Exciting Prom!

Hurrah! I have internet at home again, after surviving over 5 weeks without... silly companies... OK it's not really working yet, as I'm only connected at 160kbps when it really should be 8Mbps, but still, better than nothing... :)

Anyway, back to the title. After a boring day at work on Wednesday, I ran away early for my second prom this year. I knew the music would be good, but had no idea that I would bump into SO MANY old friends... Met up with Hok (CYM/LSSO friend, also Cambridge compsci) at South Kensington station. Catching up whilst walking to the Royal Albert Hall, where we met David BW, another CYM/LSSO/Cambridge friend. After getting our queue ticket we relocated to the Imperial Union Bar, where we bumped into old LSSO friend Leo, who I hadn't seen for 3 years. Few minutes later old school friends Alex and Oscar appeared! Hadn't seen them for 4 years... Soon followed by another group of CYM/LSSO people: Ollie, Hannah, Luan, Sarah S, and Sarah K who I randomly met at a post concert party in Cambridge last year... So yeah, we had fun catching up with each other, and drinking too, obviously. 6:30pm, we found our way back to the queue, where we bumped into Hugh, who's another Cambridge compsci, who also seemed to know most of the group... Another LSSO person Josh appeared at some point too... and I also managed to spot Helen's JAGS friends Alex and Camilla...

Anyway, the music. Budapest Festival Orchestra was conducted by the maestro Iván Fischer. The concert began with Dohnányi's Symphonic Minutes, which I was expecting to be very modern at the time. Turned out that Dohnányi was an early 20th century Hungarian composer, and his Symphonic Minutes was far from the kind of music I would classify as 'modern'; very much an orchestra showpiece in five movements, full of gorgeous folk melodies as well as exhilarating moments. I'll definitely be looking for a recording of this. Continuing the Hungarian theme, Bartók's third piano concerto followed, with the American pianist Garrick Ohlsson. This was my main reason for coming to this prom, as it was one of the favourite concertos I had played in my youth orchestra (LSSO), and I had been wanting to see it performed for years. Exciting fact: the pianist who played this piece with us in 2002, György Sándor, studied piano with Bartók himself, and actually PREMIERED the piece back in 1946! Isn't that exciting :D Yes, he was rather old when he played with us, 90 in fact, he even had a heart attack while we were touring France... But still, he was amazing, and came back to play with us two months later after surviving the heart attack. Anyway, back to this prom. I'm feeling little lazy now, so I shall copy a bit of the review by the Daily Telegraph :)

The American Garrick Ohlsson ... brought a light, lithe touch to Bartók's piano writing, though still found the spaciousness for the slow movement's disturbing chorale and the muscle for the finale's bounding rhythms. Muscle was only one aspect of Fischer and the orchestra's performance of Stravinsky's Rite of Spring after the interval. Though it had impact and energy aplenty, it reminded us what a magnificently melodious piece this is, and right from the opening bassoon solo, Fischer lovingly caressed all the folk-derived tunes as they appeared.

So yeah, the Rite of Spring was fun :) Huge orchestra too! 8 horns and 8 double basses, and two contra-bassoons weren't bad at all. Last time I heard the piece in full was at a prom 3 years ago - Berliner Philharmoniker with Simon Rattle - the performance famed for its bassoon/mobile phone duet at the start... I wasn't too keen on the piece back then, but it's definitely growing on me :)

The audience went crazy by the end, and Fischer responded by asking the audience what we wanted to hear. Hundreds of suggestions were shouted at once, everything ranging from JS Bach to probably Spice Girls... I don't think he was seriously letting the audience decide though... Time to go back to the Hungarian theme as Brahm's Hungarian Dance No. 6 was played, which Hannah couldn't stop dancing to :) And just as we thought it was the end, a double bass player discreetly made his way to the front of stage where he was joined by one violist and one of the first violins with exciting moustache. The string trio played more exciting Hungarian dance music before the orchestra disappeared, accompanied by thundering applause.

As we were walking out, we also bumped into old LSSO friend Danyal, who's also at Cambridge now... Adam the old old LSSO flautist was also spotted. A trip to High Street Kensington with Hok and Ollie to find cash and/or food before we returned to the Imperial Bar to join the others for more drinks, until it was too late to get our last trains... which was clever... so Ollie, Luan, Sarah S and I had fun getting buses home.

All in all a great evening, definitely one of the best proms I've been to, and only spotted 16 people... :) In case you are interested, have a video of some random performance of the Bartók third piano concerto, second movement :) Isn't YouTube useful :)



Christoph von Dohnányi, grandson of the composer Dohnányi, will be conducting Prom 56 next Saturday, which is the next one I'm planning on going to. Fascinating, no? :)