Compile your own choice of music for a Promenade Concert

[Hornspieler]

If you were asked to compile a programme for a Promenade Concert with a particular theme, what would your selection be?

My choice would be for a fairly lightweight first part, a wee dram of Scotch to open part two and then a symphony which typifies the strength and majesty of British music from the 20th century.

No soloists involved and nothing which would be off-putting to the average Proms devotee.


Here we are, then:

A Programme of British Music

R Vaughan Williams: Overture “The Wasps”
Frederick Delius: Summer Night on the River
Sir William Walton: Capriccio Burlesque
John Ireland: The Forgotten Rite
Sir Arthur Bliss: Suite “Things to Come”

INTERVAL

Malcolm Arnold: Overture “Tam o’Shanter”
Hamish McGunn: Land of the Mountains and the Flood
Sir Edward Elgar: Symphony Nº 1 in A flat

Encore: Arnold Bax: Tintagel

Now its your turn.

Select a theme and then compile a programme of suitable length which you would like to see scheduled as part of the Promenade Concert series. It doesn't have to be British music but must have a theme; such as "The Great Russians" or "Gipsy Serenade" or (your choice).

There should be some interesting responses.

HS

[Pabmusic]

I won't do a themed programme. But how about:

Faure: Masques et Bergamasques suite
Mozart: Clarinet Concerto
Kaiinnikov: Symphony 1 in Gm

encore: Debussy: Marche Ecossaise

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

As a counter-weight to HS' "fairly lightweight" concert (I'm not sure the orchestral players would agree - more than 80 minutes of Music and then the Elgar #1 and a substantial encore!) I'd offer:

Classical Music isn't Dead: a concert of 21st Century Orchestral Music

Barrett: No
Lachenmann: Concerto for 6 Horns and Orchestra
Sciarrino: Shadow of Sound
Ferneyhough: Plotzlichkeit

Tickets'd sell like hot cakes.

[EdgeleyRob]

The 'neglected Russian music that will get you thinking why isn't it played more often' Prom.

Taneyev - Overture to Oresteya.
Weinberg - Cello Concerto.

interval

Myaskovsky - Symphony No 6.

[MrGongGong]

As a counter-weight to HS' "fairly lightweight" concert (I'm not sure the orchestral players would agree - more than 80 minutes of Music and then the Elgar #1 and a substantial encore!) I'd offer:

Classical Music isn't Dead: a concert of 21st Century Orchestral Music

Barrett: No
Lachenmann: Concerto for 6 Horns and Orchestra
Sciarrino: Shadow of Sound
Ferneyhough: Plotzlichkeit

Tickets'd sell like hot cakes.

I'll take 100

[pastoralguy]

Well, I'd like to be traditional, so

Sibelius. 'En Saga'

Dvorak. 'Cello concerto

Beethoven. Symphony 6.

There you go...

[Hornspieler]

I won't do a themed programme. But how about:

Faure: Masques et Bergamasques suite
Mozart: Clarinet Concerto
Kaiinnikov: Symphony 1 in Gm

encore: Debussy: Marche Ecossaise

Thanks for the speedy reply, Pabs.

Yes, I think that French Composers get a poor showing in concert programmes and Faure and Debussy form a good coupling.

Of all the Mozart concerti, it is the clarinet concerto which, for me, goes on just that little bit too long; fine work though it is, so I would probably opt for the Concerto for flute and harp; which forms a link with the writings of Faure and Debussy (and it's not played often enouigh IMV)
I don't know anything of Kaiinnikov's work and I would always be interested in hearing anything from the Russian school of symphonic composition.

I think that we're off to a good start here.

Who's next?

HS

[Hornspieler]

As a counter-weight to HS' "fairly lightweight" concert (I'm not sure the orchestral players would agree - more than 80 minutes of Music and then the Elgar #1 and a substantial encore!) I'd offer:

Classical Music isn't Dead: a concert of 21st Century Orchestral Music

Barrett: No
Lachenmann: Concerto for 6 Horns and Orchestra
Sciarrino: Shadow of Sound
Ferneyhough: Plotzlichkeit

Tickets'd sell like hot cakes.

More like a hot potato, I would have thought.

Certainly your programme would attract a different audience, but not, I think, to fill the Royal Albert Hall.

I believe that "Timber" Wood's promenade concerts were considerably longer than the sparse ration we are afforded nowadays.

Anyway, food for thought here.

HS

[Hornspieler]

The 'neglected Russian music that will get you thinking why isn't it played more often' Prom.

Taneyev - Overture to Oresteya.
Weinberg - Cello Concerto.

interval

Myaskovsky - Symphony No 6.

Good idea. (see my reply to post #2)



HS

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

More like a hot potato, I would have thought.

Possibly - although this is surely better than selling a cold potato? Anyway - there'd be MrGG and his mates and me with mine: so, 101 just for starters.

Certainly your programme would attract a different audience, but not, I think, to fill the Royal Albert Hall.

