The BBC Proms season opened on Friday. Though I didn’t hear it live, that concert gives me special pleasure: woman conductor, woman composer, woman soloist.
The whole season gives me bushels of pleasure. What a musical extravaganza: eight weeks of at least one concert a day, sometimes two, even three on lucky days. Most performed in South Kensington, others in Belfast, Gateshead, Bristol, Aberdeen, Nottingham (music from Sherwood Forest, no less). Orchestras galore: BBC Philharmonic, BBC Scottish, Royal Philharmonic, National Youth – and that’s only in the first month and that’s not all of them.
Music by the big names and a bunch of newer names. I’d like a little more Bruckner, myself, but enough Elgar and Mahler to make me happy. Then there’s the tribute to Sarah Vaughan, a night of American Jazz, and appearances by at least three of the amazingly talented Kanneh Masons.
Virtually every summer for decades (a couple war interruptions, a Covid season without audiences) musicians and conductors show up, multitudes of fans take their seats – the especially intrepid ‘prom’ – the lights dim, the hall quiets, the conductor lifts her/his/their hand and the music comes alive.
Gerard Manley Hopkins and others find the divine in nature. I find the goodness of the divine and the best of humanity in these Proms concerts – people spending their lives practising, harmonizing, others poring over staff paper pulling sounds out of their imaginations for no ‘good’ reason except creating beauty. Then, people like me get the soul-nourishing pleasure of listening.
I thank all of them, plus the BBC, sponsors, box office staff, stage organizers, cleaners, lighting and sound engineers, ice-cream and drink sellers, piano tuners . . . .
Mostly, though, Glory be to God for this version of Hopkins’ dappled things.
Annette Atkins
