Prom 73: The Last Night, BBC SO / BBC SC / BBC Singers, Blue / Hough / Oramo

[Prommer]

What was the name of the Radio 3 continuity announcer who came after Douglas Smith but before Donald Macleod started to do it? 70s and 80s?

[LMcD]

What was the name of the Radio 3 continuity announcer who came after Douglas Smith but before Donald Macleod started to do it? 70s and 80s?

I never knew that Douglas Smith, star of 'Beyond Our Ken' and 'Round The Horne', was also a Third Programme presenter.
'I, Douglas Smith, play the part of the volcano'. He also played a Semi-Detached Bijou Residence.
He died in 1972, aged only 48, and it was in that year that Cormac Rigby was appointed head continuity announcer.

[vinteuil]

What was the name of the Radio 3 continuity announcer who came after Douglas Smith but before Donald Macleod started to do it? 70s and 80s?

Penny Gore? Paul Guinery? Peter Barker? Tony Scotland? Cormac Rigby? Tom Crowe? John Holmstom? Robin Holmes? Chris de Souza? Susan Sharpe? Donald Price?


.

[Petrushka]

I say, I say, I say - how many people does it take to organize the BBC Proms? The answer seems to be 3 - a Director of Artistic Planning, an Artistic Producer of the Proms and a BBC Proms Controller.

I imagine that it's a major operation to bring together orchestras, soloists, singers etc in liaison with other European festivals and working with agents on programmes, accommodation etc, etc for 70+ concerts. The three you name will be the management and there will be staff behind the scenes doing the donkey work.

In my opinion, they deserve their salaries!

[Darkbloom]

Well he was personable but musically everything I saw him conduct on the BBC was as bland as bland.

I bumped into him in the Albert Hall one day many years ago. I'm not sure 'personable' was the first word I'd use to describe him.

[Prommer]

Penny Gore? Paul Guinery? Peter Barker? Tony Scotland? Cormac Rigby? Tom Crowe? John Holmstom? Robin Holmes? Chris de Souza? Susan Sharpe? Donald Price?


.

The one I mean is the presenter here... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U2n7mvaFt6g

[cria]

I bumped into him in the Albert Hall one day many years ago

A nudge or a rugby tackle? By you or him?

[Serial_Apologist]

I imagine that it's a major operation to bring together orchestras, soloists, singers etc in liaison with other European festivals and working with agents on programmes, accommodation etc, etc for 70+ concerts. The three you name will be the management and there will be staff behind the scenes doing the donkey work.

In my opinion, they deserve their salaries!

And the staff behind the scenes!

[Ein Heldenleben]

I imagine that it's a major operation to bring together orchestras, soloists, singers etc in liaison with other European festivals and working with agents on programmes, accommodation etc, etc for 70+ concerts. The three you name will be the management and there will be staff behind the scenes doing the donkey work.

In my opinion, they deserve their salaries!

As a former insider I can say you are right. Worked in both TV and Radio - the work put in by some Radio production staff was extraordinary and the pay wasn’t great.

Don’t suppose anyone’s interested but the big divide is between BBC technical staff who get overtime and the production staff who don’t . The problem with the latter is there’s little to stop managers asking for production people to work silly hours (other than their own conscience).

As a manager I used to draw the line at the occasional 60 hour week - others weren’t quite so enlightened.

[Old Grumpy]

Review by Alexandra Coghlan in I News:

https://inews.co.uk/culture/arts/last-night-proms-review-incoherent-lousy-excuse-party-3275598

[Petrushka]

As a former insider I can say you are right. Worked in both TV and Radio - the work put in by some Radio production staff was extraordinary and the pay wasn’t great.

Don’t suppose anyone’s interested but the big divide is between BBC technical staff who get overtime and the production staff who don’t . The problem with the latter is there’s little to stop managers asking for production people to work silly hours (other than their own conscience).

As a manager I used to draw the line at the occasional 60 hour week - others weren’t quite so enlightened.

I'm certainly interested. The whole Proms organisation must be a logistical nightmare with little comparison anywhere else. I can't think of another eight week long 70+ concert series that must require superlative planning ability. From what I've heard in the past, next year's Proms season should have been broadly complete by the time Saturday's Last Night took place and planning for 2026 and 2027 should already be taking some sort of shape.

