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Reviews of some of the Prom concerts of the 2008 season
(and occasional other related observations)
[NB: neither this blog nor its author has any official connection with the BBC]
Perhaps it would be more accurate to call these articles 'reactions' rather than 'reviews', but it's a bit late to change now. . . To read all the earlier pieces, scroll right down to the apple and click on "Older Posts" above it to the right.
I'm looking for something about . . .
Prom Review 'Quick Picker'
- Prom 1
- Prom 3
- Prom 7
- Prom 18
- Prom 20 (first reaction)
- Prom 20 (Gruppen; Harmonien)
- Prom 24
- Prom 25
- Prom 26
- Prom 27 (Ravel)
- Prom 29
- Prom 30
- Prom 31 (New composers)
- Prom 31 (Bernstein, Gershwin, Stravinsky)
- Prom 34 (Rachmaninov)
- Prom 35
- Prom 36
- Prom 37
- Prom 39
- Prom 40 (pt 1)
- Prom 40 (Glagolitic Mass)
- Prom 43 (Flos Campi)
- Prom 45
- Prom 46
- Prom 51
- Prom 57 (Gershwin)
- Prom 64: Messaien, Turangalila
- Prom 68
The Introductory movement
The plan (or plot, maybe I should call it) is to do a bit of serious(-ish) reviewing of this year's BBC Proms concerts. something I've been meaning to do for ages.
I won't be covering all of them; I'm getting fussy, these days, and anyway I'm a bit crippled now, so it isn't as easy to go up in the Gallery, or even to one of the posh seats, every night as it used to be.
So, some will be reviewed 'live' and others via Radio 3. (Through a proper FM aerial and a hi-fi/studio quality tuner, not the rubbishy bitrate of digital Freeview or the internet.)
I'll tell you if I listened live in the Albert Hall or via radio: something some newspaper reviewers don't do, I've noticed. It can be important; the effect isn't always the same . . .
You may find me at odds with some other reviewers every now and then; I've walked out on more than one concert that got rave reviews before now, I warn you! Happy reading. . .and have fun . . .
I won't be covering all of them; I'm getting fussy, these days, and anyway I'm a bit crippled now, so it isn't as easy to go up in the Gallery, or even to one of the posh seats, every night as it used to be.
So, some will be reviewed 'live' and others via Radio 3. (Through a proper FM aerial and a hi-fi/studio quality tuner, not the rubbishy bitrate of digital Freeview or the internet.)
I'll tell you if I listened live in the Albert Hall or via radio: something some newspaper reviewers don't do, I've noticed. It can be important; the effect isn't always the same . . .
You may find me at odds with some other reviewers every now and then; I've walked out on more than one concert that got rave reviews before now, I warn you! Happy reading. . .and have fun . . .
Translate this page . . .
About Me
- Prommer
- wrote about hi-fi in various magazines once upon a time, and even wrote classical record reviews. (He also wrote rock reviews under a pseudonym, but perhaps we shouldn't mention that.) Living in London not that far from the Albert Memorial, he's been a regular Promenader and pre-Prom picnicer for, er, quite a few years . . .
A brief note blown on my own trumpet . . .
MusicWeb International writing about this blog: "Well written, amusing and provocative." That's nice, I like that. The cheque is in the post . . .
BBC Proms links
81-year-old (Capricorn) would like to meet . . .
I discovered this MySpace page; I don't have one, but I'd like to think of myself as a friend, all the same . . .
A different Carnival Atmosphere
Many of the 'costume' photos on this blog derive from Notting Hill Carnival. This year's is all over now.
Blog Archive
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▼
2008
(59)
- ► 09/07 - 09/14 (2)
- ► 08/31 - 09/07 (2)
- ► 08/24 - 08/31 (4)
- ► 08/17 - 08/24 (14)
- ► 08/10 - 08/17 (13)
- ► 08/03 - 08/10 (15)
- ► 07/27 - 08/03 (2)
- ► 07/20 - 07/27 (5)
- ► 07/13 - 07/20 (1)
Musical Blogs (with Proms reviews)
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St Matthew Passion, Deutsche Oper, 29 March 2024 - Evangelist – Kieran Carrel Jesus – Padraic Rowan Bass – Joel Allison Tenor, False Witness – Kangyoon Shine Lee Petrus, High Priest, Pontifex II – Youngk...2 weeks ago
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From Macau through China, India and Burma: Hong Kong Portuguse in the Chindits. By Anne Ozorio - *A few y years ago, Anne Ozorio,who died last August, gave me a typwscript copy of an article she had written on the experiences, after the 1941 Japanese...3 years ago
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And also try . . .
