Review: BBC PROMS: LAST NIGHT OF THE PROMS 2026, Royal Albert Hall
The season comes to a close with guest appearances from Nicky Spence, Yuja Wang and Beverley Knight
"It’s tradition, Oliver. Traditions are important.” So says Dawn in the Inside No. 9 episode “Last Night of the Proms”, explaining the actions of the Prommers during the Fantasia on British Sea-Songs section of the concert to her teenage nephew. Anyone at the Royal Albert Hall (or watching from home) on Saturday night might have been forgiven for thinking that the first two thirds of the programme were incidental, given the insistence on party poppers being set off every two minutes and flags taking over nearly every spare inch of the auditorium - all while Sakari Oramo conducted the BBC Symphony Orchestra through a mixture of pieces from the past two centuries.
If, like me, you regularly attend Proms throughout the season but have never gone to a Last Night before, it is a bit of a culture shock; after eight weeks of sitting quietly and paying attention to the music, applauding politely and/or cheering afterwards (depending on your preference), to then have Prommers letting off tiger tail balloons just as a performance is about to begin goes against every expectation and instinct. There’s a place for a bit of silliness and fun, but surely that’s during pauses or the interval - or at the very least the final, annual sequence of music. It’s a sensory nightmare.
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Throughout this Proms season there have been commemorations of the 250th anniversary of the USA’s Declaration of Independence, resulting in multiple performances of “Fanfare for the Common Man”, but thankfully for the final concert Aaron Copland has been shelved. The overture to Leonard Bernstein’s Candide opened the show, setting things off on the right note, and another musical theatre number in Frank Loesser’s “Sit Down, You’re Rocking the Boat” from Guys and Dolls rounded off the regular programming; sandwiched in the middle was a compelling performance of Samuel Barber’s “Piano Concerto” from the effervescent Yuja Wang.
Wang’s contributions were easily a couple of the most memorable moments of the night. Playing the concerto, and then later Alexander Tsfasman’s “Jazz Suite for piano and orchestra”, so effortlessly and with such apparent enthusiasm is one thing - but to do it in 4-inch Louboutin heels is something else entirely. Overflowing with talent and charisma, you can certainly see why she’s become such a superstar.
A late addition to the programme was To Dolly, with Love - a Fiona Brice arrangement of three of Dolly Parton’s most famous songs as a too-short medley to kick off the second half. The rendition of “9 to 5” wasn’t vintage Sheridan Smith, which is a shame as she is a very talented musical theatre performer, but Country duo Ward Thomas impressed with their harmonies on “Jolene”. It was the ever-reliable, consistently soulful Beverley Knight who stole the spotlight, rounding off the medley with a spine-tingling performance of “I Will Always Love You”. This inclusion might not have been everyone’s cup of tea, but not only did it honour the Proms’ spirit of inclusion, but it also showed off Parton’s musical legacy - and celebrated the life of a genuinely decent human being to boot.
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Tenor for the night, Scotland’s Nicky Spence, was a booking and a half for the Proms. As well as providing gloriously crisp vocals during each of his performances, the fact that he returned to the stage in a different outfit for every different piece (including a couple of Bucks Fizz-esque reveals) gave real entertainment value. Were the dancers really needed during the Scotch Snap? Probably not, but it did provide something a bit different to look at - and considering the concert lasted a whopping three-and-a-half hours, perhaps that’s fair enough. The inclusion of “I’m Gonna Be (500 Miles)” left a slightly bitter taste in the mouth, following The Proclaimers last week wading in on trans rights and downplaying the behaviour of the likes of Graham Linehan and JK Rowling, but otherwise the Scotch Snap medley of songs was a great balance of beauty and entertainment - and certainly went down well with the Last Night crowd.
There were two other BBC commissions making their world première during this Prom: Samy Moussa’s “Dithyramb” and Anne Dudley’s “Iris of Life”. The first celebrates ancient Greek dance songs which would have been performed by male voice choirs - so it was very much within the celebratory spirit of the evening to include in this particular programme. The second was inspired by the Native American poet Zitkála-Šá’s poem of the same name, and celebrates acts of kindness and the ripple effect they can have; it possibly suffered from being programmed in between two more raucous crowdpleasing pieces, this moment of beauty and calm was very much appreciated by many audience members at that moment.
The sequence of pieces which even the uninitiated associates with the Last Night of the Proms begins with Henry Wood’s Fantasia on British Sea-Songs (which concludes with “Rule, Britannia!” - not “Rule Britannia!”, as erroneously printed in the programme), and then continues with “Pomp and Circumstance March No. 1” (Land of Hope and Glory), “Jerusalem”, the British national anthem, and “Auld lang syne”. All welcome various modes of audience participation, from bobbing up and down to singing along.
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This should be a place where regular folk can reclaim the Union Flag from the far-right mobs who have been co-opting it for the past decade - where better to take something back for proper patriotic purposes than a musical concert series which has been run by the BBC for nearly one hundred years? But alas, for me it still felt stifling and helplessly outmoded - despite the fact that there were nearly as many EU flags as there were UK ones. It also hammered home that “Jerusalem” would be a far more appropriate national anthem than the one we are currently stuck with, as singing it in the majestic Royal Albert Hall actually stirred some patriotic emotion within me. Perhaps its long-standing association with the England cricket team had something of an effect, but you can’t deny a rousing composition like that.
This year’s Proms series has been one of my favourites yet, with so many highlights across classical and cross-genre concerts; it seemed to capture the public imagination as well, with a 32% increase in accounts accessing the Proms on both BBC iPlayer and BBC Sounds. This Last Night, however, was a bit more hit and miss for someone not accustomed to its foibles. Come for Yuja Wang and Nicky Spence, stay for Beverley Knight - and maybe just sneak off before the final third.
The BBC Proms ran at the Royal Albert Hall until 12 September
Photo credit: Chris Christodoulou
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