Explore the breadth of music celebrated at the Proms via this weekly curated television show. The BBC Proms, or The Henry Wood Promenade Concerts presented by the BBC, is an eight-week summer season of daily orchestral classical music concerts and other events held annually, predominantly in the Royal Albert Hall in London.
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Episodes
Specials
11 episodes
S0 E1 · Proms Extra 2013 - Episode 1
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.
S0 E2 · Proms Extra 2013 - Episode 2
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.
S0 E3 · Proms Extra 2013 - Episode 3
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.
S0 E4 · Proms Extra 2013 - Episode 4
No summary.
S0 E5 · Proms Extra 2013 - Episode 5
No summary.
S0 E6 · Proms Extra 2013 - Episode 6
No summary.
S0 E7 · 20th Century Classics - New Music at the Proms
No summary.
S0 E8 · Last Night from Around the UK
Josie D'Arby and Zeb Soanes present highlights from the Last Night of the Proms celebrations around the UK, giving a flavour of the individual nations' unique concert events. Former Spice Girl Melanie C, Alfie Boe and violinist Jennifer Pike mark the return of the Scottish event to Glasgow Green. In Wales, set against the backdrop of Caerphilly Castle, featured performers include trumpeter Alison Balsom and West End stars John Owen Jones and Sophie Evans. Soprano Katherine Jenkins, violinist Chloe Hanslip and Lithuanian accordion player Martynas entertain the crowds gathered on the spectacular quayside at the Titanic Visitor Centre in Belfast, and in London's Hyde Park, Bryan Ferry, tenor Joseph Calleja and Nigel Kennedy provide added sparkle to the festivities, drawing this summer's Proms season to a close.
S0 E9 · Beethoveniana
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.
S0 E10 · New Music at the Proms with Tom Service
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 spinetingling Let There Be Light, and Errolyn Wallen’s ecstatic new work The Whole World, for the National Youth Orchestra.
S0 E11 · Unmissable Moments
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.
1947
1 episode
S1 E1 · First Broadcast
The BBC broadcast the Last Night at the Proms for the first time on Saturday the 6th of September 1947
1948
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1950
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1951
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1952
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1953
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1954
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1955
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1956
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1957
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1963
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1964
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1965
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1966
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1967
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1968
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1969
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1970
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The first Proms to be broadcast in colour
1971
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1972
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1973
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1974
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1975
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1976
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1977
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1978
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1979
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1980
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Strike action resulted in cancellation of 1980 Prom broadcasts.
1981
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1982
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1983
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1984
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1985
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1986
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1987
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1988
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2001
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2003
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2004
1 episode
S58 E74 · Last Night of the Proms
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)
2005
1 episode
S59 E1 · Michael Berkeley, Benjamin Britten and Vaughan Williams
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.
2006
3 episodes
S60 E7 · Wednesday 19 July 2006
No summary.
S60 E62 · Thursday 31 August 2006
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
S60 E101 · Mozart at the Proms
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.
2007
0 episodes
2008
2 episodes
S62 E13 · Doctor Who at the Proms
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)
S62 E49 · National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain
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.
2009
25 episodes
S63 E1 · Prom 01 - First Night of the Proms 2009
No summary.
S63 E2 · Prom 9
No summary.
S63 E3 · Prom 10 - Orchestra National de Lyon
No summary.
S63 E4 · Prom 12 - 1934
No summary.
S63 E5 · Prom 19 - Berlioz and Mendelssohn
No summary.
S63 E6 · Prom 20 - Stravinsky and Schumann
No summary.
S63 E7 · Prom 22 - A Celebration of Classic MGM Film Musicals
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
S63 E8 · Prom 29 - Mendelssohns Italian Symphony
No summary.
S63 E9 · Prom 30 - Knussen Conducts Knussen
No summary.
S63 E10 · Prom 31: National Youth Orchestra
No summary.
S63 E11 · Prom 38: Stravinsky's Rite of Spring
No summary.
S63 E12 · Prom 39: Birtwistle's Mask of Orpheus
No summary.
S63 E13 · Prom 36: Handel Anniversary Highlights
No summary.
S63 E14 · Prom 47: Handel's Samson
No summary.
S63 E15 · Prom 48: Barenboim and West-Eastern Divan
No summary.
S63 E16 · Prom 50: Beethoven's Fidelio
No summary.
S63 E17 · Prom 56: Lang Lang Plays Chopin
No summary.
S63 E18 · Prom 57: Tchaikovsky Night
No summary.
S63 E19 · Prom 59: Tonhalle 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.
S63 E20 · Prom 64: Jurowski & London Philharmonic
No summary.
S63 E21 · Prom 65: Gustav Mahler Jugendorchester
No summary.
S63 E22 · Prom 53: Composers of the Year
No summary.
S63 E23 · Prom 73: Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra
No summary.
S63 E24 · Prom 40: Beethoven's 9th Symphony
No summary.
S63 E25 · Last Night of the Proms
No summary.
2010
23 episodes
S64 E1 · First Night -Mahler Symphony no 8 in E Flat major
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
S64 E2 · Wagner - Die Meistersinger
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
S64 E4 · Royal Liverpool Philharmonic - Manfred
Schumann - Manfred, Op 115 (orch. Gustav Mahler)
Rachmaninov - Piano Concerto No. 2 in C minor
Tchaikovsky - Manfred
S64 E8 · Britten-Prokofiev-Shostakovich
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
S64 E10 · Doctor Who at the Proms
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.
S64 E18 · Dean-Mahler-Shostakovich
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
S64 E19 · Prom 19 - Sondheim at 80
Marking the 80th birthday of one of Broadway's great innovators, this first ever all-Sondheim Prom draws together leading figures of the opera and theatre worlds, plus some further special guests.
Bryn Terfel – a magnetic Sweeney Todd, as he proved at the Royal Festival Hall in 2007 – leads a starry cast, joined by aspiring young performers supported by the BBC Performing Arts Fund. On the bill are excerpts from the horror-opera Sweeney Todd, the Ingmar Bergman-inspired A Little Night Music and the fairy-tale compendium of Into the Woods, as well as excerpts from Company, Pacific Overtures and Sunday in the Park with George.
S64 E24 · Mahler Symphony No.3 in D minor
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
S64 E26 · Mahler Symphony No.5 in C-Sharp minor(Gergiev)
Mahler Symphony No. 5 in C sharp minor World Orchestra for Peace Valery Gergiev conductor
S64 E29 · National Youth Orchestra
Paul Dukas - L' apprenti sorcier
Julian Anderson - Fantasias
Berlioz - Symphonie fantastique, Op 14
S64 E36 · Chopin-Ravel
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
S64 E37 · Verdi-Dallapiccola-Bruch-Schumann
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
S64 E39 · J.S. Bach
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
S64 E42 · In memoriam Benjamin Britten
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
S64 E46 · The Philharmonia Orchestra
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.
S64 E49 · A Celebration of Rogers & Hammerstein
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
S64 E54 · Turnage-Barber-Sibelius
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
S64 E55 · Jamie Cullum & The Heritage Orchestra
No summary.
S64 E62 · Hindemith-Mahler-Bruckner
Hindemith: Symphony 'Mathis der Maler' (27 mins) Mahler: Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen (17 mins) Christian Gerhaher: baritone Bruckner: Symphony No. 9 in D minor (65 mins) Gustav Mahler Jugendorchester Herbert Blomstedt conductor Commentary in English, vocals with fixed English subtitles Interval cut
S64 E63 · Rameau-Canteloube-Matalon
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
S64 E66 · Simon Rattle & Berliner Philharmoniker
Wagner - Parsifal
R. Strauss - Vier Letzte Lieder
Schoenberg - Five Orchestral Pieces, Op. 16
Webern - Six Pieces, Op 6
Berg - Three Pieces, Op 6
S64 E69 · Royal Scottish National Orchestra
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
S64 E76 · Last Night of The Proms
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
2011
25 episodes
S65 E1 · First Night of the Proms
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
S65 E6 · Weber, Brahms & Stravinsky
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
S65 E9 · Sibelius, Bartók and Janáček
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
S65 E10 · Debussy, Ravel & Falla
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
S65 E11 · Human Planet Prom
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
S65 E13 · Verdi – Requiem
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
S65 E14 · Mahler – Symphony No. 9
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
S65 E15 · Kodály, Bartók & Liszt
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
S65 E20 · Horrible Histories – Free Family Prom
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.
S65 E21 · Strauss, Walton & Prokofiev
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
S65 E24 · Elgar, Grainger & Strauss
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
S65 E25 · Grainger
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
S65 E26 · Debussy, Dutilleux & Ravel
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
S65 E29 · Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra plays Mahler
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
S65 E30 · National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain
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
S65 E31 · Nigel Kennedy plays Bach
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
S65 E38 · Film Music Prom
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
S65 E39 · Spaghetti Western Orchestra
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
S65 E40 · Comedy Prom
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
S65 E48 · Brahms & Schumann
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
S65 E59 · Hooray for Hollywood
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
S65 E67 · Beethoven – Missa Solemnis
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
S65 E74 · Last Night of the Proms
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
2012
26 episodes
S66 E1 · First Night of the Proms
Mark-Anthony Turnage - Canon Fever (3 mins)
Elgar - Overture 'Cockaigne (In London Town)' (15 mins)
Delius - Sea Drift (25 mins)
Tippett - Suite for the Birthday of Prince Charles (16 mins)
Elgar - Coronation Ode (33 mins)
S66 E5 · Strauss, Saariaho & Sibelius
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.
S66 E7 · Handel – Water Music and Music for the Royal Fireworks
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.
S66 E9 · Beethoven Cycle – Symphonies Nos. 1 & 2
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
S66 E10 · Beethoven Cycle – Symphonies Nos. 3 & 4
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.
S66 E12 · Beethoven Cycle – Symphonies Nos. 5 & 6
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
S66 E13 · Beethoven Cycle – Symphonies Nos. 7 & 8
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. .
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Beethoven
Pierre Boulez
Daniel Barenboim
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Beethoven - Symphony No 8 (Excerpt)
BBC Proms 2012: Beethoven: Symphony No 7 in A major (Excerpt)Programme notes
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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.
S66 E18 · Beethoven Cycle – Symphony No. 9, 'Choral'
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?
