The BBC Proms Photo: BBC Chris Christodoulou
As the world’s biggest classical music festival, the BBC Proms offers diverse and exciting musical journeys across eight weeks of live performances from a vast array of leading orchestras, conductors and soloists from the UK and around the world.
More than 125 years since it was founded, the driving factor in building the festival is founder-conductor Henry Wood’s original ambition of bringing the best classical music to the widest possible audience. With thanks to our colleagues at BBC Radio 3, you can listen to selected concerts from the 2024 BBC Proms on RNZ Concert. This is a radio-only exclusive.
Hear the BBC Proms on RNZ Concert starting from Friday 2 August, at 8pm on Wednesdays and Fridays in Music Alive with Clarissa Dunn, and 1 pm on Mondays during Days with Nick Tipping. There are also some proms concerts coming up in our Opera spot at 7pm Saturdays and Sound Lounge from 9 pm Sunday evenings.
Here is what to listen out for, and when:
Pianist Isata Kanneh-Mason. Photo: BBC Chris Christodoulou
First Night of the Proms 2024 Live at the Royal Albert Hall
8 pm Friday, 2 August 2024
In her First Night of the Proms debut, conductor Elim Chan presents Beethoven’s iconic Fifth Symphony alongside Handel’s Music for the Royal Fireworks and Clara Schumann’s tender Piano Concerto, featuring star soloist Isata Kanneh-Mason.
Beethoven railed against fate in his Symphony No. 5, capturing ideals of fortitude, defiance and bravery in an instant. In her First Night debut, conductor Elim Chan places Beethoven’s compelling score at the heart of a celebration that includes fireworks, jubilation and romance. The last comes with Clara Schumann’s tender and virtuosic Piano Concerto – performed by a pianist who has championed it tirelessly: Isata Kanneh-Mason, the eldest of the remarkable musical Kanneh-Mason siblings.
Sophie Bevan (soprano), Isata Kanneh‐Mason (piano), BBC Singers, BBC Symphony Chorus, BBC Symphony Orchestra/Elim Chan. Royal Albert Hall, London.
HANDEL: Overture, from Music for the Royal Fireworks;BRUCKNER: Psalm 150;C SCHUMANN: Piano Concerto in A minor Op 7;B NOBUTO: Hallelujah Sim. (BBC commission: world premiere); BEETHOVEN: Symphony No 5 in C minor Op 67.
BBC Proms 2024: Zemlinsky's The Mermaid
1 pm Monday, 5 August 2024
Ryan Bancroft and the BBC National Orchestra of Wales perform Zemlinsky’s The Mermaid and Schoenberg's Pelleas and Melisande. Royal Albert Hall, London.
At a concert in Vienna on 25 January 1905, two new, contrastingly impactful orchestral works were heard for the first time. In his response to Maurice Maeterlinck’s drama on the doomed love between Pelleas and Melisande, Arnold Schoenberg (born 150 years ago) pushes a colossal symphony orchestra to its limits. But Alexander Zemlinsky wasn’t going to let Schoenberg (also his brother-in-law) steal the show and wore his broken heart on his sleeve in his orchestral response to the well-known Hans Christian Andersen story The Little Mermaid. Ryan Bancroft marshals his BBC National Orchestra of Wales in two monumental tearjerkers that share far more than a birthday.
The King’s Singers and VOCES8, Photo: BBC
BBC Proms 2024: The King’s Singers and VOCES8
8 pm Wednesday, 7 August 2024
When it comes to ensemble singing, two British groups have rewritten the rule book. United on stage for the first time, The King’s Singers and VOCES8 present a Prom that mingles pop classics with classical, showcasing their world-class close-harmony singing. Expect superlative vocal precision and beauty from two of the UK’s most thrilling vocal outfits live at Royal Albert Hall, London.
