“This summer’s BBC Proms will go ahead with 52 concerts in front of live audiences at the Royal Albert Hall,” writes Mark Savage in Thursday’s (5/27) BBC News (U.K.). “The festival will open on 30 July with Vaughan Williams’ Serenade to Music… Proms director David Pickard said ‘all the traditional elements’ would be in place for the 11 September finale [including] “Rule, Britannia!” and “Land of Hope and Glory” … The 127th annual Proms season … will span six weeks instead of the usual eight…. Organizers hope that, by July, a full audience of 5,000 will be permitted…. Four ‘mystery Proms’ … allow the festival some flexibility. And with foreign travel so complicated, the Berlin-based Mahler Chamber Orchestra is the only international orchestra … Highlights … include … the Aurora Orchestra playing Igor Stravinsky’s 1945 suite from The Firebird from memory … an evening of music from across Africa with … cellist Abel Selaocoe … the Chineke! Orchestra celebrating the work of black composers… all seven of the Kanneh-Mason siblings performing Camille Saint-Saëns’s … The Carnival of the Animals … with new poems and narration from … Michael Morpurgo … [and] the Glyndebourne Festival Opera playing Wagner’s Tristan and Isolde.”
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