Proms 2026 Dudamel and the LA Phil: Beethoven and Adès

The Los Angeles Philharmonic returns to the Proms for the first time in over two decades, conducted by Music Director Gustavo Dudamel. Pastoral peace meets infernal horrors in two vividly descriptive orchestral classics. Cuckoos and nightingales call, a brook gently gurgles and tavern musicians strike up a dance in Beethoven’s ‘Pastoral’ Symphony. Thomas Adès paints a bleaker landscape in Inferno – the first panel of his Dante ballet (hear part two, Purgatorio, performed by the National Youth Orchestra on 8 August). ‘Physical, vivid and grotesque’, it’s a score that finds strange beauty in horror.

Gustavo Dudamel © Danny Clinch