19:00 BBC Proms (m000kx6f)
First Night of the BBC Proms 2020
Friday 17 July 2020
Tonight sees the launch of six weeks of highlights from the past three decades of the Proms, featuring memorable performances from an array of the world’s greatest soloists, orchestras and conductors.
Marking the 250th anniversary of Beethoven’s birth, we open with a mash-up of Beethoven’s nine symphonies – a First Night commission by Iain Farrington recorded in lockdown by a Grand Virtual Orchestra formed of around 350 players from across the BBC Performing Groups. The Beethoven celebrations continue with the dramatic Piano Concerto No. 3 performed at the 2017 First Night by Igor Levit, who has more recently reached a new audience through his live Twitter concerts streamed direct from his Berlin apartment during the coronavirus lockdown.
Sir Harrison Birtwistle’s riotous, hard-hitting Panic – for saxophone, drums and orchestra – won instant notoriety following its premiere at the Last Night of the 100th-anniversary Proms season in 1995.
Tonight’s selection concludes with Claudio Abbado’s final Proms appearance, in 2007, conducting the 127 players of his Lucerne Festival Orchestra in a rapturous performance of Mahler’s epic hymn to nature, his Third Symphony.
7.30pm
Ian Farrington: Genius Never Dies (BBC commission: world premiere)
Grand Virtual Orchestra (BBC Performing Groups)
c.
7.40pm
Beethoven: Piano Concerto No 3 in C minor
Igor Levit, piano
BBC Symphony Orchestra
Edward Gardner, conductor
(From the First Night of the BBC Proms 2017, 14 July)
c.
8.15pm
Sir Harrison Birtwistle: Panic
BBC Symphony Orchestra
Sir Andrew Davis, conductor
(From the Last Night of the BBC Proms 1995, 16 September)
c.
8.35pm
Mahler: Symphony no 3
Anna Larsson, mezzo-soprano
Trinity Boys Choir
London Symphony Chorus
Lucerne Festival Orchestra
Claudio Abbado, conductor
(From BBC Proms 2007, 22 August)
15:00 BBC Proms (m000l289)
Christian Thielemann conducts the Staatskapelle Dresden
Saturday 18 July 2020
Presented by Kate Molleson
The Staatskapelle Dresden and its Chief Conductor Christian Thielemann open with Beethoven’s most radiant, smiling work, his sublime Violin Concerto, in the sure hands of Nikolaj Znaider.
After the interval this famously rich-toned orchestra digs into Max Reger’s affectionate and beautifully orchestrated Variations and Fugue on a Theme by Mozart and finally Richard Strauss’s witty and abrasive depiction of an impish figure from German folklore, his outlandish tone-poem telling of ‘Till Eulenspiegel’s merry pranks’.
Beethoven: Violin Concerto
Reger: Variations and Fugue on a Theme by Mozart
R. Strauss: Till Eulenspiegel's Merry Pranks
Nikolaj Znaider (violin)
Staatskapelle Dresden
Christian Thielemann (conductor)
(From BBC Proms 2016, 8 September)
18:30 BBC Proms (m000l28f)
Beethoven's Leonore - a landmark performance
Saturday 18 July 2020
Beethoven: Leonore
(From BBC Proms 1996, 16 August)
Beethoven’s only opera is a passionate musical protest against political oppression that also celebrates the power of human love. This performance from 1996 of the opera’s first version (it was later revised as Fidelio) was only its second ever at the Proms, and the first featuring period instruments. Sir John Eliot Gardiner favoured this earlier version of the work, conceived at a time when Beethoven was fired up by the ideals of Napoleon and the social fragmentation of society in the wake of the French Revolution. This performance came soon after the experience of recording all of Beethoven's symphonies with his Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique. The period instruments, he said, gave the music ‘greater transparency of texture, more sharply differentiated character of the instruments and an almost visceral struggle with the musical material.'
Presented by Martin Handley.
Leonore.....Hillevi Martinpelto (soprano)
Florestan.....Kim Begley (tenor)
Rocco.....Franz Hawlata (bass)
Marzelline.....Christiane Oelze (soprano)
Jaquino.....Michael Schade (tenor)
Don Pizarro.....Matthew Best (bass)
Don Fernando.....Geert Smits (baritone)
First Prisoner.....Robert Burt (tenor)
Second Prisoner.....Colin Campbell (baritoner)
Monteverdi Choir
Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique
Sir John Eliot Gardiner (conductor)
In 2020, BBC Radio 3 is bringing together musical greats, from the past and the present, in one extraordinary Proms season. Radio 3 is broadcasting the best of four decades of unmissable Proms concerts.
