100 most memorable Proms ever

The 100 greatest, memorable and downright quirky Proms ever

13 August 1927

Auntie takes over. Although the BBC started life in 1922, it was 5 years later that the organisation took over the working of the Proms. Now 32 years outdated, the competition itself was very talked-about however not within the biggest monetary well being – with co-founder Robert Newman having died the yr earlier than, issues have been wanting iffy. Eager to discover a technique to broadcast concert events from the Queen’s Corridor, the BBC noticed its probability… and pounced. ‘After I walked on to the platform for my first Promenade Live performance beneath the British Broadcasting Company, I felt actually elated,’ wrote conductor Henry Wooden later. ‘I realised the work of such a big a part of my life had been saved from an premature demise.’

24 August 1927

After her efficiency of Brahms’s Violin Concerto grinds to a halt halfway, soloist Daisy Kennedy blames an absence of rehearsal time. The BBC denies duty.

11 August 1928

Absent for the primary yr of the BBC Proms, the ornamental fountain is restored to the centre of the Queen’s Corridor for the brand new season. It continues to carry watery reduction to scorching and sweaty Prommers till 2011.

24 August 1928

Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony is carried out in its entirety and with full refrain for the primary time since 1902. Any further, it can turn out to be an everyday a part of every Proms season.

08 August 1931

Introduced collectively as an ensemble the earlier autumn, the BBC Symphony Orchestra makes its Proms debut on the First Night time.

22 August 1931

Webern’s Passacaglia Op. 1 is carried out for the primary time in Britain, however the critics are largely sniffy a few work they regard as little greater than juvenilia.

14 August 1934

Mooted in earlier seasons, Berg’s Three Fragments from Wozzeck will get its Proms premiere, sung by soprano Might Blyth.

19 September 1935

An all-Russian Promenade consists of the British premiere of Shostakovich’s First Symphony and an aria from the 28-year-old composer’s Woman Macbeth of Mtsensk, a piece dismissed in Pravda the subsequent yr as ‘a muddle as an alternative of music’.

11 August 1938

A 24-year-old Benjamin Britten provides the world premiere of his Piano Concerto. ‘This isn’t a classy work,’ grumps the Musical Instances. ‘Mr Britten’s cleverness has received the higher of him.’

1 September 1939

After conducting Beethoven’s Second Piano Concerto and Sixth Symphony, Henry Wooden broadcasts that the remainder of the Proms season is cancelled, as Britain is now at struggle with Germany.

27 June 1942

The Beeb is again. The BBC has not been answerable for each Proms season since 1927 – on the outbreak of WWII, the company made the choice to depart the 1940 and ’41 seasons to others because it hotfooted it out of the capital. When, with issues a little bit quieter, it returned to the helm in 1942, a few notable adjustments had taken place. Firstly, with the Queen’s Corridor having been obliterated by German bombs on the night time of 10 Might 1941, the competition had moved to a brand new house on the Royal Albert Corridor. Secondly, on 16 August 1941, Henry Wooden – not the keenest of orators – had given the primary of the conductor’s speeches that may turn out to be an everyday Final Night time characteristic.

29 June 1942

In a present of defiance towards the German invasion of Russia, Shostakovich’s ‘Leningrad’ Symphony No. 7 receives its first efficiency in western Europe. The rating has been smuggled out of the Soviet Union on microfilm two months earlier.

24 June 1943

Ralph’s imaginative and prescient of peace. The listing of works which have had their first efficiency on the Proms is each lengthy and distinguished. Few, nonetheless, have loved such lasting recognition as Vaughan Williams’s terribly haunting Fifth Symphony. The work of a composer who, even at 70, was doing nightly responsibility as a fire-watcher within the occasion of German air raids, its message appeared to many listeners to be one among a longed-for imaginative and prescient of peace. ‘Its serene loveliness is totally satisfying in these occasions,’ wrote conductor Adrian Boult to the composer, ‘and exhibits, as solely music can, what we should work for when this insanity is over.’

11 July 1943

With the federal government commandeering the Albert Corridor for a gathering to honour China on 7 July, that night’s Promenade needs to be postponed 4 days, making this the primary ever Promenade to happen on a Sunday.

