BBC Proms [2020]

The centrepiece of this concert - introduced by Suzy Klein and originally presented to celebrate the 350th anniversary year of Purcell's birth in 2009 - is an affecting tribute to the composer by his teacher and predecessor as organist of Westminster Abbey, John Blow. It sets Dryden's poem of the same name, which describes how ‘the lark and linnet sing' but then fall silent at the appearance of ‘the matchless man, our Orpheus'.

A sequence of Purcell's solo songs and keyboard pieces and the deeply moving Evening Hymn complete this mix of mellifluous music, performed by English singers Iestyn Davies and Simon Wall. The duo are accompanied by members of the Academy of Ancient Music, led from the harpsichord by their Artistic Director Richard Egarr.

Purcell: Suite in G major - excerpts

Purcell: Hail, Bright Cecelia - 'Tis nature's voice

Purcell: A New Ground

Purcell: Music for a while

Purcell: Suite in D major - excerpts

Purcell: Sweeter than roses

Blow: Ode on the Death of Mr Henry Purcell

Purcell: Evening Hymn

Iestyn Davies (countertenor)

Simon Wall (tenor)

Richard Egarr (harpsichord/director)

(From the BBC Proms, 7 September 2009)

Richard Egarr directs a concert marking the 350th anniversary of Henry Purcell's birth.

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

BBC Proms: a Proms Chamber Music recital from 2008 typical of the ever-questing Pierre-Laurent Aimard, blending music from various periods. Schumann's last piano work looks forward with its harmonically advanced language. Its mood is taken up by Elliott Carter's classic Night Fantasies of 1980, a work described by its composer as ‘a piano piece of continuously changing moods, suggesting the fleeting thoughts and feelings that are passed through the mind during a period of wakefulness at night'.

Bart　k is represented by his Out of Doors Suite, written very much with himself in mind as performer, and exploiting the piano's percussive qualities to winning effect. And as a leading exponent of Messiaen's piano music, Aimard offers a sketch of a night bird, ‘L'alouette lulu' (The Woodlark).

Introduced by Christopher Cook.

Schumann: 5 Ges䀀nge der Frühe, Op 133

Elliott Carter: Night Fantasies

Messiaen: Catalogue d'oiseaux - No 8: L'alouette lulu

Bart　k: Out of Doors Suite

Pierre-Laurent Aimard (piano)

(From BBC Proms, 21 July 2008)

Pierre-Laurent Aimard plays Schumann, Carter, Messiaen and Bart\u00f3k

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

Martin Handley introduces this 1997 recital - the first ever solo piano recital at the Proms - showcases the Russian phenomenon Evgeny Kissin in only his second Proms performance. At 26, his performances and recordings had already brought him the kind of attention reserved for the starriest virtuosos - such as Chopin and Liszt themselves, whose music he plays here alongside Haydn's noble Sonata No 52.

Liszt's fiendishly difficult Hungarian Rhapsody No 12 is the jewel in centre of this mammoth recital. With eight distinctive melodies, it is the most thematically rich of the 19 Rhapsodies - as well as one of the most popular. Supposedly closing the performance is the last of Chopin's three piano sonatas - but there is an encore or two...

Haydn: Sonata No 52 in E flat

Liszt: Liebestraum No 3 in A flat

Liszt: Hungarian Rhapsody No 12 in C sharp minor

c8.10pm Interval

Martin Handley talks to his guest, pianist and broadcaster Lucy Parham, about tonight's concert

Chopin: Nocturnes Ops 27 Nos 1 & 2

Chopin: Piano Sonata No 3 in B minor

Evgeny Kissin (piano)

(From the BBC Proms, 10 August 1997)

BBC Proms: Evgeny Kissin plays Haydn, Chopin and Liszt.

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

Hannah French presents a highlight of the 1994 season.

Haydn's Symphony No. 96 was written during the composer's first visit to London and was premiered in Hannover Square, just two miles from where the Royal Albert Hall now stands. The lightest of the 12 symphonies he wrote in the city, its four movements perfectly capture the elegance and wit that brought Haydn such popularity in London society. His virtuosic First Violin Concerto, performed in this concert by the Japanese-born violinist Mayumi Seiler, was written two decades earlier, in the early years of his employment at the Esterhကzy court.

Sir Neville Marriner and his Academy of St Martin in the Fields conclude with a performance of the Fourth Symphony by Haydn's frustrated pupil, Beethoven. Despite being written at the same time as his better-known Fifth, the symphony is classical in proportion, its bubbling finale imbued with the spirit of Beethoven's teacher.

Haydn: Symphony No. 96 in D major, ‘Miracle

Haydn: Violin Concerto No. 1 in C major

Beethoven: ‘Ah! p退rfido

Beethoven: Symphony No. 4 in B flat major

Adrianne Pieczonka (soprano)

Mayumi Seiler (violin)

Sir Neville Marriner (conductor)

(From the BBC Proms 1994, 15 August)

Sir Neville Marriner conducts music by Beethoven and Haydn.

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

BBC Proms: Phillipe Herreweghe's expressive but fleet-footed Bach won praise at his Proms debut in 1996. Two years later, in this highlight from the archives, he turned to one of the peaks of Bach's output: the telling of Matthew's version of the Passion with the narration of Christ's mission, his political fates, and our response in the meditative music of arias, all mingled to create one of the most original music dramas of any age. Ian Bostridge, then near the start of his career sings the role of the Evangelist.

Presented by Petroc Trelawny who between Parts 1 and 2 talks to Andreas Scholl about working with Herreweghe, and his approach to singing the music of JS Bach.

Bach: St Matthew Passion

Ian Bostridge (Evangelist)

Sibylla Rubens (soprano)

Andreas Scholl (counter-tenor)

Werner Güra (tenor)

Dietrich Henschel (bass)

Elisabeth Hermans (soprano)

Susan Hamilton (soprano)

Franz-Josef Selig (bass)

Frits Vanhule (bass)

Dominik W怀rner (bass)

Schola Cantorum Cantate Domino

Chorus and Orchestra of Collegium Vocale Ghent

(From the BBC Proms 1998, 23 August)

Philippe Herreweghe conducts Bach's St Matthew Passion.

