The Last Night of the Proms

Marin Alsop leads the celebrated Last Night festivities on Saturday 7 September, making her the first woman to conduct the world-famous fi nale to the two-month festival.

Alsop leads the BBC Symphony Orchestra through a programme of both traditional and new music, threading together many of the strands featured throughout the 2013 festival.

Star soloists violinist Nigel Kennedy and mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato take to the stage to perform a wide range of popular pieces including Vaughan Williams’s The Lark Ascending, ‘Over the Rainbow’ and ‘Danny Boy’.

Opening with the world premiere of Anna Clyne’s Masquerade, the Last Night programme includes music by some of the season’s anniversary composers, including Wagner and Britten, as well as featured composer Granville Bantock, before closing with the traditional Last Night pieces.

Celebrations beyond the Royal Albert Hall

The Last Night of the Proms celebrations spill out from the Royal Albert Hall into all four nations of the UK. Each BBC Proms in the Park event has its own popular line-up of artists and presenters, and culminates in a live link-up with the Royal Albert Hall for the second half of the concert, transmitted on BBC One.

Nigel Kennedy and Joseph Calleja, both of whom will have featured earlier in the festival, will perform at Proms in the Park, Hyde Park, alongside the BBC Concert Orchestra, with Kennedy also appearing at the Royal Albert Hall that same evening. The Hyde Park event is broadcast live on BBC Radio 2. Full details of all the BBC Proms in the Park events will be announced shortly.

Highlights of the Last Night celebrations around the UK will be included as part of the live coverage on BBC One, BBC Two, and BBC Radio 3.