Record

Performance TitleBBC Sir Henry Wood Promenade Concerts - One Hundred and Twenty Sixth Proms Season - Prom 5: BBC National Orchestra of Wales
Performance Date2 August 2021
Performance DayMonday
Performance Time19:30
Main PerformersSol Gabetta - cello
Orchestra or BandBBC National Orchestra of Wales
ConductorsElim Chan
Set List'Dido and Aeneas – ‘When I Am Laid In Earth’ (Dido’s Lament)', Purcell, arr. Stokowski,
'Cloudline', E Ogonek,
'Cello Concerto No.1 in A Minor', Saint-Saens
INTERVAL
'Symphony No.4 in E Minor', Brahms
Performance NotesIn 2021, the BBC Proms returns to the Royal Albert Hall for a summer of live music, as it has done every year since 1941. With 52 concerts over 44 days, featuring 30 orchestras and ensembles and more than 2,000 musicians, this ambitious season promises a celebration of live music on a scale not seen since before the pandemic. From the power of a symphony orchestra to the sheer joy of a single performer on the Hall’s magnificent organ, this summer we look forward to coming together through music. Every Prom will be live on BBC Radio 3 and BBC Sounds.

Musical borrowings, reworkings and reinventions run through this season’s Proms. The invisible thread linking tonight’s concert really begins with Bach. A lilting chaconne from his Cantata No. 150 underpins the finale of Brahms’s Symphony No. 4, and the latter’s elegant synthesis of heart and head is itself the inspiration for American composer Elizabeth Ogonek’s Cloudline, a lyrical homage to ancient musical forms and techniques. The chaconne’s repeating patterns are echoed elsewhere in the circling bass line of Purcell’s powerful Lament from Dido and Aeneas. Argentine cellist Sol Gabetta is the soloist in anniversary-composer Saint-Saëns’s Cello Concerto No .1, which she first played at the age of 12.

BBC Co-commission and world premiere of 'Cloudline', E Ogonek.

The season was shortened to six, rather than eight, weeks because of the financial risk to the BBC not knowing audience sizes due to the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic.

An afternoon (13:00) and an evening (18:00) Prom were held at Cadogan Hall, London. The Proms featured celebrated British clarinettist Michael Collins and cellist Adrian Brendel and pianist Michael McHale to celebrate the 150th anniversary of Austrian composer Alexander von Zemlinsky. Charged with fin de siècle intensity and taut musical drama, the young Zemlinsky’s Clarinet Trio was much influenced by Brahms, at whose recommendation it was published. A contemporary said of Brahms’s own Trio in A minor that ‘it is as though the instruments are in love with each other’. With its graceful waltz of an intermezzo and dashing finale with hints of Gypsy swagger, it’s a musical love affair played out in glorious technicolour.
Related Archival MaterialProspectus (RAHE/1/2021/5),
Programme (RAHE/1/2021/10)
Ticket Prices£7.12-£
Catalogue
Reference NumberTitleDate
RAHE/1/2021/10BBC Sir Henry Wood Promenade Concerts - One Hundred and Twenty Sixth Proms Season - Prom 5: Elim Chan Conducts the BBC National Orchestra of Wales2 August 2021
Work
Ref NoTitleNo of Performances
Work12261BBC Proms: Sir Henry Wood Promenade Concerts 2021 - One Hundred and Twenty Sixth Proms Season46
Performers
CodeName of Performer(s)
DS/UK/21259Gabetta; Sol (1981-); Argentine cellist,
DS/UK/1019British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC); BBC National Orchestra of Wales; 1935-; Welsh orchestra
DS/UK/23488Chan; Elim (18 November 1986); Hong Konger conductor
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