50 YEARS OF PROMS

New Zealand Listener, Volume 11, Issue 273, 15 September 1944, Page 17

50 YEARS OF PROMS

HIS tribute to Sir Henry Wood, written before his death, is contained*.in the latest BBC London Letter:- A Sir Henry Wood began the Promenade Concerts and made of them a metropolitan institution. Broadcasting in the past 17 years has transformed them into an imperial possession. And so when 75 years old Sir Henry climbed on to the rostrum at London’s Albert Hall for the opening night of the fiftieth season, the volleys of cheers and drumming of feet to a crescendo (always the promenaders’ highest mark of approval) sounded in millions of homes in Britain and overseas, through the chain ‘of microphones slung above him and the -orchestra. Not a seat, hardly a square foot to stand on, are to be had these summer evenings in this bomb-scarred and solitary hall left in London for large-scale concert-giving. Sir Henry Wood, the original and presiding genius, in his 50 years of loving labour, has introduced some 900 new works to his rapt and youthful audiences,

apart altogether from acquainting them with the classical masters. He, at 75, is a phenomenon. At rehearsal as punctual and conscientious as ever, formidable in his intentness over a phrase, exacting in his building of a climax. In performance, as youthfully dramatic as when that. silver-fringed pate was an unruly black mane, which in fortissimo passages was combed impatiently back with thick, workmanlike fingers. The mannerisms marked by the frock-coated, pinch-waisted London of 1895 are still present, though matured and gentled by time, for the open-necked_ befiannelled audience of 1944 to see the jerky nods to the strings, the commanding vertical baton for the brass, the shrinking back of the whole body to the platform rail when a pianissimo is disregarded, the modesty, fuli and held, of the bowed shoulders when accepting the multitudinous plaudits of a faithful ‘and discerning crowd. This is a.man who is 75 years young, whose artistic conscience still enables him to say, in effect, what he says to a shrinking soloist about to make a first appearance: "Now, come along and enjoy yourself."