‘Its serene loveliness is completely satisfying in these times,’ wrote conductor Adrian Boult to the composer, ‘and shows, as only music can, what we must work for when this madness is over.’ 11 July 1943 The work of a composer who, even at 70, was doing nightly duty as a fire-watcher in the event of German air raids, its message seemed to many listeners to be one of a longed-for vision of peace. Few, however, have enjoyed such lasting popularity as Vaughan Williams’s extraordinarily haunting Fifth Symphony. The list of works that have had their first performance at the Proms is both long and distinguished. The score has been smuggled out of the Soviet Union on microfilm two months earlier. 7receives its first performance in western Europe. In a show of defiance against the German invasion of Russia, Shostakovich’s ‘Leningrad’ Symphony No. Secondly, on 16 August 1941, Henry Wood – not the keenest of orators – had given the first of the conductor’s speeches that would become a regular Last Night feature. Firstly, with the Queen’s Hall having been obliterated by German bombs on the night of, the festival had moved to a new home at the Royal Albert Hall. When, with things a little quieter, it returned to the helm in 1942, a couple of notable changes had taken place. The BBC has not been in charge of every Proms season since 1927 – on the outbreak of WWII, the corporation made the decision to leave the 1940 and ’41 seasons to others as it hotfooted it out of the capital. ‘Mr Britten’s cleverness has got the better of him.’ 1 September 1939Īfter conducting Beethoven’s Second Piano Concerto and Sixth Symphony, Henry Wood announces that the rest of the Proms season is cancelled, as Britain is now at war with Germany. ‘This is not a stylish work,’ grumps the Musical Times. 11 August 1938Ī 24-year-old Benjamin Britten gives the world premiere of his Piano Concerto. 19 September 1935Īn all-Russian Prom includes the British premiere of Shostakovich’s First Symphony and an aria from the 28-year-old composer’s Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk, a work dismissed in Pravda the next year as ‘a muddle instead of music’. Mooted in previous seasons, Berg’s Three Fragments from Wozzeck gets its Proms premiere, sung by soprano May Blyth. 1 is performed for the first time in Britain, but the critics are largely sniffy about a work they regard as little more than juvenilia. 08 August 1931īrought together as an ensemble the previous autumn, the BBC Symphony Orchestra makes its Proms debut on the First Night. From now on, it will become a regular part of each Proms season. 24 August 1928īeethoven’s Ninth Symphony is performed in its entirety and with full chorus for the first time since 1902. It continues to bring watery relief to hot and sweaty Prommers until 2011. 11 August 1928Ībsent for the first year of the BBC Proms, the decorative fountain is restored to the centre of the Queen’s Hall for the new season. Credit: Getty ImagesĪfter her performance of Brahms’s Violin Concerto grinds to a halt midway, soloist Daisy Kennedy blames a lack of rehearsal time.
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