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

[french frank]

Dermot's post is a copy of the i article by Alexandra Coghlan. For copyright reasons I shall have to remove it promptly when I can find the delete button ....

[Ein Heldenleben]

"" 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."

Bravo - absolutely nailed it .

[Dermot]

Dermot's post is a copy of the i article by Alexandra Coghlan. For copyright reasons I shall have to remove it promptly when I can find the delete button ....

Sorry. Please remove my post.

[Ein Heldenleben]

Sorry. Please remove my post.

Look I’ve spent a professional career dealing with media copyright issues and the very worst you’ll get or this forum will get is a cease and desist letter .
if we are commenting on this article , as I have , it comes all under fair dealing - criticism and review so don’t have any concerns.

[LMcD]

Couldn't it also be said of Radio 3 that it's trying to be something other than what it was originally meant to be, and will probably fail? It seems to be trying to please as many different audiences as possible but may succeed only in annoying all of them.

[mopsus]

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

Get the page source (ctrl+U does it in MS Edge, for example), and copy and paste it into a text file. Use word wrap or similar if the text isn't wrapped. Search for a phrase from the bit of the article that you saw and you should find text of the whole article, albeit without paragraphing etc and with HTML markup visible. This works with a lot of paywalled sites, but you didn't read me saying it ...

[french frank]

Get the page source (ctrl+U does it in MS Edge, for example), and copy and paste it into a text file. Use word wrap or similar if the text isn't wrapped. Search for a phrase from the bit of the article that you saw and you should find text of the whole article, albeit without paragraphing etc and with HTML markup visible. This works with a lot of paywalled sites, but you didn't read me saying it ...

There are indeed several ways to avoid paywalls. As far as 'fair dealing' is concerned, that covers short quotes for illustrative/reference purposes; it doesn't include reproducing entire articles.

It's hard to see how posting an entire article on a third party platform in order to avoid a paywall can be interpreted as 'fair dealing'.

The forum House Rules include 'Do not infringe copyright by posting extended quotes from outside material.'

Just a reminder. If I'd thought it a big deal I'd have removed it at once!

[Ein Heldenleben]

There are indeed several ways to avoid paywalls. As far as 'fair dealing' is concerned, that covers short quotes for illustrative/reference purposes; it doesn't include reproducing entire articles.

It's hard to see how posting an entire article on a third party platform in order to avoid a paywall can be interpreted as 'fair dealing'.

The forum House Rules include 'Do not infringe copyright by posting extended quotes from outside material.'

Just a reminder. If I'd thought it a big deal I'd have removed it at once!

It wouldn’t be a good idea to post a Boosey and Hawkes score of a living composers would it ? Though I notice there’s tons of current copyright scores on YouTube - IMSLP are much more scrupulous.

On fair dealing no one will ever give you chapter on verse on how long a clip can be.

As a matter of interest has the forum ever been asked to take down any copyright material by the holder of that copyright ? It’s all a matter of scale - Companies like Disney will chase everything ; most newspapers are indifferent to small social media fora (not big enough to impact ) when their work is constantly pillaged by Facebook and Goggle ! Several times I’ve allowed my (BBC ) copyright films to go on YouTube because of the wider public benefit - they also have little commercial value.

[french frank]

As a matter of interest has the forum ever been asked to take down any copyright material by the holder of that copyright ?

The Times once asked us to remove one of their articles that had been copied in full. With the internet articles are identifiable when Google obligingly locates random quotes. Times subscribers get offered shareable links which gets round the problem of the contemporary mania for monetisation.

[Ein Heldenleben]

The Times once asked us to remove one of their articles that had been copied in full. With the internet articles are identifiable when Google obligingly locates random quotes. Times subscribers get offered shareable links which gets round the problem of the contemporary mania for monetisation.

Yep if it was a long article I can see that especially if it was a comment piece because that’s what hauls the subscribers in …

[Pulcinella]

Yep if it was a long article I can see that especially if it was a comment piece because that’s what hauls the subscribers in …

I assume that if there's a shareable link then they are happy for the article to be shared!

[Retune]

The way the programme in the first half has shifted to lollipops in recent years is particularly odd given that the audience on the Last Night is pretty hardcore. Tickets are hard to get hold of, and most people there have presumably got theirs via the 5 concert ballot or have season passes. On TV it's presented separately on a different channel, so viewers who are mainly interested in Rule, Britannia! probably aren't going to see the first half anyway. So who is it actually for? I'd be very surprised if most of the audience wouldn't much rather have heard (say) Stephen Hough play the entire concerto rather than just a single movement.

[Old Grumpy]

I did try to see whether I News does shareable links for subscribers, but I think not. Sending myself (a subscriber) a link, but opening it with a different browser brought up a paywall. When I click on the same link with my usual browser it opens straight away.

[Barbirollians]

The way the programme in the first half has shifted to lollipops in recent years is particularly odd given that the audience on the Last Night is pretty hardcore. Tickets are hard to get hold of, and most people there have presumably got theirs via the 5 concert ballot or have season passes. On TV it's presented separately on a different channel, so viewers who are mainly interested in Rule, Britannia! probably aren't going to see the first half anyway. So who is it actually for? I'd be very surprised if most of the audience wouldn't much rather have heard (say) Stephen Hough play the entire concerto rather than just a single movement.

Agreed - it was notable to see, however, that the prommers in the front row looked like the same people as in 1984 just 40 years older !

[Prommer]

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

Can anyone help witn the question - who is the presenter who begins this broadcast? It is from the Proms in 1987 - Reggie Goodall's last stand conducting Parsifal Act 3.