Stravinsky's The Firebird - T1842217322New Zealand-born conductor Gemma New makes her Proms debut with a colourful programme of 20th and 21st-century orchestral masterworks. The graceful charm of Shostakovich's Piano Concerto No. 2 - a birthday gift for the composer's talented teenage son - meets the dazzling dances and acerbic brilliance of Stravinsky's ballet The Firebird. We move into the present with the European premiere of Canadian composer Samy Moussa's Symphony No. 2. Prize-winning pianist Pavel Kolesnikov joins the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra.Performer Pavel Kolesnikov (piano). Company BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra. Conductor Gemma New. | |
| 18 Aug 23 | Royal Albert Hall, Inner London :: V221 listing details L653420973 |
Ethel Smyth's Mass in D Major - T522804947Sacred and secular drift and blur into one another in the twilight visions of Debussy's three orchestral Nocturnes. Sirens coax and seduce sailors with their mysterious song, while back on land a festive parade is all brilliant flashes of light and teeming, fleet-footed movement. But the opening cloudscape looks heavenwards in its plainchant-inspired lines - a prelude to Ethel Smyth's Mass in D major, whose bold, robust expression of faith owes as much to Beethoven as to Elgar, and couldn't be further from Debussy's hazy sonic watercolours. Sakari Oramo conducts the BBC Symphony Chorus and Orchestra and an exciting team of young soloists including soprano Nardus Williams and bass-baritone Bozidar SmiljanicPerformer Nardus Williams (soprano). Performer Bethan Langford (mezzo-soprano). Performer Robert Murray (tenor). Performer Bozidar Smiljanic (bass-baritone). Company BBC Symphony Chorus. Company BBC Symphony Orchestra. Conductor Sakari Oramo. | |
| 20 Aug 22 | Royal Albert Hall, Inner London :: V221 listing details L1157439322 |
Belshazzar's Feast - T01237555179Sir 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 Ameriques - 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.Performer Gerald Finley (baritone). Company Orfeo Catala. Company Orfeo Catala Youth Choir. Company London Symphony Chorus. Company London Symphony Orchestra. Conductor Simon Rattle (Sir). | |
| 20 Aug 19 | Royal Albert Hall, Inner London :: V221 listing details L0487192348 |
Debussy, Ravel & Boulanger - T0981398935The CBSO and Ludovic Morlot mark two major centenaries in this all-French programme. In the centenary of his death, Debussy is celebrated in the languorous beauty of Pr?lude a l'apres-midi d'un faune, as well as the Nocturnes with their shifting, shimmering play of musical light. Lili Boulanger, whose death in 1918 at the age of just 24 cut short a career of extraordinary promise, is represented by her powerful setting of Psalm 130 - a musical howl of grief composed at the height of the First World War. Ravel's Bolero closes the evening with its hypnotic Spanish dance rhythm and swirling orchestral colours.Performer Justina Gringyte (mezzo-soprano). Company CBSO Youth Chorus. Company CBSO Chorus. Company City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra. Conductor Ludovic Morlot. | |
| 15 Aug 18 | Royal Albert Hall, Inner London :: V221 listing details L0268837624 |
Bang on a Can All-Stars - T01965968326Expect everything from avant-garde Minimalism to rock and funk in this 30th-birthday concert by American music pioneers Bang on a Can, who perform works by Louis Andriessen, Philip Glass and others alongside a world premiere by Michael Gordon.Company BBC Proms Youth Ensemble. Company Bang on a Can All-Stars. Conductor Rumon Gamba. | |
| 17 Aug 17 | Royal Albert Hall, Inner London :: V221 listing details L1977547197 |
Shakespeare: Stage and Screen - T0586413502This transatlantic Prom presents a range of Shakespeare's characters as reflected on stage and screen - with an all-British first half and a second half devoted to American musicals, conducted by the US-born Keith Lockhart.Company BBC Concert Orchestra. Conductor Keith Lockhart. | |
| 18 Aug 16 | Royal Albert Hall, Inner London :: V221 listing details L0319661324 |
West-Eastern Divan Orchestra and Daniel Barenboim - T01131467182Daniel 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. Finish time approx. 21:55Performer Guy Braunstein (violin). Performer Kian Soltani (cello). Company West-Eastern Divan Orchestra. Conductor Daniel Barenboim (piano / conductor). | |
| 18 Aug 15 | Royal Albert Hall, Inner London :: V221 listing details L1413546805 |
