This might have been the first Prom ever without a printed programme, for acclaimed violinist Maxim Vengerov had pulled out with a suspected something better to do, leaving the Beeb to scuttle round looking for a replacement set of artists and Latin American-themed compositions.There are four distinctive cover designs for the 2007 Proms programmes, because the BBC deliver in batches four days in advance to the RAH, and the staff there have been known to get a bit confused by simple numbers and dates in the past.
For the first half of the concert we were in the hands of the LSO, whose chef d'orchestre for the evening was François-Xavier Roth. They kicked off with Copland's El Salón México inspired by a visit the composer made to a popular old dance hall in DF in 1932 and concluded their set with the Hoe-down from Rodeo. (Surfer thought the latter piece sounded rather Scottish, and it does in fact contain snatches of McLeod's Reel within the Bonypart square dance tune.)
In between they tackled dour Argie-modernism in the form of Piazzolla's Tangazo and the John Adams-arranged pieces La Mufa and Todo Buenos Aires. These last two featured a violin solo by Alina Ibragimova, who in my opinion was regretably drowned out by an orchestra that was just too big for this sort of music.
We were surrounded by the sort of earnest South American youth that frequent the Autumn film festivals, and some of these made the mistake of leaving during the 'short break' that the recently blow-dried programmes were at pains to advertise as 'not an interval'. They were therefore not permitted to return to their seats for the main draw: the Venezuelan Brass Ensemble (conducted by the intriguingly-named Thomas Clamor) who delighted the crowd with some solid fanfares interspersed with party pieces like Zequinha de Abreu's Tico Tico and Gershwin's I Got Rhythm, during which a good deal of booty was shaken by the musicians. They carried on until after midnight and the audience stamped and hooted their appreciation of every piece. One can only presume that the CD pictured above is well worth buying.
Whilst the LSO's listless-looking scratch board operative had seemed off-cue, the percussion section of this ensemble was everything you would expect from the land of Hugo Rafael Chávez Frías.
I was supposed to go to see Prom 48 the next day, but had myself to pull out with a suspected mid-afternoon hangover. However TC and I watched most of this on BBC4. Shostakovich's insistent tenth was played competently by the Simón Bolívar National Youth Orchestra of Venezuela conducted by the flamboyantly self-effacing Gustavo Dudamel, and to my eye at least, incorporating several star members of the aforementioned percussion section from Prom 47.
In between they tackled dour Argie-modernism in the form of Piazzolla's Tangazo and the John Adams-arranged pieces La Mufa and Todo Buenos Aires. These last two featured a violin solo by Alina Ibragimova, who in my opinion was regretably drowned out by an orchestra that was just too big for this sort of music.
We were surrounded by the sort of earnest South American youth that frequent the Autumn film festivals, and some of these made the mistake of leaving during the 'short break' that the recently blow-dried programmes were at pains to advertise as 'not an interval'. They were therefore not permitted to return to their seats for the main draw: the Venezuelan Brass Ensemble (conducted by the intriguingly-named Thomas Clamor) who delighted the crowd with some solid fanfares interspersed with party pieces like Zequinha de Abreu's Tico Tico and Gershwin's I Got Rhythm, during which a good deal of booty was shaken by the musicians. They carried on until after midnight and the audience stamped and hooted their appreciation of every piece. One can only presume that the CD pictured above is well worth buying.
Whilst the LSO's listless-looking scratch board operative had seemed off-cue, the percussion section of this ensemble was everything you would expect from the land of Hugo Rafael Chávez Frías.
I was supposed to go to see Prom 48 the next day, but had myself to pull out with a suspected mid-afternoon hangover. However TC and I watched most of this on BBC4. Shostakovich's insistent tenth was played competently by the Simón Bolívar National Youth Orchestra of Venezuela conducted by the flamboyantly self-effacing Gustavo Dudamel, and to my eye at least, incorporating several star members of the aforementioned percussion section from Prom 47.
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