Patriotic fervour was lacking

Sadly this Last Night of the Proms concert at the Key Theatre on Sunday just didn’t do it for me.

Maybe my own expectations were set too high after many years attending the famous Henry Wood Proms in London.

But, even allowing for that, it seemed to me that the sum total of this concert was so much less than its constituent parts.

The first point to make however is that no blame attaches to the Band of the Royal Anglian Regiment. This is a tight, well-drilled wind orchestra displaying the attractive tone-colours that go with full-on orchestral brass and woodwind, plus saxophones, and a large percussion section.

Okay, there were a few intonation issues at first, but the band soon settled down, giving some lively and dynamic performances of numbers like Pirates of the Caribbean and Ashokan Farewell.

The same goes for its Director of Music, Captain Peter Hudson. As well as a clear and authoritative beat, Peter also possesses the gift of the gab when introducing items on the programme.

But, it is no part of a conductor’s job to have to ask the lighting crew for house lights not once but at least six times!

This is the kind of inefficiency which really tended to drag things down as the concert continued.

Having said that, there were also some areas where there might have been better decision-making from Peter himself.

One of the great features of the wind band genre is the amount of marvellous music for it, written by composers like Percy Grainger, Gustav Holst, and Ralph Vaughan Williams. Even a couple of items by these musicians would have added quality to the occasion.

As it was, there was a lot of frankly ephemeral and eminently forgettable music on the programme.

One example called Broadway Show Stoppers turned out to be a medley of show songs for the band. Fair enough.

But, soprano Rebecca Beldam was given the thankless task of singing over the loud instrumental lines, with the predictable result that much of her bel canto voice was masked by the players.

As the band finally turned to the traditional Last Night material I breathed a sigh of relief.

Yet, strangely the great tunes by Elgar and Parry sounded rushed and garbled, and there was little evidence of the patriotic fervour we were expecting.

Finally a word to the wise. If you are going to make what appears to be a pejorative comment about a group of musicians then do not be surprised if you are reminded of it.

Again and again and again and again.