That frock! [click to embiggen]
From the Financial Times:
At the end of the (Proms) season the BBC always likes to blow its own trumpet — this year it reported surging numbers for online viewing and listening — but what other festival of mostly classical music can fill a venue of 6,000 capacity (including standing places for Prommers) on so many nights over eight weeks?The closing jamboree was the most fun Last Night for years. Those who get offended by classical music being mixed with rock, musicals and comedy, look away now.
Indeed. For in a second-half opener like no other I can remember [and we did only watch the second half of the Last Night of the Proms] - as opposed to something in the classical or romantic canon, the orchestra revved up for a tribute to Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody, which was released fifty years ago this year [gulp!], and the excellent lead singer Sam Oladeinde was joined by Sir Brian May on his guitar, and Roger Taylor on Britain's biggest gong!
Wow.
From one camp melodrama to another, as the BBC Symphony Orchestra launched into Shostakovich's Festive Overture, then followed it...
...with the arrival on stage of our soprano for the night Miss Louise Alder as "Eliza Dolittle", for a 60th anniversary tribute to My Fair Lady! [As I said in yesterday's blog post, this was the second time in two days we were treated to the greatest hits from the movie musical.]
Typically for The Proms, there always have to be some more avant-garde moments in any concert - and the final ever live performance by ace trumpeter Alison Balsom with some virtuosic riffs from Bernstein's Prelude, Fugues and Riffs certainly fitted that bill. There also has to be at least one premiere work, and Rachel Portman and Nick Drake's rather disappointing The Gathering Tree ticked that particular box.
However, in-between, there was another genuine treat in store - as comedian and "national treasure" Mr Bill Bailey dead-panned his way through Leroy Anderson's quirky classic The Typewriter:
He's faboo!
All that out of the way, it was time for our conductor Elim Chan to lead the celebrations and get the traditional flag-waving, party-atmosphere finale started, opening (as it always does) with the "Promenader-pleasing" Fantasia on British Sea Songs, arranged by the season's founder Sir Henry Wood, followed by the return of Louise Alder - in that frock! - with a remarkable rendition of Thomas Arne's Rule, Britannia!
Gob-smacking!
By this stage, we're on a roll, flags a-flapping - and straight into another beloved piece (and contender for "the best National Anthem we never had") Elgar's Pomp and Circumstance March No. 1, better-known, of course, as Land of Hope and Glory:
Our throats hoarse from singing along - in our living-room - it was time for the traditional conductor's speech, closely followed by the most famous and beloved of all hymns [if it can be called such, given that its words were from an allegorical poem by William Blake], Hubert Parry's Jerusalem:
With the singing of the (real) National Anthem [and we still can't get used to it being God Save the King, rather than Queen], that's generally it by the time we get to Auld Lang Syne - but no! - Mr Bailey (and the Royal Albert Hall's massive organ) had the last word...
For bringing us an utterly tremendous evening's entertainment, and indeed, for the previous eight weeks - all hail, the BBC!!