FRANCIS-HEAD, Cheryl: Beyond the Night Sky; ESENVALDS: Stars; CHILCOTT: High Flight; HARLINE arr Rutter: When You Wish upon a Star, from Pinocchio; JOHN arr Ray: Can You Feel the Love tonight, from Lion King; WALLACE arr Ashby: When I See an Elephant Fly, from Dumbo; RUSBY arr Clements: Underneath the Stars; HOLST: The Evening Watch Op 43/1 H159; DUNPHY, Melissa: Totality; ARLEN arr Clements: I've Got the World on a String; SIMON arr L'Estrange: The Sound of Silence; VAN HEUSEN, HOWARD arr L'Estrange: Fly Me to the Moon/Come Fly with Me; TRAD arr Ferdinand: Riverside; LOWRY arr Morgan: Shall We Gather at the River; JOEL arr Lawson: Lullabye, Goodnight My Angel; LEWIS, HAMILTON arr Clements: How High the Moon; MACLEAN, MORGAN: Caledonia
BBC Proms 2024: Verdi’s Requiem
8 pm Friday, 9 August 2024
Giuseppe Verdi was moved to write his Requiem by the death of friends and colleagues. The result was a high-octane work whose expression of grief, faith and judgement drew such dramatic music from its composer that some thought it profane. First performed 150 years ago, and given its British premiere at the Royal Albert Hall the following year, it is one of music’s most vivid masterpieces. Following his Prom with the BBC National Orchestra of Wales last night (see Prom 5), Ryan Bancroft returns this time with two choirs, lending suitably large forces for this powerful setting of the Latin Mass for the Dead.
Latonia Moore (soprano), Karen Cargill (mezzo), SeokJong Baek (tenor), Soloman Howard (bass), BBC National Chorus of Wales, Crouch End Festival Chorus, BBC National Orchestra of Wales/Ryan Bancroft. Royal Albert Hall, London.
BBC Proms 2024: The Glasshouse 2 - Hannah Peel's Night Tracks
9 pm Sunday, 11 August 2024
Live performance comes from the award-winning pianist, composer and singer Hania Rani who performs with the strings of Royal Northern Sinfonia in brand new arrangements of songs from her recent album. Virtuosic percussionist Beibei Wang and composer Hannah Peel bring their unique collaboration of synths, marimbas, Chinese drums, gongs and water percussion to the stage. Electro folk artist Frankie Archer combines Northumbrian fiddle, synths and voice, and players from Royal Northern Sinfonia perform Richard Strauss's luscious sextet from Capriccio.
Hania Rani (vocals, piano), Maria Włoszczowska (violin), Hannah Peel (vocals, synths), Beibei Wang (perc), Frankie Archer (violin, vocals), members of Royal Northern Sinfonia. Royal Albert Hall, London
RANI, Hania: Nostalgia; RANI, Hania: Three Pieces; BACH: Largo from Violin Sonata No 3 in C BWV 1005; STRAUSS: Sextet, from Capriccio; PEEL, Hannah: (Tracks TBC);WANG, Beibei: Improvation for timpani and 5 octave marimba; ARCHER, Frankie: (Tracks TBC)
BBC Proms 2024: The Glasshouse 1 - Royal Northern Sinfonia
1 pm Monday, 12 August 2024
Orchestras all over the world commissioned symphonies from the pre-eminent Czech composer Antonín Dvořák. But there was no such commission for one of his most popular, the Symphony No. 8, which he wrote for nobody but himself. For the opening of this weekend-long Proms residency in the North-East, the Gateshead-based Royal Northern Sinfonia brings us the symphony that one conductor described as ‘a work singing of the joy of green pastures’. It’s the climax of a programme also featuring the song of fire and ice that is Sibelius’s captivating Violin Concerto. The concert opens with the charming and typically French Little Suite by Germaine Tailleferre, the only female member of the group of composers known as ‘Les Six’ that emerged in 1920s Paris.
Tailleferre: Little Suite Sibelius: Violin Concerto in D minor Dvořák: Symphony No. 8 in G major Alena Baeva (violin) Royal Northern Sinfonia Dinis Sousa (conductor). Royal Albert Hall, London.
Counter-tenor Jakub Józef Orliński joins the ensemble Il Pomo d’Oro for the BBC Proms, 2024. Photo: BBC
BBC Proms 2024: Il Pomo d'Oro
8 pm Wednesday, 14 August 2024
counter-tenor Jakub Józef Orliński joins the ensemble Il Pomo d’Oro for a programme of early Baroque music, including Monteverdi, Cavalli and Strozzi. Royal Albert Hall, London.
