well, they done did it

[realthog]

. . . performed Havergal Brian's Symphony #1 "The Gothic", that is -- the one that requires about 287 orchestras and 150 choirs (I approximate) and lasts about 1hr 46min (I don't). I had other stuff to do tonight so wasn't able to listen to the whole thing consecutively; but thanks to those nice folk at the Beeb I have another 7 days during which to listen to it properly.

So can you: just go here.

First impressions: I have some difficulty with choral symphonies (I'm the guy who wishes Beethoven had stopped his 9th after the first three movements), and I 'fess that when the singers first appeared, at about the 42min mark, my heart sank -- they seemed to be all over the place. I don't know if that's just the way Brian scored it or if, well, there were nerves. Later, though, it all seemed to be working beautifully. Stuff like this aside, I am just so thrilled I can hear this work: I'd read about it, but thought I'd never hear it.

One of the great things about the BBC Proms is that, in among all the oh-no-not-another-performance-of-a-Liszt-piano-concerto moments, there are times like this -- usually a bunch of them per season -- when you can hear performances of works that will perhaps never, because of their dimensions or obscurity, be made commercially available. I think it quite possible that no one on the whole of LJ will ever within their lifetimes have the opportunity, after tonight, to witness a live performance of this symphony -- heaven knows how much it must have cost to assemble the performers! Yet, thanks to the Proms, for at least the next few days you can listen to it online.

Some of the greats I've discovered through the Proms? Schnittke's Nagasaki (if you like Orff's Carmina Burana you'll go nuts over this) and Gliere's Symphony #3 -- both of them absolutely and completely stamped on my memory, the former beginning my own personal Schnittke fan odyssey, the latter initiating a Gliere CD-buying splurge as I added the symphonies to my collection. (Some of Gliere's other stuff, I discovered, ain't so wonderful.) Really, though, to single out a couple of composers/works is to give a false impression: I've discovered so many wonderful things through the Proms over the years that I've long since lost count.

Of course, the Proms are nasty socialist entities, spawn of the Devil, broadcast by that Jesus-denying islamofascist enterprise, slave of the state, known as the BBC -- you know, the news organization that shows how in awe it is of its paymaster, the UK government, by deploying people like Jeremy Paxman and Stephen Sackur to toss ministers softball questions.

Yeah, right.

What the US, a much richer country than the UK, needs to start doing is offering PBS sufficient funding that it, too, can stage something like the Proms season. Why? Let's face it, every time the BBC stages the Proms, the UK scores a major diplomatic coup: this is a series of concerts listened to around the world. Meantime, the US offers pop/country awards shows interrupted by commercial breaks.

Comments

[ericadawn16.livejournal.com]

Oh, awesome.

I totally agree, I wish they would do something like the Proms here. I suppose Great Performances was supposed to fulfill that role originally but it tends to appeal to a minor part of the population whereas the Proms model that the BBC has is that there is not only classical but more mainstream acts and even very popular shows like Dr Who. I'd love to go to a Dr Who Prom someday...

[realthog.livejournal.com]

I was reading in Columbia Journalism Review today an impassioned argument for the US to start up an American World Service along the same lines as the BBC World Service; lemme go dig out the URL for you.

In fact, I now find, there are two:

http://www.cjr.org/cover_story/news_for_the_world.php

http://www.cjr.org/behind_the_news/what_might_an_american_world_service_look_like.php

Neither addresses the "US Proms" question, of course -- both are concerned with the godawful news coverage here -- but at least they seem to be heading in the right general direction.

[ericadawn16.livejournal.com]

Thank you so much for the reading! It was very interesting and they're very right about the deplorable news options on cable and satellite. I like LinkTv but you never know what you'll find and CurrentTv has gone downhill. DirectTv only offers the BBC News channel for digital subscriptions and I'm not sure about Al Jazeera. LinkTv will have translated pieces sometimes.

[realthog.livejournal.com]

Thanks right back at you for the introduction to LinkTV, which I'd vaguely heard about but hadn't really looked at before. I've bookmarked it for whenever I have the chance -- right now I'm working on two projects, so rare scraps of spare time are largely reserved for staring at the ceiling and wondering how I managed to engineer this situation . . .