Booking 2020

[LHC]

Is an ability to bob up and down erratically not also a key requirement?

You could go the whole nine yards and attach springs to the base of the dummy; it could then bounce up and down and sway from side to side out of time with whatever is being played.

[Bryn]

You could go the whole nine yards and attach springs to the base of the dummy; it could then bounce up and down and sway from side to side out of time with whatever is being played.

If they repeated Colin Davis's Berlioz Trojans (in English) there would also be a call to literally head-bang on the front rail.

[Darkbloom]

You can recreate the proms atmosphere at home by dressing a dummy in your unwashed clothes and standing behind it. Then, during the interval pour yourself a glass of warm white wine, and throw a tenner in the bin.

These are all excellent constructive suggestions, with only two problems. 1) I, unaccountably, don't have a dummy to hand at the moment, and any attempt to procure one might invite speculation about my - possibly unseemly - intentions. 2) A dummy won't suddenly decide to stretch its back and hit me in the face, or turn right round and give a bored stare around the hall.

[Darkbloom]

Why assume they won't? I was present at all of those, apart from the Bychkov Elektra, and would love to hear them again. It's a great opportunity for the BBC to bing out their best and with an 8 week season to fill I'd say there's a every chance of at least one of those appearing.

Apart from those, I'd like to see two Beethoven S9lti Proms that were televised: the 1982 Missa Silemnis and the 1996 9th Symphony. Both unforgettable.

I certainly hope I'm wrong. I only assumed they wouldn't because the length means they'd have to juggle their schedules a bit. At last, I've been to a Prom that you haven't! That Elektra was a real gem, and followed Salome the previous night.

[Darkbloom]

If they repeated Colin Davis's Berlioz Trojans (in English) there would also be a call to literally head-bang on the front rail.

I'm guessing that would have Ronald Dowd as Aeneas? This would be a very good opportunity to properly honour Colin Davis and his huge contribution to musical life.

[Bryn]

I'm guessing that would have Ronald Dowd as Aeneas? This would be a very good opportunity to properly honour Colin Davis and his huge contribution to musical life.

Indeed, September 1st 1968. I queued overnight to attend. The headbanging, all too real, was not mine!

[seabright]

Why assume they won't? I was present at all of those, apart from the Bychkov Elektra, and would love to hear them again. It's a great opportunity for the BBC to bring out their best and with an 8 week season to fill I'd say there's a every chance of at least one of those appearing.

Apart from those, I'd like to see two Beethoven S9lti Proms that were televised: the 1982 Missa Silemnis and the 1996 9th Symphony. Both unforgettable.

Yes, there'd be a great opportunity to raid the archives and dig out the finest tele-recorded Proms for re-transmission on BBC4, plus the most memorable non-televised broadcasts for Radio 3. After all, we only saw and/or heard them once at the time, with sometimes a possible repeat. As it happens, the TV sports producers are currently having a great time showing again some top-class football matches - today's it's England vs Germany in the 1966 World Cup final - so I hope the Proms organisers will follow suit with some equally memorable Proms. I'd like to see again the Previn "Carmina Burana" where poor Thomas Allen fainted mid-song, due to the heat, and a Prommer wandered onto the platform and took the baritone part over to great acclaim!

[Ein Heldenleben]

You can recreate the proms atmosphere at home by dressing a dummy in your unwashed clothes and standing behind it. Then, during the interval pour yourself a glass of warm white wine, and throw a tenner in the bin.

or a walk through sunny Hyde Park from Lancaster Gate tube , an interval pint of Spitfire, a post performance pint at that pub off Queens Gate. The prospect of meeting a few old friends ....oh yes and the music.

PS you're right about the drink prices...

[Stunsworth]

I wonder if they still have the Soft Machine tapes?

[Bryn]

I wonder if they still have the Soft Machine tapes?

Why? The whole of their part of a Prom is available on CD as a bonus disc with recentish copies of Third. It's just a pity that the same cannot be said of Intermodulation's contribution, the first half, to that Prom.

[Petrushka]

Why? The whole of their part of a Prom is available on CD as a bonus disc with recentish copies of Third. It's just a pity that the same cannot be said of Intermodulation's contribution, the first half, to that Prom.

This is a sort of problem with TV Prom broadcasts from earlier times: In many cases, they only televised part of the Prom, not the full concert but there is, I suppose, a possibility of stitching different ones together to make a satisfying whole. More recently, we do, of course, have a good number of entire concerts broadcast on TV.

[bluestateprommer]

Again, not that an American's thoughts count here as to what David Pickard and his team will choose to air from the archives, but in general, my first guess is that they will try to reproduce as much as possible the general themes that they had planned for a pandemic-free normal Proms season. The obvious theme for this year is the Beethoven celebration, and it clearly will be easy to find archived concerts, both audio alone and video + audio, to cover the symphonies and concertos, for one. Other random thoughts:

* Focus in the newly generated content, produced in isolation, on getting more female composers represented with new and relatively new works
* Tributes to recently departed musicians, e.g. Penderecki, Mariss Jansons, Barry Tuckwell. Lynn Harrell, Jessye Norman, Stephen Cleobury

In terms of a personal "wish list", I clearly have no idea of the extent of past Proms TV relays and what the BBC has preserved. I do know of a video on YT of the July 2005 concert with Richard Hickox conducting the original version of RVW's A London Symphony, which would be top of my wish list, even for just the audio in pristine sound.

[bluestateprommer]

From an NYT profile by Anthony Tommasini of the American mezzo J'Nai Bridges, one example of one of the lost Proms this summer, the annual Beethoven 9 Prom, with several twists:

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/26/arts/music/jnai-bridges-met-opera.html

"When we first spoke in May, she was still hanging on for a BBC Proms concert in London in July. Simon Rattle was to conduct Chineke, an orchestra founded in 2015 to provide opportunities to young musicians of color, in Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, with Ms. Bridges, Pretty Yende, Lawrence Brownlee and Ryan Speedo Green as the vocal soloists."

Think about that soloist line up for a moment. I also wonder what SSR would have put on the 1st half of the concert.

[Simon B]

In an insignificant nanoparticle of good news, the BBC have at least chosen a good 'un as the main entertainment in the First Night of the Historical Proms...

17 July 2020, c.8.35pm

Mahler: Symphony no 3

Anna Larsson, mezzo-soprano
Trinity Boys Choir
London Symphony Chorus
Lucerne Festival Orchestra

Claudio Abbado, conductor

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000kx6f

[Petrushka]

In an insignificant nanoparticle of good news, the BBC have at least chosen a good 'un as the main entertainment in the First Night of the Historical Proms...

17 July 2020, c.8.35pm

Mahler: Symphony no 3

Anna Larsson, mezzo-soprano
Trinity Boys Choir
London Symphony Chorus
Lucerne Festival Orchestra

Claudio Abbado, conductor

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000kx6f

An unforgettable evening at which I was lucky to be present.

I do hope that these Prom archive repeats are not going to be a mish-mash of different concerts. It would be far better to broadcast them straight, as if live, with original announcements and all.