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The BBC Proms 2015 |OT| Classical music for all

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Edmond Dantès

Dantès the White
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The annual BBC Proms started on 17th July 2015 for 8 weeks of concerts, talks, workshops, family events and more, ending with the famous Last Night of the Proms at London’s Royal Albert Hall.


What is the Proms?

The first Proms concert took place on 10 August 1895 and was the brainchild of the impresario Robert Newman, manager of the newly built Queen's Hall in London.

While Newman had previously organised symphony orchestra concerts at the hall, his aim was to reach a wider audience by offering more popular programmes, adopting a less formal promenade arrangement, and keeping ticket prices low.

Who was Henry Wood?

Born in 1869, Henry Wood had undergone a thorough musical training and, from his teens, began to make a name for himself as an organist, accompanist, composer and arranger, vocal coach and conductor of choirs, orchestras and amateur opera companies.

Newman arranged to meet Wood at Queen's Hall one spring morning in 1894 to talk about the project. 'I am going to run nightly concerts to train the public in easy stages,' he explained. 'Popular at first, gradually raising the standard until I have created a public for classical and modern music.' In February 1895 Newman offered Wood conductorship of a permanent orchestra at Queen's Hall, and of the first Proms season.

The early days

The series was known as 'Mr Robert Newman's Promenade Concerts' and the programmes were perhaps over-generous by today's standards, lasting around three hours. The informal atmosphere was encouraged by cheap promenade tickets - one shilling (5p) for a single concert, or a guinea (£1.05) for a season ticket.

Eating, drinking and smoking were permissible (though patrons were asked to refrain from striking matches during the vocal numbers). The more 'serious' items were confined to the first half, and a major attraction of the shorter second half was the orchestral Grand Fantasia - choice morsels extracted from popular operas.

Developing public taste

Wood and Newman were keen to introduce audiences to an ever wider range of music. In the first seasons, a tradition was established of a Wagner Night on Mondays and a Beethoven Night on Fridays. Wood continued to present an enterprising mixture of the familiar and the adventurous, programming new works each season (referred to as 'novelties').

He also promoted young, talented performers, and he fought to raise orchestral standards, making himself unpopular in 1904 with a successful bid to scrap the system whereby orchestral players could send deputies to the rehearsals and appear in person only for the concert. By 1920 Wood had introduced to the Proms many of the leading composers of the day, including Richard Strauss, Debussy, Rachmaninoff, Ravel and Vaughan Williams.

World War 1

The onset of the First World War brought a public dislike for all things German, yet Wood and Newman - almost alone among the cultural establishment at the time - insisted that 'the greatest examples of Music and Art are world possessions and unassailable even by the prejudices of the hour'. In 1915 the publishers Chappell and Co., having earlier taken over the lease of the hall when Newman had run into financial troubles, also took over the orchestra, which was renamed the New Queen's Hall Orchestra.

Enter the BBC

But the Proms were running at a loss, and in 1927 Chappell's announced its withdrawal of financial support. In the same year the BBC had established its status as a Corporation with a mandate 'to inform, educate and entertain', clearly a vision that Henry Wood held for the Proms.

The BBC took over the Proms, and for three years the concerts were given by 'Sir Henry Wood and his Symphony Orchestra', until the BBC Symphony Orchestra was formed in 1930. The Proms now reached a far wider audience and although some feared that broadcasting would reduce audience numbers, Wood emphasised its role in achieving his aim 'of truly democratising the message of music, and making its beneficent effect universal'.

A new home at the Royal Albert Hall

Three days after Britain declared war on Germany in 1939, the BBC decentralised its Music Department and announced that it was unable to support the Proms.

With characteristic determination Wood found private sponsorship for the 1940 and 1941 seasons, and replaced the BBC orchestra with the London Symphony Orchestra. But air-raids intensified and the 1940 season lasted only four weeks. On 10 May 1941 a Luftwaffe bombardment gutted the Queen's Hall.

The only other hall available in London for orchestral concerts was the Royal Albert Hall, opened in 1871, and the Proms took place there in 1941. It was not until the following season that the BBC returned to sponsor the Proms.

The end of an era

1944 marked two anniversaries: the fiftieth anniversary of the Proms, and Henry Wood's seventy-fifth birthday. By now Wood's phenomenal energies were waning, and he passed away a whisker short of his half-century of conducting the Proms.

Moving forward

After the War, the traditional Wagner Nights became unfashionable. From 1953 Viennese evenings became popular and composer anniversaries were well catered for. In 1957 and 1958 the deaths of Sibelius and Vaughan Williams were marked by complete symphony cycles.

Malcolm Sargent, Chief Conductor of the BBC Symphony Orchestra from 1950, gave most of the performances, but the 1950s also saw a gradual increase in the number of orchestras taking part. Manchester's Hallé Orchestra, under Sir John Barbirolli, became the first non-London orchestra to perform at the Proms, and over the next few years concerts were given by the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra and the Liverpool Philharmonic. Basil Cameron featured prominently alongside Sargent, but other influential figures also began to appear: Charles Groves, Colin Davis, Norman Del Mar, Charles Mackerras.

New directions

With the arrival of William Glock as BBC Controller, Music, in 1959, the identity of the Proms began to change. The core orchestral repertoire, a mainstay of the Proms, was reduced to accommodate a more experimental style of programming, one which carried bold juxtapositions and reflected current musical trends from around the world. Between 1959 and 1964 the number of works new to the Proms had more than doubled.

The 1963 season brought international figures such as Georg Solti, Leopold Stokowski and Carlo Maria Giulini, and in 1966, the first foreign ensemble, the Moscow Radio Orchestra, appeared, followed soon after by the Amsterdam Concertgebouw Orchestra, the Polish Radio Symphony Orchestra and the Czech Philharmonic. It was this period that saw the transformation of the Proms from a successful but relatively conservative enterprise into a major international festival.

Wider and wider still

Other major innovations since the 1960s were the introduction of complete opera performances (beginning in 1961 with Glyndebourne Opera's production of Mozart's Don Giovanni), concerts by ensembles from non-Western cultures (including India, Thailand, Indonesia and Japan), music for percussion, jazz, gospel and electro-acoustic music, and concerts devised especially for children.

The BBC has commissioned a number of new works each season, offering Proms audiences a chance to hear the latest in musical trends, and creating a unique platform for dozens of contemporary composers. The 1970s brought other new features such as a series of Late Night concerts and Pre-Prom Talks.

Beyond the Proms centenary

The 100th Proms season took place in 1994 and the festival now includes over 70 main Prom concerts every year, ever widening the range of symphonic and operatic music presented. The BBC Proms continues to welcome leading international performers whilst showcasing the best of the British music scene, including the BBC's own orchestras and choirs.

Yet although the scope of the Proms has increased enormously since 1895, Henry Wood's concept for the season remains largely unaltered: to present the widest possible range of music, performed to the highest standards, to large audiences. And promenading in the Royal Albert Hall's arena continues to be a central feature, lending the Proms its unique, informal atmosphere.

