They’re Back!

/ jt

Summertime
And the Proms are returning!

First Night 2026-00001.

One of the great joys of summertime for me is the BBC Proms.

Of course, I don’t live in London, so I can’t attend the concerts at the Royal Albert Hall, which is where most of the festivities are held, but happily for me, many of the concerts are televised, and those programs have a way of finding their way to the internet.

The schedule of televised events can be found online, and there are quite a few that I’m looking forward to.

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There are traditional items such as Strauss’s Also Sprach Zarathustra, Holst’s The Planets, and Beethoven’s Pastoral Symphony, but there are also a Miles Davis Centenary concert, an evening of American classics, and a James Bond-inspired concert. Plus the Metropolitan Opera’s Met Orchestra and Director Yannick Nézet-Séguin will be presenting an all-Strauss concert that includes the final scene of the composer’s Salome.

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The First Night of the Proms on Friday night was performed by the BBC Symphony Orchestra led by Dalia Stasevska. It started with Copland’s Fanfare for the Comman Man, followed by Gershwin’s American in Paris. Then pianist Yunchan Lim joined them for Ravel’s Concerto in G. And that was just the first half.

One way to see the BBC Proms is on YouTube where “geddylee” keeps posting the concerts until they are eventually taken down and his (or her?) account is deleted. Then s/he comes back with a new account incremented with a new number. The current account is geddylee5001.

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Here’s the First Night of the Proms queued up to start at the beginning of Copland’s Fanfare.

BTW, I assume that the BBC is well aware of the geddylee5001 account (how could they not be?) and they could ask for it to be taken down immediately. That they don’t, tells me that they are sort of OK with the videos being shown at least for a short time. They presumably have to ask for them to be taken down eventually in order to preserve their copyright.

If the geddylee5001 account does disappear, just do a search on YouTube for “BBC Proms 2026” and you’ll be sure to find the new account.

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