Someone should suggest it as a subject for one of those 'fly on the wall' TV documentaries.

[Ein Heldenleben]

I'm certainly interested. The whole Proms organisation must be a logistical nightmare with little comparison anywhere else. I can't think of another eight week long 70+ concert series that must require superlative planning ability. From what I've heard in the past, next year's Proms season should have been broadly complete by the time Saturday's Last Night took place and planning for 2026 and 2027 should already be taking some sort of shape.

Someone should suggest it as a subject for one of those 'fly on the wall' TV documentaries.

Yes it must be mind boggling - four dimensional chess really . Spent a lot of my time organising film shoots which is complex enough. At least the Proms people don’t have to worry about the weather or pay the insurance premiums,
Made a few fly on the walls over the years, Honestly Petrushka you wouldn’t believe how boring it can be “setting things up” for telly and radio compared with what the medical profession , armed forces etc do. It’s just endless phone calls and emails - not visually rich,
Thing is those two medical and army genres are well over done. Maybe there’s a doc in it but don’t think it would get commissioned - not enough people bursting into tears which seems to be the contemporary criterion.

[Ein Heldenleben]

Review by Alexandra Coghlan in I News:

https://inews.co.uk/culture/arts/last-night-proms-review-incoherent-lousy-excuse-party-3275598

I wish I could get through the firewall because from the three sentences I read I agree with every word !

[oddoneout]

I wish I could get through the firewall because from the three sentences I read I agree with every word !

Ditto!

[Dermot]

"" The Last Night is to the Proms as Leicester Square is to London: no-go zone for locals, catnip for tourists, the unwary and anyone whose idea of a good time involves a Union Jack hat, a plastic flag and too many proseccos. And both are peddling the same ersatz product: Britishness shrunk and merch-ified; things and tunes you can carry home on the Tube.

“Lighten up,” you’ll say. “It’s just a bit of fun.” But hear me out. It’d be far easier to learn to stop worrying and love the Last Night party if classical music wasn’t pushed out of almost every aspect of public life: television and radio, newspaper coverage, venues, awards. The BBC itself keeps the Proms firmly segregated on BBC Four (a station they keep trying to close) and Radio 3, well away from casual mainstream audiences.

The Last Night is the one day of the year when classical music and musicians have the stage, the attention of the nation. So what do we want to say?

On the strength of this year’s line-up, nothing very coherent. Not so very long ago the last night of the festival was a continuation and culmination of the previous eight weeks of concerts. Look back ten – even five – years, and there are properly meaty musical mains before the sugar-hit of sea-shanties and patriotic songs that finish the evening.

This year’s disjointed first half wasn’t so much musical lollipops as penny sweets – a bizarre handful of works (all ten minutes and under – most under five) with no relationship beyond proximity, all rattling around in a baggy evening now running almost as long as Parsifal (three and a half hours start to finish).

You could forgive a festival for being so proud of its performers that it just couldn’t narrow it down, but scarcely two hours of that is actually music; the rest is mostly interminable stage-faff, leaving audiences restive, crowd-sourcing their own punchlines with party-poppers, balloons and bicycle horns.

There were good things. Soprano Angel Blue oozed charisma and charm in Puccini and American spirituals (though less at ease in Rule, Britannia!), the impeccable BBC Singers reminded us all just what we might have lost if the corporation had successfully managed to axe them, and where else would you see national treasure and pianist-polymath extraordinaire Sir Stephen Hough gamely plugging away at the orchestral piano part of The Pink Panther? His encore – Hough’s own fantasia of themes from Mary Poppins – was a moment of wit in an evening of laborious musical panto.

The Last Night is no more the Proms than American candy stores and vape shops are London. But why can’t it be? In his closing speech, BBC Symphony Orchestra chief conductor Sakari Oramo nodded to fellow summer festivals – Glastonbury and Reading, not Glyndebourne and Garsington. Maybe if the Proms stopped trying so hard to be what it isn’t and can never be, it could find a way to become what it should: a celebration of classical music and musicians, of Britishness that’s more than just a T-shirt slogan.

I went to the Proms and all I got was this lousy excuse for a party."