2 - 8 August 2001
Issue No.545
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Al-Ahram Weekly Online 2 - 8 August 2001 Issue No.545 |
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Plain talk
The start of the Promenade concerts in London always brings back memories of almost half a century ago. I remember how, as a young cultural attaché in London, I was taken to a night at the Proms, at the Royal Albert Hall. I was what you might call a cultural novice, at least where classical music was concerned. True, I was familiar with romantic compositions such as Sheherzade by Rimsky Korsakov, which were staples of the University Gramophone Society. But I had, up to that date, never attended a performance by a full philharmonic orchestra.
My friend, who was on the staff of the British Council, explained to me what the Proms were and how they had started. They were started by a certain Sir Henry Wood, a conductor who was one of the principal figures in the popularisation of the orchestra music in England. In 1895 he established a nightly season of Promenade concerts at the Queen's Hall in London. The concerts were a great success and they played an important role in English musical life. The Proms played mostly 18th and 19th orchestral music and introduced works by such composers as Richard Strauss, Debussy and Shoenberg. These, of course, are names with which I became increasingly familiar through my regular attendance at the Proms.
In 1927 the management of the Promenade concerts was taken over by the BBC and after the destruction of Queen's Hall in World War II the Proms moved to the Royal Albert Hall. When I started attending the concerts in the late 1940's Sir Malcolm Sargent was at the helm.
So much for history. My initiation to the Proms was quite an experience. Having donned my best suit -- thinking in terms of West End theatre -- I met my friend. I noticed that he was informally, almost casually dressed. When we approached the Royal Albert Hall I noticed queues snaking around the domed building. The people queuing were of all ages and of all colours. It was still quite early, and my friend told me that the earlier we were the better place we would get. He did not mention seats. It was then that he explained to me that the concerts were called promenades because the majority of people stood throughout the concerts. There is no seating in the gallery and arena.
The Proms have become the largest musical festival in the world. This year they started on 20 July and will continue until 15 September. There will be 73 concerts involving a dozen visiting orchestras. The queues I saw and joined in the late 1940's are still forming and will continue to form daily until the final gala night.
According to Janet Street- Porter in an Independent article this year the BBC has commissioned 12 new works which will be performed. There will be the usual favourites -- Rachmaninov, Elgar, Handel, Brahms, Dvorak, Stravinsky, Prokofiev, Bartok et al -- supplemented by late-night jazz, esoteric chamber music and ethnic music from gypsy rhythms to African drumming. Some years ago Indian classical music stole the show.
Statistics show that the while the Proms still draw the same loyal crowd they have always done a new, younger element is coming in. This is due, to some extent, to the reasonable price of tickets. A season ticket for the gallery -- which incidentally has better acoustics than the stalls -- costs between £110- £140 which means as little as £1.50 per performance.
Last year's Proms played to 90 per cent capacity audiences. The official Proms Guide sold 70,000 copies last year and this year more than 250,000 people will actually attend the concerts, 6.3 million viewers will watch the Proms on television, and another million or so will listen on UK local radio, and many more millions on the World Service. Rights have been sold, in addition, to Australia, Denmark, Norway, Singapore, Sweden and Switzerland. The Proms are no longer just British, they are global.
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