Multi-skilled, golden-voiced counter-tenor Jakub Józef Orliński joins regular collaborators Il Pomo d’Oro for a journey through the music of the early Baroque, which he believes is ‘beyond its times ... still relevant, still alive, vibrant, touching, engaging and entertaining’. Featuring costume, light and movement, this Late Night Prom draws on operas, cantatas, sonatas and songs, moving from the beautiful to the bawdy and back again.
MONTEVERDI: E pur io torno qui, from 'L’incoronazione di Poppea'; MONTEVERDI: Voglio di vita uscir; MARINI: Passacaglia in G minor, op. 22; CACCINI: Amarilli, mia bella, from 'Le Nuove Musiche'; FRESCOBALDI: Cosi mi disprezzate, from 'Arie musicali, Book I';KERLL: Sonata for Two Violins in F;STROZZI: L'amante consolato, from 'Cantate, ariette e duetti, op. 2'; CAVALLI: Incomprensibil nume, from 'Pompeo Magno'; PALLAVACINO: Sinfonia from 'Demetrio'; NETTI: Misero core, Si, si, si scioglia si, Dolcissime catene, Berillo's aria from 'La Filli';SARTORIO: La certezza di sua fede, from 'Antonino e Pompeiano'; NETTI: Quanto più la donna invecchia; NETTI: Son vecchia, patienza, from 'L’Adamiro'; JARZEBSKI: Tamburetta, from 'Canzoni e concerti'; MORATELLI: Lungi dai nostri cor, from 'La Faretra smarrita'; BORETTI: Chi scherza con Amor, from 'Eliogabalo'; ORLANDINI: Che m'ami ti prega, Nerone's aria from act 1 of 'Nerone'
BBC Proms 2024: Mahler's Kindertotenlieder
8 pm Friday, 16 August 2024
Alice Coote (mezzo), BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra/Ryan Wigglesworth. Royal Albert Hall, London.
Both Gustav Mahler and Friedrich Rückert lost children. When Mahler came to set Rückert’s grief-stricken poems on the subject as his five Kindertotenlieder, he did so with music that appears emotionally stunned and radiantly consolatory. Leading international mezzo-soprano Alice Coote lends her glowing voice to these devastating songs, after Ryan Wigglesworth conducts his BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra in a symphony by Brahms that is both menacing and mellifluous. At the heart of the programme is Schoenberg’s sumptuous tone-poem Verklärte Nacht (‘Transfigured Night’), filled with crepuscular angst and decadent late-Romantic harmony.
BRAHMS: Symphony No 3 in F Op 90; SCHOENBERG: Transfigured Night Op 4; MAHLER: Kindertotenlieder
BBC Proms 2024: Songs and Dances with the Kanneh-Masons
1 pm Monday, 19 August 2024
A concert of folk songs, dances, prayers and incantations, featuring brothers Braimah and Sheku Kanneh-Mason and the captivating Brazilian guitarist Plínio Fernandes. The dynamic Fantasia Orchestra makes its Proms debut under its founder, Tom Fetherstonhaugh.
Braimah Kanneh-Mason (violin), Sheku Kanneh-Mason (cello), Plinio Fernande (guitar), Fantasia Orchestra /Tom Fetherstonhaugh. Royal Albert Hall, London
TRAD Serbian: Ajde Jano; TRAD: Scarborough Fair; BRAHMS: Hungarian Dances Nos 1, 2 & 5; BARTOK: Romanian Folk Dances Sz68;BURT BACHARACH: I Say a Little Prayer;BOB MARLEY: Redemption Song; LAURA MVULA: Sing to the Moon; DVORAK: Song to the Moon, from Rusalka; JOBIM: The Girl From Ipanema; PIAZZOLLA: Libertango; STEVIE WONDER: I Wish; RODGERS & EDWARDS: Good Times
BBC Proms 2024: Vasily Petrenko conducts Tchaikovsky
8 pm Wednesday, 21 August 2024
Tchaikovsky was no stranger to unhappiness in love, and his symphonic fantasy Francesca da Rimini allows us to eavesdrop on his pain in heart-rending autobiographical detail as the composer retells Dante’s tale of a noblewoman’s infidelity and subsequent casting into Hell. For their Prom, Vasily Petrenko and his Royal Philharmonic Orchestra plunge us deep into Tchaikovsky’s signature emotional turmoil after moonlit Debussy, Charles Ives’s own foray into American Impressionism and Ravel’s enthralling, jazz-inspired Piano Concerto under the fingers of the ferociously talented Denis Kozhukhin.
