What is your verdict on this year's Proms?

[salymap]

I see VH in his comprehensive post has reached the figure of 48/49 realProms, the number we knew in our youth.

I can't begin to comment on his favourites as I heard very few concerts in their entirety but, as I've said elsewhere, was glad to hear the complete Smetana Ma vlast performed at the concerts after all these years.

Perhaps MORE IS LESS applies to the Proms, like other things. So many of my favourites missing this year and where are the composers who measure up to [in no particular order] Bax,Bliss, Britten, Walton etc who were conducting their own premieres years ago?

[amateur51]

Firstly, I refute the usual whinging about Jiri Belohlavec. He has built up the BBCSO in a relatively short while to a position where in Britain it rivals the Philharmonia as one of Europe's great orchestras. The strings now rival the Vienna Phil and on the basis of this season knocked spots off the Philadelphia. They do not sound half the orchestra when David Robertson muddles through. His conducting reminds me off the muddy sound that John Pritchard, Andrew Davis (sometimes, because he usually played everything too fast) and Leonard Slatkin inflicted upon us.

I hope that Edward Gardner stays at ENO where he has revived a flagging company and consolidates it. Moving people around will not help the two musical institutions. I hope that JB stays to continue making the BBCSO the best in Britain. It has not sounded so good since Pierre Boulez and Gennady Rozdhezvensky were Chief Conductors.

Secondly, it has been a very successful season. There have been good visiting orchestras: Pittsburg, French Radio, Budapest Festival, Gustav Mahler, Chamber Orchestra of Europe, Academy of Santa Cecilia in particular. The Philharmonia Orchestra produced the best orchestral playing most of us can ever expect to hear. There has been the previously mentioned improvement in the BBCSO: superb in Janacek, Smetana, Verdi, Mahler 6 and Klagende Lied. The choral Sunday concerts have been very well excecuted, some memorably (Brian, Verdi, Mozart, Beethoven IMO). I have been to five Prom/World premieres this season (I often dread these): two were astonishing successes (Fitkin Cello and Birtwistle Violin), the Colin Matthews was close to being excellent (it need some revision) and the other two were bearable (Rhim and Volens). The Cadogan Hall concerts have been fascinating.

I am currently listening to a thrilling Der Freischutz though the SIS sound engineering is very iffy again. That is my grumble about this season: THE BLOODY AWFUL RADIO SOUND. That is what people should be moaning about. The radio transmission is usually not good enough for a festival like the Proms and a disgrace to a national flagship like the BBC.

A brilliant summation Chris! - many thanks

[Jonathan]

I barely listened to any Proms this year - only a few sections. Far too much Mahler (again) and not enough Liszt for my liking.
Lets have some really obscure 19th Century stuff next year (as someone else said earlier on another thread, dream on).

[BudgieJane]

Lets have some really obscure 19th Century stuff next year.

No, let's not. If we do, you'll soon find out why the stuff is really obscure.

[johnb]

Firstly, I refute the usual whinging about Jiri Belohlavec. He has built up the BBCSO in a relatively short while to a position where in Britain it rivals the Philharmonia as one of Europe's great orchestras. The strings now rival the Vienna Phil and on the basis of this season knocked spots off the Philadelphia. They do not sound half the orchestra when David Robertson muddles through. His conducting reminds me off the muddy sound that John Pritchard, Andrew Davis (sometimes, because he usually played everything too fast) and Leonard Slatkin inflicted upon us.

Let me put a different point of view:

Belohlavec might well be a decent enough conductor - but to say that "He has built up the BBCSO in a relatively short while to a position where in Britain it rivals the Philharmonia as one of Europe's great orchestras." is just palpable nonsense.

Sure, there are one or two conductors under whom the orchestra performs very well indeed but for the most part it is a pretty mediocre band - to such an extent that if the BBC SO wasn't supported by the BBC it would have long since gone out of business. Can you really imagine any of the other London orchestras performing Beethoven's 9th in the way the BBC SO did?

The main problem with the BBC SO is that they have too many "quiet day at the office" type performances (as one critic described their efforts for the first Prom concert) and its members seem to show little pride in their orchestra. It's a dangerous approach - if there was one argument for the disbanding of the BBC orchestras - the BBC SO would be it.