29 June 1944

As German doodlebugs fall on London, a Promenade together with works by Bax, Franck and Sibelius brings the common Albert Corridor season to a untimely finish. Operations switch to Bedford, the place Proms are carried out in entrance of an invited viewers.

28 July 1944

An more and more unwell Henry Wooden conducts Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony in his final ever Proms look. He dies three weeks later, aged 75.

1 July 1945

Again on the Albert Corridor, the First Night time of the Proms’ Fiftieth-anniversary season consists of Walton’s Memorial Fanfare for Henry Wooden and, aptly, Elgar’s Cockaigne (In London City).

19 July 1947

Alongside Adrian Boult and Basil Cameron, the just lately knighted Malcolm Sargent conducts the First Night time, starting an in depth affiliation with the Proms that may proceed for 20 years.

12 September 1947

The BBC cameras arrive on the Albert Corridor, as elements of the Final Night time are televised for the primary time. Many observers are sceptical, and orchestra members battle beneath the warmth of the TV lights.

16 September 1950

Now the chief conductor of the BBC Symphony Orchestra, Sargent takes solo management of the Final Night time.

25 July 1953

The cameras are coming… With the Queen’s Coronation on 2 June having led to a increase within the gross sales of tv units throughout the UK, the BBC determined that now can be a superb time to carry the Proms to the small display screen once more, starting with the 1953 First Night time. Tv had a pure showman in Malcolm ‘Flash Harry’ Sargent, who was optimistic from the outset, although not everybody was so eager. Many throughout the BBC didn’t need TV treading on radio’s patch, whereas others nervous concerning the influence that cumbersome cameras might need on the expertise of concert-goers. Each debates would proceed effectively into the Eighties.

25 August 1953

Beneath John Barbirolli, the Hallé turns into the primary orchestra from outdoors London to seem on the Proms. Barbirolli was at one level being eyed up as a attainable chief conductor of the Proms, however selected to remain put in Manchester.

19 September 1953

Raucous shenanigans by the Promenaders in latest seasons – described by conductor Stanford Robinson as ‘hooliganism’ – result in Henry Wooden’s Fantasia on British Sea Songs being faraway from the Final Night time. The choice causes an uproar.

27 August 1955

The Albert Corridor stage has a fresh-faced look to it, because the Nationwide Youth Orchestra of Nice Britain performs its first ever Promenade, starting what is going to turn out to be a near-annual custom.

17 August 1957

The BBC celebrates the tenth anniversary of the Third Programme radio station by commissioning Ibert’s rowdy Bacchanale. The composer himself is within the viewers.

28 August 1958

The Proms hosts its first full Bruckner symphony since 1903, because the Hallé performs his ‘Romantic’ Fourth.

1 September 1959

In a ‘Masters of the twentieth century’ Promenade, Sargent conducts works by Sibelius, Stravinsky, Kodály and Shostakovich.

23 July 1960

The primary Promenade beneath the auspices of William Glock because the BBC’s controller of music is rounded off by Dvořák’s Symphony No. 9 ‘From the New World’. For some, Glock will show to be a disruptive modernist; to others, he’s a much-needed breath of contemporary air.

31 August 1960

Janet Baker performs an aria from Tippett’s The Midsummer Marriage, the primary of 36 appearances from the mezzo, who goes on to turn out to be a Proms favorite.

28 July 1961

Learn how to make some extent? Certainly one of Glock’s first commissions is Symphonies for piano, wind, harps and percussion by Elisabeth Lutyens, a ferocious critic of the ‘cowpat’ conventional faculty of English music.

21 August 1961

The Proms hosts its first full opera efficiency, as John Pritchard conducts Mozart’s Don Giovanni in a manufacturing introduced over from Glyndebourne.

14 September 1961

Robert Schumann’s Second Symphony enjoys a surprisingly late Proms debut, performed by the LSO beneath Meredith Davies.

22 July 1963

The hegemony of British conductors on the Proms involves an finish because the Swiss Silvio Varviso takes the baton for Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro. Hungary’s Georg Solti and Italy’s Carlo Maria Giulini observe later within the season.

30 July 1963

The primary ever Proms efficiency of Mahler’s Second Symphony proves such a success that conductor Leopold Stokowski will get the LSO to play all the remaining motion once more as an encore.

