Prom 75: 10.09.16 - Last Night of the Proms

[jonfan]

Every year without fail people on this thread get on their high horses and say with pride and superiority that they can't stand the last night and don't watch or listen to it. Come on it's a party, suspend the critical faculties that judge a Mahler symphony or Verdi Requiem. It's generally all good natured and fun, yesterday was no exception. It would have given more variety if an intstrumentalist had shared star billing with the singer. Good to have a youth group at the beginning and to give young soloists a go at the VW Serenade (a tough call as VW wrote it for the top singers of the day). SO linked music-making to peace and harmony in the world and the hall and venues around the UK demonstrated that. Great to see all the diverse flags and for 'Land of hope and glory' and 'Jerusalem' substitute 'the world'. Anyway it's hardly desirable to build anything as divisive as modern Jerusalem anywhere!
End of sermon from Jonfan.
A great season and a great thank you to the BBC for making up the losses of about £8,000,000. (Less than Sky spends on 3 Premier League games.)
Next season? Bring it on.

[greenilex]

I too enjoyed the party and sang along. Guantanamera an old favourite with important peace resonance now. We could have done with an Ode To Joy and a Marseillaise as well, though...and The East is Red to finish?

[ardcarp]

The Last Night was discussed on R4's Broadcasting House programme this morning;

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b07tqpq0#play

...about 12m40s from start. Happily it did not try to brand the Prommers as jingoistic flag-waving idiots and stressed that there was universal harmony all round. It did go on to discuss Brexit (well it just had to didn't it?) with Matthew Paris and some random ex-UKIP person.

[Daniel]

Blimey I wasn't that far out.

... though you might not say that about his apparel.

(I agree with the person up-thread who said that it rings strangely today - especially watching t'telly with the subtitles rubbing it in with their translation Girl from Guantanamo each time the title word came up in the song.. )

(.. and neither are you the only person who hadn't made the connection between place and song ..)

[french frank]

I agree LNotP is the end of term party - though it might make the point more clearly if the first half was more like previous concerts.

Talking of connections, am I the only person in the world who'd never connected the song Guantanamera with Guantanamo Bay? (I agree with the person up-thread who said that it rings strangely today - especially watching t'telly with the subtitles rubbing it in with their translation Girl from Guantanamo each time the title word came up in the song.. )

Better than Ipanemera anyway, which it could have been given the Olympics connection.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Every year, without fail, people on this Thread get on their high horses and say with pride and superiority that everybody else should enjoy the LNotP because it's a party; all good natured and fun.

Well, to those people I'd just like to say that my high horse is higher than your high horse!

[ucanseetheend]

The BBC Proms? what is it? A bastardised version of what Henry Wood Created or anything that it was in the 20th Century and first part of the 21st. The last few years have proved its just one of many other festivals.

[Nick Armstrong]

Every year, without fail, people on this Thread get on their high horses and say with pride and superiority that everybody else should enjoy the LNotP because it's a party; all good natured and fun.

Well, to those people I'd just like to say that my high horse is higher than your high horse!

Nay, lad!

[AmpH]

Just in case one should feel the need ........

[Once Was 4]

But what have such flag-waving issues got to do with the Referendum? What can they tell us that is directly pertinent to whether there was any need to address UK's status as an EU member state in the first place, or whether the issue should have been subjected to referendum, or why almost everyone was so shy about admitting in advance that its outcome would not be legally binding, or how the campaign was conducted on both sides, or the various divisivenesses that it engendered, or the legal challenges to its outcome, or the lack of action in progressing Brexit since the declaration of that outcome and all the rest of it? I don't see that discussing this on the Referendum thread would add anything useful thereto; it might indeed detract therefrom.

Isn't the entire flag-waving business at the LNOTP a long outmoded "tradition" that has no place in an annual concert series featuring orchestras, artists and music from many nations and attended and otherwise listened to by similarly international audiences in a world whose map hasn't been coloured pink in decades and in which attempts to pander to such detritus as might remain of the British Oompah risk at best detracting from and at worset undermining the festival's most positive aspects?

Perhaps the introduction of the waving of EU flags might instigate a new "tradition" or introduce a variation on that old one but, even were it to do so, who needs flag waving by audience members at concerts and what in any case is it supposed to achieve and for whom, other than distracting other audience members from the music being performed?

Those other "traditional" aspects of the LNOTP, namely those eternally recycled sea songs, the much misunderstood and misrepresented Jerusalem whose music was, as NK notes, written by a German influenced composer and orchestrated by a better known one and the first Pomp and Circumstance March by said better known one to which Arthur Christher Benson's Land of Hope and Glory doggerel (for all that it was suggested by King Edward VII) was later to be appended despite Elgar's reservations are surely being allowed to make ever greater mockeries of themselves with each September that passes; this can hardly do the Proms' reputation any great favours, can it?...

Also consider the writer of the 'doggeral' (A.C. Benson): an avowed opponent of the Boer War and the obsession with team sports in Public Schools; a supporter of Britain's participation in the 1st World War until its later stages which, he thought, were being prolonged by certain interests for their own ends. Did he mean his words to mean what the flag wavers think any more than Blake meant with his insipirational words about building a new and better future? And of course Rule Britannia was originally a highly subversive anti-government song which could be roughly translated as "get your fingers out and start doing something for your own people!" Ooops - dangerous ground.

I always enjoyed taking part in 'LNOP' type events (even took part in a Naxos recording of such) - in particular outdoors if there were lasers and fireworks (I once took part in one on the NE coast which was covered in mist and all that you saw of the fireworks was the mist changing colour!) But we once did one in the grounds of one of the great country houses where some of the dinner-jacketed, high-heeled, fancily dressed, wined and dined audience started to sing some clearly racist words which meant that some colleagues started paying for deps when these dates came up again. I still did them (still do if they are offered) but not with the same enjoyment.

[EnemyoftheStoat]

For the first time in my life I turned iPlayer on to see how many EU flags got through to the arena. I took caution and skipped the first bit and landed on the Borodin….. The sound and the sight of the chorus were enough to make me give up the hope of seeing the flags and I turned it off. That was my first and most likely to be the last venture into this much publicised event. I must say though the choir made me really appreciate the BBC Singers.

...who were part of the said choir. Which part of this gig did you (or HS above - "BBC Choral Society", I ask you!) actually pay any attention to?

[doversoul1]

...who were part of the said choir. Which part of this gig did you (or HS above - "BBC Choral Society", I ask you!) actually pay any attention to?

I watched the part of this concert in which a choir, BBC Singers or/and BBC Symphony Chorus (the name really does not matter here) sang the Borodin. If they were the BBC Singers, I have no difficulty in taking back my words about them although I am sorry that I have to maintain my opinion about this choir.

[ardcarp]

I think the Borodin PDs are a great romp And maybe we shouldn't be too picky about the singing. As long as they sang KHAN when the cymbal clashed, isn't that all that mattered? Seriously though, how all the rehearsals for all the Proms are managed I really can't imagine. I doubt that particular item had more than a few minutes devoted to it in the RAH.

[Petrushka]

What's not to like about the Polotsvian Dances? As ardcarp says they are a great romp and much of it foreshadows Stravinsky's Rite of Spring.

[makropulos]

What's not to like about the Polotsvian Dances? As ardcarp says they are a great romp

Quite right. I'm puzzled by the sudden outbreak of Borodin-Rage. I loved them when I was a kid and still do (as ageing kid).