This year’s Proms as well as commemorating the centennial of the end of the First World War is also marking the centennial of The Representation of the People Act, which gave voting rights to some women in the United Kingdom for the first time. The means of commemorating that law is the commissioning of eight female composers whose music has not been performed in the Proms before, and a pledge that half the BBC Commissions for the Proms will be, by 2020, from women composers. Coincidentally with that celebration is the celebration of the 90th birthday of Thea Musgrave, whose

There are certain concerts where there is a new piece which is clearly not the main item on the program. Sometimes a visiting orchestra will include a work by a composer from its country; sometimes it seems to be more or less an afterthought; sometimes a more integral part of the program, but still not the most important or central part. The earlier Prom on August 30, presented by the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Sakari Oramo, began with the first UK performance of Liguria by Andrea Tarrodi, which clearly fell into the first category. Liguria commemorates a visit

Three works on the Proms in August raised issues of authorship and authenticity, among other things. Sir Edward Elgar in the last two years of his life was engaged in the composition of his Third Symphony, which had been encouraged by his friend George Bernard Shaw and commissioned by the BBC. When he died in February of 1934, he left 130 pages of sketches, mostly in short score with few indications of instrumentation, and for many years they were given little attention, and the work considered lost. Anthony Payne, a considerable composer himself, who has had a scholar’s interest in

The Prom presented on August 9 by the BBC National Orchestra of Wales, conducted by Ryan Wigglesworth, featured the first performance of Brian Elias’s Cello Concerto, which was a BBC commission. It was written for and is dedicated to Natalie Clein, who had to withdraw from the concert due to illness. The soloist in her stead was Leonard Elschenbroich, who despite coming late to the party, gave no indication of any kind of lack of preparation. The Cello Concerto is an imposing piece in four continuous movements, lasting twenty five minutes. A grandly rhetorical first movement, is followed by a

The Prom on August 20, presented by The BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Ilan Volkov, opened with the first UK performance of Dérives by Gérard Grisey. It’s hard to believe that it’s taken 42 years for the piece to have been played in the UK, and that it was only the second work of Grisey’s to be played on the Proms. Dérive is scored for two orchestras, one smaller and amplified; the size of the Albert Hall stage made separation and a very clear distinction between the two groups more or less impossible. The work starts with the conceit

Thomas Adès is a phenominal musician. The depth of his musical intelligence and power of his insight are impossible to miss. They knocks you down, jumps up and down on your chest, and spit in your eye, and it’s enthralling. The performances of the Beethoven Eighth Symphony and the Prokofiev Classical Symphony which began and ended, respectively, the Prom concert on August 15, on which he conducted the Britten Sinfonia, were both dazzling and incredible satisfying as musical experiences. Given all of that, I would very much like to like his music, and I’ve tried, but, to use a phrase

Every year the BBC in conjunction with the Proms holds a competition for composers aged 12 through 18 as part of their larger music education program Inspire. Each concert performance of the winning pieces has always had a slightly different format, but has tended over the years towards less talk and more music. It has gradually come to include only the winning works and not those which were “highly commended.” The concerts in many past years have been at the Royal College of Music, but the 2016 concert, on August 15, was in the theater at Broadcasting House. Since it

Peter Maxwell Davies died about two months ago. I started writing this the week that Max died, but was unable to finish it before now. I met Max Davies in 1973 at Tanglewood. I had graduated from New England Conservatory in the spring. I had failed to get into any graduate school, which was a sort of minor scandal at NEC. Gunther Schuller was president of the conservatory and also ran Tanglewood, so I got into Tangelwood as the booby prize. Max was the big composer who was there most of the summer. When we met I showed him my

One of the major threads of the programming of the 2015 Proms concerts was the 90th birthday of Pierre Boulez. This commemoration is both testimony to the importance of Boulez to the music of the second half of the twentieth century, and also to his importance in the history of the BBC and to the Proms. The Prom on August 12 situated a major work of Boulez, Figures – Doubles – Prismes in the context of two of his musical forebears, Ravel and Stravinsky. On August 26, in the concert which was the Proms debut of the SWR Symphony Orchestra

Raymond Yiu’s Symphony, a sort of Mahlerian song-cycle, which received its first performance on the Prom on August 25 by counter-tenor Andrew Watts and the BBC Symphony conducted by Edward Gardner, is a big piece, ambitiously conceived and handsomely realized. It is some indication of its success that most of the criticism one might have of the piece have to do with appealing aspects of it which one wants more of. It is well timed and beautifully orchestrated and consistently engaging, and, in its final moments particularly beautiful and rather moving, and it very successfully sustains an arc of 26