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

In this late-night concert from 2003, Anne Sofie von Otter joins French conductor Marc Minkowski and his period-instrument orchestra 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'apoth退ose 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)

Anne Sofie von Otter sings Bach and Handel with Les Musiciens du Louvre.

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

Presented by Petroc Trelawny.

Xenakis: Rebonds B

Simon Holt: Quadriga

Suzanne Farrin: Hypersea

Xenakis: Tetras

JACK Quartet

Colin Currie (percussion)

(From BBC Proms 2018, 13 August)

BBC Proms: In this Proms lunchtime recital from 2018, award-winning British percussionist Colin Currie joined forces with dynamic contemporary music specialists, the JACK Quartet, for a programme of 20th- and 21st-century works, including world premieres by Simon Holt and Suzanne Farrin.

Those pieces are joined by two virtuosic Xenakis chamber works - the impossibly demanding Rebonds B for solo percussion and the 1983 string quartet Tetras with its eerie, woodwind-like sound manipulation and unsettling rhythmic patterning.

BBC Proms Chamber Music: The JACK Quartet and Colin Currie play Xenakis.

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

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

Sir Roger Norrington (conductor)

(From BBC Proms 1989, 21 August)

followed at c. 9.15 by:

Beethoven: String Quartet in F major op 59 no.1 (Razumovsky)

Aris String Quartet

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.

Sir Roger Norrington conducts Beethoven and Schubert - four decades of unmissable Proms.

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

Beethoven: Overture ‘Leonore' No. 3

Barber: Violin Concerto

Copland: Symphony No. 3

James Ehnes (violin)

Marin Alsop (conductor)

(From the BBC Proms 2007, 25 July)

New York-born Marin Alsop conducts a programme that reflects the substantial body of American works introduced to the BBC Proms during the 1940s and 1950s. Barber's lushly romantic Violin Concerto - which received its UK premiere at the 1943 Proms - is heard alongside Copland's iconic folk-influenced symphony, a work which helped define the sound of American orchestral music.

Opening the concert is Beethoven's third attempt at a curtain-raiser for his only opera, Leonore (later renamed Fidelio). Despite being rejected for a fourth and final iteration, this overture perfectly encapsulates the essence of Beethoven's opera: a proud celebration of freedom and conjugal love.

Presented by Martin Handley.

James Ehnes plays Barber's Violin Concerto.

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

(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 R退volutionnaire 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

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.

Beethoven's opera Leonore, conducted by Sir John Eliot Gardiner at the 1996 Proms

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

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

Ruth Ziesak (soprano)

Bernarda Fink (alto)

Herbert Lippert (tenor)

Neal Davies (bass)

Nikolous Harnoncourt (conductor)

(From BBC Proms 1998, 11 September)

Nikolous Harnoncourt conducts Beethoven's Missa solemnis.

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

BBC Proms: Brahms's development in the time between composing his First and Second Symphonies was remarkable. Despite finishing it less than a year after the premiere of his First, the Second Symphony belongs to an entirely different world. It is an expansive, full-bodied work, infused with the idyllic surroundings of the Austrian spa town in which it was written.

In this concert from the 1994 Proms, Italian maestro Carlo Maria Giulini and the European Union Youth Orchestra pair the symphony with Brahms's final effort in the medium: his thrilling Fourth. Written at the height of his musical powers (again, within a year of its predecessor), it is the first symphony by any composer to incorporate a strict set of variations into one of its movements: the finale is based on a repeating bass melody from Bach's Cantata 150, Nach dir, Herr, verlanget mich'.

Presented by Ian Skelly

Brahms: Symphony No. 2 in D major

Brahms: Symphony No. 4 in E minor

Carlo Maria Giulini (conductor)

(From the BBC Proms 1994, 20 August)

Carlo Maria Giulini conducts a Brahms double bill.

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

Petroc Trelawny presents a highlight from the 2017 season.

Beethoven: Overture ‘Leonore' No. 3

Stravinsky: Violin Concerto in D major

Gerald Barry: Canada (BBC commission: world premiere)

Beethoven: Symphony No. 5 in C minor

Allan Clayton (tenor)

City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra

Mirga Gražinyt?-Tyla (conductor)

(From BBC Proms 2017, 21 August)

The CBSO and Mirga Gražinyte-Tyla explore the theme of political and artistic freedom. Beethoven's Leonore Overture No. 3, written for his rescue opera Fidelio, celebrates the triumph of truth over tyranny in music of radiant beauty, while his Fifth Symphony rewrites the rules for the classical symphony.

In his new work, maverick composer Gerald Barry sets a text from Fidelio's Prisoners' Chorus - including the lines ‘Speak softly! We are watched with eyes and ears', suggesting a resonance with today's concerns over public surveillance. And Leila Josefowicz amps up the drama in the fierce brilliance of Stravinsky's neoclassical concerto.

Mirga Gra\u017einyt\u0117-Tyla returns to the Proms with Beethoven's Fifth Symphony.

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

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

Interval: Kate Molleson in conversation with Christian Thielemann.

Reger: Variations and Fugue on a Theme by Mozart

R. Strauss: Till Eulenspiegel's Merry Pranks

Nikolaj Znaider (violin)

Christian Thielemann (conductor)

(From BBC Proms 2016, 8 September)

Christian Thielemann conducts the Staatskapelle Dresden in works by Beethoven and Strauss.

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

BBC Proms: Beethoven's Sixth Symphony is surely the apogee of the pastoral. Here it is prefaced by Sibelius's late tone-poem, which he premiered in the USA, and Michael Tippett's shimmering evocation of a Senegalese lakeside view. The last orchestral piece Tippett wrote, The Rose Lake was commissioned jointly by the London Symphony Orchestra, Boston Symphony Orchestra and the Toronto Symphony Orchestra to celebrate the composer's 90th birthday.

As with Beethoven's Sixth Symphony, Tippett's piece is concerned with expressions of feeling rather than description. The late Colin Davis and the London Symphony Orchestra give free reign to that feeling in this thrilling concert from the 2001 Proms.

