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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.
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
The opera Simón Bolívar by Thea Musgrave was a joint commission by the Los Angeles Music Centre and Scottish Opera. Born in Scotland in 1928 Musgrave studied with Nadia Boulanger in Paris, knew Benjamin Britten, and has lived in the United States since 1974. For more on Thea Musgrave, and other women composers, follow this path. Thea Musgrave's two act opera tells the story of the Venezuelan folk hero Simón Bolívar (1783-1830), who liberated six South American countries from Spanish colonial rule. Bolívar was a passionate idealist, and brilliantly successful freedom fighter (he is seen in the painting above finalising his campaign). But he failed to unite the liberated countries under one flag, and today they are the independent states of Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Panama, and Bolivia. In the 21st century Simón Bolívar is still revered for defeating the Spanish and liberating the region from colonial domination.
There is no commercial recording of the opera Simón Bolívar. But on Sunday (Aug 10) I will be playing Thea Musgrave's concerto for oboe and orchestra, Helios, in my Overgrown Path webcast on Future Radio, see below for webcast details. It is in another of my programmes of fine music that is rarely broadcast, yet alone heard in the concert hall. After last week's rare American symphonies, the music this week is all by British born composers. As well as Thea Musgrave's Helios there is Edmund Rubbra's Symphony No. 10 (see my post The Year is '72), and William Alwyn's Symphony No 5 'Hydriotaphia' (see my post Brain Music).
* Simón Bolívar, the opera by Thea Musgrave, was premiered by Virginia Opera (in the other Norfolk!) in January 1995. Stephen Guggenheim sung the title role, and the composer's husband, Peter Mark, conducted. * Thea Musgrave's Two's Company is given its world premiere at the BBC Prom on August 31.
* The Simón Bolívar Youth Orchestra of Venezuela, with their conductor Gustavo Dudamel, are at the BBC Proms on August 19 playing Shostakovich's Tenth Symphony.
* The 224th anniversary of the birth of Simón Bolívar was celebrated around the world on July 24 2007.
* On July 22 2007 Venezuelan President Hugo Chavéz said that foreigners who publicly criticize him or his government while visiting the country will be expelled. In May 2007 Chavéz closed down an opposition run TV station.
* Now read about politician Hugo Chavéz and composer Carlos Carlos Chavéz in a tale of two Chavéz
My programme of Brain Music, including Thea Musgraves Helios, will be webcast between 5.00pm and 6.00pm British Summer Time, and is available on web radio. Convert on-air times to your local time zone using this link. Click here for the audio stream. Windows Media Player doesn't like the stream very much and takes ages to buffer, WinAmp or iTunes handle it best. Unfortunately the royalty license doesn't permit on-demand replay, so you have to listen in real time. If you happen to be in the Norwich, UK area tune to 96.9FM.
Painting of the meeting of San Martin(right)and Simon Bolívar(left)in Guayaquil, Ecuador, on July 26, 1822, at which was decided the campaign to liberate South America from Spanish control, from Aceros-de-espana. 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