Being a bit different
It struck me I should offer a word of explanation (or an excuse?) about the style of the reviews you'll read here.
Some years ago, I had an interesting conversation with a classical recording engineer in between takes, who asked me why I didn't do sleevenotes. He'd liked my record reviews, because, he said, they gave a flavour of how the music sounded and what it felt like to listen to it. And even he found some of the more 'musicological' writers tedious. And he is far, far better musically educated than I am.
I was very gratified, because that was exactly what I wanted to do, and it's what I'm trying to do here, too. So you won't read much of bum notes, how a 'development' was mishandled, or an andante was slower (or faster) than marked on the score. There are plenty of other reviewers you can go to to look for that. And, of course, you can use the link to the BBC to download the programme notes.
For me, music is fun, and I hope it is for you too. Maybe, even, I can persuade some readers to listen to a piece in this year's Proms they might not, otherwise. That 'Listen Again' list on the BBC's website is very handy for that and if you're in Britain most Proms are repeated in the afternoon a week or so after the evening live broadcast.
Some years ago, I had an interesting conversation with a classical recording engineer in between takes, who asked me why I didn't do sleevenotes. He'd liked my record reviews, because, he said, they gave a flavour of how the music sounded and what it felt like to listen to it. And even he found some of the more 'musicological' writers tedious. And he is far, far better musically educated than I am.
I was very gratified, because that was exactly what I wanted to do, and it's what I'm trying to do here, too. So you won't read much of bum notes, how a 'development' was mishandled, or an andante was slower (or faster) than marked on the score. There are plenty of other reviewers you can go to to look for that. And, of course, you can use the link to the BBC to download the programme notes.
For me, music is fun, and I hope it is for you too. Maybe, even, I can persuade some readers to listen to a piece in this year's Proms they might not, otherwise. That 'Listen Again' list on the BBC's website is very handy for that and if you're in Britain most Proms are repeated in the afternoon a week or so after the evening live broadcast.
And, of course, some recorded Proms are broadcast at odd times during the season by broadcasters in many other countries.
(And the reason I've never written sleevenotes like this is because, despite Tony, no-one's asked. Still.)
(And the reason I've never written sleevenotes like this is because, despite Tony, no-one's asked. Still.)
Checklist:
- Adams (1)
- applause (1)
- Ashley Wass (1)
- authentic iinstruments (1)
- authentic performance (1)
- Bach (1)
- Bach. Jian Wang (1)
- Barenboim (4)
- Bartok (1)
- BBC Singers (1)
- BBCSO (3)
- Belshazzar (1)
- Berkeley (1)
- Berlin Philharmonic (1)
- Berlioz (1)
- Bernstein (2)
- Blaauw (1)
- Bolero (1)
- Boulez (2)
- Brahms (1)
- Carolin Widmann (1)
- Carter (1)
- Chen Yi (2)
- Chicago Symphony Orchestra (1)
- Concertino (1)
- Concerto for Horn and Violin (1)
- Coote (1)
- culture (1)
- Dame Ethel Smyth (2)
- deNiese (1)
- drugs (1)
- Dudamel (1)
- Dvorak (1)
- Elgar (2)
- Ellington (1)
- encores (1)
- Ethel Smyth (1)
- fashion (1)
- Festliches Preludium (1)
- football? (1)
- George Benjamin (1)
- Gerghiev (2)
- Gershwin (3)
- Glagolitic Mass (2)
- Glyndebourne (1)
- Gothenberg Symphony (1)
- Gruppen (1)
- Gurzenich (1)
- Haim (1)
- Haitink (1)
- Han-na Chang (1)
- Handel (1)
- Henry Wood (1)
- Hillborg (1)
- iPlayer (1)
- Janacek (2)
- Javelin. Harlem (1)
- jazz (1)
- John Eliot Gardiner (2)
- Jonathan Harvey (1)
- Julia Fischer (1)
- Kings Singers (1)
- Klang (1)
- Leonard Slatkin (1)
- Maazel (3)
- MacRae (1)
- Manchicouet (1)
- McKerras (1)
- Messaien (4)
- Monteverdi (1)
- Monteverdi Choir (1)
- Mozart (2)
- music criticism (3)
- Netherlands PO (1)
- New York Philharmonic (3)
- newspaper reviews (2)
- Nigel Kennedy (1)
- Norrington (1)
- Norrington. (1)
- Noseda (1)
- OAE (1)
- Olympics (1)
- Patrice Chereau (1)
- Pavane pour une infante defunte (1)
- Perahia (1)
- planners (1)
- presenters (1)
- Prom 1 (1)
- Prom 18 (1)
- Prom 20 (1)