Presented by Martin Handley

Sibelius: The Oceanides, Op. 73

Tippett: The Rose Lake

Beethoven: Symphony No. 6 in F major, ‘Pastoral

Colin Davis (conductor)

(From the BBC Proms 2001, 13 September)

Colin Davis conducts Sibelius, Tippett and Beethoven.

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

Presented by Petroc Trelawny

J怀rg Widmann: Con brio

Liszt: Piano Concerto No. 1 in E flat major

c. 8.10pm

Interval

c.8.25pm

Wagner: Tannh䀀user - Overture

Wagner: G怀tterd䀀mmerung - Dawn and Siegfried's Rhine Journey

Wagner: G怀tterd䀀mmerung - Siegfried's Death and Funeral March

Wagner: The Mastersingers of Nuremberg - Overture

Martha Argerich (piano)

West-Eastern Divan Orchestra

Daniel Barenboim (conductor)

(From the BBC Proms 2016, 17 August)

Martha Argerich plays Liszt's First Piano Concerto.

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

BBC Proms: In 2003 the distinguished Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen made its second visit to the Proms, with its then Music Director Daniel Harding - making his fifth Proms appearance at the age of just 27. A suite of dance music from Rameau's celebrated first opera and the Beethoven symphony that Wagner declared ‘the apotheosis of dance' framed Sibelius's Violin Concerto, whose final movement was once famously described as ‘a polonaise for a polar bear'. The soloist was the acclaimed Russian-born Viktoria Mullova.

Presented by Tom Service.

Rameau: Hippolyte et Aricie - suite

Sibelius: Violin Concerto in D minor

Beethoven: Symphony No. 7 in A major

Viktoria Mullova (violin)

Daniel Harding (conductor)

Daniel Harding conducts the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen and Viktoria Mullova.

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

Elgar: In the South (Alassio)

Bliss: A Colour Symphony

Walton: Belshazzar's Feast

(From the BBC Proms 2006, 23 July)

Bryn Terfel (bass-baritone)

BBC National Chorus of Wales

London Symphony Chorus

BBC National Orchestra of Wales

London Brass

Richard Hickox (conductor)

Ever the champion of British music, Richard Hickox conducts his final Prom at the helm of the BBC National Orchestra of Wales, joined by Welsh bass-baritone Bryn Terfel and massed choirs from London and Cardiff in the Old Testament fire-and-brimstone tale of Belshazzar's Feast. Walton's mighty cantata was commissioned by the BBC in 1929, originally as a small-scale choral work. It soon outgrew its conception, morphing into a musical behemoth for orchestra, eight-part choir, organ and two brass bands.

Commissioned at the behest of Elgar - whose own In the South (Alassio) opens this concert - Bliss's A Colour Symphony explores the heraldic associations of the colours purple, red, blue and green. Hickox and BBC NOW would go on to record the work in 2006, alongside Bliss's Violin Concerto.

Presented by Martin Handley.

Richard Hickox conducts the BBC National Orchestra of Wales in Belshazzar's Feast.

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

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)

The BBC Singers perform English choral music spanning more than five centuries.

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

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 320 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.

7.05pm

Ian Farrington: Beethoveniana (BBC commission: world premiere)

Grand Virtual Orchestra (BBC Performing Groups)

c.7.15pm

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.7.50pm

Sir Harrison Birtwistle: Panic

John Harle, saxophone

Sir Andrew Davis, conductor

(From the Last Night of the BBC Proms 1995, 16 September)

c.8.20pm

Mahler: Symphony no 3

Anna Larsson, mezzo-soprano

Trinity Boys Choir

London Symphony Chorus

Claudio Abbado, conductor

(From BBC Proms 2007, 22 August)

Petroc Trelawny and Georgia Mann introduce the First Night of the 2020 BBC Proms season.

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

BBC Proms: Christophe Rousset's supremely elegant ensemble, which has been breathing new life into the rich legacy of the French Baroque for nearly 30 years, presented a programme at the 2011 Proms that fell squarely into the Gallic tradition but with influences from across the Alps. The programme includes music from Couperin's colourful Les nations and Rameau's delicately poised Pi耀ces de clavecin en concerts.

Introduced by Catherine Bott.

Less familiar may be the eloquent cantata telling the story of Lucretia and her suicideby Michel Pignolet de Mont退clair, an important musical figure in the period between Lully and Rameau, who counted Couperin's daughters among his pupils.

Couperin: Les nations - La piemontaise

Lully; Les amours d退guis退s - ‘Ah Rinaldo, e dov耀 sei?

Rameau: Pi耀ces de clavecin en concerts - Premier concert

Mont退clair: Cantata ‘Morte di Lucretia

Eug退nie Warnier (soprano)

Les Talens Lyriques

Christophe Rousset (harpsichord/director)

(From BBC Proms, 1 August 2011)

Jewels of the French Baroque with Christophe Rousset and Les Talens Lyriques

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

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)

Murray Perahia joins Bernard Haitink and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra

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

Presented by Petroc Trelawny

Verdi: Don Carlos (1886 version)

Roberto Scandiuzzi (King Philip II)

Richard Margison (Don Carlos)

Dmitri Hvorostovsky (Rodrigo)

Robert Lloyd (Grand Inquisitor)

Sylvie Valayre (Elisabeth de Valois)

Olga Borodina (Princess Eboli)

Susan Parry (Thibault)

Robin Leggate (Count of Lerma)

Sorin Coliban (Old Monk)

Mary Plazas (Voice from Heaven)

Roderick Williams (Royal Herald)

Royal Opera Chorus

Orchestra of the Royal Opera House

Bernard Haitink (conductor)

(From the BBC Proms 1996, 20 July)

Bernard Haitink conducts forces from the Royal Opera in Verdi's Don Carlos.

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

Karita Mattila stars in a concert performance of Janက?ek's opera The Makropulos Affair, a drama of immortality, death and the purpose of life, conducted by Ji?퀀 B?lohlကvek with the BBC Singers and BBC Symphony Orchestra.