S66 E20 · The Wallace and Gromit Prom
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.
S66 E26 · Bach – Mass in B minor
No summary.
S66 E27 · Wagner & Bruckner
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.
S66 E29 · National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain
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
S66 E32 · Bernstein – Mass
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
S66 E33 · Wagner, Bruckner & MacMillan
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.
S66 E36 · Glamorous Night: A Celebration of Ivor Novello
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
S66 E38 · National Youth Jazz Orchestra
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.
S66 E45 · São Paulo Symphony Orchestra
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.
S66 E48 · Weber, Mahler & Tchaikovsky
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
S66 E49 · Gilbert & Sullivan – The Yeomen of the Guard
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.
S66 E57 · Wagner, Berg, R. Strauss & Ravel
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.
S66 E59 · The Broadway Sound
John Wilson Orchestra Maida Vale Singers John Wilson: conductor After last year’s celebration of the Hollywood screen musical, John Wilson and his high-octane orchestra – whose technicoloured performances, according to one critic, offer ‘the auditory equivalent of a steam-clean’ – present a tribute to the composers and arrangers responsible for creating the Broadway Sound – among them such legendary tunesmiths as Jerome Kern, Cole Porter, Irving Berlin, Vincent Youmans, Richard Rodgers and Frank Loesser. With a cast of leading soloists, the concert includes excerpts from Show Boat, No, No, Nanette, On Your Toes, Kiss Me, Kate and Annie Get Your Gun.
S66 E61 · Howells & Elgar
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.
S66 E76 · Last Night of the Proms 2012
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
2013
29 episodes
The 119th season of the BBC Proms, broadcast in 2013.
S67 E1 · First Night of the Proms
The greatest classical music festival in the world gets underway from the Royal Albert Hall. Katie Derham introduces music on a sea-inspired theme by English composers Vaughan Williams and Britten and two sets of the well-known Paganini variations by Rachmaninov and Polish composer Lutoslawski. There is also the world premiere of Julian Anderson's Harmony.
Sakari Oramo conducts the BBC Symphony Orchestra, BBC Symphony Chorus and the BBC Proms Youth Choir and soloists Stephen Hough (piano), Sally Mathews (soprano) and Roderick Williams (baritone).
S67 E2 · Proms on Four: Orchestras of the World - Bamberg Symphony Orchestra
From the Royal Albert Hall, the Bamberg Symphony Orchestra conducted by Jonathan Nott perform Mahler's Fifth Symphony, opening a Thursday night season featuring Orchestras of the World at the BBC Proms.
Katie Derham introduces this popular work by Mahler with its intensely lyrical fourth movement, the Adagietto, written as a love letter to the composer's young wife Alma and later made famous when featured in the film Death in Venice.
S67 E3 · Proms on Four: Friday Night at the Proms - BBC Philharmonic Orchestra
From the Royal Albert Hall, Samira Ahmed introduces the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Juanjo Mena, who perform Rachmaninov's Piano Concerto No 2 and Nielsen's Fourth Symphony. The piano soloist is the extraordinary young Japanese pianist Nobuyuki Tsujii, whose blindness is no barrier to his musical talent. Nielsen's Fourth Symphony, 'The Inextinguishable', features a battle between two sets of timpani.
S67 E4 · Proms on Four: Orchestras of the World - Santa Cecilia Orchestra
A rare opportunity to hear the Orchestra of the Academy of Santa Cecilia, Rome conducted by Sir Antonio Pappano at the Royal Albert Hall. The Prom begins with a classical gem, Mozart's Haffner Symphony, and ends with the melancholy and high drama of Rachmaninov's Second Symphony. 18-year-old Canadian piano phenomenon Jan Lisiecki makes his Proms debut as the soloist in Schumann's Piano Concerto.
S67 E5 · Proms on Four: Friday Night at the Proms - National Youth Orchestra USA
The newly-formed National Youth Orchestra of the USA comes to the Proms under the conductor Valery Gergiev, performing Tchaikovsky's Violin Concerto with Proms favourite Joshua Bell as soloist and Shostakovich's 10th Symphony, a stirring and powerful musical protest against oppression.
S67 E6 · Proms on Four: 20th Century Classics - BBC Symphony Orchestra
Leading British composer Thomas Adès joins presenter Tom Service to reflect on his new work Totentanz, or Dance of Death, which receives its world premiere at the Royal Albert Hall. Adès himself conducts the BBC Symphony Orchestra in a programme which also features Benjamin Britten's Sinfonia da Requiem and Polish composer Witold Lutoslawski's Cello Concerto with soloist Paul Watkins.
S67 E7 · Proms on Four: Orchestras of the World - Mahler Chamber Orchestra
From the Royal Albert Hall, Katie Derham introduces the Mahler Chamber Orchestra, a truly international orchestra whose players come from 20 different countries. Formed in 1997 it has rapidly established a reputation as one of Europe's best ensembles. Under conductor Daniel Harding it plays symphonies by Schumann and Sibelius and is joined by the Liverpool-born pianist Paul Lewis for a performance of Mozart's Piano Concerto no 25.
S67 E8 · Proms on Four: Friday Night at the Proms - BBC Philharmonic Orchestra
A Prom concert of music and dance introduced by Samira Ahmed from the Royal Albert Hall. The Antonio Marquez Company from Spain joins the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra to dance in Ravel's Bolero and Falla's Three-Cornered Hat. Before that, Juanjo Mena conducts a performance of Beethoven's 7th Symphony, described famously by Wagner as 'the apotheosis of the dance'.
S67 E9 · BBC National Orchestra of Wales
The Sunday series at the Proms continues with an all-Russian programme of Prokofiev and Shostakovich, performed by Danish conductor Thomas Sondergard with the BBC National Orchestra of Wales at the Royal Albert Hall.
Tom Service presents his distinctive take on the music, featuring soloist Daniel Hope in Prokofiev's Violin Concerto No 2 in G minor, followed by Shostakovich's mighty Symphony No 11, The Year 1905.
S67 E10 · Proms on Four: Orchestras of the World - Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra
The Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra conducted by Mariss Jansons performs Piano Concerto No 4 by Beethoven (soloist Mitsuko Uchida) and Symphonie Fantastique by Berlioz.
S67 E11 · Proms on Four: Friday Night at the Proms - BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra
Beethoven's 5th Symphony headlines this Prom, the most iconic symphony in western music with its dramatic opening 'fate' motif. The symphony is preceded by Beethoven's Coriolan Overture, a work of contained ferocity. In contrast the concert opens with Strauss's Blue Danube Waltz, the ultimate expression of the pleasures of Viennese high society.
Donald Runnicles conducts the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra. Introduced from the Royal Albert Hall by Suzy Klein.
S67 E12 · The Urban Prom 2013
Sarah-Jane Crawford and Charlie Sloth present the first ever Urban Prom from the Royal Albert Hall. A selection of artists sing and rap their biggest hits - including gospel singer Laura Mvula, hip-hop star Wretch 32, rapper/producer/DJ/songwriter Fazer, old-school soul rapper Maverick Sabre, soul singing maverick Jacob Banks and UK grime scene sensation Lady Leshurr rapping with Labrinth - all performing alongside the BBC Symphony Orchestra. The euphoric musical experience is led by conductor and arranger Jules Buckley, who has created a unique, unforgettable Prom.
S67 E13 · Proms on Four: Orchestras of the World - Santa Cecilia Orchestra
From the Royal Albert Hall, the Santa Cecilia Orchestra and Chorus, based in Rome and conducted by Sir Antonio Pappano, bring an authentically Italian touch to a celebration of the 200th anniversary of Verdi's birth.
In a concert featuring his religious works, Italian soprano Maria Agresta makes her Proms debut singing rarely performed settings of Ave Maria and Libera Me. The Prom concludes with Verdi's final work, Four Sacred Pieces, completed a few years before his death in 1901.
S67 E14 · Proms on Four: Friday Night at the Proms - Bach Oratorios
Sir John Eliot Gardiner, one of the pre-eminent exponents of the music of JS Bach, returns to the Proms with the Monteverdi Choir and English Baroque Soloists in two profoundly moving works based on events in the life of Christ, the Easter Oratorio and the Ascension Oratorio. Introduced by Suzy Klein.
S67 E15 · Proms on Four: 20th Century Classics - New Music at the Proms
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.
S67 E16 · Proms on Four: Orchestras of the World - Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra
From the Royal Albert Hall, the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra, under their charismatic French-Canadian conductor Yannick Nezet-Seguin, bring a programme of ill-fated love to the BBC Proms. Tchaikovsky's fantasy overture Romeo and Juliet is followed by Wagner's Wesendonck Leider, a song cycle inspired by the composer's infatuation with the wife of one of his wealthy patrons. Soprano Anna Caterina Antonacci is the soloist. The concert ends with a performance of one of the great orchestral works of the 20th century, Prokofiev's 5th Symphony. Presented by Katie Derham.
S67 E17 · Nigel Kennedy at the Proms
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.
S67 E18 · Proms on Four: 20th Century Classics - London Symphony Orchestra
Tom Service presents a thoroughly British edition of his series focusing on 20th century music at the Proms, performed by the London Symphony Orchestra conducted by Daniel Harding. Music includes Michael Tippett's Concerto for Double String Orchestra, Benjamin Britten's Les Illuminations featuring tenor Ian Bostridge, and Elgar's Second Symphony. The concert is dedicated to Sir Colin Davis, president of the London Symphony Orchestra, who died earlier this year.
S67 E19 · Doctor Who at the Proms (2013)
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.
S67 E20 · Proms on Four: Orchestras of the World - Gustav Mahler Youth Orchestra
From the Royal Albert Hall, Katie Derham introduces the Gustav Mahler Jurgendorchester, which brings together some of Europe's best young musicians and is one of the most musically exciting and polished youth orchestras in the world. Conducted by Philippe Jordan, the orchestra performs Wagner's Rienzi Overture and Shostakovich's Fifth Symphony and is joined by the flamboyant French pianist Jean-Yves Thibaudet for Ravel's jazz-influenced Piano Concerto in G Major.
S67 E21 · Proms on Four: John Wilson's Hollywood Rhapsody
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.