- Prom 24 (3)
- Prom 25 (1)
- Prom 26 (1)
- Prom 27 (1)
- Prom 29 (2)
- Prom 3 (1)
- Prom 30 (1)
- Prom 31 (1)
- Prom 33 (1)
- Rachmaninov (4)
- Rattle (1)
- Ravel (3)
- Reith Lectures (1)
- Richard Strauss (1)
- Richard Watkins (1)
- Rimsky (1)
- Schoenberg (2)
- Scofield (1)
- silence (1)
- Sinaisky (1)
- Sinfonietta (1)
- Sleeping Beauty (1)
- Solyom (1)
- Stockhausen (2)
- Stockhausen. Prom 20 (1)
- Stravinsky (3)
- Symcock (1)
- Tasmin Little (1)
- Tchaikovsky (2)
- Thatcher (1)
- The Chairman Dances (1)
- Thibaudet (1)
- Three Meditations (1)
- Turangalila (1)
- v (1)
- Varese (1)
- Varèse (1)
- Vaughan Williams (3)
- Violin and Horn Concerto (1)
- Wagenaar (1)
- war (2)
- West-Eastern Divan Orchestra (4)
- Yarde (1)
- young composers (1)
Bad Seasonal Jokes. . .
Japanese Tourist:
"Do you know Albert Hall?"
Londoner:
Londoner:
"No, but I've met his brother Wigmore."
(Sorry.)
(Sorry.)
And heard before a performance of Samson:
Arena: "Short back and sides, today, sir?"
Gallery: "And anything for the weekend?"*
Followed by a rousing rendition of Tom Jones's Delilah . . .
(*If you don't get it—I thought at the time the gale of laughter that got probably totally mystified listeners abroad that day— the "anything for the weekend" was once a barber's euphemism for asking if his client would like to buy any condoms after he'd finished brushing the cut hairs off his shoulders . . .)
And, from the Arena half-way through one season, like this one, when it seemed people just couldn't (or wouldn't) stop coughing during nearly every performance:
"That was an orchestral suite . . . not a cough suite!"
(The BBC handed out free coughdrops the next season, and I wish they still did.)
"Invite me to a party, a wedding, a tea dance or an orgy during those eight weeks," Richard Morrison once wrote in The Times, " 'Sorry', will come my reply. 'Rattle conducting Wagner that night. Unmissable. Start the orgy without me.' "
I just have a couple of nights free; give you the dates, shall I?
To go to the next page (and the earlier articles) click on 'Older Posts' above
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This performance was created on a Mac
[ click on the apple ]
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This blog © Eric Braithwaite and Zeina Trewin 2008
This blog (text and pictures, unless credited otherwise) is copyright, and its contents, while they may be quoted in part (acknowledging the author, please) may not be reproduced in whole electronically or otherwise without permission.
A note on home recording
The BBC allows (technically, 'licences') listeners at home to make a recording of a broadcast for their private use. It is not, however, legal—or moral—to sell, re-broadcast (and that also means on the Internet!) or disseminate such a recording.
Please remember the BBC never makes a profit out of the Proms concerts themselves, it relies on the sale of its own recordings to other broadcasters and by means of cover CD's with the BBC Music magazine to recoup some (only in fact about half) of the costs.
Many orchestras, especially the London ones, and new composers, particularly, also rely on re-broadcast fees and royalties to keep them afloat financially, which, of course, they will never see if their concerts and compositions are widely distributed for free.
(As a struggling underpaid journalist in the past, some of my own material has been pirated and published without payment, and at times when I really could have done with the cash —just a tenner or two would have been welcome. We're not all paid huge salaries, or high fees, you know. So I know how it feels.)
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2 comments:
Many thanks for a fascinating blog, and for the link to mine! (Words and Music)
I probably know you by sight from the arena? Maybe next season we can make contact.
All best wishes, and enjoy your time off before next year's oferings!
Jonathan
The BBC Proms have started again! Are you running a new blog for this year as well? It would be lovely to hear some of your reviews and thoughts!
Anyways, I have compiled a list of the Proms which I think are the highlights this year for me and worth seeing:
http://www.london-insider.co.uk/2009/07/bbc-proms-2009-top-concert-picks/
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