Barenboim, Rattle and the Berlin Philharmonic in lineup for Proms
Daniel Barenboim and Sir Simon Rattle will return to the Royal Albert Hall this summer as part of the BBC Proms, which will include 90 concerts taking place over eight weeks.
Barenboim will be making a rare visit, conducting the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra that he and Edward Said founded 25 years ago. The 81-year-old conductor has largely stepped back from performing owing to a neurological condition and has not conducted in the UK since 2019.
Rattle, who at last year’s Proms gave his final UK performance as the London Symphony Orchestra’s music director, will return with his new orchestra, the Bavarian Radio Symphony.
The Berlin Philharmonic will give two concerts with its principal conductor, Kirill Petrenko, in what will be its only appearance in the UK this year.
Also expected to be a hot ticket is the 28-year-old Finnish conductor Klaus Mäkelä, who comes with the Orchestra de Paris to perform Berlioz’s Symphonie Fantastique.
Audiences will have the opportunity to get to know the incoming music director of the Royal Opera House, Jakub Hrůša, who brings two all-Czech programmes to the festival with the Czech Philharmonic.
The starry soloists who will be in South Kensington include the cellist Yo-Yo Ma, the pianist Víkingur Ólafsson and the mezzo-soprano Jamie Barton. The 20-year-old South Korean piano sensation Yunchan Lim makes his proms debut playing Beethoven’s Emperor piano concerto with the BBC Symphony Orchestra.
One in three concerts will include a soloist or conductor from an ethnic minority, and music written by a female composer will feature in nearly a third of this year’s programmes.
Ten female conductors will be on the podium across the season, including the Hong Kong-born Elim Chan, who will conduct the opening night.
Beyond the festival’s core classical content, Doctor Who’s Tardis returns to the Royal Albert Hall, and disco makes its Proms debut. The pop stars Florence Welch and Sam Smith will give concerts that arrange their breakthrough albums (2009’s Lungs, and 2014’s In the Lonely Hour) with orchestral settings.
The controversial Last Night of the Proms remains unchanged. The Proms and BBC Radio 3 controller, Sam Jackson, acknowledged comments made by last year’s soloist, the cellist Sheku Kanneh-Mason, who told Desert Island Discs that Rule, Britannia! made a lot of people uncomfortable, and decried the social media attacks that resulted.
The festival’s expansion beyond its London base continues with concerts in Newport, Belfast and Aberdeen, two in Nottingham, a residency in the newly opened Bristol Beacon plus a return to the Glasshouse, Gateshead, for five concerts over the last weekend in July.