13:00 BBC Proms (m000l1y9)
Proms Chamber Music: Jeremy Denk
Sunday 19 July 2020
In 2020, BBC Radio 3 is bringing together musical greats, from the past and the present, in one extraordinary Proms season. Radio 3 is broadcasting the best of four decades of unmissable Proms concerts.
Bartók: Piano Sonata
Scriabin: Piano Sonata No. 9, 'Black Mass’
Beethoven: Piano Sonata No. 32 in C minor, Op. 111
Jeremy Denk (piano)
(From BBC Proms 2015, 24 August)
Jeremy Denk is one of America’s foremost pianists – a musician the New York Times hails as someone ‘you want to hear no matter what he performs’. In 2015 he put Beethoven’s final piano sonata at the core of his debut Proms recital. This majestic work – which he later recorded for a 2019 disc entitled ‘c.1300–c.2000’ – blends extrovert passion with a depth that characterises all of the composer’s late works.
Denk paired the Beethoven with Bartók’s only piano sonata – a piece strongly coloured by Hungarian folk melodies and rhythmic attack – and Scriabin’s ‘Black Mass’ Piano Sonata. His most famous work in the genre, Scriabin’s sonata is a disconcerting, phantasmagoric musical journey – and a gleeful vision of horror.
18:15 BBC Proms (m000l1yk)
Programme 1
Sunday 19 July 2020
Starting a series of six weekly programmes, Georgia Mann explores the coming week's Proms together with a group of guests, including Nicholas Kenyon, Managing Director of the Barbican Centre; Gillian Moore, Director of Music at Southbank Centre, and Helen Wallace, Artistic Director at Kings Place. As Radio 3 opens its rich archives during the summer, the guests offer tips, recommendations and rediscoveries in a unique chance to hear some historic and memorable recordings. The most significant people and events coming up in the week ahead are put under a spotlight, and the guests react to both archive interviews and fresh material recorded especially for the programme.
21:00 BBC Proms (m000l1yp)
Beethoven’s Missa solemnis
Sunday 19 July 2020
Presented by Tom Service
Finding the terror alongside the spiritual awe, the questioning doubt as well as the faith, Beethoven’s mighty Missa solemnis is a work of visceral power – a public statement of intensely private belief. ‘From the heart – may it return to the heart!,’ the composer wrote at the top of a score that stretched the proportions and ambitions of the orchestral Mass to new limits.
A work close to Harnoncourt’s heart, the Missa solemnis was also the work he conducted in his final public performance before retiring in December 2015. Experience the raw intensity of his account here with the Chamber Orchestra of Europe and Arnold Schoenberg Choir at the 1998 BBC Proms.
Beethoven: Missa solemnis
Chamber Orchestra of Europe
Arnold Schoenberg Choir
Ruth Ziesak (soprano)
Bernarda Fink (alto)
Herbert Lippert (tenor)
Neal Davies (bass)
Nikolous Harnoncourt (conductor)
(From BBC Proms 1998, 11 September)
13:00 BBC Proms (m000l1m6)
Proms Chamber Music: Apollon Musagète Quartet
Monday 20 July 2020
In 2020, BBC Radio 3 is bringing together musical greats, from the past and the present, in one extraordinary Proms season. Radio 3 is broadcasting the best of four decades of unmissable Proms concerts.
Webern: Langsamer Satz
Colin Matthews: String Quartet No. 5 (European premiere)
Beethoven: String Quartet in D major, Op. 18 No. 3
Apollon Musagète Quartet
(From BBC Proms 2015, 3 August)
Presented by Petroc Trelawny.
Former BBC Radio 3 New Generation Artists the Apollon Musagète Quartet present the European premiere of the Fifth String Quartet by one of Britain’s foremost living composers, Colin Matthews. Commissioned for the 75th anniversary of the Tanglewood Festival in 2015, the piece remains the last work Matthews has written in the medium.
