Prom 74 (12.09.20) Last Night of the Proms

[jonfan]

Yes it was faster I was singing along and keeping up was more difficult than usual! .

Yes Helen Vollam, the only trombone, certainly looked very busy keeping up with the Elgar speed. Let’s have con molto fuoco every year I say!

[Simon B]

I've had no great fondness for the LNoTP for a long while. Moreover, I wouldn't be troubled if the words to IETF RFC 2549 (Internet Protocol via Carrier Pigeon) were sung to P&C 1 or even Jerusalem in place of the current lyrics.

They are though, very good music in their familiar guises IMO.

While fully acknowledging the necessity of all the restrictions, that the BBC and its musicians did the best they could in the circumstances, the skill of the arrangers etc etc etc, what last night did for me was:

Prove what a brilliant orchestrator Elgar was, of both his own and Parry's music, when permitted a sufficiently large group of musicians.

P&C 1 played by an end-of-the Pier pit band? Pallid, emaciated, gutless sound despite the top notch players... Traps percussion? A kick bass drum like someone furiously thumping a sack of feathers? . Better to just give up and leave it out. Watery soup.

For some reason the whole thing called to mind the "Cabaret Singers" skit that Griff Rhys Jones and the late lamented Mel Smith used to do at the end of their 80s TV show - mullets, dodgy strobe lighting, terrible synthesisers, an air of resignation, the lot.

The only things that have "worked" in the live Proms have, IMO, been those written for the forces that can actually be accommodated. Only Rattle/LSO nearly got away with a (less) undersized string section, though even that was challenged in RVW5 by the wholly uncharacteristic barrage at critical moments of splat-split-slide-splat-split-splat from the mostly-not-the-LSO upper brass... Allowances have to be made in the circumstances, but it was very conspicuous.

At least some of the independent orchestras and freelance players will have got at least some fees over the last few weeks.

All of this is of course pretty much unavoidable and the BBC are to be commended for doing something. That doesn't make it any less depressing IMO.

[kernelbogey]

Worth mentioning again, IMV, the skill of the lighting teams in creating differing, stimulating lighting designs for the RAH that gave it an air of intimacy, despite the abence of an audience.