BBC Proms [2008]

The Proms continues to celebrate the centenary of the birth of Olivier Messiaen, one of the most inspirational, colourful and influential composers of the 20th century. La Transfiguration is a fervent expression of his passionately held Roman Catholic faith, illuminating the moment when Christ was enveloped in light and revealed to his disciples as the Son of God.

Messiaen: La Transfiguration de notre Seigneur Jesus-Christ

Denes Varjon (piano)

Adam Walker (flute)

Julian Bliss (clarinet)

Sonia Wieder-Atherton (cello)

Colin Currie (xylophone)

Adrian Spillett (marimba)

Richard Benjafield (vibraphone)

Philharmonia Voices

BBC Symphony Chorus

BBC National Chorus of Wales

BBC National Orchestra of Wales

Thierry Fischer (conductor).

A performance of Olivier Messiaen's La Transfiguration de notre Seigneur Jesus-Christ.

The world's greatest classical music festival - stunning performances and collaborations.

The BBC Concert Orchestra under Paul Daniel accompanies tenor Andrew Kennedy in a celtic tone-poem by Bax and Finzi's setting of Wordsworth. Plus the much-anticipated return to the Royal Albert Hall of maverick violinist Nigel Kennedy for a performance of Elgar's Violin Concerto.

Andrew Kennedy (tenor)

Nigel Kennedy (violin)

BBC Symphony Chorus

Paul Daniel (conductor)

Bax: The Garden of Fand

Finzi: Intimations of Immortality

Elgar: Violin Concerto.

BBC Concert Orchestra under Paul Daniel in Bax and Finzi, and Nigel Kennedy in Elgar.

The world's greatest classical music festival - stunning performances and collaborations.

Continuing the celebration of Karlheinz Stockhausen, the ensemble Theatre of Voices and their director Paul Hiller perform Stockhausen's Stimmung for six singers and six microphones, which is one of their signature pieces.

Ian Dearden (sound projection)

Paul Hillier (director)

Stockhausen: Stimmung.

The ensemble Theatre of Voices in Stockhausen's Stimmung for six singers and microphones.

The world's greatest classical music festival - stunning performances and collaborations.

Organist Wayne Marshall performs an all-French programme on the Albert Hall's huge Willis organ, with works ranging from pieces works by Messiaen to a one by his protege, Naji Hakim. There is also a symphony for solo organ by Marcel Dupre and to conclude the programme, an improvisation.

Wayne Marshall (organ)

Jeanne Demessieux: Te Deum

Messiaen: Verset pour la fete de la dedicace

Marcel Dupre: Organ Symphony No 2

Naji Hakim: Pange Lingua

Messiaen: Prelude

Wayne Marshall in an all-French organ programme, with pieces by Messiaen and Marcel Dupre.

The world's greatest classical music festival - stunning performances and collaborations.

The King's Singers celebrate their 40th anniversary year at the 2008 Proms with a wide-ranging Anglo-French programme. From Lassus to Bridge they perform a variety of French Renaissance madrigals, Victorian part-songs and English folk songs, as well as a selection of Poulenc's Chansons francaises.

And British composer John McCabe brings a contemporary note with his Scenes in America deserta - commissioned by and dedicated to the ensemble.

Poulenc: Chansons francaises, Op 130 (selection)

John McCabe: Scenes in America deserta

French Renaissance madrigals:

Lassus: Dessus le marche d'Arras

Passereau: Il est bel et bon

Lassus: Toutes les nuits

Janequin: La guerre

Victorian part songs:

Rogers: Hears not my Phyllis

Hobbs: Phillis is my only joy

Trad. arr. SE Lovatt: The Little Green Lane

Bridge: The Goslings

English folk songs:

Trad. arr. B Chilcott: Greensleeves

Trad. arr. G Langford: Blow away the morning dew

Trad. arr. P Lawson: The Turtle Dove

Trad. arr. G Langford: Widdicombe Fair.

The King's Singers celebrate their 40th anniversary year with an Anglo-French programme.

The world's greatest classical music festival - stunning performances and collaborations.

The King's Singers celebrate their 40th anniversary year at the 2008 Proms with a wide-ranging Anglo-French programme. From Lassus to Bridge they perform a variety of French Renaissance madrigals, Victorian part-songs and English folk songs, as well as a selection of Poulenc's Chansons francaises.

And British composer John McCabe brings a contemporary note with his Scenes in America deserta - commissioned by and dedicated to the ensemble.