1 August 1963

Fifteen months after its premiere in Coventry, Britten conducts his Warfare Requiem. The soloists embody soprano Heather Harper and tenor Peter Pears.

6 September 1963

Soprano Birgit Nilsson and bass Gottlob Frick be a part of the celebration as Georg Solti leads a A hundred and fiftieth-anniversary Wagner celebration.

13 August 1964

Berthold Goldschmidt conducts the LSO on this planet premiere of Mahler’s Tenth Symphony, a piece left unfinished on the composer’s demise however just lately accomplished by Deryck Cooke.

4 September 1964

The Amadeus Quartet does its greatest to fill the huge areas of the Albert Corridor with a efficiency of the ‘Emperor’ String Quartet initially of an all-Haydn Promenade.

1 September 1965

That includes Jacqueline du Pré in Elgar’s Cello Concerto, Malcolm Sargent conducts a Promenade celebrating his seventieth birthday (a day that really fell again in April).

17 August 1966

Shostakovich, Rachmaninov and Tchaikovsky are on the invoice because the Proms welcomes its first ever abroad orchestra, the Moscow Symphony, performed by Gennady Rozhdestvensky.

17 September 1966

A 25-year-old Martha Argerich wows the Final Night time viewers together with her Proms debut in Prokofiev’s Piano Concerto No. 3. Will probably be one other 26 years earlier than the Argentinian makes a return go to to the competition.

16 September 1967

A poignant farewell. Affected by pancreatic most cancers, Malcolm Sargent was too unwell to conduct any Proms within the 1967 season. Nonetheless, come the Final Night time, he appeared on the Albert Corridor one remaining time to offer a speech. ‘Subsequent yr, the 74th season of the Henry Wooden Promenade Concert events begins on July twentieth,’ he informed the viewers. ‘I’ve been invited to be right here on that night time. I’ve accepted the invitation.’ He died on 3 October.

19 July 1968

The 1968 season opens with a Malcolm Sargent Memorial Promenade, by which Colin Davis conducts works by Vaughan Williams, Walton and Elgar.

12 August 1968

After a primary half that includes Thea Musgrave’s Concerto for Orchestra, John Tavener’s Alium and Don Banks’s Violin Concerto, the viewers is requested to vote for which work they wish to hear once more after the interval. Alium wins by a landslide.

21 August 1968

Feelings in Czech. On 20 August, Soviet tanks rolled into Prague to place a cease to liberal reforms being carried out by the Czechoslovak chief Alexander Dubcˇek – 137 civilians have been killed because the world regarded on in dismay. When the USSR State Orchestra and Russian cellist Mstislav Rostropovich (above) took to the Albert Corridor stage to play Dvorˇák’s Cello Concerto the subsequent night time, the event was extremely charged and tinged with determined irony. ‘That night time will eternally reside within the reminiscence of these of us who have been there,’ recollects cellist Julian Lloyd Webber, who was 17 on the time. ‘Prague was a vital metropolis in Rostropovich’s life – he met his spouse Galina there – and right here he was taking part in the Czech cello concerto. The stress was extraordinary, and whereas the efficiency was not his most technically excellent, in direction of the top it was completely heartbreaking. When it got here to the encore, he had tears rolling down his face.’

18 July 1969

Breaking with custom, the Proms season doesn’t open with the Nationwide Anthem. As a substitute, conductor Colin Davis launches straight into Berlioz’s Grande messe des morts in a Henry Wooden Centenary Promenade.

13 August 1969

In addition to championing the brand new, Glock exhibits his willingness to push the boundaries on the different finish of the timeline, because the Proms welcomes music from the 14th century: Machaut’s Messe de Nostre Dame, sung by the Ambrosian Singers.

28 August 1969

Some issues go on too lengthy. The 40-minute premiere of Maxwell Davies’s Worldes Blis has many viewers members heading in direction of the bar effectively earlier than the work is over. Others stick round to boo.

30 July 1970

Interval efficiency pioneer David Munrow brings the Early Music Consort of London to the Proms for the primary time.

