2012 - The Song is Over...

[jayne lee wilson]

...but the Proms Remain the Same...

...the Proms are over, the Penguin is down*, looking out at the fading summer, I frown...

Never mind the scattered carps and cavils, how was it for you? Big disappointments or major discoveries? Old flames reignited?

My old flame was a new one - my enthusiasm for new and recent music is ablaze again, and there's a Proms inspired stack of Saariaho, Goehr, Knussen, Maxwell Davies CDs which I'm already well into (no unplayed guilt there!). And I've been rampaging through the John Adams Earbox with renewed appetite... above all I'm keen to hear more music I don't know, or don't know well. As long as it's good!

Best Premieres:
Max Davies, Symphony No.9
Olga Neuwirth, Remnants of Songs

Great Performances:
Prokofiev Symphony No.6 (BBCSO/Oramo)
Tchaikovsky Symphony No.6 (BBCSO/Dausgaard)
Macmillan, Credo; Bruckner Symphony No.6 (BBCPO/Mena)
Bartok Cto for Orchestra (Philharmonia/Malkki)
VW 4,5,6 (BBCSSO/Manze)
London Sinfonietta/de Ridder in Andriessen, Xenakis etc.
DSCH 10 (RLPO/Petrenko)
DSCH 7 (CBSO/Nelsons)

Great Events:
Debussy- Pelleas et Melisande (Gardiner)
Adams - Nixon in China (Adams)
BBCSO/Knussen - Goehr/Knussen; Debussy, Le Martyre de Saint Sebastien
Berlin Phil/Rattle - especially Ligeti-Wagner-Sibelius 4 sequence & Lutoslawski 3...
Leipzig G./Chailly with Messiaen Et Exspecto & Mahler 6...

Promolympics 2012... Wasn't bad was it?
(Biggest disappointment? Broadband breakdown during A Child of Our Time...)

[french frank]

I think the Beeb would be pretty pleased with that number of 'Great Performances'. Makes a change for the BBCSO to get some plaudits too.

I've a load of stuff recorded but haven't had a chance to listen to much at all so over to others for suggestions.

[kernelbogey]

Promming for the first time in five years - a triumph over protesting feet and legs...!

A sense of loss today, too.

[amateur51]

An excellent summation of a great Proms Season I agree jlw

You'll send me back to my Adams' Earbox after my hols

I'm sure that other listeners will have other favourites - Peter Grimes, The Apostles, Gurrelieder perhaps

[salymap]

An excellent summation of a great Proms Season I agree jlw

You'll send me back to my Adams' Earbox after my hols





I'm sure that other listeners will have other favourites - Peter Grimes, The Apostles, Gurrelieder perhaps

Hols? Well have a nice time then

[EdgeleyRob]

Yet another quality summing up from Jayne.
Yes there were some great moments as you say, but looking back, the only concerts I would have loved to have been able to attend would be the RVW 4,5,6 and Howells/Elgar.
Biggest disappointment,same as usual for me,not enough Stanford,Parry,Bax,Alwyn,Arnold,Rubbra etc,etc,etc

[Thropplenoggin]

The Beethoven Violin Concerto was a thin, weedy joke of a concerto. Was the soloist having a Tetzlaff or what? I had to rush and put Isabelle Faust's version on to recover my shattered faculties after that abstract cadenza.

[Barbirollians]

Chailly and the LGO in Mahler 6 much my highlight of the season. Low light Ryan Wigglesworth 's very ropey In the south

[kernelbogey]

.... the Penguin is down*....

Keep wondering about this, Jayne: was there going to be a footnote that ran away...?

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

I agree a very good season with a healthy balance of "warhorses" and "exotica". My highlights? Boulez, Cage, the best performance of Prometheus I've ever heard, Mahler 7, Pelleas et Melisande, RVW. I wasn't surprised by anything this year - no revelations on a par with the Gothic of last year - I enjoyed most of the events I thought I'd enjoy, and wasn't convinced/converted by the works I thought I wouldn't like. Biggest disappointment for me was the lost opportunity of collaborating with Birmingham Opera to include Mitwoch in the season, a missed opportunity which I think the Beeb will regret for many years to come.

Nevertheless, I feel I ought to add a sentence that quite rightly rarely appears on these Boards, but which is absolutely justified here:

Well done and thank you, Mr Wright.

[IRF]

This year will live in my memory as the first year I deliberately went to a Prom (I went to one two years ago but that was a sort of accident. And I might never go to one again, for all I know...)

And it was brilliant! Two thumbs up

I had a talk, a guided walk around Kensington, and a three-hour concert, all for a fiver. Where else in the world can you get that kind of value for money? Here's another thumbs up:

Occasionally I read these forums and I think that as an audience we (I mean "you" ) have become jaded by too many years of the Proms, and we (I mean "you" ) forget how great the whole thing is. I don't see how anybody could ever complain about the Proms. Even if they don't play your favourite things one year, or they do too much of a composer you hate, or they dare to play something that gets airplay on Classic FM, etc., etc. ..............the fact is that there's so much on and you really shouldn't expect them to please 100% of the people 100% of the time.

The Proms season is the greatest thing in the musical calendar and it's only a fiver. Which, honestly, still boggles my mind.

[aeolium]

Good points, IRF. I think it's hard sometimes for the classical music cognoscenti to forget, with all the talk of warhorses, that there was a time when this music was new to them, and that there will be many who go to the Proms or listen to them on TV/radio for whom even the warhorses are new. This festival is not imo primarily for the cognoscenti (who have many other sources for their music) but for a wider audience including people discovering classical music for the first time, and the Proms gives them a chance to hear a wide range of mainly classical music in generally excellent performances - and as you say at a very affordable price. So it gets a from me.

[Alf-Prufrock]

I quite agree with IRF too. I can still remember the surprise I had in April (was it?) when the Proms programme was greeted with what some BBC presenters call a crescendo of groans and mutterings of 'Boring, boring' on these boards. I thought the programme exciting and splendid then, and am pleased that it has proved so and that many agree that it was so.

I am quite sure that too many of the contributors here are jaded and said so once before on another thread. Music is a chore to them; the only remedy is really to stop listening for a year or so. I know this by experience, for I was once posted to an African outback; though I had a radio, it was poor and did not pick up much classical music. It was such a joy to get back home and listen to records again or go to a concert. You find that even Tchaikovsky's first piano concerto has delights galore when you haven't heard it for a year or two.

[jayne lee wilson]

Keep wondering about this, Jayne: was there going to be a footnote that ran away...?

Thought you'd never ask! Bit cheeky of me, an insomniac's caprice....

Some years ago I was given (or possibly bought on impulse - prone to that a bit...) a small cuddly toy penguin. I put him on top of the carriage clock on the mantelpiece, looking back into the room from a central position between the speakers, as a proms mascot on the first night. Down he comes after the last, a symbol of summer's end.

Weirdly, it was a visitor who pointed out the resemblance to a conductor on a podium.... (I just thought he was cute).

So that's the tale of the "Proms Penguin".

[Barbirollians]

I didn't think it was a great Proms season from what I heard. There were lots of lacklustre concerts IMO - and there is always a tendency after the big international orchestras turn up to look at the season through rose tinted glasses .

I did not hear some of those in mid Aug as i was away including the raved about VW symphonies .