Prom 49: The Lost Words - 25.08.19

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

17:30 Sunday 25 August 2019
Royal Albert Hall


We celebrate the rich musical landscape of nature in a Prom inspired by the bestselling book The Lost Words, which revives disappearing words that describe the natural world.

With a brand-new ‘spell’ by the book’s author Robert Macfarlane, and live paintings from Jackie Morris, who created the original artwork, the programme includes the nightingale, quail and cuckoo calls from Beethoven’s ‘Pastoral’ Symphony, the Arctic bird cries of Rautavaara’s Cantus arcticus, the carefree flight of Vaughan Williams’s The Lark Ascending, plus new commissions by Jocelyn Pook and Alissa Firsova.

Stephanie Childress, violin
Jason Singh, beatboxer
Spell Songs, folk group
National Youth Choir of Great Britain
Southbank Sinfonia
Jessica Cottis, conductor

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

Why don't they just tell us what they're going to play?

[alywin]

Oh well, I don't have any trains, so can't go anyway. Will be interested to hear what those who do make of it.

[MrGongGong]

Why don't they just tell us what they're going to play?

They have
It's in the list you posted

This also has recordings from Chris Watson

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

They have
It's in the list you posted

:

Do you mean that vague approximation?

[MrGongGong]

Do you mean that vague approximation?

Do you always need to know precise details in advance of everything you experience ?

Seems quite clear to me what this gig is likely to consist of

[doversoul1]

Seems quite clear to me what this gig is likely to consist of

… to an/the exclusive club members? What are ‘spell’ and ‘live paintings’? And ‘the original artwork' of what? Are we expected to Google all these? Or am I supposed to know what they are? Or those of us who are ignorant of these things don’t count?

[Pulcinella]

Maybe it's the return of Sooty and Sweep (Abracadabra!) with the equivalent of 'Can you tell what it is yet?' going on in the background.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Maybe it's the return of Sooty and Sweep (Abracadabra!)

Surely - surely - "Izzy-wizzy, let's get busy"?!

[Pulcinella]

Surely - surely - "Izzy-wizzy, let's get busy"?!

You're right, of course!
Was Tommy Cooper Abracadabra then, or is it just the generic magic spell word we all learned?

[vinteuil]

You're right, of course!
Was Tommy Cooper Abracadabra then, or is it just the generic magic spell word we all learned?

.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abracadabra

.

[Pulcinella]

.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abracadabra

.

This is how I mostly remember it:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodliffe%27s_Abracadabra

My father was a member of The Magic Circle.
We never played card games with him, as if he were to win he'd know that we'd accuse him of dodgy dealing!


I still thought it was associated with a TV 'personality' (not that we called them that way back when!).
Maybe David Nixon?

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

Do you always need to know precise details in advance of everything you experience ?

Seems quite clear to me what this gig is likely to consist of

Yes - if I’m paying good money to attend.

[oddoneout]

Do you mean that vague approximation?

This might help - or not - with the spell bit

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2019/jan/16/spell-songs-robert-macfarlane-the-lost-words-vanishing-nature-folk-musicians

For a performance such as this I wouldn't necessarily expect to see a complete list of the items, as it's not a 'conventional' concert.
There is a core of works I know, new works by a composer(Jocelyn Pook) some of whose work I have heard and enjoyed, and another I don't recognise. The rest will be an unknown, to be experienced in the comfort of my home, with an off switch to hand if necessary.
Attending the concert would I think come from a different viewpoint - perhaps knowing enough about the performers or this type of happening etc to want to be there, or being able to risk losing the ticket price on something that possibly doesn't suit.
The painting part will have to be taken on trust unless this is being televised at some point.

[Master Jacques]

Whether or not anybody knows what we're going to be hearing, it is clear from Alan Davey's Letter to the Editor in the September Opera (in response to an editorial complaining about the diluted programming in general and minimal presence of opera in particular) that this prom is there to "reflect" Sir Henry Wood's "primary concern" of "bringing the greatest classical music to as many people as possible". How he knows that his own safety-first policy was Wood's "primary concern" I am not sure: my understanding was, that Sir Henry was more interested in bringing unusual and under-played music - especially new music of ambitious quality - to an audience not paying a fortune to hear it. However:

"Sir Henry Wood would have loved the fact that we are staging both a rarely-performed opera by Berlioz and a beat-boxing Prom, because his vision was to innovate and include popular music of the time alongside classical".

So there we are. It's not what they do, but the fact they're doing it at all which is the reason this group have been programmed. I rather think it will render everything down to the condition of harmless film music, but with an added beat. I hope I am wrong. Really I do.