From info on Facebook, and also on the website, start time seems to have been put back half-an-hour for some reason.

Is anyone going to the live edition of 'In Tune' from the RCM Britten Theatre?

Scrub that, I can't go myself now.

The Mini-guide with BBC Music Magazine is better laid out this year - in date order; with Chamber Music, Films and Literary Festival events interspersed with the main concerts, not all stuffed at the back. Mine is now replete with a great amount of orange highlighter.

Taken as a whole, maybe not a Prom to live long in the memory but hardly worth the predictable torrent of negativity at TOP. Memo to self re. that message board; don't bother, really don't bother. Does it matter SO much if CH is a wee bit naff ?

Loved the Elliott Carter, sounded as if he had been listening to a lot of Dave Smith.

I do have to agree with people at TOP who are complaining and complaining and complaining about the presenters being hermetically sealed in a studio.  It dampens the atmosphere and makes me wonder if they're making their silly comments based on having watched and listened through a screen and speakers.  As IRF says, pointless.

In fairness to Charles Hazlewood, one piece of chat that I caught was actually informative. I had been thinking that the Mozart oboe concerto sounded very much like one of his flute concertos -- and  CH came on and helpfully told me that it was the same piece of music!

Don't care about the presenters - I was there!

A curious evening.  I enjoyed the prom as a whole, but not much grabbed me individually.  In several pieces I found myself wondering whether I was enjoying the music or the sound of the music (but does this matter?)

The house band seemed in good form, which bodes well.  Heathen clappers were out in force, which doesn't.

Also disturbing to see such a short queue, although the arena didn't look that empty.  Quite a few people trickled out between pieces towards the end - the concert finished at 10:30.

NB

Thanks Stanley, I did in fact realise that but sarcasm on my part maybe didn't transfer to the keypad ! And sarcasm is not a trait to be encouraged anyway I guess.

Mrs Pianola and I were there, privileged to be sitting in the stalls, and not at our expense! I used to inhabit the arena in the 1960s and '70s, and, from looking at the lads and lasses there last night, so did they. Bald heads and tums a-plenty, and a good smattering of the brown ricers too. The youthful vigour is still there, but not the actual youth, which is sad. But if Roger Wright's programming continues like this, then just maybe he'll get some of them back.

Wayne Marshall plays in such a way that one can perceive the whites of his eyes, even though he has his back to the audience. There is a slightly obsessive quality which makes his playing all the more intense and exciting, which suited the First Night to a "T".

A vote of thanks to Michael Broadway, the indefatigable organ tuner, who said he had been there on the "late shift", between 11.30 pm and 3.30 am, the only time when the hall was empty. The instrument was in excellent shape. All the season's organists have a special relationship with Sir Henry Wood, whose bust sits right in front of them as they bow, and the contrast of Wayne's dark skin and Sir Henry's plaster was a neat visual token of the inclusiveness of the Proms, just in case any ill-informed MPs might think otherwise.

The Mozart was subtle and witty, and in the Four Last Songs, I felt Christine Brewer was trying to do more in the way of rubato than the ensemble would allow her. At one point she sang to the leader, who had played his solos very sensitively, as though hoping that he might somehow influence the proceedings. In a way, the individual words don't matter so much to me - it's the effect they had on Strauss, and the musical progressions which they inspired which get the old tearducts going. Strauss' world had been destroyed by a combination of Hitler and "Bomber" Harris, and his own death must have come at an unbearably poignant time. But we are generations away from that now, and to judge from the resolutely inept clapping between songs, increasingly unable to appreciate sensitivity when we hear it.

The Beethoven was a delight, and as a pianola player, the Elliott Carter piece struck me as an example of how differently we regard mechanism in the 21st century from attitudes in the 1920s. I disapprove of George Antheil's "Ballet Mécanique" being played on Yamaha Disklaviers, because they are too smooth and effortless. Antheil wrote for machines of his time, which needed oil and sweat to keep them going. Similarly, Honegger's "Pacific 2-3-1" is the apotheosis of the steam train as it was then, while Elliott Carter's "Caténaires" reminded me of European electric rail travel - there was even a nice photo of some overhead lines in the programme. Carter is truly amazing - when I'm 100 years old, I think all I shall be able to manage is underground travel, and that with the aid of a good posse of worms.

Overall, a big pat on the back to Roger Wright. I'm not sure how many First Nights I have been to, but I would say this was the best bash.