As has been the tradition for over 120 years now, the 2016 edition of BBC Proms, the world’s largest music festival, will offer a wide selection of concerts, spanning over 8 weeks. Opening and closing the festival, BBC’s own Symphony Orchestra will perform 12 concerts in total, offering a varied programme and featuring world’s foremost soloists, such as Peter Serkin, Ray Chen, Claudia Buder, Stephen Hough, Karita Mattila, Håkan Hardenberger, Baiba Skride, and Juan Diego Flórez. The list of BBC Symphony guest conductors that will be leading the orchestra includes Marc Minkovski, Jiří Bělohlávek, Simone Young, and Semyon Bychkov. This year, the festival celebrates an important Shakespeare anniversary—400 years since the author’s death—and the great Brit’s signature will appear in many a concert of the 2016 Proms.

The BBC Symphony Orchestra will also take their turn in commemorating his works on several occasions. One of the concerts that reflects this theme as well as the general spirit of the festival is the Prom 22 concert on July 31. Under the baton of Edward Gardner and along with Crouch End Festival Chorus, counter-tenor Andrew Watts and violinist Vadim Guzman, the BBC Symphony Orchestra will perform i.a. Debussy’s incidental music for King Lear, as well as a UK premiere of Lera Auerbach’s new symphony The Infant Minstrel and His Peculiar Menagerie (Symphony No. 3), newly commissioned by BBC.

The BBC Proms 2016 : http://www.bbc.co.uk/proms

Ester Lavoie Fialová

CR : Benjamin Ealovega