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Here are Pliable's personal picks for the remainder of this year's BBC Proms season. All Proms are available for seven days online, detailed programmes and broadcast times for every concert are available from the BBC web site.
* August 29, 10.00pm - important contemporary music is once again consigned to the bed-time ghetto. Works by Oliver Knussen, Anton Webern and Julian Anderson are performed by the Birmingham Contemporary Music Group.
* August 30, 7.30pm - a rare opportunity to hear Artur Honegger's excellent 1946 Symphony No. 3 Symphonie liturgie played by the Bavarian Radio Symphony under Mariss Jansons . Herbert von Karajan's recorded legacy has dated somewhat, but his recording of this symphony is definitive. (Lovely Lauterwasser cover photo as well).
* August 31, 7.30pm - shout it from the rooftops - the world premiere of Thea Musgrave's Two's Company, a BBC commission. I wrote about Thea Musgrave's concerto for orchestra, Helios, a few weeks ago when I played the NMC recording of it on my Overgrown Path radio programme. The soloists for this premiere are oboist Nicholas Daniel, who also plays on the NMC recording of Helios, and Evelyn Glennie. For this Prom we have a rare sighting of chief conductor Jiří Bělohlávek on the podium with the BBC Symphony Orchestra, obviously finding out where the Albert Hall is before presiding over the Last Night on Saturday. Great to see a big dose of new music, but the BBC really does have a blockage about women composers at the Proms. At the time of writing Thea Musgrave's name is completely missing from the BBC's online listing of composers with performances at the 2007 Proms.
* September 4, 7.30pm - the Vienna Philharmonic and Daniel Barenboim serve up Ligeti in a digestible portion (Atmosphères - 9 mins), and a rather bigger serving of Bartók (Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta - 30 mins). No minimalist composers, but a distinctly minimalist programme - 30 minutes of music in the first half and 38 minutes in the second with top price tickets at £45. Did I hear anyone mention attracting new audiences?
* September 7, 7.30pm - is it a coincidence that this concert by the Boston Symphony and James Levine also contains exactly nine minutes of contemporary music in the form of Elliott Carter's Three Illusions for Orchestra? Or is nine minutes the maximum permissible duration for contemporary music before it is shunted off to the late-night graveyard slot? Safer Brahms and Bartók provide the other 86 minutes.
* September 8, 7.30pm - tokenism reaches its logical conclusion with just one contemporary work in this concert - a three minute excerpt from Thomas Adès' The Storm. Not enough to mar the whitewashing of the history of music.
Now read more about music history rewritten.
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The 2007 UK New Year's Honours announced today are remarkable for the absence of political awards, which may have something to do with the current scandal over cash for honours. But classical music does appear in the awards, with Evelyn Glennie receiving a damehood for 'services to music'. Glennie (above) is a lady of many parts, and on her website describes herself as " solo percussionist, composer, teacher, motivational speaker and jewellery designer." She has strong views on the futute direction of music, and in June 2006 published an open letter to music professionals. Here is an edited version:
Dear Colleagues. My comments here demonstrate my huge concern over what our business is actually offering our customers today. As many of you know, I am naturally “stubborn” and do not just accept the dismissal of a need when there is an urgent requirement for its address in a healthy, open, honest and constructive way from ALL quarters of the business and beyond.
So who are our customers ? While my employer may be the many orchestras and other promoters that hire me to perform over 
100 performances per year, my customer is actually the paying public who come to these venues and events to be entertained and stimulated by our artistic endeavours and experience the passion which we bring to our specialities. An artist without passion is the same as any other employee who is just doing their job – our extra effort makes the difference.
I was rehearsing in the wonderful Disney Hall in Los Angeles – the new building designed by Frank Geary – and looked up and counted approximately 200 fixed lighting features and about 20 moving light fixtures - I walked past far more backstage. There is also a fantastic sound system built into and especially for 
the space. I was banned from using all of it and was told that, “This is a concert Hall and not a theatre” and that the logistics of the event in which I was involved excluded even the modest audio reinforcement that I and the composer had requested. We have all the ingredients right in front of our faces to consistently put on great events but at this point I see this part of the music business and many of our performances like the ingredients of a cocktail sitting in a glass and needing to be shaken or stirred. Let's face it, we aren't going to repeat a bad cocktail experience by choice.
The elitism and refusal to accept that what orchestras are doing now is far less relevant to the general public is answered by the old mantra “they need to be educated”. I do not believe that entrenching ourselves in tried, trusted and accessible repertoire is the answer. It cannot be denied that the composers of these pieces are great composers with many wonderful 
works available to us to experience - It is the only reason why these pieces continue to be performed. However, with the advent of the myriads of alternative entertainments available to the public why should they want to come to hear the same thing time and time again done in exactly the same way? We would not expect a contemporary artist to continue to play the same repertoire endlessly and continue to make a living yet this is exactly what we see the orchestras doing.
Despite the classical orchestras being perhaps the older of the Arts we have not learnt new tricks. The pop world, theatre, dance and the graphic and written arts have all reinvented themselves and where deserved, thrive. This is also known as evolution. Dame Evelyn Glennie OBE, June 2006
But for an opposing view read about The latest avant garde tricks.
Any copyrighted material on these pages is included as "fair use", for the purpose of study, review or critical analysis only, and will be removed at the request of copyright owner(s). Report broken links, missing images and other errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk
