Welcome to your daily BBC Proms preview, brought to you by BBC Music Magazine! Read on for all you need to know about Prom 59, taking place at the Royal Albert Hall at 6.30pm (BST) on Wednesday 4 September. It's an all French lineup, including a much-loved Requiem and one of the lushest, most atmospheric orchestral works of the 20th century.
Keep coming back to www.classical-music.com throughout the 2024 BBC Proms season (which culminates with the Last Night of the Proms, on Saturday 14 September). Each day you'll find an insightful guide to that evening's Prom, including repertoire, performers and more. And for a bird's-eye view of all the Proms taking place this year, simply head to our fully loaded 2024 BBC Proms guide.
And by the way, Prom 59 is the first of two Proms taking place today. Later tonight you also have Prom 60, featuring US choral composer Eric Whitacre's new work Eternity in an Hour performed by the BBC Singers and others.
What's on at the BBC Proms today?
Prom 59 is an all-French affair. We begin with two works by the early 20th-century French composer Lili Boulanger. Lili was the sister of Nadia Boulanger, one of the most influential classical music teachers of any era.
Sadly, Lili only lived to the age of 24, dying tragically young after suffering with bronchial pneumonia and, latterly, intestinal tuberculosis. Tonight we'll hear Lili's Pie Jesu, scored for high voice, string quartet, harp and organ and dicatetd to her sister Nadia in her illness, We'll also hear the Vieille prière bouddhique ('Old Buddhist Prayer'). Setting, you've guessed it, an old Buddhist prayer to music, it's scored for tenor, chorus (soprano, alto, tenor, bass) and orchestra.
Fauré's serene, consoling Requiem
The major work before the interval tonight is Gabriel Fauré's beautiful, soothing Requiem. Composed between 1887 and 1890, the Requiem in D minor is one of the French composer's best-known works. Fauré worked for decades as a church organist, accompanying the burial services of countless Parisians. This will doubtless have left the composer with a philosophical attitude to death, and this is reflected in his Requiem, which is a far more serene and tranquil example of the form than the more blood-and-thunder Requiems composed by Mozart and Verdi.
Fauré noted of his own Requiem that it displayed ‘a very human feeling of faith in eternal rest’. Certainly, the work's tenderness and lack of hellfire and brimstone are in stark contrast to the doomy grandeur of other Requiem settings. For one thing, there is no ‘Dies Irae’, a description of the Last Judgment, so often a dramatic centrepiece of others in the genre.
We'll also hear another Fauré work tonight: incidental music to the Symbolist play Pelléas et Mélisande by Maurice Maeterlinck. This play inspired other composers including Arnold Schoenberg, Jean Sibelius - and Claude Debussy, who was inspired by Maeterlinck's play to write his only opera.
A sensuous masterpiece from Ravel
Tonight's other major work is another French masterpiece: Suite No. 2 from Maurice Ravel's sensuous ballet Daphnis et Chloé.This sumptuous work took its inspiration from a popular Ancient Greek novel, written in the second or third century AD by the writer Longus. His youthful lovers have had a profound impact on both literature and art, inspiring works by the likes of Shakespeare, Goethe, George Sand and Chagall.
Ravel began to compose the score for Daphnis et Chloé in 1909, after the impresario Sergei Diaghilev had asked him to wrote something for his Ballets Russes. His richly scored ballet features, among other things, a wind machine and off-stage chorus. Tonight we'll hear the second of two Suites taken from the ballet.
Who is performing at the BBC Proms today?
This evening's performers include soprano Golda Schultz, tenor Laurence Kilsby and baritone Thomas Mole in the Fauré Requiem. They are accompanied by the BBC Symphony Chorus, BBC Symphony Orchestra and French conductor Stéphane Denève.
What time does Prom 59 start?
At the slightly earlier time of 6.30pm, as there's also a Late Night Prom tonight, featuring the BBC Singers and Eric Whitacre.
