Pick of the Proms 2013

Booking opens on May 11 for the world’s largest classical music festival — from Barenboim to Bryan Ferry, our critics have the lowdown on the line-up
Proms

The highlight of London’s summer, the Proms always offer a mouthwatering programme of music old and new, spread lavishly over two months. This year’s line-up is exceptionally starry, with a dazzling array of names from Daniel Barenboim to Bryn Terfel and Sarah Connolly to Nigel Kennedy - and the scope of music has been opened up to include urban, gospel and punk elements that might attract first-timers as well as regulars among the more than 300,000-strong festival audience.

Anniversaries play a part in programming, with seven operas, including the entire Ring cycle, on offer in Wagner’s bicentenary year. Britten, Bantock and British music are celebrated, too; and the music of Lutoslawski leads a Polish strand. Also to choose from are the complete Tchaikovsky symphonies, 18 world premieres and a free concert. Marin Alsop may have made news already on being announced as the first female conductor to preside over the Last Night, but with world-class musicians ready to descend, there are sure to be some five-star concerts to grab the headlines too.

Classical highlights

New work by David Matthews

A BBC commission, A Vision of Sea, celebrates the 70th birthday of David Matthews, one of the most approachable and lyrical of contemporary composers. The piece is inspired in part by the poetry of Shelley and in part by the pull of the tide on the Kent coast. Rachmaninov and Nielsen make up the programme.

Prom 6, 7pm, July 16

Thomas Adès premiere

The composer/conductor leads the BBC Symphony in the world premiere of his own Totentanz, commissioned in memory of the Polish composer Lutoslawski, whose own elegiac Cello Concerto is heard together with Britten’s powerful anti-war statement the Sinfonia da Requiem. Promises to be a sombre but rewarding programme.

Prom 8, 7.30pm, July 17

Strauss’s Alpine Symphony

Strauss’s glorious evocation of a mountaineering expedition, complete with waterfall, birdsong and sunrise, is always an enthralling experience. Here it is accompanied by Szymanowski’s ravishing Third Symphony (The Song of the Night) and Stenhammar’s inspiring Excelsior!

Prom 9, 7pm, July 18

Daniel Barenboim

He has astonishingly never conducted a Wagner opera in the UK before; and his Ring cycle, played by the Staatskapelle Berlin, will be heard complete for the first time at the Proms. The strong cast has been selected from the cycles Barenboim has recently conducted in Berlin and Milan.

Proms 14, July 22; 15, July 23; 18, July 26; 20, Jul 28

Korngold’s Symphony

The ambitious large-scale work dedicated to Franklin D Roosevelt comes to the Proms at last. It features music from the composer’s score for the film Elizabeth and Essex. The talented Norwegian violinist Vilde Frang also plays the ever-popular Bruch Concerto.

Prom 31, 7.30pm, Aug 6

Mariss Jansons and Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra

Mahler’s apocalyptic Resurrection Symphony, with its thrilling choral finale, could have been written for the Albert Hall. Jansons, giving the second of two concerts with his orchestra, will surely set the place alight.

Prom 35, 7pm, Aug 9

Trendy trumpets

Trumpeters Norwegian Tine Thing Helseth and and Dutch Marco Blaauw star in Matthias Pintscher’s Chute d’Etoiles, a tribute to the German artist Anselm Kiefer. The piece evokes a shower of falling stars and is accompanied by colourful scores of Ravel (Rapsodie Espagnole) and Stravinsky (The Firebird).

Prom 48, 7.30pm, Aug 18

Romance in the air

The Canadian conductor Yannick Nézet-Séguin is sure to bring a keen edge to Prokofiev’s bracing Fifth Symphony. The passion of Tchaikovsky’s Romeo and Juliet Fantasy-Overture is heard alongside the Wesendonck Lieder of Wagner, who was similarly infatuated when he wrote it.

Prom 53, 7pm, Aug 22

Billy Budd

Last year’s Peter Grimes was one of the most talked-about concerts of the season; this year, as part of the Britten centenary celebrations, it’s the turn of Billy Budd, given by Glyndebourne Festival Opera under Andrew Davis.

Prom 60, 7pm, Aug 27

BARRY MILLINGTON

The pop Proms

Gospel

Four of Britain’s top gospel choirs the London Adventist Chorale, the London Community Gospel Choir, Muyiwa & Riversongz and the People’s Christian Fellowship Choir — take turns to deliver the most uplifting form of worship music there is, including, inevitably, O Happy Day.

Prom 7, 10.15pm, July 16

Zappa — The Adventures Of Greggery Peccary

The experimental Aurora Orchestra from the Kings Place venue have a crack at Frank Zappa’s 1978 take on rock opera, the 25-minute Adventures of Greggery Peccary. There’s also a Player Piano composition by Colin Nancarrow and the UK premiere of Philip Glass’s Symphony No10.

Prom 25, 10.15pm, July 31

Urban classic

The Proms get edgy under conductor Jules Buckley as the BBC Symphony Orchestra is joined by Fazer from N-Dubz, Irish soul singer Maverick Sabre and Laura Mvula, who should feel the most at home having studied at the Birmingham Conservatoire.

