Tag Archives: BBC Proms

Arcana at the BBC Proms – Soloists, Epiphoni Consort, BBC Symphony Chorus & Orchestra / Nil Venditti: Respighi & Rossini

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Federica Lombardi (soprano), Chiara Amarù (mezzo-soprano), Dave Monaco (tenor), Nicola Ulivieri (bass), Epiphoni Consort, BBC Symphony Chorus and Orchestra / Nil Venditti

Respighi Church Windows (Vetrate di chiesa) (1925-26)
Rossini Stabat Mater (1831-1841)

Royal Albert Hall, London
Friday 7 August 2026

Reviewed by Ben Hogwood Photos (c) BBC / Mark Allan

Friday night is Italian night at the BBC Proms, it would seem. Two weeks after John Wilson’s blistering account of Respighi’s Roman Trilogy, we had a sequel of sorts headed by Italian-Turkish conductor Nil Venditti, marshalling a double bill from Respighi and Rossini, a composer he much admired.

As we heard two weeks back, Respighi was no shrinking violet when writing for orchestra, a point reemphasised by this first Proms performance of Church Windows. This is the sort of orchestral music on which the Royal Albert Hall thrives – descriptive, colourful, bold, brash in places but beautifully controlled in others. One of these moments was Adam Lee’s clarinet solo, exquisitely spun.

Less obviously demonstrative than the Roman poems, Church Windows nonetheless softened the heart with its invocations of Gregorian chants and chorales, woven into Respighi’s writing. Not all were successful in performance, the horn theme of San Michele Arcangelo taking a while to align with Venditti’s tempo, but this movement grew into a tumultuous finish, the tam-tam describing Satan’s fall from heaven. A tender account of Il mattutino di Santa Chiara (The Matins of St Clare) found the BBC SO woodwind on fine form, but the finale, San Gregorio Magno (St Gregory the Great) carried all before it, Richard Pearce’s barnstorming organ solo briefly smothering the orchestra before a brilliantly manoeuvred climax. Once again, the ears were ringing, and while this may not have registered so highly on the Richter scale, it was nonetheless a qualified triumph.

Rossini’s Stabat Mater is similarly unconventional. Its long gestation period would suggest a creative block, but the final composition, finished after a decade, is a profound utterance. Venditti kept things moving here, and with an evident love for the piece, from the solemn choral intoning of the Stabat mater dolorosa itself, through the sequence of arias which found the soloists taking a little while to adjust to the acoustic of the hall. A healthy balance was found, though bass Nicola Ulivieri, a commanding presence, was appreciably louder than his three colleagues – each of whom were dramatic in their responses to the text. Tenor Dave Monaco nailed his top notes with impressive precision in the Cujus animam gementem, soprano Federica Lombardi was bright and commendably unforced with the chorus throughout Inflammatus et accensus, while mezzo-soprano Chiara Amarù shone in the Fac, ut portem Christi mortem.

Yet the real stars of this performance were the London-based Epiphoni Consort, making their Proms debut, and the BBC Symphony Chorus, both extremely well drilled and of one voice. The antiphonal exchanges of ‘Paradisi gloria’ in the Quando corpus morietur section were memorable, but the crowning glory was the ‘Amen’ finale, where Rossini – and the charismatic Venditti – let loose in the thrilling tour de force of powerful counterpoint. A special mention for timpanist Antoine Bedewi, too, whose role throughout was critical. This was the choir’s to bring home, however, and they delivered with style and panache, convincing audience and listeners of Rossini’s original inspiration and dramatic instinct. A refreshingly different Prom, and how good to hear two less familiar but deserving works in performances that made them shine.

You can listen to this Proms concert on BBC Sounds until the end of September 2026.

Published post no.2,977 – Saturday 8 August 2026

Arcana at the BBC Proms – Louise Alder, London Philharmonic Orchestra / Edward Gardner: From the Alps to the Auvergne

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Louise Alder (soprano), London Philharmonic Orchestra / Edward Gardner

Tjøgersen Between Trees (2021)
Canteloube from Chants d’Auvergne (1923-55): La pastoura als camps; La delaïssádo; Deux bourrées; Lou coucut; Baïlèro
Richard Strauss Eine Alpensinfonie Op.64 (1911-15)

Royal Albert Hall, London
Monday 27 July 2026

Reviewed by Ben Hogwood Photos (c) BBC / Chris Christodoulou

The music for this invigorating Prom drew us outdoors, to Norwegian woods, the fields of Auvergne and the mountains of the Alps – all brought to us in glorious technicolour by an orchestra on top of their game.