Bookending the Quartet are Webern’s youthful Langsamer Satz – an ecstatic piece that showcases the composer’s formal skill within a lyrical idiom – and Beethoven’s String Quartet Op. 18 No. 3. Of Beethoven’s six Op. 18 quartets, No. 3 is both the lightest and the hardest to pin down: the scherzo is fleeting, and even the framing movements have an unusual delicacy and wistfulness about them.
14:00 Afternoon Concert - BBC Proms (m000l1m8)
Summer Festivals
Monday 20 July 2020
A new series of great Proms concerts from recent years by BBC orchestras and choirs, launched by the BBC National Orchestra of Wales, BBC Symphony Orchestra and BBC Concert Orchestra. Presented by Fiona Talkington.
Prokofiev: Symphony No 1 in D major (Classical Symphony)
Qigang Chen: Iris Dévoilée (London premiere)
with Meng Meng, Anu Komsi and Piia Komsi (sopranos), Jia Li (pipa), Jing Chang (zheng) and Nan Wang (erhu)
Rachmaninov: Symphony No 2 in E minor
BBC NOW
Conductor Xian Zhang
George Benjamin: Ringed by the Flat Horizon
BBC Symphony Orchestra
Conducted by the composer
Throughout the 2020 Proms season Afternoon Concert celebrates top music-making at Summer Festivals, with four weeks of concerts from 2019 summer festivals across Europe and four weeks of great Proms performances from recent years by the BBC Orchestras and Choirs. This week features all six BBC-associated orchestras including the Ulster Orchestra, plus the BBC Singers and BBC Symphony Chorus; the BBC National Chorus of Wales will feature in two weeks' time. The series will also celebrate the 60th birthdays in 2020 of two great British composers, George Benjamin and Mark-Anthony Turnage, and highlight some of the best Proms premieres from James MacMillan's The Confession of Isobel Gowdie in 1990 to the present day.
To launch the series today Chinese-American conductor Xian Zhang makes her Proms debut in a hyper-Romantic 2015 concert featuring two Russian blockbusters and a gorgeous recent work by her compatriot Qigang Chen. Plus George Benjamin conducting the BBC Symphony Orchestra in the piece whose 1980 Proms premiere catapulted him to fame, and film favourites from a 2011 Prom by the BBC Concert Orchestra and their then Principal Conductor Keith Lockhart - who feature throughout this week.
19:30 BBC Proms (m000l1mk)
Leif Ove Andsnes plays Beethoven
Monday 20 July 2020
In 2020, BBC Radio 3 is bringing together musical greats, from the past and the present, in one extraordinary Proms season. Radio 3 is broadcasting the best of four decades of unmissable Proms concerts.
This evening we've another chance to hear a Prom from 2015 - Norwegian pianist Leif Ove Andsnes and the Mahler Chamber Orchestra present Beethoven’s Second and Fifth piano concertos – the composer’s first and final experiments in the genre. In No 2, a spacious and gentle central adagio is framed with Mozartean grace in the outer movements, while the Fifth is the composer’s last word on the subject – a musical emancipation of the soloist that anticipates the Romantic concertos of Beethoven’s successors.
Opening tonight’s concert is Stravinsky’s Octet, written for wind ensemble. Looking to the musical past for inspiration once again, Stravinsky’s Neo-classical masterpiece pastiches the forms and textures of the 18th century, colouring them with a mood and mischief all his own.
Presented by Andrew McGregor, who chats to Leif Ove between the two piano concertos.
Stravinsky: Octet
c.
7.55pm
Beethoven: Piano Concerto No. 2 in B flat major
c.
8.35pm
Beethoven: Piano Concerto No. 5 in E flat major, ‘Emperor’
Mahler Chamber Orchestra
Leif Ove Andsnes (piano/conductor)
(From BBC Proms 2015, 26 July)
22:00 BBC Proms (p02xfqpc)
Proms Lecture - Daniel Levitin: Music and Our Brains
Monday 20 July 2020
Before becoming a leading neuroscientist, Daniel Levitin worked as a musician and record producer. In "Unlocking the Mysteries of Music in Your Brain", the Proms Lecture given in front of an audience at the Royal College of Music, he explores the new thinking about the crucial relationship between music and our neural responses.
