The line-ups and timings for the world’s largest classical music festival have been released, with this year’s performers ranging from Daniel Barenboim and Yo-Yo Ma to Florence Welch and even Daleks.
Stretching over eight weeks this summer, the BBC Proms will feature 90 concerts – 73 at London’s Royal Albert Hall and 17 at venues across the UK, including in Bristol, Gateshead, Aberdeen, Newport, Belfast and Nottingham.
When are the Proms?
The 2024 Proms season runs from 19 July to 14 September. Season and Weekend passes for the Proms go on sale at 9am on Thursday 16 May and general tickets go on sale at 9am on Saturday 18 May. You can also buy “Proms Plan” tickets; essentially, a bespoke programme of what you want to see. Book online at royalalberthall.com; by phone on 020 7589 8212, or in person.
What are the Proms highlights?
Outgoing director David Pickard has “managed to balance innovation with tradition in his final year of programming the festival”, after nine years in charge, said The Guardian‘s Andrew Clements.
The opening night will feature Hong Kong-born conductor Elim Chan leading the BBC Symphony Orchestra for Beethoven’s “Symphony No 5” and Handel’s “Music for the Royal Fireworks”.
Other highlights, said the paper, include a “rare visit” by Daniel Barenboim, to conduct the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra that he and the Palestinian-American academic Edward Said founded 25 years ago. The performance will be the first by the 81-year-old in the UK since 2019.
Another “hot ticket” will be young Finnish conductor Klaus Mäkelä leading the Orchestra de Paris in Berlioz’s “Symphonie Fantastique”.
Among the many visiting orchestras are “four of the greatest in continental Europe”, said The Telegraph. Simon Rattle is making his first visit to the Proms as chief conductor of the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, in two concerts featuring Thomas Adès and Mahler.
If your musical taste is for “great choral-and-orchestral big beasts”, there’s Handel’s “Messiah”, with six choirs and the Academy of St Martin-in-the-Fields; Bach’s “St John Passion; Britten’s “War Requiem”; and, “most blazingly dramatic of all”, Verdi’s “Requiem”. And the “giant-sized orchestral works” include Mahler’s “5th Symphony”, and “most joyous and deafening of all”, Messiaen’s “Turangalîla Symphony”.
“Beyond the core classical content”, said The Guardian, there’s “Doctor Who” and disco. The BBC National Orchestra of Wales will play Murray Gold’s music from the television series. And following the success of 2023’s Northern Soul night, the second night of the 2024 season will be “dedicated to the sounds of the 1970s disco scene”, said the BBC.
This year’s Proms will also feature debut pop performances from Florence Welch and Sam Smith, both in “specially curated concerts” that arrange their breakthrough albums (2009’s “Lungs” and 2014’s “In the Lonely Hour” respectively) with orchestral settings, said The Guardian.
The Proms “strives to appeal to younger listeners without talking down to them”, said The Telegraph. And “very young kiddies will thrill to” the CBeebies Prom: Wildlife Jamboree BBC, and can also enjoy “proper grown-up music by Telemann, Ravel, Britten, etc” in the CBeebies Prom: Ocean Adventure.
Can I enjoy the Proms on TV and radio?
Concert TV coverage is split between BBC Two and BBC Four. You can also watch on BBC iPlayer and listen live on BBC Radio 3 and on BBC Sounds.