Proms Catchup

My photo shows my own view from the empty Arena of the Royal Albert Hall, just as the general rehearsal for Moon and Star is about to start. To hear your own work in the centre of that huge darkened space is really a composer's lifetime highlight. Particularly on this occasion, when a thirty-year old Proms commission was returning home, and I felt more confident about it than would ever be possible before a world premiere.

I would love everyone to hear the very fine performance that resulted, given by the BBC Scottish Symphony and BBC Singers under Ryan Wigglesworth's careful and expert direction. And (a great step forward since that 1995 premiere) this is entirely possible thanks to the BBC's catchup services. You can visit BBC Sounds for the BBC Radio 3 broadcast, available until mid October. The programme title is Elgar's First Symphony, but Moon and Star opens the programme, and Tom Service's intergalactic intro and outro is an added joy.

But you can also watch the performance. It's already up on BBC iPlayer, in a curated programme of musical sky pieces, titled Also Sprach Zarathustra at the Proms. (Moon and Star begins about 38 minutes in, after the Strauss.) And there seems to be an actual TV broadcast scheduled on BBC Four, on Friday August 7th at 7pm, if anyone out there is still watching live television.

What an extraordinary amount of arts provision the BBC have done here, just looking at this one 15-minute piece; commissioning it, employing the many musicians and singers needed, producing the concert in a 5000-seat venue, and broadcasting it on radio and tv. (They also recorded Moon and Star commercially twenty years ago, on the NMC label.) While alternative models of BBC funding are being discussed, let's just pray it can continue at this level of inspired patronage.