Scoring centuries
The centenaries marked this season
The year 1918 looms large over this year’s BBC Proms, as the festival tips its hat to centenaries of notable milestones and big birthdays. And the most notable of these – 100 years since the end of World
War I – is marked right from the opening concert, when Anna Meredith’s Five Telegrams gets its world premiere. A BBC co-commission, Meredith’s work is based on messages home sent by young soldiers during the conflict. It is paired in the same concert with Holst’s The Planets, a work that itself was first performed in 1918.
As for composer centenaries, 25 August marks what would have been Leonard Bernstein’s 100th birthday, and he is accordingly feted with a wealth of celebratory performances. These include two complete musicals conducted by John Wilson – West Side Story and On The Town – and his Symphonies No. 1, ‘Jeremiah’, and No. 2, ‘The Age of Anxiety’.
More sombrely, the deaths of Debussy and Lili Boulanger in the same year are commemorated by a mini festival of French music. Presented across 20 concerts, it serves up richly diverse works by the two composers alongside various contemporaries and compatriots.
Orchestras, too, are blowing out centenary candles. Both the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande and Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra were founded 100 years ago, and so have been invited to come and celebrate with concerts at the world’s biggest musical get-together.