A Dolly Parton tribute and a piano star: the Last Night of the Proms in review
Yuja Wang, Nicky Spence and Sakari Oramo led the BBC’s closing-night celebrations at the Royal Albert Hall on 12 September.
The BBC Proms’ 2026 season came to its traditional close on 12 September with the Last Night of the Proms at the Royal Albert Hall, led by the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Chorus, the BBC Singers and conductor Sakari Oramo.
The soloists were the pianist Yuja Wang and the tenor Nicky Spence, who headed a programme that balanced the ceremonial with the celebratory in the usual Last Night fashion. Wang gave the first Proms performance of Samuel Barber’s Pulitzer Prize-winning Piano Concerto, and also delivered a Proms premiere, Alexander Tsfasman’s Jazz Suite for piano and orchestra.
The evening’s most talked-about moment was its tribute to Dolly Parton, who had died three weeks earlier. The second half began with To Dolly, with Love, a seven-minute medley of three of her songs arranged by Fiona Brice: Sheridan Smith, dressed as Parton, sang “9 to 5”, Ward Thomas delivered “Jolene” and Beverley Knight sang “I Will Always Love You” as audience members lit the hall with their mobile phones.
Spence, the evening’s tenor soloist, sang Dvořák’s Rusalka in the first half and led a medley of Scots songs, Scotch Snap, created this year by Stuart Calvert. Later, dressed as Nicely-Nicely Johnson from Guys and Dolls, he sang “Sit Down, You’re Rockin’ the Boat” with the BBC Symphony Chorus and BBC Singers.
The 2026 season presented 86 concerts over eight weeks, from 17 July to 12 September, with more than 70,000 tickets at £8 and 24 programmes on BBC television. On this evidence, the argument about the Last Night will run a while yet.
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