Prom 37, 8pm, Aug 10

Holst, Nishat Khan & Vaughan Williams

There’s an Indian flavour to this Prom, which includes Sitar Concerto No 1, composed and performed by California-based virtuoso Nishat Khan with the BBC National Orchestra of Wales, and Gustav Holst’s 1903 tone poem Indra.

Prom 39, 7pm, Aug 12

6 Music

The BBC radio station with the most cerebral take on rock music meets the home of classical on Radio 3, on a culture-clashing bill that features the London Sinfonietta playing alongside folk-rock darling Laura Marling, Catatonia singer and 6 Music presenter Cerys Matthews, and veteran punks The Stranglers.

Prom 40, 10.15pm, Aug 12

World Routes

This year’s World Music Prom offers mugham sounds from Azerbaijan sung by Gochaq Askarov and his teenage protégé Fidan Hajiyeva. There’s also Saharan blues from the acclaimed band of nomads Tinariwen, and Malian ngoni player Bassekou Kouyaté and his group Ngoni Ba.

Prom 54, 10pm, 22 Aug

A Celebration of Charlie Parker

Jazz piano veteran Django Bates is joined by Sweden’s Norrbotten Big Band and Freak Power singer Ashley Slater to explore the music of bebop sax legend Parker. They’ll also deliver the UK premiere of Bates’s own composition, The Study of Touch.

Prom 62, 10.15pm, Aug 28

DAVID SMYTH

Top Prom names

Daniel Barenboim

The conductor brings Wagner’s mighty Ring complete to the Proms with his Berlin forces and top singers (Prom 14, 15, 18, 20, July 22, 23, 26, 28)

Nigel Kennedy

The punky violinist’s three appearances include his chart-topping rendition of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons, here with the Palestine Strings (Prom 34, 75, Aug 8, plus the Last Night (Sep 7))

Marin Alsop

The conductor storms another bastion by being the first woman to take the baton for the Last Night (Prom 75, Sep 7)

Joyce DiDonato

The mezzo-soprano will be a popular choice for the Last Night celebrations (Prom 75, Sep 7)

Joshua Bell

A familiar face on television and at the White House, the charismatic Bell tackles the taxing Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto (Prom 13, July 21)

Mariss Jansons

Widely acclaimed as one of the world’s half-dozen top conductors, the Latvian Mariss Jansons brings his ace Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra for Beethoven, Berlioz (Prom 33, Aug 8) and Mahler’s roof-raising Resurrection Symphony (Prom 35, Aug 9)

Tine Thing Helseth

The dazzling blonde Norwegian trumpeter plays in a new work by the German composer Matthias Pintscher (Prom 48, Aug 18) and also with her all-female 10-piece brass ensemble tenThing (Proms Chamber Music 4, Aug 5)

Alison Balsom

The first female trumpeter to win international acclaim, she returns as soloist in Shostakovich’s skittish concerto for piano, trumpet and strings, (Proms Saturday Matinee 3, Aug 10)

John Wilson

The conductor’s hand-picked orchestra first took the Proms by storm in 2009. They return with a programme of Hollywood film scores from Robin Hood to Casablanca. Play it again, John (Prom 59, Aug 26)

Joseph Calleja

He’ll be hard-pressed to top his appearance at the 2012 Last Night in an Olympic shell suit, but the popular Maltese tenor is sure to raise the roof with his ardent rendition of Verdi arias (Prom 72, Sep 5)

Antonio Pappano

When he’s not running the Royal Opera, the energetic Antonio Pappano is often working with the Orchestra of the Academy of Santa Cecilia, Rome, with which he gives a pair of concerts (Prom 10, 12, July 19, 20)

Stephen Hough

The multi-talented Hough is almost as familiar a face as an eloquent BBC commentator but this year he will be playing both the Rachmaninov and Lutoslawski Paganini Variations (Prom 1, July 12) and Mendelssohn (Prom 49, Aug 19)

Valery Gergiev

Russian music old and new looms large in the pair of concerts under the dynamic Gergiev (Prom 13, 41, July 21, Aug 13)

Ian Bostridge

The English tenor brings his dramatic flair to bear on the phantasmagoric Rimbaud settings of Britten’s Les Illuminations (Prom 51, Prom Chamber Music 8, Aug 20, Sep 2)

Bryn Terfel

As Wotan in Das Rheingold, the first instalment of Wagner’s Ring, Terfel heads a starry line-up (Prom 15, July 22)

Nina Stemme

One of the world’s great Wagner singers, Nina Stemme takes the role of the head Valkyrie Brünnhilde in Barenboim’s Ring (Prom 15, 18, 20, July 23, 26, 28)

Sarah Connolly

The British mezzo performs Lennox Berkeley and Britten (his final vocal work, the powerful Phaedra) (Prom Saturday Matinee 2, Aug 3)

Noriko Ogawa

The Japanese pianist makes her long-awaited Proms debut with her partner Kathryn Stott in Malcolm Arnold’s three-handed concerto (Prom 24, July 31)

BARRY MILLINGTON

The BBC Proms run from July 12 to September 7 at the Albert Hall, SW7 (0845 401 5040, bbc.co.uk/proms) and other venues, where stated. Booking opens at 9am on May 11.

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