Here’s your daily 2024 BBC Proms preview from BBC Music Magazine. We’ve got no fewer than three Proms to preview today, Saturday 7 September, as it’s Choral Day at the BBC Proms.
Visit www.classical-music.com every day during the 2024 Proms (it all winds up, as ever, with the grand finale that is the Last Night of the Proms on Saturday 14 September). Each day you’ll find a fascinating preview for that day’s Proms concert(s). And, while you’re here, why not also bookmark our 2024 BBC Proms guide, where you find listings for all the Proms concerts taking place this year.
What’s on at the BBC Proms today?
Today is Choral Day at the BBC Proms. And there are no fewer than three choral Proms.
We begin at 10.30am with Prom 63, which features late 19th and early 20th century British choral music. Highlights include Hubert Parry’s anthem I was glad, written for the Coronation of Edward VII and sung at every Coronation since. Parry also composed the music for the much-loved hymns Jerusalem and Dear Lord and Father of Mankind. He died in 1918 of Spanish Flu – the Covid of its time.
We also have three motets by Parry’s contemporary, Charles Villiers Stanford: Beati Quorum Via, Justorum Animae and Coelos Ascendit Hodie. These are gorgeous, unaccompanied works, beloved of generations of choristers. Born in Dublin in 1852, Stanford was a tutor to a whole generation of British composers, including Holst and Vaughan Williams, at the Royal College of Music. He fell out horribly with Parry, and was distraught when the latter died. Stanford himself died in 1924, 100 years ago this year.
Elsewhere on the programme for Prom 63 is Henry Balfour Gardiner’s Evening Hymn, a big-hitting work for choir and orchestra, and William Harris’s Faire is the Heaven.
Then, this afternoon at 2pm, we have Prom 64. This features contemporary choral works by the likes of Jacob Collier (World O World) and J. Rosamond Johnson (Lift Every Voice and Sing).
The final Prom of Choral Day is Prom 65, at 7pm. This features a performance of Messiah, the great sacred oratorio by George Frideric Handel. Handel’s great work is generally associated with Christmas, but in fact less than half of it actually relates to the festive period. Tonight you’ll hear the arrangement of Messiah made by Mozart: this augments the instrumentation, from a Baroque-sized orchestra to the symphony-sized orchestra that Mozart would have known in his own day – and, as such, it’s more suitable for a big space like the Royal Albert Hall).
We named George Frideric Handel one of the greatest German composers of all time. Interestingly, though, as he spent a significant portion of his life in Britain, he also features in our list of best British composers of all time!
Who is performing at the BBC Proms today?
Performers for Prom 63 are the renowned British choir The Sixteen, conducted by their founder and director Harry Christophers. Simon Johnson is on organ duties. At Prom 64 you’ll hear the Jason Max Ferdinand Singers conducted by their eponymous director, with John Stoddart at the piano.
For Prom 65, Handel’s Messiah, performers include soprano Nardus Williams, mezzo-soprano Helen Charlston, tenor Benjamin Hulett and bass Ashley Riches. They are accompanied by a massed ensemble of choirs: the Fourth Choir, the Jason Max Ferdinand Singers, LYC Chamber Choir, Bath Minerva Choir, Philharmonia Chorus, Voices of the River’s Edge, and the Academy of St Martin in the Fields. John Butt conducts.