Poulenc: Chansons francaises, Op 130 (selection)

John McCabe: Scenes in America deserta

French Renaissance madrigals:

Lassus: Dessus le marche d'Arras

Passereau: Il est bel et bon

Lassus: Toutes les nuits

Janequin: La guerre

Victorian part songs:

Rogers: Hears not my Phyllis

Hobbs: Phillis is my only joy

Trad. arr. SE Lovatt: The Little Green Lane

Bridge: The Goslings

English folk songs:

Trad. arr. B Chilcott: Greensleeves

Trad. arr. G Langford: Blow away the morning dew

Trad. arr. P Lawson: The Turtle Dove

Trad. arr. G Langford: Widdicombe Fair.

The King's Singers celebrate their 40th anniversary year with an Anglo-French programme.

The world's greatest classical music festival - stunning performances and collaborations.

Royal Philharmonic Orchestra

Leonard Slatkin (conductor)

Vaughan Williams: Five Variants of Dives and Lazarus; Symphony No 6 in E minor.

The Prom concludes with Vaughan Williams's Five Variants of Dives and Lazarus.

The world's greatest classical music festival - stunning performances and collaborations.

A round-up of this year's BBC Proms Inspire Young Composers' Competition.

Since moving to Poland a few years ago, Kennedy has teamed up with some of the country's finest jazz musicians. In this performance his Quintet are joined for a guest appearance by jazz-funk-soul fusion singer Xantone Blacq.

Nigel Kennedy (violin)

Tomasz Grzegorski (saxophone)

Piotr Wylezol (piano)

Adam Kowalewski (double bass)

Pawel Dobrowolski (percussion)

Xantone Blacq (vocals).

A Prom featuring Nigel Kennedy and his Polish-based jazz quintet NKQ.

The world's greatest classical music festival - stunning performances and collaborations.

A concert of 20th-century Americana featuring the BBC National Orchestra of Wales under the baton of Kristjan Jarvi. To mark the opening of the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing tonight, Jarvi launches the programme with Michael Torke's Javelin, written for the 1994 games, which is followed by John Adams's evocation of Richard Nixon's visit to China in the 1970s.

Young cellist Han-Na Chang joins the orchestra for Three Mediations from Bernstein's personal and thought-provoking theatre piece Mass, while New York finally comes to town with a jazz work by Duke Ellington.

Han-Na Chang (cello)

Kristjan Jarvi (conductor)

Michael Torke: Javelin

John Adams: The Chairman Dances

Bernstein: Three Meditations (Mass)

Ellington: Harlem.

An America-focused Prom, with works by Torke, Adams, Bernstein and Ellington.

The world's greatest classical music festival - stunning performances and collaborations.

A concert of 20th-century Americana featuring the BBC National Orchestra of Wales under the baton of Kristjan Jarvi. To mark the opening of the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing tonight, Jarvi launches the programme with Michael Torke's Javelin, written for the 1994 games, which is followed by John Adams's evocation of Richard Nixon's visit to China in the 1970s.

Young cellist Han-Na Chang joins the orchestra for Three Mediations from Bernstein's personal and thought-provoking theatre piece Mass, while New York finally comes to town with a jazz work by Duke Ellington.

Han-Na Chang (cello)

Kristjan Jarvi (conductor)

Michael Torke: Javelin

John Adams: The Chairman Dances

Bernstein: Three Meditations (Mass)

Ellington: Harlem.

An America-focused Prom, with works by Torke, Adams, Bernstein and Ellington.

The world's greatest classical music festival - stunning performances and collaborations.

James O'Donnell puts the organ of the Royal Albert Hall through its paces in one of the landmarks of 20th-century repertoire for the instrument, Messiaen's Messe de la Pentec䀀te, which draws musical inspiration from birdsong and concludes with a shattering depiction of pentecostal tongues of fire engulfing the Apostles. Alongside it, sacred French music for the same church feast from an earlier tradition: a Renaissance mass by Pierre de Manchicourt, a composer who, though little known today, ended his life as master of the royal chapel of Philip II of Spain and who no less a figure than Orlando Lassus called a 'distinguished and excellent composer of music'.

James O'Donnell (organ)

BBC Singers

Andrew Carwood (conductor)

Olivier Messiaen: Messe de la Pentec䀀te

interspersed with

Pierre de Manchicourt: Missa Veni sancte spiritus.

Organist James O'Donnell performs Messiaen's Messe de la Pentecote.

The world's greatest classical music festival - stunning performances and collaborations.

James O'Donnell puts the organ of the Royal Albert Hall through its paces in one of the landmarks of 20th-century repertoire for the instrument, Messiaen's Messe de la Pentec䀀te, which draws musical inspiration from birdsong and concludes with a shattering depiction of pentecostal tongues of fire engulfing the Apostles. Alongside it, sacred French music for the same church feast from an earlier tradition: a Renaissance mass by Pierre de Manchicourt, a composer who, though little known today, ended his life as master of the royal chapel of Philip II of Spain and who no less a figure than Orlando Lassus called a 'distinguished and excellent composer of music'.