IVES: Three Places in New England;RAVEL: Piano Concerto in G;TCHAIKOVSKY: In Church, from Children's Album Op 39/24;DEBUSSY: Nocturnes;TCHAIKOVSKY: Francesca da Rimini Op 32
BBC Proms 2024: Henry Purcell's The Fairy Queen
8 pm Saturday, 24 August 2024
After critically acclaimed runs in New York, Paris and around the world, Mourad Merzouki’s staging of Purcell’s The Fairy Queen comes to the Proms. Expression and spontaneity characterise both Merzouki’s hip hop-derived dance, Paul Agnew’s musical direction and Purcell’s 1692 composition, a series of allegorical celebrations of young love based on Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. (For two other major musical responses to the play, see Proms 36 & 68.) Goblins and elves meet street dance as Paul Agnew makes his Proms conducting debut and soloists from Le Jardin des Voix (the vocal academy run by Les Arts Florissants) and dancers from Merzouki’s troupe combine in this moving and imaginative meeting of genres.
Paulina Francisco (soprano), Georgia Burashko (mezzo-soprano), Rebecca Leggett (mezzo-soprano), Juliette Mey (mezzo-soprano), Rodrigo Carreto (tenor), Ilja Aksionov (tenor), Hugo Herman-Wilson (baritone), Benjamin Schilperoort (bass-baritone), Compagnie Käfig, Les Arts Florissants/Paul Agnew. Royal Albert Hall, London
BBC Proms 2024: Messiaen’s Turangalîla Symphony
9pm Sunday, 25 August 2024
The composer and critic Virgil Thomson described Olivier Messiaen’s music as ‘convulsive, ecstatic, cataclysmic, terrifying and unreal’. All converge in the most vibrant and unignorable symphony of the 20th century: Messiaen’s Turangalîla Symphony. Nicholas Collon and the BBC Philharmonic perform a work that opens up the heavens even as it brings down the house, after the tantalising prospect of a world premiere by Anna Clyne. The Gorgeous Nothings, written specially for the Proms, is the composer’s response to the ‘spellbinding wordsmithery’ of American poet Emily Dickinson, scored for orchestra, amplified voices and real-time electronic processing.
CLYNE: The Gorgeous Nothings (BBC Commission);TRAD Bulgarian: Bučimiš (encore);MESSIAEN: Turangalîla Symphony
BBC Proms 2024: The Sinfonia of London and John Wilson
8 pm Wednesday, 28 August 2024
John Adams once dreamt of an oil tanker rising out of San Francisco Bay, soaring into the sky like a rocket. That dream prompted Harmonielehre, a luscious, churning score that fuses Minimalism and Wagnerism. The work concludes a programme of scintillating American classics from John Wilson and his all-star orchestra – including Copland’s ballet on the folk hero Billy the Kid, haunting pieces by Barber and Ives, Gershwin’s jazz-infused Rhapsody in Blue (100 years old this year) and jazz living legend Wynton Marsalis’s brassy, swingy Herald, Holler and Hallelujah!.
Steven Osborne (pno), Sinfonia of London/John Wilson. Royal Albert Hall,London
MARSALIS: Herald, Holler and Hallelujah!;COPLAND: Billy the Kid, Suite; BARBER: Adagio for Strings Op 11; GERSHWIN: Rhapsody in Blue; IVES: The Unanswered Question; ADAMS: Harmonielehre
BBC Proms 2024: Proms Newport: vision string quartet with Mahan Mirarab
8 pm Friday, 30 August 2024
At Newport for the first time, the Proms hosts a string ensemble from Berlin that is half quartet, half band – and the programme it brings proves the point. The first half sees Bloch’s solemn Prelude and one of Dvořák’s most astonishing string quartets – a piece charged by Romantic emotions but imbued with Classical order. After the interval the rules go out of the window thanks to the boundless energy of the vision string quartet’s collaboration with Mahan Mirarab, the guitarist who combines the sounds of the Middle East with jazz. Expect grooving rhythms, tearaway improvisations and an irresistible fusion of musical worlds.
BLOCH: Prelude, B63; DVORAK: String Quartet No 13 in G Op 106; MIRARAB: Selected works
The Riverfront, Newport
