Behind the scenes | 25 July 2009

We heard not one but three renditions of the traditional chorus ‘Heave ho’ on Friday night at the opening of this year’s Proms season.

We heard not one but three renditions of the traditional chorus ‘Heave ho’ on Friday night at the opening of this year’s Proms season. Impromptu, responsive and a bit disrespectful, it’s the most British thing about this annual musical jamboree, much more so than ‘Rule Britannia’ or ‘Jerusalem’. The Prommers get the chance to join in, become part of the ‘live’ broadcast, as the lid of the precious Steinway piano is lifted into place. In the interval we heard from the team of logisticians whose job it is to manoeuvre one, two, three and sometimes four pianos on and off the stage in time for the ‘Heave ho’ chorus.

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Moving Pianos took us backstage at the Royal Albert Hall in the first of the special Twenty Minutes programmes on Radio Three designed to be more than just an interval-filler. ‘You do have to be a bit fearless to shove £90,000 worth of Steinway across the stage in front of five and a half thousand people. And then there’s the TV and especially the radio audience, who would hear you curse if it doesn’t all quite go to plan,’ explains Jacqui Kelly, the Proms co-ordinator at the RAH. A shove too far and the piano will start rolling down the stage, which is gently raked.

It takes three men to move a concert grand, although it’s much more about balance than physical strength: ‘You need to know where the balancing points are.’ Jacqui Kelly thinks of the piano as a stiletto heel — a huge weight poised upon a spindly leg. Sunday 9 August has been etched on her mind since last September when she discovered she would need to stage-manage not one but four pianos into place for ‘Multiple Pianos Day’, when six pianists will between them perform music by Fauré, Mozart, Saint-Saëns, Lutoslawski and Anna Meredith.