7th September 1997
Music for Mourning
This year we found fame and fortune - well we might have found some of the former if BBC2's "Modern Times" documentary had shown something other than the first rehearsal (good for a first rehearsal, which is pretty bad) and the first six bars of the Academic Festival Overture - stopping just before the first big tune came in. But it was also a season of tragedy. None of us died, which was more than could be said for a lot of other people in what became a Season noted for its tragic announcements of unexpected deaths.
The first item, 'Diana' was a change in our original plans, in response to recent events. The Prayer for the dying from Gerontius was in the programme as originally planned, but turned out to be more appropriate than we imagined.
There were also some interesting coincidences. The first time the Academic Festival Overture appeared in the Proms was exactly 100 years earlier to the day - 7th September 1897. The Bellini had never before been heard during the Proms. The Dream of Gerontius was the last work performed in the Queens Hall (former home of the Proms) before it was destroyed by a bomb in 1942.