The Norwegian forest was first, a 360 degree view turning the Royal Albert Hall itself into a vast canopy. Kristine Tjøgersen’s Between Trees was full of sonic invention, an intriguing portrait by turns humorous, ominous, light, heavy, happy and sad. The instrumental effects (water in the brass instruments, ‘prepared’ harp and strings) would have been gimmicky in the wrong hands, but Tjøgersen clearly knows her way around a symphony orchestra and ensured all were used to the greater good.

The creak of a branch, the snap of a twig and even the underground workings of fungi and insect life – all were vividly evoked, to the point of wondering if the casing around the organ was even swaying in the light wind! Every rustle had a purpose, pointed towards the more conventional passages for horn quartet and strings in the closing pages, where unexpectedly sharp points of emotion lay in wait. Tjørgersen, who was in the audience, begins a three-year residence with the Oslo Philharmonic Orchestra next season. On this evidence hers is a striking, individual voice, a composer to follow closely.

Canteloube is a rare visitor to the Proms on account of his small output, heavily weighted towards his crowd-pleasing Chants d’Auvergne. These settings of traditional Auvergnian folksongs for soprano and orchestra are largely pastoral affairs, descriptively bringing their shepherds and birds to life. It proved impossible to listen, however, without a strong pull of sympathy for those suffering at the hands of the fires in France, a feeling heightened by the sorrowful La delaïssádo (The Abandoned Shepherdess). The part was inhabited with great feeling by soprano Louise Alder, supported by meltingly beautiful solos from cor anglais (Sue Böhling) and oboe (Ian Hardwick).

By contrast the bright La pastoura als camps (The Shepherdess in the Pasture) revelled in the open air, while the Deux bourrées danced lightly, the second (Lo calhé) especially, the quail a worrisome presence as it protected its nest. Lou coucut (The Cuckoo) was funny, heightened by Alder’s side glances to the audience, but inevitably the showstopper was Baïlèro, the shepherd’s song drawing an exquisite tone from the soprano and the supporting London Philharmonic Orchestra woodwind.

Donning our crampons after the interval, we joined Edward Gardner in an ascent he knows well, scaling the peak of Richard Strauss’s Eine Alpensinfonie, a piece both he and the LPO have captured on record. Familiarity in this case brought a tight structural grasp of the arching structure, whose 22 sections lasted 48 minutes – a relatively quick interpretation. Some of the sections did indeed move a little too quickly, the ascent taken by quick mountaineers, but the vistas on display were stunning in their sound quality.

The brass in particular excelled, trombones (led by Mark Templeton), trumpets (Tom Nielsen), tubas (Lee Tsarmaklis) and horns, both onstage (John Ryan) and off (Annemarie Federle), the latter expertly marshalled in the gallery by conductor Wilson Ng, who successfully accounted for the sonic delay.

Meanwhile the percussion took the brunt of the Thunderstorm, the wind machines whirring as timpani rolled and struck with ever greater danger, the mountain revealing its dark side. As an orchestral sound painter, Strauss is almost without equal, and his gifts were shown off repeatedly as Gardner showed us the waterfall, flowery meadows, mountain pasture and glacier in glorious technicolour. The LPO woodwind were crystal clear in the rarefied air, the burnished strings enjoying the rich melodies and cadences. Balancing everything was Richard Gowers on the Albert Hall organ, his church solo ideally rendered as the magical coda approached, setting us back on the arena floor where this extended musical paragraph began.

You can listen to this Proms concert on BBC Sounds until the end of September 2026. Meanwhile you can click on the link to access Richard Strauss’s Eine Alpensinfonie as recorded by the London Philharmonic Orchestra and Edward Gardner

Published post no.2,961 – Tuesday 28 July 2026

BBC Proms 2026 – The First Night

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by Ben Hogwood Photo (c) Chris Christodoulou

The 2026 edition of the BBC Proms is underway! With a Transatlantic first night, the BBC Symphony Chorus and BBC Symphony Orchestra under Dalia Stasevska were joined by pianist Yunchan Lim for a special performance of Ravel‘s Piano Concerto.

