Prom 34: Tuesday 9th August 2011 at 7.00 p.m. (Bridge, Holt, Dupré, Saint-Saëns)

[EdgeleyRob]

I really enjoyed the Bridge pieces.What a wonderful work Enter Spring is!

[barber olly]

What a pity. I would have thought the Saint-Saens would have been quite a crowd-puller.

The most sparsely attended concert I can remember going to see was the Gothenburg SO at Symphony Hall a few years ago. Sibelius and Tchaikovsky were on the programme but Neeme Jarvi had had to pull out as conductor and I suspect not many people were interesting in hearing his replacement, a young unknown Venezuelan named Gustavo Dudamel.

And if my memory serves me correctly Dudamel was not on the spasrkling form we now expect.

[BetweenTheStaves]

Just listened to the Saint-Saens and really enjoyed the performance. Pacy...with a light French touch. And the first prom I've heard that I wish I'd been there. I do remember hearing it many years ago with Rattle and the CBSO (most likely). To start the last movement, Rattle simply looked up to the organ loft and gently opened his hand....magnificent sound!

[bluestateprommer]

I associate the NOW with the wretched Doctor Who proms. There're other reasons to account for Tuesday night's thin audience but may a degree of taint play its part?

Why should there be any "taint" with this? The BBC NOW has recorded music for Doctor Who TV productions, which makes their participation in the Doctor Who Proms eminently sensible. Granted, my only live experience of the BBC NOW was the one Prom that would stretch the most technically accomplished orchestra anywhere to its limits, the Havergal Brian 1 Prom, and they did a fine job there, if certainly not note-perfect.

Liked the sound of the flugelhorn but to my ears Simon Holt's piece had little else to recommend itself.

Here, I'm more with you, as I wasn't particularly bowled over by SH's work, although kudos to Robert Plane and Philippe Schartz for their solo work. I thought that the BBC NOW was on cracking form in this whole Prom. Great to see Enter Spring return to the Proms in a very fine performance, and the Rupert Brooke setting get good treatment, although obviously tenor Ben Johnson was center stage. The Dupre is a pleasant piece, but certainly no match in panache for Saint-Saens 3. One nice detail from the iPlayer broadcast was the crispness of the piano ripples in the scherzo.

By the way, some random thoughts on Saint-Saens 3: the more I've thought about it, the more it strikes me as a work derived from a single motif, at the start, which in turns resembles the 'Dies irae', though done in a very non-Rachmaninov fashion. Any comments?

[BudgieJane]

By the way, some random thoughts on Saint-Saens 3: the more I've thought about it, the more it strikes me as a work derived from a single motif, at the start, which in turns resembles the 'Dies irae', though done in a very non-Rachmaninov fashion. Any comments?

You're right.

For more info, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symphon...nt-Sa%C3%ABns), especially the section "Instrumentation and score"