[1999 Season] [Proms 11 - 20] [Proms 21 - 30] [Proms 31 - 40] [Proms 41 - 50] [Proms 51 - 60] [Proms 61 - 72]
It's Friday 14 July 2000. The weather is still cool and overcast, but promises to become hot and dry by Sunday, in time for our planned group mountain bike tour of the Forest of Dean. For the moment, though all eyes are concentrated on the improvements to the Royal Albert Hall. The lower passageways have a sound deadening carpet, and all the doors are new. No more creaking and bangs, audible during the concert. The toilets are unchanged. They smell as bad as ever, and the powder blue 1960's basins contrasts with the stained Victorian stand-up sanitary ware. Some of the entry steps into the Arena have disappeared. You can now stand and sit around the walls at the edge of the Arena after the ban imposed many years ago and enforced by a white line and constant arguments with the stewards.
The floor feels new, and no longer creaks where the panel slabs used to crack. No fountain as yet - that will reappear after the Berlioz Requiem, the third of the concerts to be televised this season. For now, the chairs around the fountain are arranged at various points near the edge of the Arena. The ancient swivel Stalls seats have been replaced with smart but functional metal framed chairs, upholstered in red. It looks like there are more of them, which will reduce the proportion still owned by debenture-holders. At the end of each row is a black hand rail. The gangways are slightly narrower, leaving a wheelchair space by each door. Some of the mushrooms have been moved and rearranged. They are still dirty, but two parallel silver rails have been set into the roof space, and a gantry is making its way around the circumference. Some of the flaking paintwork is being rubbed down. Water seeps through the roof in places, and once poured down into the Stalls during a concert, so there will be substantial repair work to be done. The large hole to the south of the hall has been there 3 years. The work has 2 more years to run.
Tonight's audience was a good one. Quiet and appreciative. The first mobile phone trilled only 5 seconds into the concert, closely followed by another, but these noises now seem inevitable, and the RAH no longer even bothers to make an announcement asking patrons to switch them off. I was at a small theatre recently when one woman even answered a call during the play, and then had a short conversation. Copeland's Fanfare for the Common Man sounds well in the Albert Hall, and the placement of brass in the Gallery worked well. Stokowski's orchestration of the Toccata and Fugue in D minor (did Bach actually write it?) was if anything an improvement on the now hackneyed organ original, and well played by the BBC Symphony Orchestra under Sir Andrew Davis in his last Prom season.
Evgeny Kissin is the Prommer's favourite pianist. He always reminds me of those old Hoffnung cartoons, where the pianist is depicted in a series of ever more violent poses, his hair flying in all directions, and fire issuing from the instrument by the end. I lost the bet as to how many encores he would play. Only two. I thought three, and saw Kissin play seven a couple of years ago, on a hot Sunday afternoon when he played solo pieces in a temperature of over 30C. Great stuff, and the dark brillo pad on his head did not even move. Nor did he smile even when he acknowledged the adulation of the groupies, one of whom presented him with a rose.
As for the second half, well Janacek Glagolitic Mass is not my cup of tea, nor indeed did my sister and brother-in-law relish singing it. They both are members of the BBC Symphony Chorus, and will usually happily tackle anything with verve, but this work is too much even for them.
The BBC National Orchestra of Wales continue to improve, from a low point some years ago when we walked out of a concert by them, and usually tried to avoid any of the Proms when they appeared. This was an interesting programme. I cannot think that Julian Wu's tribute to Bach will be heard again, but Palimsest by tonight's conductor George Benjamin struck a chord with me. It was good to start the night with Debussy, given his undoubted influence on the other composers featured this evening. Messiaen is - well you know my views on Messiaen, and the Oiseaux exotiques did not disappoint. Messiaen was fascinated by birds, amongst other things and one can only listen to the extraordinary noises and wonder what the original calls must sound like. Maybe a CD of this work with birdsongs to illustrate the music? The Firebird rounded off Prom 4 nicely, not a memorable concert, but enjoyable nonetheless.
There was 40 minutes before the first of the late-night Proms, which we spent picnicking in the car. There's not so much room to park this year. We noticed Westminster have extended parking controls in Kensington Gore opposite the Albert Hall until midnight, so there will be a number of cars this season which will be ticketed, if their owners park in their usual spots and do not notice. Sadly the wait was not worth it. You can usually rely on the British choral tradition for sheer quality, but the Choir of King's College Cambridge were disappointing. The treble soloist sounded dreadful in one of my favourite choral works. We abandoned the affair after about an hour and went off to our bed. Sad.
Work prevented me from attending Proms 6 - 8 but I heard some of 6 and 7 on the Arcam digital radio which I won in last years BBC competition. I must have been one of the few entrants who got all the questions right, as between us, my wife and I won first and second prizes. The radio is worth £800, and yes the difference is marked. Get one, they're wonderful and don't even new an external aerial. Michael, who has been to every Prom season since 1943 pronounced Thursday's BBC Philharmonic truly excellent, probably the best rendition of Shostakovich 4 he had ever heard.
Lee Kettlewell adds: Vassily Sinaisky is a very fine Shostakovitch conductor as evidenced by his Prom performances of the 8th and 13th. I agree with Michael that his performance of the 4th Symphony was the finest I had heard and compared favourably with Rozhdestvensky in the early eighties and Kondrashin and Ormandy on record.
On Friday 21st, the same orchestra under Yan Pascal Tortelier did not do so well, but were hampered by quite the worst audience so far. One elderly woman, having coughed through the Lark Ascending tried to bottle up her explosions and created a truly sensational apoplectic fit. People around her tried to offer sweets, bottles of water etc, but she explained and apologised loudly, quite eclipsing the wonderful playing of Tasmin Little. This woman was not alone, but was joined by loud noises from all around the hall - coughing, mobile phones, and objects dropped onto the floor.
No one really was looking forward to Sir Peter Maxwell Davies. The advance publicity had it that his 7th symphony would be his most approachable work, influenced by Haydn. It sounded much like Max to me. Alas. Great British Classics (and Max). That was tonight's fare.
Lee Kettlewell adds: The Enigma Variations in Prom 9 was far too fast. Don't just take my word for it you will have a chance to reappraise it as it is televised on Sunday 20 August. I do hope they will transmit the Maxwell Davies Symphony which was easily the best performance of the whole concert. It is funny not having a season this year (the first time for many years) but I do not feel so inclined to go to concerts that on paper I expect to be great due to the programme but are often ruined, not so much by the performances, but by the wretched crowd who insist on going to the RAH even though they wish they were somewhere else.
[1999 Season] [Proms 11 - 20] [Proms 21 - 30] [Proms 31 - 40] [Proms 41 - 50] [Proms 51 - 60] [Proms 61 - 72]