Proms 2015 Launch video

Link

Proms on TV
17 July - BBC Two - Prom 1: First Night of the Proms
19 July - BBC Four - Prom 4: Beethoven - Symphony No. 9
22 July - watch at bbc.co.uk/proms - Prom 8: Late Night With ... BBC Asian Network
24 July - BBC Four - Prom 10: Leif Ove Andsnes and the Mahler Chamber Orchestra
26 July - BBC Four - Prom 6: Stravinsky - Symphony of Psalms
29 July - watch online at bbc.co.uk/proms - Prom 16: Late Night With ... BBC Radio 1
30 July - BBC Four - Prom 7: Nielsen and Hugh Wood
31 July - BBC Four - Prom 13: Holst - The Planets
2 August - BBC Four Prom 17: Elgar's Symphony No. 2 in E flat major
5 August - watch at bbc.co.uk/proms - Prom 27: Late Night With ... BBC Radio 6 Music
6 August - BBC Four - Prom 5: Haydn, HK Gruber & Stravinsky
7 August - BBC Four - Prom 30: Late Night Sinatra
9 August - BBC Four Prom 22: Aurora Orchestra – Brett Dean & Beethoven
12 August - watch at bbc.co.uk/proms - Prom 37: Late Night With ... BBC Radio 1Xtra
13 August - BBC Four - Prom 34: Prokofiev
14 August - BBC Four - Prom 32: Eric Whitacre and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra
16 August - BBC Four - Prom 31: National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain – Mahler
21 August - BBC Four - Prom 19: Alina Ibragimova plays Bach
20 August - BBC Four - Prom 44: West-Eastern Divan Orchestra & Daniel Barenboim
23 August - BBC Four - Prom 46: Danish National Symphony Orchestra – Nielsen
27 August - BBC Four - Prom 21: Alina Ibragimova plays Bach
28 August - BBC Four - Prom 35: Story of Swing
30 August - BBC Four - Prom 34: Britten & Korngold
3 September - BBC Four - Prom 50: Bach – Goldberg variations
4 September - BBC Four - Prom 57: Chamber Orchestra of Europe & Bernard Haitink
6 September - BBC Four - Prom 24: James MacMillan
10 September - BBC Four - Prom 68: Bach – Six Cello Suites
11 September - BBC Four - Prom 67: Bernstein – Stage and Screen
12 September - First half BBC Two, second half BBC One - Prom 76: Last Night of the Proms
Proms on radio

Listen to every Prom - broadcast live on BBC Radio 3 (available on digital radio, via TV, mobile, laptop and tablet as well as on 90-93 FM.

Proms Programmes on BBC World Service

In 2015 the following Proms programmes are broadcast on the BBC World Service:
15th August: Britten: Four Sea Interludes from 'Peter Grimes' (17') Korngold: Violin Concerto (26')

22nd August: Tchaikovsky: Symphony No. 4 (43')

29th August: Ravel: Piano Concerto In G (23’),Messiaen/Dingle: Un Oiseau des arbres de vie (World premiere) (4’) La Valse (11')

5th September: Sibelius: Symphony No. 2 (43')

12th September: Leonard Bernstein - Stage And Screen PLUS Bach Cello Suite (from P68)

19th September: Rimsky-Korsakov: Scheherazade (42')
Proms schedule

Prom 12: Leif Ove Andsnes and the Mahler Chamber Orchestra
- Sunday 26 July 2015


Leif Ove Andsnes and the Mahler Chamber Orchestra complete their cycle of Beethoven Piano Concertos with Nos. 2 and 5 – the composer’s first and final experiments in the genre.

In No. 2 a spacious and lovely central Adagio is framed with Mozartean grace in the outer movements, while the Fifth is the composer’s last word on the subject – a musical emancipation of the soloist that anticipates the Romantic concertos of Beethoven’s successors.

Looking to the musical past for inspiration once again, Stravinsky’s Octet pastiches the forms and textures of the 18th century, colouring them with a mood and mischief all his own.
Prom 13: Holst - The Planets - Monday 27 July 2015

Once an irascible enfant terrible, Pierre Boulez was born 90 years ago. The Proms celebrations continue with one of his earliest works. Originally a series of 12 brilliant miniatures for piano, Notations is gradually being expanded by the composer into an orchestral cycle.

Holst’s The Planets brings musical imagery of a different kind. Violinist Leila Josefowicz makes a welcome return to the Proms, with a new concerto composed specially for her by one of Italy’s greatest living composers.
Prom 14: Prokofiev - The Piano Concertos - Tuesday 28 July 2015

All five Prokofiev piano concertos in one concert – it’s a feat conductor Valery Gergiev achieved in 2012 at the Mariinsky and now brings to the Proms, along with three of his original pianists.

It’s a rare opportunity to hear three international soloists back-to-back, to compare styles and approaches, as well as to explore the composer’s later, lesser-known concertos with their newly expressive tenderness.

Daniil Trifonov, the prodigious young winner of the Tchaikovsky and Chopin competitions, shares the bill with his teacher Sergei Babayan, while Alexei Volodin tackles the rarely heard Fourth, commissioned, like Ravel’s Piano Concerto for the Left Hand (Prom 36), by the one-armed pianist Paul Wittgenstein.
Prom 15: Prokofiev, Qigang Chen & Rachmaninov - Wednesday 29 July 2015

Following last night’s Prokofiev piano concerto cycle, tonight’s Prom opens with the Russian’s bright and joyous ‘Classical’ Symphony, which surprised critics of the young firebrand composer with its formal elegance.

It’s paired with Rachmaninov’s Second Symphony – beloved for its intimate, lyrical slow movement.

Rachmaninov might be the original composer of the ‘big tune’, but it’s an instinct China’s Qigang Chen – a pupil of Messiaen – shares. East and West come together for his evocative Iris dévoilée, pairing traditional Chinese instruments with Western harmonies.
Prom 16: Late Night With BBC Radio 1 - Wednesday 29 July 2015

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.

Veteran British DJ Pete Tong presents a line-up of live artists, who perform with Jules Buckley and his Heritage Orchestra.
Prom 17: Hallé - Debussy, Vaughan Williams & Elgar - Thursday 30 July 2015

Sir Mark Elder and the Hallé champion Vaughan Williams’s neglected oratorio Sancta civitas – an ecstatic vision of post-apocalyptic salvation. It’s a piece made for the huge space of the Royal Albert Hall, where its heavenly trumpets and choirs can swell to full force.

Described by Elgar’s wife as ‘vast in design and supremely beautiful’, his Second Symphony took a while to win public affection, but is now almost as cherished as Debussy’s evocative tone-poem depicting the lascivious thoughts of a sleepy faun – a work the composer Pierre Boulez has hailed as signalling the beginning of modern music.
Prom 18: Katia and Marielle Labéque - Friday 31 July 2015

Sisters Katia and Marielle Labèque perform Mozart’s Concerto for two pianos as a complement to our focus on the composer’s late piano concertos.

