#30 Storm in a Tea Cup
16/09/20 11:17
Growing up, two musical events punctuated my year. One was listening to Nine Lessons and Carols on Christmas Eve, worrying that the choirboy chosen to sing ‘Once in Royal David’s City’ was going to fluff it. The other watching Last Night of the Proms, as the summer waned, wishing we were in the Royal Albert Hall with the raucous hordes. We were neither religious, nor jingoistic – nevertheless, these were big events in our calendar, and I’ve tried to continue the tradition with my own sons, who remain vehemently uninterested. So, I sat down to the latter on my own, particularly intrigued this year to see how the BBC would frame the evening, in light of the recent furore over #promgate.
If you’re unfamiliar with the controversy, then well done for managing to ignore the braying right-wing press, fanning a wet fart into flames. Their protestations successfully infected frothing flag-wavers who couldn’t tell you the lyrics to Rule Britannia! if they were printed in big letters on a blue passport. Even Bozo got involved: ‘It’s time we stopped our cringing embarrassment about our history,’ said the man who is doing so much to ensure we suffer cringing embarrassment for years to come. I would have thought he wouldn’t want to comment on an issue involving violins, but that’s me told. It seems the decision whether or not to sing the songs was influenced as much by concerns about Covid as a feeling that their sentiment was offensive and outdated, but who ever let facts get in the way of a good rant about snowflakes and libs? It’s yet another lefty attempt to curtail our rights and slap down our sovereignty!
As if in answer to the accusation that the BBC was somehow pursuing an anti-Blighty agenda, they seemed at pains to stress their solid patriotism. Indeed, even the little drinks tables next to Katie Derham and her guests were defiantly draped in the flag. At one point, Lesley Garrett, necking wine in her front room, gamely waved a Union Jack umbrella – that’s bad luck indoors, love.
Anyway, to the actual concert. A pared-down Royal Philharmonic – 65 to the usual 300 - sat socially distanced on stage. Their conductor, Dalia Stasevska, was sporting a very fetching kimono dress, which I worried might fall open if she gesticulated too wildly. They played the overture to The Marriage of Figaro, always an absolute banger, and then the soprano Golda Schultz joined them, wearing what looked like the Koh-i-Noor diamond, to sing ‘Deh vieni, non tardar’, the rose aria. There was a wonderful, pure exuberance to her performance, and if I’d been Figaro hiding in a bush, I’d have been livid at the thought of her in love with someone else, too.
The world premiere of a new commission, Solus, by Swedish composer Andrea Tarrodi, reminded me of the soundtrack to The Bridge, just before they find a mutilated body. I mean that as a compliment. Resolutely trying to drum up a party atmosphere to counteract the empty, echoing Albert Hall, we kept hearing from a panel of celeb viewers at home – Lesley, ostentatiously dabbing her eyes after every performance, and Mel Giedroyc, who was as droll and entertaining as ever on Sondheim, except I was distracted by the pelmet curtains behind her. Was that actually her living room? I never saw Mel as a pelmet sort of person.
The high point for me was Nicola Benedetti’s performance, as I’ve had a crush on her since she won Young Musician of the Year in 2004. She has an utterly absorbed, graceful swaying stance when she performs that is entrancing. When I played the violin (or rather, viola, as they were short on them in the school orchestra), I hunched over the instrument like a quivering old witch clutching her broom. As a self-conscious teenager, I longed for that kind of sexy insouciance, effortless vibrato and massive hair. Also, I suspect her violin would fetch a few quid on Ebay - nice looking fiddle, that. Nicola’s version of The Lark Ascending was glorious, particularly given that she was a last-minute booking, but from sublime we swallow-dived to slightly ridiculous, as the orchestra stoutly made their way through the final, controversial section. All the usual numbers seemed incongruous without the dipping, waving, hooting crowds. The choir members, standing wide apart in the stalls, failed to generate the booming chorus you need for the big climax, and it just felt like a bit of a damp squib. Given the recent, equally manufactured, controversy over on ITV’s Britain’s Got Talent, I think they should have ditched that last bit altogether, and invited Diversity to perform their BLM routine, somersaulting over the seats and storming the stage. That would have been a great, timely finish, and ruffled a few more racist feathers to boot.