The last performance of theirs I attended was quite some years ago. They were playing Mahler 7 under a less well known conductor. I was accompanied by a friend who had, then, only recently caught the classical music bug but who had been to many LSO concerts before that BBC SO effort. After the performance she turned to me and said "they were taking the piss". How right she was.

Yes they have improved since then - but compared with the other London orchestras and the majority of the regional orchestras they have a hell of a way to go.

PS I do think that Belohlavec has done a good job with the orchestra. I remember that, at the time when the orchestra was looking for a replacement for Slatkin, at least one person on the old MBs said that the position was widely seen as a poisoned chalice because of the attitude of orchestra.

[Jonathan]

No, let's not. If we do, you'll soon find out why the stuff is really obscure.

Ah, but you might find hear something that turns out to be a masterpiece and was unjustly neglected for no good reason.

[johnb]

The Proms seems to be mainly concerned with either popularly acclaimed C20 'masterpieces' or contemporary pieces - leaving a huge amount of outstanding, though less popular, C20 repertoire relatively untouched.

[BudgieJane]

Ah, but you might find hear something that turns out to be a masterpiece and was unjustly neglected for no good reason.

I doubt it.

Maybe they ought to do Spohr's Octet and Nonet, or Hummel's Trumpet concerto. All masterpieces, all neglected.

[jayne lee wilson]

Still hoping for a reply to my msg 38, where I asked if everyone is sure it is SIS doing the audio-only webcasts/broadcasts like HDs...
To recap, on the SIS website all it says is they did 28 TV Transmissions at the 2011 Proms. Doesn't the BBC's own OB unit do any of them? Audio & Music, Rupert Brun etc...?

Firstly, I refute the usual whinging about Jiri Belohlavec. He has built up the BBCSO in a relatively short while to a position where in Britain it rivals the Philharmonia as one of Europe's great orchestras. The strings now rival the Vienna Phil and on the basis of this season knocked spots off the Philadelphia. They do not sound half the orchestra when David Robertson muddles through. His conducting reminds me off the muddy sound that John Pritchard, Andrew Davis (sometimes, because he usually played everything too fast) and Leonard Slatkin inflicted upon us.

I hope that Edward Gardner stays at ENO where he has revived a flagging company and consolidates it. Moving people around will not help the two musical institutions. I hope that JB stays to continue making the BBCSO the best in Britain. It has not sounded so good since Pierre Boulez and Gennady Rozdhezvensky were Chief Conductors.

Secondly, it has been a very successful season. There have been good visiting orchestras: Pittsburg, French Radio, Budapest Festival, Gustav Mahler, Chamber Orchestra of Europe, Academy of Santa Cecilia in particular. The Philharmonia Orchestra produced the best orchestral playing most of us can ever expect to hear. There has been the previously mentioned improvement in the BBCSO: superb in Janacek, Smetana, Verdi, Mahler 6 and Klagende Lied. The choral Sunday concerts have been very well excecuted, some memorably (Brian, Verdi, Mozart, Beethoven IMO). I have been to five Prom/World premieres this season (I often dread these): two were astonishing successes (Fitkin Cello and Birtwistle Violin), the Colin Matthews was close to being excellent (it need some revision) and the other two were bearable (Rhim and Volens). The Cadogan Hall concerts have been fascinating.

I am currently listening to a thrilling Der Freischutz though the SIS sound engineering is very iffy again. That is my grumble about this season: THE BLOODY AWFUL RADIO SOUND. That is what people should be moaning about. The radio transmission is usually not good enough for a festival like the Proms and a disgrace to a national flagship like the BBC.

[Chris Newman]

Still hoping for a reply to my msg 38, where I asked if everyone is sure it is SIS doing the audio-only webcasts/broadcasts like HDs...
To recap, on the SIS website all it says is they did 28 TV Transmissions at the 2011 Proms. Doesn't the BBC's own OB unit do any of them? Audio & Music, Rupert Brun etc...?

