Review: BBC PROMS: FIRST NIGHT OF THE PROMS 2026, Royal Albert Hall

And so, we’re off. The 99th BBC Proms bursts from the blocks with a satisfying start.

If the Last Night is about the waving of Union Jacks until arms ache, the First Night had some of that feeling too — albeit a different flag. The Proms this time around will commemorate the 250th anniversary of United States declaring bye-bye to Blighty and plotting its own course into history. Before the strains of “Jerusalem” fade away for another year, the Royal Albert Hall will see both the LA Philharmonic and New York’s Met Orchestra take the stage and Marin Alsop will conduct a night of Leonard Bernstein and George Gershwin. Yuja Wang gives Samuel Barber’s Piano Concerto its first Proms outing on the Last Night, there are world premieres from Wynton Marsalis and Jessie Montgomery plus a centenary celebration of Miles Davis’ work.

On its opening evening, though, the theme was noticeably light touch. The BBC Symphony Orchestra was led by its Finnish principal guest conductor Dalia Stasevska, the star turn was the 22-year-old South Korean pianist Yunchan Lim, New Zealand’s tenor Thomas Atkins was front and centre and, in attendance to see her own work receiving its official world debut, was the French-British composer Josephine Stephenson. 

The show opens with twenty minutes of restless Americana. After the brief blast that is Copland’s “Fanfare for the Common Man”, the orchestra settles into two longer pieces. Gershwin’s An American in Paris focuses on the homesick Yank’s impressions of the French capital; Maurice Ravel’s jazz-inspired Piano Concerto in G major is Paris biting back. Their 1928 Stateside meeting is legendary: Ravel famously refused to teach Gershwin, advising him not to settle for second-rate Ravel when he was already first-rate Gershwin.

After the applause dies down for the Gershwin, Lim’s grand piano is wheeled on stage while the audience takes a welcome hydration break. Many are still fanning the Proms programmes into their faces when the prodigy takes his seat and shows us exactly why the classical music world is going ga-ga over him. He was only 18 when he won the prestigious Van Cliburn competition, an international event held every four years that — unlike the FIFA World Cup currently wrapping up in the US — doesn’t reek of capitalism and corruption. 

Lim eases into the concerto like an F1 driver pulling away from pole, taking the fast first bend with casual confidence. The long, slow Adagio assai that follows threatens to topple into aural melatonin until the Presto finale which he takes at full tilt, all speed and weight, ripping through a piece less about what can be taught than what is felt. Every movement is studied; none of it merely studied. 

The second half contains two choral works, one fresh out of the box and the other that makes its Proms debut after nearly eighty years. The American theme, having jaunted off to Paris before the interval, slinks back after it as text only: named after a line from Belgian-born American writer May Sarton, Stephenson’s specially commissioned That the sunrise not leave us unmoved contains a mosaic of quotes from the Massachusetts poet Emily Dickinson. The piece comes in at just eight minutes but, through the sharp use of harps and woodwinds, makes a genuine impact. Not exactly a killer but more than a filler.

The chunkiest section of the post-interval section is given over to Gerald Finzi’s For St Cecilia. It premiered in this hall on 22 November 1947 — St Cecilia's Day and, coincidentally, exactly 16 years before JFK’s assassination — played by the BBC Symphony Orchestra under Adrian Boult, with tenor René Soames and the Luton Choral Society. Scroll forward to today and Stasevska holds the baton with Atkins on tenor duty backed by the BBC Singers and BBC Symphony Chorus. It’s a skilful blend of talents that gives the programme a rollicking finish. 

With the nation nursing a World Cup hangover and our boys soon on their way back from the States, the show’s encore embraced the perfect opportunity to send us out on a quintessentially English football song. But which one? Would there be an orchestral version of “Vindaloo”? A soaring “Nessun Dorma” from Atkins? Maybe a heartfelt “Three Lions” with lyrics updated to “sixty years of hurt”, or even the gallows humour of “Don’t Cry For Me, Argentina”? Instead, we get the obvious. The otherwise-accomplished night ends on a rendition of Oasis' wedding-and-funeral cliché 'Wonderwall', a choice as reliably deflating as England's trophy drought since 1966. Maybe next time.

The Proms continues at the Royal Albert Hall until 12 September.

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