James O'Donnell (organ)

BBC Singers

Andrew Carwood (conductor)

Olivier Messiaen: Messe de la Pentec䀀te

interspersed with

Pierre de Manchicourt: Missa Veni sancte spiritus.

Organist James O'Donnell performs Messiaen's Messe de la Pentecote.

The world's greatest classical music festival - stunning performances and collaborations.

Rachmaninov's Vespers, his heartfelt setting of the Orthodox All-Night Vigil, is performed by the Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir and its outgoing chief conductor and artistic director Paul Hillier. Written shortly before the composer emigrated, the piece is based on chants of the Russian Orthodox Church, evoking the rich, expressive choral sound of his native land.

Paul Hillier (conductor)

Rachmaninov: All-Night Vigil (Vespers).

The Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir under Paul Hillier perform Rachmaninov's Vespers.

The world's greatest classical music festival - stunning performances and collaborations.

Rachmaninov's Vespers, his heartfelt setting of the Orthodox All-Night Vigil, is performed by the Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir and its outgoing chief conductor and artistic director Paul Hillier. Written shortly before the composer emigrated, the piece is based on chants of the Russian Orthodox Church, evoking the rich, expressive choral sound of his native land.

Paul Hillier (conductor)

Rachmaninov: All-Night Vigil (Vespers).

The Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir under Paul Hillier perform Rachmaninov's Vespers.

The world's greatest classical music festival - stunning performances and collaborations.

A concert given as part of the 2008 BBC Proms by the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra under its founder-conductor Daniel Barenboim, in what was their third appearance at the Royal Albert Hall. They combine an austere masterpiece by Schoenberg with a quirky, sunny piece by Haydn with Brahms's final symphony.

Ramon Ortega Quero (oboe)

Mor Biron (bassoon)

Guy Braunstein (violin)

Hassan Moataz El Molla (cello)

Daniel Barenboim (conductor)

Haydn: Sinfonia concertante in B flat

Schoenberg: Variations for orchestra

Brahms: Symphony No 4 in E minor.

Austrian classics performed by the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra at the 2008 BBC Proms.

The world's greatest classical music festival - stunning performances and collaborations.

Daniel Barenboim and his West-Eastern Divan Orchestra in their second concert for the 2008 BBC Proms. Boulez's Memoriale, written to commemorate the death of Stravinsky, is followed by Stravinsky's L'histoire du soldat, the mesmerising tale of a soldier who is tricked by the Devil.

Patrice Chereau (narrator)

Members of West-Eastern Divan Orchestra

Daniel Barenboim (conductor)

Pierre Boulez: M退moriale (... explosante-fixe ... Originel)

Stravinsky: L'histoire du soldat.

Daniel Barenboim and West-Eastern Divan Orchestra in works by Pierre Boulez and Stravinsky

The world's greatest classical music festival - stunning performances and collaborations.

In the 2008 centenary year of Messaien's birth, one of his staunchest British champions plays a programme of his music on the recently restored organ of the Royal Albert Hall.

Jennifer Bate (organ)

Messiaen: Apparition de l'eglise eternelle; La nativite du Seigneur.

Jennifer Bate (organ) in Messiaen. Including Apparition de l'eglise eternelle.

The world's greatest classical music festival - stunning performances and collaborations.

Renowned Bach interpreter Simon Preston is at the Royal Albert Hall's great organ for a cross-section of repertoire by the instrument's most eminent composer. With a mixture of the famous and the less well-known - ranging from the celebrated Toccata and Fugue to one of a set of small but intricate duets which the composer wrote towards the end of his life. Bach the inventive contrapuntist is represented by the Canonic Variations, while Bach the pious Lutheran by two of his chorale preludes and finally Bach as a master of high-flown musical rhetoric is heard in the St Anne Prelude and Fugue.

Simon Preston (organ)

Bach:

Toccata and Fugue in D minor, BWV 565

Canonic Variations on Vom Himmel Hoch, BWV 769

Prelude in E flat, BWV 552 No 1 (St Anne)

Vater unser im Himmelreich, BWV 682

Aus tiefer Not, BWV 687

Duetto No 2 in F, BWV 803

Fugue in E flat, BWV 552 No 2 (St Anne).

Simon Preston (organ) in music by Bach, including the celebrated Toccata and Fugue.

The world's greatest classical music festival - stunning performances and collaborations.

