Classical Music

BBC Proms highlights

The BBC Proms celebrates its 80th birthday

What's on at the BBC Proms this week

The biggest music festival in the world is under way; until September 8, Kensington Gore suffers the annual inundation of international musicians and their fans, ranging from irredeemable anoraks to far-out avant-gardists. And that’s not counting the whistle-blowing, hooter-honking hearties whose antics are televised worldwide every Last Night, embarrassing the po-faced but imitated by foreign impresarios who have started putting on their own ‘Last Nights’ – even down to the patriotic British songs (after all, many years ago Vera Lynn singing ‘Land of Hope and Glory’ made the Dutch hit parade; it is actually a terrific tune). Feature continues

'Evening with Nitin Sawhney and Friends'

The Proms are back. Officially the BBC Proms, as Radio 3, which broadcasts every concert live, reminds us in its listings – though Radio Times’ TV billing ignored the brand name as if sheepishly distancing itself from high culture. The Beeb took over the management exactly 80 years ago (the corporation loves an anniversary), reminding us that the BBC’s the world’s biggest commissioner of new music. It may screen mixed-up footage of the Queen and fake phone-calls from the public, but the Proms remain the jewel in the crown of Reithian public-service broadcasting. And even they are under pressure. This year’s dumbing-down is an evening of Michael Ball and show tunes including Lloyd Webber.

Promenade Concerts get their name from the nineteenth-century pastime of hearing music while walking around, socialising and making less respectable contacts. We’ve cut down the perambulating, drinking and smoking (though you may get lucky in striking up new acquaintances). The Promenade areas, the Arena and Gallery, are simply spaces in the Albert Hall with no seating where for a fiver (or less, with season or half-season tickets) you can stand, squat or loll through some of the world’s greatest music. The Prommers are famous, or infamous, for the chanted quips that can disconcert visiting notables and the ritualistic cries of ‘heave!’ as the piano’s wheeled on and ‘ho!’ as the lid is raised.

Proms virgin
It’s not all corn. Prommers are known as the world’s most informed listeners. After one concert of rapt intensity uniting both audience and players, the Vienna Philharmonic, no less, sent a collective thank-you letter via the Times beginning, ‘We love you’. Will the magic recur when the great band plays under Barenboim this season? Try mid-European Slavic shimmer and abrasiveness (Bartók, Ligeti) on September 4.

If it’s a Vienna year, we won’t be getting Berlin. But the greats, established, up-and-coming, and unknown in the 90 concerts, are too many to count. For the Proms virgin, the liveliest introduction may be our own National Youth Orchestra, first and best of its kind, conducted by Mark Elder (who was smartly stood down when he objected to the Last Night’s jingoistic bally-hoo in time of war): accessible American Aaron Jay Kernis, fizzing Prokofiev and Shostakovich’s hammeringly mesmeric ‘Leningrad’ Symphony (August 4).

Deborah Voigt

Sheer glamour?
Diva Renée Fleming singing late Viennese Romantics, including infant prodigy Korngold, ultimately famed for Hollywood sound-tracks. Her swooning, silken voice lifts this neurasthenic slurpiness to high art (August 6). The diva’s slimmer of the decade award goes to Deborah Voigt, dropped by Covent Garden some years ago for being too big for the little black number designed for a Strauss opera, who rather pointedly sings the final scene from Strauss’s ‘Salome’ with San Francisco Symphony (September 1). For charisma: saturnine Valery Gergiev, hypnotic in all-Russian fare with the LSO (August 28).

Gustavo Dudamel

Tip for the top
As the young maestro becomes an international sell-out: Gustavo Dudamel conducts Venezuela’s Simón Bolívar National Youth Orchestra (August 19). This product of the country’s extraordinary socio-musical education includes ex-homeless kids, street gang members and criminals who have literally traded their weapons for instruments. No need to patronise – they’re phenomenally good, winning over musicians like Simon Rattle and Claudio Abbado.

Sakari Oramo

Annual theme
This year Elgar’s 150th anniversay is celebrated, just as he’s removed from the £20 note. Try something less familiar than the beloved ‘Enigma’. Sakari Oramo, one of Finland’s dazzlingly gifted musicians, conducts ‘The Apostles’, with the CBSO, the Brummies whom Rattle polished to international standards and still superb (August 18).

Maxim Vengerov

Oddities
Maxim Vengerov playing the viola and electric violin and dancing the tango in August 18’s late night ‘Viola Tango Rock Concerto’ by Benjamin Yusupov. Or, another late-nighter, August 10’s ‘Evening with Nitin Sawhney and Friends’, featuring the east-west London Under Sound Symphony Orchestra, more dancing and guests. Back to basics, the haunting sounds of 1,000-year-old song are recreated by Ensemble Sequentia in ‘Songs of a Rhineland Harper’ (August 27).

Baroque and Chamber
This is a lunchtime performance at Cadogan Hall, a more intimate venue than the Albert Hall, ideal for superb baroque ensembles like The English Consort with Mark Padmore (August 18).

Families
Parents can sneakily have a crash-course in concert-going by tagging along with their kids in the family events. Oscar-winning Rachel Portman’s ‘Water Diviner’s Tale’ is a music drama piece sparked by myth and legend about water (August 27) and the Blue Peter Proms are now an established institution (July 21-22, 11am), with presenters Peter Duncan and Dave Benson Phillips, kids’ choirs, the BBC Phil and Bollywood Brass Band. And the nationwide Proms in the Park are an ideal Prom-lite family occasion: live music, then a big-screen link-up for the Albert Hall’s final knees-up. Londoners have Hyde Park and – er – Terry Wogan. Never mind, there are 90 other concerts to choose from…

What's on at the BBC Proms this week

The BBC Proms celebrates its 80th birthday

Visit the official BBC Proms website for more information