13 August 1970

The music carries on effectively in direction of midnight because the BBC Symphony Orchestra is joined by rock band Gentle Machine for the primary ever Late Night time Promenade. A night of premieres consists of Mike Ratledge’s Out-Bloody-Rageous.

7 September 1972

The Albert Corridor Area is cleared to make room for Stockhausen’s Carré for 4 orchestras. It’s performed as soon as, after which once more for good measure.

29 December 1972

Sure, you will have learn the date proper. An all-Stravinsky live performance launches an eight-day Winter Promenade season, reviving a practice deserted earlier within the century. The revival solely lasts a yr.

4 January 1973

The Berlin Philharmonic makes its debut go to to the Proms, taking part in Beethoven’s Fourth and Fifth Symphonies beneath Herbert von Karajan.

26 July 1974

As pre-Proms talks are launched to the combo, the BBC Symphony Orchestra’s chief conductor (and composer) Pierre Boulez leads the best way, giving 5 throughout the season, together with one introducing this night’s programme of Stockhausen, Berg and Wagner.

7 August 1974

Disaster looms when baritone Thomas Allen collapses throughout Orff’s Carmina Burana however – Oh, Fortuna! – budding opera singer Patrick McCarthy steps out from the viewers to take over and save the day.

9 August 1976

The hair is right here. Simon Rattle’s late night time live performance with the London Sinfonietta makes him, at 21, the youngest ever conductor on the Proms.

17 August 1977

An 88-year-old Adrian Boult conducts his 251st and final Promenade, rounding off with Vaughan Williams’s Job, a piece that the composer himself had devoted to him.

18 August 1979

Though the BBC Northern Symphony Orchestra’s ‘Viennese Night time’ Promenade is later watched by greater than 5 million on TV, the BBC’s controller of music Robert Ponsonby decides to not repeat the format.

7 August 1980

After a musicians’ strike has worn out the primary 19 Proms, the season will get off to a really belated begin, with soprano Jessye Norman becoming a member of the BBC SO for Mahler’s Fourth.

16 and 18 July 1982

Pleas to Ponsonby for a TV-friendly First Night time fall on deaf ears, and the brand new season opens as an alternative with Berlioz’s The Trojans, divided between two Proms on Friday and Sunday. Neither are televised.

20 August 1984

Odaline breaks new floor. It took practically 90 years since Henry Wooden first flourished his Proms baton, however finally the conductor’s podium was stuffed by somebody with two X chromosomes, with Odaline de la Martinez stepping as much as lead her personal Lontano ensemble in works by Schoenberg, Gerhard and others. ‘I keep in mind contacting the BBC and suggesting I do a programme there,’ de la Martinez later stated in an interview. ‘They agreed, and it was just a few weeks earlier than the efficiency that somebody stated to me, “Do you realise that you’re the primary lady to conduct a efficiency on the Albert Corridor?” So I rang the BBC and so they confirmed it!’

8 September 1984

Symphonies by Mozart and Bruckner mark the Vienna Philharmonic’s first go to to the Proms, beneath Claudio Abbado.

15 September 1984

The viewers on the Final Night time is invited to get pleasure from an extra-long interval in order that TV viewers have time to look at Dynasty on BBC One earlier than becoming a member of them for the second-half jollity on the Albert Corridor.

14 September 1985

Final Night time mezzo soloist Sarah Walker unbuttons the sleeve of her seemingly typical white gown to disclose a Union Flag. A sartorial precedent is about.

24 July 1988

Leonard Bernstein is right here to conduct his Songfest. The Promenade’s kick-off time is 7.30pm. Bernstein arrives on the Albert Corridor at 7.28pm. And chill out…

15 September 1990

Andrew Davis takes over the Final Night time at late discover after meant conductor Mark Elder has been despatched to the naughty step, sacked for questioning the suitability of singing patriotic songs within the mild of the approaching Gulf Warfare.

10 August 1992

Carried out by Evelyn Glennie, the world premiere of James MacMillan’s percussion concerto Veni, Veni, Emmanuel proves a significant hit (excuse the pun).

18 July 1994

On the age of 68, Queen Elizabeth II attends her first ever Promenade. Her Majesty is handled to an all-British live performance from the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Andrew Davis that features Britten’s Violin Concerto, carried out by Ida Haendel.

