A British Musical Tradition Will Get Airtime in New York

Performances from the BBC Proms - an eight-week explosion of daily summer concerts, mostly at the Royal Albert Hall in London - will be broadcast by WQXR, the New York classical radio station, for the first time this summer, in an arrangement made possible by the station’s membership in the European Broadcasting Union.

For devoted fans of the proms, which have often offered important new work as well as standard repertory in starry performances, the station’s series is likely to be frustrating. Unlike BBC Radio 3, the BBC’s classical music arm, which broadcasts all 92 of this year’s concerts, WQXR is being selective: it is broadcasting only eight full concerts, on Saturday evenings at 5 p.m., starting on July 20. Highlights from other performances will be broadcast daily at 4 p.m.

The Saturday broadcasts will not be the performances that take place in London the same day. A WQXR spokeswoman said that the station had not yet selected all eight concerts, but three have been scheduled so far. The opening broadcast, on July 20, will include Vaughan Williams’s “Sea Symphony” and works by Britten, Lutoslawski, Rachmaninoff and Julian Anderson, with the BBC Symphony Orchestra, led by Sakari Oramo. The July 27 program features the National Youth Orchestra of the United States of America, with Valery Gergiev conducting and Joshua Bell as the soloist in the Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto. And on Sept. 7, the station will broadcast the Last Night at the Proms, a celebratory concert of short works with the mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato and the violinist Nigel Kennedy as the soloists, and Marin Alsop conducting.

The full Proms schedule includes a Wagner celebration that offers the “Ring” cycle, with Daniel Barenboim conducting, as well as performances of “Tristan und Isolde,” led by Semyon Bychkov; “Tannhäuser,” conducted by Donald Runnicles, and “Parsifal,” led by Sir Mark Elder. Other highlights include an evening of Stockhausen, with “Mittwoch aus ‘Licht’ - Welt-Parlament” and “Gesang der Jünglinge,” a 40th anniversary concert by the Tallis Scholars, and a program by the Nicholas Collon and the Aurora Orchestra devoted to works by Frank Zappa, Conlon Nancarrow and Philip Glass.