by The BBC today announces details of this summer’s Proms festival which will feature 90 concerts over eight weeks. Daniel Barenboim will make a rare visit, conducting the West-East Divan Orchestra that he and the Palestinian-American academic Edward Said founded 25 years ago. The 81-year-old sailor has almost completely retired from performing due to a neurological condition and has not sailed in the UK since 2019.
Sir Simon Rattle, who gave his final UK performance at last year’s Proms as music director of the London Symphony Orchestra, will return to the Albert Hall with his new orchestra, the Bavarian Radio Symphony. Rattle’s home orchestra before the LSO, the Berlin Philharmonic, will give two concerts with its principal conductor Kirill Petrenko, the group’s only appearance in the UK this year. Finnish conductor Klaus Mäkelä, 28, will also be a hot ticket, joining the Orchester de Paris to perform Berlioz’s Symphonie Fantastique.
Audiences will have the chance to meet the Royal Opera House’s new music director, Jakub Hrůša, who will bring two all-Czech programs to the festival with the Czech Philharmonic, while star soloists in South Kensington will include cellist Yo – Yo Ma, pianist Víkingur Ólafsson and mezzo-soprano Jamie Barton. 20-year-old South Korean pianist Yunchan Lim will make his Proms debut playing Beethoven’s Emperor piano concerto with the BBC Symphony Orchestra.
The Aurora orchestra, a Proms favourite, will once again be performing a work of the heart: Beethoven’s Choral Symphony, in its 200th year. The first half of their concert will explore the piece both dramatically and musically, focusing on how Beethoven wrote it in the midst of a personal crisis and hearing loss. One in three concerts will feature a soloist or director from an ethnic minority, and almost one third of this year’s programs will feature music written by a female composer. There will be ten female conductors on the podium during the season, including 37-year-old Hong Kong-born Elim Chan, who will lead the opening night.
Chan made her Proms debut last year. “When I heard her five, six years ago when she conducted in Heidelberg it was clear that she had enormous potential,” said the director of the Proms, David Pickard. “She did a fantastic concert with the BBC Symphony Orchestra last year, and we felt now was the time to give her this opportunity to do the first night, and I’m delighted.”
As well as the classic core, Doctor Who’s Tardis returns to the hall with special guests and promised monsters, while the disco makes its Proms debut. “We had a great success with the Northern Soul Prom last year … I hope the Disco Prom will do the same, focusing on this great music from the late 1970s from Studio 54, which is completely orchestral along the way it is. to put together,” said Pickard, who pointed out that you can hear Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony on the first night, and on the second night, Walter Murphy’s A Fifth of Beethoven from Saturday Night Fever – no doubt first Proms.
More people first arrive in the shape of pop stars Florence Welch and Sam Smith, who give specially curated concerts that arrange their breakthrough albums (2009’s Lungs, and 2014’s In the Lonely Hour) with orchestral arrangements. August’s Prom will be Smith’s only appearance in the UK this year. The singer, whose fetish-inspired performances have sparked controversy at will, Proms and Radio 3 controller Sam Jackson, promises to present a show that is “absolutely suitable for the festival. We’ve worked hard with Smith and their management to see how we can create something that’s really Proms-specific and works for the audience.”
Jackson and Pickard were quick to dismiss accusations of dumbing down. “Folk music has always been part of the Proms,” said Pickard. “Henry Wood used to put in Victorian parlor songs, suspiciously. Thank God we have Florence + the Machine!”
It’s a multi-year charge, Jackson said. “I have no excuse that we want to use the Proms to introduce people to the joy of orchestral music and to create strong programs that you don’t experience anywhere else.”
Related: In our orchestra, Israelis and Palestinians found common ground. Our hearts are broken by this conflict | Daniel Barenboim
The controversial Last Night has not changed, however. Jackson acknowledged the comments made by last year’s soloist on Last Night, bassist Sheku Kanneh-Mason, who told Desert Island Discs Radio 4 that Rule, Britannia! it makes many people uncomfortable, and has focused on the “horrific” attacks on social media that have resulted.
“We want the Proms to be somewhere where everyone feels welcome,” Jackson said. “Our challenge is that because we cater to everyone and believe in that universality we will have very different opinions about our programme, and that is embodied by the response to Rule, Britannia! We know that the traditions are very important to a very large number of people, especially the TV audience – 3.5 million people at the peak on the last night on BBC One.”
The festival’s expansion beyond its London base continues with concerts in Newport, Belfast and Aberdeen, two in Nottingham, a residency at the newly opened Bristol Beacon as well as a return to Gateshead’s Glasshouse for five concerts over this weekend. spent in July. In London on Choir Day, three concerts will celebrate amateur and professional choirs, performing music from Handel to Woody Guthrie.
This season is Pickard’s final game in charge; Hannah Donat, currently Proms artistic producer, is to become director of artistic planning. Commitment tickets, 1,000 of which are available on the day, are still £8, while the highest price – for the Last Night, has risen to £150. Booking opens on 18 May; the season starts on 19 July and closes on 14 September.
