Don’t miss The top 5 Proms
1 Prom 25: August 4 Monteverdi’s Orfeo/ John Eliot Gardiner
The first great opera in history, Monteverdi’s
Orfeo from 1607 – a take on the tragic Greek myth of Orpheus and his beloved lost wife Eurydice – has always been close to Sir John Eliot Gardiner’s heart. He made a famous recording of it in 1987 and returns to it now with a fresh young cast of singers, the English Baroque Soloists. Knowing him, he’ll have several fresh ideas too.
2 Prom 41 (matinée): August 16
Sherlock Holmes: A musical mind
The world’s most famous detective was a keen amateur fiddler, who once used Offenbach to outwit a pair of jewel thieves. He also loved Paganini, Lassus and Wagner. This Prom, featuring the BBC Concert Orchestra, aims to conjure up Holmes’s intriguing musical world. It’ll also include the film and television scores written for him, such as Miklós Rózsa’s
The Private Life of
Sherlock Holmes. Mark Gatiss, co-creator of the BBC TV series Sherlock, will make a guest appearance, while mezzosoprano Christine Rice will explore the repertoire of Holmes’s nemesis, the opera singer Irene Adler. (Alas, there’ll be no Benedict Cumberbatch, as by mid-August he’ll have started his run as Hamlet at the Barbican.)
3 Prom 67: September 5
Bernstein: Stage & Screen/John Wilson Orchestra
The fabulous John Wilson (above right) and his orchestra have become an annual Proms fixture. Who can forget their superb Prom last year in which they played Cole Porter’s Kiss Me Kate? In the second of their two Proms this year, they play music from all five of Leonard Bernstein’s Broadway shows (including West Side Story, perhaps the greatest musical of them all). The suite from his film score for On the Waterfront is also on the bill, as are several Bernstein rarities.
4 Prom 68 (late night): September 5
Yo-Yo Ma Superstar American cellist and Proms regular, Yo-Yo Ma (below left), is nothing if not ambitious. Most cellists spread Bach’s six suites for solo cello across two concerts. Ma, by contrast, is playing all six at once in this latenight Prom, which won’t finish much before midnight. It’s 160 minutes with no interval. But if anybody can pull it off, Yo-Yo can. 5
Prom 75: September 11 The Dream of Gerontius/Simon Rattle & the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra It’s perhaps an unlikely pairing: Elgar’s great, visionary oratorio and the orchestra (in their second of two concerts this year) that embodies the great Austro-German tradition. But it should turn out wonderful, given the three fine soloists on view: Toby Spence, Roderick Williams and mezzosoprano Magdalena Kozená as the Angel. Not to mention our own Sir Simon Rattle (above, centre), making a return to the UK to conduct.