Pleasures of Promenading

Relatively few Americans care to sit through a symphony program; fewer still would think of standing through one. But for Londoners, standing is natural when midsummer rolls around and the Promenade Concerts in the Royal Albert Hall get going. A good many of the queue-hardy, in fact, stand all day, sometimes four abreast, in lines stretching around the hall and down the street. When the doors open at 6:45 p.m., they plop down their 2s. 6d., break for the arena floor, and go right on standing. Those with the best positions (i.e., as close to the conductor as possible) do not budge for the whole 2 1/2-hour concert.

Curious Public. The "prom" tradition goes back to the grand old days of Handel (1685-1759), but the London prom proper was just 60 years old last week. To celebrate the occasion, dapper Conductor Sir Malcolm Sargent ("Flash Harry" to the trade) appeared before the crowd five minutes ahead of time. Bearing a laurel wreath, he strode purposefully to the bust of the late Sir Henry Wood, permanent prom conductor for its first half-century, and collared it. Promenaders cheered.

The jubilee concert made no attempt to duplicate the first one in 1895--no modern prom audience would stand for that hodgepodge of waltzes, marches and cornet solos--but it did stick pretty close to prom tradition. There were Richard Wagner's Rienzi Overture, the first piece played at the first prom; Serenade to Music, a short choral work written by Vaughan Williams for Wood's golden jubilee as a conductor 16 years ago; Sargent's own Impression of a Windy Day, which had its prom premiere in 1921; Liszt's Hungarian Fantasia, played by Pianist Mark Hambourg, 75, who played his first prom in 1896; Hary Janos Suite, by Hungary's Zoltan Kodaly, which, like works by many other modern composers (e.g., Bartok and Stravinsky), was first introduced to a curious London public at the prom concerts.

Fainting Ladies. Despite the fact that Albert Hall's atrocious acoustics muffled all but the most brilliant passages--and the BBC Symphony muffed some of those--the crowd whooped and stamped its delight as it has done through the years. There were some changes from the early days. Queen's Hall, original home of the proms, was bombed during World War II. But Albert Hall, 83 years old and monstrously big (10,000 capacity), took over one of the old building's most beloved attractions: a jetting fountain in the center of the arena floor. Refreshments are no longer served, and promenaders today sometimes bring their own. Biggest change in 60 years of promenading: from bluff Sir Henry Wood, who gets credit for force-feeding his public large helpings of new music (and who used to lock the doors to keep his men from nipping off for a quick one during rehearsals), to suave Sir Malcolm, who has babied his audiences since he took over in 1950, feeds them what they like, and even sees to it (with appropriate gestures) that they laugh in the right places.

In the wasp-waist era, during slow movements of the music, the thuds of corseted ladies falling in faints were often audible at the proms. At last week's jubilee concert, no casualties were reported, although fainting in the dense crowd is not uncommon even today. A few years ago, a woman fainted during a symphony. Her husband, as respectful of music as most London promenaders, waited until the end of the movement before he carried her out of the hall.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.