Presented by Kate Molleson

Janက?ek: The Makropulos Affair (concert performance; sung in Czech)

Emilia Marty ..... Karita Mattila (soprano)

Albert Gregor ..... Aleš Briscein (tenor)

Dr Kolenatý ..... Gustကv Belက?ek (bass)

V퀀tek ..... Jan Vac퀀k (tenor)

Kristina ..... Eva Št?rbovက (soprano)

Baron Jaroslav Prus ..... Svatopluk Sem (baritone)

Janek ..... Aleš Vorက?ek (tenor)

Hauk-Šendorf ..... Jan Ježek (tenor)

Stage Technician ..... Ji?퀀 Klecker (bass)

Cleaning Woman ..... Yvona Skvကrovက (mezzo-soprano)

Chambermaid ..... Jana Hrochovက (mezzo-soprano)

Ji?퀀 B?lohlကvek (conductor)

(From the BBC Proms 2016, 19 August)

An all-star cast gathers for Janက?ek's late, existential masterpiece, The Makropulos Affair. This tragic satire is powered by a score that contains some of the composer's most extreme and alluring music, written as Janက?ek was approaching 70 - and aflame with desire for a married woman less than half his age. The opera's heroine, Emilia Marty, is part-inspired by his reluctant muse, Kamila St怀sslovက.

The Finnish soprano Karita Mattila, acclaimed for her ‘electrifying' portrayal of Marty in a 2012 production at the Metropolitan Opera, New York, is joined by native Czech musicians, including the BBC Symphony Orchestra's former Conductor Laureate Ji?퀀 B?lohlကvek. This is only the second performance of The Makropulos Affair at the Proms - the first being Glyndebourne Festival Opera's 1995 production under Sir Andrew Davis.

Karita Mattila stars in a concert performance of Jan\u00e1\u010dek's opera The Makropulos Affair

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

Stravinsky: Concerto in E flat major, ‘Dumbarton Oaks

Judith Weir: woman.life.song

Ravel: Introduction and Allegro

Schoenberg: 6 Brettl Lieder

Jessye Norman (soprano)

Helen Tunstall (harp)

Mark Markham (piano)

London Sinfonietta

David Robertson (conductor)

(From BBC Proms 2000, 6 August)

BBC Proms: One of the greatest voices of the 20th century, Jessye Norman made a rare London appearance in the Prom in 2000, when she gave the first UK performance of Judith Weir's song-cycle commissioned for her by Carnegie Hall. This major addition to the repertoire sets specially written texts by Maya Angelou, Toni Morrison and Clarissa Ping Est退s depicting a woman's life through youth, middle age and maturity.

Jessye Norman sings Judith Weir and Schoenberg

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

BBC Proms: A potent mix of old and new from the 2011 Proms, in which the youthful members of the Elias Quartet, at that time members of BBC Radio 3's New Generation Artists scheme, were joined by young clarinettist Julian Bliss, by then already established on the world's stages. After music from the English Baroque and the present day - the latter represented by new work from Sally Beamish based on a Celtic-inspired melody - Bliss joins the quartet for Brahms's autumnal Clarinet Quintet.

Introduced by Catherine Bott.

Purcell: Fantasia No 6 in F major

Purcell: Fantasia No 7 in C minor

Sally Beamish: Reed Stanzas (String Quartet No. 3) (BBC commission: world premiere)

Brahms: Clarinet Quintet in B minor

Julian Bliss (clarinet)

(From the BBC Proms, 25 July 2011)

Purcell, Brahms and Sally Beamish performed by the Elias Quartet with Julian Bliss.

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

Schubert: Symphony No. 5 in B flat major, D485

Halle Orchestra

Sir John Barbirolli, conductor

c.7.55pm

Beethoven: Symphony No. 9 in D minor, ‘Choral

Brighton Festival Chorus

London Philharmonic Choir

London Philharmonic Orchestra

Jane Eaglen (soprano)

Kathleen Kuhlmann (mezzo-soprano)

Anthony Rolfe Johnson (tenor)

John Tomlinson (bass)

Klaus Tennstedt (conductor)

Christopher Larkin (conductor)

(From BBC Proms 1991, 31 August)

c.9.05pm

Janacek: Taras Bulba

Bela Dekany (violin)

BBC Symphony Orchestra

Gennady Rozhdestvensky, conductor

BBC Proms: A fixture of almost every Proms season, Beethoven's Ninth Symphony received a celebrated performance at the 1991 festival by Klaus Tennstedt, at that time Conductor Laureate of the London Philharmonic Orchestra. Tennstedt led the orchestra alongside choirs from London and Brighton in Beethoven's great hymn to humanity, whose last movement features the composer's profoundly optimistic vocal and choral setting of Schiller's ‘Ode to Joy'.

Before we hear the Beethoven, Petroc Trelawny introduces a recording made at the BBC Proms on 9 August 1968, in which Sir John Barbirolli conducted the Halle Orchestra in Schubert's Fifth Symphony.

After the rousing performance of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, we've a chance to hear the BBC Symphony Orchestra conducted by Gennady Rozhdestvensky at the BBC Proms in 1981 in a searing performance of Janacek's powerful and dramatic work, Taras Bulba.

Klaus Tennstedt conducts the London Philharmonic Orchestra in Beethoven's Ninth Symphony.

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

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

Leif Ove Andsnes (piano/conductor)

(From BBC Proms 2015, 26 July)

Two Beethoven concertos led from the piano by Leif Ove Andsnes

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

BBC Proms: Bernstein appeared only twice at the Proms. In tonight's selection from the Proms archive, we hear the first of those appearances, from 1987. Mozart's Clarinet Concerto, with its sublime slow movement, is the composer at his sunniest and most mellow, despite the fact that he was to die two months after its completion. Mahler's Fifth Symphony, a work especially associated with Bernstein, is by contrast the urgent work of a composer starting a new adventure, charged with new musical possibilities and a new love, expressed with impossible tenderness in its famous Adagietto.

