Sunday, August 17, 2014

Our second night at the Proms after a slower day!!

Yesterday was much quieter through the day  - reading the weekend papers and a late breakfast after the night before!! We did a little local shopping, had a decent meal at home and rested up for the evening!!

We headed out to the RAH around four just to experience the ticketing and the queuing! Many of our friends from last night and lots more of like kinds as the London Symphony Orchestra is on tonight, The "Proms Plus" included a talk/interview at the Royal College of Music, across the road so, with our places in the queue secured via our "raffle ticket" we enjoyed a chat between a Viennaphile and a music critic about the differenct influences in Vienna on both Schubert and Mahler - good preparation for Vienna next week!



Back to the queue which was much larger that last night and into the "Arena" where we were able to get even closer to the stage. The London Symphony Orchestra was remarkable and the sound was  astonishing. It was a truly magical way to experience them and to be able to see the expressions on their faces and the conductor's (Bernard Haitink) interactions and expressions (the soprano was Camilla Tilling). Their control, timing and tone was just that rearkable cut above ..... some experience!


This concert finished around 8:40 and everyone goes out of the hall. Our "raffle ticket" from the first queue ensures us the same rank in the new new queue so we had an excellent salad bar meal in one of the bars and rested our legs!! The second concert was altogether different. Presented by the Aurora Orchestra and Nicholas Collon, think a younger Richard Tognetti and the ACO ,,, very "hip", accomplished and modern! They played Mozart Symphony No 40 from memory before a "musical tour de force involving around 150 musicians specially designed to be presented in the RAH with movement, spectacle and choral sections". We were a bit buggered by this time and found it to be a bit too long. It was certainly impressive and novel and our promming friends seemed to love it ... we could have managed with less!!

Home about midnight again on a pretty cold evening. More rest in the morning!!

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