# BBC Proms 2016



## Guest

The Royal Albert Hall box office opens today for the sale of tickets...and I've got into the online waiting room to book for Prom 13:

http://www.royalalberthall.com/tickets/proms/proms-2016/prom-13-beethoven-symphony-no-9/

I'm 8,594th in the queue!


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## Guest

Yay! Got seats! Rausing Circle, Row 4 seats 70,71 - in case anyone knows what this means - I let the system pick as I didn't really know what the best was.

Anyone else going to go?


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## Pugg

My granddad sent me a quick mail that he had tickets for some date, I keep you posted.

( He always has the last night, don't ask how, they are in his pocket as the time comes)


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## KlavierM

I am going to Prom 59, Blomstedt conducts Beethoven Symphony 7! anyone else going?


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## Pugg

KlavierM said:


> I am going to Prom 59, Blomstedt conducts Beethoven Symphony 7! anyone else going?


Not that particular one, no.


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## Judith

My gripe is, they didn't show the good proms on television. I thought it was compromised for the Olympics!!


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## juliante

Anyone see the Tchaikovsky voilin concerto? Not my favourite piece of music, but was a fairly irresistible performance I found.


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## Becca

Did anyone attend Saturday evening's Prom 55 ... the CBSO and their new music director along with Barbara Hannigan? (or the evening before in Birmingham?)


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## juliante

KlavierM said:


> I am going to Prom 59, Blomstedt conducts Beethoven Symphony 7! anyone else going?


How was it......?


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## Pugg

*BBC FOUR* is screening Mahler 7 tonight *19.30 U.K time *
B.P / Simon conducted by Simon Rattle.


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## Vaneyes

*Prom 63*/9.1.16. I was sorry to read mixed reviews for Les Arts Florissants/Christie's *Bach*: Mass in B minor. A slightly off night in a so-so venue. But, as much as I like LAF/Christie, maybe they're overstepping their boundaries with this Mass-ive work.


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## juliante

Pugg said:


> *BBC FOUR* is screening Mahler 7 tonight *19.30 U.K time *
> B.P / Simon conducted by Simon Rattle.


Any good.…...? ? ?


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## Pugg

juliante said:


> Any good.…...? ? ?


I haven't seen it yet, recorded it though.


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## Judith

Pugg said:


> *BBC FOUR* is screening Mahler 7 tonight *19.30 U.K time *
> B.P / Simon conducted by Simon Rattle.


Loved it!! Simon Rattle is amazing. Wish him every success in the future with the London Symphony Orchestra!


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## Pugg

*Tonight BBC FOUR:* 19.00 UK time

CBSO Plays Tchaikovsky
BBC Proms, 2016

The City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra perform Tchaikovsky's Fourth Symphony with their new music director, 30-year-old Lithuanian Mirga Grazinyte-Tyla. Mozart's overture to The Magic Flute and a new piece by Hans Abrahamsen also feature in this broadcast presented by Sara Mohr-Pietsch.

Written in 1877, Tchaikovsky's Fourth famously explores the forces of fate wrestling with human happiness, through music by turns tragic, yearning and celebratory.

The curtain-raiser is Mozart's overture to his opera The Magic Flute. It packs a punch in just a few minutes, with playful inventiveness and dramatic shifts between sparkling melodies and the famous 'masonic' three chords which open and punctuate it.

There's also the London premiere of Danish composer Hans Abrahamsen's acclaimed new work 'let me tell you'. Canadian soprano Barbara Hannigan balances extraordinary vocal dexterity with emotional subtlety to create a powerful interpretation of Hamlet's troubled Ophelia.
Show less


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## DavidA

Vaneyes said:


> *Prom 63*/9.1.16. I was sorry to read mixed reviews for Les Arts Florissants/Christie's *Bach*: Mass in B minor. A slightly off night in a so-so venue. But, as much as I like LAF/Christie, maybe they're overstepping their boundaries with this Mass-ive work.


The Mass was certainly OT top notch as performed. I think the venue goes against it and the singing certainly did not seem to be up to the mark. The bass soloist was flat in one of his solos.


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## Judith

Wonderful Tchaikovsky Fourth Symphony on BBC Proms tonight performed by City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra conducted by Mirga Grazinyte-Tyla.


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## Pugg

Becca said:


> Did anyone attend Saturday evening's Prom 55 ... the CBSO and their new music director along with Barbara Hannigan? (or the evening before in Birmingham?)


This one was on BBC FOUR last night!. You missed a lot .


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## Merl

Pugg said:


> *BBC FOUR* is screening Mahler 7 tonight *19.30 U.K time *
> B.P / Simon conducted by Simon Rattle.


