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.
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.’
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.
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.
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 Dvo?ák’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.
‘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.
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.
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’.
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.
‘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.
