BBC Proms
2018
201824 episodes
Episode 1
First Night of the Proms
Jul 13, 20183h
TMDB rating 7.0TMDB
An all-British concert launches the 2018 season. Vaughan Williams atmospheric Whitman settings and Holst’s ever-popular 1918 suite The Planets sit alongside a new collaboration by Anna Meredith and 59 Productions.
Episode 2
BBC Young Musician 40th Anniversary
Jul 15, 20183h
BBC Young Musician celebrates its 40th birthday with a concert featuring illustrious past winners and finalists, including Nicola Benedetti, Freddy Kempf and Sheku Kanneh-Mason, as well as this year’s winner. With music by Ravel and Saint-Saëns.
Episode 3
Jacob Collier and Friends
Jul 19, 20183h
23-year-old vocalist, multi-instrumentalist and arranger Jacob Collier is already a multi-Grammy Award-winner. Here he teams up with Jules Buckley, the Metropole Orkest and special guests Sam Amidon and Take 6 for a special Proms performance.
Episode 4
Youthful Beginnings
Jul 20, 20183h
Mendelssohn’s precocious First Piano Concerto joins Schumann’s forward-looking Fourth Symphony and music by Lili Boulanger and Morfydd Owen – both of whom died tragically young – in the BBC National Orchestra of Wales’s first Prom of the season.
Episode 5
Pioneers of Sound
Jul 23, 20183h
The London Contemporary Orchestra leads a late-night tribute to the legacy of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop – pioneers of experimental electronic music – which includes Daphne Oram’s groundbreaking Still Point and music by RW stalwart Delia Derbyshire.
Episode 6
Beethoven, Shostakovich & Rachmaninov
Jul 23, 20183h
Karina Canellakis directs the BBC Symphony Orchestra in two Russian classics: Rachmaninov’s exhilarating Symphonic Dances and Shostakovich’s First Cello Concerto, with Alisa Weilerstein as soloist. Beethoven’s spirited overture Coriolan opens the concert.
Episode 7
Paul Lewis plays Beethoven’s ‘Emperor’ concerto
Jul 25, 20183h
TMDB rating 7.0TMDB
A concert of darkness and light opens with the world premiere of Tansy Davies’s 9/11-inspired What Did We See? and closes with Brahms’s sunny Second Symphony. Paul Lewis joins Ben Gernon and the BBC Philharmonic for Beethoven’s 'Emperor' Concerto.
Episode 8
Parry, Vaughan Williams & Holst
Jul 27, 20183h
Vaughan Williams’s The Lark Ascending and Pastoral Symphony sit alongside music by Holst and Parry’s stirring Fifth Symphony in this centenary celebration of Hubert Parry – father of 20th-century English music. Martyn Brabbins conducts the BBC NOW.
Episode 9
Havana Meets Kingston
Jul 31, 20183h
Leading reggae and dancehall producer Mister Savona brings together some of Cuba and Jamaica’s most influential musicians for a concert combing the sounds of roots reggae, dub and dancehall with son, salsa and Afro-Cuban to create a new musical fusion.
Episode 10
Folk Music around Britain and Ireland
Aug 3, 20183h
The BBC Concert Orchestra collaborates with some of the folk world’s leading musicians, including Julie Fowlis, The Unthanks and Sam Lee, in a concert that celebrates traditional music while also looking to the future of this ever-evolving genre.
Episode 11
NYO perform Mussorgsky, Ligeti and Debussy
Aug 4, 20183h
George Benjamin and the National Youth Orchestra in a concert of orchestral masterworks that includes Debussy’s La Mer and Ligeti’s mesmerising Lontano. Pianist Tamara Stefanovich is the soloist in Ravel’s Concerto for the Left Hand.
Episode 12
Brahms's A German Requiem
Aug 7, 20183h
Richard Farnes conducts the BBC Symphony Orchestra and soloists Golda Schultz and Johan Reuter in Brahms’s much-loved Requiem. Marking Thea Musgrave’s 90th birthday, the performance opens with her dramatic Phoenix Rising.
Episode 13
New York: Sound of a City
Aug 8, 20183h
TMDB rating 7.0TMDB
Celebrating the music of a modern New York, the Heritage Orchestra and conductor Jules Buckley present the sound of NYC. With guest artists drawn from across the Big Apple, expect anything from pagan-gospel and disco-punk to feminist rap or DIY indie.
Episode 14
Edward Gardner conducts Elgar & Vaughan Williams
Aug 12, 20183h
The conflict of war runs through this concert by Edward Gardner and the BBC Symphony Orchestra. Vaughan Williams’s beautiful cantata Dona nobis pacem and Lili Boulanger frame Elgar’s elegiac Cello Concerto.
Episode 15
Sir Simon Rattle conducts L’enfant et les sortilèges
Aug 18, 20183h
Ravel’s magical opera The Child and the Spells follows his fairy-tale ballet Mother Goose and the oriental aura of Shéhérazade.
Episode 16
Mozart's Clarinet Concerto & Mahler's Fifth Symphony
Aug 19, 20183h
Recreating a Prom conducted by Leonard Bernstein in 1987, the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra and Thomas Dausgaard pair two of the best-loved and most beautiful works in the repertoire: Mozart’s Clarinet Concerto and Mahler’s Fifth Symphony.
Episode 17
Iván Fischer & Budapest Festival Orchestra (II)
Aug 23, 20183h
TMDB rating 7.0TMDB
Dance to the Gypsy rhythms of Hungarian folk music in works by Liszt and Sarasate, while Brahms’s dramatic First Symphony, with its transcendent finale, is at the heart of this second concert by Iván Fischer and the Budapest Festival Orchestra.
Episode 18
John Wilson conducts Bernstein's On the Town
Aug 25, 20183h
Launching a Bernstein bank-holiday weekend on what would have been the composer’s 100th birthday, John Wilson conducts Bernstein’s hit Broadway musical On The Town, which follows the adventures of three sailors on shore leave in 1944.
Episode 19
Marin Alsop & Baltimore Symphony Orchestra
Aug 27, 20183h
Bernstein-protégée Marin Alsop returns to the Proms with one of the great American symphony orchestras to perform a politically charged programme that includes Shostakovich’s Fifth Symphony alongside Bernstein’s own Second Symphony.
Episode 20
Sir András Schiff plays 'The Well-Tempered Clavier' (Book 2)
Aug 29, 20183h
Following his performance of Book 1 in 2017, distinguished pianist and Bach specialist Sir András Schiff returns to present the complete Book 2 of J. S. Bach’s The Well-Tempered Clavier.
Episode 21
Youssou Ndour & Le Super Étoile de Dakar
Aug 31, 20183h
Senegalese cultural icon Youssou Ndour makes his Proms debut in a special late-night appearance. He’s joined by his group Le Super Étoile de Dakar for a performance embracing his signature mix of Cuban rumba, hip hop, jazz and soul.
Episode 22
Tango Prom
Sep 4, 20183h
Explore the raw sensuality and charged rhythms of the tango in all its guises. The Britten Sinfonia join forces with a tango band to take the dance from its dusty beginning in the streets of Buenos Aires right up to the present day.
Episode 23
Last Night of the Proms - Part One
Sep 8, 20181h 44m
The BBC Proms 2018 season comes to a close with the BBC Symphony Orchestra and their much-loved former chief conductor and Last Night of the Proms veteran Sir Andrew Davis steering proceedings live from the Royal Albert Hall. Long-standing nautical traditions of the evening are extended in Stanford's Songs of the Sea, featuring Canadian baritone Gerald Finley. The centenary of the end of the Great War is marked with a new work from Roxanna Panufnik, which also rounds off the season's original premieres and features BBC Singers and BBC Symphony Chorus. The evening includes music by Hindemith, Berlioz and Charles Hubert Parry, who is celebrated 100 years after his death with a performance of Blest Pair of Sirens. Coverage also includes visits to Proms in the Parks across the Nation, also celebrating this annual great night in classical music.
Episode 24
Last Night of the Proms - Part Two
Sep 8, 20181h 30m
Katie Derham presents live coverage as the Last Night of the Proms continues from the Royal Albert Hall with the ever-popular Marche militaire francaise by Saint-Saens. Award-winning 18-year-old saxophonist Jess Gillam performs Scaramouche by Milhaud, and baritone Gerry Finley performs the song Soliloquy from Rodgers and Hammerstein's Carousel. To mark 100 years since 1918 there is a nationwide sing-around of traditional First World War songs, with contributions from the Proms in the Park events in Colwyn Bay, Glasgow and Belfast. The 2018 Proms are brought to a familiar and much-loved rousing close with Rule Britannia, Land of Hope and Glory, and Jerusalem. The BBC Symphony Orchestra and Chorus and BBC Singers are conducted by Sir Andrew Davis.