I'm just watching that as we speak. Sounding very good up to now, going into the 2nd movement. The Boulez 'Eclat' piece , before it, was bloody awful, though.


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## Merl

Well that was excellent.


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## Pugg

Merl said:


> I'm just watching that as we speak. Sounding very good up to now, going into the 2nd movement. The Boulez 'Eclat' piece , before it, was bloody awful, though.


On my to do list today


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## Genoveva

I'm quite a keen listener of the "Proms" each year. I have enjoyed quite a few concerts but among the standard, major orchestral works I have especially liked so far are:

Bartok - Duke Bluebeard's Castle
Beethoven - Missa Solemnis
Mahler - Symphony No 7
Walton - A Child of Our Time
Prokofiev - Symphony No 5

If I were to pick out the two best it would be the Mahler and Prokofiev symphonies.

I'm afraid to say that I didn't enjoy the Bach Mass in B Minor as much as I thought I would. I recognise it as a very major work in the entire classical repertoire, but it's not among my favourite sacred works as I find it rather too long and drawn out in places. I can't imagine that anything quite as long as this would seriously have taken any prominent role in actual R.C. services at any time since its composition was completed, and this rather weakens its standing in my eyes. 

That aside, the Proms performance itself of the Mass in B Minor should have been really splendid given the superb line up of artists. Instead, I found it rather too bitty (i.e. stopping often for longish breaks) and there was quite a lot of audience noise coming through at the breaks. Some of the solo pieces sounded off tune in places. Overall I was not impressed, although I have seen some glowing reports on another music forum. I tried to edit out some of the noise but I'm not satisfied with the result, so for the time being my JEG/Monteverdi Choir/English Baroque Solists version on CD will continue to remain my favourite.


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## Headphone Hermit

Genoveva said:


> I can't imagine that anything quite as long as this would seriously have taken any prominent role in actual R.C. services at any time since its composition was completed, and this rather weakens its standing in my eyes.


It wasn't an R.C. (Roman Catholic) Mass, but even if it were, its length wouldn't preclude it from being used as I can remember some very, very long church services from my childhood

Doesn't alter the fact that you think it is too long for your tastes, of course


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## Genoveva

Headphone Hermit said:


> It wasn't an R.C. (Roman Catholic) Mass, but even if it were, its length wouldn't preclude it from being used as I can remember some very, very long church services from my childhood
> 
> Doesn't alter the fact that you think it is too long for your tastes, of course


Yes it was an R.C. Mass. Look it up in Wiki or other places. Although a Lutheran, Bach had no problems writing masses in Latin for the R. C. Church, and he wrote several. One of them was for the Dresden (R.C.) Court in 1733. He later expanded this mass during the last years of his life (completing it 1749) into what finally became the Mass in B Minor as we know it today. His son C P E Bach archived the work as the _Great Catholic Mass. _

Regards its length, in fact, based on a bit more research, I have discovered what I suspected that it is such of immense dimensions that it was virtually unusable within the liturgical rites of either the Roman or Protestant churches. It was not performed for a long time after Bach's death, and when it did eventually become better known in the mid 19th C it was largely performed as a concert piece, rather than the centrepiece of a religious service. I've never heard it being performed in any church service, although I'm not saying that it's impossible, just unlikely.


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## Vaneyes

Outside of The Vatican, are there RC services anywhere that include grandiose classical works? I'd think not, unless it was part of a commercial undertaking.

While someone proves me wrong, we pause for a brief message.


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## Pugg

*Friday night: BBC Four: 19.30 U.K time

Verdi Requiem
BBC Proms, 2016*

The 2016 Proms season draws to a close with a bang not a whimper, with Verdi's thunderous Requiem. Marin Alsop is at the helm of the penultimate prom, conducting the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment and the BBC Proms Youth Choir.

Tom Service introduces for television and talks to Marin Alsop backstage. The soloists lining up for Verdi's largest scale non-operatic work are soprano Tamara Wilson, mezzo-soprano Alisa Kolosova, Dimitri Pittas and bass Morris Robinson.

The Requiem had its British premiere in 1875 at the Royal Albert Hall with the composer himself conducting and it is still packing the audiences in. Its fire and brimstone depiction of death and destruction never fails to appeal, most famously of all in the tumultuous Dies Irae.