Presented by Ian Skelly

Mozart: Clarinet Concerto in A major, K622

Mahler: Symphony No 5 in C sharp minor

Peter Schmidl (clarinet)

Vienna Philharmonic

Leonard Bernstein (conductor)

(From the BBC Proms 1987, 10 September)

Leonard Bernstein conducts the Vienna Philharmonic in Mozart and Mahler.

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

The Scottish Chamber Orchestra and its then Conductor Laureate Charles Mackerras collaborated with Alfred Brendel on a series of performances and recordings of the piano concertos by Mozart, and they brought the grandest of them all to the Proms in 2001, along with an Italianate Symphony from the late 1770s. The classical strand continued with Schubert's rarely heard early Fourth Symphony, and Stravinsky's neoclassical string concerto.

Presented by Martin Handley

Mozart: Symphony No. 32, K318

Mozart: Piano Concerto No. 25, K50

Stravinsky: Concerto in D

Schubert: Symphony No.4, ‘Tragic

Alfred Brendel (piano)

Sir Charles Mackerras (conductor)

(From BBC Proms 2001, 5 September)

Sir Charles Mackerras conducts the Scottish Chamber Orchestra with Alfred Brendel.

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

After almost a decade at the helm of the BBC Philharmonic, Gianandrea Noseda (who later became the orchestra's Conductor Laureate) opened this 2012 Prom with Mozart's famous overture to Don Giovanni - by turns solemn, impetuous and edgy. From dreaming sleep to a dawn awakening, Oliver Knussen's Second Symphony then takes us through a landscape of iridescent colour, with a vocal line that soars to stratospheric heights.

One of British music's great originals, Knussen found an individual voice while still in his teens. This performance - given on his 60th-birthday year - is a celebration of his unique contribution to UK music. Its nocturnal sequence finds a counterpart in the two ‘Night Music' movements of Mahler's Seventh Symphony - his own all-encompassing journey from darkness to light - which concludes the programme.

Presented by Petroc Trelawny

Mozart: Don Giovanni - overture

Knussen: Symphony No. 2

Mahler: Symphony No 7 in E minor

Gillian Keith (soprano)

Gianandrea Noseda (conductor)

(From the BBC Proms 2012, 7 July)

Gianandrea Noseda conducts Mahler's Seventh Symphony.

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

Presented by Hannah French

7.30pm

Brett Dean: Dramatis personae

c.8.05pm

Interval

c.8.20

Mahler: Symphony No. 6 in A minor

H倀kan Hardenberger (trumpet)

Andris Nelsons (conductor)

(From BBC Proms 2015, 22 August)

Andris Nelsons and the Boston Symphony Orchestra perform Brett Dean and Mahler.

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

The late, great Mariss Jansons and his Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra mark the centenary of Dvo?ကk's death in a 2004 Prom also featuring a popular tone poem by Richard Strauss. Presented by Petroc Trelawny

Dvo?ကk: Symphony No. 8 in G major

Strauss: Ein Heldenleben

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 Dvo?ကk's Eighth Symphony. Written at his brother-in-law's estate around 30 miles outside of Prague, the symphony reflects Dvo?ကk's pastoral surroundings, and gives a flavour of the profusion of ideas to come in his ‘New World' Ninth.

The Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra under Mariss Jansons play Dvo\u0159\u00e1k and Strauss.

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

Works inspired by the sea and night-time, plus Beethoven's barnstorming ‘Eroica' Symphony - Mark Elder conducts the Hall退 in a classic BBC Prom from August 2014.

The sunshine glitters on the waves in Berlioz's overture Le corsaire, while the ocean ebbs and flows in Elgar's Sea Pictures. Human rather than natural drama is what drives Beethoven's ‘Eroica' Symphony, however - a stirring musical meditation on heroism and valour. Presented by Hannah French.

Berlioz: Overture ‘Le corsaire

Elgar: Sea Pictures, Op. 37

with Alice Coote (mezzo-soprano)

Helen Grime: Near Midnight (London premiere)

Beethoven: Symphony No 3 in E flat major, ‘Eroica

Sir Mark Elder

(From BBC Proms 2014, 9 August)

The sea lies the centre of tonight's concert from Sir Mark Elder and the Hall退. Berlioz composed his swashbuckling overture Le corsaire on holiday by the Mediterranean Sea in Nice.

A celebrated Elgar champion, Elder is joined by British mezzo-soprano Alice Coote for Sea Pictures: Elgar's only orchestral song-cycle, which explores the fascination and fear inspired by the sea. While Helen Grime's Near Midnight explores a nocturnal theme, Beethoven created a storm of human drama in his ‘Eroica' Symphony.

Works inspired by the sea and night-time, plus Beethoven's barnstorming 'Eroica' Symphony.

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

Britten's Variations is one of many British pieces championed by the late Richard Hickox, two of whose distinguished vocal collaborators, Ian Bostridge and Roderick Williams, are featured in Colin Matthews's new work, which Hickox commissioned.

Mozart's Requiem was left incomplete at the composer's early death, its deathly tread and radiant hope adding to its symbolism as Mozart's musical epitaph.

Presented by Martin Handley.

Britten: Variations on a Theme of Frank Bridge

Colin Matthews: No Man's Land (world premiere)

Mozart (compl. Sussmayr): Requiem in D minor

Emma Bell (soprano)

Renata Pokupi? (mezzo-soprano)

Ian Bostridge (tenor)

Roderick Williams (baritone)

Henk Neven (bass)

Polyphony

City of London Sinfonia

Stephen Layton (conductor)

(From BBC Proms 2011, 21 August)

Music championed by, or written in memory of, Richard Hickox (1948 - 2008)

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

Presented by Tom Service.

Ligeti: Night; Morning (Proms premiere)

Tchaikovsky: Violin Concerto in D major

Ligeti: Lux aeterna

Langgaard: Music of the Spheres (UK premiere)

Sibelius: Symphony No. 5 in E flat major

Henning Kraggerud (violin)

Inger Dam-Jensen (soprano)

Danish Radio Vocal Ensemble and Concert Chorus

Danish Radio Symphony Orchestra

Thomas Dausgaard (conductor)

(From the BBC Proms 2010, 11 August)

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.