Written in the 1770s for Mozart and his own sister ‘Nannerl’ to perform, it’s a work that delights in the interplay of dialogue, with a slow movement that is a tender conversation between friends.

Intimacy gives way to epic gestures in Shostakovich’s sprawling ‘Leningrad’ Symphony – one of the giants of the symphonic repertoire, and a passionate musical testament to the 25 million Soviet citizens killed in the Second World War.
Prom 19: Alina Ibragimova Plays Bach 1 - Friday 31 July 2015

When you place a single, solo instrumentalist in the Royal Albert Hall, a peculiar alchemy occurs. Suddenly the huge space becomes charged with a collective energy, a concentration that amplifies the emotions and gestures of the music performed. When that happens at a Late Night Prom, it’s particularly magical.

Violinist Alina Ibragimova, making the first of several appearances this season, takes us back to what can seem like the purest expression of music, performing Bach’s complete Sonatas and Partitas for solo violin, split across two concerts (see also Prom 21).
Prom 20: Schubert, Luke Bedford & Bruckner - Saturday 1 August 2015

Although composed for the church, it is in the concert hall that the dramatic scale of Bruckner’s mighty Mass in F minor comes into its own.

A new commission from Luke Bedford puts the Royal Albert Hall’s great organ in the spotlight, while opening the concert is Schubert’s ‘Tragic’ Symphony – a work whose heart-on-sleeve emotions are those of a composer still in his teens.
Prom 21: Alina Ibragimova Plays Bach 2 - Saturday 1 August 2015

Russian-born Alina Ibragimova gives the second of her two Late Night recitals of solo Bach.

Her natural tendency towards a historically informed style of playing these works was formed while she was a teenager at the Yehudi Menuhin School.

Her teachers at the time called for more vibrato, bigger gestures. “I wanted something more direct,” she recalls, “less about me”.
Prom 22: Aurora Orchestra - Sunday 2 August 2015

The Aurora Orchestra staged a Proms first last year when it performed Mozart’s Symphony No. 40 from memory. Now the dynamic young ensemble returns to continue this season’s sequence of family-friendly matinees, giving Beethoven’s ‘Pastoral’ Symphony the same direct, communicative treatment.

It is paired with Australian composer Brett Dean’s own homage to nature – a work, he explains, inspired by ‘glorious birdsong, the threat that it faces, the loss, and the soulless noise that we’re left with when they’re all gone’.

Former BBC Radio 3 New Generation Artist Francesco Piemontesi joins the orchestra for Mozart’s late ‘Coronation’ Concerto, and the afternoon also features the premiere of a new commission from British composer Anna Meredith – also performed from memory.
Prom 23: Verdi – Requiem - Sunday 2 August 2015

After a powerfully disquieting performance of Strauss’s Salome last year, Donald Runnicles returns for the first of two appearances this summer, bringing the chorus of the Deutsche Oper Berlin and the BBC SSO together for Verdi’s Requiem – a work conductor Hans von Bülow described as ‘an opera in ecclesiastical garb’, written for the concert hall but distilling all the drama and intensity of the stage.

At its core is the extended Dies irae sequence – a Day of Judgement whose terrors are not easily forgotten.

The international cast of soloists includes Scottish mezzo-soprano Karen Cargill.
Prom 24: James MacMillian & Mahler - Monday 3 August 2015

Mahler’s mighty Symphony No. 5 is the climax of this second Prom from Donald Runnicles and the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra.

The work’s intense, contrasting moods – the bitter solemnity of the funeral march, the violence of the second movement and the tenderness of the famous Adagietto – make this one of the great orchestral showpieces.

The evening opens with the world premiere of a dramatic new symphony from Scottish composer James MacMillan.
Prom 25: Monteverdi - Orfeo - Tuesday 4 August 2015

Monteverdi’s Orfeo is the first great opera – the moment when psychological truth and musical virtuosity came together to tell a story of love, loss and the power of art.

Sir John Eliot Gardiner – making the first of two appearances this year, tonight with the English Baroque Soloists – transforms the Royal Albert Hall into the 17th-century Mantuan court of the Gonzagas with some of Monteverdi’s loveliest melodies and most colourful instrumental writing, bringing the tale of Orpheus and his beloved Eurydice to fresh musical life.
Prom 26: British Composers - Wednesday 5 August 2015

Elgar’s Froissart overture throbs with national pride and swagger, while Walton’s Second Symphony sustains an altogether darker, more contemplative mood.

Chloë Hanslip is the soloist in Vaughan Williams’s rarely heard Concerto accademico – a work whose lyrical slow movement and dancing finale are anything but ‘academic’.

The concert also features Welsh composer Grace Williams’s ecstatic, neo-Straussian Fairest of Stars for soprano and orchestra, a musical celebration of Milton’s poetry.
Prom 27: Late Night with BBC 6 Music - Wednesday 5 August 2015

Mary Anne Hobbs of BBC Radio 6 Music presents an evening exploring the borderlands of classical music, with the pioneers of a new generation of musicians who draw on contemporary electronic influences.

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.
Prom 28: Dukas, Turnage Schuller & Scriabin - Thursday 6 August 2015

Poetry, art and music itself inspire this programme.

Scriabin’s The Poem of Ecstasy fuses poetry and music in pursuit of sexual bliss and spiritual transcendence.

Turnage’s On Opened Ground pays tribute to the poet Seamus Heaney.

Schuller’s Seven Studies explore Paul Klee’s paintings in sound, while Dukas transforms a ballad by Goethe into a musical tale of magic and mischief.
Prom 29: Stravinsky, Messiaen & Ravel - Friday 7 August 2015

Mozart’s Idomeneo owes its ballet sequence to the influence of French opera, and it launches a programme featuring two Frenchmen who idolised Mozart: Ravel and Messiaen.

Ravel’s Piano Concerto in G adds a jazzy colouring to its Classical influences, while Oiseaux tristes and La valse contrast the doleful calls of lost forest birds with a dark, swirling portrait of the disintegration of Vienna.

The world premiere of a recently rediscovered work by Messiaen – originally intended for the composer’s Éclairs sur l’au-delà – brings more birdsong (that of the tui from New Zealand), while Stravinsky’s urbane neo-Classical Symphony combines piquancy and elegance.
Prom 30: The John Wilson Orchestra performs Frank Sinatra - Friday 7 August 2015

‘The Voice’ … ‘Ol’ Blue Eyes’ … ‘The Sultan of Swoon’: the mythology surrounding Frank Sinatra is overwhelming. A gifted entertainer, screen actor and ubiquitous personality, his real legacy as a pioneer of popular song can sometimes get lost in the clamour.

This Late Night Prom celebrates the centenary of this musical legend in a concert that brings together some of the great voices of our own time, led by the multitalented Seth MacFarlane.

Join John Wilson and his orchestra for an after-hours sequence of big tunes and even bigger performances.
 

Edmond Dantès

Dantès the White
Prom 31: National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain - Saturday 8 August 2015

Mahler’s bitterly beautiful Ninth Symphony is the focus for the National Youth Orchestra’s annual visit to the Proms.

