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31/08/06 : Proms and stuff

I'm currently enjoying the televised proms concerts on the BBC. There's been some good stuff - Tchaikovsky 4, Sibelius 5, Shostakovich 7, and Beethoven's 3rd Piano Concerto nicely played by someone I'd not heard of before - who unfortunately is one of those people that pulls the kind of faces while playing that make him look as if he's constipated. Which reminds me of a bad joke:

Q. What's brown and sits on the piano stool?
A. Beethoven's last movement...

More good stuff to follow - Beethoven 9 on Sunday, Shostakovich 10 next week - and then the last night to look forward to ...

Actually, I hate the Last Night of the Proms. I'm just not the flag waving type (as this post shows). I'm not going to go on about it here - I posted about it on my old blog (here) and there's an interesting Comment is Free post on the subject here. This comment, from "WillDuff", pretty much sums up my feelings:

... the dreadful impression this gives of the UK, and the dreadful impression this gives of classical music. Classical music is marginalised and derided by politicians and the media ... this is partly because it is perceived to be middle-class, elitist and irrelevant. So if the main view that people have of classical music is a bunch of pompous idiots creaming themselves over Land of Hope and Glory - which undeniably belongs to a long-gone era - what hope has music got?

I'll probably still end up watching though.