Flanking this were two pieces celebrating America’s 250th ‘birthday’, Copland‘s Fanfare for the Common Man and Gershwin‘s An American in Paris, while French-British composer Josephine Stephenson was the ideal choice to write a first night premiere, That the sunrise not leave us unmoved.

Wrapping up the night was a rare performance of Finzi‘s For St Cecilia, a choral work of typical mystery and elegance but one that deserved its rare moment in the sun. Choral and orchestral forces then gave an encore of the Oasis song Wonderwall, acknowledging the England team’s prowess in the World Cup. A red card for its choice, I’m afraid – and a shame to have Finzi’s contribution immediately overshadowed in this way. Wonderwall is a great song, but felt miscast here.

Enough of my griping, though – as we should acknowledge many people enjoyed the inclusion, and the night as a whole was a celebratory indication of what we can expect to indulge in over the next eight weeks. Truly something for everyone.

You can watch the First Night of the Proms on the BBC iPlayer

In concert – Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra / Franz Welser-Möst @ BBC Proms: Mozart & Tchaikovsky

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Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra / Franz Welser-Möst (above)

Mozart Symphony no.38 in D major K504 ‘Prague’ (1786)
Tchaikovsky Symphony no.6 in B minor Op.74 ‘Pathétique’ (1893)

Royal Albert Hall, London
Tuesday 9 September 2025

Reviewed by Ben Hogwood Photos (c) BBC / Chris Christodoulou

The music of Mozart is the lifeblood of the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, so to describe their performance of the composer’s Prague symphony as routine is to say that everything was present and completely idiomatic.

Completed in Vienna, the Prague deserves to be mentioned with the last three symphonies as among Mozart’s greatest. In the hands of guest conductor Franz Welser-Möst, its phrases were stylishly turned, violins silky-smooth but keeping clear of full fat over-indulgence. This performance drew the audience in, with a chamber orchestra sound that acquired more beef when needed in the first movement, which had appropriate drama, or the boisterous passages of the finale. The woodwind were superb throughout.

Most intriguing was the Andante, a thoughtful repose whose chromatic melodies were lovingly shaped, while the central section was notable for its autumnal frissons whenever the music headed for a minor key. Meanwhile the faster music was imbued with the spirit of the dance, a performance carefully considered but let off the leash when appropriate.

Tchaikovsky’s Pathétique symphony took a while to get going, revealing the composer’s own Mozartian influence in the process. Initially the first movement felt underpowered, its sense of dread kept to a minimum and the second theme kept within itself – though that did mean a particularly beautiful clarinet solo from Matthias Schorn. This turned out to be an effective interpretative ploy on the part of Welser-Möst, for the impact of the stormy section was heightened, the orchestra suddenly playing hell for leather.

The 5/4 metre of the second movement was persuasively realised, the lilt of its dance compromised by unexpected syncopations, alternating between charming and disturbing. By this point the Proms audience notably rapt in their attention, and still between movements.

The scherzo felt Viennese yet acquired a manic need to please more in keeping with Mahler – not encouraged as much by Welser-Möst as previous Vienna Philharmonic incumbents (Herbert von Karajan, for example) but effective, nonetheless. It all set up the devastating pathos of the finale, taken relatively smooth and never lingering, but still uncommonly moving. Double basses were appropriately knotty, while the effect of the stopped horns, playing low and loud, was genuinely chilling. The fabled gong stroke, on the light side, was still a telling moment in the hall, as was the silence following the last note, Welser-Möst giving us over a minute to consider the masterpiece we had just heard. After that, there could be no encore.

Franz Welser-Möst is a subtle conductor who over the years has developed a close relationship with his charges in Cleveland and Vienna particularly. His poised approach brings optimum virtuosity and watertight ensemble, to which can be added artistic approaches with a great deal to commend them. In this case both Mozart and Tchaikovsky were the beneficiaries.

You can listen back to this Prom concert on BBC Sounds until Sunday 12 October.