Still unperformed at the time of the composer’s death, the symphony was the last Mahler would complete – a requiem in all but name from a man who had already lost his daughter and knew his own death was imminent. The work’s rich writing for brass and strings makes it one of the greats of the orchestral repertoire.

The concert opens with the world premiere of Tansy Davies’s Re-greening, a celebration of spring written specially as a complement to Mahler’s Symphony No. 9.
Prom 32: Eric Whitacre and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra - Sunday 9 August 2015

Eric Whitacre’s new work Deep Field is inspired by images taken from the Hubble Space Telescope – and offers the audience a chance to participate in a novel way.

In his popular Cloudburst, too, you can help create the sound of rain falling. Plus, American classics by Copland and Gershwin.
Prom 33: Sir John Eliot Gardiner and the Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique - Sunday 9 August 2015

Sir John Eliot Gardiner’s second appearance of the season showcases the work of the conductor’s other period-instrument ensemble – the Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique, specialists in 19th- and 20th-century repertoire.

Gardiner’s brisk and brilliant take on Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony promises to find fresh energy within a familiar work – a Classical curtain-raiser to Berlioz’s extravagant Symphonie fantastique, the height of Romantic excess, with its quasi-cinematic storytelling and vivid, ghoulish soundscapes.
Prom 34: Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra - Monday 10 August 2015

A musical snapshot of 1945 – a world emerging from the haze of war into the neon glow of Hollywood and new-found hope. Three contrasting works sum up the spirit of this charged year: Britten’s Peter Grimes, reinventing English opera; Prokofiev’s Fifth Symphony, striving after the ‘grandeur of the human spirit’; and Korngold’s Violin Concerto.

Hailed in his youth as a ‘genius’ and a ‘miracle’ by no lesser figures than Mahler and Puccini respectively, Korngold’s reputation still rests mainly on his luscious film music. The Violin Concerto combines his instinct for melody (themes are borrowed from four of his finest film scores) with classical virtuosity and structural elegance.

The soloist here is Proms regular Nicola Benedetti, a passionate champion of this unaccountably neglected work.
Prom 35: Story of Swing - Tuesday 11 August 2015

After the success of last year’s Battle of the Bands Prom, Clare Teal returns with a line-up of musicians to showcase the very best of the current UK jazz and big band scene.

She’s joined by Guy Barker and 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.
Prom 36: Pierre Boulez, Ravel & Stravinsky - Wednesday 12 August 2015

Textures and colours are to the fore in this concert with a French accent.

Our triptych of Stravinsky ballets continues with The Firebird – the work that seized the ears of Paris’s elite with its urgent rhythms and evocative Russian folk melodies.

We celebrate Boulez’s 90th-birthday year with his first work for full orchestra, a sophisticated experiment in colours and timbres. Marc-André Hamelin joins the BBCSO for Ravel’s jazz-influenced Piano Concerto for the Left Hand, commissioned by the one-armed pianist Paul Wittgenstein.
Prom 37: Late Night with BBC Radio 1Xtra - Wednesday 12 August 2015

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 in new remixes blending classical and urban styles, with a little help from Jules Buckley and his Metropole Orkest.
Prom 38: Messiaen - Turangalîla Symphony - Thursday 13 August 2015

Hindu philosophy is the guiding thread through this Prom of music by one of the 20th century’s undisputed masters and one of its neglected mavericks.

Messiaen’s Turangalîla Symphony translates the ‘curious, exquisite, unexpected melodic contours’ of the Hindu tradition for Western ears.

John Foulds’s music was heavily influenced by his spiritual fascination with India; his style shifts in his Three Mantras from the rhythmic violence of Stravinsky to meditative loveliness and the sleek modernism of Ravel.
Prom 39: Mozart - The Abduction from the Seraglio - Friday 14 August 2015

Energy and good humour meet musical exoticism in Mozart’s earliest operatic success – the storybook fantasy The Abduction from the Seraglio.

It’s a work born of the 18th-century fascination with the Orient and there’s no resisting the jangling pulse of percussion that is the opera’s heartbeat.

Glyndebourne Festival Opera returns for its annual visit to the Proms under Music Director Robin Ticciati, with an international cast led by British soprano Sally Matthews and Lithuanian tenor Edgaras Montvidas.
Prom 40: Sibelius - Symphonies Nos. 1& 2 - Saturday 15 August 2015

Celebrations for Sibelius’s 150th anniversary continue with a complete symphony cycle, launched by the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra and its new Chief Conductor Designate, Thomas Dausgaard.

The First Symphony is prefaced by the nationalistic tone-poem Finlandia, its singing central melody composed with an ear to mass appeal as well as to political protest. The First Symphony is no apprentice work; although drawing on the legacy of Tchaikovsky and Brahms, Sibelius created something distinctively and evocatively Nordic.

Still more sophisticated is the Second, often heard as a musical shout of grief and rage at Russian oppression.
Prom 41: Sherlock Holmes - A Musical Mind - Sunday 16 August 2015

The Proms salutes a crime-fighting violin virtuoso who wrote a pioneering study of Dutch sacred music, tussled with a contralto from the Warsaw Opera and used Offenbach to outwit a pair of jewel thieves.

This Proms matinee celebrates music that conjures up the world of Sherlock Holmes: works by Paganini, Lassus and Wagner which Conan Doyle tells us Holmes loved, and the film and TV scores written for him – from Miklós Rózsa’s The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes to David Arnold’s music from the BBC’s Sherlock series starring Benedict Cumberbatch.

Special guests include Sherlock co-creator Mark Gatiss, as well as mezzo-soprano Christine Rice, who explores the repertoire of Holmes’s nemesis, the opera singer Irene Adler.
Prom 42: Sibelius - Symphonies Nos. 3 & 4 - Sunday 16 August 2015

The Proms’ Sibelius symphony cycle continues with the concise, intricately wrought Third and the darker Fourth – once described by conductor Herbert Blomstedt as ‘an essay in trying to be happy which fails – on purpose’. These are paired with the composer’s popular Violin Concerto with Lithuanian soloist Julian Rachlin.

Conductor Ilan Volkov is a passionate champion of contemporary music and here premieres a new Sibelius-inspired work by Michael Finnissy – a composer whose music, though fascinatingly complex, finds real connection with politics, society and culture.
Prom 43: Sibelius - Symphonies Nos. 5, 6 & 7 - Monday 17 August 2015

Who better to bring this year’s cycle of Sibelius symphonies to a close than Finnish conductor Osmo Vänskä, with one exceptional cycle already completed on disc and another currently under way.

‘These symphonies of mine are more confessions of faith than are my other works,’ wrote Sibelius, but the later symphonies were hard-won confessions in which the composer’s creativity struggled with self-doubt and hostile critics.

