Proms 2024

[smittims]

Hmm... I'm not fond of that sort of 'never mind, cheer up, all is for the best, though much we doubt' stance. I wouldn't want to rely on him to defend civilisation. The views on this forum indicate that there is a lot wrong with the Proms, we're paying for it, and it ought to be put right, not glossed over .

[french frank]

A Times article by AN Wilson:

I don't doubt he's a genuine classical music lover but when he writes: "More and more, Radio 3 has been training its stick-in-the mud listeners like me to realise that music is music, whether it is “world music”, jazz or soul. None of this detracts from my joy at the coming of the Proms, which remain, overwhelmingly, a celebration of the classical repertoire"

I think of:

The border between classical and pop may indeed be, as he says, a blurred line but, to quote his own example, "in 2015, we had the Radio 1 DJ Pete Tong bring a late-night Ibiza rave to the Proms", that isn't it. That is pop music spreading into the space of classical music while the reverse doesn't happen. This isn't Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells, just an observation.

[Ein Heldenleben]

I don't doubt he's a genuine classical music lover but when he writes: "More and more, Radio 3 has been training its stick-in-the mud listeners like me to realise that music is music, whether it is “world music”, jazz or soul. None of this detracts from my joy at the coming of the Proms, which remain, overwhelmingly, a celebration of the classical repertoire"

I think of:

The border between classical and pop may indeed be, as he says, a blurred line but, to quote his own example, "in 2015, we had the Radio 1 DJ Pete Tong bring a late-night Ibiza rave to the Proms", that isn't it. That is pop music spreading into the space of classical music while the reverse doesn't happen. This isn't Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells, just an observation.

What ever Pete Tong did in 2015 it wasn’t bringing an Ibiza Rave to the Albert Hall. Where were the €75 cocktails, the hillocks of white powder and other activities I had better not detail….

[MickyD]

I suspect that young Jackson would say he's 'refreshing' them. He obviously believes in the possibility of being all things to all men (and women). Good luck with that, mate!

This reminds me of that other awful word 'revisité' used by pretentious French restaurants where I live - in short, taking a perfectly good traditional dish and ruining it.

[mopsus]

As for 'world music', Indian classical music Proms don't appear as often as they used to, though there was one a couple of years ago. The Arena is I'm told a very good space to listen to that repertoire, particularly for the all-night concerts that were sometimes given. (In general, it seems to be harder to find performances of Indian classical music now, unless you are in an area with a large number of Indian descent.)

[edashtav]

According to a note by Christoper Palmer to the Chandos CD, Holst conducted the premiere of Cloud Messenger on 4 March 1913 in Queen's Hall. It may have been an amateur choir but surely it would have been a professional orchestra?

It was within the 3rd concert promoted by Balfour Gardiner. The choir was an amateur London Chorus the orchestra was variously described as the LSO and the New Symphony Orchestra. The piece was reported to have started well, to have included too much descriptive text and to have outstayed its welcome although it lasted little over half of an hour.

[Simon B]

It was within the 3rd concert promoted by Balfour Gardiner. The choir was an amateur London Chorus the orchestra was variously described as the LSO and the New Symphony Orchestra. The piece was reported to have started well, to have included too much descriptive text and to have outstayed its welcome although it lasted little over half of an hour.

Thanks to both Smittims and Ed for correcting my alternative fact there. It's probably been 20 years since I read the CD sleeve note and my memory for details is clearly more fallible than it once was .

It turns out that what I meant was that it's never been professionally performed since the first performance, at least in the UK. The English Music Festival at Dorchester programmed it some years ago and then dropped it prior to the event - that's the only sign of it I've ever seen. Now it's about to get two in a week by two unrelated sets of performers. Still a notable inversion.

Interestingly (for sufficiently small values of "interesting" to anyone except me) this thread so far evidences my theory that any Proms programme that gets a "That's a bit more like it" from me generally goes down less well than average more widely. I must have appalling taste.

As the LPO Prom with the Busoni Piano Concerto is my on-paper favourite of the 2024 programme, that may be so. Has it been done at the Proms since 1988 (Donohoe/Elder)? I remember hearing that one on the radio and thinking "What the was that?!" - in a good way. Something to look forward to in these dark times perhaps.

