A lost illusion at the Last Night of the Proms

It was the last night of the Proms and the first I’ve ever attended. I’ve watched it on TV, of course, and even been to a Last Night of the Proms party, where we all watched the television, swigging sparkling wine and singing along to Rule Britannia. But to be there, actually among the audience at the Royal Albert Hall, would be something special, I thought.

And it was. Ever since receiving an invitation to join a friend whose party were occupying a whole box I’d felt excited about it, and I was not disappointed. There’s something about real events — a thrill that has perhaps sharpened in an era when, thanks to information technology, ‘virtual’ attendance gets cheaper all the time. Live performance is thriving in an age when we had thought internet access might kill it. Ninety-seven per cent of all the seats at all the BBC’s performances at the Proms this year were sold.

So make no mistake: I had a marvellous and unforgettable night. But a night, too, that was edged with melancholy: and this because of the recital to which I had most looked forward.

I fell in love with Bruch’s Violin Concerto No. 1 in G minor in my first year as an undergraduate at Cambridge. You might say I fell in love with classical music at the same time, for, although I had heard and vaguely appreciated symphonies and concertos as a youth — my father loved Beethoven and Brahms — this had remained music at the periphery of my understanding and my taste; and opera had eluded me altogether. But as an undergraduate newly arrived from the colonies, with my own room and my own Dansette record player, I was ready to open mind and ear to what Dad had always implied was serious, grown-up music that went deeper than pop.