The annual BBC Proms started on 17th July 2015 for 8 weeks of concerts, talks, workshops, family events and more, ending with the famous Last Night of the Proms at London’s Royal Albert Hall.
What is the Proms?
The first Proms concert took place on 10 August 1895 and was the brainchild of the impresario Robert Newman, manager of the newly built Queen's Hall in London.
While Newman had previously organised symphony orchestra concerts at the hall, his aim was to reach a wider audience by offering more popular programmes, adopting a less formal promenade arrangement, and keeping ticket prices low.
Who was Henry Wood?
Born in 1869, Henry Wood had undergone a thorough musical training and, from his teens, began to make a name for himself as an organist, accompanist, composer and arranger, vocal coach and conductor of choirs, orchestras and amateur opera companies.
Newman arranged to meet Wood at Queen's Hall one spring morning in 1894 to talk about the project. 'I am going to run nightly concerts to train the public in easy stages,' he explained. 'Popular at first, gradually raising the standard until I have created a public for classical and modern music.' In February 1895 Newman offered Wood conductorship of a permanent orchestra at Queen's Hall, and of the first Proms season.
The early days
The series was known as 'Mr Robert Newman's Promenade Concerts' and the programmes were perhaps over-generous by today's standards, lasting around three hours. The informal atmosphere was encouraged by cheap promenade tickets - one shilling (5p) for a single concert, or a guinea (£1.05) for a season ticket.
Eating, drinking and smoking were permissible (though patrons were asked to refrain from striking matches during the vocal numbers). The more 'serious' items were confined to the first half, and a major attraction of the shorter second half was the orchestral Grand Fantasia - choice morsels extracted from popular operas.
Developing public taste
Wood and Newman were keen to introduce audiences to an ever wider range of music. In the first seasons, a tradition was established of a Wagner Night on Mondays and a Beethoven Night on Fridays. Wood continued to present an enterprising mixture of the familiar and the adventurous, programming new works each season (referred to as 'novelties').
He also promoted young, talented performers, and he fought to raise orchestral standards, making himself unpopular in 1904 with a successful bid to scrap the system whereby orchestral players could send deputies to the rehearsals and appear in person only for the concert. By 1920 Wood had introduced to the Proms many of the leading composers of the day, including Richard Strauss, Debussy, Rachmaninoff, Ravel and Vaughan Williams.
World War 1
The onset of the First World War brought a public dislike for all things German, yet Wood and Newman - almost alone among the cultural establishment at the time - insisted that 'the greatest examples of Music and Art are world possessions and unassailable even by the prejudices of the hour'. In 1915 the publishers Chappell and Co., having earlier taken over the lease of the hall when Newman had run into financial troubles, also took over the orchestra, which was renamed the New Queen's Hall Orchestra.
Enter the BBC
But the Proms were running at a loss, and in 1927 Chappell's announced its withdrawal of financial support. In the same year the BBC had established its status as a Corporation with a mandate 'to inform, educate and entertain', clearly a vision that Henry Wood held for the Proms.
The BBC took over the Proms, and for three years the concerts were given by 'Sir Henry Wood and his Symphony Orchestra', until the BBC Symphony Orchestra was formed in 1930. The Proms now reached a far wider audience and although some feared that broadcasting would reduce audience numbers, Wood emphasised its role in achieving his aim 'of truly democratising the message of music, and making its beneficent effect universal'.
A new home at the Royal Albert Hall
Three days after Britain declared war on Germany in 1939, the BBC decentralised its Music Department and announced that it was unable to support the Proms.
With characteristic determination Wood found private sponsorship for the 1940 and 1941 seasons, and replaced the BBC orchestra with the London Symphony Orchestra. But air-raids intensified and the 1940 season lasted only four weeks. On 10 May 1941 a Luftwaffe bombardment gutted the Queen's Hall.
The only other hall available in London for orchestral concerts was the Royal Albert Hall, opened in 1871, and the Proms took place there in 1941. It was not until the following season that the BBC returned to sponsor the Proms.
The end of an era
1944 marked two anniversaries: the fiftieth anniversary of the Proms, and Henry Wood's seventy-fifth birthday. By now Wood's phenomenal energies were waning, and he passed away a whisker short of his half-century of conducting the Proms.
