lennygoran wrote: ↑Tue Apr 18, 2017 6:05 am
We've been talking about her recently and now it's off to Broadway!...“Carousel,” one of the greatest of American musicals
Not the same thing as the crossover topic but I felt close enough to add that I was reading this article about the upcoming Proms-this caught my eye. Regards, Len
"There may be no TV spinoffs this summer, but there’s no shortage of populism. The theatre and film musicals expert John Wilson waltzes onwards; this year he conducts three Proms, including two semi-staged performances of the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical Oklahoma! (August 11). “For me, Richard Rodgers was as great a composer, certainly as great a tunesmith, as Handel was,” Pickard enthuses, a touch contentiously. “And when Oklahoma! is played by the John Wilson Orchestra, that for me is of the same quality as the Vienna Philharmonic playing Beethoven.”
Here's the whole article. Regards, Len
Never mind the general election. What about the news that has rocked the music world? The BBC Proms are being transferred to Hull — the first time “that anyone can remember”, in the delightfully vague words of the Proms director David Pickard, that the 122-year-old institution will have ventured outside London.
Before diehard Prommers start frothing from all orifices, I had better be less economical with the actualité. The Proms are going to Hull for one programme only — on July 22. The other 74 concerts in this summer’s festival will be in London, as usual. “It is Hull’s year as UK City of Culture,” Pickard points out. “I wanted to experiment with a Prom outside the capital, and it made more sense to go to somewhere like Hull than, say, Manchester, which has two symphony orchestras playing throughout the year. And we’ve matched up the venue [an outdoor amphitheatre by an old dock] with a suitably watery-themed programme, including a 300th anniversary performance of Handel’s Water Music.”
Hull’s Prom won’t be the only one not in the Royal Albert Hall. Pickard is expanding the list of venues to include excursions to Tate Modern, Southwark Cathedral and the tiny but trendy Wilton’s Music Hall in east London (“we will cram people in upstairs and take the seats out downstairs”), as well as returning to the Bold Tendencies multi-storey car park in Peckham, a huge success last year.
Does this diversification imply any dissatisfaction with the Albert Hall? “The Albert Hall is a wonderful place, but not perfect for everything,” Pickard says. “Different venues bring a different feel to the music, and sometimes a different audience as well.”
Surely, though, he can’t be happy that, year after year, the Albert Hall’s debenture holders (the people who own seats in perpetuity) flog their tickets for the Last Night of the Proms on resale websites, often for thousands of pounds. Doesn’t that go against the Proms ethos? “It’s infuriating for us, and indeed for the colleagues we work with at the Albert Hall, and it creates a very unfortunate image,” Pickard admits. “Unfortunately, we are powerless to stop it. The Albert Hall and the Proms are synonymous, and the festival will be based there for the foreseeable future.”
After managing the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment and then Glyndebourne, where he spent 14 years, Pickard, 57, was appointed to run the Proms nearly two years ago. It’s only with this season, however, that his impact will be properly felt. “I’d say last year was 50 per cent mine, and this year 90 per cent,” he says. “Some things get booked ages in advance. I remember Kathryn McDowell [the London Symphony Orchestra’s chief executive] coming up to me at Glyndebourne just after I was appointed to the Proms and saying, ‘I should let you know that Roger Wright [Pickard’s predecessor] agreed that Simon Rattle and the LSO should do Gurrelieder in the 2017 season.”
Schoenberg’s vast choral work, conducted by Rattle on August 19, won’t be the season’s only blockbuster. Pickard has also scheduled Beethoven’s Fidelio (July 21, with the feisty Australian tenor Stuart Skelton in the title role), Mussorgsky’s epic opera Khovanshchina, in Shostakovich’s orchestration (August 6), and Berlioz’s equally sprawling The Damnation of Faust, conducted by John Eliot Gardiner (August
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Those will be big events, but what’s even more striking when you thumb through the eight weeks of concerts is the extraordinary number of anniversaries and significant birthdays being marked — from the Russian Revolution (1917), the Reformation (1517), Finnish independence (1917) and even the partition of India (1947) to Ella Fitzgerald, Claudio Monteverdi, Dizzy Gillespie, John Adams, Philip Glass, John Williams and Malcolm Sargent, whose death 50 years ago is being commemorated by a recreation of his 500th Prom (July 24). Doesn’t Pickard feel he has overdone the historical allusions?
“You are probably right,” he concedes. “One of my notes to myself when I took the job was ‘beware of anniversary-itis’, yet despite being aware of the trap one still falls into it. On the other hand, if you have a composer such as John Adams turning 70, and he’s written so many extraordinary pieces that go well in the Albert Hall, it would be mad not to engage with that. I think his Harmonium, which we’ve put on the First Night [July 14] will be thrilling. And although I don’t expect everyone to latch on to our Reformation Day [August 20], I’m quite proud of us putting together five centuries of music telling the story of the Crucifixion, culminating in Bach’s St John Passion with chorales sung by the audience.”