Thomas Dausgaard conducts the UK premiere of Rued Langgaard's Music of the Spheres.

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

The Mediterranean verve of Berlioz's overture Le Corsaire and the shimmering weight of full orchestra and organ in Saint-Sa뀀ns's Third Symphony complete a programme of introspective reflection and extrovert display.

Presented by Hannah French.

Arvo P䀀rt: Cantus in memoriam Benjamin Britten

Britten: Violin Concerto

Berlioz: Overture ‘Le corsaire

Saint?Sa뀀ns: Symphony No. 3 in C minor, ‘Organ

Janine Jansen (violin)

Paavo J䀀rvi (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.

(From the BBC Proms 2013, 1 September)

BBC Proms: The Orchestre de Paris in works by Arvo Part, Britten, Berlioz and Saint-Saens.

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

Davies, Scholl and McCreesh had recorded Saul with the Gabrieli Consort & Players in 2002, for a disc described by BBC Music Magazine as ‘overwhelming'. It was later made First Choice on BBC Radio 3's Building a Library. Experience the work live in this exhilarating performance from the 2003 Proms season.

Presented by Martin Handley

Handel: Saul

Neal Davies (Saul)

Andreas Scholl (David)

Deborah York (Michal)

Susan Gritton (Merab)

Mark Padmore (Jonathan)

Paul Agnew (High Priest/Witch of Endor)

Jonathan Lemalu (Ghost of Samuel)

Paul McCreesh (conductor)

(From the BBC Proms 2003, 24 August)

Neal Davies and Andreas Scholl star in Handel's Saul.

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

Webern: Langsamer Satz

Colin Matthews: String Quartet No. 5 (European premiere)

Beethoven: String Quartet in D major, Op. 18 No. 3

Apollon Musag耀te Quartet

(From BBC Proms 2015, 3 August)

Presented by Petroc Trelawny.

Former BBC Radio 3 New Generation Artists the Apollon Musag耀te 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.

The Apollon Musagete Quartet perform Colin Matthews's Fifth String Quartet plus Beethoven.

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

Martin?: 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.

Martin?'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 Musag耀te 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.

Star flautist Emmanuel Pahud in recital with pianist Eric Le Sage.

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

Bart　k: 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 Bart　k'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.

Jeremy Denk plays piano sonatas by Scriabin, Bart\u00f3k and Beethoven.

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

Liszt: Piano Sonata in B minor

Liszt: Liebestr䀀um No. 3 in A flat major

Prokofiev: Piano Sonata No. 7 in B flat major

Chopin: Preludes, Op. 28 - No. 4 in E minor

Khatia Buniatishvili (piano)

(From the BBC Proms 2011, 8 August)

Presented by Catherine Bott

Former BBC Radio 3 New Generation Artist Khatia Buniatishvili has for years been turning heads with her mesmerising stage presence and unique style of pianism, mixing uncanny sensitivity with old-school fireworks. In this recital she explores the different brands of virtuosity perfected by three composer-pianists, Chopin, Liszt and Prokofiev.

Liszt's B minor Piano Sonata, dedicated to Schumann, is considered by many to be his finest work, whilst his Liebestr䀀um No. 3 is one of his most popular - the quintessential Romantic piano miniature. Buniatishvili recorded both as part of her 2011 disc Liszt: Piano Works, which was released shortly before this chamber performance. Prokofiev's Seventh Sonata, meanwhile, contains some of the most dynamic music ever devised by a composer renowned for his motoric piano style.

Proms chamber music from the archive: Khatia Buniatishvili plays Liszt and Prokofiev.

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

In this her Proms debut, star soprano Ren退e Fleming performed music by two composers with whom she has long been associated - a florid Mozart motet and Strauss's ravishing final songs, which were given their premiere at the Royal Albert Hall.

Christoph Eschenbach also conducted Richard Strauss's colourful tone-poem inspired by the lothario Don Juan, and Brahms's classically elegant variations on the ‘St Anthony Chorale', a theme thought at the time to have been penned by Haydn.

At the interval Ren退e Fleming joins Ian Skelly to look back on the night and reflect on performing at the Proms for two decades.

Dvo?ကk: Carnival Overture

Brahms: Variations on the St Anthony Chorale

Mozart: Exsultate, jubilate

R. Strauss: Don Juan

R. Strauss: Four Last Songs

Ren退e Fleming (soprano)

Philharmonia Orchestra

Christoph Eschenbach (conductor)

(From BBC Proms 2001, 1 August)

Ren\u00e9e Fleming sings Mozart and Strauss.

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

The crushing, five-note dissonance at the grizzly climax of Richard Strauss's operatic masterpiece - when Salome kisses the severed head of John the Baptist - is one of the most influential moments in 20th-century music. Overnight Strauss redefined the scope of opera, paving the way for modernists such as Arnold Schoenberg and Alban Berg, both of whom were present at the 1906 Austrian premiere.

In this concert performance from the 2014 Proms, Scottish conductor Donald Runnicles leads the Deutsche Oper Berlin orchestra and a cast that includes Nina Stemme in the title role. Fresh from acclaimed productions in Stockholm and Zurich, the Swedish soprano gives a thrilling account of this blood-curdling tale.

Presented by Kate Molleson

Nina Stemme (Salome)

Samuel Youn (Jokanaan)

Burkhard Ulrich (Herod)

Doris Soffel (Herodias)

Thomas Blondelle (Narraboth)

Ronnita Miller (Herodias's Page)

Paul Kaufmann (1st Jew)

Gideon Poppe (2nd Jew)

J怀rg Sch怀rner (3rd Jew)

Clemens Bieber (4th Jew)

Andrew Harris (5th Jew)

Noel Bouley (1st Narazene)

Carlton Ford (2nd Nazarene)

Marko Mimica (1st Soldier)

Tobias Kehrer (2nd Soldier)

Seth Carico (Cappadocian)

Orchestra of the Deutsche Oper Berlin

Donald Runnicles (conductor)

(From the BBC Proms 2014, 30 August)

Donald Runnicles conducts a concert performance of Salome.

