Aha - thanks for the tip-off!


I only picked 5, all cheap ones until the above. I suppose I shouldn't be surprised that there is no Foulds and no Havergal Brian in this, the biggest British music festival... but no Tippett? no Britten? 

And no Bruckner 

Darn it! Just when I'd persuaded myself that I could probably forego a visit this year....(wonder if they're playing Edinburgh, though.)

I have already noted this happy news on TOP    

He must have been the "piano-organist,
Who never would be missed".

 

I like the attempt to make it sound logical in the blurb:

nestling between the two ‘original’ halves comes a performance of Stockhausen’s Punkte, originally dating from almost exactly 50 years after the Mahler premiere (and also first heard in Cologne)

 

It's an extraordinary programme... in particular in that order! Looks a bit like Mahler-Stockhausen-programmed encores...

(Or rather: the 3rd Act idea which Stenz also used to do at the Melbourne Symphony.)

At least Punkte has an interval either side of it to enable the John Ws to remove their sensitive ears from the auditorium while the appalling racket is going on!

Personally I'd leave after the Stockhausen, not because I don't like the third "half" but because the first two would have given me quite enough to think about. I'd be interested to hear how having the Mahler first would affect the perception of the Stockhausen. I remember another Mahler/Stockhausen concert where Stockhausen's Jubiläum (as close to a curtain-raiser as he ever wrote, I'm surprised it isn't played more often) was followed by Mahler 5, which sounded distinctly odd - sparse, staccato and even somewhat monochrome in comparison to Stockhausen's luxuriantly dense textures. It was a highly thought-provoking experience.

  Aw, go on, George, 'ave a go.   It's such fun.

 Last weekend, I viewed the DVD of the film version of Lillian Hellman's "Watch On The Rhine" (1943).    The 'extra' on the disc was a film historian's comments on the social changes between the time when the play was presented on Broadway, late 1939, and the subsequent American involvement in WW2, a few years later.   I remembered seeing the play at the NT, in the late 1970s, and spent several hours finding the programme, simultaneously consulting Hellman's memoirs.  Four hours later..... 

With Peggy Ashcroft no less. I remember it well. (Goes to dig out programme )

Congratulations on your 500th, Stanley.

And, um, to try and keep on topic, I've whittled my list of 'must go' Proms down to seven now. I'm aiming to trim that down to four but it's going to be tough.

I don't think the Boulez/Janacek one has been mentioned here yet, has it? That, together with St Francis and the Stockhausen day make a definite three but there are four others I'm very keen on hearing in the flesh. The criterion is whether I really want to hear them in the RAH, with all that entails, not just whether I want to hear them.