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BBC Proms 2015


Omen II

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Hey, you! It's me with my annual topic about the BBC Proms, the 2015 season of which was announced last Thursday.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/proms

There are slim pickings this year for pure film music fans, aside from a concert devoted to Murray Gold's music for the TV documentary series Life Story and another Prom based around music connected to Sherlock Holmes. Never let it be said that the BBC will pass up an opportunity to plug one of its flagship programmes by devising a concert based around it, however tenuous the link! Proms regulars the John Wilson Orchestra also return with a couple of concerts devoted to Frank Sinatra and the musicals of Leonard Bernstein, so some film connections there.

Does anyone have any particular recommendations from the listings? I am told that Franz Schmidt's second symphony is worth hearing (Hitler's favourite composer and performed by the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, no less) while there is quite a lot of music by Sibelius and Nielsen to celebrate their 150th anniversaries. Eric Whitacre has a Prom featuring some of his most popular works and there is also the Organ Concerto by Icelandic composer Jon Leifs, whose music was one of the big discoveries for many people last year.

:music: Klassykle myoozik

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Schmidt is an interesting composer. I only really know his organ works. I would check that one out. Sibelius, Nielsen, and Leifs are great - but then I'm a sucker for the "northern" sound. And of course Whitacre... I dunno, it all sounds pretty good to me!

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  • 3 months later...

I very much enjoyed watching the late night Prom yesterday devoted to Frank Sinatra. Here is Seth MacFarlane singing I've Got You Under My Skin with the John Wilson Orchestra...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jVJDp25Wo5M

...and Jamie Parker singing Cheek to Cheek.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ltq9VNpwTUg

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  • 2 weeks later...

The BBC Proms concert yesterday afternoon was devoted to the music of Sherlock Holmes, including music written for film and television adaptations of Conan Doyle's sleuth. The latter included music by Hans Zimmer, David Arnold & Michael Price, Miklos Rozsa, Frank Skinner and even Patrick Gowers (from the 1980s Granada TV series). Audio clips are available here:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b065wxfg

The BBC Concert Orchestra was conducted by Barry Wordsworth.

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You're probably in luck considering that guy has uploaded all but one piece from that concert (Deep Field) and 5 of the pieces have been uploaded in the last 3 hours. Probably just around corner.

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  • 3 weeks later...

The Leonard Bernstein - Stage and Screen concert yesterday with the John Wilson Orchestra and Maida Vale Singers was incredible. Don't miss the TV broadcast next Friday 11th September on BBC4 if you can access it. You can also listen to the concert now at this link, wherever you are (I think).

http://www.bbc.co.uk/events/e89v2m#b068rs22

The encore was (no surprise) America from West Side Story.

It's difficult to pick a highlight, but film music fans will enjoy the lengthy suite from On The Waterfront that closed the first half of the concert. At one point one of the horn players left the stage to play genuinely 'off stage' in the lobby area behind the loggia boxes. All the singers were fantastic too.

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I found this season really disappointing. Not to be rude, but you can only have so much Nielsen, Sibelius and Beethoven before it gets boring. It really does seem like it's something for the elite. Last year's last night was fantastic, but it doesn't look as if they will play many popular songs this year... Why not throw in some Vivaldi, Handel or John Williams?

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I found this season really disappointing. Not to be rude, but you can only have so much Nielsen, Sibelius and Beethoven before it gets boring. It really does seem like it's something for the elite. Last year's last night was fantastic, but it doesn't look as if they will play many popular songs this year... Why not throw in some Vivaldi, Handel or John Williams?

Yeah, it's definitely gotten more conservative and Classic FMish over the last 5 years. Less modern pieces getting commissioned.

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I found this season really disappointing. Not to be rude, but you can only have so much Nielsen, Sibelius and Beethoven before it gets boring. It really does seem like it's something for the elite. Last year's last night was fantastic, but it doesn't look as if they will play many popular songs this year... Why not throw in some Vivaldi, Handel or John Williams?

For the Last Night they pretty much have the same program year on year.

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The Last Night is infectiously exciting even if it's all familiar and you aren't a Brit, because when Jerusalem starts, everyone in the hall becomes one!

I always look for myself in this but I don't think I managed to get seen.

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The second half of the Last Night of the Proms has several ever-presents, but the first half is always different.

It really does seem like it's something for the elite.

Do you really mean that, bollemanneke? I would argue that the Proms must be one of the least elitist musical festivals anywhere in the world. You can get in for a fiver and you are made to feel as welcome wearing shorts, a T shirt and trainers as you are wearing formal evening dress; nobody bats an eyelid. It costs me more to watch a fourth division football match than it did for me to watch the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra play this evening. I have been to four great concerts this season and each one has been completely different from the others.

Anyone who has been to the Proms will probably know that it is one of the Proms traditions that some of the Promenaders hold a bucket collection in aid of musical charities as people leave the Royal Albert Hall. A group of them call for silence during the interval, just before the second half starts, and announce in unison to the hall how much money has been raised so far during the current Proms season. This evening it was announced that Proms concertgoers had raised more than £100,000 so far!

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Does anyone know why they did not sing the last verse of Aaron Copland's I Bought Me a Cat in yesterday's Last Night? As if I couldn't guess. This sort of petty, revisionist censorship of a harmless traditional song really gets on my tits. Surely the whole point of the song is that the last verse is "I got me a wife"?

If the last verse is excised, why even bother programming the song to start with?

Here is the last verse:

I got me a wife

My wife pleased me
I fed my wife under yonder tree
My wife says "Honey, honey"
My horse says "Neigh, Neigh"
My cow says "Moo, moo"
My pig says "Griffey, griffey"
My hen says "chimmy-chuck, chimmy-chuck"
My goose says "Qua, qua"
My duck says "Quack, quack"
My cat says fiddle I fee.

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...they seriously cut it? Ye gods, that's like a bad joke, not reality.

This is the same BBC that felt the need to apologise on air when Alan Titchmarsh used the perfectly legitimate gardening term "bastard trenching" on the BBC breakfast show a few weeks ago.

I love the Proms but I do wish they wouldn't tinker with the last night so much. It's already as inclusive as inclusive can be. For example, I wish they'd ditch that annoying cutting over to the various outdoor "Proms in the Park" concerts going on at the same time; I'd much rather watch what's going on in the Royal Albert Hall. I'm just getting into Jerusalem when the camera cuts to some god awful park in Swansea, the camera swooping over these poor old dears sitting in deck chairs, covered in blankets and looking as if they are about to die from hypothermia. No bugger's joining in with the singing and the best you can expect are a few frantic waves from the ones who spot themselves on TV.

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I was in Eastbourne, covered in jackets and blankets and still shivering but oh God, it was a great evening! Is it me or did the woman who sang that Delibes song had to stop twice so she could cough? The fireworks when Jerusalem started annoyed me to eath, but hearing Land of Hope and Glory all around me was simply surreal. I also HATED that American woman waffling about equality. My British friends found it very, very awkward. This was the first time I heard Puccini's Humming Chorus and it made me shiver all over, just like Jonas Kaufman. Rule Britannia!

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It wasn't a bad last night, got a bit silly with people throwing stuff at the male tenor. Also, the Sound of Music medley...maybe I tuned out, but no Edelweiss.

Still, it's always something to have Land of Hope and Glory belting out and then Britten's arrangement of the national anthem.

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