Five years ago, Anthony Parnther re-opened London’s newly-renovated Queen Elizabeth Hall with Chineke!, Europe’s first majority Black and ethnically diverse orchestra, in a historic concert that was broadcast live worldwide by the BBC.

Their program concluded with Beethoven’s Fourth Symphony, in what The Guardian welcomed as “a high voltage interpretation that maintained a fine balance between detail and elan.”

The review continued “The finale was edge-of-your-seat stuff, blending rhythmic precision and energy with heady elation…A most exhilarating evening.”

Late this summer, Parnther and the British orchestra reprise their reading of Beethoven’s Fourth at another iconic London venue, when the conductor makes his BBC Proms debut at the Royal Albert Hall on September 1.

This time the work crowns a program comprising Seven O’Clock Shout, a pandemic anthem by Valerie Coleman, Performance Today’s 2020 Classical Woman of the Year; the Rondo from Sinfonietta No. 1 by innovative American composer Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson; Four Novelletten by Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, the pioneering Black British composer for whom Perkinson was named; and Haydn’s Trumpet Concerto, with Nigerian-Scottish trumpeter Aaron Azunda Akugbo as soloist.

The concert will air live on Britain’s BBC television.

News