If Pickard has been afflicted by anniversary-itis, however, he has deftly avoided something even more irritating: blatant BBC self-promotion. For the first time in recent years, incredibly, there will be no Prom linked to a BBC TV programme. Has he heeded the purists’ sour response to last year’s decidedly downmarket Strictly Come Dancing Prom, or are we spared the yeasty spectacle of a Great British Bake Off Prom only because the programme has defected to Channel 4?
“Put it this way, it’s not accidental,” he says. “The moment we start saying, ‘Well, it’s not absolutely top musical quality, but there might be an audience for it,’ warning lights start flashing for me. There are other ways of reaching new audiences, rather than allying yourself to another popular BBC brand. That’s not to say it will never happen again, but I was quite keen in my first year to try some different approaches, such as Tom Service deconstructing the Eroica Symphony before it’s played by memory by the Aurora Orchestra [July 22], or Gerard McBurney’s Beyond the Score presentation of Dvorák’s New World Symphony [August 23].”
There may be no TV spinoffs this summer, but there’s no shortage of populism. The theatre and film musicals expert John Wilson waltzes onwards; this year he conducts three Proms, including two semi-staged performances of the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical Oklahoma! (August 11). “For me, Richard Rodgers was as great a composer, certainly as great a tunesmith, as Handel was,” Pickard enthuses, a touch contentiously. “And when Oklahoma! is played by the John Wilson Orchestra, that for me is of the same quality as the Vienna Philharmonic playing Beethoven.”
Thankfully, for those music lovers who might need convincing about that, the season does also include the Vienna Philharmonic playing Beethoven, as well as Mahler, Mozart and Brahms (September 7 and
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Pickard admits that the Proms budget is under financial pressure, “but no more than the rest of the BBC — and of course we are one part of the corporation that does have an additional income stream, from the box office”. The trick with the latter, he says, is to “maintain accessibility while maximising income”. So, although promming tickets for arena and gallery remain fixed at £6 (“that’s a given”), prices for the plusher seats are likely to rise markedly over the coming seasons, with a good stalls seat for a top-flight orchestra already above £60.
Urbane in manner and steeped in the classical repertoire from boyhood (he went to a choir school, then did a music degree at Cambridge), Pickard seems unlikely to be a provocative or radical Proms director in the style of, say, William Glock in the 1960s. On the other hand, he is a shrewd and seasoned operator, alert to pitfalls as well as opportunities.
Under his watch, for instance, there won’t be a Proms season without a single woman composer or conductor — as another of his predecessorsonce disastrously contrived. And, like Clint Eastwood, Pickard accepts that a man’s gotta know his limitations. “There’s nothing like being Proms director,” he says, “to make you realise that what you thought was your comprehensive knowledge of western music is nothing of the sort.”
10 Proms to catch
Barenboim’s Elgar: Now as much of a Proms fixture as the bust of Henry Wood, Daniel Barenboim conducts his great Staatskapelle Berlin in Elgar’s two completed symphonies (July 15, 16).
Later in the season Elgar’s Third Symphony, controversially but imaginatively completed by Anthony Payne, is performed by the BBC Symphony Orchestra under Sakari Oramo (August 22).
The Immortal: A sensation in Manchester, Mark Simpson’s extraordinary oratorio, inspired by Victorian seances, receives its London premiere (July 27).
Relaxed Prom: Usual concert decorum is suspended for the first Prom specially designed for children and adults with autism, sensory and communication impairments and learning disabilities (July 29).
Ella and Dizzy: Fitzgerald and Gillespie, of course, both jazz legends born 100 years ago and celebrated in a Prom featuring the singer Dianne Reeves and the trumpeter James Morrison (August 4).
Passages: The classic album on which Philip Glass and Ravi Shankar collaborated is recreated for the first time in a concert, with Shankar’s daughter, Anoushka, pictured, playing a prominent role (August 15).
Chineke! Britain’s first orchestra of black and minority ethnic musicians makes its Proms debut, with the remarkable teenage cellist Sheku Kanneh-Mason (August 30).
Royal Concertgebouw: Fascinating to see how Amsterdam’s illustrious orchestra is coping with its new chief conductor, Daniele Gatti. Two beefy programmes of Bruckner, Mahler, Haydn and Wolfgang Rihm will be a good test (September 1, 2).
General booking (bbc.co.uk/proms, 0845 4015040) opens on May 13
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/time ... -kv79pjkkh
