NB: Neither this 'unofficial' blog nor the author has any connection with the BBC.

Sunday 14 September 2014

This Year, No Fat Lady Sang . . .

In fact, all the soloists looked pretty trim and slim. Not least Janine Jansen, who polished off the Proms Season in great style with two superbly played pieces: Chausson's Poeme, and Ravel's Tzigane, the latter being one of the truly great performances of this season.

I don't usually comment on the Last Night, and don't always listen to (or watch) it, but Jansen playing the Ravel was—or is, if you didn't listen on Saturday—a performance of a calibre you don't always get when the Proms season winds down.

And a special mention for the very funny unexpected 'La Cucuracha' violin duet between her and Sakari Oramo; who, it might be suspected, was overdoing the shy bashful Finn just a bit?

 He had nothing, last night, to be bashful about, as far as his culminative concert went, though Sir Tim Rice, were he there, should have been feeling not just bashful but downright ashamed for his 'new words' to Malcolm Arnold's Peterloo.

I have never (well, hardly ever, even  in Huntingdon or in Hampshire) heard such nonsense. It's damn well insulting to anyone brought up in the north (like me!)  for the Peterloo Massacre to be transformed into such an utterly crass piece of pseudo-Brookean 'poetry', such a pathetic piece of pale third-hand patriotic pap that, I suppose, was supposed somehow to invoke Blake and 'Jerusalem'. and actually came out worse even than Alfred Noyes.

From one massacre, however, to another. As a prom-going friend (who's French)  remarked, it was pretty magnanimous of the English to put on such an outrageous celebration of their defeat by the Normans as Strauss's Taillefer. Neither of us knew it at all; she didn't care for it, for all she's on the winning side. Maybe you had to be there . . .Admittedly, though, it's a great deal more Beowulf than Bearn or Teutonic Knight than Troubadour.

It was played with considerable vigour and style, Oramao very far from bashful; bombastic, even. which suited it perfectly, if you treat it (as he did) as a glorious battle piece and (perhaps, listeninmg to the German words—vastly superior, anyway, to Tim Rice's, not difficult that—and be a little less distracted by the English subtitles) something of a spectacular. And, it would seem, unusually rare, according to Wikipedia, at any rate, which neatly updated its Taillefer page to commend another 'rare' performance at the 2014 Proms before it had actually happened . . .

And I do like Britten's arrangement of 'God Save the Queen' that ends it all. A genuine anthem, not a piece of patriotic bombast at all; Mr Rice, please note, if commissioned—and I really hope not—again.

I almost forgot, in this night of really near-superlative performances (with the obvious exception) the BBC Singers in Tavener's 'Song for Athene'; haunting, contemplative, and. while deceptively simply—innocently?—sung, of immense power thanks to them. a deserved compliment (and complement) to their work throughout a Proms Season that tends to be forgotten on last nights when they often only get to sing the choruses in Britannia . . .

Oramo. in his speech, brought up music education again, as many of his predecessors have. A waste of time, both with the pedestrian and culturally primitive government we've got at the moment and whichever one we're likely to have a couple of months before the next Proms season in 2015.

This 'Last Night' really was a memorable one; as much, for once. a concert (leaving aside the 'trad' bits) that could have been a Prom of any number, not just a celebratory race finish.


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