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

Presented by Hannah French

11pm

Purcell: Dido and Aeneas

Christopher Purves (Aeneas)

Sarah Connolly (Dido)

Carolyn Sampson (Belinda)

D'Arcy Bleiker (Sorcerer)

Elizabeth Cragg (Second Woman)

Matthew Beale (Sailor)

Lucy Crowe (Spirit)

Choir of the Enlightenment

Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment

Richard Egarr (conductor)

(From BBC Proms 2003, 2 September)

Purcell's Dido and Aeneas, featuring Sarah Connolly and Christopher Purves.

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

This evening, Finnish conductor Sakari Oramo pairs two of Sibelius's most engagingly descriptive works as part of a Proms season that marked 150 years since the composer's birth. The folk hero Kullervo was the inspiration behind a powerful national statement for a country struggling to overthrow Russian rule. This massive musical hybrid - part cantata, part symphony, part suite - is a vivid work, richly melodic but looking ahead to modernism in some striking musical gestures.

The opening work, En saga, is a fairy tale without a plot, whose contrasting movements suggest many possible stories, but never commit to just one. Sibelius began working on the piece in 1891, soon after returning from musical studies in Vienna and Berlin. It wasn't until 1902, however, that he completed the version we know today.

Presented by Ian Skelly.

Sibelius: En saga

Sibelius: Kullervo

Johanna Rusanen (soprano)

Waltteri Torikka (baritone)

Polyteknikkojen Kuoro

BBC Symphony Chorus (men's voices)

BBC Symphony Orchestra

Sakari Oramo (conductor)

(From the BBC Proms 2015, 29 August)

An all-Sibelius programme from Sakari Oramo and the BBC Symphony Orchestra.

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

Georgia Mann presents this concert from 2014, Sir Simon Rattle and the Berlin Philharmonic perform an all-Russian programme inspired by dance. Opening the concert is Rachmaninov's Symphonic Dances - the composer's blazing ‘final spark' and, for many, his finest orchestral work. Embracing jazz, plainchant and the waltz, it is a mercurial showcase of dramatic skill.

In the second half we enter the Russian fairy-tale world of Stravinsky's The Firebird, the vivid, folk-infused ballet score for Diaghilev's Ballets Russes that established the young composer as a rising star.

Rachmaninov: Symphonic Dances

Stravinsky: The Firebird

(From the BBC Proms, 5 September 2014)

Sir Simon Rattle conducts the Berlin Philharmonic.

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

Marking the 80th birthday in 2010 of one of Broadway's great innovators, this first ever Sondheim Prom drew together leading figures of the opera and theatre worlds, plus an array of special guests. Bryn Terfel had previously proved himself a magnetic Sweeney Todd in performances at London's Royal Festival Hall in 2007.

Terfel led a strong cast, joined by aspiring young performers supported by the BBC Performing Arts Fund. On the bill were excerpts from horror musical Sweeney Todd, the Ingmar Bergman-inspired A Little Night Music and the fairy-tale compendium of Into the Woods, as well as excerpts from Company, Pacific Overtures and Sunday in the Park with George.

Presented by Georgia Mann

Simon Russell Beale (vocalist)

Dame Judi Dench (vocalist)

Daniel Evans (vocalist)

Maria Friedman (vocalist)

Caroline O'Connor (vocalist)

Julian Ovenden (vocalist)

Jenna Russell (vocalist)

Bryn Terfel (bass-baritone)

Proms Sondheim Ensemble

BBC Performing Arts Fund Singers

BBC Concert Orchestra

David Charles Abell (conductor)

A special Prom marking the 80th birthday in 2010 of composer and lyricist Stephen Sondheim

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

Today's concert, introduced by Petroc Trelawny, comes from 2016, when vocal ensemble Stile Antico and viol consort Fretwork combined to celebrate the 400th anniversary year of the death of England's great bard, William Shakespeare. Their programme contrasts music by Shakespeare's contemporaries with new settings from Nico Muhly and Composer in Association with the BBC National Orchestra of Wales, Huw Watkins. In the words of Shakespeare himself, ‘How sweet the moonlight sleeps upon this bank! Here will we sit, and let the sounds of music creep in our ears -

Morley: It was a lover and his lass

Byrd: O Lord, make thy servant Elizabeth

Byrd: Why do I use my paper, ink and pen?

Huw Watkins: The Phoenix and the Turtle

Byrd: Fantasia a 5, 'Two parts in one in the fourth above

Tomkins: Be strong and of a good courage

Ramsey: Sleep, fleshly birth

Byrd: Browning a 5, 'The leaves be green

Johnson: Full fathom five

Nico Muhly: Gentle sleep

Gibbons: In nomine No 1

Wilbye: Draw on, sweet night

(From the BBC Proms, 15 August 2016)

Stile Antico and viol consort Fretwork celebrate a Shakespearean anniversary.

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

In today's chamber music concert given in Cadogan Hall in 2009, American mezzo-soprano Susan Graham performs repertoire close to her heart with pianist Malcolm Martineau: a sampler of 19th- and 20th-century French song.

Introduced by Louise Fryer.

Bizet: Chanson d'avril

Franck: Nocturne

Chabrier: Les cigales

Bachelet: Chere nuit

Duparc: Au pays ou se fait la guerre

Ravel: La paon

Caplet: Le corbeau et le renard

Roussel: Reponse d'une epouse sage

Debussy: Colloque sentimental

Honegger: Three Songs from 'The Little Mermaid

Rosenthal: La souris d'Angleterre

Poulenc: La Dame de Monte Carlo

(From the BBC Proms, 27 July 2009)

Songs by Bizet, Chabrier, Duparc, Debussy, Ravel, Poulenc, Honegger and more.

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

Presented by Andrew McGregor.