(Prom 59)
S67 E22 · Proms on Four: Tristan and Isolde
As part of the Wagner bicentenary celebrations at the Proms, Tom Service is at the Royal Albert Hall for a concert performance of Wagner's mighty Tristan and Isolde, the opera that marked a defining moment in the evolution of modern music. Semyon Bychkov conducts the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Violeta Urmana and Robert Dean Smith are the lovers for whom the sweet embrace of death beckons. Tom talks to writer and Wagnerite Philip Hensher, while conductor and cast explain the herculean physical and emotional endurance the opera demands of them.
S67 E23 · Proms on Four: Orchestras of the World - Sinfonica di Milano
Making their Proms debut, the Orchestra Sinfonica di Milano Guiseppe Verdi are joined by Maltese tenor Joseph Calleja to celebrate the bicentenary of Verdi's birth with a feast of his arias. With their Chinese-American conductor Xian Zhang, the orchestra also take us on a lovelorn trek through the Alps in Tchaikovsky's Manfred Symphony, based on a poem by Lord Byron.
S67 E24 · Proms on Four: Friday Night at the Proms - National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain
The National Youth Orchestra under conductor Vasily Petrenko are joined by the National Youth Choir, the Irish Youth Chamber Choir, Codetta and a line-up of international soloists to perform Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, the Choral, and new commission Frieze by British composer Mark-Anthony Turnage, based on ideas from the Choral Symphony. Introduced by Simon Russell Beale.
S67 E25 · Last Night of the Proms - Part 1
Live from the Royal Albert Hall Katie Derham introduces the final concert of the 2013 Proms season.
History is in the making as conductor Marin Alsop takes charge of her first Last Night. Violinist Nigel Kennedy and mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDinato are the star soloists in a programme that includes Vaughan Williams' Lark Ascending and arias by Massenet, Handel and Rossini. The concert begins with a celebratory new piece by composer Anna Clyne and there are works by anniversary composers Wagner and Britten, as well Bernstein's Chichester Psalms for chorus and orchestra.
S67 E26 · Last Night of the Proms - Part 2
Live from the Royal Albert Hall, the grand finale to the 2013 Proms, with soloists Nigel Kennedy and Joyce DiDonato and the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Chorus under Marin Alsop.
S67 E27 · Proms on Four: The Film Music Prom
Neil Brand presents a special night of music from the movies, with war and science-fiction looming large. Keith Lockhart conducts the BBC Concert Orchestra at the Royal Albert Hall in Walton's largely-rejected original score for Battle of Britain, Bond composer David Arnold's Independence Day end titles, and Richard Strauss and Ligeti as used by Stanley Kubrick in 2001: A Space Odyssey.
Also, possibly the most famous film music ever - John Williams's Star Wars, a world premiere of Giacchino's music for Star Trek: Into Darkness and much more.
S67 E28 · Britten at the Proms
From the Royal Albert Hall, Petroc Trelawny presents a Prom to mark the centenary of the birth of Benjamin Britten, one of the greatest British composers of the 20th century. The virtuoso violinist Janine Jansen joins the Orchestre de Paris and conductor Paavo Jarvi to perform one of Britten's masterworks, the evocative Violin Concerto. Also in the programme is Arvo Part's Cantus in Memoriam Benjamin Britten, Berlioz's overture Le Corsaire and Saint-Saens's Organ Symphony with soloist Thierry Escaich.
S67 E101 · Last Night from Around the UK
Josie D'Arby and Zeb Soanes present highlights from the Last Night of the Proms celebrations around the UK, giving a flavour of the individual nations' unique concert events.
Former Spice Girl Melanie C, Alfie Boe and violinist Jennifer Pike mark the return of the Scottish event to Glasgow Green. In Wales, set against the backdrop of Caerphilly Castle, featured performers include trumpeter Alison Balsom and West End stars John Owen Jones and Sophie Evans.
Soprano Katherine Jenkins, violinist Chloe Hanslip and Lithuanian accordion player Martynas entertain the crowds gathered on the spectacular quayside at the Titanic Visitor Centre in Belfast, and in London's Hyde Park, Bryan Ferry, tenor Joseph Calleja and Nigel Kennedy provide added sparkle to the festivities, drawing this summer's Proms season to a close.
2014
0 episodes
2015
26 episodes
S69 E1 · First Night of the Proms
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.
S69 E2 · Ten Pieces Prom
Join CBBC presenters Barney Harwood and Dick and Dom for an introduction to some of the greatest pieces of classical music and a celebration of children’s creative responses to them.
S69 E3 · Ten Piece Prom
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.
S69 E4 · Beethoven - Symphony No.9
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.
S69 E5 · Haydn, HK Gruber & Stravinsky
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'.
S69 E6 · Poulenc, Stravinsky, Haydn & Mozart
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.
S69 E7 · Delius, Nielsen, Hugh Wood & Ravel
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'.
S69 E10 · Beethoven Piano Concertos
Leif Ove Andsnes continues his survey of Beethoven’s works for piano and orchestra with the Piano Concerto No. 3 and the ‘Choral Fantasy’.
S69 E13 · Holst - The Planets
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.
S69 E16 · Radio 1 Ibiza Prom
Pete Tong takes charge of the BBC Radio 1 Prom and decides to employ 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.
S69 E17 · Hallé - Debussy, Vaughan Williams & Elgar
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'.
S69 E19 · Alina Ibragimova plays Bach (1)
Virtuoso violinist Alina Ibragimova has the stage to herself for an evening of solo works by Bach.
S69 E21 · Alina Ibragimova plays Bach (2)
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.
S69 E22 · Aurora Orchestra
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.
S69 E24 · James MacMillan & Mahler
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.
S69 E30 · The John Wilson Orchestra performs Frank Sinatra
Seth MacFarlane and other guest vocalists join the John Wilson Orchestra to celebrate the centenary of Frank Sinatra in this Late Night Prom.
S69 E31 · National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain
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.
S69 E32 · Eric Whitacre and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra
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'.
S69 E34 · Bournemouth Symphony Orchestr
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'.
S69 E44 · West-Eastern Divan Orchestra and Daniel Barenboim
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.
S69 E46 · Danish National Symphony Orchestra
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.
S69 E50 · Bach - Goldberg Variations
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.
S69 E57 · Chamber Orchestra of Europe and Bernard Haitink
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.
S69 E67 · Bernstein - Stage and Screen
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'.
S69 E68 · Bach - Six Cello Suites
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.
S69 E76 · Last Night of the Proms 2015
Pianist Benjamin Grosvenor, soprano Danielle de Niese and tenor Jonas Kaufmann are the stars at this year’s Last Night. The programme includes Richard Strauss, Shostakovich, Grieg and much more …
2016
1 episode
S70 E56 · CBeebies Prom: A Musical Journey
CBeebies favourites take a musical journey through the countryside, around the world, back in time and into space with the BBC Concert Orchestra and conductor Jessica Cottis. Enjoy inspirational classical pieces and CBeebies themes while joining in with Andy, Cat, Chris, Gem, Rebecca, Mr Bloom and Mr William Shakespeare at the Royal Albert Hall.
2017
48 episodes
S71 E1 · First Night of the Proms - Part 1
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.
S71 E2 · First Night of the Proms - Part 2
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.
S71 E3 · Barenboim's Elgar
Broadcast of Prom 4: Daniel Barenboim and Staatskapel Berlin
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.
S71 E4 · John Williams’ Film Prom
Broadcast of Prom 8: Celebrating John Williams
Celebrate the 85th birthday of one of the world’s favourite film composers in an evening of big emotions and even bigger melodies.
S71 E5 · Haitink’s Mozart
Broadcast of Prom 3: Bernard Haitink conducts Mozart and Schumann
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, which is paired tonight with his groundbreaking Prague Symphony. Schumann's Second Symphony closes the programme.
S71 E6 · Malcolm Sargent Revisited
Broadcast of Prom 13: Malcolm Sargent's 500th Prom
Nicknamed 'Flash Harry', Sir Malcolm Sargent was the chief conductor of the Proms for two decades, bringing the concerts to TV audiences for the first time. Marking the 50th anniversary of his death, conductor Sir Andrew Davis, the BBC Symphony Orchestra and sensational young pianist Beatrice Rana recreate Sargent's 500th Prom from 1966. Alongside Schumann and Berlioz, there's a feast of English music, including works by Elgar and Holst, culminating in Britten's much-loved Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra.
S71 E7 · Scott Walker Revisited
Broadcast of Prom 15: The Songs of Scott Walker (1967–70)
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.
S71 E8 · Zhang’s Beethoven
Broadcast of Prom 21: Beethoven – Symphony No. 9, ‘Choral’
Beethoven's much-loved Ninth Symphony, with its passionate plea for unity, is performed by the BBC National Orchestra & Chorus of Wales and the CBSO Chorus, conducted by Xian Zhang. Its companion piece is the European premiere of A European Requiem, written in 2015 by the great Scottish composer Sir James MacMillan.
S71 E9 · Beethoven’s Fidelio
Broadcast of Prom 9: Beethoven – Fidelio
Beethoven’s only opera is a passionate musical protest against political oppression that premiered in the wake of the French Revolution. Stuart Skelton stars as the imprisoned Florestan, with soprano Ricarda Merbeth as Leonore. Juanjo Mena conducts.
S71 E10 · Ella and Dizzy Revisited
Broadcast of Prom 27: Ella and Dizzy: A Centenary Tribute
A special Proms tribute to jazz greats Ella Fitzgerald and Dizzy Gillespie, in the centenary year of their births. Grammy Award-winning singer Dianne Reeves and sensational trumpeter James Morrison perform with the BBC Concert Orchestra under the baton of Hollywood music legend John Mauceri, as they showcase some of the music most closely associated with Ella and Dizzy.
S71 E11 · Ades Conducts Stravinsky
Broadcast of Prom 28: National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain
The National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain returns to the BBC Proms under the baton of renowned composer and conductor Thomas Ades. The formidable young musicians perform Stravinsky's thrilling ballet score The Rite of Spring, the London premiere of Mural by Francisco Coll and Ades's own work Polaris.
S71 E12 · Oklahoma!
Broadcast of Prom 35: John Wilson conducts Oklahoma!
Cowboys and farm girls are let loose in the Royal Albert Hall as the John Wilson Orchestra transports us to the Great American Plains in Oklahoma!
