{"id":2504764,"date":"2026-07-16T16:20:40","date_gmt":"2026-07-16T16:20:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/?p=2504764"},"modified":"2026-07-16T16:20:40","modified_gmt":"2026-07-16T16:20:40","slug":"from-a-forest-to-an-all-star-trio-and-the-fires-of-hell-my-pick-of-new-music-coming-to-the-proms-this-year-music","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/from-a-forest-to-an-all-star-trio-and-the-fires-of-hell-my-pick-of-new-music-coming-to-the-proms-this-year-music\/","title":{"rendered":"From a forest to an all-star trio and the fires of hell \u2013 my pick of new music coming to the Proms this year | Music"},"content":{"rendered":"

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T<\/span>hree heatwaves in, but the summer hasn\u2019t truly started until the Proms begin, and on Friday<\/a>, Radio 3 and the BBC Symphony Orchestra light the blue touchpaper of eight weeks of music-making at the Royal Albert Hall and beyond. Like me, you might have been through the Proms guide marking up the concerts you most want to hear, but what\u2019s always surprising as the summer of music unfolds are the concerts you couldn\u2019t have predicted as being remarkable; the concerts that might look unexceptional on paper but in the flesh of performance find special resonance, be that the groups making their debuts, the brand new music and Proms premieres, or simply that alchemy that means that concerts that are days or weeks apart create musical and creative connections you\u2019d never have thought possible.<\/p>\n

Predicting surprises and revelations of a season that hasn\u2019t even begun is of course a pointless and contradictory exercise, but of the new music on offer there are many works that should merit their own marker-pen tick. The First Night\u2019s world premiere of Josephine Stephenson<\/a>\u2019s That the Sunrise Not Leave Us Unmoved<\/a>, and Jessie Montgomery<\/a>\u2019s cello concerto for Abel Selaocoe<\/a>, These Righteous Paths, on 20 July<\/a>, should make a wonderfully contrasting pairing \u2013 Stephenson has written music of poetic refinement while Montgomery and Selaocoe\u2019s concerto collaboration promises an experience of soul-searching power. \u201cA living organism that gradually absorbs orchestra and audience alike into its breathing body\u201d wrote Michelle Assay<\/a> at the work\u2019s North American premiere in Toronto.<\/p>\n

<\/svg><\/span>Abel Selaocoe performs on Glastonbury\u2019s West Holts Stage in June 2025. The cellist brings Jessie Montgomery\u2019s These Righteous Paths to the Royal Albert Hall. <\/span> Photograph: Alicia Canter\/The Guardian<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

And I will not be missing two elementally different orchestral visions that open concerts a few days apart: Gy\u00f6rgy Kurt\u00e1g<\/a>\u2019s Stele, which Sakari Oramo conducts with the BBC Symphony on 22 July<\/a>, and Norwegian composer Kristine Tj\u00f8gersen<\/a>\u2019s Between Trees, with the London Philharmonic and Edward Gardner on 27 July.<\/p>\n

Stele\u2019s three short but shattering movements<\/a> are a multilayered tapestry of lament that\u2019s personal, musical and historical. Kurt\u00e1g has said that this piece, composed for the Berlin Philharmonic in 1994, is a vision \u201cof someone lying wounded on a battlefield. The fighting rages all around him, but he sees only a very clear, very blue sky \u2026 His feeling is that nothing is as important as this sky\u201d. Written in memory of his friend, the composer and teacher Andr\u00e1s Mih\u00e1ly, the work opens with a reference to Beethoven\u2019s opera Fidelio: the octaves that symbolise Florestan\u2019s imprisonment, and his hope. But Kurt\u00e1g\u2019s piece offers no release. That blue sky remains out of reach in the Larghissimo-Adagio first movement, and especially in the detonation of despair of the second part<\/a>, in which the gigantic orchestra is consumed by implacable, battering conflict, before a final movement that\u2019s a muffled march to oblivion, a steady state of purgatorial desolation.<\/p>\n