Tchaikovsky: The Queen of Spades

Yuri Marusin (Hermann)

Sergei Leiferkus (Tomsky)

Dimitri Kharitonov (Prince Yeletsky)

Felicity Palmer (Countess)

Nancy Gustafson (Lisa)

Enid Hartle (Governess)

Anne Dawson (Chloe)

Glyndebourne Chorus

London Philharmonic Orchestra

Sir Andrew Davis (conductor)

(From BBC Proms 1992, 26 July)

At the time Chief Conductor of the BBC Symphony Orchestra as well as Music Director of Glyndebourne Festival Opera, newly knighted Sir Andrew Davis brought his distinguished East Sussex opera company to the Royal Albert Hall in 1992 for the Proms premiere of Tchaikovsky's chilling supernatural tale of obsession and revenge, based on Pushkin. Nancy Gustafson, who made a memorable Proms appearance (alongside Felicity Palmer) two years earlier as Janက?ek's Katya, sings Lisa to the Hermann of leading Russian tenor Yuri Marusin; while Palmer - who was created DBE the following year - added Tchaikovsky's Countess to her long list of distinguished roles.

A season of archive Proms: Glyndebourne's production of Tchaikovsky's The Queen of Spades.

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

Presented by Tom Service.

Ligeti: Atmosph耀res

Mahler: Kindertotenlieder

Schoenberg: Five Orchestral Pieces

R. Strauss: Also sprach Zarathustra

Matthias Goerne (baritone)

Jonathan Nott (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.

(From the BBC Proms 2009, 4 September)

The Gustav Mahler Youth Orchestra in works by Mahler, Strauss, Schoenberg and Ligeti.

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

BBC Proms: Our series exploring the Proms archives continues with a performance from 2005 marking the Manchester Camerata's debut at the festival. Kate Royal returned for her third Proms visit to sing a pair of Mozart arias, having won the Kathleen Ferrier Award the previous summer. Michael Tippett's Divertimento on Sellinger's Round, which draws on British music from across the centuries, was an apt inclusion in the centenary year of the composer's birth. Beethoven's sparkling Eighth Symphony contrasts with his ballet overture in praise of the Greek-mythical creator of mankind.

Beethoven: Overture: The Creatures of Prometheus;

Tippett: Divertimento on Sellinger's Round

Mozart: ‘Bella mia fiamma - Resta, o cara', K528

Mozart: ‘Chi s

Messiaen's ecstatic, Eastern-influenced celebration of love is framed by a BBC commission from American talent Nico Muhly and British composer Anna Meredith's acclaimed tour de force of clapping, stamping, singing and body percussion, first performed earlier the same year by NYO members.

Var耀se's Tuning Up is a tongue-in-cheek parody based on the familiar orchestral strains usually heard on stage only before the conductor arrives.

Presented by Georgia Mann.

Edgard Var耀se: Tuning Up

Nico Muhly: Gait (BBC commission: London premiere)

Messiaen: Turangalla Symphony

Anna Meredith: HandsFree

Cynthia Millar (ondes martenot)

Joanna MacGregor (piano)

National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain

Vassily Petrenko (conductor)

(From BBC Proms 2012, 4 August)

The National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain perform Messiaen's Turangal\u00eela Symphony.

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

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

Riccardo Chailly (conductor)

(From BBC Proms 1990, 11 September)

The Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra performs symphonies by Beethoven and Prokofiev.

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

Kate Molleson introduces a Prom from 1989 conducted by the late Oliver Knussen, one of the most respected figures in British contemporary music. She is also joined by the soloist in tonight's concert, cellist Steven Isserlis.

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: Pr退lude

BBC Proms: ‘A composer's music should express his love affairs, his religion, the books that have influenced him, the pictures he loves.' So said Rachmaninov, whose Third Symphony does just that through irrepressible yearning and longing. It forms the culmination of this performance from the 2016 Proms archive, in which the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra and its Russian Chief Conductor performed Shostakovich's disquieting First Cello Concerto, joined by cellist Alexey Stadler. The concert opens with Liverpool-born Emily Howard's Torus, inspired by the doughnut-shaped form of ‘the whole with a hole'.

Presented by Andrew McGregor

Emily Howard: Torus (Concerto for Orchestra) (world premiere)

Shostakovich: Cello Concerto No. 1

Rachmaninov: Symphony No. 3

Alexey Stadler (cello)

Vasily Petrenko (conductor)

(From the BBC Proms 2016, 8 September)

Vasily Petrenko and the RLPO perform works by Rachmaninov, Shostakovich and Emily Howard.

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

Presented by Hannah French

7.30pm

Vaughan Williams: Symphony No. 4 in F minor

Vaughan Williams: Symphony No. 5 in D major

c.8.50pm

Interval

c.9.05pm

Vaughan Williams: Symphony No. 6 in E minor

Andrew Manze (conductor)

(From BBC Proms 2012, 16 August)

A Vaughan Williams triple bill. Andrew Manze conducts Symphonies No s 4, 5 and 6.

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

It was an event which drew unanimous critical and audience acclaim for conductor cast and, not least, the orchestra. As one critic put it: 'there's surely no other ensemble in the world that has this music more deeply ingrained in its collective psyche than the Berlin Staatskapelle. Even with some of the greatest Wagner singers of the present day onstage here, it was the orchestral playing that regularly demanded the attention, whether it was the effortless depth of tone in the strings, the sheer solidity and easy assertiveness of the brass, the perfectly defined pianissimos or the immaculate articulation of every solo detail.

Wagner: Die Walküre

7.30pm: Act 2

9.15pm: Act 3

Bryn Terfel (Wotan)

Simon O'Neill (Siegmund)

Anja Kampe (Sieglinde)

Eric Halfvarson (Hunding)

Nina Stemme (Brünnhilde)

Ekaterina Gubanova (Fricka)

Sonja Mühleck (Gerhilde)

Carola H怀hn (Ortlinde)

Ivonne Fuchs (Waltraute)

Anak Morel (Schwertleite)

Susan Foster (Helmwige)

Leann Sandel-Pantaleo (Siegrune)

Anna Lapkovskaja (Grimgerde)

Simone Schr怀der (Rossweisse)

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.

Daniel Barenboim conducts Wagner's Die Walk\u00fcre

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