Rodgers and Hammerstein's first ever musical was an instant hit when it premiered on Broadway in 1943 and it's not hard to see why - it's chock-full of toe-tapping classics, including Oh, What a Beautiful Mornin', People Will Say We're in Love, and of course the title song itself. With a stellar cast, sensational dance numbers and the unique energy of the John Wilson Orchestra, the magic of the original lives on in 2017.
S71 E13 · Dausgaard’s Rachmaninov
Broadcast of Prom 37: Rachmaninov – Piano Concerto No. 3
This all-Rachmaninov programme features two of the composer's greatest and most-loved works performed by the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra under conductor Thomas Dausgaard.
Alexander Gavrylyuk is the soloist for the famously demanding Third Piano Concerto, which is followed by the capricious and impassioned Second Symphony. The Latvian Radio Choir joins the line-up, setting both pieces alongside the Russian Orthodox chants that the composer would have known.
S71 E14 · Beethoven’s Eroica Revisited
Broadcast of Prom 10: Aurora Orchestra – Beethoven’s ‘Eroica’
The fearlessly brilliant members of Aurora Orchestra put Beethoven's revolutionary Eroica Symphony under the Proms microscope.
Presenter Tom Service and conductor Nicholas Collon perform a lively and revealing on-stage dissection of the score that changed musical history. The Prom culminates with a full performance of the symphony, which the orchestra will play entirely from memory.
S71 E15 · Philip Glass and Ravi Shankar
Broadcast of Prom 41: Philip Glass and Ravi Shankar
Two goliaths of 20th-century music, Ravi Shankar and Philip Glass, recorded the studio album Passages together in 1989. The result was a unique fusion of Hindustani sitar music with American minimalism.
Tonight the album is performed live and in full for the first time, with Shankar's daughter Anoushka playing the sitar alongside a dazzling array of Indian soloists and the Britten Sinfonia, conducted by Karen Kamensek.
S71 E16 · Bach’s St John Passion
Broadcast of Prom 49: Bach’s St John Passion
In one of a series of Proms performances marking the 500th anniversary of the Protestant Reformation, John Butt directs his Dunedin Consort in a complete performance of Bach's powerful St John Passion, with Nicolas Mulroy as the Evangelist and Matthew Brook as Jesus. Reflecting the church setting for which it was written, the performance includes congregational singing from the Proms audience.
S71 E17 · Charles Mingus Revisited
Broadcast of Prom 53: Beneath the Underdog: Charles Mingus Revisited
A giant in 20th-century jazz, the legendary composer, bandleader and bass player Charles Mingus is celebrated by conductor Jules Buckley and his Metropole Orkest.
Plus a brilliant line-up of soloists, including saxophonist Shabaka Hutchings, trumpeter Christian Scott and singer Kandace Springs, are on the bill.
S71 E18 · CBSO play Beethoven’s Fifth
Broadcast of Prom 50: Beethoven, Stravinsky and Gerald Barry
Katie Derham introduces the first of six weekly programmes celebrating the 125th anniversary of the Proms, featuring some of the most memorable concerts from the unrivalled Proms archive. Katie is joined by conductor Mirga Gražinyte-Tyla to mark Beethoven’s 250th birthday year with another chance to see her acclaimed Proms appearance with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra from 2017.
As well as a thrillingly fresh interpretation of Beethoven’s famous Fifth Symphony, the concert also includes his Leonore Overture No 3 and a world premiere by Irish maverick Gerald Barry, performed by tenor Allan Clayton. All this alongside Stravinsky’s Violin Concerto in D Major performed by Leila Josefowicz.
S71 E19 · Big Band Swing with Clare Teal
Broadcast of Prom 57: Swing No End
Singer and broadcaster Clare Teal heads the charge in this big band spectacular. Travel back in time with this rip-roaring Prom to the 1930s and 1940s and celebrate the irrepressible music of Duke Ellington, Benny Goodman, Count Basie, Tommy Dorsey, Stan Kenton and more, plus a special tribute to the unassuming giant of the big band world, Mary Lou Williams.
Band leaders Guy Barker and Winston Rollins take to the stage alongside their eponymous big bands with help from a myriad of guest artists.
S71 E20 · Stax with Jools Holland
Broadcast of Prom 65: Stax Records: 50 Years of Soul
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 appear alongside Sir Tom Jones, a longtime fan and interpreter of the Stax songbook.
Both Jones and Moore were part of the 1967 tour and join fellow Stax artists William Bell, Steve Cropper and Eddie Floyd in this unique coming-together. They are joined by more fans of the Stax sound in Beverley Knight, James Morrison, Nadia Rose & Sweetie Irie and Ruby Turner.
S71 E21 · Simon Rattle’s Gurrelieder
Broadcast of Prom 46: Schoenberg – Gurrelieder
In one of the highlights of this year's Proms season, Sir Simon Rattle brings Schoenberg's colossal Gurrelieder to the Royal Albert Hall, uniting the London Symphony Orchestra & Chorus, CBSO Chorus, Orfeo Catala and a stunning line-up of soloists including Eva-Maria Westbroek, Simon O'Neill and speaker Thomas Quasthoff. An epic love story conceived on a Wagnerian scale, it reaches its climax with a truly unforgettable depiction of sunrise.
S71 E22 · Classical Music of India and Pakistan
Broadcast of Prom 55: Classical Music of India and Pakistan
To mark the 70th anniversary of independence from British rule and the subsequent Partition of India from Pakistan and Bangladesh, this special late-night Prom celebrates the power of music to heal and unify. Curated by the cultural heritage trust Darbar, it brings together virtuoso soloists and world-leading groups representing the three great traditions of classical music from India and Pakistan.
From late evening into the night, the concert takes us from the Hindustani music of north India to the Carnatic music of the south, and leads to an ecstatic climax with devotional Sufi qawwali from Pakistan.
S71 E23 · Andras Schiff Plays Bach
Broadcast of Prom 73: Sir András Schiff performs Bach’s The Well-Tempered Clavier
After his extraordinary performance of Bach's Goldberg Variations at the 2015 Proms, world-renowned pianist Sir Andras Schiff returns to the Royal Albert Hall for another solo Bach recital. He performs Book One of Bach's The Well-Tempered Clavier, a cycle that he will complete next year with Book Two. Almost three centuries after Bach composed his two sequences of preludes and fugues in all 24 keys, 'the 48' remains a touchstone for all great pianists.
S71 E24 · Dvořák and Bartók
Broadcast of Prom 70: Missy Mazzoli, Bartók and Dvořák
Bartok's sparkling Second Piano Concerto and Dvorak's Eighth Symphony are in the spotlight as American pianist Jeremy Denk joins conductor Karina Canellakis and the BBC Symphony Orchestra. The concert opens with Sinfonia (for Orbiting Spheres) by young American composer Missy Mazzoli, music 'in the shape of the solar system'.
S71 E25 · Chineke! Orchestra with Sheku Kanneh-Mason and Jeanine De Bique
Broadcast of Prom 62: Chineke!
The UK’s first majority BME orchestra, Chineke!, makes its Proms debut. 2016 BBC Young Musician winner, cellist Sheku Kanneh-Mason, is the soloist, and the concert also includes works by composers George Walker and Hannah Kendall.
S71 E26 · Last Night of the Proms - Part One
The BBC Proms 2017 season comes to a close with the BBC Symphony Orchestra and their Finnish chief conductor Sakari Oramo leading proceedings live from London's Royal Albert Hall.
Soprano superstar Nina Stemme performs music from Wagner's Tristan and Isolde, the BBC Symphony Chorus and BBC Singers mark 100 years of Finnish independence with a performance of Sibelius's glorious Finlandia and Kodaly's Budavari Te Deum is performed by soprano Lucy Crowe, mezzo Christine Rice, tenor Ben Johnson and bass John Relyea.
Also on the programme is the world premiere of Finnish composer Lotta Wennakoski's Flounce, as well as a performance of Malcolm Sargent's An Impression on a Windy Day. Presented by Katie Derham.
S71 E27 · Last Night of the Proms - Part Two
The Last Night of the Proms celebrations continue live from the Royal Albert Hall in London. John Adams's seventieth birthday is marked with the London premiere of his exhilarating Lola Montez Does the Spider Dance, and solo star soprano Nina Stemme performs Weill's Surabaya Johnny and The Saga of Jenny, followed by Gershwin's The Lorelei.
The programme takes a trip around the UK with Henry Wood's Fantasia on British Sea Songs, with contributions from the Proms in the Park events in Swansea, Glasgow and Belfast, before the BBC Proms 2017 is brought to a rousing close with Rule Britannia, Land of Hope and Glory and Jerusalem.
The BBC Symphony Orchestra and Chorus and BBC Singers are conducted by Sakari Oramo. Presented by Katie Derham.
S71 E51 · Proms Extra: Episode 1
Katie Derham returns with the magazine show Proms Extra to review the opening week of Proms 2017 with her special guests. 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.
S71 E52 · Proms Extra: Episode 2
Join Katie Derham as she looks back at the week's events from the Proms, with conductors Xian Zhang, Jules Buckley and violinist Tai Murray. This programme focuses on Walton's Facade from the Malcolm Sargent Prom and celebrates the genius of Scott Walker. Plus there is Chord of the Week with David Owen Norris.
S71 E53 · Proms Extra: Episode 3
Katie Derham presents the companion guide to the Proms. Tonight's show has the tenor Stuart Skelton, soprano Ailish Tynan and gospel conductor and composer Ken Burton discussing Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, and a Proms centenary tribute to Ella Fitzgerald and Dizzy Gillespie.
S71 E54 · Proms Extra: Episode 4
Proms Extra continues to explore the Proms season as it passes the halfway mark. Katie Derham is joined by harpist Catrin Finch and singer Julian Ovenden, and the show turns the spotlight on the National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain and their performance of Thomas Ades's Polaris, John Wilson Orchestra's Oklahoma! and David Owen Norris returns with Chord of the Week.
S71 E55 · Proms Extra: Episode 5
Katie Derham 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.
S71 E56 · Proms Extra: Episode 6
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.
S71 E57 · Proms Extra: Episode 7
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.
