The Proms are not just a wonderful opportunity to hear classical music by some of the best orchestras and soloists in the world.
Mr. Barenboim gave the score a solid reading with fine moments in the opening Andante, where the piano's top line must ring out incisively, and in the closing Giocoso, a virtuoso dialogue between the keyboard and soloists in the orchestra.
The price for Promenaders – those who stand in front of the stage to give the event its unique atmosphere – is just £5 (unchanged for five years), which has to be astonishing value to see the best orchestras, conductors and soloists in the world.
First-rank orchestras like Philadelphia pick and choose from among the best conductors and soloists in the world to fill their seasons; Joseph Kluger, the orchestra's president, said that of the 634 conductors who were on an initial list put together by the search committee in a process that eventually settled on Mr. Eschenbach about 10percentt had performed with Philadelphia in the last decade.
Towards this end Mahler used a chorus and soloists in the finale of his Second Symphony, the "Resurrection".
Vaughan Williams also insisted on a balance between words and music in A Sea Symphony, writing in his program note for the work, "It is also noticeable that the orchestra has an equal share with the chorus and soloists in carrying out the musical ideas".
Today, she is an executive assistant at a Wall Street investment firm and a soloist in the choir.
He became a lay preacher and featured soloist in the choir at the First United Methodist Church not long after he started working at Hawthorn Funeral Home in 1985.
The orchestra will take this program on its tour of Japan and South Korea next week, and the soloist in the concerto is a 21-year-old Japanese-born violinist, Sayaka Shoji, in her Philarmonic debut.
And the soloist in the Brahms should be no less well suited: Garrick Ohlsson, a big, burly pianist capable of melting sensitivity as well as raw power to take on a big, burly work that needs both.
