What is your verdict on this year's Proms?

[Guest]

The 2011 Proms season is drawing to its close.

What is your verdict on a) The programme content offered and b) The standards of performance in comparison with 2010 and previous years (going back to when you last remember!)?

This should, I hope, lead to a lively discussion with many differing views.

VH

[Ventilhorn]

I thought that I might set this discussion on its way by quoting part of a message which I received yesterday from a former BBC message boarder who has elected not to become a member of this independent forum, but whose views, quite unsolicited by myself are very relevent to this discussion:

I have long given up on the dubious motives of the trendies at the BBC as they struggle to be ever more clever with our listening diet.
When you are looking to cut a dash with your faceless bosses upstairs, audience considerations are not usually a good idea anyway.
Only yesterday evening, during the interval feature, we were, would you believe, treated to modern jazz!

A tenuous enough rationale if the second half had contained Scriabin or Schnitker, but most certainly off the clock when Tchaikovsky was
about to follow!

That composer didn't get much justice either.
I don't know your views on the subject but I think Maestro Davis had a big problem last night if he was aiming to get any sensitive interpretation out of that eager youth orchestra.
Rimsky's Scheherezade (appropriate enough after the Ravel) surely would have been a better programme choice.

I have listened to very few proms this year. I have lost interest somehow; it's all too artificial these days.
The Proms have completely lost the magic of the era you and I remember.

Perhaps that erosion began with the title change from the Henry Wood Proms to those of the BBC instead.
Now whose brilliant idea was that, Kenyon's? Sounds like something of his.

VH

[salymap]

Morning VH, the proms seem to have lost their magic for me this year but this might be an age and health thing partly.
The far fewer concerts years ago managed to introduce the young and inexperienced concertgoer to far more of the basic repertoire, a smattering of new works, often conducted by the composer, and usually a knowledgeable introduction to the music, usually by someone in the RAH and not feeling the need for two other people to chat to. No one shouted over the applause and the few women involved did not stsnd outside the Albert Hall Mansions dressed for a party.

it's nice to see and hear so many visiting orchestras but perhaps it's all got out of hand.
Just my aged opinion of course.

[antongould]

I am sure VH this will indeed be a very interesting thread ......personally I have not been able to as listen to as many Proms as last year and my length of experience is about 5% of that of you and your friend!
Of the Proms I have heard I enjoyed them .....the Gothic, salymap's Smetena being for me particular highlights. I wasn't particularly impressed by the Mahler 2. As to the programme purely personally I am not a big fan of anniversary bias and feel excellence should outweigh birthday boys. Why for example did we have no Vaughan Williams?
I also feel we should have slightly more modern stuff I particularly enjoys Rattles Prom of Webern, Berg and Schoenberg last year.
A special joy of the Proms for me has to be reading the views and analysis you and others - many thanks for it and I look forward to your views on the season.

[aeolium]

I'm going to hold off on comments about the season as a whole until after the Proms have finished.

salymap, you mention the 'far fewer concerts years ago'. What sort of difference in number are we talking about? I know the chamber music concerts at the Cadogan Hall are a recent innovation but was the season significantly shorter in the time you are thinking of?

[cavatina]

I have listened to very few proms this year. I have lost interest somehow; it's all too artificial these days.
The Proms have completely lost the magic of the era you and I remember.

They haven't lost any magic for me. I haven't missed a single Prom this season, and I've found these concerts intensely enjoyable...full of infinite colour, zest, and relish, which I've savoured right down to my toes. I've greedily devoured every note and still can't get enough: if I could, I'd do Cadogan in the afternoon, a two-intermission Prom, a Late Night concert, and a Proms Plus programme in the Elgar Room every single day. What a marvelous blessing to be offered such a bountiful cornucopia of the finest music the world has to offer!

When I was a very moody and depressed twelve-year-old, I often glumly wondered what my life would be like at the age I am now. Was there any point in going on? If someone had seen into the future and told me I'd be spending two glorious months in London hearing the greatest classical music in the world as performed by the greatest artists in the world--Colin Davis and Marc-Andre Hamelin IN ONE NIGHT!!-- and shown me a picture of myself exactly as I looked last night, laughing, talking to friends and eagerly soaking up every note...happily walking home in the mist with a young heart, feeling as if I were floating on air?

