The Proms will soon be upon us. This year's season marks both the 80th anniversary of their association with the BBC, and also Nicholas Kenyon's final season as director before he moves to the Barbican. Kenyon's programming has already caused controversy in certain quarters, not least because this year's season includes an evening with Michael Ball, which has seemingly provoked more comment than the rest of the season put together.
Kenyon has been anxious, however, to fend off accusations that the Proms are "dumbing down". Leaving aside Ball's impending debut - legitimised perhaps in the eyes of some by the fact that he will by then also have made his debut with English National Opera - Kenyon's programming is by and large characterised by its usual seriousness, an occasional lack of excitement, and by a blending of the familiar with the rare.
The 150th anniversary of Elgar's birth and the 50th of Sibelius's death are judiciously marked without the sense of overkill that characterised last year's Mozart and Shostakovich celebrations. The centenary of Grieg's death and the 50th anniversary of Korngold's are, in my opinion, under-represented, however: we need slightly more of Grieg than the Piano Concerto, the Holberg Suite and a couple of rarities. We certainly need more of Korngold than his incidental music for Much Ado About Nothing and the now familiar arias sung by Renée Fleming, however wonderfully she performs them.
This year's themes are Shakespeare and music, Auden and Blake and music, and a series entitled "Proms Firsts" - basically a retrospective survey of works that received some kind of premiere at the Proms, be it a world premiere or a first performance in the UK or in London. Shakespeare and music allows us to hear some genuine rarities like Strauss's Macbeth or Fauré's Shylock, the latter new to me. Auden and Blake are primarily associated with Benjamin Britten, though the Auden centenary also brings in its wake Bernstein's Second Symphony. Proms Firsts tacitly remind us that many now familiar scores were first heard in the country at the Proms.
Deciding what to go to is, of course, ultimately a matter of individual taste. The list of "ten best" below is my own personal choice, and is neither conclusive nor definitive.
1. Prom 4: Chorus and Orchestra of the Academia di Santa Cecilia, Rome/ Pappano (July 16)
Antonio Pappano is best known to UK audiences as the Royal Opera's music director, though he's also the principal conductor of Rome's Orchestra of the Academia di Santa Cecilia. At his best in Italian music, he conducts Rossini's flamboyant Stabat Mater and Berio's Sinfonia, a bold, postmodern take on symphonic music past and present, that demands we "keep going" even as when our culture seems to be collapsing round us. The impressive line up of soloists includes Emma Bell and Joyce DiDonato.
2. Prom 8: BBC Philharmonic / Sinaisky (July 19)
A rare opportunity to hear Reinhold Glière's Ilya Murometz, a lushly post-Romantic depiction of the 12th century Slav hero by a Soviet composer who went on to become the controversial high priest of Socialist Realism. Plus Arvo Pärt's Cantus in Memoriam Benjamin Britten and Nelson Goerner playing Rachmaninov's Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini.
3. Prom 19: Hallé / Elder (July 27)
Superlative Strauss interpreter Mark Elder conducts the Hallé in the composer's undervalued tone poem Macbeth, which junks the play's supernatural elements in favour of a savage depiction of psychotic violence and mental disintegration. Lisa Milne is the soprano soloist in Our Hunting Fathers, Benjamin Britten's first Auden setting, and the programme is rounded off with Nielsen's imposing Fourth Symphony, "The Inextinguishable".
4. Prom 22: Les Musiciens du Louvre-Grenoble / Minkowski (July 29)
More musical Shakespeare, this time with Marc Minkowski conducting Gabriel Fauré's Shylock, one of classical music's few attempts to get to grips with the now highly controversial Merchant of Venice. Minkowski has always been anxious to re-evaluate the French repertoire, and the programme also includes Berlioz's great song cycle Les Nuits d'été sung by Anne Sofie von Otter and Bizet's incidental music for Alphonse Daudet's play L'Arlésienne, usually heard in suites, but here performed something like complete for the first time in ages.
5. Prom 33: BBC Philharmonic / Noseda (August 7)
Gianandrea Noseda conducts Deryck Cooke's completion of Mahler's Tenth Symphony a harrowing yet ultimately optimistic work, which examines both the composer's attitudes to his own impending mortality and his anguish at discovering his wife's infidelity. Noseda's sinewy, forceful interpretation caused something of a stir, when he first conducted the work in Manchester last year. Its companion piece is Britten's Sinfonia da Requiem. Written in 1940, it effectively forms Britten's requiem for his own parents as well as capturing the mood of a world at war.
6. Prom 46: The Apostles (August 18)
Sakari Oramo conducts the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra and Chorus in Elgar's 1903 oratorio, which forms the centrepiece of the Proms celebration of the 150th anniversary of the composer's birth. The work itself views the events of the New Testament through the eyes of Christ's apostles, and closes with some of the most beautiful music Elgar ever wrote. Oramo is known for his committed, if radical Elgar interpretations, so expect something out of the ordinary.
7. Prom 42: Lahti Symphony Orchestra / Vanska (August 22)
Osmo Vanska is widely regarded as the greatest of today's Sibelius interpreters. To mark the 50th anniversary of the composer's death, he conducts a complete performance of the cataclysmic incidental music to Shakespeare's The Tempest, together with a selection of orchestral songs and the Seventh Symphony, one of Sibelius's final works, composed in 1924, two years before the onset of the long compositional silence that lasted until the end of his life.
8. Prom 48: Simon Bolivar National Youth Orchestra of Venezuela / Dudamel (August 19)
The variable, if exciting Gustavo Dudamel brings his remarkable Venezuelan youth orchestra to the Proms for their debut. Shostakovich's Tenth Symphony is followed by the Symphonic Dances from Bernstein's West Side Story and a clutch of raunchy Latin American pieces that includes music by Ginastera and Revueltas. Expect fireworks.
9. Prom 49: Philharmonia / Dohnanyi (August 20)
A Prom dealing with sex and marital disintegration, that prefaces Bluebeard's Castle, Bartok's chilling two hander about the secrets that poison relationships, with the London premiere of the Suite from Powder her Face, Thomas Adès's scabrous yet sad opera on the life of Margaret, Duchess of Argyll. Christoph von Dohnanyi conducts. Charlotte Hellekant and Falk Struckmann play Bartok's embattled couple.
10. Prom 51: Lucerne Festival Orchestra / Abbado (August 22)
Founded by Claudio Abbado, the Lucerne Festival Orchestra draws its players from his own Mahler Chamber Orchestra, augmented by some of the world's finest soloists. Here they perform Mahler's Third Symphony, a vast, ambitious disquisition on man's alienated place in a divinely ordered cosmos. The work as become something of a calling card for Abbado of late, and his interpretation is widely regarded as being second to none.
Those are my top picks. Which Proms are you looking forward to most?