In order to secure financial support for his enterprise, back in 1895, Henry Wood had to make a concession to his backers. Concert pitch in the UK was a semitone higher than the continent, and Dr George Cathcart, an ear nose and throat specialist, worried English voices would be damaged by all that screeching. One of his stipulations was that they take it down a notch, match up with the rest of Europe. And so, in a lower, mellower key, the Proms began. Those shrill, hectoring voices insisting Britannia must be allowed to rule the waves might do well to remember that.
If you’re unfamiliar with the controversy, then well done for managing to ignore the braying right-wing press, fanning a wet fart into flames. Their protestations successfully infected frothing flag-wavers who couldn’t tell you the lyrics to Rule Britannia! if they were printed in big letters on a blue passport. Even Bozo got involved: ‘It’s time we stopped our cringing embarrassment about our history,’ said the man who is doing so much to ensure we suffer cringing embarrassment for years to come. I would have thought he wouldn’t want to comment on an issue involving violins, but that’s me told. It seems the decision whether or not to sing the songs was influenced as much by concerns about Covid as a feeling that their sentiment was offensive and outdated, but who ever let facts get in the way of a good rant about snowflakes and libs? It’s yet another lefty attempt to curtail our rights and slap down our sovereignty!
As if in answer to the accusation that the BBC was somehow pursuing an anti-Blighty agenda, they seemed at pains to stress their solid patriotism. Indeed, even the little drinks tables next to Katie Derham and her guests were defiantly draped in the flag. At one point, Lesley Garrett, necking wine in her front room, gamely waved a Union Jack umbrella – that’s bad luck indoors, love.
Anyway, to the actual concert. A pared-down Royal Philharmonic – 65 to the usual 300 - sat socially distanced on stage. Their conductor, Dalia Stasevska, was sporting a very fetching kimono dress, which I worried might fall open if she gesticulated too wildly. They played the overture to The Marriage of Figaro, always an absolute banger, and then the soprano Golda Schultz joined them, wearing what looked like the Koh-i-Noor diamond, to sing ‘Deh vieni, non tardar’, the rose aria. There was a wonderful, pure exuberance to her performance, and if I’d been Figaro hiding in a bush, I’d have been livid at the thought of her in love with someone else, too.
The world premiere of a new commission, Solus, by Swedish composer Andrea Tarrodi, reminded me of the soundtrack to The Bridge, just before they find a mutilated body. I mean that as a compliment. Resolutely trying to drum up a party atmosphere to counteract the empty, echoing Albert Hall, we kept hearing from a panel of celeb viewers at home – Lesley, ostentatiously dabbing her eyes after every performance, and Mel Giedroyc, who was as droll and entertaining as ever on Sondheim, except I was distracted by the pelmet curtains behind her. Was that actually her living room? I never saw Mel as a pelmet sort of person.
The high point for me was Nicola Benedetti’s performance, as I’ve had a crush on her since she won Young Musician of the Year in 2004. She has an utterly absorbed, graceful swaying stance when she performs that is entrancing. When I played the violin (or rather, viola, as they were short on them in the school orchestra), I hunched over the instrument like a quivering old witch clutching her broom. As a self-conscious teenager, I longed for that kind of sexy insouciance, effortless vibrato and massive hair. Also, I suspect her violin would fetch a few quid on Ebay - nice looking fiddle, that. Nicola’s version of The Lark Ascending was glorious, particularly given that she was a last-minute booking, but from sublime we swallow-dived to slightly ridiculous, as the orchestra stoutly made their way through the final, controversial section. All the usual numbers seemed incongruous without the dipping, waving, hooting crowds. The choir members, standing wide apart in the stalls, failed to generate the booming chorus you need for the big climax, and it just felt like a bit of a damp squib. Given the recent, equally manufactured, controversy over on ITV’s Britain’s Got Talent, I think they should have ditched that last bit altogether, and invited Diversity to perform their BLM routine, somersaulting over the seats and storming the stage. That would have been a great, timely finish, and ruffled a few more racist feathers to boot.
In order to secure financial support for his enterprise, back in 1895, Henry Wood had to make a concession to his backers. Concert pitch in the UK was a semitone higher than the continent, and Dr George Cathcart, an ear nose and throat specialist, worried English voices would be damaged by all that screeching. One of his stipulations was that they take it down a notch, match up with the rest of Europe. And so, in a lower, mellower key, the Proms began. Those shrill, hectoring voices insisting Britannia must be allowed to rule the waves might do well to remember that.
- Proms, BBC iPlayer
