BBC Proms 2023: The Best Bits

It’s been yet another glorious summer of music at the BBC Proms: over 70 captivating concerts at the Royal Albert Hall, plus the UK-wide chamber series and a weekend-long celebration at Sage Gateshead. (You can relive the season on BBC Sounds right now!)

But before we settle into the autumn months, put away our sunhats and wait in earnest for the 2024 Prom season announcement, here’s a quick reminder of the very best bits from the past two months.

South African soprano Masabane Cecilia Rangwanasha wowed audiences at Prom 28 with her sparkling rendition of Richard Strauss’s Four Last Songs, accompanied by the young players of the National Youth Orchestra.

But it was their encore that stole the show: a joyful performance of Errollyn Wallen’s new a cappella arrangement of ‘He’s Got the Whole World in His Hands’, which ‘kept the eyes teary and the goosebumps going’, according to theartsdesk.com.

We dare you not to sing along.

Watch the full performance on iPlayer.

Co-curated by writer and broadcaster Stuart Maconie, the Northern Soul Prom brought a much-loved British music scene to the Royal Albert Hall for the very first time.

The audience were up and moving all night long, with new orchestral arrangements by Joe Duddell and Fiona Brice adding a symphonic edge to the revelry.

‘Tainted Love’ – originally a B-side on a 1965 Gloria Jones single, later a classic Northern Soul track at Va Va’s in Bolton and Wigan Casino – was arguably the high point of the evening, led by a superb Vula Malinga.

Watch it on iPlayer.

The electric final movement of Mahler’s Symphony No. 9, performed at Prom 56, was also the last movement Sir Simon Rattle conducted as Music Director of the London Symphony Orchestra.

So, when the strings faded gently into nothingness at the work’s close, the collective silence – over 30 seconds’-worth – felt monumental: the end of an era, a perfect farewell.

The critics thought so too: the Prom received five-star reviews from The Guardian, The Times, the i, The Telegraph and the Evening Standard, among others.

Auf Wiedersehen, Sir Simon! Watch the full concert on iPlayer.

Prom 18 saw a tribute to the ‘Nightingale of India’, Lata Mangeshkar, a Bollywood icon whose voice was the soundtrack for generations of cinema-goers.

Singers Palak Muchhal and Palash Muchhal joined forces with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, an array of percussionists and dancers from London’s The Bollywood Co. for a joyful celebration of an extraordinary, era-defining artist.

You can watch the full concert on iPlayer.

The Chineke! Orchestra brought down the house at Prom 61 with two Classical masterpieces: Beethoven’s slender Fourth Symphony and Haydn’s exuberant Trumpet Concerto, featuring Aaron Azunda Akugbo – a regular member of the orchestra – as soloist.

‘This top-class musicianship and irresistible blend of works both old and new will surely serve to inspire for generations to come,’ wrote Broadway World – and this clip of Akugbo playing the first movement of the Haydn concerto proves exactly that.

What a performer!

Watch the full concert from Chineke! on iPlayer.

Perhaps the most impressive – and certainly one of the most charismatic – concert pianist working today, Yuja Wang was bound to dazzle at Prom 27, where she was the soloist in Rachmaninov’s Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini.

Returning to the Proms alongside rising-star conductor Klaus Mäkelä, the pair blew the roof off the Royal Albert Hall with a performance by turns playful, dramatic and lyrical.

What better way to pay tribute to the great Russian composer in the 150th-anniversary year of his birth?

Watch the concert on iPlayer.

Another Prom with a clutch of five-star reviews came from the Aurora Orchestra and its founding conductor Nicholas Collon. Together they performed Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring – with its complex rhythms and exuberant dissonances – entirely from memory. Yes, really.

The piece, written for Serge Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes, famously caused a riot at its Paris premiere in 1913. And if there wasn’t exactly a riot in the Royal Albert Hall this time around, there was at least a riotous atmosphere – caused by some sensational, frankly unbelievable playing.

We can't wait to see what the orchestra does next – but for now, you can listen to Collon et al giving it everything on BBC Sounds.

For Prom 24 the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra were joined by its long-standing Chief Conductor Kirill Karabits and its Artist-in-Residence Felix Klieser, making his Proms debut. Together they gave a gorgeous account of Mozart’s Fourth Horn Concerto.

Klieser, who was born without arms, plays the horn with his feet. He’s used his sizeable presence on social media to give encouragement and advice on overcoming obstacles, as he did to get to this point in his career.

‘It’s crucial that you believe in yourself,’ he said before the concert. ‘I want to use these experiences from my own life to give other people motivation: they can maybe do much more than they think they can, if they believe in themselves.’

What an inspiration you are, Felix.

You can watch Felix's debut at the Proms on iPlayer.

The Third is the best-known of Prokofiev’s five piano concertos. It was written partly as a calling card for the Russian composer’s burgeoning pianistic career and, as such, contains all the dazzling fireworks and agility that we have come to associate with his music (he was once described as having ‘steel fingers’).

No worries for pianist Isata Kanneh-Mason, though, who gave an ‘assured, exhilarating performance’ (The Observer) for her Proms solo debut, garnering a standing ovation at the work’s close.

And, in case you hadn’t got your fill of Kanneh-Mason magic, Isata’s brother, cellist Sheku is one of the soloists at the Last Night of the Proms!

Watch Isata’s performance with the BBC National Orchestra of Wales on iPlayer.

Something of a Ba-roque star, Anna Lapwood has brought the organ into the limelight with her irresistible performances and infectious personality.

This season she gave a late-night recital inspired by the star-strewn Zambian night sky. Works ranged from Florence Price’s radiant Retrospection and Philip Glass’s glinting Mad Rush to the world premiere of Olivia Belli’s Limina Luminis – all bejeweled with the twinkling lights of a giant disco ball.

What’s the collective noun for a group of Anna Lapwood fans? We haven't decided yet, but you can listen to them scream on BBC Sounds …

Missed a concert? You can relive the Proms season on BBC Sounds, and watch selected concerts on BBC iPlayer.