Maximum drama: BBC Proms 2024 (part 2)

Finding your way around a festival of the sheer scale of the BBC Proms can be a daunting task – especially now that the festival also includes concerts in 6 other cities across the UK. This year we are publishing two previews of the festival: the first covered up to 18th August. This preview covers events in the second half of the season, until the Last Night on 14th September – and what a plethora of events it is.

The second half of this year’s season sees visits from major international orchestras, including the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra, the Czech Philharmonic, Rotterdam Philharmonic, Berlin Philharmonic, Orchestre de Paris and the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra. Prom 40, on 19th August, sees a visit from the world-renowned Bach Collegium Japan, led by Masaaki Suzuki, for a must-hear St John Passion. The performance features an international roster of vocal soloists, with Benjamin Bruns as the Evangelist. Bach fans should stick around later in the season for Prom 71 on 12th September, which features Sir András Schiff performing The Art of Fugue, Bach’s mysterious late contrapuntal masterpiece.

Beethoven fans are also in for a treat this year, as the Aurora Orchestra make a return for another of their always riveting performances from memory – this time, Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, together with the National Youth Choir of Great Britain and BBC Singers. From-memory performance is also on the books at the Bristol Beacon, with the British Paraorchestra performing Mozart’s 40th Symphony by heart, interspersed with new music written by Oliver Vibrans. (Other standout events at Bristol this year include a centenary performance by the BBC Singers, and a concert from percussion virtuoso Evelyn Glennie and the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra.)

The Czech Philharmonic’s appearances at this year’s Proms will also certainly be worth catching. In two concerts 27th–28th August they perform classics from a cross-section of Czech composers, including Dvořák’s Cello and Piano Concertos, Janáček’s stunning Glagolitic Mass, and the ebullient and heartfelt Military Sinfonietta by Vítězslava Kaprálová, a fiendishly talented composer who tragically died at the age of 25 in 1940. Jakub Hrůša, soon to take up music direction at Covent Garden, is the ideal guide for this foray into all things Czech.

Czech music is also at the centre of Berlin Philharmonic’s concert a few days later on 31st August, with Kirill Petrenko conducting Bedřich Smetana’s soulful Má vlast (My Fatherland). This year marks Smetana’s 200th anniversary, and this most personal of works is paired with Robert Schumann’s own deeply personal Piano Concerto, played with singular clarity by Víkingur Ólafsson. Then on 1st September comes the great blow-out Brucknerians have been waiting for this year, when Petrenko conducts the majestic Fifth Symphony. This somewhat church-like symphony is paired with a trio of Bruckner’s resplendent a cappella motets, sung by the BBC Singers.

Bruckner is on the menu again later that week, with Sir Simon Rattle conducting in the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra in his Fourth Symphony on 5th September. Thomas Adès’ new orchestral work Aquifer is also given its first performance in the UK. Do not be deceived by its watery title: this is a work in Adès’ grand, neo-Lisztian style, full of brass. Rattle returns the following day for the grand tragic darkness of Mahler’s Sixth Symphony. It's all music of maximum drama.

The tragic mood continues a few days later with Tchaikovsky’s Symphony no. 6 “Pathétique”, performed by Chineke! Orchestra – paired on this occasion with Billy Strayhorn’s wonderful Tchaikovsky arrangements, created for Duke Ellington in 1960 and adapted for use by the orchestra. Strayhorn, one of the few openly gay men in the mid-century jazz world, was the genius responsible for much of Ellington’s distinctive sound; he himself had a tragic early death in 1967.

The second half of the Proms season also sees two operas in semi-staged performances. The first, on 29th August, is Glyndebourne’s acclaimed new production of Carmen, with Rihab Chaieb in the title role. Later on 10th September is Garsington’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, headed up by Iestyn Davies as Oberon. Britten fans should also be sure to catch the War Requiem on 17th August, performed by the LSO and new chief Sir Antonio Pappano, with soloists including Allan Clayton.

Frequent Glyndebourne resident band the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment make a return to the Proms just before the Last Night, on September 13th, for a performance of Beethoven’s Eroica, together with symphonies by Mozart and Louise Farrenc. (Fans of period-instrument performance should also be sure to check out Ensemble Resonanz’s all-Mozart concert on 20th August, as well as the Academy of St Martin in the Fields’ Messiah on 7th September.)

Finally, we come to the Last Night of the Proms itself, which this year features soloists Angel Blue and Sir Stephen Hough in vocal favourites from Puccini and Chapí, and Saint-Saëns’ sparkling Fifth Piano Concerto. This is set against raucous Ivy League ultra-dissonance from Charles Ives (also celebrating his 150th anniversary), and a new work from US composer Carlos Simon, before the customary half-cut bunting-strewn nautical romp courtesy of Arne, Elgar and Sir Henry Wood.

See our preview for the first half of this year’s BBC Proms.

BBC Proms 2024 runs from 19th July to 14th September.

Concerts are are also held in Bristol, Nottingham, Gateshead, Aberdeen, Belfast and Newport.

This preview was sponsored by BBC Proms.