Welcome to your latest 2024 BBC Proms preview from BBC Music Magazine. Read on for all the details on Prom 71, taking place at 10.15pm on Thursday 12 September at the Royal Albert Hall… and featuring some dazzling music from Maurice Ravel and Franz Liszt.
Prom 71 is the second of two Proms taking place today. Check out our guide to Prom 70, featuring music from Tchaikovsky, Prokofiev, and Grażyna Bacewicz. We’re getting near to the end of the 2024 BBC Proms, though: it all winds up on Saturday 14 September, with the grand annual jamboree that is the Last Night of the Proms. You can find details for all the Proms in our all-inclusive 2024 BBC Proms guide.
What’s on at the BBC Proms tonight?
Tonight’s Prom 71 is a solo piano recital from fast-rising South Korean pianist Seong-Jin Cho. He will begin with three pieces from Ravel’s beautiful, impressionistic piano collection, Miroirs (‘Mirrors’).
This suite of five piano pieces was composed by Ravel in 1904-1905. Each of the five pieces has its own distinct soundworld, from the sparse melancholy of ‘Oiseaux tristes’ (‘Sad birds’) to the rhythmic Spanish vitality of ‘Alborada del gracioso’ (‘The Jester’s Aubade’). Miroirs is a summation of Ravel’s impressionistic style, with its rich harmonies, complex textures, and often unexpected melodies and rhythms.
Tonight we’ll hear three selections from Miroirs: ‘Oiseaux tristes’; ‘Une barque sur l’oceán’ (‘A boat on the ocean’) and ‘Alborada del gracioso’.
Then comes the evening’s main work: the second volume, ‘Italie’, of Franz Liszt’s major trilogy of piano suites, Années de pèlerinage. Translated as Years of Pilgrimage, this epic three-suite set for solo piano is one of Liszt’s most famous and also his most personal works.
The title is a reference to Liszt’s travels through Europe, particularly Switzerland and Italy, as a young man. As well as a geographical journey, through many varied landscapes, people, and cultures, the work is also a spiritual and artistic journey – the third volume, for example, is less virtuosic but more harmonically adventurous than the first two.
The first volume, ‘Suisse’ evokes Liszt’s travels in Switzerland, and conveys his reactions to the rugged natural beauty of the Swiss landscapes. The second volume, ‘Italie’, which we will hear tonight, focuses on Italy – in particular, on it art and literature. Raphael, Michelangelo and Petrarch are among the Italian painters and poets cited, and there is also a reference to Rossini‘s opera Otello. The third and final volume is more reflective and sparse compared to the earlier ones, reflecting Liszt’s later life.
Here is another brilliant South Korean pianist and 2024 Proms star, Yunchan Lim, performing ‘Italie’:
Who is Seong-Jin Cho?
Seong-Jin Cho is an acclaimed pianist from South Korea. He burst onto the scene in 2015, after winning the prestigious International Chopin Piano Competition in 2015. Seong-Jin Cho has won praise for his performance of works by composers including Chopin, Liszt, Beethoven, and Debussy. He has played with the likes of the Berlin Philharmonic (under Simon Rattle), the London Symphony, New York Philharmonic and Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestras.