IS PROMENADING WORTH IT?

New Zealand Listener, Volume 15, Issue 384, 1 November 1946, Page 7

IS PROMENADING WORTH IT?

Joy Through Strength at the Albert Hall —

| Written for "The Listener" i

by

RONALD L.

MEEK

for it is good that mankind should mortify the flesh and exalt the spirit! But, just in case you are harbouring any illusions, I think it is only fair to warn you that this is going to hurt. x Eo * ( to the Proms, comrades, F course, there are several minor adjustments which you can make in order to soften the ordeal. You can take a stock of nice standard loaf sandwiches with you and devour them in the queue. If you know your way around the bowels of the building, and run like the devil, you may be lucky enough to grab one of the seats which line the Arena. If you are very cautious, and the people around you are very tall, you may be able to get away with sitting down on the floor for a minute or two during the performance. And, finally, it is always open to you to faint. But it takes some time to become acquainted with these minutiae of promenading. The smug sect of Season Ticket Holders could teach you if they wanted to, but they are innately conservative, and see no reason why they should be instrumental in helping you to avoid the growing pains which they themselves have had to suffer. And, at any rate, I don’t think that anything you could do would afford much more relief than would be given to a victim on the rack by reading him shaggy dog stories. Not everyone agrees with me, I am efraid. Here, for example, is Harold Rutland writing in the Radio Times: After 20 years of promenading at the Queen’s Hall I ought to have remembered that the discomfort of standing is as nothing compared to the advantages. How much more immediate and satisfying is the impact of the music in the Promenade; how much more one shares in the thrills, the ardours and endurances, of the performers! It is very difficult, naturally, to disagree with Mr. Rutland when he writes such pretty prose; but one can only suggest that 20 years of promenad-

ing would be sufficient to make even the best of us write like Mr. Rutland. But, anyway, come and queue up, and you can decide for yourself. x * ‘THE statistics of | the Proms _ are easily disposed of. This is the 52nd season; there is a different concert every night, except Sunday, between July 27 and September

21; the orchestras are the London Symphony and the BBC Symphony; the conductors are Basil Cameron, Sir Adrian Boult, and Constant Lambert; the soloists include Muriel Brunskill, Elisabeth Schumann, Alfredo Campoli, Eileen Joyce, Alan Loveday, Oscar Natzke (sic!), Max Rostal, Moiseiwitsch, Ida Haendel, Menuhin, Szigeti, Heddle Nash, and Louis Kentner; the prices for reservable seats range from 7/6 to 5/-, the Balcony will cost you 3/-, and the dear old Promenade a

couple of bob; the show starts at 7.0 p.m.-and, my God, it’s half-past three now, and we'll be a mile down the queue if we don’t get a move on! So we dive down into the nearest Underground, and are whooped along efficiently in the murk to South Kensington Station. Whence, threading our way carefully through the welter of museums in that vicinity, we arrive at the Albert Hall. %* * * ‘THE Albert Hall looks rather like a cross between an ornamented hatbox and a wedding cake made by Joe Lyons. Its main defect, however, is its proximity to the Albert Memorial. (I heard the following in a food queue the other day: "My dear, the Germans are absolute sadists! They knocked down all those lovely buildings in such-and-such Square, but they didn’t even slice a single knick-knack off the Albert Memorial!) Once you purge your mind of the unfortunate nomenclatural and geographical associations, however, you have to admit that the Albert Hall serves its purpose admirably-it can hold 10,000 people, and a fair proportion of them can hear reasonably well. There’s even a fountain in the centre of the Arena, which plays nightly for your comfort and edification. It is alleged to contain goldfish, but I couldn’t find any. It is Friday, which is Beethoven night, and Max Rostal is playing the Violin Concerto, so there are already a hundred or so people in front of us in the Prom queue by the time we get there. (It is about four o’clock.) But before you can take your place in the queue, there is a little ceremony in which you have to take part, whether you like it or not. How the people of London love ceremonies! I don’t’ mean things like the

show at. Bucking‘ham Palace every | morning, but the pageant in the fish | shop when ‘the fishmonger wraps up a : pound of herrings ‘ in the Daily Worker, , or the countless dramas _performed in the five- _ bob- maximum res- ' taurants. Or, if you like, the ceremony you are now participating in-hiring a theatre stool.

HE Woman of the Stools is very conscious of her power. She is not only a hirer of stools, but also a hirer of labour-there is a man on the steps around the corner mending the stools for her, maintaining her capital intact. The Woman of the Stools knows that economists (if they ever went to symphony concerts) would recognise in her profession the only genuine example of pure monopoly extant in this unhappy world of State enterprise, and she is

proud of it. She retains remote control of the stool even when you have actually hired it and are sitting on it, keeping her eye on the whole line of stools as if she were a broody hen and they were her chickens. She tells you exactly when to sit down, and it is part of the ceremonial rites that you should not sit down more than a second or two before or after she gives you the word. If you move the stool even half-an-inch after she has put it in the appropriate place, or if you don’t sit down when she tells you to, she looks at you with a withering sort of basilisky stare, and says: "I don’t know what’s come over you people this season. It never used to be like

