Six of the sillier Proms

The BBC Proms schedule, made public last night, contains plenty of temptations.

– There’s the Vienna Philharmonic, rarely spotted in London nowadays, playing a cheerful pair of symphonies, Bruckner 9 and Tchaikovsky Pathetique.

– My all-time favourite blaster, Birtwistle’s Earth Dances, a thrilling remedy for ear-wax.

– Luciano Berio’s Sinfonia, his cultish, seldom-heard rip-off of Mahler’s Resurrection is performed the day before the Mahler original (smart scheduling this).

– Simon Rattle pulls on his dancing pumps with a folksy selection of Arnold, Grainger, Tippett and Ralph Vaughan Williams.

– Charles Hazlewood’s disability Paraorchestra (in Bristol)

– And I’m deeply moved by a BBC Scottish Symphony concert on July 27, which opens with a new work composed by conductor Ryan Wigglesworth in tribute to his late concertmaster Laura Samuel, who died this year of cancer. The Proms can be a very human place.

As for the silly ones:
– Organist Anna Lapwood’s all-nighter, warning people not to bring sleeping-bags.
– The Royal Philharmonic relegated to a Sunday morning dead-slot with a great pairing of Milhaud and RVW.
– Saturday night given over to TV-ratings show, Traitors.
– Aurora playing Shostakovich 5 without scores (I’d rather they got the notes right).
– An Australian orchestra carbon-footprinting all the way from Melbourne to play Dvorak 6.
– An entire Prom of Arooj Afrab and Friends (me, neither).

Right, that’s made my selection a bit easier.

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