Well, I scarcely could have believed it. It would have given me great hope, comfort, and a real reason for living.


OR: If all the music has gone out of you, don't blame the Proms.

[salymap]

aeolium. I worked in a music hire library when very young and occasionally took sets of parts to the RAH
for the librarian and saw the room where it was all [where possible] assembled for the orchestras. The concerts numbered 49 in the late 1940s to 50s. 8 weeks, 6 days a week and the last night. The BBCSO and LSO took most of the concerts at that time, as far as I remember.
There were a fortnight of 'prelims' where the orchestra[s] rehearsed all day and were part of my musical education.

[salymap]

They haven't lost any magic for me. I haven't missed a single Prom this season, and I've found these concerts intensely enjoyable...full of infinite colour, zest, and relish, which I've savoured right down to my toes. I've greedily devoured every note and still can't get enough: if I could, I'd do Cadogan in the afternoon, a two-intermission Prom, a Late Night concert, and a Proms Plus programme in the Elgar Room every single day. What a marvelous blessing to be offered such a bountiful cornucopia of the finest music the world has to offer!

When I was a very moody and depressed twelve-year-old, I often glumly wondered what my life would be like at the age I am now. Was there any point in going on? If someone had seen into the future and told me I'd be spending two glorious months in London hearing the greatest classical music in the world as performed by the greatest artists in the world--Colin Davis and Marc-Andre Hamelin IN ONE NIGHT!!-- and shown me a picture of myself exactly as I looked last night, laughing, talking to friends and eagerly soaking up every note...happily walking home in the mist with a young heart, feeling as if I were floating on air?

Well, I scarcely could have believed it. It would have given me great hope, comfort, and a real reason for living.


OR: If all the music has gone out of you, don't blame the Proms.

Well you to your over the top way and me to mine. Even musicians have told me that overkill is easy if one listens to too much music

[salymap]

Well you to your over the top way and me to mine. Even musicians have told me that overkill is easy if one listens to too much music

And music is still ONE of the most important things in life for me too bjut it's with me allthe time.

[Ventilhorn]

I am sure VH this will indeed be a very interesting thread ......personally I have not been able to as listen to as many Proms as last year and my length of experience is about 5% of that of you and your friend!
Of the Proms I have heard I enjoyed them .....the Gothic, salymap's Smetena being for me particular highlights. I wasn't particularly impressed by the Mahler 2. As to the programme purely personally I am not a big fan of anniversary bias and feel excellence should outweigh birthday boys. Why for example did we have no Vaughan Williams?
I also feel we should have slightly more modern stuff I particularly enjoys Rattles Prom of Webern, Berg and Schoenberg last year.
A special joy of the Proms for me has to be reading the views and analysis you and others - many thanks for it and I look forward to your views on the season.

Good morning Anton. I quite agree with you about this obsession with anniversarys. I was born on the same date as Mozart died. Does that make any difference to my appreciation of his works? I share my birthday with. (amongst one in 365 of the population,) Ronnie O'Sullivan. Does that make me any good at Snooker?

I am much more concerned with tributes paid on learning of the death of a loved and respected musician and possibly a broadcast reminder of that anniversary. I was shocked that, on the 50th anniversary on 1st September 2007 of the tragic early death of Dennis Brain, not a single mention of the fact was to be heard on Radio 3.

Anyway, back to the thread. I am going to wait until it is all over for another year before posting my impressions. I expect that most contributors will do the same, but I opened this thread early in case somebody wanted "to get something off their chest", apart from commenting on individual proms performances.

