The 2015 BBC Proms season is announced

Gramophone
Thursday, April 23, 2015

Marin Alsop to conduct the Last Night with soloists Jonas Kaufmann, Danielle de Niese and Benjamin Grosvenor

The 2015 BBC Proms season has just been unveiled: 92 concerts of classical music (from Friday July 17 to Saturday September 12), all of which will be broadcast live on BBC Radio 3. 

The Last Night will be conducted once again by Marin Alsop, who first led the celebrations in 2013, and will feature tenor Jonas Kaufmann (who will sing 'Rule, Britannia!'), soprano Danielle de Niese and pianist Benjamin Grosvenor.

A particular focus of this year's Proms is the piano. In all, 25 solo pianists will make appearances, including Maria João Pires (in Mozart's Piano Concerto No 23 with the Chamber Orchestra of Europe and conductor Bernard Haitink on August 28) and Elisabeth Leonskaja (Mozart's Piano Concerto No 22 with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and conductor Charles Dutoit on August 19). Leif Ove Andsnes will be performing all of Beethoven's piano concertos, plus the Choral Fantasy, with the Mahler Chamber Orchestra. Gramophone's readers will be familiar with Andsnes's excellent 'Beethoven Journey' recordings: the first (featuring the First and Third concertos) was a Recording of the Month and both subsequent volumes were Editor's Choices. You can read the Gramophone reviews here: Vol 1, Vol 2, Vol 3.

Another highlight for pianophiles is sure to be Prom 14 on July 28 when Prokofiev's five piano concertos will be performed in one concert by pianists Daniil Trifonov, Sergei Babayan and Alexei Volodin, with the London Symphony Orchestra and conductor Valery Gergiev.

Sir Simon Rattle will appear not with the LSO or the Berlin Philharmonic but with the Vienna Philharmonic in Elgar's The Dream of Gerontius on September 11, with soloists Magdalena Kožená, Toby Spence and Roderick Williams. The Vienna Philharmonic will also be performing Brahms's Symphony No 3 and Schmidt's Symphony No 2 with conductor Semyon Bychkov on September 10.

The ever-enterprising Aurora Orchestra will play two pastoral symphonies in their concert on August 2, by Brett Dean and Beethoven. You can read an interview with Aurora's Music Director Nicholas Collon about the orchestra's approach to integrating contemporary music with standard repertoire in the current (May) issue of Gramophone. Aurora will be performing the Beethoven symphony in this concert from memory.

In all, 21 world premieres will be performed this season, including James MacMillan's Symphony No 4 (on August 3), B Tommy Andersson's Pan (on September 3), Hugh Wood's Epithalamium (July 22) and Eleanor Alberga's Arise, Athena!, which will open the Last Night.

For full details of the season please visit: bbc.co.uk/proms. Tickets go on sale from 9am on Saturday May 16 via bbc.co.uk/proms or 0845 401 5040 and in person at the Royal Albert Hall. Season Tickets, Weekend Promming Passes and Proms in the Park tickets go on sale a day earlier at 9am on Friday May 15.

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