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16/07/2004 The Proms: some great radio; pity about the gigs
The 2004 Proms season starts tonight. The annual two-month long festival of 74 concerts held at London's Royal Albert Hall samples the popular classical repertoire, from Beethoven to Britten, Mahler to Mussorgsky. Every concert is also broadcast on BBC Radio 3. Likely highlights include: * mezzo Alice Coote singing Mahler's Kindertotenlieder (July 29) * Alfred Brendel's Emperor Concerto (August 17) * Berlin Phil's La Mer by Debussy (Sept 6). I'll be catching a sample of the performances on radio and TV, but, as always, will be giving the concerts themselves a very wide berth. OK, the Proms are a unique music festival. OK, among the 74 concerts, there's something for nearly everybody. But you couldn't pay me to go to the Proms. For three reasons: the programme (endless middlebrow pap, dreary 19thC orchestral works); the uniquely awful venue (the 5,000 seater Albert Hall - it would make a handy, capacious multi-storey car park); and the dreadful audience - the Promenaders, who stand on the hall floor. There might be bigger gatherings of overgrown, geeky stiffs somewhere in the world, but I ain't witnessed one. The Prommers - who make vicars, Boy Scouts and maiden aunts look like dangerous revolutionaries - are the unacceptable face of classical music, the kind of embarrassing adolescent semi-toffs whose annual TV appearances probably dissuade millions from exploring great music for grown-ups.
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