S71 E61 · Beethoven: Overture ‘Leonore’ No.3
The CBSO perform Beethoven's dramatic overture, celebrating the triumph of truth over tyranny in music of radiant beauty. Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla conducts.
(performance from Prom #50)
S71 E62 · Gerald Barry: Canada
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.
(performance from Prom #50)
S71 E63 · Stravinsky: Violin Concerto in D major
Violinist Leila Josefowicz performs Stravinsky's fiercely brilliant neo-Classical concerto, with the CBSO and Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla.
(Performance from Prom #50)
S71 E64 · David Popper: Hungarian Rhapsody, Op. 68
Sheku Kanneh-Masson performs an arrangement of the Hungarian Rhapsody by the 19th-Century Bohemian cellist and composer David Popper.
(Performance from Prom #62)
S71 E65 · Hannah Kendall: The Spark Catchers
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.
(Performance from Prom #62)
S71 E66 · Rimsky-Korsakov: Capriccio espagnol, Op 34
Rimsky-Korsakov's popular 'Capriccio on Spanish Themes' is based on five lively and exuberant Spanish folk tunes.
(Performance from Prom #62)
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.
S71 E101 · Proms in the Park - Live from Glasgow
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 BBC 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.
S71 E102 · Proms in the Park - Live from Swansea
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 pays 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.
S71 E103 · Proms in the Park - Swansea Highlights
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.
S71 E104 · The Last Night of the Proms from Around the UK
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.
S71 E105 · Proms in the Park - Co Fermanagh Highlights
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.
S71 E106 · Proms in the Park - Highlights from Glasgow 2017
Filmed live from Glasgow Green in September, the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra celebrates the Last Night of the Proms with world class musical entertainment.
Conducted by Stephen Bell, the BBC SSO is joined by a host of musical talent, including Scottish folk singer and Capercaillie lead vocalist Karen Matheson, award-winning jazz singer and BBC Radio 2 presenter Clare Teal, Irish soprano Ailish Tynan as well as comedian and West End musical star Jason Manford.
Actor Tom Urie ticks off a bucket list ambition to sing with an orchestra as he tackles the momentous Nessun Dorma. The evening is presented by tenor and BBC Radio Scotland presenter Jamie MacDougall.
S71 E107 · Proms in the Park: Hyde Park
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.
2018
30 episodes
S72 E1 · First Night of the Proms
An all-British concert launches the 2018 season. Vaughan Williams atmospheric Whitman settings and Holst’s ever-popular 1918 suite The Planets sit alongside a new collaboration by Anna Meredith and 59 Productions.
S72 E3 · BBC Young Musician 40th Anniversary
BBC Young Musician celebrates its 40th birthday with a concert featuring illustrious past winners and finalists, including Nicola Benedetti, Freddy Kempf and Sheku Kanneh-Mason, as well as this year’s winner. With music by Ravel and Saint-Saëns.
S72 E7 · Jacob Collier and Friends
23-year-old vocalist, multi-instrumentalist and arranger Jacob Collier is already a multi-Grammy Award-winner. Here he teams up with Jules Buckley, the Metropole Orkest and special guests Sam Amidon and Take 6 for a special Proms performance.
S72 E8 · Youthful Beginnings
Mendelssohn’s precocious First Piano Concerto joins Schumann’s forward-looking Fourth Symphony and music by Lili Boulanger and Morfydd Owen – both of whom died tragically young – in the BBC National Orchestra of Wales’s first Prom of the season.
S72 E12 · Beethoven, Shostakovich & Rachmaninov
Karina Canellakis directs the BBC Symphony Orchestra in two Russian classics: Rachmaninov’s exhilarating Symphonic Dances and Shostakovich’s First Cello Concerto, with Alisa Weilerstein as soloist. Beethoven’s spirited overture Coriolan opens the concert.
S72 E13 · Pioneers of Sound
The London Contemporary Orchestra leads a late-night tribute to the legacy of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop – pioneers of experimental electronic music – which includes Daphne Oram’s groundbreaking Still Point and music by RW stalwart Delia Derbyshire.
S72 E15 · Paul Lewis plays Beethoven’s ‘Emperor’ concerto
A concert of darkness and light opens with the world premiere of Tansy Davies’s 9/11-inspired What Did We See? and closes with Brahms’s sunny Second Symphony. Paul Lewis joins Ben Gernon and the BBC Philharmonic for Beethoven’s 'Emperor' Concerto.
S72 E17 · Parry, Vaughan Williams & Holst
Vaughan Williams’s The Lark Ascending and Pastoral Symphony sit alongside music by Holst and Parry’s stirring Fifth Symphony in this centenary celebration of Hubert Parry – father of 20th-century English music. Martyn Brabbins conducts the BBC NOW.
S72 E23 · Havana Meets Kingston
Leading reggae and dancehall producer Mister Savona brings together some of Cuba and Jamaica’s most influential musicians for a concert combing the sounds of roots reggae, dub and dancehall with son, salsa and Afro-Cuban to create a new musical fusion.
S72 E27 · Folk Music around Britain and Ireland
The BBC Concert Orchestra collaborates with some of the folk world’s leading musicians, including Julie Fowlis, The Unthanks and Sam Lee, in a concert that celebrates traditional music while also looking to the future of this ever-evolving genre.
S72 E28 · NYO perform Mussorgsky, Ligeti and Debussy
George Benjamin and the National Youth Orchestra in a concert of orchestral masterworks that includes Debussy’s La Mer and Ligeti’s mesmerising Lontano. Pianist Tamara Stefanovich is the soloist in Ravel’s Concerto for the Left Hand.
S72 E33 · Brahms's A German Requiem
Richard Farnes conducts the BBC Symphony Orchestra and soloists Golda Schultz and Johan Reuter in Brahms’s much-loved Requiem. Marking Thea Musgrave’s 90th birthday, the performance opens with her dramatic Phoenix Rising.
S72 E35 · New York: Sound of a City
Celebrating the music of a modern New York, the Heritage Orchestra and conductor Jules Buckley present the sound of NYC. With guest artists drawn from across the Big Apple, expect anything from pagan-gospel and disco-punk to feminist rap or DIY indie.
S72 E41 · Edward Gardner conducts Elgar & Vaughan Williams
The conflict of war runs through this concert by Edward Gardner and the BBC Symphony Orchestra. Vaughan Williams’s beautiful cantata Dona nobis pacem and Lili Boulanger frame Elgar’s elegiac Cello Concerto.
S72 E48 · Sir Simon Rattle conducts L’enfant et les sortilèges
Ravel’s magical opera The Child and the Spells follows his fairy-tale ballet Mother Goose and the oriental aura of Shéhérazade.
Recreating a Prom conducted by Leonard Bernstein in 1987, the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra and Thomas Dausgaard pair two of the best-loved and most beautiful works in the repertoire: Mozart’s Clarinet Concerto and Mahler’s Fifth Symphony.
S72 E55 · Iván Fischer & Budapest Festival Orchestra (II)
Dance to the Gypsy rhythms of Hungarian folk music in works by Liszt and Sarasate, while Brahms’s dramatic First Symphony, with its transcendent finale, is at the heart of this second concert by Iván Fischer and the Budapest Festival Orchestra.
S72 E57 · John Wilson conducts Bernstein's On the Town
Launching a Bernstein bank-holiday weekend on what would have been the composer’s 100th birthday, John Wilson conducts Bernstein’s hit Broadway musical On The Town, which follows the adventures of three sailors on shore leave in 1944.
Bernstein-protégée Marin Alsop returns to the Proms with one of the great American symphony orchestras to perform a politically charged programme that includes Shostakovich’s Fifth Symphony alongside Bernstein’s own Second Symphony.
S72 E63 · Sir András Schiff plays 'The Well-Tempered Clavier' (Book 2)
Following his performance of Book 1 in 2017, distinguished pianist and Bach specialist Sir András Schiff returns to present the complete Book 2 of J. S. Bach’s The Well-Tempered Clavier.
S72 E65 · Youssou Ndour & Le Super Étoile de Dakar
Senegalese cultural icon Youssou Ndour makes his Proms debut in a special late-night appearance. He’s joined by his group Le Super Étoile de Dakar for a performance embracing his signature mix of Cuban rumba, hip hop, jazz and soul.
S72 E70 · Tango Prom
Explore the raw sensuality and charged rhythms of the tango in all its guises. The Britten Sinfonia join forces with a tango band to take the dance from its dusty beginning in the streets of Buenos Aires right up to the present day.
S72 E75 · Last Night of the Proms - Part One
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.
S72 E76 · Last Night of the Proms - Part Two
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.
S72 E101 · Proms in the Park - Live from Glasgow
Jamie MacDougall presents coverage of part one of Scotland's Proms in the Park live from Glasgow Green. Featuring the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra conducted by Stephen Bell, the show features music from a range of styles and a host of guest performers including Sophie Ellis-Bextor, Radio Scotland Young Traditional Musician of the Year Hannah Rarity, soprano Elizabeth Watts, Scottish-Egyptian duet The Ayoub Sisters and, marking their 10th anniversary, a group of young performers from Sistema Scotland.
S72 E102 · BBC Proms in the Park 2018 - Live from Colwyn Bay
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.
S72 E103 · Colwyn Bay Highlights
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.
S72 E104 · The Last Night of the Proms from around the UK
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.
Artists include one of Britain's leading sopranos Elizabeth Watts and pop diva Sophie Ellis-Bextor in Glasgow Green. World-famous classical singer Katherine Jenkins and show-stopping West End star Lee Mead perform at Eirias Park in Colwyn Bay alongside 2018 BBC Young Musician of the Year, pianist Lauren Zhang. Internationally acclaimed Israeli mandolinist Avi Avital and Midge Ure entertain in Titanic Slipways, Belfast, while rising star saxophonist and former Young Musician finalist Jess Gillam, and the sensational voice of soul Gladys Knight, draw the crowds to London's Hyde Park. They all come together for the traditional Last Night celebrations - accompanied by the BBC's orchestras.
S72 E106 · Proms in the Park - Belfast Highlights
This year's extravaganza from Titanic Slipways, Belfast, features a stellar line-up including Midge Ure, Kim Criswell, Xuefei Yang, Avi Avital and Itamar Doari, Karl McGuckin, the Ulster Youth Choir and the Ulster Orchestra under the baton of David Brophy.
