BBC Proms 2024

[Barry]

Is anyone going to listen to this year's Proms?

In the past I used to attend a few of them each year, but the o postal booking system used often meant that I could not get the seats I wanted; and since the acoustics of the Albert Hall are, shall we say, "variable", booking tickets was always a bit of a lottery.

So for the past ten years or so, I have been more than happy to hear them via the BBC on Radio 3. The sound is far more balanced, the Albert Hall echo eliminated, and best of all - it's free. Of course you loose the sense of presence and occasion but it is a small price to pay.

Tonight it is The National Orchestra of Wales conducted by Ryan Bancroft performing Shoenberg's Pelleas and Melisande and Zemlinsky's The Mermaid. Both pieces were first performed in Vienna in 1905.

[Wakefield Turntables]

I did think that this was going to be another thread on how good/bad the BBC transmission was going to be this year. We always seem to have one of these threads. I think I have an old DECCA pressing of the mermaid kicking around somewhere, I'd have to look, don't hold me to that though.

[vinylspinner]

Yes, listened to the opening night and to the prom yesterday evening, Mahler 5 with Mark Elder conducting his last concert with the Halle, very good performance too.




Is anyone going to listen to this year's Proms?

In the past I used to attend a few of them each year, but the o postal booking system used often meant that I could not get the seats I wanted; and since the acoustics of the Albert Hall are, shall we say, "variable", booking tickets was always a bit of a lottery.

So for the past ten years or so, I have been more than happy to hear them via the BBC on Radio 3. The sound is far more balanced, the





Albert Hall echo eliminated, and best of all - it's free. Of course you loose the sense of presence and occasion but it is a small price to pay.

Tonight it is The National Orchestra of Wales conducted by Ryan Bancroft performing Shoenberg's Pelleas and Melisande and Zemlinsky's The Mermaid. Both pieces were first performed in Vienna in 1905.

[Barry]

Prom 8, Wednesday 24 July 2024. Nick Drake: an Orchestral Tribute

This year, the BBC Proms have extended their repertoire further than that of previous years. This has been greeted with relish by some, as reperesented by a letter in the Radio Times:

"... really pleased to see there are plenty of BBC Proms this year celebrating disco, jazz, folk and pop music. It is high time that the Proms moved away from evening after evening of long, tedious syphonies by composers such as Mahler, Bruckner and Brahms.
Hopefully the "intellectual" classical music content of the Proms will continue to diminish year on year so that more people can actually enjoy them."

Clearly the correspondent doesn't listen to either Radio 1 or Radio 2, or to any of the other music programs broadcast; if he doesn't like classical music then why does he listen to Radio 3, which broadcast the Proms? The correspondent's opinion was countered by a couple of letters published a week later:

"So, ... delights in the hope that the classical content of the Proms might diminish to make way more disco, jazz, folk and pop.
The works of Mahler, Bruckner and Brahms may require the listener to have a long attention span, but to call them "tedious" is no better than me calling all pop music "purile".
There are many hundreds of festivals in the UK catering for these genres, compared with the relatively small number of classical festivals. There are also numerous radio stations devoted to pop music, while classical music is served by only three. Please allow classical music fans one big celebration each year and I'm sure none of us will begrudge the time given to Gastonbury, the Isle of Wight, Radio 1 Big Weekend and all the other festivals that keep the music scene in this country so vibrant."

As far as I know there have been many 'Late Night Proms' which would present performances of jazz and 'alternative' music. One such Late Night Prom I attended was by Soft Machine. (Apparently when the group tried to get in back stage, they were barred by an official who said that only performers could be admitted; to which one of them (I think it was Mike Ratledge) replied "But we are the performers!"



But I digress, Wednesday's Prom was an orchestral tribute to Nick Drake - and I approached it with some trepidation. Rarely do I like the orchestral playing of pop music - it just doesn't sound 'right' to me. And so it proved to be on Wednesday: I only could put up with it for about three quarters of an hour before turning it off and playing some Nick Drake recording instead.

However if the Prom introduced the work of Nick Drake to a new audience then that can only be a good thing.

Did anyone else hear Prom 8 - what were your impressions?