Moving forward
After the War, the traditional Wagner Nights became unfashionable. From 1953 Viennese evenings became popular and composer anniversaries were well catered for. In 1957 and 1958 the deaths of Sibelius and Vaughan Williams were marked by complete symphony cycles.
Malcolm Sargent, Chief Conductor of the BBC Symphony Orchestra from 1950, gave most of the performances, but the 1950s also saw a gradual increase in the number of orchestras taking part. Manchester's Hallé Orchestra, under Sir John Barbirolli, became the first non-London orchestra to perform at the Proms, and over the next few years concerts were given by the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra and the Liverpool Philharmonic. Basil Cameron featured prominently alongside Sargent, but other influential figures also began to appear: Charles Groves, Colin Davis, Norman Del Mar, Charles Mackerras.
New directions
With the arrival of William Glock as BBC Controller, Music, in 1959, the identity of the Proms began to change. The core orchestral repertoire, a mainstay of the Proms, was reduced to accommodate a more experimental style of programming, one which carried bold juxtapositions and reflected current musical trends from around the world. Between 1959 and 1964 the number of works new to the Proms had more than doubled.
The 1963 season brought international figures such as Georg Solti, Leopold Stokowski and Carlo Maria Giulini, and in 1966, the first foreign ensemble, the Moscow Radio Orchestra, appeared, followed soon after by the Amsterdam Concertgebouw Orchestra, the Polish Radio Symphony Orchestra and the Czech Philharmonic. It was this period that saw the transformation of the Proms from a successful but relatively conservative enterprise into a major international festival.
Wider and wider still
Other major innovations since the 1960s were the introduction of complete opera performances (beginning in 1961 with Glyndebourne Opera's production of Mozart's Don Giovanni), concerts by ensembles from non-Western cultures (including India, Thailand, Indonesia and Japan), music for percussion, jazz, gospel and electro-acoustic music, and concerts devised especially for children.
The BBC has commissioned a number of new works each season, offering Proms audiences a chance to hear the latest in musical trends, and creating a unique platform for dozens of contemporary composers. The 1970s brought other new features such as a series of Late Night concerts and Pre-Prom Talks.
Beyond the Proms centenary
The 100th Proms season took place in 1994 and the festival now includes over 70 main Prom concerts every year, ever widening the range of symphonic and operatic music presented. The BBC Proms continues to welcome leading international performers whilst showcasing the best of the British music scene, including the BBC's own orchestras and choirs.
Yet although the scope of the Proms has increased enormously since 1895, Henry Wood's concept for the season remains largely unaltered: to present the widest possible range of music, performed to the highest standards, to large audiences. And promenading in the Royal Albert Hall's arena continues to be a central feature, lending the Proms its unique, informal atmosphere.
Proms 2015 Launch video
Link
Proms on TV
17 July - BBC Two - Prom 1: First Night of the Proms
19 July - BBC Four - Prom 4: Beethoven - Symphony No. 9
22 July - watch at bbc.co.uk/proms - Prom 8: Late Night With ... BBC Asian Network
24 July - BBC Four - Prom 10: Leif Ove Andsnes and the Mahler Chamber Orchestra
26 July - BBC Four - Prom 6: Stravinsky - Symphony of Psalms
29 July - watch online at bbc.co.uk/proms - Prom 16: Late Night With ... BBC Radio 1
30 July - BBC Four - Prom 7: Nielsen and Hugh Wood
31 July - BBC Four - Prom 13: Holst - The Planets
2 August - BBC Four Prom 17: Elgar's Symphony No. 2 in E flat major
5 August - watch at bbc.co.uk/proms - Prom 27: Late Night With ... BBC Radio 6 Music
6 August - BBC Four - Prom 5: Haydn, HK Gruber & Stravinsky
7 August - BBC Four - Prom 30: Late Night Sinatra
9 August - BBC Four Prom 22: Aurora Orchestra – Brett Dean & Beethoven
12 August - watch at bbc.co.uk/proms - Prom 37: Late Night With ... BBC Radio 1Xtra
13 August - BBC Four - Prom 34: Prokofiev
14 August - BBC Four - Prom 32: Eric Whitacre and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra
16 August - BBC Four - Prom 31: National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain – Mahler
21 August - BBC Four - Prom 19: Alina Ibragimova plays Bach
20 August - BBC Four - Prom 44: West-Eastern Divan Orchestra & Daniel Barenboim
23 August - BBC Four - Prom 46: Danish National Symphony Orchestra – Nielsen
27 August - BBC Four - Prom 21: Alina Ibragimova plays Bach
28 August - BBC Four - Prom 35: Story of Swing
30 August - BBC Four - Prom 34: Britten & Korngold
3 September - BBC Four - Prom 50: Bach – Goldberg variations
4 September - BBC Four - Prom 57: Chamber Orchestra of Europe & Bernard Haitink
6 September - BBC Four - Prom 24: James MacMillan
10 September - BBC Four - Prom 68: Bach – Six Cello Suites
11 September - BBC Four - Prom 67: Bernstein – Stage and Screen
12 September - First half BBC Two, second half BBC One - Prom 76: Last Night of the Proms
Proms on radio
Listen to every Prom - broadcast live on BBC Radio 3 (available on digital radio, via TV, mobile, laptop and tablet as well as on 90-93 FM.
