Tomorrow night, at 7.30pm, BBC2 visits the Royal Albert Hall for the opening night of the 94th season of the Henry Wood Promenade Concerts. Michael Berkeley previews the ten concerts which will be shown this summer for BBC viewers and introduces the theme that runs through all of this year's Proms - the relationship between music and the written word.

BBC at the Proms

First Night of the Proms

Season 41

The opening of the 94th season of Henry Wood Promenade Concerts live in stereo from the Royal Albert Hall.

Sir John Pritchard conducts the masterpiece that has become one of the most popular of all choral works. The Verdi Requiem

Throughout this year's 69 Proms there is a single thematic thread - the response of composers over the centuries to the power of the word. Written at the height of his powers, Verdi's Requiem expresses the ancient Latin text in a richly theatrical style that has earned the work the epithet of 'Verdi's greatest opera'. Soloists

Julia Varady (soprano)

Dolora Zajic (mezzo-soprano) Dennis O'Neill (tenor)

Evgeny Nesterenko (bass) BBC Symphony Chorus Bach Choir

London Philharmonic Choir BBC Symphony Orchestra led by BELA DEKANY

Introduced by Richard Baker

with Leonard Bernstein conducting his Songfest

'I love the Proms' declared Leonard Bernstein, after his Prom debut last September with the Vienna Philharmonic - 'the audience is incredible, the atmosphere unique.'

Tonight Bernstein, who will be 70 next month, returns to the Proms conducting an international youth orchestra from the Schleswig-Holstein Music Festival in Germany, which he has been training for the past two years.

This first of six Omnibus visits to the Royal Albert Hall for highlights of the 1988 Prom season reflects this year's literary theme.

Bernstein's large-scale song-cycle for orchestra and six soloists consists of poems by 13 American poets ranging from 1650 to the present day. They include Edgar Allan Poe, e.e. cummings and Edna St Vincent Millay.

Soloists:

Janice Meyerson (soprano) Candice Burrows (mezzo-soprano) Daisy Newman (alto) Salvatore Champagne (tenor) Jerrold Pope (baritone) Robert Osborne (bass)

Introduced by Michael Berkeley

Omnibus at the Proms

From Art Nouveau to Australia

A triptych of exotically coloured music.

The heavily perfumed and sensuous music of Debussy and Scriabin frames the world premiere of a new orchestral work reflecting the harsher colours and history of Australia.

Debussy: La Damoiselle elue (to words by Dante Gabriel Rossetti) with Ann Murray, Elizabeth Laurence, BBC Singers (women's voices).

Michael Finnissy: Red Earth.

Scriabin: The Poem of Ecstasy.

BBC Symphony Orchestra led by Bela Dekany, conducted by Lothar Zagrosek

Sue Cook makes her debut as a Proms presenter and talks to Michael Finnissy about his new orchestral work, Red Earth:

There is a red-ochre soil the Aboriginals use as a body paint in ritual ceremonies. In homage to them, 'Red Earth' could be described as a ritual chant.

Introduced by Nigel Kennedy

Since its birth in 1983, the Lyons Opera Orchestra has quickly made its mark on the European musical scene. Now, under the baton of its founder and Music Director, John Eliot Gardiner, the orchestra makes its first visit to the Proms.

Continuing the literary strand of this year's concerts, the centrepiece of tonight's programme is Berlioz's Harold in Italy, a richly romantic work inspired by Byron's poem Childe Harold's Pilgrimage. The soloist is

Zoltan Toth, the orchestra's principal viola and a former professor at the National Conservatory in Budapest. The concert begins with Faure's orchestral masterpiece, his suite Pelleas et Melisande.

Tonight one of the world's finest composers and one of the world's greatest violinists join forces in a television premiere. Chain 2 is a violin concerto in all but name by the Polish composer Witold Lutoslawski.

The soloist is the brilliant young German violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter.

To begin the programme, there is another work taking up this year's literary theme, Liszt's symphonic poem Tasso conducted by Peter Eotvos with the BBC Symphony Orchestra led by BELA DEKANY

Introduced by Paul Crossley

Instead of the familiar venue of the Royal Albert Hall, tonight's Prom comes from the more intimate location of St Paul's Church, Knightsbridge where Anthony Rooley and his Consort of Musicke perform a specially devised programme of ltalian madrigals. In keeping with this year's literary theme the concert is based on the poetry of the great Italian Renaissance writer TORQUATO TASSO, whose epic poem Gerusalemme liberata inspired such celebrated composers of the age as Monteverdi, De Wert, and Rovetta.

The programme is introduced by Iain Fenlon, author and Vice-Provost of King's College, Cambridge.