S72 E107 · Proms in the Park - Highlights (Glasgow)
Jamie MacDougall presents highlights of Scotland's Proms in the Park on Glasgow Green. Featuring the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra conducted by Stephen Bell, the show features music from a range of styles and a host of guest performers including Sophie Ellis-Bextor, Radio Scotland Young Traditional Musician of the Year Hannah Rarity, soprano Elizabeth Watts and Scottish-Egyptian duet The Ayoub Sisters.
2019
29 episodes
S73 E1 · First Night of the Proms (Part One)
The BBC Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Karina Canellakis, perform Dvorak’s The Golden Spinning Wheel and a commission commemorating the 50th anniversary of the moon landings.
S73 E2 · First Night of the Proms (Part Two)
The BBC Symphony Orchestra and BBC Symphony Chorus, conducted by Karina Canellakis, perform Janácek’s Glagolitic Mass in the second half of First Night of the Proms 2019.
S73 E3 · Joshua Bell plays Dvořák
Join Katie Derham and Jess Gillam at the Royal Albert Hall for a Proms Bohemian rhapsody. The Bamberg Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Jakob Hrusa, perform Smetana’s legendary Ma Vlast and, with American superstar violinist Joshua Bell, Dvorak’s Violin Concerto.
S73 E4 · Schumann, Schoenberg and Mozart
Suzy Klein introduces the BBC Philharmonic and Omer Meir Wellber in a performance of works by Ben-Haim, Schumann, Schoenberg and, with Yeol Eum Son, Mozart's Piano Concerto No 15 in B flat, K450.
S73 E5 · Public Service Broadcasting
Cult band Public Service Broadcasting join the Multi-Story Orchestra and London Contemporary Voices to perform a specially commissioned new arrangement of their 2015 album The Race for Space.
S73 E6 · Nicola Benedetti with the NYO
Mark Wigglesworth conducts the National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain in Auerbach, Prokofiev and, with Nicola Benedetti, Tchaikovsky's Violin Concerto.
S73 E7 · Britten and Mahler
Katie Derham introduces two pieces originally premiered by Proms founder Sir Henry Wood. Leif Ove Andsnes performs Britten’s Piano Concerto while Claudia Mahnke and Stuart Skelton sing Mahler’s poignant Das Lied von der Erde. Edward Gardner conducts the BBC Symphony Orchestra.
S73 E8 · Rachmaninov and Shostakovich
The BBC Philharmonic, conducted by John Storgårds, performs Rachmaninov's The Isle of the Dead, Shostakovich’s Symphony No 11 and the world premiere of Outi Tarkiainen’s Midnight Sun Variations.
S73 E9 · Angélique Kidjo
Three-time Grammy Award-winner Angélique Kidjo makes her Proms debut together with her nine-piece band in a late-night tribute to salsa legend Celia Cruz.
S73 E10 · John Wilson Orchestra
John Wilson's virtuoso orchestra celebrates the music of one of the world's most famous film studios, Warner Brothers, including works by Max Steiner and Erich Korngold.
S73 E11 · The Sound of Space
Cerys Matthews introduces the London Contemporary Orchestra in a late-night Prom featuring sci-fi film music including excerpts from Alien: Covenant, Interstellar, Under the Skin and Gravity.
S73 E12 · Mozart's Requiem
The BBC National Orchestra and Chorus of Wales, conducted by Nathalie Stutzmann, with Fatma Said, Kathryn Rudge, Sunnyboy Dladla and David Shipley in Mozart's Requiem.
S73 E13 · Pappano and the National Youth Orchestra of the USA
Sir Antonio Pappano conducts the National Youth Orchestra of the USA in Benjamin Beckman's Occidentalis, Strauss's Alpine Symphony and, with mezzo Joyce DiDonato, Berlioz's Les nuits d'été.
S73 E14 · Queen Victoria's Playlist
An evening of music to celebrate the 200th anniversary of Queen Victoria's birth including Mendelssohn's 'Scottish' Symphony and First Piano Concerto, performed by Stephen Hough on Victoria's piano.
S73 E15 · Rattle conducts Belshazzar's Feast
The London Symphony Orchestra, LSO Chorus, Orfeó Català and the Orfeó Català Youth Choir, conducted by Sir Simon Rattle, perform works by Koechlin, Varèse and Walton's cantata, Belshazzar's Feast.
S73 E16 · Sheku Plays Elgar
BBC 2016 Young Musician winner and superstar Sheku Kanneh-Mason performs Elgar's passionate Cello Concerto with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra and their music director Mirga Gražinyte-Tyla. Introduced by Tom Service and Sheku's sister, pianist Isata Kanneh-Mason.
S73 E17 · Strauss, Sibelius and Prokofiev
Katie Derham presents flavours of Finland, Russia and Germany from three 20th-century favourites, featuring Yannick Nézet-Séguin and the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra.
S73 E18 · Homage to Nina Simone
First transmitted in 2019. Clara Amfo introduces a celebration of jazz and blues legend Nina Simone with The Metropole Orkest led by Jules Buckley, Ledisi, Lisa Fisher and more.
S73 E19 · Happy Birthday Henry Wood!
A 150th anniversary tribute to Sir Henry Wood, founder-conductor of the Proms, featuring many of the works he both premiered and arranged across nearly 50 years of the festival.
S73 E20 · Shanghai Symphony Orchestra
The Shanghai Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Long Yu, makes its Proms debut in a programme including works by Qigang Chen, Rachmaninov and, with Eric Lu, Mozart’s Piano Concerto No 23 in A major.
S73 E21 · Ellington's Sacred Music
Cerys Matthews introduces an evening of jazz, gospel and Broadway-style music inspired by Duke Ellington's three sacred concerts. In a Proms premiere, Peter Edwards conducts the Nu Civilisation Orchestra in a new version of these landmark works, written originally between 1965 and 1973.
S73 E22 · Elgar's Enigma
The BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra performs music by Vaughan Williams, Brahms and a new work - a birthday tribute to conductor Martyn Brabbins - inspired by Elgar's 'Enigma' Variations.
S73 E23 · Berlioz's Symphonie fantastique
Mathew Baynton, Nicholas Collon and the Aurora Orchestra present Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique from memory, in a specially devised production incorporating elements of theatre, spectacular lighting and choreography as well as Berlioz’s own words about his music.
S73 E24 · Jonny Greenwood Curates
Radiohead lead guitarist and award-winning film composer Jonny Greenwood curates a late-night Prom culminating in the world premiere of his work Horror vacui, written for solo violin and 68 strings.
S73 E25 · Last Night of the Proms, Part 1
Katie Derham hosts the climax of the world's greatest classical music festival live from London's Royal Albert Hall.
S73 E26 · Last Night of the Proms, part 2
Katie Derham introduces live coverage from the Royal Albert Hall of the climax of the world’s greatest classical music festival, including the traditional Last Night classics.
S73 E27 · CBeebies Prom: Off to the Moon
To celebrate 50 years since the first astronauts walked on the moon, join the CBeebies Prommers for this third CBeebies Prom, which sees them taking a musical journey to the moon.
Featuring music performed by the orchestra Chineke! conducted by Kwamé Ryan, with additional performances by the Chineke! Junior Orchestra and the first ever CBeebies Proms Choir, the preschool audience can hear pieces by composers such as Handel, Puccini, John Adams, Benjamin Britten and Jessie Montgomery as well as the world premiere of Hans Zimmer's new work, Earth.
With specially made pieces of animation from some of CBeebies' most popular shows such as Clangers, Go Jetters and Moon and Me, an interactive song inspired by Neil Armstrong and special Nasa archive footage from the moon landing itself, join some of CBeebies's favourite presenters as they take you on a musical voyage to the stars.
S73 E28 · The Last Night of the Proms from around the UK
The traditional Last Night Proms in the Park celebrations from around the UK. YolanDa Brown and Josie d’Arby present a thrilling mix of classical and contemporary performances.
S73 E101 · Barry Manilow at Proms in Hyde Park: 2019
International sensation Barry Manilow plays Proms in Hyde Park with a career spanning over 50 years, a catalogue of hits and accompaniment from the BBC Concert Orchestra.
2020
15 episodes
S74 E1 · First Night of the Proms
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.
S74 E2 · The Symphonic Organ
Organist Jonathan Scott performs his own virtuosic arrangements of works by Rossini, Mascagni, Dukas, plus a climactic Saint-Saëns's Symphony No. 3, on the world-famous Royal Albert Hall organ.
S74 E3 · Sir Simon Rattle and the LSO
Sir Simon Rattle and the LSO with a programme of unmissable music featuring star pianist Mitsuko Uchida playing Beethoven, works by Elgar and Vaughan Williams, and a new composition by Thomas Adès.
S74 E4 · Viennese Night
In a Viennese spectacular, the BBC Concert Orchestra are joined by soloists Sophie Bevan and Robert Murray, performing works by Lehár and Johann Strauss II, conducted by Bramwell Tovey.
S74 E5 · London Sinfonietta
The London Sinfonietta perform cutting edge contemporary works by Philip Glass, Tansy Davies, Steve Reich and Anna Meredith.
S74 E6 · Proms @ MediaCityUK, Salford with the BBC Philharmonic
In a change to the originally advertised programme, John Storgårds, the BBC Philharmonic's Chief Guest Conductor, joins the orchestra to conduct Haydn, Britten and Tchaikovsky.
S74 E7 · Nicola Benedetti and the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment
Nicola Benedetti leads a high-energy evening of baroque music with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, led by Jonathan Cohen.
S74 E8 · Anoushka Shankar and Gold Panda
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.
S74 E9 · Proms @ City Halls, Glasgow, with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra
Stephen Hough plays Beethoven in a concert featuring a World Premiere from Jay Capperauld.
S74 E10 · Laura Marling and the 12 Ensemble
Laura Marling teams up with the 12 Ensemble for a retrospective journey through her back catalogue, as well as showcasing tracks from her 2020 album, Song for Our Daughter.
S74 E11 · KOKOROKO
London based eight-piece band KOKOROKO bring their ‘horn fuelled’ Afrobeat sound to the Proms, led by trumpeter Sheila Maurice-Grey.
S74 E12 · Exploring Beethoven’s Seventh
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.