Hi Jayne
Humble apologies. Grovel. I have been away for a day since my last message on this thread. I must also apologise for worrying you over SIS and the Outside Broadcast Unit. I had been mislead by the BBC publicity into thinking SIS were doing the audio-only broadcasts as well as the TV. Their Van was seemingly omnipresent at the Proms whether television was used or not whilst BBC vans came and went. I assumed (wrongly it seems) that Rupert Brun and Edward Blakeman were there just to keep an Auntie eye on things. In that case apologies to you and SIS and all my grumbles about poor sound get passed to the OB unit. That doesn't mean I was much impressed by TV sound, but then who is?

I see you agree with my carping on about wimpy engineers on the Prom 70 thread in Message 12

Yes, that was a high point in the performance, fairly thundered out of the speakers, but a shame the engineer seemed to pull back the level towards the end of both Mars and Jupiter... (listening on HDs as usual).

[Chris Newman]

Fiona Maddocks in The Observer seems to have had a similar experience to me at this season's Proms:

As the closing sentences of this column were being written, word came that the 2011 season has once again broken records: the average attendance for main evening concerts at the Royal Albert Hall rose to 94%, up from 92% last year; 70% of concerts (52 out of 74) in the RAH were sold out, compared with 64% (49 out of 76) in 2010. More than 300,000 people attended the total 86 concerts, including those at Cadogan Hall.

What does all this mean? That it rained more, or there was nothing on telly or that no one went on holiday? For some darkly hidden reason I broke my own record and notched up more Proms this season than ever before, including, would you credit it, some I had no obligation to attend. So I'll settle for the possibility that it was, indeed, a very good year.

I would suggest that somebody is doing something right, Roger Wright? We will never agree about what pieces of music constitute an ideal season. We all have our favourite bits: mine are opera, baroque and pre-baroque music, Contemporary music, folk, jazz and late-romantic stuff. I thought I did very well: not much opera though by comparison with the good old days. There have been years with too much Beethoven or Tchaikovsky: this year was perhaps leaner but Rachmaninov lovers did well. It was the first time for seven years I went to a Mahler symphony. I always feel the Proms are an opportunity to hear those pieces that rarely get into the provinces where I live: Beethoven's Missa Solemnis, Schoenberg's arrangement of Brahm's Piano Quartet, Brian's Gothic, Smetana's Ma Vlast, and special orchestras. I am truly grateful for this season.

Ventilhorn makes an important point about the BBC Symphony Orchestra:

I wish I could say the same about the BBC Symphony Orchestra, but I fear that until they stop chopping and changing their Leader and Section Principals, they are heading in the opposite direction.

I agree strongly about the changes in personnel. They gave twelve concerts. The leader was always changing whenever I went. They have very different string sounds (both excellent) with Stephen Bryant who goes for a sleek sound than Andrew Haveron who gets a very rich Viennese sound. The strings are fast becoming their best players. They seem to have a principal woodwind group for the first half of the season and a different one for the second half. On the other hand they are playing better these days putting aside the Beethoven 9 and second half of the last night (they can't be heard much there so it doesn't matter).

[Simon]

Well, I've enjoyed the concerts that I've heard, very much. Rachael says the same.

That may be because we have been selective about what we've listened to.

We haven't anything like the experience of some of you, so our opinion is probably amost valueless in terms of the OP, but nevertheless we think there have ben some brilliant concerts this year. We aren't the slightest bit interested in the fact that some of the ones we haven't heard have not been well-received, though of course we are sorry if people went and didn't enjoy themselves.

We don't think that it is fair to expect to like every single concert in any season.

[Lateralthinking1]

They have broadened - been popularized - and I have broadened - taken more in. Before RW considers that I might be a glowing example of what is right about R3 strategy, I'm not. The two things are unconnected in me. I could summarize the reasons for my greater receptiveness in two short phrases - (i) Change on reaching a certain age and (ii) More time because of unemployment. It is though possible that World Music being on R3 helped me but certainly not the new coffee table CFM changes. I don't like those.

