Publications Index | Encyclopedia of Trotskyism | Marxists’s Internet Archive
Socialist Review Index (1993–1996) | Socialist Review 177 Contents
From Socialist Review, No. 177, July/August 1994.
Copyright © Socialist Review.
Copied with thanks from the Socialist Review Archive.
Marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for ETOL.
This year’s series of Promenade Concerts takes place every day from 15 July to 10 September. The Proms are an off putting experience for many people, with all the pomposity of the Albert Hall and the mindless middle class braying, Land of Hope and Glory. Most of the boxes and 600 seats in the stalls are privately owned.
Yet the concerts are not the bastion of conservatism they once were. And they represent the cheapest way imaginable to hear some great music: every concert is broadcast live by the BBC on Radio 3.
This year’s programme includes all Beethoven’s symphonies; Mozart’s two most spectacular and revolutionary works; some of the key pieces of 20th century music by Schoenberg, Berg, Webern and Stravinsky; Hindemith’s symphony Mathis der Maler (premiered just eight months before his music was banned by the Nazis); and Shostakovich’s 4th Symphony, suppressed because of Stalin’s disapproval.
Other less well known music includes James Macmillan’s work The Confession of Isobel Gowdie, commemorating one of the 4,500 Scots accused of witchcraft between 1560 and 1707 (she was tortured and judicially murdered in 1662).
Alexander Goehr’s new piece, Colossos, is inspired by one of Goya’s most dramatic paintings. And there is a revival of The Wreckers, an opera set in a Cornish fishing village, first performed in 1906. The composer, Ethel Smyth, was jailed for her part in the fight for votes for women.
Anyone with access to a decent radio and cassette recorder can build themselves a marvellous library of music.
This month also sees the 1994 WOMAD festival at the Rivermead Centre in Reading. It includes two outstanding attractions.
Gil Scott Heron, described as the ‘acknowledged godfather of rap’, has personified all the anger and militancy (and also the humour) of black America for years – most famously in The Revolution will not be Televised.
Boukman Eksperyans produce Haiti’s greatest dance music. Banned in their own country, they are rightly described in the programme as ‘the living embodiment of the revolutionary spirit of Haiti’.
Both are due to appear on the last day of the festival (24 July). Details from 0734 591591. Boukman Eksperyans also appear on 25 July at The Garage, near Highbury Corner, London.
Socialist Review Index | ETOL Main Page
Last updated: 8 May 2017