The results, however, are exceptional, from the soaring horn-led ‘Swan Hymn’ of the Fifth to the innocent beauty of the Sixth to the single-movement Seventh, with its total symphonic unity and an ending that has been called ‘the grandest celebration of C major there ever was’.
Prom 44: West-Eastern Divan Orchestra and Daniel Barenboim - Tuesday 18 August 2015

Daniel Barenboim returns to the Proms, this time as both conductor and soloist, taking the piano part in Beethoven’s Triple Concerto.

Schoenberg’s Chamber Symphony startled audiences with its ruthless concision – a reaction against the excesses of the late-Romantics. But excess gets the last word, in Tchaikovsky’s Fourth Symphony, the musical expression of some of its composer’s most-troubled and heartfelt emotions.
Prom 45: Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and Charles Dutoit - Wednesday 19 August 2015

It has been almost 30 years since the celebrated Russian pianist Elisabeth Leonskaja last performed at the Proms. She makes her return alongside another international great, Charles Dutoit, in Mozart’s majestic E flat Piano Concerto.

Written concurrently with The Marriage of Figaro, the concerto shares much of the opera’s grace and its abundance of tunes, as well as some strikingly lovely woodwind textures.

Shostakovich’s 15th Symphony is an altogether darker affair – intimate and introspective. Musical memories haunt the score as the composer searches for meaning in what he surely knew would be his final symphony.
Prom 46: Danish National Symphony Orchestra - Thursday 20 August 2015

Continuing our celebration of Nielsen’s 150th anniversary, his Second Symphony is an exercise in contrasting moods and textures – the ‘Temperaments’ of the subtitle are the Humours of Greco-Roman medicine: Choleric, Phlegmatic, Melancholic and Sanguine.

Less familiar are Nielsen’s choral works – the swelling loveliness of Hymnus amoris, inspired by a Titian painting, and the Three Motets that pay homage to Renaissance polyphony.

Completing the programme is Brahms’s warmly Romantic Violin Concerto, with Danish-Israeli Nikolaj Znaider.
Prom 47: Sibelius, Jón Leifs, Anders Hillborg & Beethoven - Friday 21 August 2015

There’s no denying the potent rhythmic urgency of Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony.

Its giddying, propulsive movement finds contrast in the mysterious stillness of Sibelius’s Tapiola, inspired by the spirit of Finland’s dusky forests, its wood-sprites and magic secrets.

Jón Leifs’s Organ Concerto harnesses the full power and scope of the Royal Albert Hall’s organ in its massive musical gestures, while Anders Hillborg’s Beast Sampler promises to strip away all we know of the symphony orchestra, transforming it into a ‘sound animal’.
Prom 48: Late-night Bach - Friday 21 August 2015

Bach’s much-loved Magnificat, bright with fanfares and lively with dance rhythms, is paired with the composer’s Mass in G minor in this Late Night Prom by the BBC Singers and the Academy of Ancient Music.

Though sometimes overlooked, Bach’s Lutheran Masses are a treasure-trove of melody, borrowing their themes from the best of Bach’s own cantatas.

Completing the programme is the Brandenburg Concerto No. 2, with its muscular textures and brilliant brass and wind colours.
Prom 49: Mahler - Symphony No. 6 - Saturday 22 August 2015

Two contrasting heroes share the limelight in this evening of musical drama from the Boston Symphony Orchestra and its new Chief Conductor, Andris Nelsons.

Brett Dean’s trumpet concerto Dramatis personae, composed for tonight’s Swedish virtuoso Håkan Hardenberger, assigns all roles to the trumpet, casting him by turns as fallen superhero and accidental revolutionary.

Mahler’s Sixth Symphony sees the composer himself as cursed hero – one, he explained, ‘on whom fall three blows of fate, the last of which fells him as a tree is felled’. The conclusion may be a tragic one but there are also scenes of beauty and joy in a work that includes a glowing theme associated with Mahler’s wife Alma.
Prom 50: Bach - Goldberg Variations - Saturday 22 August 2015

Grammy Award-winning pianist Sir András Schiff is a titan of the keyboard, bringing his distinctive blend of clarity and authority to repertoire from Bach to Bartók.

Tonight he continues his long association with Bach’s music in a performance of the composer’s ‘Goldberg’ Variations – a monumental work composed, according to its title-page, ‘for the refreshment of the spirits’.

The resulting Aria and variations are a compositional wonder, a sequence of musical miniatures unequalled in all Bach’s output.
Prom 51: Boston Symphony Orchestra and Andris Nelsons - Sunday 23 August 2015

Returning for a second appearance this summer, Andris Nelsons and the Boston Symphony Orchestra bring a piece of America with them in Barber’s Essay No. 2 – a symphony in miniature, moving from lyrical loveliness through contrapuntal conflict to end with a radiant chorale.

They pair it with Haydn’s Symphony No. 90, where ebullient mischief and dignity vie for supremacy in sunny C major.

Joy gives way to high drama, however, in Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 10 – a vivid portrait of Stalinist Russia.
Prom 52: Thierry Escaich - Sunday 23 August 2015

Bach and beyond – a fascinating musical journey with Thierry Escaich, renowned organist of the church of Saint-Étienne-du-Mont in Paris (where he is a successor to Maurice Duruflé), and an ambassador of the great French School of improvisation.
Prom 53: Bartók – The Miraculous Mandarin; Shostakovich - Orango - Monday 24 August 2015

Shostakovich’s Orango – an incomplete opera whose manuscript came to light only in 2004 – is a glossy fusion of wit and political venom.

The ‘Orango’ of the title is half man, half ape – a symbol of the decadent West. It’s a work matched for vivid colouring by Bartók’s violent and sexually charged ballet-pantomime The Miraculous Mandarin.

French pianist David Fray returns following his Proms debut in 2011 to play Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 24 – written at the height of the composer’s fame in Vienna as a performer of his own works.
Prom 54: Britten, Raymond Yiu, Nielsen & Janáček - Tuesday 25 August 2015

Proms regular Edward Gardner continues this year’s Nielsen anniversary celebrations with the Flute Concerto – a work that expresses what Nielsen perceived as the instrument’s ‘Arcadian’ quality. This gentle, pastoral quality battles, however, with darker forces, characterfully symbolised by the bass trombone.

Both Janáček’s Sinfonietta and Britten’s Sinfonia da Requiem are also vivid expressions of contrast – in mood, texture and colour.

The five movements of the Sinfonietta are all scored for a different – and sometimes unlikely – combination of instruments, while the three episodes in Britten’s elegiac Sinfonia da Requiem paint different stages of mourning, from grief, to anger and finally an uneasy acceptance.
Prom 55: SWR Symphony Orchestra Baden-Baden and Freiburg - Wednesday 26 August 2015

Bartók wasn’t the first composer to write a Concerto for Orchestra, but freewheeling virtuosity and rhythmic energy set this one apart. Treating individual instruments as soloists or partners in exhilarating duets-to-the-death, Bartók reinvents the orchestra itself.

The whole classical canon seems dissolved in Ligeti’s Lontano, in which familiar harmonies and styles are suspended in space and time, and resolution continually hangs just out of reach.