(From BBC Proms 2015, 18 July)
14:00 Afternoon Concert - BBC Proms (m000l22v)
Summer Festivals
Tuesday 21 July 2020
Fiona Talkington presents great Prom concerts from recent years by BBC orchestras and choirs - today the BBC Singers in Palestrina and Judith Weir and Ulster Orchestra in Tchaikovsky. Venezuelan Rafael Payare makes his 2016 Proms debut as Principal Conductor and Music Director of the Ulster Orchestra with Tchaikovsky's Fifth and a brand-new work by Professor of Composition at Queens University, Belfast, Piers Hellawell, plus Haydn with the cellist Narek Hakhnazaryan, who was then a BBC New Generation Artist. Plus a 2017 Prom at Southwark Cathedral with Palestrina from BBC Singers and their then chief conductor, David Hill, who are joined by the Nash Ensemble for another world premiere by Master of the Queen's Music Judith Weir.
Piers Hellawell: Wild Flow (world premiere)
Haydn: Cello Concerto No 1 in C major
with Narek Hakhnazaryan (cello)
Tchaikovsky: Symphony No 5
Ulster Orchestra
Conductor Rafael Payare
Proms at… Southwark Cathedral
Palestrina: Motet 'Confitebor tibi, Domine'; Missa 'Confitebor tibi'
Judith Weir: In the Land of Uz (BBC commission: world premiere)
with Adrian Thompson (tenor), Stephen Farr (organ) and Nash Ensemble
BBC Singers
Conductor David Hill
19:30 BBC Proms (m000l23b)
The world premiere of John Tavener's 20th-century classic, The Protecting Veil
Tuesday 21 July 2020
In 2020, BBC Radio 3 is bringing together musical greats, from the past and the present, in one extraordinary Proms season. Radio 3 is broadcasting the best of four decades of unmissable Proms concerts.
Kate Molleson introduces a Prom from 1989 conducted by the late Oliver Knussen, one of the most respected figures in British contemporary music.
Knussen composed his Flourish with Fireworks for American conductor Michael Tilson Thomas, to reflect a shared admiration for the music of Stravinsky, here represented in the symphonic poem he made in 1917 from his opera The Nightingale. Song of the Nightingale later became a successful ballet, with choreography by Massine and later Balanchine.
Also premiered were two other works by British composers: the Symphony by Minna Keal; and John Tavener’s The Protecting Veil for cello and orchestra, a radiant expression of Tavener’s faith, which, in his own words, attempted to ‘capture some of the almost cosmic power of the Mother of God’. Commissioned by the BBC, it has since become a contemporary classic, having received over a dozen recordings.
Knussen: Flourish with Fireworks
Debussy: Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune
Keal: Symphony, Op. 3 (first concert performance of complete work)
Tavener: The Protecting Veil (world premiere)
Mussorgsky: Intermezzo in modo classico (orchestral version)
Stravinsky: Song of the Nightingale
Steven Isserlis (cello)
BBC Symphony Orchestra
Oliver Knussen (conductor)
(From BBC Proms, 4 September 1989)
22:00 BBC Proms (b04b2lwg)
Proms Plus
Tavener and Literature
Tuesday 21 July 2020
Matthew Sweet and his guests, the award-winning poet and librettist Michael Symmons Roberts and musician, priest and broadcaster Richard Coles, explore the inspiration John Tavener took from poems written by George Herbert, John Donne and William Blake. Tonight's Proms broadcast includes The Protecting Veil, which earnt Tavener a nomination for the Mercury Prize and whilst this work takes its cue from an icon and the Orthodox feast of the Protecting Veil of the Mother of God, other pieces by Tavener draw on literary sources.
Originally recorded before an audience at the Royal College of Music at the BBC Proms on 23 July 2014.
22:20 BBC Proms (m000l23m)
Proms Plus
Birds
Tuesday 21 July 2020
Helen Macdonald, author of H Is For Hawk and Tim Birkhead, Professor of Behaviour and Evolution at the University of Sheffield and author of Bird Sense, share their experiences of observing birds closely and their pick of writing inspired by real and fictional birds. Professor Birkhead’s recent research has been into the adaptive significance of egg shape in birds and Helen Macdonald won the 2014 Samuel Johnson Prize and Costa Book Award for her writing about the year she spent training a goshawk. The presenter is New Generation Thinker Lucy Powell who researches birds in British 18th-century literature. Tonight's Proms concert broadcast ends with a performance of Stravinsky's Song of the Nightingale.
