Prom 22 - 3.08.14: 'War Horse' Prom

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

Sunday 3 August
4.30 p.m. – c. 6.00 p.m.
Royal Albert Hall

Adrian Sutton: Only Remembered
Bridge: Summer
Holst: Home they brought her warrior dead
Elgar: Two Partsongs, Op 26 - The Snow
Holst: Ave Maria
Adrian Sutton: War Horse Suite
Trad. Turkish: Chanakkale Ichinde
Ravel: Le tombeau de Couperin - movements, 1 & 4
Klenau: Die Weise von Liebe und Tod. 3 songs
Henry Wood arr. French/Sutton: New War Hymn
Adrian Sutton: Peace Anthem (BBC commission; world premiere)
Adrian Sutton: Only Remembered

Eser Ebcin (Turkish folk singer)
Duncan Rock (baritone)
Cambiata Choir North West
Proms Military Wives Choir
Gareth Malone (conductor)
BBC Concert Orchestra
David Charles Abell (conductor)
Melly Still (director)

The Proms continues to commemorate the anniversary of the outbreak of First World War, collaborating for the first time with the National Theatre for a concert inspired by Michael Morpurgo's award-winning play War Horse. Lifesize War Horse puppets join the BBC Concert Orchestra and conductor David Charles Abell, Gareth Malone and the Military Wives on stage for a performance that explores the music and stories of the Great War.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

The listing may be inaccurate, but it's the same from all my sources - the Elgar "Two Partsongs Op. 26" appears to be only one: "The Snow", so I assume its partner, "Fly, Singing Bird" is not to be performed. Nevertheless, it's good to have just The Snow, being one of the composer's finest partsongs. However, one of Elgar's WWI recitations might have been more appropriate. Une voix dans le désert is extremely moving and better suited to a prom of this nature than something the composer wrote before the Boer War.

[mlb7171]

Let us all remember the paradox that is this concert: The NT's show is now 'performed' with no live musicians, after they were made redundant.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-27034895

Perhaps the BBC Concert orchestra can show some solidarity at the Prom with their jobless union brothers...

[MrGongGong]

Let us all remember the paradox that is this concert: The NT's show is now 'performed' with no live musicians, after they were made redundant.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-27034895

Perhaps the BBC Concert orchestra can show some solidarity at the Prom with their jobless union brothers...

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Let us all remember the paradox that is this concert: The NT's show is now 'performed' with no live musicians, after they were made redundant.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-27034895

Perhaps the BBC Concert orchestra can show some solidarity at the Prom with their jobless union brothers...

[Lento]

5 stars from Hilary Finch in The Times: praise indeed:
"the show walked a tightrope between sentiment and sentimentality, and never fell off".

3 stars from the Guardian, though:

http://www.theguardian.com/music/2014/aug/04/war-horse-prom-review-royal-albert-hall-london

[Roslynmuse]

Does anyone know if the Holst piece, Home they brought her warrior dead, is published? It wasn't included in the Novello edition of Five Songs from The Princess and although it has been recorded several times, I've been unable to trace a score. My old Imogen Holst Thematic Index tells me that a facsimile of the ms is in the RCM library but thereafter the trail is cold.

[bluestateprommer]

Gave this a listen on iPlayer. Even more than most concerts, where it really is the thing to be at the live event, I got the impression that for full effect, you really did have to be there. While the 'suite' of miscellaneous works was reasonably well assembled and performed, without the dramatic set-up of the compressed, dialogue-free re-telling of War Horse to watch to link to the choice of music, it's hard to infer the logic of the particular choices in the particular order, even if the choice of works because of their connections to World War I is pretty self-evident, at least to classical music aficionados (e.g. nice to see Frank Bridge's Summer back at The Proms after a 30-year absence). However, having seen a touring production of War Horse on this side of the pond (with Brit accents of extreme variability, to put it mildly - American cast, of course), I can readily imagine the visceral reaction of the audience to seeing Joey, the puppet horse, on stage.

Musically, perhaps the most moving moments were the solo singing of "Only Remembered", but also the encore, which was a bit of a surprise in several ways. (Note: spoiler alert, if you think you might want to catch it on iPlayer.) It started with a solo banjo, evidently Gareth Malone, but then a single female singer performing "It's a Long Way to Tipperary". In the reprises, the full choirs joined in, but the next surprises were that one repeat of the chorus was sung in French, and then the next chorus repeat was sung in German. Given the WWI associations of this song, the multi-lingual treatment gives it a new and not-obvious gloss here.

For Roslynmuse's question about the Holst, did you already try contacting Novello? You may have found this link on the set of songs: http://www.musicsalesclassical.com/c...r/work/712/886

[David Underdown]

The actors linked the music together in a variety of ways, and there were also video screens with captions and snippets of information. There was clever us of one of the actors having a small handheld video camera disguised as a box bronie camera (or similar) which was linked directly to the video screens. I imagine this will all be incorporated when it's shown on telly later in the year. The boys choir also slipped through the arena (in uniform) on their way to form up, a real "Lads in their hundreds" moment. Those of us in the arena also had to hold up fake barley stalks at one point to make a field for Joey to cavort through.

[BBMmk2]

The BBC have recorded this Prom for TV, to be shown on Armistice Day(as opposed to Rememberance Day)