Click to read more about the BBC Proms

Published post no.2,653 – Wednesday 10 September 2025

In concert – Lukas Sternath, BBC Singers, Symphony Chorus & Orchestra / Sakari Oramo @ BBC Proms: Bliss ‘The Beatitudes’, Grieg & Gipps

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Lukas Sternath (piano), Elizabeth Watts (soprano), Laurence Kilsby (tenor), BBC Singers, BBC Symphony Chorus, BBC Symphony Orchestra / Sakari Oramo

Gipps Death on the Pale Horse Op.25 (1943) [Proms premiere]
Grieg Piano Concerto in A minor Op.16 (1868 rev.1907)
Bliss The Beatitudes F28 (1961)

Royal Albert Hall, London
Sunday 7 September 2025

Reviewed by Richard Whitehouse Photos (c) BBC / Chris Christodoulou

This evening’s Prom – launching the final week of the present season – was billed as ‘Grieg’s Piano Concerto’, no doubt the reason why many in the audience were attending while hardly being the most interesting aspect of a typically adventurous programme from Sakari Oramo.

In the event the Grieg received a responsive reading from Lukas Sternath (below, with Oramo), the Viennese pianist who, still in his mid-20s, was most at home in more inward passages. The second theme of the initial Allegro was enticingly taken up after a heartfelt rendering by cellos, as was the Adagio’s eloquent melody and that first emerging in the finale on flute, where it was soulfully rendered by Daniel Pailthorpe. Nor were the more demonstrative aspects underplayed – Sternath having the measure of a cadenza whose mounting rhetoric was pointedly reined-in, while the finale’s outer sections were incisively inflected prior to an apotheosis which felt the more exhilarating through its absence of bathos. A melting take on Richard Strauss’ early song Morgen!, transcribed with enviable poise by Max Reger, served to reinforce Sternath’s formidable pianistic credentials.

The 50th anniversary year of Sir Arthur Bliss’s death has seen a gratifying number of revivals, few more significant than that of The Beatitudes. The misfortune of its premiere having been moved from Coventry’s new Cathedral to its Belgrade Theatre, thus freeing up rehearsal time for Britten’s War Requiem, rather condemned it as an also-ran from the outset. Yet Bliss had created a piece unerringly suited for the consecration in what, in itself, remains an impressive conception. Unfolding as 14 short sections which can be grouped into six larger movements, this is less a cantata than a choral symphony. Setting all nine Beatitudes, Bliss none the less merged several of these and interspersed them with settings from three 17th-century and one 20th-century ‘metaphysical’ poets to commemorate the past from the vantage of the present.

The texts, drawn from Henry Vaughan, George Herbert and Jeremy Taylor, anticipate a future redemption – as, more ambivalently, does Dylan Thomas in And death shall have dominion which builds implacably to the climactic Ninth Beatitude and Voices of the Mob prior to the hard-won serenity of the Epilogue. That The Beatitudes has enjoyed relatively few revivals is less to do with its intrinsic quality than the demands of its choral writing, to which the BBC Symphony Chorus and BBC Singers did notable justice. Elizabeth Watts responded with real sensitivity and perception to some radiant soprano writing and while Laurence Kilsby was a little effortful in the more demonstrative passages, he brought conviction to a tenor role both fervent and compassionate. Nor did Richard Pearce disappoint with his extensive organ part.

Oramo paced the 50-minute entity superbly as to make one hope he will tackle more works by Bliss – not least the masterly Meditations on a Theme by John Blow, which has inexplicably fallen through the net this year. He had started tonight’s concert with a most welcome revival for Death on the Pale Horse – the succinctly eventful tone poem by Ruth Gipps which, while it might not capture the visceral drama of Blake’s eponymous engraving, distils an evocative atmosphere from pithy initial ideas that audibly reflects the circumstances of its composition.

Click on the artist names to read more about soloists Elizabeth Watts, Laurence Kilsby and Lukas Sternath, the BBC Singers, BBC Symphony Chorus and BBC Symphony Orchestra, and their conductor Sakari Oramo. You can also click to read more about composers Arthur Bliss, Ruth Gipps and the BBC Proms

Published post no.2,652 – Tuesday 9 September 2025