The Proms, London’s eight-week season of daily orchestral classical music concerts and events, has kicked off for 2018 and Cadogan Hall on Sloane Street is playing host to a series of concerts throughout, held every Monday lunchtime.
A bit of history: Prom is short for promenade concert, a term which originally referred to 18th Century outdoor concerts in London’s pleasure gardens, where members of the audience could stroll around as the orchestra played.
The first of the annual series of Proms continuing today inaugurated in 1895 by the businessman and impresario Robert Newman, who wanted to entice a wider audience for concert hall music by offering tickets to standing areas in the hall, where prices for tickets were considerably lower than those in seated areas, and an informal atmosphere, where eating, drinking and smoking were permitted to the standing “Promenaders” or “Prommers”.
This year, Cadogan Hall’s line-up BBC Proms concerts includes several standout events, from moving choral music from the BBC Singers and Bernstein showtunes to contemporary chamber music and an array of 20th-century French chamber music performed by the soloists of the Berliner Philharmoniker.
For more information and to book tickets, visit www.cadoganhall.com and check out the highlight events below to see what’s happening…