Producer: Jacqueline Smith
Originally recorded with an audience at BBC Proms on 26 July 2018.
14:00 Afternoon Concert - BBC Proms (m000l1dr)
Summer Festivals
Wednesday 22 July 2020
Hannah French presents great Prom concerts from recent years by BBC orchestras and choirs - today Stephen Hough and the BBC Philharmonic play Brahms's mighty First Piano Concerto.
Brahms: Piano Concerto No 1 in D minor
David Sawer: the greatest happiness principle
Haydn: Symphony No 99 in E flat major
BBC Philharmonic
Conductor Mark Wigglesworth
19:30 BBC Proms (m000l1f2)
The Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra at the Proms
Wednesday 22 July 2020
In 2020, BBC Radio 3 is bringing together musical greats, from the past and the present, in one extraordinary Proms season. Radio 3 is broadcasting the best of four decades of unmissable Proms concerts.
The sparkling overture from Rossini’s opera Semiramide opens this Prom given by the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, led by Italian maestro Riccardo Chailly. Flexing his Beethoven muscles, Chailly gives his unique reading of the composer’s First Symphony – a work later captured as part of a complete cycle, recorded with the Leipzig Gewandhausorchester from 2007 to 2009.
Rounding off the programme is Prokofiev’s striking Third Symphony. Written in 1928, it was a direct and spirited reaction to the disappointment Prokofiev experienced with his opera The Fiery Angel, whose first performance, accepted by Bruno Walter for Berlin, had been summarily and indefinitely postponed. Though the second act was given in a concert in Paris conducted by Koussevitzky in June 1928, the opera as a whole was not seen until 1954. Prokofiev rescued some of the material by developing it symphonically; the result is a work of great drama and intensity.
Presented by Ian Skelly
Rossini: Semiramide – overture
Beethoven: Symphony No. 1 in C major
Prokofiev: Symphony No. 3 in C minor
Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra
Riccardo Chailly (conductor)
(From BBC Proms 1990, 11 September)
14:00 Afternoon Concert - BBC Proms (m000l2v7)
Summer Festivals
Thursday 23 July 2020
Proms Opera Matinee: Michael Tippett's masterpiece The Midsummer Marriage from the BBC SO, BBC Singers and BBC Symphony Chorus conducted by Andrew Davis - an acclaimed performance from the 2013 BBC Proms. Tippett asked TS Eliot to write the libretto for his first opera, but Eliot recommended the composer to try it himself. The result is one of the unusual but haunting operas ever written, a kind of 1950s Magic Flute. Its three acts are filled with some of the most beautiful operatic music composed since the Second World War, from the chorus's opening hymn to the sun and Mark's rapturous love song to Jenifer through the famous Ritual Dances of Act 2 to the deeply moving aria for the oracle Sosostris at the heart of the final act.
Michael Tippett: The Midsummer Marriage
Mark ….. Paul Groves (tenor)
Jenifer, his fiancée ….. Erin Wall (soprano)
King Fisher, her father, a rich businessman ….. David Wilson-Johnson (baritone)
Bella, his secretary ….. Ailish Tynan (soprano)
Jack, her mechanic boyfriend ….. Allan Clayton (tenor)
Sosostris ….. Catherine Wyn-Rogers (mezzo-soprano)
He-Ancient ….. David Soar (bass)
She-Ancient ….. Madeleine Shaw (mezzo-soprano)
BBC Singers
BBC Symphony Chorus
BBC Symphony Orchestra
Conductor Andrew Davis
19:30 BBC Proms (m000l2vf)
Mariss Jansons conducts Dvorak and Strauss
Thursday 23 July 2020
In 2020, BBC Radio 3 is bringing together musical greats, from the past and the present, in one extraordinary Proms season. Radio 3 is broadcasting the best of four decades of unmissable Proms concerts.
The late, great Mariss Jansons and his Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra mark the centenary of Dvořák’s death in a 2004 Prom also featuring a popular tone poem by Richard Strauss. Presented by Petroc Trelawny
Dvořák: Symphony No. 8 in G major
Strauss: Ein Heldenleben
Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra
Conductor Mariss Jansons
(From BBC Proms 2004, 30 July)
The late Latvian maestro Mariss Jansons appeared at the Proms in 2004 with his renowned German orchestra, of which he was Chief Conductor from 2003 until the end of his life. Together they present Richard Strauss’s autobiographical showpiece, Ein Heldenleben.