Proms Programmes on BBC World Service
In 2015 the following Proms programmes are broadcast on the BBC World Service:
15th August: Britten: Four Sea Interludes from 'Peter Grimes' (17') Korngold: Violin Concerto (26')
22nd August: Tchaikovsky: Symphony No. 4 (43')
29th August: Ravel: Piano Concerto In G (23’
,Messiaen/Dingle: Un Oiseau des arbres de vie (World premiere) (4’
La Valse (11')
5th September: Sibelius: Symphony No. 2 (43')
12th September: Leonard Bernstein - Stage And Screen PLUS Bach Cello Suite (from P68)
19th September: Rimsky-Korsakov: Scheherazade (42')
Proms schedule
Prom 12: Leif Ove Andsnes and the Mahler Chamber Orchestra
- Sunday 26 July 2015
Leif Ove Andsnes and the Mahler Chamber Orchestra complete their cycle of Beethoven Piano Concertos with Nos. 2 and 5 – the composer’s first and final experiments in the genre.
In No. 2 a spacious and lovely 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.
Looking to the musical past for inspiration once again, Stravinsky’s Octet pastiches the forms and textures of the 18th century, colouring them with a mood and mischief all his own.
Prom 13: Holst - The Planets - Monday 27 July 2015
Once an irascible enfant terrible, Pierre Boulez was born 90 years ago. The Proms celebrations continue with one of his earliest works. Originally a series of 12 brilliant miniatures for piano, Notations is gradually being expanded by the composer into an orchestral cycle.
Holst’s The Planets brings musical imagery of a different kind. Violinist Leila Josefowicz makes a welcome return to the Proms, with a new concerto composed specially for her by one of Italy’s greatest living composers.
Prom 14: Prokofiev - The Piano Concertos - Tuesday 28 July 2015
All five Prokofiev piano concertos in one concert – it’s a feat conductor Valery Gergiev achieved in 2012 at the Mariinsky and now brings to the Proms, along with three of his original pianists.
It’s a rare opportunity to hear three international soloists back-to-back, to compare styles and approaches, as well as to explore the composer’s later, lesser-known concertos with their newly expressive tenderness.
Daniil Trifonov, the prodigious young winner of the Tchaikovsky and Chopin competitions, shares the bill with his teacher Sergei Babayan, while Alexei Volodin tackles the rarely heard Fourth, commissioned, like Ravel’s Piano Concerto for the Left Hand (Prom 36), by the one-armed pianist Paul Wittgenstein.
Prom 15: Prokofiev, Qigang Chen & Rachmaninov - Wednesday 29 July 2015
Following last night’s Prokofiev piano concerto cycle, tonight’s Prom opens with the Russian’s bright and joyous ‘Classical’ Symphony, which surprised critics of the young firebrand composer with its formal elegance.
It’s paired with Rachmaninov’s Second Symphony – beloved for its intimate, lyrical slow movement.
Rachmaninov might be the original composer of the ‘big tune’, but it’s an instinct China’s Qigang Chen – a pupil of Messiaen – shares. East and West come together for his evocative Iris dévoilée, pairing traditional Chinese instruments with Western harmonies.
