Here’s all you need to know about Prom 36 at the BBC Proms today, Friday 16 August, at London’s Royal Albert Hall.
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What’s on at the BBC Proms today?
Today’s Prom 36 opens with Salomé, a vivid portrayal of the Biblical character by French composer Mel Bonis. The piece’s introduction and finale, both evoke a distant desert caravan, and the entire piece is richly atmospheric, relying on effects such as syncopations and glissandi to create an exotic atmosphere. Salomé is, in this way, part of the school of late 19th and early 20th century music that evoked exotic, ‘Oriental’ atmospheres and landscapes – also present in pieces by the likes of Rimsky-Korsakov and Ravel.
We continue with Mozart‘s joyous, much-loved Clarinet Concerto in A major. Mozart’s last concerto, this masterpiece was completed less than three months before the composer’s death in December 1791. Many will hear sunniness and unclouded joy, while others find shadows lurking beneath its apparently smiling surface. That’s just one of many captivating features of this great, late Mozart work.
This evening’s Prom concludes with the incidental music that Mendelssohn penned for Shakespeare‘s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. The composer was just 17 years old when he composed the sparkling Overture, which the music writer George Grove dubbed ‘the greatest marvel of early maturity that the world has ever seen in music’. It’s full of those scurrying, skittering string themes that Mendelssohn did so beautifully.
Who is performing at the BBC Proms tonight?
The performers are tonight are the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra and New Zealand conductor Gemma New. Elsewhere, Gemma memorably described to us how the American athlete Simone Biles is her inspiration. These forces are joined by the National Youth Choir of Scotland Chamber Choir for Salomé, and by the trailblazing American clarinetist Anthony McGill for the Mozart Clarinet Concerto. Principal clarinet of the New York Philharmonic, McGill is the first African-American principal player in the orchestra’s history.