The 2025 BBC Proms season plays host to music by Tom Coult, Thomas Adès, Cassandra Miller and Ralph Vaughan Williams at London’s Royal Albert Hall and Gateshead.
On 21 July Tom Coult’s role as Composer-in-Association with the BBC Philharmonic culminates with the premiere of Monologues for the Curious, commissioned by BBC Radio 3, with tenor Allan Clayton as soloist, conducted by John Storgårds. The 24-minute set of four dramatic monologues set texts created by Coult inspired by the ghost stories of M.R. James, whose tone Coult describes as “sepulchral yet distanced”.
Its first movement recounts an erotically-charged encounter with a stranger, though its initial enthusiasm fades; the second movement recalls a series of chilling dreams. ‘A lonely hearts ad’ sees the tenor play a harmonica as he presents his views, experiences, and peccadillos. The loss of a child haunts the final movement, ‘Letitia has left me for Brighton’. It is Coult’s second collaboration with Allan Clayton in 2025, following the world premiere of Black Shuck Lament with Dunedin Consort at the Aldeburgh Festival on 21 June, inspired by the local legend of ghostly black dog. The premiere of Coult’s St. John’s Dance opened the 2017 Proms season, conducted by Edward Gardner.
Thomas Adès returns to the podium on 2 September at the Royal Albert Hall for a performance with the BBC Symphony Orchestra of Five Spells from The Tempest, alongside music by Sibelius and Gabriella Smith, whose organ concerto Breathing Forests receives its UK premiere with James McVinnie.
Sean Shibe and Ema Nikolovska lead a performance of Cassandra Miller’s Bel Canto at the Glasshouse International Centre for Music in Gateshead on 27 July, alongside Boulez’s Le marteau sans maître. The piece for voice and ensemble is a portrait of Maria Callas, partly based on her famous live recording of Vissi d’arte, and spotloighting the idiosyncrasies of Callas’ singing – her vibrato, portamenti, and swoops. Alongside Shibe and Nikolovska, the 16-minute work will be performed by Adam Walker, Colin Alexander, Ruth Gibson, Mira Benjamin, and Matthew Hunt. The group also present the piece at Wigmore Hall (29 May), the Elbphilharmonie (31 May) and at the Aldeburgh Festival this summer (23 June).
The Proms opens on 18 July with a performance of Vaughan Williams’ oratorio Sancta Civitas (1925) – a magisterial setting of the Book of Revelation that ranks among the jewels of the British choral repertoire. The 30-minute work calls for substantial vocal forces, including a semi chorus of around twenty voices and an offstage ‘distant choir’ of upper voices, who are also placed with an offstage trumpet, recalling his Pastoral Symphony). Though its title is Latin, the text is entirely in English and drawn from several different translations of its Biblical sources. Sakari Oramo conducts the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Chorus, bolstered by the BBC Singers and London Youth Choirs, with baritone Gerald Finley and tenor Caspar Singh as soloists.