3's Tom Service introduces the deaf composer with wild eyes and crazy hair who wanted people to hear music as if they were hearing it all for the first time. And he did it by innovating in every established type of music he touched: 'da da da dum' ‒ the opening of the Fifth Symphony ‒ no-one had ever done that before. Tom tells us how Beethoven ‘grabs you by the ... soul.’
Proms Extra returns for the summer with presenter Katie Derham. Elgar's Cello Concerto, Fauré's Requiem and the Gospel Prom are the musical focus, and David Owen Norris is back with Chord of the Week. Music is provided by Sheku Kanneh-Mason, winner of BBC Young Musician 2016.
Katie Derham presents the weekly Proms magazine show that takes a look at all things Proms during the current season. This week, the focus is on Vaughan Williams's The Lark Ascending, taken from the Ten Pieces...
Proms Extra, the Proms companion show, returns with a look at Mahler's Third Symphony, the David Bowie Prom and a nod to Shakespeare's anniversary with Berlioz's choral symphony Romeo and Juliet.
For one night only, Katie Derham presents Proms Extra from the Royal Albert Hall to warm the audience up for a night of Gershwin, courtesy of the John Wilson Orchestra. With her guests, she takes a look at the highlights from Tchaikovsky's Violin Concerto and Holst's Planets, and David Owen Norris presents Chord of the Week.
This episode of Proms Extra, presented by Katie Derham, looks at Rachmaninov, shows the John Wilson Orchestra performing Gershwin and visits the Proms at Shakespeare's Globe.
A touch of Brazil hits Proms Extra as the Sao Paulo Symphony Orchestra is discussed alongside the Quincy Jones Prom and a memorised Mozart symphony. Katie Derham's guests include Venezuelan pianist Gabriela Montero and Quincy Jones Prom conductor Jules Buckley.
Join Katie Derham for the final show in the current series of Proms Extra. Katie is joined by celebrated soprano Lesley Garrett, the composer and musician Mark Simpson and conductor Simone Young, fresh from her Proms debut.
A new work by Anna Meredith and 59 Productions, Five Telegrams draws on communications sent by young soldiers in 1918 and features specially produced digital projections, creating a unique spectacle. With the BBC Proms Youth Ensemble conducted by Sakari Oramo. Filmed from outside the Royal Albert Hall.
A new work by Anna Meredith and 59 Productions, Five Telegrams draws on communications sent by young soldiers in 1918 and features specially produced digital projections, creating a unique spectacle. With the BBC Proms Youth Ensemble conducted by Sakari Oramo. Filmed outside and inside the Royal Albert Hall.
Live from Glasgow Green, Jamie MacDougall presents an evening of fabulous music performed by the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra and a selection of world-class soloists. Topping the bill is Scottish singing legend Barbara Dickson who will be performing some of her classic tracks, and performers from a range of musical styles make this an evening with something for everyone. Performing live with the BBC SSO, conducted by Stephen Bell, will be Scottish soprano Eleanor Dennis, violinist Stephanie Childress, BBC Radio Scotland Young Traditional Musician 2019 Benedict Morris and the Glasgow Youth Choir.
YolanDa Brown and Josie d’Arby take us on a whistle stop tour around the UK as the nations join in the Last Night of the Proms celebrations. A star-studded line-up is joined by some of the country’s most exciting emerging talent as each location presents a mix of timeless classics and contemporary hits. Josie D’Arby is at Swansea’s Singleton Park with 80s pop sensations ABC, West End star Sophie Evans, Andrei Kymach, who was crowned BBC Cardiff Singer of the World 2019 in June, and BBC Young Jazz Musician 2018 winner, saxophonist Xhosa Cole. At Glasgow Green, one of Scotland’s best-selling and much-loved female singers, Barbara Dickson, entertains the crowds alongside Scottish soprano Eleanor Dennis and violinist Stephanie Childress, who is already making her name as one of the most exciting musicians of her generation. Susan Boyle headlines at Titanic Slipways, Belfast, as she celebrates ten years in the industry. Alongside her on the line-up, Australian tenor Mark Vincent and award-winning violinist Ziyu He. And at London’s Hyde Park, YolanDa Brown is on hand to capture the very best performances from a line-up that includes American singer-songwriter and founding member of the Pretenders Chrissie Hynde, English-Italian singer-songwriter Jack Savoretti, and, headlining the show, the legendary Barry Manilow. It’s a party like no other, with the nations joining in the traditional celebrations as the world’s greatest musical festival draws to a close.
Sheku Kanneh-Masson performs an arrangement of the Hungarian Rhapsody by the 19th-Century Bohemian cellist and composer David Popper.
World premiere of BBC commission of Hannah Kendall's The Spark Catchers which takes inspiration from the urgent energy of Lemn Sissay’s poem of the same name.
The European premiere of Missy Mazzoli’s mesmeric Sinfonia – music ‘in the shape of the solar system’ that weaves and coils itself in a sequence of pulsing loops.
Rimsky-Korsakov's popular 'Capriccio on Spanish Themes' is based on five lively and exuberant Spanish folk tunes.
US conductor Karina Canellakis makes her Proms debut with the BBC Symphony Orchestra and fellow American Jeremy Denk for Bartók’s ferociously brilliant Second Piano Concerto.
‘Melodies simply pour out of me,’ wrote the composer, and Dvořák’s Symphony No. 8, is a pastoral symphony in all but name.
Tenor Allan Clayton is the soloist in the world premiere of Gerald Barry's new work, inspired by revolutionary events in Canada’s history. Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla conducts the CBSO.
Violinist Leila Josefowicz performs Stravinsky's fiercely brilliant neo-Classical concerto, with the CBSO and Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla.
Charles Hazlewood conducts the BBC Concert Orchestra in memorable performances of works by George Gershwin at the Proms.
Compilation of music by British composers performed at the BBC Proms in the past decade (2000s), including works by Handel, Edward Elgar, Eric Coates, Benjamin Britten and Henry Purcell.
From the 1992 BBC Proms, the premiere of James MacMillan's concerto for percussion and orchestra, Veni, Veni, Emmanuel, composed for Evelyn Glennie. Jukka-Pekka Saraste conducts the Scottish Chamber Orchestra.
A glittering line up at the Caird Hall in Dundee for the BBC Proms Last Night Celebrations in Scotland concert. Presented by Kaye Adams, the programme features superstar violinist Nicola Benedetti, soprano Lesley Garrett, guitarist Paul Galbraith, the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra conducted by Garry Walker, and the specially assembled Dundee Proms Chorus.