The following list captured my imagination. I listened to them all in whole or in part. Mainly I avoided things that were well-known to me - Debussy, Copland, Holst etc - and which I knew I liked. Kodaly, Brian and Brahms were the new discoveries really. I opened my mind to Brahms for the first time and almost at one point even to Beethoven re Missa Solemnis but I didn't follow that through. As for performers, Ax, Grosvenor, Barley and Mullova and the Israel Philharmonic stick in the mind, the individuals for their dexterity and the orchestra for its bravery in letting the music play powerfully over and above British and American louts. Mehta is my choice of conductor for that reason. Haitink would be the other. The artist I went out of my way to avoid at all cost - Nigel Kennedy.

Sadly I missed the World Routes, the Simon Bolivar Orchestra and the Stan Kention. I really wanted to hear all of those, particularly Hari Sivanesan who was one of the unexpected highlights at Womad. I hovered over the film ones but decided against them. I didn't like the turntables of the new Prokofiev at all, nor the Spaghetti Western stuff. On reflection, the comedy prom has left me feeling slightly uneasy but I enjoyed it at the time. I would like to have heard more serious music and will do so next year.

Brahms - Hungarian Dance No. 5 in F sharp minor
Rossini - William Tell
Brian - Symphony No. 1 in D minor, 'The Gothic' (Top 5)
Human Planet
Kodály - Dances of Galánta
Grainger - Shallow Brown, Green Bushes, Shepherd's Hey, Molly on the Shore, Early One Morning, Scotch Strathspey
Gould - Boogie Woogie Etude
Reich - Music for 18 Musicians, Clapping Music, Electric Counterpoint
Barley-Mullova - particularly the Zawinul and Kodaly (Top 5)
Brahms — Symphony no. 3 in F major Op.90 (Top 5)
Brahms - Concerto no. 1 in D minor Op.15 (Top 5)
Volans - Piano Concerto No. 3
Rachmaninov - Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini
Kodály - Háry János - suite (Top 5)

No one in the BBC could have guessed at these selections. What I think they show is that anyone who is not a traditional listener can be unique. He might love much that many would have a knee-jerk reaction against being included at all. Equally he might wholly reject similar things as them. Arguably, it is not only an insult to the traditionalists to have a generic, survey-based, approach to accessibility. It is also offensive to anyone who half owns a mind. Overall score for the BBC on the 2011 Proms - 7 out of 10. Pretty good but a lot of room for improvement that could be achieved with better listening skills and clear reception.

[Demetrius]

Well, as it is 7 o'clock in the morning and I more or less enjoy the view of a closed door in front of me that nobody will unlock any time soon, I might as well go ahead and make a post.

Ignoring the occasional exposure to the usual popular scraps and a few Concerts over the years, Classical Music is a relatively new interest of mine; One that I decided to pursue seriously after witnessing a splendid Opera performance at my local theatre. With only marginal knowledge and experience, the Proms were a chance to get to know more music, and especially more composers. With time on my hands, I decided to listen to as many concerts as possible, and for the most part I enjoyed it thoroughly

I really liked the music of several british composers, most of whom I never heard of before. Bridge, Elgar, Britten and Bax are going to be future targets

Beyond that, I am quite astonished that most of my personal highlights (Britten Spring Symphony, Mozart Requiem, Mendelssohn Elijah + Freischütz and Ma vlast) were part of the Choral Sunday events, which I expected to be less attractive to me.

The part that proved less attractive were Mahlers Symphonies, which I had already marked down as dull when the First Symphony creeped the hell out of me when I started to sing along a song I had no knowledge of knowing. I'm still at a loss as to where I heard "Ging heut Morgen übers Feld" or why I can sing whole passages of it seems like I'll have to look into Mahler again, as I like what youtube provides of these songs; maybe more exposure will unlock the symphonies for me too.

Overall quite an experience; one that will definitely be repeated next year. Meanwhile, I intend to enjoy quite a bit of BBC 3 and keep an eye on this forum, as I learned more about music here in the last few weaks than in several years of school

[salymap]

Welcome Demetrius from an 'old hand' who is still learning from the experts on these message boards.

You have a wonderful journey ahead of you, listening and learning. I started with the Mahler Symphony no 1 and several of his early works quote from his various Song Cycles.

Keep an open mind, try all sorts of things and I hope you make all the good friends here that I have.

Best wishes from salymap