Dome run ... for all the quibbles, the Proms remains a wonderfully unlikely institution
In the interval at the first night of the Proms, someone said to me: "It's that time of the year again. You have to retune your ear - it's like the music is coming from the next village. Sort of wafting over the hillside."
Quite true. From where I was sitting, soprano Barbara Frittoli, singing Mozart arias, sounded decidedly indistinct, as if she was on the stereo in another part of the house. And Shostakovich's Symphony No 5 - well, it wasn't exactly deafening.
That's the Albert Hall for you. Awful acoustic, threatening to kill off any enjoyment of the music. Temperature: sweltering, threatening to cast one into a deep sleep. True, that has improved since a new cooling system was put in a few years back, but the hall is still stuffy and airless. On one very hot night, I once witnessed a pair of a pair of feet, pointed at the ceiling, disappearing beneath the red curtain that marks the exit from the auditorium: some soul, overcome by the heat, being removed.
Sometimes, in fact, it seems a more sensible and satisfactory notion to sit at home and listen to the Proms on the radio.
On the other hand, It certainly seems to belie the notion that the audience for classical music is in terminal decline. And it feels like a wonderfully unlikely thing still to exist - as critic Ivan Hewett pointed out recently, if a government committee were charged with inventing a huge summer music festival now (shudder at the thought), it would look absolutely nothing like this.
The Last Night - now that's another question. There are about 70 concerts to go until then, though. We'll get on to that old chestnut later.