Opening the programme is Dvořák’s Eighth Symphony. Written at his brother-in-law’s estate around 30 miles outside of Prague, the symphony reflects Dvořák’s pastoral surroundings, and gives a flavour of the profusion of ideas to come in his ‘New World’ Ninth.
23:00 BBC Proms (m000l2vh)
Baroque classics from Anne Sofie von Otter and Les Musiciens du Louvre
Thursday 23 July 2020
Anne Sofie von Otter joins French conductor Marc Minkowski and his period-instrument ensemble in a pair of arias from Handel’s mighty opera Ariodante – which they recorded together in 1997 – and one of Bach’s most beautiful and consoling solo cantatas, ‘Vergnügte Ruh, beliebte Seelenlust’.
Rounding off this all-Baroque affair is a colourful selection of dances by Jean-Philippe Rameau, a near-direct contemporary of Bach. The suite, which was compiled by Marc Minkowski, draws from a selection of the French composer’s operas.
Bach: Cantata No 170, ‘Vergnügte Ruh, beliebte Seelenlust’
Rameau: L'apothéose de la dance – suite
Handel: Ariodante: Scherza infida; Doppo notte
Anne Sofie von Otter (mezzo-soprano)
Les Musiciens du Louvre
Marc Minkowski (conductor)
(From BBC Proms, 10 September 2003)
14:00 Afternoon Concert - BBC Proms (m000l2zf)
Summer Festivals
Friday 24 July 2020
Hannah French presents great Prom concerts from recent years by BBC Orchestras & Choirs - today a feast of 20th and 21st century music from the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra. In this remarkable BBC Prom from 2008 Ilan Volkov - then Principal Conductor of the BBC SSO, now their Principal Guest Conductor - leads a beautifully shaped concert featuring classics of electronic music by the French-American pioneer Edgard Varese and the modern master Jonathan Harvey, plus a Harvey world premiere. The concert is launched by two Proms premieres: from another towering French modernist, Olivier Messiaen, and Harvey's tribute to him on the centenary of his birth.
Jonathan Harvey: Tombeau de Messiaen for piano and tape
Cédric Tiberghien (piano)
Messiaen: Concert à quatre
with Emily Beynon (flute), Alexei Ogrintchouk (oboe),
Danjulo Ishizaka (cello) and Cédric Tiberghien (piano)
Harvey: Mortuos plango, vivos voco; Speakings (world premiere)
Varèse: Poème électronique; Déserts
BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra
Conductor Ilan Volkov
19:30 BBC Proms (m000l2zm)
Hollywood Rhapsody Prom
Friday 24 July 2020
In 2020, BBC Radio 3 is bringing together musical greats, from the past and the present, in one extraordinary Proms season. Radio 3 is broadcasting the best of four decades of unmissable Proms concerts. This evening's concert, from 2013, features Proms favourites John Wilson and his orchestra in a celebration of classic Hollywood film scores.
Connecticut-born child prodigy Alfred Newman’s ‘Street Scene’, from the 1953 classic How to Marry a Millionaire, contrasts with the music of Jewish émigrés Erich Korngold, Max Steiner and Franz Waxman, with suites from Korngold’s swashbuckling score for Robin Hood, Steiner’s nostalgic music for Casablanca and Waxman’s brooding score for A Place in the Sun – all of them Academy Award-winners – making for a red-carpet event.
Presented by Georgia Mann
7.30pm
Newman: Street Scene
Kaper: Confetti
Raskin: Laura - New Suite
Herrmann: Psycho Suite
Herrmann: Salammbo Aria (Citizen Kane)
Korngold: Robin Hood - Suite
Moross: The Big Country
c.
8:20pm Interval
c.
8:35pm
Steiner: Casablanca - Suite
Various: Main Title - Song Medley
Waxman: A Place in the Sun
Rózsa: Ben-Hur - Suite
Venera Gimadieva (soprano)
Matthew Ford (vocalist)
Jane Monheit (vocalist)
John Wilson Orchestra
John Wilson (conductor)
(From BBC Proms 2013, 26 August)
18:30 BBC Proms (m000l7m3)
Wagner's Die Walküre from the 2013 BBC Proms
Saturday 25 July 2020
In 2020, BBC Radio 3 is bringing together musical greats, from the past and the present, in one extraordinary Proms season. Radio 3 is broadcasting the best of four decades of unmissable Proms concerts. This evening, Kate Molleson introduces a performance from the 2013 BBC Proms when Daniel Barenboim conducted the Staatskapelle Berlin and a starry cast in Wagner's Die Walküre, as part of the first complete Ring cycle in a single Proms season.
