Proms 2023 - what is in your diary ?

[Master Jacques]

The last time the Last Night was truly worth bothering with was 1994 in my view. The first half included the tightest and most exciting Belshazzar's Feast I've ever seen - from a long list. Those were the days. Hard to believe John Drummond has been dead for nigh on 20 years. Upon looking this up I note Wikipedia quotes him late in life saying: "The lowest-common-denominator, accessibility-at-any-price, anti-intellectual laziness of so many of today's leaders [...] is a form of appeasement. Failing or refusing to differentiate between the good and the indifferent, while sheltering under a cloak of spurious democracy, is simply not good enough. It is a betrayal of all our civilization has stood for". Hard to imagine what he'd make of today's lot then!

Splendid words, thank you for quoting them. The difference is that today's Arts Council et al. do differentiate between excellence and indifference, and consciously valorise the latter!

[Bryn]

One way or another I would like to attend The Triojens and Endgame. The former, partly for nostalgia, having queued all night for the Colin Davis performance in 1968.

[smittims]

One thing that struck me about the Last Night is that only seven minutes are allocated to Henry Wood's Fantasia on British Sea Songs. For me this sums up the BBC's attitude to the Proms.

[Master Jacques]

This year's Proms may be the most uninteresting I've seen in years, and this year's LPO has only two major British works scheduled --- one of which is "The Planets" and the other the Elgar Violin Concerto. Imagine the Czech Philharmonic doing a season without any Smetana, Janacek, Martinu or even Novak! Or the Prague Spring Festival not having a single Dvorak symphony. Yet I can't see a single symphony by Vaughan Williams, Bax, Elgar or Walton in the entire Proms booklet. What's going on in England?

This from a horrified American friend of mine, who loves 20th century English music. I really don't have a sensible reply for him, though I can see John Wilson is doing Walton's 1st Symphony, which is better than nothing. We should hang our heads in shame, I quite agree.

[smittims]

The omission of Bax is particularly reprehensible. It's the 70th anniversary of his death and the 140th anniversary of his birth, and he was the last man to hold the title of Master of the King's Musick. I can't remember when one of his symphonies was done at the Proms. They could at least have played his delightful Coronation March , one of his last works.

[Master Jacques]

The omission of Bax is particularly reprehensible. It's the 70th anniversary of his death and the 140th anniversary of his birth, and he was the last man to hold the title of Master of the King's Musick. I can't remember when one of his symphonies was done at the Proms. They could at least have played his delightful Coronation March , one of his last works.

Hear, hear! The last symphony of his heard at the Proms was the 2nd, in a well-focused performance by the RPO under Andrew Litton in 2011. This was the programme:

Copland: Fanfare for the Common Man
Bax: Symphony No.2 in E minor and C major
Barber: Adagio for Strings, Op.11a
Bartók: Piano Concerto No.2
Prokofiev: Symphony No.4 in C [Revised Version, Op.112]

The Bax hit the Prokofiev out of the ground, on this occasion. Though putting up one of Bax's strongest symphonic statements, against one of Prokofiev's weakest, was hardly a fair fight!

[vinteuil]

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I can't see a single symphony by Vaughan Williams, Bax, Elgar or Walton in the entire Proms booklet

... sounds like a good start to me!

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[Master Jacques]

.... sounds like a good start to me!

Ah, so you must be a Rubbra fan. Things are even worse for us, vinteuil: we have to look back to 2001 for the last time one of his magnificent eleven got a Proms outing (No.4, Hickox, BBC Welsh, unfortunately under-rehearsed) and the wait continues. The 8th - in my opinion, one of the outstanding 20th century symphonies - has never been performed at the Proms at all. That, I'd agree with you, is at least as shameful as these other omissions.

[Pulcinella]

Ah, so you must be a Rubbra fan. Things are even worse for us, vinteuil: we have to look back to 2001 for the last time one of his magnificent eleven got a Proms outing (No.4, Hickox, BBC Welsh, unfortunately under-rehearsed) and the wait continues. The 8th - in my opinion, one of the outstanding 20th century symphonies - has never been performed at the Proms at all. That, I'd agree with you, is at least as shameful as these other omissions.

Mentioned before, but worth saying again, I hope.
I was at the Liverpool premiere and the Oxford repeat a little while after.
The RLPO performance (available on an Intaglio CD) now sounds decidedly ropey, but at the time it impressed me greatly, and it's probably the symphony of his I play the most.