Prom 16: Late Night With BBC Radio 1 - Wednesday 29 July 2015
Radio 1’s first ever Prom is less concert and more dance-party – a musical homage to Ibiza and its infectious, energetic brand of club music. 2015 marks the 20th anniversary of Radio 1 in Ibiza and this will be a celebration to remember.
Veteran British DJ Pete Tong presents a line-up of live artists, who perform with Jules Buckley and his Heritage Orchestra.
Prom 17: Hallé - Debussy, Vaughan Williams & Elgar - Thursday 30 July 2015
Sir Mark Elder and the Hallé champion Vaughan Williams’s neglected oratorio Sancta civitas – an ecstatic vision of post-apocalyptic salvation. It’s a piece made for the huge space of the Royal Albert Hall, where its heavenly trumpets and choirs can swell to full force.
Described by Elgar’s wife as ‘vast in design and supremely beautiful’, his Second Symphony took a while to win public affection, but is now almost as cherished as Debussy’s evocative tone-poem depicting the lascivious thoughts of a sleepy faun – a work the composer Pierre Boulez has hailed as signalling the beginning of modern music.
Prom 18: Katia and Marielle Labéque - Friday 31 July 2015
Sisters Katia and Marielle Labèque perform Mozart’s Concerto for two pianos as a complement to our focus on the composer’s late piano concertos.
Written in the 1770s for Mozart and his own sister ‘Nannerl’ to perform, it’s a work that delights in the interplay of dialogue, with a slow movement that is a tender conversation between friends.
Intimacy gives way to epic gestures in Shostakovich’s sprawling ‘Leningrad’ Symphony – one of the giants of the symphonic repertoire, and a passionate musical testament to the 25 million Soviet citizens killed in the Second World War.
Prom 19: Alina Ibragimova Plays Bach 1 - Friday 31 July 2015
When you place a single, solo instrumentalist in the Royal Albert Hall, a peculiar alchemy occurs. Suddenly the huge space becomes charged with a collective energy, a concentration that amplifies the emotions and gestures of the music performed. When that happens at a Late Night Prom, it’s particularly magical.
Violinist Alina Ibragimova, making the first of several appearances this season, takes us back to what can seem like the purest expression of music, performing Bach’s complete Sonatas and Partitas for solo violin, split across two concerts (see also Prom 21).
Prom 20: Schubert, Luke Bedford & Bruckner - Saturday 1 August 2015
Although composed for the church, it is in the concert hall that the dramatic scale of Bruckner’s mighty Mass in F minor comes into its own.
A new commission from Luke Bedford puts the Royal Albert Hall’s great organ in the spotlight, while opening the concert is Schubert’s ‘Tragic’ Symphony – a work whose heart-on-sleeve emotions are those of a composer still in his teens.
Prom 21: Alina Ibragimova Plays Bach 2 - Saturday 1 August 2015
Russian-born Alina Ibragimova gives the second of her two Late Night recitals of solo Bach.
Her natural tendency towards a historically informed style of playing these works was formed while she was a teenager at the Yehudi Menuhin School.
Her teachers at the time called for more vibrato, bigger gestures. “I wanted something more direct,” she recalls, “less about me”.
Prom 22: Aurora Orchestra - Sunday 2 August 2015
The Aurora Orchestra staged a Proms first last year when it performed Mozart’s Symphony No. 40 from memory. Now the dynamic young ensemble returns to continue this season’s sequence of family-friendly matinees, giving Beethoven’s ‘Pastoral’ Symphony the same direct, communicative treatment.
It is paired with Australian composer Brett Dean’s own homage to nature – a work, he explains, inspired by ‘glorious birdsong, the threat that it faces, the loss, and the soulless noise that we’re left with when they’re all gone’.
Former BBC Radio 3 New Generation Artist Francesco Piemontesi joins the orchestra for Mozart’s late ‘Coronation’ Concerto, and the afternoon also features the premiere of a new commission from British composer Anna Meredith – also performed from memory.
Prom 23: Verdi – Requiem - Sunday 2 August 2015
After a powerfully disquieting performance of Strauss’s Salome last year, Donald Runnicles returns for the first of two appearances this summer, bringing the chorus of the Deutsche Oper Berlin and the BBC SSO together for Verdi’s Requiem – a work conductor Hans von Bülow described as ‘an opera in ecclesiastical garb’, written for the concert hall but distilling all the drama and intensity of the stage.
