You'd be better off with a Rolex...

Is it just me, or do there seem to be more 'distractions' this year? Messrs et Dame West, Grant and Scales tripping their way through narrations yesterday, dancers thripping the light fantastic today, cheap inane chat rather than informative inserts. It's beginning to look as if someone somewhere belives that the music cannot speak for itself.

the dancing didn't detract from the music for once - the reason i don't like ballet much, and possibly the beauty of watching on tv rather than being there.
at the risk of being lynched, i would much much much rather listen to rameau (and telemann for that matter) than bach. so much more life to it.

i think it is simply, for me, that rameau is so much more interesting. most of the time i find bach a real joyless wade.

and thanks, bbc4, for cutting the concert short.
it would have been a real frigging upset if Britain in pictures would have started 2 minutes later.
christ.

I was wondering if a proms season had ever got off to such a lacklustre start and that included the worthy but dull requiem in the first half of tonight's prom. But the second half tonight was wonderful. Hopefully there'll be plenty of purely musical highlights to come through the weeks but I don't think anything will match the joie de vivre of this. Buskaid will rightly get the plaudits so I'd just like to put in a word for the humour and invention of Compaignie Roussat-Lubek too. Not a project that I would have expected from John Eliot Gardener either.

Tonight's Prom was one of the best I've ever seen.  What a fantastic mix of cultures.  I loved every minute.  All credit due to those young South African  performers who have been playing for so little time and yet were excellent, polished and exhibited the highest musicianship.

It just shows what enthusiasm and motivation can do.  How many people in this country do you think would knock on someone's door and demand, beg and plead to learn the violin?  That is what one young boy had done who was interviewed in the interval.  That's motivation. 

The choir and orchestra were superb and the dancing was quirky, athletic and hugely entertaining.

I suppose it won't have been everyone's cup of tea but it was certainly mine.  I loved it! 

I was absolutle stunned. I wish I had recorded it!

Musically, I thought the Campra Requiem was the most engrossing piece. The second half music was a bit "ordinary" in comparison but the dancers more than made up for it -- they were all fantastic. (Although, I wonder if I would have appreciated Rameau's music more without the dancers distracting me?  )


I'm not a ballet fan, or an appreciator of dance in general, so I wasn't expecting to enjoy it so much. The French company, in particular, were so inventive in their routines that I would actually consider going to see them perform somewhere 


But I bet it sounded really weird to the people listening on radio 

Thanks, Mr. Dough, I shall bear that in mind