I spent much of the morning listening to Beethoven’s 3rd and 9th symphonies whilst working. I’d downloaded them last month, and wonderful it was too: certainly made for difference to my normal music choice.
Earlier this evening I caught one of the adverts for the BBC’s Prom season which is underway at the moment. It’s a remarkable series of concerts (I look forward to the BBC extending the podcasting experiment and making some available for download sometime!). Of course the Last Night of the Proms is the fantastic climax, which I’ve been lucky enough to attend in Hyde Park several times.
The television advert shows landmarks lighting up in tune with the music, and people around the country enjoying listening to it. As it draws on some national landmarks I was wondering why the BBC don’t look to make the concerts a bit more of a truly national event. Here in Glasgow there’s the Royal Concert Hall, which I’ve been too a few times in the last year, and it’s a wonderful auditorium. With such places, and many orchestras visiting from across the world for what is the biggest classical music festival in the world, it’d be great to use some more of the facilities we have nationally.
I’m not suggesting that they give up on the Albert Hall altogether - far from it! Whilst it’s acoustics aren’t necessarily the best, it has atmosphere in buckets, and that’s almost as important as the sound. I just think that it’d be nice if the BBC could find some way to host some concerts outside of London for at least some of the time. With 70 concerts, I’m sure they wouldn’t miss some of them going on around the country.
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July 26th, 2005 at 12:00 am
What a good idea, would love to hear one concert at the Slug (sorry Sage) Gateshead