S74 E13 · Sheku and Isata Kanneh-Mason
Superstar siblings Sheku and Isata Kanneh-Mason perform their first Prom together, an evening of chamber music for cello and piano.
S74 E14 · Proms at BBC Hoddinott Hall, Cardiff
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.
S74 E15 · Last Night of the Proms
Featuring South African soprano Golda Schultz with the BBC Symphony Orchestra under its principal guest conductor Dalia Stasevska. Presented by Katie Derham.
2021
22 episodes
S75 E1 · First Night of the Proms: Part 1
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.
S75 E2 · First Night of the Proms: Part 2
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.
S75 E3 · Prom 4: An Evening of Mozart with the Scottish Chamber Orchestra
The Scottish Chamber Orchestra and their young Principal Conductor Maxim Emelyanychev showcase Mozart’s final three symphonies – composed over a period of just two months in the summer of 1788.
S75 E4 · Prom 8: Gražinytė-Tyla Conducts the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra
The City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra and Music Director Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla champion the music of a too-long neglected composer. A pupil of Vaughan Williams, Ruth Gipps started her career as an oboist with what was then the City of Birmingham Orchestra in 1944, before becoming established as a composer. Her Symphony No. 2 takes a wide-screen, cinematic view of the Second World War, embracing exhilaration, anxiety and, finally, ecstatic rejoicing. Conflict of a very different kind runs through The Exterminating Angel Symphony by Thomas Adès (50 this year), inspired by Louis Buñuel’s Surrealist film.
Brahms’s Third Symphony strikes a more autumnal tone, inspired by a visit to the River Rhine in 1883. The critic Eduard Hanslick pronounced it ‘artistically the most nearly perfect’ of the composer’s symphonies to date.
S75 E5 · Prom 5: Ryan Bancroft Conducts the BBC National Orchestra of Wales
Musical borrowings, reworkings and reinventions run through this season’s Proms. The invisible thread linking tonight’s concert really begins with Bach. A lilting chaconne from his Cantata No. 150 underpins the finale of Brahms’s Symphony No. 4, and the latter’s elegant synthesis of heart and head is itself the inspiration for American composer Elizabeth Ogonek’s Cloudline, a lyrical homage to ancient musical forms and techniques. The chaconne’s repeating patterns are echoed elsewhere in the circling bass line of Purcell’s powerful Lament from Dido and Aeneas. Cellist Guy Johnston is the soloist in anniversary-composer Saint-Saëns’s Cello Concerto No .1.
S75 E6 · Prom 2: The Golden Age of Broadway
Smell the greasepaint and feel the blaze of those Broadway lights, as the BBC Concert Orchestra whisks you away for a night at the musicals. The toe-tapping favourites include songs from musicals including South Pacific, My Fair Lady, Anything Goes, Annie Get Your Gun and High Society, all performed by the ever-versatile BBC Concert Orchestra – and some special guest soloists.
S75 E7 · Prom 10: Nicola Benedetti and the NYOGB
Rising star Jonathon Heyward conducts the talented teenagers of the National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain in one of the all-time symphonic greats. Propelling the symphony into the Romantic age, Beethoven’s ‘Eroica’ is a celebration of scope and drama, a musical depiction of heroism that surges with pioneering spirit. Nicola Benedetti is the soloist in Prokofiev’s Violin Concerto No. 2 with its song-like slow movement – a work whose sardonic wit is balanced by a new lyricism that would come to dominate the composer’s later works. The Prom also includes a new NYOGB commission by British composer, jazz trumpeter and former BBC Radio 3 New Generation Artist, Laura Jurd.
S75 E8 · Prom 14/15: Stravinsky from Memory
Nicholas Collon and the Aurora Orchestra’s from-memory performances have become a thrilling recent fixture of the Proms. Now, following symphonies by Beethoven, Brahms, Shostakovich and Berlioz, they tackle their most audacious challenge yet: a complete performance of the colourful 1945 suite from Stravinsky’s ballet The Firebird. Russian fairy tales and folk melodies collide with Stravinsky’s bold musical modernism to create a memorable score. Radio 3 presenter Tom Service introduces the work from the stage, exploring its textures and themes and dismantling its intricate musical narrative with the help of Collon and his musicians. The concert opens with another Russian classic: Rachmaninov’s virtuosic Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini, with former BBC Radio 3 New Generation Artist Pavel Kolesnikov as soloist.
S75 E9 · Prom 17: Víkingur Ólafsson Plays Bach and Mozart
Award-winning Icelandic pianist Víkingur Ólafsson makes his much-anticipated Proms debut, as soloist in both Bach’s Keyboard Concerto in F minor, whose energised outer movements frame a ravishing central Adagio, and Mozart’s pioneering Piano Concerto K491, a rare minor-key work whose stormy, richly orchestrated music climaxes in a relentless dance. The Philharmonia Orchestra and its dynamic Finnish Principal Conductor Designate Santtu-Matias Rouvali frame the concert with two symphonies: Prokofiev’s playful ‘Classical’ Symphony, with its clever juxtaposition of traditional forms and contemporary colours, and the more loaded irony of Shostakovich’s compact Symphony No. 9.
S75 E10 · Prom 20: To Soothe the Aching Heart (A Night at the Opera)
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.
S75 E11 · Prom 22: Nubya Garcia
British saxophonist, composer, DJ and bandleader Nubya Garcia is one of the brightest of a new generation of jazz talent, drawing comparison with greats such as Sonny Rollins and Dexter Gordon. Named a ‘major voice’ by The New York Times, she has devised a brand of ‘eclectic, danceable, political jazz’ that draws on influences from Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean. Tonight marks her Proms debut.
S75 E12 · Prom 26: Sir Simon Rattle Conducts the London Symphony Orchestra
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.
S75 E13 · Prom 28: Chineke! Orchestra
The Chineke! Orchestra returns for its fourth visit to the Proms, celebrating diversity in composers as well as performers. Black British composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor’s overture to his popular cantata based on the tale of a Native American leader quotes the spiritual ‘Nobody knows the trouble I’ve seen’. There are further meetings of African and European musical styles in Nigerian composer Fela Sowande’s African Suite and the piano concerto by Florence Price, the first female African-American composer to win renown in America. By contrast, Coleridge-Taylor’s Symphony, written as a 20-year old student of Stanford at London’s Royal College of Music, reveals the influence of his hero, Dvořák.
From an icy Italian winter to the heady, sensual warmth of a South American summer: violinist Joshua Bell leads the Academy of St Martin in the Fields on a musical journey through the sights and sounds of two continents and four very different seasons. Inspired by Vivaldi’s best-known work, Piazzolla – Argentina’s 20th-century tango king, whose 100th anniversary we celebrate this year – created his own response, complete with musical quotations. While Vivaldi’s virtuosic concertos celebrate contrast – the freshness of spring, with its sudden thunderstorms, versus the languid heat of summer – Piazzolla’s musical landscape remains more constant, always swaying to the pervasive rhythm of the tango.
S75 E15 · Prom 34/35: Family Prom - The Carnival of the Animals with the Kanneh-Masons
Author Michael Morpurgo joins the seven talented Kanneh-Mason siblings and starry musical friends for this special Family Prom. Saint-Saëns’s much-loved suite The Carnival of the Animals – a musical menagerie packed with braying donkeys, energetic kangaroos, a serene swan and an aquarium of glinting fish – gets a fresh update in witty new poems by Morpurgo.
S75 E16 · Prom 31: George Lewis & Beethoven
The BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra and Principal Guest Conductor Ilan Volkov pair Beethoven’s dramatic concert aria ‘Ah! perfido’ with the Second Symphony – a work whose vitality and ‘smiling’ mood belie the private struggles and despair of a composer wrestling with hearing loss – with a new commission from celebrated American composer George Lewis. This world premiere blends a conventional orchestra with spatialised electronics, exploiting the unique space of the Royal Albert Hall to create, in Lewis’s words, ‘a medium for meditation on what processes of decolonisation might sound like’.
S75 E17 · Prom 25: Moses Sumney Meets Jules Buckley and the BBC Symphony Orchestra
Blending soul, jazz, art-pop and spoken word, singer-songwriter Moses Sumney defies traditional categories. His ever-evolving voice has channelled political rage and emotional optimism into everything from sprawling orchestral tracks to electronica. Here he performs songs from his albums Aromanticism and græ in new orchestral arrangements, masterminded by Jules Buckley.
S75 E18 · Prom 38: Sir John Eliot Gardiner Conducts the Monteverdi Choir & English Baroque Soloists
Sir John Eliot Gardiner makes his 60th Proms appearance directing his own Monteverdi Choir and English Baroque Soloists in Handel’s vividly theatrical Dixit Dominus – a concerto for choir that blazes with virtuosity and colour. It’s paired with Bach’s Easter cantata Christ lag in Todes Banden – a fiery, dramatic setting of Luther’s popular hymn. Mezzo-soprano Ann Hallenberg is the soloist in the young Handel’s cantata of praise to the Virgin Mary, Donna, che in ciel, containing music the composer later borrowed for his opera Agrippina.
S75 E19 · Prom 42: John Wilson Conducts the Sinfonia of London
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.
S75 E21 · Prom 47: Bach’s St Matthew Passion
Bach’s crowning masterpiece, the St Matthew Passion combines moments of extraordinary fragility and tenderness with raw choral power and explosive jubilation, bitter grief with passages of consolation. With double chorus and orchestra, its scope and ambition is vast – a piece made for the Royal Albert Hall. Following on from their gripping account of Handel’s Theodora in 2018, period-instrument ensemble Arcangelo and Director Jonathan Cohen return to the Proms, joined by a glittering line-up of soloists including Roderick Williams and rising star Stuart Jackson.
S75 E22 · Last Night of the Proms 2021 - Part 1
With his ‘thrilling vocal heroics’ and ‘magnetic stage presence’, Stuart Skelton is one of the great tenors of his generation, a regular in all the major international opera houses. The Australian singer is joined by charismatic Latvian accordionist Ksenija Sidorova for the climax of the 2021 festival – a musical celebration like no other.
S75 E23 · Last Night of the Proms - Part 2
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.
2022
24 episodes
Running from 15 July to 10 September, the Proms returns this summer for its first full eight-week season in two years.