Wagner: Die Walküre
Bryn Terfel (Wotan)
Simon O'Neill (Siegmund)
Anja Kampe (Sieglinde)
Eric Halfvarson (Hunding)
Nina Stemme (Brünnhilde)
Ekaterina Gubanova (Fricka)
Sonja Mühleck (Gerhilde)
Carola Höhn (Ortlinde)
Ivonne Fuchs (Waltraute)
Anaïk Morel (Schwertleite)
Susan Foster (Helmwige)
Leann Sandel-Pantaleo (Siegrune)
Anna Lapkovskaja (Grimgerde)
Simone Schröder (Rossweisse)
Staatskapelle Berlin
Daniel Barenboim (conductor)
Die Walküre, the second instalment of Wagner's epic four-opera cycle The Ring, opens with a terrible storm presaging the devastating events which are about to unfold, as the gods fall prey to all too-human flaws. Siegmund, who has been asked by his father Wotan to help him acquire the Ring, meets and falls in love with his long-lost twin sister Sieglinde. Fricka, Wotan's consort, is infuriated and demands Siegmund's death. Brünnhilde, Wotan's rebel daughter, tries to defend him, but in punishment she is put to sleep on a rock surrounded by fire.
13:00 BBC Proms (m000l71z)
English choral music new and old
Sunday 26 July 2020
In 2020, BBC Radio 3 is bringing together musical greats, from the past and the present, in one extraordinary Proms season. Radio 3 is broadcasting the best of four decades of unmissable Proms concerts.
Sir Harrison Birtwistle’s long association with the Proms is reflected in this concert from 2013, in which Nicholas Kok conducts the UK premiere of The Moth Requiem for women’s voices, alto flute and three harps, a dream-like incantation of the names of the dustier cousins of the sun-loving butterfly.
Before that, pre-Reformation motets by William Cornysh and Walter Lambe, preserved in the Eton Choirbook, intersperse with alluring works by Gustav Holst and his daughter Imogen, including the third set of Choral Hymns from the Rig Veda for female voices and harp,
Presented by Petroc Trelawny.
Gustav Holst: Choral Hymns from the Rig Veda – Group 3
William Cornysh: Ave Maria mater Dei
Imogen Holst: Hallo, my fancy, whither wilt thou go?
Walter Lambe: Stella caeli
Sir Harrison Birtwistle: The Moth Requiem (BBC co-commission with the Danish National Vocal Ensemble: UK premiere)
BBC Singers
Nash Ensemble
Nicholas Kok (conductor)
(From BBC Proms, 12 August 2013)
21:00 BBC Proms (m000l72d)
BBC Proms: Monteverdi's Vespers
Sunday 26 July 2020
In 2020, BBC Radio 3 is bringing together musical greats, from the past and the present, in one extraordinary Proms season. Radio 3 is broadcasting the best of four decades of unmissable Proms concerts.
French period instrument collective Pygmalion make their 2017 Proms debut in Monteverdi’s iconic Vespers of 1610. Presented by Kate Molleson.
Claudio Monteverdi: Vespers of 1610
Giuseppina Bridelli (soprano)
Eva Zaïcik (mezzo-soprano)
Emiliano Gonzalez‐Toro (tenor)
Magnus Staveland (tenor)
Virgile Ancely (bass)
Renaud Bres (bass)
Geoffroy Buffière (bass)
Ensemble Pygmalion
Director Raphaël Pichon
(From BBC Proms 2017, 31 July)
Before there was Bach's Mass in B minor or Beethoven's Missa solemnis there was Monteverdi's Vespers, a choral masterpiece of unprecedented musical scope and audacious beauty. The work's textural extremes, multiple choirs and sonic effects are brought richly to life in this 2017 Proms performance marking the 450th anniversary of the composer’s birth.
This concert was the Proms debut of award-winning French Baroque ensemble Pygmalion under its director Raphaël Pichon, together with an exciting line-up of young soloists.