Turning classical rules of development on their head, Boulez’s ‘… explosante-fixe …’ works backwards, moving from its most complex material to its primary, original source. It’s audacious and completely compelling.
Prom 56: Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra and Andrew Litton - Thursday 27 August 2015

Is there a better-known or better-loved violin concerto than Mendelssohn’s? Following her two solo Late Night Proms, and Proms Saturday Matinee appearance with Apollo’s Fire, violinist Alina Ibragimova returns to perform this inventive and charming work, with the Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra.

They bring with them music by the young Norwegian Ørjan Matre and a new work by Russian-British composer Alissa Firsova inspired by Norse mythology.

This season’s series of three Stravinsky ballets written for the Ballets Russes reaches its conclusion with The Rite of Spring, as ferocious and exhilarating a musical assault now as it was at its notorious Paris premiere over a century ago.
Prom 57: Chamber Orchestra of Europe and Bernard Haitink - Friday 28 August 2015

Refined but also profoundly expressive, Maria João Pires is one of the great Mozart interpreters of her generation. She returns to the Proms to continue our series of late Mozart piano concertos.

No. 23 in A major boasts quasi-operatic melodies and deft woodwind colouring. It took musicians and audiences a long time to come to terms with Schubert’s ‘unplayable’ Ninth Symphony, but now – like that other great unplayable, Beethoven’s Ninth – it has won an unquestioned place in the repertoire.
Prom 58: Sibelius - Kullervo - Saturday 29 August 2015

Finnish conductor Sakari Oramo pairs two of Sibelius’s most engagingly descriptive works as we continue our 150th-anniversary celebrations of the composer. The folk hero Kullervo was the inspiration behind a powerful national statement for a country struggling to overthrow Russian rule.

This massive musical hybrid – part cantata, part symphony, part suite – is a vivid work, richly melodic but looking ahead to modernism in some striking musical gestures.

En saga is a fairy tale without a plot, whose contrasting movements suggest many possible stories, but never commit to just one.
Prom 59: Life Story Prom - Sunday 30 August 2015

Distinguished naturalist and broadcaster Sir David Attenborough presents a concert inspired by his recent BBC Television series, Life Story.

The soundtrack, composed by Murray Gold (who has written the music for Doctor Who since 2005), takes centre-stage, performed by the BBC Concert Orchestra.

Sir David introduces sequences from the series played on big screens and is joined by members of the production team, who offer insights into the making of this stunning natural history series.
Prom 60: Mahler - Symphony No. 1 - Sunday 30 August 2015

It has been almost a decade since the San Francisco Symphony visited the Proms. The orchestra is joined by its Music Director of more than 20 years, Michael Tilson Thomas, and by American pianist Jeremy Denk in the latter’s second concert of the season.

Here Denk tackles an American rarity – Henry Cowell’s extraordinary Piano Concerto, whose primitive textures require the soloist to pound the piano with fists and forearms.

It is paired with Mahler’s First Symphony, an ebullient youthful work filled with hints of the mature composer to come, and Schoenberg’s imaginative Theme and Variations, heard in the composer’s own orchestral arrangement.
Prom 61: San Francisco Symphony and Michael Tilson Thomas - Monday 31 August 2015

Chinese virtuoso Yuja Wang is the soloist in Bartók’s Second Piano Concerto – a work the composer intended to pose ‘fewer difficulties for the orchestra’ and to be ‘more pleasing in its thematic material’ than his First.

Beethoven’s emotionally charged ‘Eroica’ Symphony forms the second half – the groundbreaking symphony that would pave the way for the mighty Romantic works of Mahler and Bruckner.

The concert opens with Charles Ives’s atmospheric Decoration Day, inspired by his father’s marching band.
Prom 62: Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment performs Brahms - Tuesday 1 September 2015

Proms favourite Marin Alsop returns prior to her second Last Night appearance for an all-Brahms evening.

The Academic Festival Overture is an ebullient work the composer himself described as ‘a very boisterous potpourri of student songs’, and there’s also a rare opportunity to hear the epic Triumphlied – celebrating German victories in the Franco-Prussian War in choral settings of striking power and vividness.

American mezzo-soprano Jamie Barton, winner of the 2013 BBC Cardiff Singer of the World, is the soloist in Brahms’s glorious Alto Rhapsody, and completing the concert is Brahms’s First Symphony – a work nicknamed ‘Beethoven’s 10th’ for its obvious debt to the elder composer.
Prom 63: Messiaen, Mozart & Bruckner - Wednesday 2 September 2015

Former BBC Radio 3 New Generation Artist Igor Levit made his Proms debut at a Cadogan Hall chamber music recital in 2012.

Now he makes his Proms concerto debut in Mozart’s poignantly delicate No. 27, completing this year’s series of late great Mozart piano concertos.

Delicacy gives way to orchestral weight and heft in Bruckner’s popular Seventh Symphony, its beautiful Adagio a tribute to Wagner, and a finale that, according to composer Robert Simpson, ‘blends solemnity and humour in festive grandeur’.
Prom 64: Nielsen, B Tommy Andersson & Mahler - Thursday 3 September 2015

Thomas Søndergård and the BBC NOW return for their fourth concert, opening with a suite from Nielsen’s music for Oehlenschläger’s play Aladdin.

It’s one of the composer’s best-loved works, one that avoids musical clichés of the exotic Orient, conjuring scenes altogether more subtle and vivid.

A major premiere by the orchestra’s Composer-in-Association, B Tommy Andersson, puts organist David Goode in the spotlight and the concert concludes with the sunniest and most intimate of Mahler’s symphonies – the concise No. 4, a work filled with birdsong and pastoral landscapes that features a child’s-eye view of Heaven in its final movement.
Prom 65: Alice Coote sings Handel - Thursday 3 September 2015

Few composers express emotion as directly or with greater psychological truth than Handel. British mezzo-soprano Alice Coote explores the full gamut of these emotions in a Late Night Prom featuring some of Handel’s greatest arias.

Taking on both male and female roles, she delves into what it means to be a man, or a woman, in Handel’s world of sorceresses and knights, kings and queens.

She is joined in her theatrical journey by regular collaborators and period-performance specialists Harry Bicket and The English Concert.
Prom 66: Beethoven, Schoenberg & Shostakovich - Friday 4 September 2015

Mitsuko Uchida makes a welcome return to the Proms for Schoenberg’s rarely heard Piano Concerto.

It’s a work whose 12-tone abstraction is tempered by intriguing autobiographical suggestions – ‘Life was so easy’, ‘Suddenly hatred broke out’ – scribbled on the original manuscript.

Autobiography is also at the fore in Shostakovich’s Eighth Symphony. Composed in 1943, at a particularly dark moment for Russia in the war, the work is a fragile statement of hope that the composer himself summarised as: ‘All that is dark and oppressive will disappear; all that is beautiful will triumph.’
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Edmond Dantès

Dantès the White
Prom 67: Bernstein - Stage and Screen - Saturday 5 September 2015

John Wilson and his orchestra are an annual Proms highlight, bringing the glitz and glamour of old-time stage and screen to the Royal Albert Hall.