this." When the woman has departed with

your sixpence to another part of the queue, you know that the ceremony is over, and it is now permitted that you should _ take stock of your neighbours. The remarkable thing about the Promenaders, which you notice immediately, is that at least 90 per cent. of them are under 25. They are nursing food and newspapers and

miniature scores and raincoats and books and programmes, and talking about how Alan Loveday played the Tchaikovski Concerto last Monday, and how they liked.or didn’t like the new Britten Pianoforte Concerto which was slipped into the Beethoven programme last Friday week, and what The Rape of Lucretia is going to be like. I have heard it suggested that the extreme youth of the Promenaders is due to the fact that most of them die off after about 10 years of it; but I am afraid that the real reason is much less romantic-namely, that the Promenaders graduate to the Circle as soon as their financial circumstances permit, being apparently perfectly willing to sacrifice "the more immediate and exciting impact \of the music" for -the duller but more soothing environment of a plush seat. * * * AM afraid that buskers are sheer opportunists. They endeavour to suit their performances to the tastes of the particular queue they are entertaining. The other night, waiting for the doors to open for Gielgud in Crime and Punishment, we heard a number of eloquent passages from Henry V and The Merchant of Venice. Waiting for the Beatrice Lillie Revue a few*nights later, we were given a high-speed second-sight performance by two characters who were obviously very anxious to get away to longer and more wealthy queues. And the buskers favouring the Proms with their presence to-night, obedient to the rules of the game, are all musical. | There is, first of all, an elderly individual who announces himself as an old miner with T.B. and a number of other ‘complaints, and who sings "a few of Bing Crosby’s songs." A little while later

there appears a mouth organist with one leg. He, scorning the usual introductory sob-story, proceeds slowly up the queue, with his mouth organ crammed into his mouth with one hand and his hat in the other. But the third and last busker is the cream of them all. He is a real artist. He stands in the middle of the road near the peach-vendor’s barrow ("Ripe peaches, only sixpence each!’’) and sings two short songs. You don’t know whether to laugh at his singing or not, because you’ve been caught so oftenyou have laughed, and have later been informed by the busker that the defects are due to some awful and unimaginable disease.

But. the third busker, when he has finished his songs, starts talking to us.

He tells us that he knows there have been others here before him, and he will quite understand if we can’t "spare anything else for him. But if we can, he will be doubly grateful.to us for giving it to him, _because he will ‘know that we can ill afford it. He apologises, too, for the fact that ° his voice was no better

(we will have noticed that he was forcing his voice). but this is because he is suffering from nerves and is under the care of Doctor So-and-So, and he has also got a serious stomach complaint; he cannot get work and he isn’t eligible for a pension. He doesn’t like being reduced to this sort of work, but what can a man in his position do? What would we do, if we were in his position? And he hopes that we'll be able to spare a copper or two for him, even though we have already been so kind to the others who have been before him, and .... But by this time half the queue are feeling in their pockets for their programme money, and the third busker collects a noble haul about three times as big as he would have collected had he been the first on the scene. * a Eg ND then Sir Adrian and (presumably) Lady Boult are seen walking along the street towards the hall; they take no notice of the queue, and the queue takes little notice of them. The queue isn’t being disrespectful — it merely holds the view that the music is more important than. its interpreters. This healthy outlook pervades the printed programmes, too: these concentrate entirely on the works to be presented, and the names of the performers, however exalted they may be, are printed once in inconspicuous type underneath the title of the work. We do not read in these programmes, thank heaven, of the number of husbands whom, the contralto has discarded, or the number of times Menuhin changes his shirt in the course of an evening's recital. (continued on néxt page)

[PINS AND NEEDLES. AT THE. PROMS

(continued from previous page) [Tt is six o’clock, and the Woman of the Stools supefintends afiother little ceremony which is virtually the teverse of the previous one. We then stand for approximately 20 minutes (while two youths at our side compose infantile quatrains about the Albert Hall) until the doors open, ard there is a wild rush to buy the tickets and get a good place in the hall. The impressive clique of Season Ticket Holders, who: know all the short cuts into the Arena, have already bagged the seats round the foun-

tain and the row by the altar-bar immediately in front of the orchestra, and there is nothing for it but to get as near to the front as possible and .reconcile ourselves to standing throughout the concert. It is permitted, as a matter of fact, to sit down on the floor until about a quarter to seven, " but the red matting is very hard, and it _