CONSORT OF MUSICKE directed by ANTHONY ROOLEY (lute) with Emma Kirkby (soprano) Evelyn Tubb (soprano) Mary Nichols (alto) Andrew King (tenor) Rufus Muller (tenor) Alan Ewing (bass)

Tonight a visit to the 94th season of Henry Wood Proms by one of the world's great orchestras the Amsterdam Concertgebouw Orchestra under its new Chief

Conductor Riccardo Chailly. Part 1 Mozart

Overture Idomeneo

Piano Concerto No 19 in F (K 459). Soloist Radu Lupu

8.05*-8.25* One Hundred Years of Music

In the interval

Michael Berkeley talks to

Riccardo Chailly and Richard Osborne about the history and unique reputation of both the orchestra and its famous

Concertgebouw concert hall celebrating this year a combined centenary. Director DAVID STEVENS

Part 2 Bruckner

Symphony No 3 in D minor (1889 version)

Under conductors like

Mengelberg and Haitink the Concertgebouw Orchestra has established a world reputation in the Viennese late romantic repertoire. Tonight they perform the first of Bruckner's symphonies to exhibit his emerging mature style. Introduced by Michael Berkeley

Live from the Proms

Last in the series Introduced by John Tusa

The Leipzig

Gewandhaus is one of Europe's greatest and oldest symphony orchestras. Under their Principal

Conductor Kurt Masur they perform Mendelssohn's Symphony No 3

The Scottish. The Orchestra gave the first performance in 1842 conducted by the composer himself, who had been inspired to write it during a visit to Holyrood Palace in Edinburgh.

To complete the programme - music by Richard Strauss with whom the orchestra has had a long association. Tonight they play his colourful symphonic poem

Till Eulenspiegel based on the outrageous character from German folklore.

John Tusa also talks to Kurt Masur about his relationship with the orchestra and about its illustrious past.

The American conductor Michael Tilson Thomas this week takes up his new post as f rincipal Conductor of the London Symphony

Orchestra. Before tonight's performance of Das klagende Lied, Tilson Thomas illustrates the background to this striking example of Mahler's early genius. Tonight's complete performance is specially illustrated for television.

8.30* Live in stereo from the Royal Albert Hall , London

Introduced by Donald MacLeod

Mahler Das klagende Lied (Song of Lament)

Part 1: Forest Legend Part 2: The Minstrel

Part 3: Wedding Piece

Margaret Price (soprano) Jard Van Nes

(mezzo-soprano)

Siegfried Jerusalem (tenor) Henry Herford (baritone)

London Symphony Chorus

London Symphony Orchestra led by ASHLEY ARBUCKLE conducted by Michael Tilson Thomas Lighting DAN CRANEFIELD Sound VIC GODRICH and JAMES HAMILTON

Live in stereo from the Royal Albert Hall , London, television and radio join to relay the entire concert with its unique blend of musical entertainment and flag-waving with the BBC Symphony Orchestra led by RODNEY FRIEND BBC Singers directed by JOHN POOLE BBC Symphony Chorus chorusmaster

GARETH MORRELL conducted by Andrew Davis Introduced by Richard Baker Part 1

The famous RICHARD STRAUSS tone-poem Don Juan sets the scene appropriately with its fiery, youthful ardour while

Joan Rodgers (soprano) sings in Russian Tatyana's stirring 'Letter Scene' from

TCHAIKOVSKY'S

Eugene Onegin. Then, intriguingly, the late Percy Grainger is the highly individual soloist in GRIEG'S Piano Concerto in A minor - on a piano roll made in 1921. (Part 2 is on BBCI at 9.05pm)

Last Night of the Proms

Part 2

The suite from

WILLIAM WALTON 's score for the film of Henry V, PERCY GRAINGER 'S idiosyncratic settings of Molly on the Shore, Danny Boy and Shepherd's Hey; and STANFORD'S Drake's Drum from Songs of the Sea are followed by the time-honoured last-night favourites: ELGAR'S Pomp and Circumstance March No 1, HENRY WOOD'S Fantasia on British Sea Songs, ARNE'S

Rule Britannia! and PARRY'S Jerusalem (orchestrated by ELGAR), with Benjamin Luxon (baritone).

The Manchester-based BBC Philharmonic Orchestra visited the Royal Albert Hall in London earlier this year to play in the 1988 Promenade Concerts. In the first of two programmes they perform

SCHUMANN'S Symphony No 4 in D minor, and are conducted by Kurt Sanderling.

Introduced by John Mundy

The Phil at the Albert

Second of two programmes. The Manchester-based BBC

Philharmonic Orchestra play GUSTAV MAHLER'S Das Lied

Von der Erde recorded at this Year's Promenade Concerts from the Royal Albert Hall m London. The concert is conducted by Kurt Sanderling and the soloists are mezzo-soprano, Carolyn Watkinson and the tenor,

John Mitchinson.

Introduced by John Mundy.

The World's Greatest Classical Music Festival.  The BBC Proms is a classical music festival held every summer at the Royal Albert Hall in London, and in recent years has explored an innovative series of Proms around the UK with concerts in all four nations. Its aim: to bring the best in classical music to the widest possible audience, which remains true to founder-conductor Henry Wood’s original vision in 1895.  Whether you are a classical connoisseur or think classical music isn’t for you, there is something for everyone in the eight-week stretch of concerts.

BBC at the Proms

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