S76 E1 · First Night of the Proms 2022
Giuseppe Verdi had a complicated relationship with religion: he asked to be buried with just ‘one priest, one candle, one cross’. But as a born dramatist, he knew how to tell a great story – and his colossal Requiem encompasses death, rebirth and the end of the world itself, in music that simply blazes with passion and power. Now, in the vast spaces of the Royal Albert Hall, Sakari Oramo assembles two choruses, a multinational team of solo singers (including 2021 Cardiff Singer of the World Song Prize winner Masabane Cecilia Rangwanasha) and the full forces of the BBC Symphony Orchestra, and prepares to raise the roof. A truly spectacular First Night of the 2022 BBC Proms.
S76 E2 · Prom 2: John Wilson conducts the Sinfonia of London
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.
S76 E3 · Prom 3: Radio 1 Relax at the Proms
Celebrating the BBC’s centenary year, the Proms partners with Radio 1 Relax for a late-night wind-down. Relax with Radio 1’s Chillest Show presenter Sian Eleri, who appears onstage to introduce a stripped-back set of collaborations and explorations.
S76 E4 · Prom 10: Music for Royal Occasions
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.
S76 E5 · Prom 16: Sea Sketches with Andrew Manze and BBC NOW
‘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.
S76 E6 · Prom 19: Puccini’s Il tabarro
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.
S76 E7 · Prom 21: Gaming Prom – From 8-Bit to Infinity
Fantastic worlds, epic adventures, complex characters and huge moral choices – the universe of computer gaming is a natural match for orchestral music, and in the 21st century games have created a huge and passionate global audience for some of the most vivid, ambitious and inventive music currently being written for symphony orchestra. In this first ever Gaming Prom, Robert Ames – best-known at the Proms for his explorations of sci-fi and electroacoustic music – takes an electronically expanded Royal Philharmonic Orchestra on an odyssey from the classic console titles of the 1980s, through Jessica Curry’s haunted soundscapes to the European concert premiere of music from Hildur Guðnadóttir’s and Sam Slater’s score for Battlefield 2042.
S76 E8 · Prom 19a: Ukrainian Freedom Orchestra
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 during the dark months of conflict – but also a beacon of hope for peace. They celebrate Ukraine’s leading living composer, Valentin Silvestrov, who escaped Kyiv with his daughter and granddaughter in March. ‘It is now clear how little we appreciate the times when peace reigns,’ he has since said, ‘and how fragile civilisation is.’
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.
S76 E10 · Prom 35: Yuja Wang with the Oslo Philharmonic and Klaus Mäkelä
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.
S76 E11 · Prom 34: Thorvaldsdottir, Elgar and Sibelius
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 Kollinainen – 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’.
S76 E12 · Prom 27: NYOGB plays Elfman, Gershwin and Ravel
‘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.
S76 E13 · Prom 36: Marin Alsop conducts the Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra
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.
S76 E14 · Prom 47: Aretha Franklin – Queen of Soul
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.
S76 E17 · Prom 54: Earth Prom with Chris Packham
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.
S76 E18 · Prom 58: Public Service Broadcasting – This New Noise
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.
S76 E20 · Prom 67: Nicola Benedetti plays Wynton Marsalis
‘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.
S76 E21 · Last Night of the Proms 2022 - Part 1
It’s time to put on your party clothes, grab your favourite flag and raise the roof of the Royal Albert Hall! There’s nothing quite like the Last Night of the Proms – the happiest annual celebration in the classical music calendar. BBC Symphony Orchestra Principal Guest Conductor Dalia Stasevska returns to host a concert that stars soprano Lise Davidsen and cellist Sheku Kanneh-Mason in party pieces by Verdi, Wagner and Coleridge-Taylor, as well as a salute to a century of innovation from rising British composer James B. Wilson – before giving the 2022 BBC Proms a send-off with all the traditional Last Night favourites. Until next year!
S76 E22 · Last Night of the Proms - Part 2
It’s time to put on your party clothes, grab your favourite flag and raise the roof of the Royal Albert Hall! There’s nothing quite like the Last Night of the Proms – the happiest annual celebration in the classical music calendar. BBC Symphony Orchestra Principal Guest Conductor Dalia Stasevska returns to host a concert that stars soprano Lise Davidsen and cellist Sheku Kanneh-Mason in party pieces by Verdi, Wagner and Coleridge-Taylor, as well as a salute to a century of innovation from rising British composer James B. Wilson – before giving the 2022 BBC Proms a send-off with all the traditional Last Night favourites. Until next year!
S76 E23 · CBeebies Prom: Ocean Adventure
Join CBeebies for an ocean adventure travelling the musical world in the Royal Albert Hall submarine to find endangered creatures and tackle tricky environmental problems.
The musical repertoire played by the Southbank Sinfonia is:
Argentum (excerpt) by Dani Howard
Dolphin Dance ( BBC Commission) by Dominque le Gendre
Overture from 'Wassermusik' by Georg Philipp Telemann
The Fairy Garden from 'Mother Goose' by Maurice Ravel
G.R.S. from 'Enigma Variations' by Edward Elgar
Storm from 'Peter Grimes' by Benjamin Britten
Whalesong (BBC Commission) by Mason Bates
CBeebies Medley arranged by Daniel Whibley
Celebration Dance by Eleanor Alberga
S76 E101 · Unmissable Moments
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.
2023
22 episodes
The BBC Proms 2023 season runs from Friday 14 July to Saturday 9 September.
S77 E1 · First Night of the Proms
Clive Myrie presents live from the Royal Albert Hall as the annual music festival is launched with Sibelius, Grieg, Britten and a world premiere from Ukrainian composer Bohdana Frolyak.
S77 E2 · Prom 4: Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons
Finnish violinist and conductor Pekka Kuusisto leads The Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen in a concert of works by Beethoven, Vivaldi and Andrea Tarrodi.
S77 E3 · Prom 7: Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony
The BBC National Orchestra of Wales and their conductor laureate, Tadaaki Otaka, perform perhaps the most famous classical symphony ever written, Beethoven’s Fifth.
S77 E4 · Prom 12: Beethoven’s ‘Choral’ Symphony
The BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra and new Chief Conductor Ryan Wigglesworth perform Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 for the first of their two Proms together this season.
S77 E5 · Prom 18: Lata Mangeshkar: Bollywood Legend
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.
S77 E6 · Prom 5: Bruch’s First Violin Concerto
South Korean star violinist Bomsori performs Bruch’s First Violin Concerto with conductor Anja Bihlmaier and the BBC Philharmonic.
S77 E7 · Prom 23: NYO Jazz (USA) with Dee Dee Bridgewater
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.
S77 E8 · Prom 22: Isata Kanneh-Mason plays Prokofiev
The BBC National Orchestra of Wales and Principal Conductor Ryan Bancroft return for the second of their consecutive Proms. Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 5 is paired with Prokofiev’s Piano Concerto No. 3, with soloist Isata Kanneh-Mason.
S77 E9 · Prom 27: Yuja Wang plays Rachmaninov
Klaus Mäkelä and the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Chorus perform Walton’s choral symphony Belshazzar’s Feast, while Yuja Wang is the soloist in Rachmaninov’s Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini.
S77 E10 · Prom 24: Felix Klieser plays Mozart
The Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra and Chief Conductor Kirill Karabits present Rachmaninov’s Symphony No. 2 alongside a work by Karabits’s own father. Horn virtuoso Felix Klieser makes his Proms debut with Mozart’s sunny Concerto No. 4.
S77 E11 · Prom 37: Budapest Festival Orchestra
Budapest Festival Orchestra and Iván Fischer are joined by Sir András Schiff for one of the great Romantic piano concertos from Schumann. Weber’s overture to Der Freischütz and Mendelssohn’s ‘Scottish’ Symphony complete the programme.
S77 E12 · Prom 28: National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain
Works by Copland and Hindemith bookend Strauss’s Four Last Songs – featuring South African soprano Masabane Cecilia Rangwanasha – in this Prom from the National Youth Orchestra.
S77 E13 · Prom 30: Rachmaninov’s Second Piano Concerto
John Wilson and the Sinfonia of London perform Rachmaninov’s famous Second Piano Concerto with soloist Alim Beisembayev. Bookending the Prom are Lili Boulanger’s tone-poem D’un matin de printemps and Walton’s First Symphony.
S77 E14 · Prom 2: Northern Soul
The BBC Concert Orchestra brings a symphonic edge to the beats that took the industrial North and Midlands by storm in the 1960s and 1970s, in a stomping celebration of underground British club culture.
S77 E15 · Prom 34: Mindful Mix Prom
Relax into a late-night musical meditation with Grammy-nominated vocal group VOCES8 and a playlist that drifts from the Renaissance to Radiohead.
S77 E16 · Prom 56: Rattle conducts Mahler’s Ninth
Sir Simon Rattle’s final UK performance as Music Director of the London Symphony Orchestra. He conducts Mahler’s epic farewell symphony, haunted by loss but urgently clinging to dance and song, alongside Poulenc’s choral masterpiece Figure humaine.
The Chineke! Orchestra – Europe’s first majority Black and ethnically diverse ensemble – returns to the Proms with Beethoven’s joyful Fourth Symphony, and continues our focus on Samuel Coleridge-Taylor.
S77 E18 · Prom 57: Fantasy, Myths and Legends
Encounter music from The Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, Game of Thrones and other titles in a Prom celebrating soundtracks from the worlds of film, TV and gaming.
S77 E19 · Prom 10: Horrible Histories: ’Orrible Opera
Join the Horrible Histories team and the English National Opera Chorus and Orchestra for a high-decibel dive into ’Orrible Opera.
S77 E20 · Prom 29: Mozart’s Mass in C minor
John Butt and the award-winning Dunedin Consort perform Mozart’s magnificent Mass in C minor with soloists including Lucy Crowe, Jess Dandy and Nardus Williams.
S77 E21 · Prom 71: Last Night of the Proms 2023, Part 1
Cellist Sheku Kanneh-Mason and soprano Lise Davidsen join conductor Marin Alsop and the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Chorus for the biggest musical party of the year.
S77 E22 · Prom 71: Last Night of the Proms 2023, Part 2
Cellist Sheku Kanneh-Mason and soprano Lise Davidsen join conductor Marin Alsop and the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Chorus for the biggest musical party of the year.