is probably mofe comfortable (af this stage) to stand. So we watch the seven-and-sixpennies and five-bobbets swoop gracefully to their seats; and all aroufid us, as if we were in a great amphitheatre, the people spread outwards and upwards to the very ‘roof of the enormous hall. Standing where the front stalls would be in a New Zealand theatre not more than 20 feet from the conductor’s rostrum, you have an uncomfortable feeling that the seated audience is coming there to look at you, and not at the London Symphony Orchestra. You feel as if you wete méant to perform, or to fight one another, or something; the temptation to stretch your arm upwards and salute Caesar would be quite irresistible were it not for your doubt as to whether they think you are a Christidn or a lio. It is all somehow unreal and absurd. What is the meaning of the boxes of pretty flowers which grow between the altar-rail and the orchestra? Why those extraordinary convex pale-blue screens (apparently designed to improve the acoustics of the place) which stand behind the orchestra like great pillars? Why the’ fountain arid the hibernating goldfish? It is all intensely curious, and full of wonder. The man who tells you to stand up comes round and does so, and you stand up if you’ve been sitting down: The members of the orchestra begin to seat themselves, and start making those odd little preliminary noises which to many of the audience are the most attractive part of the show. And then Sir Adrian Boult comes in, and bows, and the hall echoes with the applause, and he starts off on Leonora No. 1. At this juncture, you begin to feel a slight pain at the base of your spine, and a touch of fatigue in your legs. : * * SHOULD not like it to be thought that we are philistines. In my view, philistines are only one whit better than bohemians. I am personally very fond indeed of the two main items on this evening’s programme-even though the Eighth Symphony is a trifle too bucolic

h..4 y \ for my taste, and the first movement of the Concerto has been somewhat spoiled for me ever since a friend drew my attention to thé resemblance between the Famous Five Notes and the reiterated blast of a motor-horh. So when I say that our enjoyment of the programme diminishes in direct proportion to the effluxion of time, I hope that you will be willing to blame this oft the frailty of our forms, and not on any lack of spiritual grace. Because we afte not comfortable. The pain that was only a pin point during the overture swells up to the size of a

balloon during the Concerto. You try to exercise it by changing from one leg to the other, by leaning slightly forward. or backward, by bending at the knees, by smoking a pipe, and by making every conceivable bodily adjustmentbut you only succeed in aggravating it. (Dah dah dah-dah-dah .... those damned pone Hoty EI

again! Curse my false friend!) You feel that if you have another pipe it will take your mind off the agony; you fill it quickly and quigtly, and make a dive for your matches during the next pause between movements, but your pipe goes out, and you're left with the horrid taste of stale tobacco in your mouth, and the -pains grow in intensity and spread to hitherto inviolate portions of your body. (Dah-de dah -dah dee... . the second movement does sound like "Annie Laurie" in places, doesn’t it?) You try to listen intelligently to the music, because you really like the Concerto very much, and Mr. Rostal is playing it superbly. You try to be as unconcerned at the discomfort as the numerous people around you who ate raptly following the music with the aid of their miniature scores. A little distance away from us, a girl faints and is promptly removed. Anyway, going to concerts is a silly pastime. Like taking a clock to bits to see how it works-a child’s game. Concerts like this are always a bit of a flop, because the mystery of the music is unveiled, and you see before your eyes the exact manner in which the effects which have hitherto delighted you are produced. Why pay good ‘money (even if it’s only two bob, and sixperice’ for a stool) to remind yourself that: music is. distressingly human? If you see a beautiful torso on the beach, no one other than a madman or a specialist wants to take an X-ray photograph of it, to examine the tubes and vessels below that silky epidermis. And so far as music is concerned, we are not technicians. . . . We wake up from this reflection to. find that the third movement of the symphony is drawing to a close, and the pains have been working quietly but efficiently during our period of somnolence. : * * * OU are in a dilemma when the interval comes, If you go out and buy a glass of lemonade and a slab of fruit cake, you will probably lose your place in the Arena. And if you stay in your (continued on next page)

(continued from previous page) place-well, obviously you don’t get anything to eat. The flesh, considerably weakened, prevails, and we pick our way delicately and sstiffly through the sprawled bodies on the floor to the exit. The lemonade is not very good; the fruit cake is dry as a bone; but you can sit down for a minute or two, and for that privilege we would at the moment be prepared to pay twice the exorbitant amount which we are charged for the refreshments.. We sit down, and for a wonderful moment the pain is anaesthetised, and is transmuted into mere numbness. The same traitorous thought creeps into our minds, almost simultaneously. Should we stay for the Vaughan Williams Pastoral Symphony? We don’t dare as yet to express our treason openly, but we munch our arid cake and sip our lemonade on the cold stone stair, and think about it solemnly. If we go, it will mean that we have failed the test; we will be the subject of the just ridicule and anger of the more hardy Promenaders; We will have to face up to the awful realisation that we love our bodily comfort more than music. On the other hand, of course, the Vaughan Williams is the last work on the programme (the broadcast ceases at the interval), and it does seem rather odd that such a modern work should have been incorporated in a Beethoven programme. And, anyhow, we are stout classicists in music. The rationalisations pile up in our minds; we mould them into a halo, and our projected conduct begins to seem almost virtuous. Quite a number of other Promenaders seem to have the same idea-or are they merely taking a little exercise in order to get the stiffness out of their legs? And so, trying to look as if we are merely going for a little walk along the passage, we slink up the stairs and skulk out into the street. Just over the road, the moonlight illuminating its every knob and knick knack, the Albert Memorial glares grimly at us, like the Picture of Dorian Gray,’ and we know that we are doomed.