John Eliot Gardiner conducts Bach's dramatic and moving Passiontide oratorio based on the Gospel according to St John. It focuses on the emotional and political drama of the arrest, trial and execution of Jesus - betrayed by Judas, abandoned by his disciples, flogged then defended by the Roman governor Pontius Pilate, but finally condemned at the behest of the angry mob.

Evangelist - Mark Padmore (tenor)

Christus - Peter Harvey (baritone)

Katharine Fuge (soprano)

Robin Blaze (countertenor)

Nicholas Mulroy (tenor)

Jeremy Budd (tenor)

Matthew Brook (bass)

Monteverdi Choir

English Baroque Soloists

John Eliot Gardiner (conductor)

Bach: St John Passion (sung in German).

John Eliot Gardiner conducts Bach's St John Passion, with the Monteverdi Choir.

The world's greatest classical music festival - stunning performances and collaborations.

Chinese cellist Jian Wang takes centre stage for the first three of Bach;s six solo cello suites. Works of considerable technical accomplishment as well as intellectual and spiritual nourishment, Jian Wang comments that 'Bach's music has a lot of qualities that appeal to the Chinese philosophy of life: to be humble, to wish but not desire, to love but not own.

Jian Wang (cello)

Bach: Suites for solo cello: No 1 in G; No 2 in D minor; No 3 in C.

Chinese cellist Jian Wang performs the first three of Bach's six solo cello suites.

The world's greatest classical music festival - stunning performances and collaborations.

A concert given as part of the BBC Proms 2008 featuring Einojuhani Rautavaara's most popular work - a soundscape for taped birdsong and orchestra, set against John Tavener's early cantata The Whale, the work that the London Sinfonietta premiered at its first concert 40 years ago. The programme concludes with the UK premiere of Tavener's Cantus mysticus, which uses texts by Goethe Dante and Buddhist scripture to explore the creative feminine element in the divine.

Patricia Rozario (soprano)

Susan Bickley (mezzo-soprano)

David Wilson-Johnson (baritone)

Mark van de Wiel (clarinet)

London Sinfonietta Chorus

David Atherton (conductor)

Einojuhani Rautavaara: Cantus arcticus

John Tavener: Cantus mysticus (UK premiere); The Whale.

With Rautavaara's Cantus arcticus and the premiere of Tavener's Cantus mysticus.

The world's greatest classical music festival - stunning performances and collaborations.

Lang Lang (piano)

Marc Yu (piano)

Mozart: Piano Sonata No 13 in B flat, K333

Rachmaninov: Preludes: in G minor, Op 23 No 5; in B flat, Op 23 No 2

Chopin: Grande polonaise brilliante, Op 22

Schubert: Fantasia in F minor, D940 - for piano duet

Debussy: La fille aux cheveux de lin; Les collines d'Anacapri (Preludes, Book 1)

Traditional Chinese: Moonlight Reflections; Spring Dance

Liszt, transcr. Horowitz: Hungarian Rhapsody No 2, S244.

Chinese pianist Lang Lang in music by Mozart, Rachmaninov, Chopin, Schubert and Debussy.

The world's greatest classical music festival - stunning performances and collaborations.

A line-up featuring over 220 voices of the massed choirs of the BBC Symphony Chorus and Crouch End Festival Chorus, an international array of soloists and Jiri Belohlavek conducting the BBC Symphony Orchestra in Verdi's Requiem, a work that the composer called one of his greatest achievements.

One of the best known choral works in the repertory, the Requiem is every bit as popular as Verdi's famous operas, and the composer himself conducted the British premiere at the Royal Albert Hall in 1875 to a tumultuous reception.

Violeta Urmana (soprano)

Michelle DeYoung (mezzo-soprano)

Joseph Calleja (tenor)

Ildebrando d'Arcangelo (bass)

Jiri Belohlavek (conductor)

Verdi: Requiem.

The BBC SO/Chorus, the Crouch End Festival Chorus and other soloists in Verdi's Requiem.

The world's greatest classical music festival - stunning performances and collaborations.

A performance of Messiaen's Cinq rechants - a work which draws its inspiration from a mixture of Sanskrit texts, traditional Indian rhythms, Renaissance polyphony and ancient tales and mythology, creating a sensual, vocally virtuosic and highly charged synthesis of styles and language.

The opening sequence likewise weaves together music of the East and West. Nishat Khan joins the BBC Singers in a short sequence of French Renaissance motets and chansons - exploring the season of spring and the erotic imagery associated with it - woven around improvised classical Indian ragas, echoing the mood of Messiaen.

