Dave Mepham wrote:

>I noticed that Slatkin was practicing for the Proms with a 'mini-Proms'
>in, I think, Washington.  It's not often that people in Britain get that
>patriotic, and the spectacle of the Last Night is one to be experienced.

'Patriotic' is one possible view of the Last Night of the Proms.  Others
have considered it imperialist, jingoistic, or chauvinist.  For some
conductors that factor has created an insuperable barrier to an engagement
with the BBC Symphony.

Nevertheless there is always a huge demand for tickets for the Last Night,
with a complicated allocation system requiring attendance at several
previous concerts and/or sleeping on the stone steps at the back of the
Albert Hall from 4pm the previous day till about 6pm on the Last Night.
For those who join this queue (and some people do so year after year) it
is presumably an indispensable part of the whole Last Night experience,
and one which can result in lifelong friendships and sometimes marriage.

Patriotic sentiments run high at the Proms (even in peacetime), and never
more so in recent years, I think, than on the penultimate night of the 1997
season.  That Prom was not broadcast to millions around the world as the
Last Night is.  The music wasn't British, in fact it was Verdi's requiem.
But it turned out to be also a requiem for two friends, both of whom died
suddenly, both British, but very different people with very different
backgrounds.

Solti had chosen Michele Crider, Olga Borodina, Frank Lopardo and Rene
Pape with the London Symphony Orchestra and members of the London Symphony
Chorus.  Unfortunately Solti died suddenly a few days before the concert,
and Colin Davis stepped in to conduct it as a tribute to him.

But just prior to Solti's death, his friend Diana Princess of Wales had
met her end, and just before he died Solti had of course agreed that the
performance should be dedicated to her memory.

Even while she was HRH (before she was forbidden by the Queen to continue
using that style) those who worked with the Princess of Wales often
referred to her among themselves as the PoW.  Among all the good causes she
supported, that of classical music may not have hit the headlines, but she
was almost certainly the most classical-music-loving British royal around
for some time, and of course when she supported a cause she was never
content to be a mere figurehead.

One example of that was back in 1991 when she asked the London Symphony
Chorus, of which she was Patron, to sing in a performance of Verdi's
requiem, one of her favourite works, with the Philharmonia at the Albert
Hall.  This was a glittering gala occasion in celebration of her thirtieth
birthday, where thanks to the PoW large sums of money were raised for
charity.  Naturally, the beneficiaries included the Chorus, itself a
charity.

Before that 1997 Prom, the last time Verdi's requiem had been done at
the Proms was on the first night of the 1992 season, again attended by the
PoW.  She attended quite a number of classical concerts, quite often with
her sons.  However, in contrast to big gala occasions like the birthday
concert, a number of her visits to the concert-hall (she was regularly to
be seen at the Barbican, for instance) were quite informal, and made with
a minimum of fuss and purely out of her personal interest in classical
music and her desire to introduce her children to it.  They were still
quite young when she started bringing them to concerts.  As the evening
wore on the boys would sometimes doze.

That evening of Friday 12 September 1997 the Albert Hall was of course
packed to the rafters.  Over in Kensington Gardens, just a short walk from
the hall, people were still turning up to lay floral tributes and light
candles and grieve outside the gates of Kensington Palace where the PoW
last had her official residence.

Inside the hall, the great and the good were there in immaculate evening
dress, along with the tousled and the T-shirted.  During the opening
pianissimo I would have dropped a pin but for the fact that it would have
been heard even before it made contact with the plush carpet.  Not a single
flag was to be seen, and the international line-up of soloists only served
to highlight the patriotic nature of the occasion.  It was the Proms,
Solti's favourite audience, it was the Royal Albert Hall, it was Diana's
own chorus singing her favourite music in her back yard - and I could swear
that later, as I was driving home through London Town, a nightingale sobbed
in Berkeley Square.

Alan Moss