Live, Video: Kritiken zu klassischen Konzerten, Opern, Ballett und Tanz finden | Bantock

The Last Night of the Proms provided a welcome tying-up of the various strands that have permeated this year’s season: British light music, the 60th anniversary of the Coronation, a host of premières and new BBC commissions, and the significant anniversaries of a number of composers (including the big-hitters of the season, Wagner and Britten).

Featuring works inspired by Shelley, the Kalevala and Nietzsche (with a piano concerto thrown in for good measure), the programme for Prom 64 was certainly wide-ranging. The theme for the concert was the development of the tone poem, with the Bantock, Sibelius and Strauss pinned together by the idea of nature and the supernatural.

In what was only his second Prom as chief conductor of the BBC Symphony Orchestra, Sakari Oramo led this fine orchestra on a journey through two of the best-known pieces of the 20th century. However, the first piece to be played was the BBC-commissioned work by Param Vir, Cave of Luminous Mind.

There was a noticeable difference in the audience who had come to this Prom from those who had attended the rather more serious Proms in the preceding week: colourful clothing. Gone were the sombre suits; in came casual summer dress in every imaginable colour under the sun.

It’s rather unusual to find one Russian in a programme with three British composers, but Prom 16, with Jac van Steen and the BBC National Orchestra of Wales, brought together two of this season’s themes. The first in the 2013 Proms’ Tchaikovsky symphony cycle (no. 4) was presented alongside British works including one by the composer Granville Bantock, who is featuring in a total of five Proms.