Introduction
Friday 16 July – Saturday 11 September
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The 2004 ´óÏó´«Ã½ Proms, launched today, features the traditional mixture
of great music, great artists and great occasions – including this year
the biggest celebration of Proms in the Park around the United Kingdom
on the Last Night.
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It also introduces new music, new outreach events, new interactive
elements and more Proms on television than ever before, creating a renewed
commitment to the audience of the future.
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Since the very beginning the Proms has been about making the greatest
music available to all, informing, educating and entertaining the widest
possible audience, and championing new music, composers and artists.
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In 2004 the ´óÏó´«Ã½ renews all these great traditions, emphasising the
great heritage of the Henry Wood Promenade Concerts in their 110th year,
while creating a new model of a music festival for the new media of
the 21st century.
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More Proms on TV than ever before
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The ´óÏó´«Ã½ Proms concerts are available to more people in more ways than
ever before in 2004.
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´óÏó´«Ã½ FOUR, which has broadcast the first two weeks of the season since
its launch, now adds the final week of concerts.
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´óÏó´«Ã½ ONE and ´óÏó´«Ã½ TWO broadcast 10 concerts between them.
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Thirty of the 74 main evening Proms are televised on ´óÏó´«Ã½ ONE, TWO and
FOUR, and all concerts are broadcast live on ´óÏó´«Ã½ Radio 3 and streamed
via the ´óÏó´«Ã½ Proms website.
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Increasing interactivity
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To ensure that audiences have the richest possible experience, advances
in the ´óÏó´«Ã½'s interactive and digital services are used to the full.
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People can access informative notes about the music and musicians,
wherever and however they are listening or watching, including for the
first time on DAB radio and on Radio 3 via Freeview, as well as online.
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The ´óÏó´«Ã½ Proms website provides unprecedented access to the music and
information about all aspects of the Proms.
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This year there will be a special audience vote online as well as by
phone for overtures to be played in The Nation's Favourite Prom.
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The ´óÏó´«Ã½ Proms also launches a text club to keep audiences up-to-date
with news and concert information during the season.
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Music for all
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Ticket prices remain stable, reasonable and accessible to all. There
are no price increases this season.
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For every Prom up to 1,400 standing places are available on the day
at £4.
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There are more than 150,000 places, including seats, available at £10
or under during the Proms season, a price level made possible by the
´óÏó´«Ã½'s continuing promotion of the festival as part of its public service
mission.
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The Proms look East
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The Proms' East/West theme brings the charismatic cellist Yo-Yo Ma
and his Silk Road Ensemble to the Proms for the first time, as well
as new music by Chinese-American composers Tan Dun, Zhou Long and Bright
Sheng.
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Many of the finest works of Western music by composers such as Britten,
Debussy, Mahler, Messiaen and Ravel are also heard.
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Bohemian rhapsodies
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Anniversaries for Dvoøák and Janáèek have stimulated an exploration
of Czech music which goes beyond those composers to Biber (whose anniversary
is also marked), Martinù and other Czech masters.
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There are great classics: Dvoøák's last four symphonies under Bernard
Haitink, Mariss Jansons, Sir Charles Mackerras and Vassily Sinaisky;
Janáèek's Glagolitic Mass and Biber's Missa bruxellensis.
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Back to Bohemia also brings rare gems such as Dvoøák's little-known
opera Dimitrij and music by neglected composers which might not otherwise
be heard.
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The rebirth of English music
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England at the Crossroads: 1934 celebrates the work of the great patriarchs
of English music - Elgar, Delius and Holst, who all died in 1934, as
well as the births of two great Proms names of today, Sir Harrison Birtwistle
and Sir Peter Maxwell Davies, both born that year.
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Popular classics such as Holst's The Planets are heard alongside rarer
works such as Elgar's elegiac choral masterpiece The Music Makers and
Delius' Whitman setting Sea Drift.
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Anthony Payne's acclaimed realisation of Elgar's Third Symphony receives
a second Proms hearing while there are premieres of new works by Sir
Harrison Birtwistle.
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A first Proms hearing for Sir Peter Maxwell Davies' Antarctic Symphony
and a concert on his actual birthday form part of the celebrations for
the new Master of The Queen's Music.
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Creating the new
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The ´óÏó´«Ã½ Proms has always championed new music.
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This season there are major commissions for the ´óÏó´«Ã½ orchestras from
John Casken, Zhou Long and Joby Talbot, a commission from Sir Harrison
Birtwistle (as well as the first hearing here of a new co-commission)
and new choral works from Judith Bingham and Mark-Anthony Turnage.
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The Proms also continues to place music by composers of today at the
heart of its season with more than 15 other premieres of works by popular
composers of our time as diverse as John Adams and Sir John Tavener.
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There are pieces by around 30 living composers and nearly 90 works
which have never been heard at the Proms before.
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Audiences of the future
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In its ongoing commitment to provide greater access to the riches of
the Proms, there are three projects which aim to help build audiences
of the future.
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´óÏó´«Ã½ Proms: out & about events with the ´óÏó´«Ã½ Symphony Orchestra and ´óÏó´«Ã½
Concert Orchestra take high-quality, live orchestral music-making to
the Hammersmith Town Hall and the Hackney Empire as an upbeat to the
2004 season.
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Building on the success of the event with John Adams at the Carling
Brixton Academy in 2003, the aim is to provide children from the local
communities with the chance to experience the vibrancy of an orchestral
concert for the first time.
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In collaboration with the British Library, another project brings together
120 teenage students from the UK's Turkish, Chinese and various other
Asian communities in a series of creative workshops culminating in an
event involving Yo-Yo Ma and the Silk Road Ensemble.
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The ´óÏó´«Ã½ Proms/Guardian Young Composers Competition, now a well-established
strand in the Proms' audience development programme, is expecting more
entries than ever from 12 to 18 year olds around the country.
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Participants in all three projects are invited to attend Proms concerts
at the Royal Albert Hall.
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There are also major events aimed at attracting younger audiences to
the Proms.
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The Blue Peter Prom has been such a popular fixture in recent years
that the ´óÏó´«Ã½ Proms is introducing a repeat performance in 2004.
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Hosted by Blue Peter presenters Simon Thomas and Liz Barker, this year's
event picks up the East/West theme as Japanese drums and a Chinese Lion
Dance troupe join the ´óÏó´«Ã½ Philharmonic under its Chief Conductor, Gianandrea
Noseda.
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The fifth ´óÏó´«Ã½ Children's Prom in the Park, which follows the festivities
of the Last Night in Hyde Park, is on Sunday 12 September.
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It introduces the best-loved music of Disney to the Proms with plenty
of on-stage action and footage from the classic films relayed on giant
screens around the park.
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The organ is back
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A £1.7m refurbishment of the Royal Albert Hall organ, which includes
money raised by Proms audiences, puts the country's largest instrument
at the heart of the 2004 season.
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It has not been heard by Prommers since 2001 and brings many of the
world's leading organists, including Naji Hakim, Martin Neary, Simon
Preston, Thomas Trotter and Dame Gillian Weir, to the Proms.
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Solo organ works feature in the 2004 season, from Bach's famous Toccata
on the First Night to Barber's Toccata festiva on the Last, and there
are many giants of the choral and orchestral repertoire with prominent
parts for organ, including Saint-Saëns' Organ Symphony, Janáèek's Glagolitic
Mass and Britten's War Requiem.
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Great artists
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From Sir Simon Rattle and the Berliner Philharmoniker to Wynton Marsalis
and his Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra, and from William Christie and
Les Arts Florissants to Pierre Boulez and Ensemble Intercontemporain,
the range of top partnerships is unparalleled.
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Among the other great conductors and orchestras to look out for are
Bernard Haitink and the Dresden Staatskapelle, Sir Charles Mackerras
and the Czech Philharmonic, Mariss Jansons and the Bavarian Radio Symphony
Orchestra, and Valery Gergiev who gives his first Prom with the ´óÏó´«Ã½
Symphony Orchestra.
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Outstanding singers permeate the season from Lorraine Hunt Lieberson
on the First Night to Thomas Allen on the Last Night.
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Great violinists include the return of Anne-Sophie Mutter (with the
Violin Concerto written for her by her husband, André Previn, who conducts
it in his first Prom for 17 years), Joshua Bell, Sarah Chang, Gidon
Kremer, Maxim Vengerov and Pinchas Zukerman.
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Among the host of leading pianists, Alfred Brendel plays his last Prom
as he retires from live broadcast concerts, while hotly-tipped newcomers
Simon Trpèeski and Llyr Williams make their Proms debuts.
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Top opera
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Eight complete operas include Sir Simon Rattle conducting Das Rheingold,
on period instruments, in the first instalment of a four-year cycle
of Wagner's Ring by different performers; Britten's Curlew River specially
staged for the Proms; Holst's Eastern-influenced chamber opera Sâvitri
and Humperdinck's Hansel and Gretel.
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Festive finale
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´óÏó´«Ã½ Proms in the Park spreads further on the Last Night than ever before
with all the fun of the Last Night of the Proms spilling out of the
Royal Albert Hall and into big outdoor events in Belfast, Glasgow, London
and Swansea, with Manchester joining the party for the first time.
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As in previous years each city will have its own distinctive concert
before joining together with big-screen link-ups for the live relay
of the famous finale.
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The concerts are broadcast live across ´óÏó´«Ã½ Radio and Television including
Radio 2, Radio Wales, Radio Scotland, Radio Ulster and GMR (Manchester)
plus highlights of all five events shown as part of the live coverage
of the Last Night of the Proms on ´óÏó´«Ã½ ONE and ´óÏó´«Ã½ TWO.
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The ´óÏó´«Ã½ Proms 2004 Guide is published on Friday 30 April 2004.
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It contains full details of the complete programme of concerts, along
with articles about the music and artists, and a priority booking form.
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Priced £5, it is available from all good bookshops and can be ordered
from the ´óÏó´«Ã½ Shop, 50 Margaret Street, London, W1W 8SF or by telephone
on 0870 241 5490.
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Booking facilities are also available on the ´óÏó´«Ã½ Proms website -
- itself a comprehensive source of information and insight into the
2004 Proms season.
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