At its core is the extended Dies irae sequence – a Day of Judgement whose terrors are not easily forgotten.
The international cast of soloists includes Scottish mezzo-soprano Karen Cargill.
Prom 24: James MacMillian & Mahler - Monday 3 August 2015
Mahler’s mighty Symphony No. 5 is the climax of this second Prom from Donald Runnicles and the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra.
The work’s intense, contrasting moods – the bitter solemnity of the funeral march, the violence of the second movement and the tenderness of the famous Adagietto – make this one of the great orchestral showpieces.
The evening opens with the world premiere of a dramatic new symphony from Scottish composer James MacMillan.
Prom 25: Monteverdi - Orfeo - Tuesday 4 August 2015
Monteverdi’s Orfeo is the first great opera – the moment when psychological truth and musical virtuosity came together to tell a story of love, loss and the power of art.
Sir John Eliot Gardiner – making the first of two appearances this year, tonight with the English Baroque Soloists – transforms the Royal Albert Hall into the 17th-century Mantuan court of the Gonzagas with some of Monteverdi’s loveliest melodies and most colourful instrumental writing, bringing the tale of Orpheus and his beloved Eurydice to fresh musical life.
Prom 26: British Composers - Wednesday 5 August 2015
Elgar’s Froissart overture throbs with national pride and swagger, while Walton’s Second Symphony sustains an altogether darker, more contemplative mood.
Chloë Hanslip is the soloist in Vaughan Williams’s rarely heard Concerto accademico – a work whose lyrical slow movement and dancing finale are anything but ‘academic’.
The concert also features Welsh composer Grace Williams’s ecstatic, neo-Straussian Fairest of Stars for soprano and orchestra, a musical celebration of Milton’s poetry.
Prom 27: Late Night with BBC 6 Music - Wednesday 5 August 2015
Mary Anne Hobbs of BBC Radio 6 Music presents an evening exploring the borderlands of classical music, with the pioneers of a new generation of musicians who draw on contemporary electronic influences.
Piano and keyboard virtuoso Nils Frahm makes his Proms debut, as does atmospheric duo A Winged Victory for the Sullen, and together they create an exclusive centrepiece collaboration.
Prom 28: Dukas, Turnage Schuller & Scriabin - Thursday 6 August 2015
Poetry, art and music itself inspire this programme.
Scriabin’s The Poem of Ecstasy fuses poetry and music in pursuit of sexual bliss and spiritual transcendence.
Turnage’s On Opened Ground pays tribute to the poet Seamus Heaney.
Schuller’s Seven Studies explore Paul Klee’s paintings in sound, while Dukas transforms a ballad by Goethe into a musical tale of magic and mischief.
Prom 29: Stravinsky, Messiaen & Ravel - Friday 7 August 2015
Mozart’s Idomeneo owes its ballet sequence to the influence of French opera, and it launches a programme featuring two Frenchmen who idolised Mozart: Ravel and Messiaen.
Ravel’s Piano Concerto in G adds a jazzy colouring to its Classical influences, while Oiseaux tristes and La valse contrast the doleful calls of lost forest birds with a dark, swirling portrait of the disintegration of Vienna.
The world premiere of a recently rediscovered work by Messiaen – originally intended for the composer’s Éclairs sur l’au-delà – brings more birdsong (that of the tui from New Zealand), while Stravinsky’s urbane neo-Classical Symphony combines piquancy and elegance.
Prom 30: The John Wilson Orchestra performs Frank Sinatra - Friday 7 August 2015
‘The Voice’ … ‘Ol’ Blue Eyes’ … ‘The Sultan of Swoon’: the mythology surrounding Frank Sinatra is overwhelming. A gifted entertainer, screen actor and ubiquitous personality, his real legacy as a pioneer of popular song can sometimes get lost in the clamour.
This Late Night Prom celebrates the centenary of this musical legend in a concert that brings together some of the great voices of our own time, led by the multitalented Seth MacFarlane.
Join John Wilson and his orchestra for an after-hours sequence of big tunes and even bigger performances.
