The ones that dies in 1934.
BBC National Orchestra of Wales; the Bach Choir; BBC National Chorus of Wales; Choir of St Paul's Cathedral. Conducted by Richard Hickox.
The bloke next to me commented on the irony of having a predominantly Welsh line-up playing English music.
We started with Elgar's Cockaigne, a gorgeous and jolly piece of music. From the programme:
The mythical kingdom of Cockaigne was long famous in French legend as an imaginary land of luxury and idleness, where the houses were made of barley sugar, the streets paved with pastry, and the shops gave everything away for free. But in the 19th century it became adopted as a name for London, by punning reference to the word Cockney. When Elgars overture was first played in Latin America the programmenote writerused his own imagination and stated confidently that the piece portrayed the terrible ravages of the drug [cocaine] in the East End of London!
Next came Delius's Sea Drift. When I booked the ticket - indeed when I received my prospectus - I knew it would be the worst bit of the concert. In the event, it wasn't too bad, although I couldn't really find anything especially likeable, and there was nothing memorable about the music. It's set to words by Walt Whitman, not a poet about which I know anything, really, but I am tempted to explore more. The baritone was Thomas Hampson. This is the second time I have seen him now, and, I'm sorry, I just can't see what makes him a sex symbol. Also, I found it interesting to realise how much louder and clearer he sounded in the cheap seats at Covent Garden than in the Royal Albert Hall (which has twice the capacity of the ROH). I really must get my ears syringed! I'm going to take advantage of Radio 3's Listen Again to, er, listen again!
After the interval was an unfamiliar but moving piece - Holst's Hymn of Jesus. Amazing - it used three choirs, including a small male chorus right up in the Gods - almost literally - and there was a splendid organ accompaniment, too. I won't describe the music in detail - the programme notes are available online and the actual concert is re-broadcast on Wednesday afternoon and is available as webcast on demand until next Monday. Okay, I'm a sucker for oratorio-like things, but this is definitelyone piece I shall be wanting to hear again.
I hereby award Gustav Holst my prestigious "Man of the Week" award.
We finished with the exquisite Enigma Variations by Elgar. I think we all know it - especially Nimrod. As that came to a close you could hear a pin drop. (Except for the girl in front who was engrossed in her Harry Potter book. she looked far too old to be reading Harry Potter,and, frankly, by her age, 12-14, she should have been making a bit of an effort to the listen to the music, or, at least, not distracting her mother...). And we had more organ in the closing variation.
I was again pleased to see - as on Saturday (save for the pyrotechnical 1812) the audience waited until the conductor lowered his baton before applauding. Why can't people do that at the Colisseum at RFH, I wonder.
My next few Proms are going to be via BBC4. Tomorrow night, at 7.30, we have the World Premier of a piece "The Immortal" by Zhou Long, followed by Liszt's Paino Concerto #2 in A and R. Strauss's Alpine Symphony. Programme notes should be available online from about 5.30pm.
Update: I wasn't the only blogger there...
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