The BBC Proms season opens at the Royal Albert Hall with a live transmission in simultaneous broadcast with Radio 3 of Haydn's The Creation, the first of ten concerts screened this summer.

Andrew Davis conducts the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Chorus, with German soloists Juliane Banse (soprano), Hans Peter Blochwitz (tenor) and Wolfgang Schone (baritone).

In the interval, host James Naughtie examines how Haydn chose his particular theme, while Professor David Broomhead, Heather Couper, Dr Richard Dawkins, and Archbishop Richard Harries look at modern religious and scientific attitudes.

BBC Proms 96: the First Night

BBC Proms 1996: Dawn at Dusk

Season 49

The first of four Proms especially recorded for BBCtv and featuring interviews with the performing artists. Introduced by James Naughtie.

American soprano Dawn Upshaw celebrates the range and vitality of the music she grew up with. Accompanied by the London Sinfonietta, conducted by Eric Stern, and American pianist Fred Hersch, she performs music by Bernstein, Copland, Weill, Gershwin, Rodgers and Hart, and Sondheim.

Live from the Royal Albert Hall, London, and in a simultaneous broadcast with Radio 3, the National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain performs a programme of 20th-century classics. Opera star Sally Burgess joins the orchestra, conducted by Paul Daniel, to sing a selection of George Gershwin's best known tunes, including Someone to Watch over Me and Slap That Bass. The concert opens with Ameriques by Varese and ends with Stravinsky's Rite of Spring, on the 25th anniversary of the composer's death. Introduced by Sarah Walker.

BBC Proms 96

Second of four Proms recorded especially for BBC television. James Naughtie introduces a programme of Bach and Handel, bringing together the choirs of Winchester Cathedral, New College, Oxford, and the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment.

Featuring an interview with Belgian Rene Jacobs who makes his Prom debut conducting excerpts from Handel's opera Julius Caesar and two of Bach's most popular works, Suite No 3 in D - which includes Air on a G String - and the Magnificat.

Live from the Royal Albert Hall, London, in a simultaneous broadcast with Radio 3, the new Principal Guest Conductor of the BBC Symphony Orchestra, Jiri Belohlavek, makes his debut at the Proms for a programme featuring a trio of pieces from his Czech homeland.

Dvorak's Te Deum, written for the composer's visit to America in 1892, opens the concert, sung by soprano Judith Howarth, baritone Ivan Kusnjer and the BBC Symphony Chorus. It is followed by works with military associations from the two greatest Czech composers of the 20th century: Martinu's Field Mass and Janacek's

Sinfonietta. The evening is completed by the last of Mozart's piano concertos - No 27 in B flat, K595 - performed by American pianist Richard Goode.

The first of two Proms featuring youth orchestras being televised this year, presented by James Naughtie.

The European Union Youth Orchestra is caught both off and on duty on the last night of a six-country tour. Some of the 140 musicians selected from European Union countries talk about their rehearsal and tour period.

Led for the first time by conductor Sir Colin Davis, who is known for his interpretations of Jean Sibelius, they play the composer's Symphony No 2 and complement it with Richard Strauss's portrait of a lover, Don Juan.

Pianist Andras Schiff performs two of Mozart's lesser-known masterpieces, No 19 in Fand No 22 in E flat, with the English Chamber Orchestra conducted by George Malcolm.

Introduced by James Naughtie.

The Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra, making its British television debut, is conducted by Valery Gergiev in a programme of Russian and French music. The concert is introduced by Christopher Warren-Green, leader of the Philharmonia Orchestra, and begins with Prokofiev's Symphony No 6, the composer's most tragic, emotional and structurally complex work, written during the last years of the Second World War.

This is followed by the European premiere of an orchestration by the contemporary Russian composer Edison Denisov of Musorgsky's The Nursery, sung by the young Russian soprano Anna Netrebko. The concert finishes with a performance of Debussy's atmospheric evocation of the sea, La Mer. During the interval, Christopher Warren-Green's travel diary records his bike trip to the Netherlands.

Live from the Royal Albert Hall in London. To mark the centenary of the death of Anton Bruckner, a sequence of his choral music makes up part one of tonight's programme. The BBC Singers are conducted by Jane Glover and organist John Scott opens the concert by playing the Prelude and Fugue in C Minor. Beethoven's Ninth Symphony in D Minor, The Choral, forms the second half of the programme, with Sir Georg Solti conducting the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the BBC Singers and the London Voices. During the interval, he talks to James Naughtie about the two decades he has spent as Music Director of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.

Live from the Albert Hall , the musical line-up begins with a performance of Haydn Te Deum by the BBC Symphony Chorus and Orchestra and the BBC Singers, conducted by Andrew Davis. Poul Ruders 's Concerto in Pieces, a reworking of Purcell, follows. Then Felicity Lott and Ann Murray join conductor Andrew Davis to sing music from Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro and Mitridate.

This is followed by a brief visit to the BBC's Proms in the Park concert in Hyde Park, where the BBC Concert Orchestra plays Leonard Bernstein 's overture Candide, conducted by Robin Stapleton. Back at the Royal Albert Hall , Joanna MacGregor (piano) and John Wallace (trumpet) perform Shostakovich's Concerto for Piano, Trumpet and Strings. James Naughtie describes the scene.

The Last Night of the Proms

For the whole of the second half of the concert, a giant screen and video link joins the audience in the Royal Albert Hall with thousands of people gathered in Hyde Park. Opening with Glinka's Overture Ruslan and Ludmilla and Malcolm Arnold's The Sound Barrier, the concert continues with Offenbach's Barcarolle from The Tales of Hoffman and Ah! Que J'aime les Militaires from The Grand Duchess of Gerolstein. Then, after Le Spectre de la Rose from Les Nuits d'Eté by Berlioz and Puccini's Flower Duet from Madam Butterfly, comes the traditional last night finale- Elgar's Pomp and Circumstance March No 1 in D, Sir Henry Wood 's Fantasia on British Sea Songs, Arne's Rule, Britannia! and Elgar's orchestration of Parry's Jerusalem.

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 Proms 96: the First Night

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