Yes, I've often wondered about this. Considering the sizeable audiences at specialist Contemporary Music events aren't all that small, I wonder if it might be better to have a "New Music Weekend" stretching from Friday night to Sunday night, with afternoon and evening chamber events, and education workshops involving teenagers (captive audience of relatives, there). The more adventurous "traditional" Prommers would go along as well as the already-converted. I reckon that would attratct a larger, international audience than a single "one-off" concert in the middle of the week.

'Course - the standard "Prom Commission"-type of "new" Music would stay where it belongs in the main core of the Season: if we're going to have a ghetto for New Music, then at least let the Music be at least "New": Music the like of which has never been heard before (as opposed to that which copies - affectionately and with great skill - what has already been better done before).

[Demetrius]

Yes, I've often wondered about this. Considering the sizeable audiences at specialist Contemporary Music events aren't all that small, I wonder if it might be better to have a "New Music Weekend" stretching from Friday night to Sunday night, with afternoon and evening chamber events, and education workshops involving teenagers (captive audience of relatives, there). The more adventurous "traditional" Prommers would go along as well as the already-converted. I reckon that would attratct a larger, international audience than a single "one-off" concert in the middle of the week.

That, I like.

As someone who only reluctantly ventures into "new" music and had mixed success when I did, I would actually prefer that to smallish bits and pieces mixed into standardfare. If I do venture into Crumb, Schoenberg or anything even more recent, I like to put myself into a certain mindset. Something which is difficult to achieve if the piece follows say a Beethoven Symphony.

I might be slightly less likely to give your weekend a try, but if I did, the music would stand a better chance reaching me.


As for Concerts, the possibilities are endless (If you don't care about audience numbers, or the pressures of finding orchestras that are willing and able to perform unusual fare)

Britisch Music: Starting with Cypriani Potter Symphony No 3/6 in c minor (1926), going on to Rubbra Violin or Viola Concerto, then after the interval something shorter by Rubbra, say the Sinfonietta Op 163, and then Potter Symphony in G minor from 1832, which is either his 6th, his 10th, his 2nd (all Wikipedia) or his 4th (Suffolkcoastal)

American Music for next Year: Birthdayboy David Diamond to start off with Rounds, then his Second Symphony, after the Interval Walter Piston: Capriccio for Harp and String Orchestra - not that I ever heard it, but something for the harp would be interesting - to finish off Diamond 4th Symphony

for another theme, I would like to commission a prom centred on female composers, can't come up with a good selection myself, the pieces I know and like don't fit together.

[DracoM]

Anything in which there is no clapping between movements.

[ahinton]

Considering the sizeable audiences at specialist Contemporary Music events aren't all that small, I wonder if it might be better to have a "New Music Weekend" stretching from Friday night to Sunday night, with afternoon and evening chamber events, and education workshops involving teenagers (captive audience of relatives, there). The more adventurous "traditional" Prommers would go along as well as the already-converted. I reckon that would attratct a larger, international audience than a single "one-off" concert in the middle of the week.

As a rule, I would feel more inclued to tend towards the inclusion of more challenging contemporary works in programmes - especially at the Proms - that are complemented by better known and more "traditional" ones, such as the Prom some five years ago that pitted Xenakis' Nomos Gamma and Ais against Rachmaninov's The Isle of the Dead and Shostakovich's Symphony No. 9; OK, the latter two might not be the most popualr of their composers' works but they're still pretty much "standard repertoire" that would likely (and doubtless did) attract a decent size Prom audience of whom many might not previously have heard one or other or both of the Xenakis pieces; the alternative smacks rather too much of ghettoising, whereas creating workable programmes that mix the familiar with the considearbly more challenging seem more likely to get audiences invlolved in the latter rather than run the possible risk of dissuading them from bothering to turn up an all-contemporary concert. Also, for a similarly mixed programme devoted, for example, to music by living British composers, how about something along the lines of

Richard Barrett: Vanity
David Matthews: Symphony No. 6
________________

Brian Ferneyhough: La Terre est un homme
Ronald Stevenson: Violin Concerto

OK, the second half would be somewhat lengthy, but...

[Roehre]

A whole "Beethoven ?" concert:

Beethoven:
Contretänze WoO 14
Piano concerto mvt in D KH-Anh. 7 (composer Rössler/Rosetti ?)
Romance Cantabile for piano and orchestra in e Hess 15
Rondo for piano and orchestra in B-flat WoO 6

Interval

Beethoven
Symfonie in C “Jena” KH-Anh.1 (composer Friedrich witt)
Gratulationsmenuett WoO 3
Symphonic movement based on sketches for the Tenth symphony ( realized by Barry Cooper)

Encores:
Military March in F WoO 18
Menuet and Coda with posthorn solo in C WoO 7/12

[Roehre]

A British concert:

Smyth:
The Wreckers: overture

Grace Williams
Violin concerto

Interval

German:
Welsh Rhapsody

Harty:
With the Wild Geese

Maxwell Davies:
Orkney Wedding, with sunrise