16 September 1995

Don’t Panic! The favored narrative goes that John Drummond, the departing controller of the BBC Proms who was by no means a fan of the Final Night time, plonked Birtwistle’s discordant Panic for saxophone and orchestra into the live performance’s second half particularly to wind up the TV viewers tuning in for Jerusalem and all. Very drôle in that case… however not true. Although numerous calls of grievance have been made to the BBC, that was not Drummond’s goal. Panic had actually been meant for the primary half however, as Birtwistle had composed a piece practically twice so long as commissioned and since it required massive quantities of orchestral shifting beforehand, there was no alternative however to place Panic initially of the second.

22 July 1996

Lovers of music on a smaller scale head to the Royal Faculty of Music on a Monday lunchtime as the brand new Chamber Music Proms collection is launched with a efficiency by the Arditti Quartet. The collection later finds a everlasting house at close by Cadogan Corridor.

14 September 1996

One other Proms first, this time involving hundreds of concert-goers and an open-air stage in Hyde Park. Hosted by Sheridan Morley, the debut Proms within the Park occasion on the Final Night time proves so successful that it’s quickly prolonged to different cities throughout the UK.

10 August 1997

The Russian pianist Evgeny Kissin makes historical past by giving the primary ever solo recital on the Proms. The seven encores that observe might be a Proms document too…

17 August 1997

Westminster Abbey choristers in cassocks and ruffs, processing into the Royal Albert Corridor and singing Britten’s A Ceremony of Carols on a swelteringly scorching August afternoon? Completely.

12 September 1997

A shifting efficiency of Verdi’s Requiem is devoted to the reminiscences of Princess Diana and Georg Solti. Tragically, Solti was himself initially scheduled to conduct the live performance, however died the day earlier than Diana’s funeral. 5 minutes of silence follows the efficiency earlier than applause begins.

10 August 1998

Simon Rattle and the Birmingham Modern Music Group’s Late Night time Promenade is introduced rudely to a halt by the sound of rape alarms and leaflets fluttering down from up excessive within the Albert Corridor. The perpetrators, who’re protesting towards what they imagine is a cabal working British music publishing, disappear anonymously into the night time.

7 September 1998

Right here’s one we made earlier. Introduced by Katy Hill, the primary Blue Peter Promenade marks the fortieth anniversary of the a lot liked youngsters’s programme.

10 August 1999

And… one, two, three, kick! One, two, three, kick! The Proms premiere of Bernstein’s Great City, starring Thomas Hampson, ends with Prommers doing a conga across the Area.

15 September 2001

Barber replaces Britannia. Perfected by the likes of Malcolm Sargent and Andrew Davis, the conductor’s Final Night time speech normally offers the possibility to bask in a couple of witticisms and rouse the Prommers right into a state of even larger patriotic pleasure. For Leonard Slatkin (above) in 2001, the duty was very totally different. Coming simply 4 days after the 9/11 terrorist assaults, the event required a change of tone, not simply within the speech however within the alternative of music too. Out went ‘Land of Hope and Glory’ and ‘Rule Britannia’; in got here Barber’s Adagio, Negro Spirituals from Tippett’s A Youngster of Our Time and the ultimate motion of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. ‘We felt it was important to reply to individuals’s temper at this sombre and troublesome hour,’ defined Proms controller Nicholas Kenyon, ‘and on the identical time to point out that music can affirm our shared humanity.’

19 July 2003

Readers of the Radio Instances are invited to vote for the repertoire of the Nation’s Favorite Promenade. The successful works embody Prokofiev’s Peter and the Wolf, learn right here by Sir David Attenborough.

31 August 2003

For some concert-goers, studying how one can flip off a cell phone is an mental problem too far, as Simon Rattle discovers originally of Stravinsky’s Ceremony of Spring. He stops the Berlin Philharmonic mid-bar, and begins the piece once more.

16 July 2004

After two years of silence throughout a significant revamp, the mighty Albert Corridor organ is able to play once more. And the way. The 2004 season opens with the thunderous sound of Bach’s Toccata in D minor, performed by Martin Neary, earlier than the BBC Symphony Orchestra takes over for the Fugue, as orchestrated by Henry Wooden.

