Prom 53: Elgar’s The Music Makers - 29.08.19

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

19:00 Thursday 29 August 2019
Royal Albert Hall

Ralph Vaughan Williams: Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis
Hugh Wood: Scenes from Comus
Edward Elgar: The Music Makers

Stacey Tappan soprano
Dame Sarah Connolly mezzo-soprano
Anthony Gregory tenor
BBC Symphony Chorus
BBC Symphony Orchestra
Sir Andrew Davis conductor


Sir Andrew Davis conducts the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Chorus and mezzo-soprano Dame Sarah Connolly in Elgar’s last great choral work.

The Music Makers is the musical culmination of a career, drawing together quotations from many of the composer’s best-loved pieces, including the ‘Enigma’ Variations and Sea Pictures, and weaving them into a musical manifesto for the power of art.

The concert also includes Vaughan Williams’s luminous Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis for double string orchestra and Hugh Wood’s lyrical setting of scenes from Milton’s pastoral masque Comus.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

Clearly the BBC blurb-padder hasn't heard of Elgar's The Spirit of England.

[MrGongGong]

More tribute bands

[gradus]

Thanks for the reminder about this concert which I'd overlooked.

[mrbouffant]

A jolly good Prom indeed.

[gedsmk]

A jolly good Prom indeed.

Stunning sound and performance quality in the VW/Tallis. Rapt silence at the end. Loved it!

[Petrushka]

A jolly good Prom indeed.

Indeed it was and I'd second the comments from gedsmk on the excellent sound quality. I was present at a 1979 Prom performance of Scenes from Comus and it's a very fine work that deserves many more performances.

[gradus]

Indeed it was and I'd second the comments from gradus on the excellent sound quality. I was present at a 1979 Prom performance of Scenes from Comus and it's a very fine work that deserves many more performances.

'Twas another G, not I.

[Petrushka]

'Twas another G, not I.

Apologies, wasn't properly awake. Now amended.

[bluestateprommer]

Caught up with this all-British Prom just in time, as with others from the same week. Agree with gedsmk & Petrushka on its quality. Great that Hugh Wood was present to take a bow, 54 years on from the Proms premiere, even if it sounded as though he didn't walk down the stairs to center stage. Even though I've heard Scenes from Comus on CD before (it's been a while), hearing the Messiaen influences hit me fresh with this hearing.

It was a bit curious to hear Hannah French, in the very good interval discussion with Kate Kennedy and Jordan Kistler, ask them rather 'leading' questions in an attempt to buff up the quality of Elgar's The Music Makers, to try to make it out to be a better work than it is, e.g. with a comparison to Richard Strauss and Ein Heldenleben. This was my first time hearing TMM in any form, and in all honesty, the leading questions didn't succeed in their purpose. Nothing in TMM around Elgar's self-quotations is anywhere near as good or memorable as the musical quotes themselves (which cannot be said of Ein Heldenleben, whatever one thinks aesthetically of EH overall), IMHO. But Sir Andrew, Dame Sarah (good that she's back at The Proms after her medical scare earlier this year, where the audience seemed to give her an especially warm welcome), the BBC SO and BBC SC did their best for it.

[BBMmk2]

I’m surprised this has t been talked about more. What a wonderful Prom this was. Pity not more like it.

[Maclintick]

Clearly the BBC blurb-padder hasn't heard of Elgar's The Spirit of England.

Equally clearly it depends on one's assessment of The Spirit of England as a "great" work -- make of that what you will..

[LeMartinPecheur]

Equally clearly it depends on one's assessment of The Spirit of England as a "great" work -- make of that what you will..

Oddly enough, the Launceston Choral Soc, slightly assisted by yours truly amid the 2nd basses, is currently working on The Music Makers and The Spirit of England. Early impressions of the latter are that, whatever the merits of Sir Edward's music, they have a tough task surmounting the horrors of much of Binyon's verse. And the text of TMM is pretty dire in parts too! IMHO of course.