Prom 65: Saturday 3rd September at 7.00 p.m. (Elgar, Berkeley, Rachmaninov, Kodaly)

[Keybawd]

Just finished listening to the Rachmaninov - it was almost as if I'd never heard it before - what a performance!

I agree. I was keft with my jaw dropping. I hadn't heard Hamelin play Rachmaninoff before. In the pre-prom interview, he described the piano writing as "lean and mean" and in his performance it really was. It reminded me at times of Stravinsky. But always beautiful and totally un self indulgent. There were some gorgeous inner voices he brought out which are rarely 'heard'.

[Petrushka]

It's extremely good if you prefer immediacy over balance...feeling the sound wash over you is a pleasure all its own. There's nothing like it for putting you right in the middle of the music; often, I feel like I'm standing with the first violin section. Which is appropriate, because some nights we're close enough to make out their sheet music. And when I was wedged in the extreme left corner for the Gothic, the timpani were beside (and behind!) me as the choirs towered overhead. Can you even imagine?

If you haven't tried it, you don't know what you're missing.

I know what cavatina means here but from the seats! I recall an incredible experience I had at a 1998 Prom when Valery Gergiev conducted the World Orchestra for Peace in the Shostakovich 'Leningrad'. I was sitting in 'O' stalls in one of those front seats that is actually on the platform so close to the back desk strings that you can almost touch them. It was a very intense experience indeed especially during the hurricane of the first movement development. Every time Gergiev cued in the double basses he seemed to look straight at me!