3 August 2005

A household second, as Ravi Shankar and his daughter Anoushka carry out collectively in a live performance that features the Proms premiere of Shankar Snr’s Sitar Concerto No. 1.

19 July 2006

Her Majesty the Queen makes a return go to to the Proms, this time for an Eightieth-birthday celebration. Among the many works are A Little Birthday Music by Grasp of the Queen’s Music Peter Maxwell Davies and Poet Laureate Andrew Movement.

2 August 2006

Elgar’s Pomp and Circumstance March No. 6, a piece created by Anthony Payne from the composer’s incomplete sketches, is given its world premiere.

4 September 2006

After their Beethoven Ninth Symphony Promenade has been cancelled by a hearth within the Albert Corridor, the Philadelphia Orchestra and Christoph Eschenbach come again the subsequent day for a second go, this time taking part in Beethoven’s and Tchaikovsky’s Fifths.

19 August 2007

The Albert Corridor stage turns into a vibrant sea of yellow, blue and pink, as Venezuela’s Simón Bolívar Youth Orchestra makes its full of life Proms debut beneath conductor Gustavo Dudamel.

27 July 2008

Daleks come head to head with double basses on the inaugural Physician Who Promenade. Fortunately, no viola gamers or trombonists are exterminated.

30 July 2011

No sooner have the daleks been repelled than the Albert Corridor is invaded by Vikings, courtesy of the Horrible Histories Promenade. There are additionally visits from Henry VIII, a caveman and Loss of life, amongst others.

1 September 2011

Although the live performance itself goes forward, protests by the pro-Palestinian group BDS London result in the Israel Philharmonic’s Promenade being taken off air.

13 July 2012

BBC Music Journal performs its personal little half in Proms historical past, because the 2012 season opens with Mark-Anthony Turnage’s Canon Fever, a piece commissioned by the journal’s editorial group.

27 July 2012

Daniel Barenboim conducts the West-Japanese Divan Orchestra in Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony earlier than haring off and throughout town to seem as one of many Olympic flag bearers on the Opening Ceremony of London 2012.

22 July 2013

From Olympic rings to Wagnerian ones – Barenboim returns to the Proms to conduct Das Rheingold, following up with the remainder of the Ring cycle in three additional concert events over six days.

7 September 2013

Marin Alsop is the primary lady to conduct the Final Night time of the Proms. ‘I really feel sure that Henry Wooden would see this night as a pure development in direction of extra inclusion in classical music,’ says the American in her speech.

10 August 2014

As he steps onto the rostrum to conduct the Academy of St Martin within the Fields in Walton’s Henry V: A Shakespeare State of affairs, Neville Marriner turns into, at 90, the oldest conductor within the historical past of the Proms. Marriner appeared in his first Promenade, as a violinist, in 1963.

29 July 2015

Radio 1 DJ Pete Tong hosts a late-night Ibiza Promenade, bringing the Balearics celebration vibe to Kensington.

5 August 2016

In one of many nice Proms encores, violinist Pekka Kuusisto marks his debut by getting the viewers to affix him and BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra chief Laura Samuel for a Finnish folks sing-along.

21 July 2019

The Sunday morning CBeebies: A Musical Journey to the Moon Promenade consists of Earth, a specifically commissioned work by Oscar-winning composer Hans Zimmer, no much less.

28 August 2020

No person house. In years to come back, the date will inform its personal story – a Proms season starting on the finish of August, with simply two weeks of concert events to observe. Viewers figures for that season – zero – can even reveal that the UK was nonetheless within the grip of Covid. With no-one within the seats or the Area to applaud, the orchestral gamers did their greatest to fill the void by clapping the soloists, however it was a sorry sound. Tasked with conducting this strangest of First Nights, Sakari Oramo stated he would deal with the event as if he and the BBC Symphony Orchestra have been within the recording studio. Collectively, they carried out works that included, within the composer’s 250th-anniversary yr, Beethoven’s ‘Eroica’ Symphony.

30 July 2021

Although the season is barely shorter than ordinary and a sure degree of social distancing continues to be in place, the Proms returns to one thing near normality. Dalia Stasevska, who performed the earlier season’s Final Night time to an empty corridor, is straight away referred to as again to start this yr’s festivities.

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