Berlioz - Symphonie fantastique - T01897864442This 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. Finish time approx. 21:00Performer Truls Mork (cello). Company Melbourne Symphony Orchestra. Conductor Andrew Davis (Sir). | |
| 19 Aug 14 | Royal Albert Hall, Inner London :: V221 listing details L257232697 |
Stravinsky, Penderecki, Debussy & Ravel - T0993082026Brilliance and brevity as Stravinsky's Fireworks opens a concert in which Charles Dutoit and the RPO explore the sensuous orchestrations of Debussy's La mer and the second suite from Ravel's Daphnis and Chloe. The Proms focus on Polish music continues as Leonard Elschenbroich, Daniel M?ller-Schott and Arto Noras are the soloists in the Concerto grosso by Krzysztof Penderecki, 80 this year. Written in 2000 and championed by Dutoit in Tokyo, Philadelphia and Chicago, the concerto plays with Baroque forms, pitting the trio of cellists against choirs of woodwind. Finish time: approx. 21:30Performer Leonard Elschenbroich (cello). Performer Daniel Muller-Schott (cello). Performer Arto Noras (cello). Company Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. Conductor Charles Dutoit. | |
| 15 Aug 13 | Royal Albert Hall, Inner London :: V221 listing details L01196049207 |
London Sinfonietta - T791249458Tonight's pocket history of post-war music, reflecting Radio 3's Fifty Modern Classics, opens with Ligeti's playful Poeme for 100 ticking metronomes. In Berio's solo trombone extravaganza the player employs many extended techniques and at one point turns to the audience to ask, ?Why?' Xenakis makes lively play out of rigorous patternings and Cage - whose centenary we mark this year - removes the idea of a sound source altogether. Before that notorious provocation there's Jonathan Harvey's haunting electronic amalgam of a Winchester Cathedral bell and the voice of his boy chorister son, and Louis Andriessen's thrilling, hard-Minimalist musical clock. There will be no interval. Finish time approx. 23:30Performer Byron Fulcher (trombone). Company Sound Intermedia. Company London Sinfonietta. Company London Sinfonietta Academy Ensemble. Conductor Andre Ridder. | |
| 14 Aug 12 | Royal Albert Hall, Inner London :: V221 listing details L19002005 |
Shostakovich/Stravinsky & Tchaikovsky - T0301658115Former BBC Radio 3 New Generation Artist Lisa Batiashvili has a special relationship with Shostakovich's profoundly moving concerto, as she demonstrated in a recent recording with tonight's conductor. She sees the work as peculiarly emblematic of the Soviet era, whose later days she experienced at first hand - a metaphorical escape and symbol of freedom for those struggling to function within the system. Stravinsky's tragic puppet love triangle dazzles in its 1947 revision, while Tchaikovsky's Russian-sounding music animates Dante's timeless tale of forbidden love and eternal punishment. Finish time: approx. 22:05Performer Lisa Batiashvili (violin). Company Philharmonia Orchestra. Conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen. | |
| 17 Aug 11 | Royal Albert Hall, Inner London :: V221 listing details L1708779884 |
Russian National Orchestra - T1812372692Celebrating its 20th annivesrary this year, the Russian National Orchestra returns to the Proms with its founder, Mikhail Pletnev, folowing a 14-year absence. After the drama of Beethoven's powerful overture to the play Coriolan (whose titular Roman general had inspired Shakespeare 200 years earlier), Nikolai Lugansky, one of today's renowned Rachmaninov players, takes the solo role in the variations of the 'Paganini' Rhapsody – the first of a sequence of great pianists appearing at the Proms over the coming week. Tchaikovsky's Suite No. 3 - a form which the composer found more liberating than the conventions of the symphony - ends with another set of flamboyant variations. Finish time: approx. 21:25Conductor Mikhail Pletnev. Company Russian National Orchestra. Performer Nikolai Lugansky (piano). | |
| 18 Aug 10 | Royal Albert Hall, Inner London :: V221 listing details L01482526977 |
Budapest Festival Orchestra - T223640849Hungary's leading orchestra returns to the Proms, this time with Leonidas Kavakos, the soloist in Bartók's Second Violin Concerto, which combines breathtaking virtuosity with passionate lyricism. Prokofiev wrote his klezmer-tinged overture in New York in 1919 for a group of Jewish refugees who had all been fellow-students of his in St Petersburg; his 1934 arrangement, for a Haydn-sized band, was made two years before his return to the USSR. Dvorák's most darkly dramatic and passionate symphony, commissioned by the Philharmonic Society of London and premiered under its auspices in 1885, has remained especially popular with UK audiences ever since. Approx finish time: 21:10. Live on BBC Radio 3 | |