The second of their two performances this year is all about Leonard Bernstein – America’s multitalented conductor, pianist and composer. He reinvented the musical with the anger, energy and feral beauty of West Side Story, his updated take on Romeo and Juliet.

A starry cast of soloists including Proms favourite Julian Ovenden and the West End’s Louise Dearman join the John Wilson Orchestra and Maida Vale Singers for a tribute to the composer that includes Bernstein’s biggest hits as well as a selection of rarities
Prom 68: Bach - Six Cello Suites - Saturday 5 September 2015

American cellist Yo-Yo Ma has been a regular Proms soloist for almost 40 years, and now tackles perhaps his boldest performance to date. He performs the complete Bach solo cello suites – over two hours of music – in a single concert: a feat as challenging intellectually as it is physically.

Though neglected until the 20th century, the suites represent some of Bach’s greatest musical achivements – music at its purest and most profound.

Ma’s relationship with them extends back over many decades and multiple recordings, generating expressive performances distinguished by their depth of emotion.
Prom 69: Free Prom: Orff - Carmina burana - Sunday 6 September 2015

This year’s free Prom is an ideal opportunity to introduce family and friends to classical music.

Carmina burana is as musically inventive as it is irreverent – a choral cantata based on a medieval text charting the joys, fickleness and excesses of human life.

The BBC Concert Orchestra’s Composer-in-Association Guy Barker provides a new concerto for trumpet virtuoso Alison Balsom and the orchestra’s own Charles Mutter is the soloist in Saint-Saëns’s devilish Danse macabre
Prom 70: Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninov & Rimsky-Korsakov - Monday 7 September 2015

Just over a decade since their most recent visit, the St Petersburg Philharmonic and its renowned Artistic Director and Chief Conductor, Yuri Temirkanov, return to the Proms with a homegrown programme of Russian greats.

Pianist Nikolai Lugansky is the soloist in Rachmaninov’s most famous work, the Second Piano Concerto, with its lyrical slow movement and brilliant, virtuosic finale.

Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherazade dissolves the magic and colour of the tales of the Thousand and One Nights into a glittering musical tapestry that the composer himself described as ‘an oriental narrative of fairy-tale wonders’.

Tchaikovsky’s swirling tone-poem of doomed lovers opens the programme.
Prom 71: St Petersburg Philharmonic Orchestra - Tuesday 8 September 2015

German violinist Julia Fischer joins the St Petersburg Philharmonic Orchestra for its second concert, as soloist in Tchaikovsky’s much-loved Violin Concerto – a work in which concert-hall sophistication balances rustic folk-simplicity, overflowing with tunes and climaxing in a dazzling rondo finale.

Big tunes – or, at least, one big tune – also dominate Elgar’s ‘Enigma’ Variations, his affectionate musical portrait of friends and acquaintances.

The concert opens with one of Rimsky-Korsakov’s finest scores, the ‘three symphonic pictures’ adapted from his 1907 opera The Legend of the Invisible City of Kitezh – a work sometimes nicknamed ‘the Russian Parsifal’.
Prom 72: Nielsen & Ives - Wednesday 9 September 2015

Ives’s Fourth Symphony demands massive orchestral forces and quotes from his own earlier works as well as from traditional American hymns.

Completing this year’s Nielsen concerto cycle is the Violin Concerto – a work that wears its technical demands with great delicacy.

Nielsen also provides the concertopener, the folk-inspired choral cantata Springtime on Funen.
Prom 73: Vienna Philharmonic - Thursday 10 September 2015

The first of two consecutive nights with the Vienna Philharmonic under two different conductors.

Here, Semyon Bychkov showcases Franz Schmidt’s neglected Second Symphony – a work he has passionately championed.

A bold piece of Brucknerian ambition, it has more than a hint of Richard Strauss about it. It’s paired with Brahms’s Third Symphony – the work that saw the composer finding his true musical identity, stepping out from behind his influences to create something lyrical yet strangely unresolved
Prom 74: Wireless Nights Prom With Jarvis Cocker - Thursday 10 September 2015

In the last of this year’s Proms collaborations with six of the BBC national radio stations and BBC Music, popular Radio 4 show Wireless Nights becomes a live concert experience, pairing music and spoken word inspired by the night.

Singer-songwriter Jarvis Cocker presents an evening he describes as ‘a nocturnal investigation of the human condition’, with Maxime Tortelier conducting the BBC Philharmonic.

Badgers, stars, elves and lambs may or may not be involved.
Prom 75: Elgar - The Dream of Gerontius - Friday 11 September 2015

Sir Simon Rattle conducts the second of two performances by the Vienna Philharmonic, completing a Proms triptych of Elgar’s great oratorios, spread across recent seasons, with arguably the greatest of them all: The Dream of Gerontius.

This is spiritual inquiry at its most musically intoxicating and ecstatic – a work that reaches after the same mystic transcendence as Wagner’s Parsifal.

The BBC Proms Youth Choir returns for its fourth festival appearance, joining soloists Toby Spence and Roderick Williams, with Czech mezzo-soprano Magdalena Kožená as the Angel.
Proms in the Park 2015 - Saturday 12 September 2015

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Join in the Last Night of the Proms celebrations in Hyde Park, hosted by Proms in the Park stalwart Sir Terry Wogan.

The open-air concert features a host of musical stars, including Proms in the Park favourites the BBC Concert Orchestra under the baton of Richard Balcombe, and special guests Danielle de Niese, Alison Balsom, Russell Watson and The Jacksons.

Now in its 20th year, Proms in the Park is Britain’s largest outdoor classical music event and a rousing finale to two months of the finest music-making at the BBC Proms.

Danielle de Niese soprano
Alison Balsom trumpet
Russell Watson tenor
and Special Guests The Jacksons

BBC Concert Orchestra
Richard Balcombe conductor
Royal Choral Society
Sir Terry Wogan presenter

Early evening entertainment:
The Mavericks
The Cast of Memphis
Jack Pack

Tony Blackburn presenter
Prom 76: Last Night of the Proms - Saturday 12 September 2015

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Marin Alsop, who triumphed at 2013’s Last Night, presides over a finale that opens with the new and ends with the Last Night favourites.

Eleanor Alberga Arise, Athena! c3’
BBC commission: world premiere

Shostakovich
Piano Concerto No. 2 in F major 20’

Arvo Pärt
Credo 12’

R. Strauss
Till Eulenspiegels lustige Streiche 16’

Puccini
Opera arias 15’

interval

Johnson
Victory Stride 4’

Copland
Old American Songs – ‘I bought me a cat’ 3’

Grieg
Peer Gynt – Morning 4’

Gershwin, arr. Grainger
Love walked in 4’

M. Gould
Boogie Woogie Étude 2’

Lehár
The Land of Smiles – ‘Dein ist mein ganzes Herz’ 4’

Rodgers, arr. C. Hazell
The Sound of Music – medley 6’

Wood
Fantasia on British Sea-Songs – Jack’s the Lad (Hornpipe); Home, Sweet Home 6’

Arne, arr. Sargent
Rule, Britannia! 5’

Elgar
Pomp and Circumstance March No. 1 in D major (Land of Hope and Glory) 8’

Parry, orch. Elgar
Jerusalem 3’

The National Anthem (arr. Britten) 3’

Trad., arr. Thorpe Davie
Auld Lang Syne 2’
15 unmissable highlights from the BBC Proms 2015

Link


Interesting line-up this year, in what is a transitional year for the Proms.