VH

[David Underdown]

I think what anyone gets out of the Proms is bound to change. In my first two seasons (97 & 98) I went to virtually every concert. Firstly I was a student and single, so had few other calls on my time, and until this point my concert going (for professional performances) had been limited to a fairly small number of RLPO concerts, so there were vast amounts of repertoire I had never heard live (and probably not that much I'd heard on the radio or disc for that matter). The season ticket then worked out at about £2 concert. From 99-04 I was living out of London, so my attendance was naturally reduced (though most seasons I still wasn't actually far off breaking even on the season ticket). By this time I was of course far more familiar with the major works, so I'm more likely to puck which concerts to attend on the basis of performers, rather than repertoire.

Of course there are some things I would gladly see rested (look back through the archives and see how many times the Stravinsky ballets have been performed over this time, do we really need them ever year? And it's not that I dislike them). But every year (hopefully) there will still be people coming to these works for the first time, just as I once did). Therein lies one of the major programming problems for the director who had to balance the interests of the newcomer against those of the seasoned prommer. However much we may decry "warhorses", there's usually a reason why they have that status. Different directors will have different emphases. I think trying to pin some sort of significance to the change in branding to BBC Proms is a red herring, the full name is still given on the tickets, inside every programme and so on. I understand that the main reason for the increased prominence of "BBC" is a court case the Beeb lost trying to prevent another series of concerts "The Cathcart Spring Proms" (named after Dr Henry Cathcart, the third founder of the original Queen's Hall proms) being held in the RAH. It was ruled that the word "proms" itself was a generic description, not specifically connected with the annual summer series in the hall

[Petrushka]

Yes, a lot of the magic has gone hasn't it? I first went to the Proms in 1978 after listening on the radio since 1970. All the big names of that era have largely passed away or don't appear at the Proms any more. Colin Davis and Bernard Haitink are still there, of course, but I do miss Solti, Tennstedt, Gunter Wand, Abbado and Rozhdestvensky. Can't the last two be persuaded to return? This year we've had B list visiting orchestras in lack-lustre performances of unimaginative programmes while our home orchestras have wiped the floor with them. The Chamber Orchestra of Europe's Brahms under Haitink provided an enjoyable revelatory exception. The forthcoming Philadelphia Orchestra Prom was not enough to set my pulse racing. Where was the VPO this year? The Concertgebouw? The Dresden Staatskapelle? Chicago SO? Too many programmes were ruined by Liszt being on them particularly the LPO/Jurowski which had a great first half. Let's have a season free from all anniversary hype and pointless 'themes'.

BBC commissions have largely passed me by this year and don't seem to have caused any great stir or even much in the way of comment on here.

Perhaps the BBC are lining up the big guns for 2012.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

Where was the VPO this year? The Concertgebouw? The Dresden Staatskapelle? Chicago SO?

I really was hoping for the VPO, who generally alternate with the Berlin Phil. But no.

[Chris Newman]

I have to beg to differ with most people on this topic. For me the magic has returned considerably. Living as I do out in the sticks of Wiltshire Kensington is not on my door step. For many years I have contented myself with attending one or two Proms each season. Also I was performing in opera myself when the Proms were in full swing and rehearsal schedules kept me away except for the end of the season. Then I had several years of poor health. This year, however, feeling stronger, receiving a pension and some private income has enabled me to get to twelve Prom concerts. Getting back in that arena for several days (sometimes twice a night) and meeting fellow promenaders some new to me and some whom I had not spoken to for forty years really got me feeling part of the furniture. I have tended to go to music that I love very much like Haitink's cleaned-up Brahms as well as Manze's and Dausgaard's, Smetana's Ma Vlast, the Dvorak Cello Concerto and the Verdi Requiem because of the visual and aural spectacle and the line-up (I was very satisfied). It has been a fantastic tonic and given me the urge to get to more live music rather than sit at home and listen to Cds and broadcasts.

[Norfolk Born]

[QUOTE=Ventilhorn;77919]The 2011 Proms season is drawing to its close.What is your verdict on a) The programme content offered and b) The standards of performance in comparison with 2010 and previous years (going back to when you last remember!)?

This should, I hope, lead to a lively discussion with many differing views.

There are still 18 Proms to go ...isn't this a bit like reviewing a performance of 'Hamlet' half-way through Act IV?