Pianists at the Proms
Monday, June 10, 2024
The programme for this year’s BBC Proms has been announced and there are several high-profile piano performances to look out for
The headline-grabbing events include Yunchan Lim’s Proms debut on 29 July, playing Beethoven’s Emperor Concerto, and a rare performance of Busoni’s Piano Concerto, played by Benjamin Grosvenor on 5 August.
Víkingur Ólafsson plays Robert Schumann’s Piano Concerto with the Berliner Philharmoniker and Kirill Petrenko on 31 August – the first of a two-concert weekend visit by the orchestra.
Steven Osborne brings Messiaen’s Turangalîla-Symphonie back to the Royal Albert Hall on 30 July, and returns on 4 August with Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue.
Denis Kozhukhin performs Ravel’s G major Concerto on 1 August; Seong-Jin Cho plays Mozart’s Piano Concerto No 9, Jeunehomme, on 9 August; Francesco Piemontesi plays Beethoven’s Fourth Piano Concerto on 18 August; and Paul Lewis joins the CBSO and Kazuki Yamada in a performance of Mozart’s final Piano Concerto, K595, on 22 August.
Unusually, Lahav Shahani plays Prokofiev’s Piano Concerto No 3 directing the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra from the keyboard, on 23 August. The young Japanese pianist Mao Fujita plays Dvořák’s rarely heard G minor Piano Concerto with Czech Philharmonic and Jakub Hrůša on 28 August.
At the First Night of the Proms (19 July) Isata Kanneh-Mason plays Clara Schumann’s Piano Concerto; and at the Last Night of the Proms (14 September) Sir Stephen Hough plays the exotically coloured slow movement of Saint-Saëns’s Fifth Piano Concerto.