And Nishat Khan concludes the programme with a selection of night ragas, chosen according to the mood of the occasion.

Motets and chansons by Claudin de Sermisy, Jean Richafort, Antoine Brumel and Claude Le Jeune, interspersed with Indian ragas

Messiaen: Cinq rechants

Nishat Khan (sitar)

Rashid Mustafa Thirak (tabla)

Natasha Ahmad (tanpura)

David Hill (conductor).

A concert featuring Messiaen's Cinq rechants plus motets, chansons and Indian night ragas.

The world's greatest classical music festival - stunning performances and collaborations.

A late-night opportunity to hear four leading young musicians come together to perform Messiaen's Quartet for the End of Time, which was written and first performed while the composer was a prisoner of war in 1940s.

Martin Frost (clarinet)

Anthony Marwood (violin)

Matthew Barley (cello)

Thomas Larcher (piano)

Messiaen: Quartet for the End of Time.

Verity Sharp presents a performance of Messiaen's Quartet for the End of Time.

The world's greatest classical music festival - stunning performances and collaborations.

Roger Norrington is master of ceremonies as the traditional festivities herald the Last Night of the 114th BBC Proms season.

Star turns are provided by bass-baritone Bryn Terfel who brings operatic heroes and villains vividly to life, and French pianist Helene Grimaud who is soloist in Beethoven's Choral Fantasy.

Bryn Terfel (bass-baritone)

Helene Grimaud (piano)

Anna Leese, Sophie Bevan (soprano)

Cora Burggraaf (mezzo-soprano)

Nathan Vale, Joshua Ellicott (tenor)

Jonathan Lemalu (bass-baritone)

BBC Singers

BBC Symphony Chorus

BBC Symphony Orchestra

Roger Norrington (conductor)

Beethoven: Overture (The Creatures of Prometheus)

Wagner: Wie Todesahnung Damm'rung...O du, mein holder Abendstern (Tannhauser - Act 3)

Puccini: Tre sbirri, Una carrozza' (Tosca - Act 1)

Beethoven: Fantasia in C minor for piano, chorus and orchestra (Choral Fantasy)

Verdi: Ehi paggio!... L'onore Ladri! (Falstaff - Act 1).

BBC SO and Chorus in works by Beethoven, Wagner, Puccini, Verdi and Beethoven.

The world's greatest classical music festival - stunning performances and collaborations.

Proms in the Park highlights, with Jose Carreras, Evelyn Glennie and Rebecca Evans.

The Tallis Scholars, directed by Peter Phillips, perform mass settings by two masters of the Renaissance. Both settings are based on the melody of the chanson Malheur me bat (Misfortune has struck me), whose original text is lost and which is performed here to a specially commissioned version by French poet Jacques Darras.

Peter Phillips (conductor)

Ockeghem: Malheur me bat

Obrecht: Missa Malheur me bat

Josquin Desprez: Missa Malheur me bat.

The Tallis Scholars perform mass settings by Ockeghem, Obrecht and Desprez.

The world's greatest classical music festival - stunning performances and collaborations.

Part of a Christmas and New Year series of highlights of the 2008 BBC Proms at the Royal Albert Hall. In August, 2008 Gianandrea Noseda celebrated Puccini's 150th anniversary by conducting the BBC Philharmonic, BBC Singers and an international cast in a concert performance of his one-act opera Il tabarro.

Puccini: Il tabarro (concert performance; sung in Italian)

Barbara Frittoli (Giorgetta)

Miro Dvorsky (Luigi)

Lado Ataneli (Michele)

Jane Henschel (La Frugola)

Barry Banks (Il Tinca)

Alastair Miles (Il Talpa)

Allan Clayton (A song-vendor)

Katherine Broderick (Young lover)

Edgaras Montvidas (Young lover)

Gianandrea Noseda (conductor).

A performance of Puccini's Il tabarro with an international cast and the BBC Philharmonic.

The world's greatest classical music festival - stunning performances and collaborations.

From the BBC Proms 2008, the Berlin Philharmonic conducted by Simon Rattle in two works based on the tragic story of the forbidden love between the Cornish knight Tristan and Isolde the Irish princess. Wagner's own concert version of the overture to his great opera of love and death combined with the final aria of his heroine is followed by the centrepiece of Messiaen's trilogy on the same subject: the monumental Turangalila Symphony.

Pierre-Laurent Aimard (piano)

Tristan Murail (ondes martenot)

Simon Rattle (conductor)

Wagner: Prelude and Liebestod (Tristan und Isolde)

Messiaen: Turangalila Symphony.

The Berlin Philharmonic conducted by Simon Rattle perform Wagner and Messiaen.