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## Pugg

Pugg said:


> *Tonight BBC FOUR:* 19.00 UK time
> 
> CBSO Plays Tchaikovsky
> BBC Proms, 2016
> 
> The City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra perform Tchaikovsky's Fourth Symphony with their new music director, 30-year-old Lithuanian Mirga Grazinyte-Tyla. Mozart's overture to The Magic Flute and a new piece by Hans Abrahamsen also feature in this broadcast presented by Sara Mohr-Pietsch.
> 
> Written in 1877, Tchaikovsky's Fourth famously explores the forces of fate wrestling with human happiness, through music by turns tragic, yearning and celebratory.
> 
> The curtain-raiser is Mozart's overture to his opera The Magic Flute. It packs a punch in just a few minutes, with playful inventiveness and dramatic shifts between sparkling melodies and the famous 'masonic' three chords which open and punctuate it.
> 
> There's also the London premiere of Danish composer Hans Abrahamsen's acclaimed new work 'let me tell you'. Canadian soprano Barbara Hannigan balances extraordinary vocal dexterity with emotional subtlety to create a powerful interpretation of Hamlet's troubled Ophelia.
> Show less


I do apologise, it is on Friday September 11


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## Genoveva

Vaneyes said:


> Outside of The Vatican, are there RC services anywhere that include grandiose classical works? I'd think not, unless it was part of a commercial undertaking.


I presume that you mean regular performances of various grandiose works, say once a month in a Cathedral, as opposed to the occasional one-off performance on much less frequent special occasions.

I rather doubt it but I don't know for sure. As an exception, hazarding a guess there might be something like Haydn's Seven Last Words performed each Easter in a Spanish Cathedral. Even inside the Vatican, I rather doubt that performances of grandiose religious classical works are anything but exceptional events, if at all.

I would imagine that less grandiose religious classical works are performed on a more regular basis in some of the bigger R.C. churches.


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## Merl

I watched the Tchaikovsky 4 performance, last night, and was totally underwhelmed until the last 2 movements where Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla finally brought the CBSO back to life and ended on a massive high. A strange reading full of some serious lags in momentum but once we got to the business end all was fine. Hans Abrahamsen's song cycle 'Let me tell you' was certainly not my cup of tea but gave me the chance to mark some schoolwork, feed the cats / clean out the kitten's litter tray and iron a shirt for work - all activities preferable to listening to Barbara Hannigan warbling through Abrahamsen's turgid song cycle.


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## Pugg

*Saturday on BBC one and two 
*

Proms: Last Night of the Proms 10-09-2012

Juan Diego Flórez tenor
Francesca Chiejina soprano
Eve Daniell soprano
Lauren Fagan soprano
Alison Rose soprano
Claire Barnett-Jones mezzo-soprano
Marta Fontanals-Simmons mezzo-soprano
Anna Harvey mezzo-soprano
Katie Stevenson mezzo-soprano
Trystan Llŷr Griffiths tenor
Oliver Johnston tenor
Joshua Owen Mills tenor
James Way tenor
Bragi Jónsson bass
Benjamin Lewis bass
James Newby bass
Bradley Travis bass
BBC Proms Youth Ensemble
BBC Singers
BBC Symphony Chorus
BBC Symphony Orchestra
Sakari Oramo conductor


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## Pugg

Pugg said:


> *Friday night: BBC Four: 19.30 U.K time
> 
> Verdi Requiem
> BBC Proms, 2016*
> 
> The 2016 Proms season draws to a close with a bang not a whimper, with Verdi's thunderous Requiem. Marin Alsop is at the helm of the penultimate prom, conducting the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment and the BBC Proms Youth Choir.
> 
> Tom Service introduces for television and talks to Marin Alsop backstage. The soloists lining up for Verdi's largest scale non-operatic work are soprano Tamara Wilson, mezzo-soprano Alisa Kolosova, Dimitri Pittas and bass Morris Robinson.
> 
> The Requiem had its British premiere in 1875 at the Royal Albert Hall with the composer himself conducting and it is still packing the audiences in. Its fire and brimstone depiction of death and destruction never fails to appeal, most famously of all in the tumultuous Dies Irae.


This was a stunning performance, all credits to Marin Alsop.


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## Judith

Loved Last Night of the Proms. Watched it on television. Sakari Oramo was amazing and such a "double act" with opera singer Juan Diego Florez!!


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## Pugg

Judith said:


> Loved Last Night of the Proms. Watched it on television. Sakari Oramo was amazing and such a "double act" with opera singer Juan Diego Florez!!


I do love the audience the most, that energy coming from the first rows especially always warms my heart.


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## Nereffid

For those who missed it, Florez and Paddington Bear:


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## Judith

Nereffid said:


> For those who missed it, Florez and Paddington Bear:
> 
> View attachment 88689


I loved that bit. Laughing, because I like Paddington Bear even though I am in my fifties!!


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## Pat Fairlea

Judith said:


> Loved Last Night of the Proms. Watched it on television. Sakari Oramo was amazing and such a "double act" with opera singer Juan Diego Florez!!


Hear hear. It may be corny, it may be predictable (up to a point), but sometimes that's what we need. An excellent Last Night, really well played and sung. And what a superb version of our usually turgid National Anthem!


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