13:00 BBC Proms (m000l79b)
Proms Chamber Music: Emmanuel Pahud
Monday 27 July 2020
In 2020, BBC Radio 3 is bringing together musical greats, from the past and the present, in one extraordinary Proms season. Radio 3 is broadcasting the best of four decades of unmissable Proms concerts.
Martinů: Flute Sonata
Dutilleux: Sonatine
Prokofiev: Flute Sonata
Emmanuel Pahud (flute)
Eric Le Sage (piano)
(From BBC Proms 2011, 22 August)
Presented by Catherine Bott
Emmanuel Pahud – principal flute of the Berlin Philharmonic and a featured artist at the 2011 Proms – returned following a concerto appearance earlier the same Proms season for a recital of pieces composed in the 1940s.
Martinů's amiable Sonata plumbs unexpected depths in its central core, while the Prokofiev Sonata's delightfully sunny nature makes it an ideal vehicle for the brilliant sparkle of the flute.
In between comes the Sonatine by Dutilleux, here at his most pastoral and Debussyan, carrying the flag for the Paris Conservatoire tradition of commissioning new scores for its final examinations.
Former BBC Radio 3 New Generation Artists the Apollon Musagète Quartet present the European premiere of the Fifth String Quartet by one of Britain’s foremost living composers, Colin Matthews. Commissioned for the 75th anniversary of the Tanglewood Festival in 2015, the piece remains the last work Matthews has written in the medium.
Bookending the Quartet are Webern’s youthful Langsamer Satz – an ecstatic piece that showcases the composer’s formal skill within a lyrical idiom – and Beethoven’s String Quartet Op. 18 No. 3. Of Beethoven’s six Op. 18 quartets, No. 3 is both the lightest and the hardest to pin down: the scherzo is fleeting, and even the framing movements have an unusual delicacy and wistfulness about them.
19:30 BBC Proms (m000l79n)
Beethoven and Schubert from Roger Norrington
Monday 27 July 2020
Sir Roger Norrington conducts his period instrument London Classical Players in symphonies by Beethoven and Schubert.
Where some musicians follow trends, Roger Norrington has always led them, not least in his long collaboration with the London Classical Players, the orchestra he formed to explore the playing styles relating to Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert and Berlioz. In this 1989 Prom, Schubert's monumental 'Great' symphony - once praised for its 'heavenly length'- is paired with early Beethoven.
Presented by Hannah French.
Beethoven: Symphony No. 2 in D major
Schubert: Schubert: Symphony No. 9 in C major, ‘Great’
London Classical Players
Sir Roger Norrington (conductor)
(From BBC Proms 1989, 21 August)
Sir Roger Norrington's ‘Experiences’ were one of the defining features of the UK's musical life in the 1980s. In these hugely popular events, Sir Roger and his London Classical Players offered music, talk and provocative discussion and brought new insights into works from the Classical and Romantic periods, seen then as the preserve of the traditional symphony orchestras. It is no exaggeration to say that performance style of Beethoven and Schubert has not been the same since.
In 2020, BBC Radio 3 is bringing together musical greats, from the past and the present, in one extraordinary Proms season. Radio 3 is broadcasting the best of four decades of unmissable Proms concerts.
19:30 BBC Proms (m000l6lt)
Haitink and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra
Tuesday 28 July 2020
In 2020, BBC Radio 3 is bringing together musical greats, from the past and the present, in one extraordinary Proms season. Radio 3 is broadcasting the best of four decades of unmissable Proms concerts.
Murray Perahia and Bernard Haitink have a musical rapport that has given us countless magnificent performances. This performance from the BBC Proms in 2008 saw Perahia return to the Proms, following a gap of 20 years, to perform one of Mozart's greatest piano concertos.
It was while writing his Fourth Symphony that Shostakovich was denounced in a newspaper article entitled ‘Muddle Instead of Music’. He continued composing the work in private, but it had to wait 25 years – beyond the death of Stalin – before it was first heard in public, in 1961.
Presented by Ian Skelly
7.30pm
Mozart: Piano Concerto No 24 in C minor, K491
c.
8.10pm
Shostakovich: Symphony No. 4 in C minor
Murray Perahia (piano)
Chicago Symphony Orchestra
Bernard Haitink (conductor)
(From BBC Proms 2008, 9 September)