Flora Willson gave Jonathon Heyward’s BBC Proms debut a glowing five star review in The Guardian. She wrote:
“Jessie Montgomery’s Banner provided an equivalent opportunity for Technicolor funk and forward drive, compressing and refracting the Star-Spangled Banner through layers of more recent musical idioms. It was ferociously committed and incisive; no wonder Heyward leaned back against the podium, grinning and exhausted, at its end.
“Not too exhausted, though, to lead – from memory – a fast and fearless performance of Beethoven’s Eroica Symphony, in which loud chords exploded, repeating like fireworks in the hall’s dome, and the quietest passages barely registered. It was exuberant, exhilarating stuff.”