[Historian]

Interestingly (for sufficiently small values of "interesting" to anyone except me) this thread so far evidences my theory that any Proms programme that gets a "That's a bit more like it" from me generally goes down less well than average more widely. I must have appalling taste.

As the LPO Prom with the Busoni Piano Concerto is my on-paper favourite of the 2024 programme, that may be so. Has it been done at the Proms since 1988 (Donohoe/Elder)? I remember hearing that one on the radio and thinking "What the was that?!" - in a good way. Something to look forward to in these dark times perhaps.

Maybe we share appalling taste as I too think there is a lot to look forward to this year, more than for some time. The Busoni is a very rare sighting as you say, let alone the almost unheard 'Cloud Messenger'. The visiting orchestras are surely a fine line-up. Upthread someone else mentioned the Czech P.O. Concerts, including the Glagolitic Mass with the Prague Philhamonic Choir. I will also try to see the two Berlin Phil. and Bavarian R.S.O. concerts, Mutter playing Brahms with the West-Eastern Divan Orch., Bach Collegium Japan, and Les Arts Florissants...

In a much-diminished London orchestral scene I too am very much looking forward to this Proms season.

[LMcD]

Maybe we share appalling taste as I too think there is a lot to look forward to this year, more than for some time. The Busoni is a very rare sighting as you say, let alone the almost unheard 'Cloud Messenger'. The visiting orchestras are surely a fine line-up. Upthread someone else mentioned the Czech P.O. Concerts, including the Glagolitic Mass with the Prague Philhamonic Choir. I will also try to see the two Berlin Phil. and Bavarian R.S.O. concerts, Mutter playing Brahms with the West-Eastern Divan Orch., Bach Collegium Japan, and Les Arts Florissants...

In a much-diminished London orchestral scene I too am very much looking forward to this Proms season.

Does 'almost unheard' mean that somebody once caught a bar or two?

[Prommer]

A Times article by AN Wilson:

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/8...d0f80f28ab82f9

"Though we call them the BBC Proms, in my youth they were always called the Henry Wood Promenade Concerts, and I love that."

Fact-checkers, please: when did they (officially) cease to be so described? Not that long ago...

[Prommer]

Wilson also writes:

"If you ask me to write down on a piece of paper all the things that “happened” in the news during 2023, I would make a poor fist of it. But if you asked me for the high points of last summer, I would say immediately hearing Sir Stephen Hough play Rachmaninov’s First Piano Concerto. Or Isata Kanneh-Mason’s Prokofiev Piano Concerto No 3. Or — an evening that was totally electrifying in its excitement — Semyon Bychkov conducting the BBC Symphony Orchestra as they played Bruckner’s Eighth Symphony."

Any of this 'true'? Or is his understanding a little limited, despite his pleasing enjoyment of the Proms?

[french frank]

Maybe we share appalling taste

That's interesting (to me :-) ): the word 'taste' itself implies that there is good taste and bad taste, whereas I would think of it as individual people being kaleidiscopically different. We are categorised in infinite different ways . So approaches like 'what listeners like', 'what people want' are doomed to fail. Parameters should be set somewhere and clearly described.

[LMcD]

"Though we call them the BBC Proms, in my youth they were always called the Henry Wood Promenade Concerts, and I love that."

Fact-checkers, please: when did they (officially) cease to be so described? Not that long ago...

According to the History of the BBC, the first 'BBC Promenade Concert' took place on the 13th of August 1927, but I think the title 'BBC Proms' has come into use only relatively recently.

[smittims]

All I can say is that the change happened between 1980 and 2015! In 1980 the BBC published a history (written by David Cox ) entitled 'The Henry Wood Proms' and by 2015 they were officially 'The BBC Proms'. Cox' book reveals that the name was owned by Wood himself and he allowed the BBC to use it unless or until they decided to stop broadcasting them. In fact the BBC withdrew from the 1940 amd '41 seasons which were sponsored by the RPS and featured the London Philharmonic Orchestra.

[Rcartes]

Although, like others here, I'm against the popification of the Proms, I really was amused to see the ineffable Stephen Pollard in the Daily Torygraph writing apocalyptic nonsense.

It's behind their paywall so I can't read the details but it's pretty clear what he's on about.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/04/28/the-bbc-has-gone-to-war-on-our-culture/