Wonderful Prom This Evening!
Well, given obviously personal tastes which are not assessments of quality anyway, the Henry Wood Promenade Concerts are always wonderful. Now hosted by BBC Radio Three and based primarily in London's Royal Albert Hall with satellite concerts in other cities, this is the world's largest, annual, international music festival.
And not a muddy field and plastic khazi in sight.
This evening's special - the first of two - was from the Ulster Hall in Belfast; and of music and readings celebrating the 100th Anniversary of... The Shipping Forecast!
That is the serious, technical weather-forecast issued daily by the Meteorological Office and broadcast on BBC Radio Four, for mariners and others in British Isles coastal regions - its early forms mentioned farmers too. However, largely due to its telegrammatic format and to Britain and Ireland being islands in the NE corner of the Atlantic, it has gained an unexpectedly large audience who love its poetic litany.
The concert also acknowledged the Royal National Lifeboat Institution, the charity celebrating its 200th Anniversary of, as it says itself, saving lives at sea.
......
The second? It has just started: led by Anna Lapwood, the English composer and the Royal Albert Hall's organist-in-residence, as an overnight event, in that venue! She is used to playing the magnificent 9999-pipe instrument there nocturnally, but that's when rehearsing alone apart from RAH night-shift staff.
The radio is one in the background now, but very quietly as I don't want to disturb my neighbour beyond our very thin party wall! I didn't quite catch the introduction but I think she's playing an organ arrangement of music from the Star Wars films.
As she says, good film music is as valid as any of the "classical" or indeed Classical, works she also plays. Indeed the connection struck me a long time ago, between for example, John Williams, Sergei Prokoviev and Felix Mendelssohn: the last wrote for a stage-play not films of course, but all three composed orchestral music to accompany dramatic works.
The concert will not be all organ music. There will be other performers too.
And not a muddy field and plastic khazi in sight.
This evening's special - the first of two - was from the Ulster Hall in Belfast; and of music and readings celebrating the 100th Anniversary of... The Shipping Forecast!
That is the serious, technical weather-forecast issued daily by the Meteorological Office and broadcast on BBC Radio Four, for mariners and others in British Isles coastal regions - its early forms mentioned farmers too. However, largely due to its telegrammatic format and to Britain and Ireland being islands in the NE corner of the Atlantic, it has gained an unexpectedly large audience who love its poetic litany.
The concert also acknowledged the Royal National Lifeboat Institution, the charity celebrating its 200th Anniversary of, as it says itself, saving lives at sea.
......
The second? It has just started: led by Anna Lapwood, the English composer and the Royal Albert Hall's organist-in-residence, as an overnight event, in that venue! She is used to playing the magnificent 9999-pipe instrument there nocturnally, but that's when rehearsing alone apart from RAH night-shift staff.
The radio is one in the background now, but very quietly as I don't want to disturb my neighbour beyond our very thin party wall! I didn't quite catch the introduction but I think she's playing an organ arrangement of music from the Star Wars films.
As she says, good film music is as valid as any of the "classical" or indeed Classical, works she also plays. Indeed the connection struck me a long time ago, between for example, John Williams, Sergei Prokoviev and Felix Mendelssohn: the last wrote for a stage-play not films of course, but all three composed orchestral music to accompany dramatic works.
The concert will not be all organ music. There will be other performers too.