| 18 Aug 09 | Royal Albert Hall, Inner London :: V221 listing details L349121360 |
BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra - T02024493266Finish time approx. 21:35Music Elliott Carter (10 mins)). Music Prokofiev (38 mins)). Music Beethoven (40 mins)). Performer Nicolas Hodges (piano). Performer Alban Gerhardt (cello). Company BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra. Conductor Ilan Volkov. | |
| 18 Aug 08 | Royal Albert Hall, Inner London :: V221 listing details L1470205185 |
T0691742115Finish time approx. 23:30Conductor Martyn Brabbins. Performer Colin Currie (percussion). Performer Solveig Kringelborn (soprano). Performer Martin Robertson (alto saxophone). Company BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra. Performer Peter Erskine (drums). Music James MacMillan (Veni veni Emmanuel - Proms Firsts World Premiere 1992). Music Lutoslawski (Chantefleurs et Chantefables - Proms Firsts World Premiere 1991). Music Harrison Birtwistle (Sir - Panic - Proms Firsts World Premiere 1995). | |
| 16 Aug 07 | Royal Albert Hall, Inner London :: V221 listing details L303216972 |
T582175820Finish time approx. 21:25Conductor Ivan Fischer. Company Budapest Festival Orchestra. Music Dohnanyi (Symphonic Minutes). Music Bartok (Piano Concerto No 3). Music Stravinsky (The Rite of Spring). | |
| 16 Aug 06 | Royal Albert Hall, Inner London :: V221 listing details L50347863 |
T1534558132Company Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. Conductor Daniele Gatti. Performer Christine Schafer (soprano). Music Berg (Lulu Suite). Music Mahler (Symphony No 4 in G major). | |
| 17 Aug 05 | Royal Albert Hall, Inner London :: V221 listing details L0997947041 |
T1648925492Finish time approx. 21:40Music Hans Werner Henze (Symphony No 10 - UK premiere). Music Mozart (Piano Concerto No 20 in D minor K466). Music R. Strauss (Don Juan). Performer Richard Goode (piano). Company Hamburg Philharmonic Orchestra. Conductor Ingo Metzmacher. | |
| 18 Aug 04 | Royal Albert Hall, Inner London :: V221 listing details L0455425313 |
T01283774619Music Mozart (Concerto in F major for three pianos K242). Music Beethoven (Symphony No 3 in E flat major - Eroica). Company West-Eastern Divan Orchestra. Performer Saleem Abboud-Ashkar (piano). Performer Shai Wosner (piano). Conductor Daniel Barenboim (piano). | |
| 22 Aug 03 | Royal Albert Hall, Inner London :: V221 listing details L0431347852 |
T01104144329Company Gustav Mahler Jugendorchester. Conductor Claudio Abbado. Performer Martha Argerich (piano). Music Bartok (Bartok (Music for Strings Percussion and Celesta). Music Ravel (Piano Concerto in G major). Music Debussy (La mer). | |
| 22 Aug 02 | Royal Albert Hall, Inner London :: V221 listing details L1576952014 |
T0961308041Music Britten (Sinfonia da Requiem). Music Verdi (Four Sacred Pieces). Music Beethoven (Piano Concerto No 5 in E flat major 'Emperor'). Performer Yefim Bronfman (piano). Company London Symphony Chorus. Company London Symphony Orchestra. Conductor Antonio Pappano. | |
| 23 Aug 01 | Royal Albert Hall, Inner London :: V221 listing details L0292973554 |
T352081088Music Pierre Boulez (Rituel: in memoriam; Bruno Maderna). Music Mahler (Symphony No 4 in G major). Performer Janice Watson (soprano). Company London Philharmonic Orchestra. Conductor Mark Wigglesworth. | |
| 17 Aug 00 | Royal Albert Hall, Inner London :: V221 listing details L1293616667 |
T01928031661Music Rakhmaninov (The Isle of the Dead). Music Bartok (Piano Concerto No 3). Music Gyorgy Kurtag (Messages UK premiere). Music Stravinsky (Petrushka). Performer Pierre-Laurent Aimard (piano). Company BBC Singers. Company BBC Symphony Orchestra. Conductor Peter Eotvos. | |
| 20 Aug 99 | Royal Albert Hall, Inner London :: V221 listing details L01149447974 |
| 20 Aug 99 | Royal Albert Hall, Inner London :: V221 listing details L1308239840 |
T211568372Music Tchaikovsky (Overture '1812'). Music Szymanowski (Symphony No 4 'Sinfonia Concertante'). Music Shostakovich (Symphony No 13 'Babi Yar'). Performer Howard Shelley (piano). Performer Sergei Aleksashkin (bass). Conductor Vassily Sinaisky. Company Leeds Festival Chorus. Company Huddersfield Choral Society. Company BBC Philharmonic. | |
| 21 Aug 98 | Royal Albert Hall, Inner London :: V221 listing details L01421278483 |
