The Opening Night Of The Proms

My aim is to watch all of the televised live concerts in this year's BBC Proms. The first was the opening night of the proms, which I enjoyed a lot. The first night usually opens with a brand new piece of music by a contemporary composer. Thanks to this course my eyes and ears have been opened to a lot of great contemporary classical music, and I was excited to see what this new piece would offer. The composer was Brit Julian Anderson, and his piece was called Harmony. There was a dream-like feel to the music, the vocals from the choir almost conversationary. Despite this there were some thundering dynamic moments, and some more unusual instruments; I saw what I think was a bass clarinet, and what looked like a huge rain stick.

This piece was followed by Four Sea Interludes by Benjamin Britten. The composer took music from his opera Peter Grimes and organised it into an orchestral suite. My favourite interlude was probably The Storm, which required really energised players. There is a great use of timpani in the piece, and an explosive ending. Watching the music live I was able to observe some interesting instrumental technique, such as the 'thumb roll' on the tambourine.

The next piece, Rachmaninoff's Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini make use of Paganini's ultra-famous theme Caprice No.24 in A, and closely resembles a piano concerto. It starts with a bare-bones theme at first, then proceeds through 24 exhilarating variations. It is exciting to see how much Rachmaninoff can do with a basic theme, and how, regardless of how the theme is being manipulated, you can still recognise fragments of melody or harmony from the theme throughout, either from the piano, or frequently from the orchestra. Amongst the thematic variations there is also variation in tempo and dynamic, which really pins down the listeners attention. The rhapsody ends with a bang, a conclusion that sums up the enjoyment of the whole piece. The pianist - Stephen Hough - and the orchestra then proceed to perform Polish composer Lutosławski's own variations on Paganini's theme.

After the interval was a performance of Vaughan Williams' A Sea Symphony. It is the composers first symphony, and also his longest, and features voices throughout. There was a massive 450-voice choir supplying the vocals which created a huge 'wall of sound'. Providing the main platform for the sung text was a baritone vocalist and a soprano vocalist. Aside from the vocals, I particularly enjoyed the percussion in this piece, from the piercing snare drum, to the crashing cymbals to the much-used timpani, which added depth to the musical texture, and sounded like rolling waves.

I enjoyed this first proms concert, and I'm looking forward to the next one. I think watching a live performance of this kind of music really shows the scale of what's going on, you can learn more about the instruments as you observe their playing technique, and it has more drama as you can see the intensity of the players.