I shall personally be attending quite a few this year; Proms 13, 25, 33, 34, 40, 42, 43, 47, 50, 58, 59, 68, 70 and 75.
 

mclem

Member
New iPlayer allows 28 days of backtracking, too, which is more convenient than the traditional 7 days.


The last few years I've attempted to dump the entire Proms season. I'll be doing that again. Might include the video ones this time, too.
 
I was just talking yesterday night with my unlce of how amazing was the BBC proms to help bring musical culture to everybody.

Im not even from England, but could assist the doctor who at the proms for the 50th anniversary and it was fantastic.
Would love more countries did similar things on summer afternoons.
 

Smithy C

Member
I was going to go see Prom 27 live, because I love Nils Frahm and A Winged Victory for the Sullen, but it's late at night and I'd miss my train home. Super bummed out about it, but I guess it'll be good on iPlayer too.
 

Ruruja

Member
Still no Video Games Soundtrack prom. I can't believe they even have a DJ night (prom 16) before a video games soundtrack prom.

Oh well, will watch a couple + Last Night as usual. Nice OP anyways Edmond.
 

Edmond Dantès

Dantès the White
Still no Video Games Soundtrack prom. I can't believe they even have a DJ night (prom 16) before a video games soundtrack prom.

Oh well, will watch a couple + Last Night as usual. Nice OP anyways Edmond.
Indeed, there have been many film music Proms over the years. It's about time that video game music was embraced too. Maybe the new Director of the Proms (David Pickard) will make it happen.
 

Ruruja

Member
Edmond Dantès;173014591 said:
Indeed, there have been many film music Proms over the years. It's about time that video game music was embraced too. Maybe the new Director of the Proms (David Pickard) will make it happen.

Yeah, I thought with the frequent video game music shows on Classic FM the last year or two that we'd get something at the proms.
 

Edmond Dantès

Dantès the White
Yesterday's Prom (13) was fantastic. The Planet Suite is always lovely to hear, especially Jupiter, but the standout performer of the night was certainly the violinist Leila Josefowicz. A mesmerizing performance by her in Duende - The Dark Notes.
 
Proms 15 was very nice. Nothing spectacularly memorable tbh, but not a bad evening. The composer was extremely energetic which was great to watch, Never heard any of the pieces n full before tonight so I went in fresh. Prokofiev symphony no.1 was the starter and was actually my favourite piece of the evening.

The second piece however Qigang Chen's 'Iris dévoilée' which was described "East and West come together... pairing traditional Chinese instruments with Western harmonies." did not go down as well. They brought on some chinese musical instruments and a chinese style singer to really put on a show. If it's not already patently clear I'm not a classical music superfan but it felt to me like the East and West sides clashed more than harmonised. Overall the piece sounded like it was out of a horror movie with very sharp, near screeching sounds. However what really sullied the experience was the audience's idea that they should go into an aggressive coughing fit at the for each section (movement?) of the piece. Is this a way of respectfully booing? Or just a coincidence that the other pieces didn't get nearly as much coughs and instead got small applauses between movements?

The final piece was Rachmaninov's Symphony No. 2. Was a very long piece and I felt my attention waning at parts but the sweeping strings are very compelling. I might need to pick out a movement I liked and focus on it.

Nice mix of people, mostly old and white, but a decent number of young people and whole families and a fair few chinese/east-Asian people.I bought a box seat which was fairly dear (£40), but I don't think I could stand for all that time, and the standing view seems atrocious if you aren't well over 6 feet tall. Might have to do it do see Rachmaninov's Piano concerto No.2 since the seat tickets are sold out (Prom 70).
 
Edmond Dantès;173834616 said:
Most of them are available here as pure audio, but unfortunately, I see no way to download them on to devices.
If you have the iPlayer Radio app (UK only) you can download them to your device to listen to for 30 days or so.
 

Edmond Dantès

Dantès the White
Monteverdi's Orfeo (Prom 25) conducted by Sir Eliot Gardiner took place yesterday. It was a novel approach to the famous Opera, but hampered somewhat by the Royal Albert Hall's floor layout. Nonetheless, the performers were superb.
 

Diabelli

Member
Prom 33: Sir John Eliot Gardiner and the Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique - Sunday 9 August 2015

Sir John Eliot Gardiner’s second appearance of the season showcases the work of the conductor’s other period-instrument ensemble – the Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique, specialists in 19th- and 20th-century repertoire.

Gardiner’s brisk and brilliant take on Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony promises to find fresh energy within a familiar work – a Classical curtain-raiser to Berlioz’s extravagant Symphonie fantastique, the height of Romantic excess, with its quasi-cinematic storytelling and vivid, ghoulish soundscapes.
http://www.somersethouse.org.uk/film/film4-summer-screen-2015/princess-mononoke

This is the hardest choice I've had to make in my life.

Edit - How long should one arrive in the queue and expect to get a spot around 10 rows from the front in the arena? I've been before but this is on a Sunday and it's a popular concert that sold out pretty quickly. I think my decision will be made if I have to queue for 3-4 hours in the sweltering heat and then stand for another 90 minutes in a congested sweat pit. But Gardiner's 5th is the 5th, and the Symphonie fantastique is ever brilliant, so bollocks.
 

Edmond Dantès

Dantès the White
http://www.somersethouse.org.uk/film/film4-summer-screen-2015/princess-mononoke

This is the hardest choice I've had to make in my life.

Edit - How long should one arrive in the queue and expect to get a spot around 10 rows from the front in the arena? I've been before but this is on a Sunday and it's a popular concert that sold out pretty quickly. I think my decision will be made if I have to queue for 3-4 hours in the sweltering heat and then stand for another 90 minutes in a congested sweat pit. But Gardiner's 5th is the 5th, and the Symphonie fantastique is ever brilliant, so bollocks.
Generally, people aim to get to the Royal Albert Hall at least an hour in advance of the doors opening. Doors open 45 minutes in advance of the scheduled start time. That should enable you to get a good spot.
 

Edmond Dantès

Dantès the White
Prom 59 was fantastic. Seeing David Attenborough in good health and spirits and the marvellous reception he was given by us in the audience. The performance of Life Story's soundtrack was very well done.
 

kruis

Exposing the sinister cartel of retailers who allow companies to pay for advertising space.
Are there any of the recent proms concerts watchable online for non Brits?
 

Edmond Dantès

Dantès the White
Last Night of the Proms tomorrow and Proms in the Park concurrently.

Last Night will be televised on BBC2 and BBC1 as well as Radio 3.

Tickets are still available for Proms in the Park.
 
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