[Barbirollians]

I note reference to increasing works by female composers which so long as it does not mean Amy Beach can only be a good thing but yet again not a note of Louise Farrenc whose Third Symphony in particular must be worth a spin . Also amazing that not a note if Crusell of the lovely clarinet concertos has ever been played at the Proms.

Agree about Bax but with Handley and Lloyd-Jones no longer with us who conducts Bax nowadays ?

[Simon B]

Agree about Bax but with Handley and Lloyd-Jones no longer with us who conducts Bax nowadays ?

John Wilson? He's done a few of the tone poems. Inevitably Tintagel (several times) but also November Woods and the Garden of Fand. Mark Elder has done a few of these too, Spring Fire comes to mind.

Admittedly, that's not the symphonies and they're a different proposition. The only conductor of note still with us I can think of who's done a Bax symphony is Andrew Litton.

Your point is well made. Live performance and recording of these works seems to have died out along with the conductors who championed them. Something similar seems to have happened with Delius. When was one of his major works last put on? Even the miniatures seem to have largely disappeared without trace.

Only a conductor in a position to bring about a live performance themselves is going to learn them now. That'll be a list with one entry: John Wilson again. Unless he feels the urge for what is literally a rather hard sell, how's it going to happen? Otherwise you're left with someone at the BBC deciding there should be a performance. Good Luck With That as they say.

[Master Jacques]

John Wilson? He's done a few of the tone poems. Inevitably Tintagel (several times) but also November Woods and the Garden of Fand. Mark Elder has done a few of these too, Spring Fire comes to mind.

Admittedly, that's not the symphonies and they're a different proposition. The only conductor of note still with us I can think of who's done a Bax symphony is Andrew Litton.

Your point is well made. Live performance and recording of these works seems to have died out along with the conductors who championed them. Something similar seems to have happened with Delius. When was one of his major works last put on? Even the miniatures seem to have largely disappeared without trace.

Only a conductor in a position to bring about a live performance themselves is going to learn them now. That'll be a list with one entry: John Wilson again. Unless he feels the urge for what is literally a rather hard sell, how's it going to happen? Otherwise you're left with someone at the BBC deciding there should be a performance. Good Luck With That as they say.

Mark Elder has also done In Memoriam, as well as Spring Fire (very much "his" piece, as you hint) and the three popular tone poems. He is constantly toying with the idea of doing one of the earlier symphonies. The problem, both for him and John Wilson, who would also love to tackle the symphonies, is time for rehearsal - always the difficulty, as it takes orchestras about three sessions to find Bax's style for themselves, rather than playing him as Strauss or Rachmaninov.

The other difficulty is, that due to scandalously selfish and short-sighted management of his royalties trust, no money has been spent on preparing good, new editions of his major scores, so orchestras spend hours trying to work out what they're actually playing from decrepit parts covered in other players' markings.

Another national shame, but there we are. There's (paradoxically) a better chance of good, new editions for Bax once he runs out of copyright. It's madness.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

Another national shame, but there we are. There's (paradoxically) a better chance of good, new editions for Bax once he runs out of copyright. It's madness.

Only 8 months to go.

[Barbirollians]

Mark Elder has also done In Memoriam, as well as Spring Fire (very much "his" piece, as you hint) and the three popular tone poems. He is constantly toying with the idea of doing one of the earlier symphonies. The problem, both for him and John Wilson, who would also love to tackle the symphonies, is time for rehearsal - always the difficulty, as it takes orchestras about three sessions to find Bax's style for themselves, rather than playing him as Strauss or Rachmaninov.

The other difficulty is, that due to scandalously selfish and short-sighted management of his royalties trust, no money has been spent on preparing good, new editions of his major scores, so orchestras spend hours trying to work out what they're actually playing from decrepit parts covered in other players' markings.

Another national shame, but there we are. There's (paradoxically) a better chance of good, new editions for Bax once he runs out of copyright. It's madness.

Yes one would have thought Bax 3 would have been good for the Halle/Elder especially considering the orchestra's relationship with the work and Barbirolli and the first recording.

[smittims]

I heard (and saw) the Halle play Bax 3 in 1968 under Maurice Handford. It was a memorable evening for me because , although I had gone to hear the Bax, which I'd never heard as there was no available recording then, I was overwhelmed by another work on the programme, Erwartung. That was the evening I fell in love with the music of Arnold Schoenberg, which has never let me go.