“It is still one of the great bargains in British culture,” said The Times. An on-the-day Promming ticket at the Albert Hall is just £8 – and the wide variety of “world-class talent you can catch for under a tenner is remarkable”.
Running until 12 September, the “world’s biggest classical music festival” features a jam-packed schedule of 86 concerts, said The Telegraph. Most are in London, but other venues across the UK will also be hosting events in locations including Gateshead, Bristol and Sunderland. It’s a “truly spectacular” line-up.
Edward Gardner and An Alpine Symphony
“Some works are just made to soar at the Royal Albert Hall and Strauss’ widescreen tone poem is one of them,” said The Times. Conductor Edward Gardner will be your “sherpa on this journey up and down the mountain” with the London Philharmonic Orchestra. Expect dazzling vocals from soprano Louise Alder, who will be singing Joseph Canteloube’s celebrated orchestral “Songs of the Auvergne”.
Royal Albert Hall, 27 July
Kafka Fragments
Finnish soprano Anu Komsi and her husband Sakari Oramo perform this hauntingly beautiful recital as part of celebrations to mark György Kurtág’s 100th birthday. It’s a “very different, vanishingly delicate side” to the Hungarian composer’s music, filled with “faint echoes” of Bach, Schumann and Bartók, said The Telegraph.
Bristol Beacon, 9 August
Berlioz’s Requiem
The “biggest beast” is Hector Berlioz’s “Requiem”, written to commemorate the French soldiers in the revolution of July 1830, said The Guardian. Antonio Pappano conducts the “humungous” London Symphony Orchestra plus “extra brass choirs dotted around the Albert Hall”.
Royal Albert Hall, 15 August
Amériques
“Someone at the Proms deserves a pat on the back for including Edgard Varèse’s bracingly vivid ‘Amériques’”, in a season that marks the 250th birthday of the USA, said The Times. The French-born composer wrote this “homage to urban chaos” shortly after he “decamped to New York”. It’s performed together with Dvořák’s “Cello Concerto”.
Royal Albert Hall, 23 August
Martha Argerich
Argerich is 84 years old but the Argentinian pianist’s “astoundingly athletic artistry” is “undimmed”, said The Telegraph. She will be returning to the Proms with the Munich Philharmonic for Beethoven’s “2nd Piano Concerto”, and the concert also contains an overture by “feisty” Parisian composer Louise Farranc.
Royal Albert Hall, 5 September