Tonight's concert at the 2024 BBC Proms has a delicious programme. Its highlights include Beethoven's Fourth Piano Concerto, which, although its successor the Fifth (or 'Emperor') gets most of the attention, might just be the great composer's finest concerto for piano and orchestra.
To be honest, there's a similar theme to another of tonight's works. When it comes to Dvořák's nine symphonies, it's unquestionably the last one - the Ninth, or 'New World' Symphony - that gets the most performances and recordings. However, a very strong case can be made for tonight's Dvořák symphony, the Seventh, being his finest essay in the form.
Prom 39, which takes place on Monday 19 August at 7.30pm at London's Royal Albert Hall, also features the Comedy Overture by the Italian composer Ferruccio Busoni, plus the tone poem A Sussex Landscape by Avril Coleridge-Taylor.
Keep looking in at www.classical-music.com to find daily guides to that day's Proms concerts. You'll also find information for all of this year's Proms - including performers, repertoire, start times and ticket prices - in our comprehensive 2024 BBC Proms guide. This is where you'll find all the info you need, not only for all the concerts at the Royal Albert Hall, but also for those Proms being held elsewhere across the UK. Aberdeen, Belfast and Newport are all hosting chamber music concerts, and there are also weekend music festivals taking place in Gateshead, Bristol and Nottingham.
What's on at the Proms tonight?
As mentioned, tonight's Proms contains two absolute gems, works which are overshadowed by more famous successors but which, in our view, deserve to sit right at the top of the tree.
Beethoven's Fourth Piano Concerto contains some of the composer's most eloquent writing for piano and orchestra. It has a beautifully mysterious opening, with the piano beginning a softly lilting melody that the orchestra then takes up. This whole first movement beautifully treads a tightrope between serene contemplation, beauty and melancholy. The final movement, a Rondo, has great rhythmic verve and drama, while the middle movement sets up a uniquely tense, taut dialogue between piano and orchestra.
Here's a great performance from pianist Krystian Zimerman, with the inimitable Leonard Bernstein conducting.
Similarly, Dvořák's Symphony No. 7 of 1885 is unquestionably a masterpiece, with its grave, Brahmsian first movement and eloquent, lyrical slow movement (containing one of our favourite French horn solos in the repertoire). Then comes one of those folk-inflected Scherzo movements that Dvořák does so beautifully. The whole work has a kind of emotional gravity - not unlike Brahms's great Third Symphony, composed in the very same year.
Also on tonight's programme is the tone poem A Sussex Landscape, by Avril Coleridge-Taylor, daughter of the pioneering black composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor. This beautiful work featured on a recent disc by the brilliant Chineke! orchestra, which we gave a four-star review. 'Much impacted by Vaughan Williams, it has an elegiac undertow all its own,' noted our reviewer Jessica Duchen.
Who is performing at the BBC Proms today?
Tonight's performers are the Ulster Orchestra and conductor Daniele Rustioni. They are joined by the Italian pianist Francesco Piemontesi for the performance of Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 4.
What time does tonight's Prom start?
Prom 39 gets underway at 7.30pm.
