BBC Proms 2020

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BBC Radio 3 is a radio channel that started transmitting on the 30th September 1967. It replaced Third Programme.

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BBC Proms

Music: Classical

2024

The world's greatest classical music festival - stunning performances and collaborations.

The world's greatest classical music festival. Stunning performances, unique collaborations and the sheer joy of live music. Relive 2023's highlights before the new season begins.

BBC Proms: Proms 2020: Beethoven’s Eroica

Beethoven’s Eroica

Proms 2020

BBC Radio 3 - BBC Proms, Proms 2020, Beethoven’s Eroica

Another chance to hear the first live Prom of the 2020 season.

Another chance to hear the first live Prom of 2020. Sakari Oramo and the BBC Symphony Orchestra perform Beethoven's Third Symphony, Copland and a Hannah Kendall world premiere.

Another chance to hear Sakari Oramo and the BBC Symphony Orchestra in the first live Prom of the 2020 season. Beethoven’s epic Third Symphony sits alongside Copland’s Quiet City and a Basquiat-inspired world premiere from Hannah Kendall. The BBC Singers perform Eric Whitacre's Sleep.

Originally broadcast live from the Royal Albert Hall 
Presented by Georgia Mann and Petroc Trelawny

Hannah Kendall: Tuxedo: Vasco ‘de’ Gama (BBC commission: world premiere)

Eric Whitacre: Sleep*

Aaron Copland: Quiet City

Ludwig van Beethoven: Symphony No. 3 in E flat major, ‘Eroica’

BBC Singers*
BBC Symphony Orchestra
Nicholas Chalmers (conductor)*
Sakari Oramo (conductor)

Sakari Oramo and the BBC Symphony Orchestra kick off this season’s live offering with a specially commissioned work by English composer Hannah Kendall. Tuxedo: Vasco ‘de’ Gama takes as its title a quote from American artist Jean-Michel Basquiat’s matrix of hieroglyphs, symbols and words, and it launches a voyage across the Atlantic that takes us via Eric Whitacre’s tender Sleep, sung by the BBC Singers, to the expansive, desolate sound-world of Copland’s Quiet City. 

For the concert’s climax we plunge into the stormy waters of Beethoven’s revolutionary ‘Eroica’ Symphony, noted by one early reviewer for its ‘strange modulations and violent transitions’ –  a passionate musical vision of heroism.

BBC Proms: Proms 2020

Live music and the arts: broadcasts more live music than any other radio network. Classical music is its core. Genres include world and new music, jazz, speech and drama.

Another chance to hear broadcasts of selected concerts from the 2020 BBC Proms season.

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