Finally. Amid a global pandemic, the audience gets the credit it deserves.
It’s not the same. Not by any means. But, still the opening night of this year’s highlights-driven Proms season arrived with some sense of anticipation, signposted at the top of the day with a Facebook-generated memory of me pictured in the arena waiting for the First Night to start in 2009.
Later, an unexpected invitation to preview Ian Farrington’s fun-filled Beethovenmania – a season-opening commission that mashed-up all of Beethoven’s best-loved melodies. It’s a gorgeous thing to watch (you can see it on BBC Four on Sunday 19 July 2020) which depicts 350+ musicians and singers trapped in their lockdown view playing the music whilst two dancers rip off their masks and gig about to the music. It’s a tear-jerking thing which unexpectedly got me in the mood.
Come the actual First Night broadcast some of that infectious energy was inevitably lacking. Georgia Mann and Petroc Trelawny valiantly compensated with to and fro, plus some contributions from performers ‘down the line’.
But, in its place a strange unexpected feeling as a listener: a perception driven by a moment in a radio schedule – a day, a month, perhaps even the air temperature; the idea that Proms regulars are all coalescing around speakers to relive a shared memory.
Why else would I look forward to listening to a series of pre-recorded links and archive broadcasts, if I knew none of it was actually going on up the road, if not to reconnect with a cavalcade of broadcast-related memories?
In the absence of the actual event, memories were driving me to listen. The warmth in the listening experience wasn’t only down the content (the music) but the way the contrived event stirred concertinaed memories and recollections.
Ian Farrington’s Beethoveniana
Farrington’s commission was a rip-roaring joyous musical celebration of all things Beethoven, neatly capturing recognisable melodies and subverting them with a series of musical theatre and movie medley style variations and settings. There was a whiff of Nigel Hess’ mastery in Farrington’s score. I also heard bits of former BBC music director Victor Hely-Hutchison’s harmonic style too. There was something effortlessly pleasing about the whole thing that got this rather odd year underway with a much-needed flourish. Jaw-dropping efficiency. Watch out for the choral element – those harmonies tickle the melancholy gland.
LISTEN TO IAN FARRINGTON’S BEETHOVENIANA
Beethoven Piano Concerto No.3 / Igor Levit / 2017
What became obvious pretty quickly to me during Igor Levit’s taut and electrifying performance of Beethoven’s third piano concerto with the BBC Symphony Orchestra, was the sound world of the Proms-world. Regardless of whether you’re one of those tiresome purists who relishes a debate about the declining quality of Albert Hall sound mixes and the like, there is a distinct Proms ‘live’ sound. It’s different from studio recordings and live concert captures. What I hear on the archive broadcast is the ‘space’ of the Royal Albert Hall, itself a contrivance. And yet it transports me in an instant. There is in that imagined space a grand sense of occasion, inclusion, warmth and acceptance. A projection of a kind of egalitarianism. And I miss it (we’ll go into that in later posts).
Audience as unlikely but valued artists
And there are coughs. And warm applause. I can hear evidence of real life in between the first and second movements of the Beethoven. Never in my concert-going and listening experience have I wanted to hear more coughing, not less. The sound from the audience reminds me what we’re striving for: a viable return to live performance.
From this delicate almost painful soundscape emerges a hard-fought opening chord at the piano at the beginning of the second movement. The response from the orchestra sets the mood in a fragile state. There are moments when I imagine myself inside the Royal Albert Hall listening to it there, at which point it all gets a bit too raw and I have to back away.
Such passion and enthusiasm is the enemy of accessibility
This is all tempered by the thoughts and feelings I’m still grappling with. I’ve spent way too much time in the company of people for whom wax lyrical about why music moves me is evidence of me being elitist. As though my passion and enthusiasm and joy at responding to the music I love is the very thing that is casting a shadow over them. I find myself feeling guilty at wanting to articulate the enormous joy I experience in the moment hearing all of these textures in this contrived aural ‘space’. That’s gaslighting. Isn’t it?
I’m struggling with it now as a I embark on 6 weeks of listening to archive Proms broadcasts. Advocacy is seen by some I know as a threat. A danger. How can something that brings joy even in the darkest times for whatever reason be such a threatening thing? And why am I still feeling guilty about it? Unless of course it’s because you feel jealous.
