What is your verdict on this year's Proms?
The 2011 Proms season is drawing to its close.
What is your verdict on a) The programme content offered and b) The standards of performance in comparison with 2010 and previous years (going back to when you last remember!)?
This should, I hope, lead to a lively discussion with many differing views.
VH
I thought that I might set this discussion on its way by quoting part of a message which I received yesterday from a former BBC message boarder who has elected not to become a member of this independent forum, but whose views, quite unsolicited by myself are very relevent to this discussion:
VHI have long given up on the dubious motives of the trendies at the BBC as they struggle to be ever more clever with our listening diet.
When you are looking to cut a dash with your faceless bosses upstairs, audience considerations are not usually a good idea anyway.
Only yesterday evening, during the interval feature, we were, would you believe, treated to modern jazz!
A tenuous enough rationale if the second half had contained Scriabin or Schnitker, but most certainly off the clock when Tchaikovsky was
about to follow!
That composer didn't get much justice either.
I don't know your views on the subject but I think Maestro Davis had a big problem last night if he was aiming to get any sensitive interpretation out of that eager youth orchestra.
Rimsky's Scheherezade (appropriate enough after the Ravel) surely would have been a better programme choice.
I have listened to very few proms this year. I have lost interest somehow; it's all too artificial these days.
The Proms have completely lost the magic of the era you and I remember.
Perhaps that erosion began with the title change from the Henry Wood Proms to those of the BBC instead.
Now whose brilliant idea was that, Kenyon's? Sounds like something of his.
Full Member
Morning VH, the proms seem to have lost their magic for me this year but this might be an age and health thing partly.
The far fewer concerts years ago managed to introduce the young and inexperienced concertgoer to far more of the basic repertoire, a smattering of new works, often conducted by the composer, and usually a knowledgeable introduction to the music, usually by someone in the RAH and not feeling the need for two other people to chat to. No one shouted over the applause and the few women involved did not stsnd outside the Albert Hall Mansions dressed for a party.
it's nice to see and hear so many visiting orchestras but perhaps it's all got out of hand.
Just my aged opinion of course.
Full Member
I am sure VH this will indeed be a very interesting thread ......personally I have not been able to as listen to as many Proms as last year and my length of experience is about 5% of that of you and your friend!
Of the Proms I have heard I enjoyed them .....the Gothic, salymap's Smetena being for me particular highlights. I wasn't particularly impressed by the Mahler 2. As to the programme purely personally I am not a big fan of anniversary bias and feel excellence should outweigh birthday boys. Why for example did we have no Vaughan Williams?
I also feel we should have slightly more modern stuff I particularly enjoys Rattles Prom of Webern, Berg and Schoenberg last year.
A special joy of the Proms for me has to be reading the views and analysis you and others - many thanks for it and I look forward to your views on the season.
Full Member
I'm going to hold off on comments about the season as a whole until after the Proms have finished.
salymap, you mention the 'far fewer concerts years ago'. What sort of difference in number are we talking about? I know the chamber music concerts at the Cadogan Hall are a recent innovation but was the season significantly shorter in the time you are thinking of?
They haven't lost any magic for me. I haven't missed a single Prom this season, and I've found these concerts intensely enjoyable...full of infinite colour, zest, and relish, which I've savoured right down to my toes. I've greedily devoured every note and still can't get enough: if I could, I'd do Cadogan in the afternoon, a two-intermission Prom, a Late Night concert, and a Proms Plus programme in the Elgar Room every single day. What a marvelous blessing to be offered such a bountiful cornucopia of the finest music the world has to offer!I have listened to very few proms this year. I have lost interest somehow; it's all too artificial these days.
The Proms have completely lost the magic of the era you and I remember.
When I was a very moody and depressed twelve-year-old, I often glumly wondered what my life would be like at the age I am now. Was there any point in going on? If someone had seen into the future and told me I'd be spending two glorious months in London hearing the greatest classical music in the world as performed by the greatest artists in the world--Colin Davis and Marc-Andre Hamelin IN ONE NIGHT!!-- and shown me a picture of myself exactly as I looked last night, laughing, talking to friends and eagerly soaking up every note...happily walking home in the mist with a young heart, feeling as if I were floating on air?
Well, I scarcely could have believed it. It would have given me great hope, comfort, and a real reason for living.
OR: If all the music has gone out of you, don't blame the Proms.
Full Member
aeolium. I worked in a music hire library when very young and occasionally took sets of parts to the RAH
for the librarian and saw the room where it was all [where possible] assembled for the orchestras. The concerts numbered 49 in the late 1940s to 50s. 8 weeks, 6 days a week and the last night. The BBCSO and LSO took most of the concerts at that time, as far as I remember.
There were a fortnight of 'prelims' where the orchestra[s] rehearsed all day and were part of my musical education.
Full Member
Well you to your over the top way and me to mine. Even musicians have told me that overkill is easy if one listens to too much musicOriginally Posted by cavatina
Full Member
And music is still ONE of the most important things in life for me too bjut it's with me allthe time.
Good morning Anton. I quite agree with you about this obsession with anniversarys. I was born on the same date as Mozart died. Does that make any difference to my appreciation of his works? I share my birthday with. (amongst one in 365 of the population,) Ronnie O'Sullivan. Does that make me any good at Snooker?
I am much more concerned with tributes paid on learning of the death of a loved and respected musician and possibly a broadcast reminder of that anniversary. I was shocked that, on the 50th anniversary on 1st September 2007 of the tragic early death of Dennis Brain, not a single mention of the fact was to be heard on Radio 3.
Anyway, back to the thread. I am going to wait until it is all over for another year before posting my impressions. I expect that most contributors will do the same, but I opened this thread early in case somebody wanted "to get something off their chest", apart from commenting on individual proms performances.
VH
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