Our night at the Proms

After a restful day catching up on chores (laundry etc) and generally relaxing, we went out at 5pm to have some dinner and then attend the BBC Proms at the Royal Albert Hall. The Proms is actually 60 days of special musical performances through the English summer. We had booked before leaving Australia for Khatia Buniatishvili playing Tchaikovsky’s beloved Piano Concerto No. 1 with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra on its first visit to the Proms with Chief Conductor Jaime Martín. The MSO performed two Romantic classics: Dvořák’s Symphony No. 6 and Margaret Sutherland’s Haunted Hills. Now many years ago in my teens I had attended the last night of the Proms in Sydney at the Sydney Town Hall, but this Proms was a whole new level. Mother ship experience again.

We took the tube to South Kensington where we found a great little Lebanese restaurant. We shared two dishes (Meze Plate for one and a serve of lamb kofta) which were so tasty. Time then to walk on the Royal Albert Hall. The inside of this place was familiar to us in Oz from seeing Royal Command performances on our TV. But coming upon the building from behind via winding streets was very special. It’s very impressive - a circular cake of a building in an angular world. The entry is set up like a clock face - doors 1 to 12, and ours was number 9. From our door entry we could see the gorgeous Albert Memorial across the way: this screams that Queen Victoria really was besotted with her German prince.

We settled into our red velvet swivel seats with no arms and watched as the central well of the theatre filled with standing patrons, and many tiers above also filled until the auditorium was filled and finally the orchestra arrived, then the conductor and the concert got underway.
Briefly.

Then the shouting started. First we thought it was a part of Margaret Sutherland’s lament for Aboriginal Australians called “Haunted Hills” which seemed very avant garde and could well accommodate some angry recitative. But no it became apparent as the orchestra stopped, and the conductor looked askance that something was UP. Literally. In the high galleries Pro Palestinian protesters screamed that the MSO had blood on its hands - apparently since the acoustics from up above for us were not as good as they might be so we couldn’t make out what it was about. But those in the audience who could were not happy. Booing, return shouting, conductor leaving the stage, then 1st violinist. It took at least a full 10 minutes before order was restored.

After the concert resumed “a capo” (from the top), with a new order of items, the shouting broke out again. Oh no we thought still none the wiser as to its meaning - but this time the staff acted very quickly and the band played on. Hallelujah. The orchestra, the conductor and our soloist all acted heroically and they played the concert of their lives it seemed to us. And the knowledgeable crowd responded in kind. At the concert’s end they clapped, they stomped, they called out. Many standing ovations later, we had a ravishingly beautiful piano encore. See her play the Marcello- Bach Adagio here
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Oh Brush With Fame: saw Stephen Smith, now Australia’s High Commissioner at the concert, looking fabulous in the Silver Fox category that’s for sure!Читать далее