Sir Andrew Davis makes his return
Legend of the Last Night
The conductor of this year’s Last Night of the Proms will be a familiar face to many, as he’s been here before a few times. In fact, Sir Andrew Davis’s 12th appearance at the celebratory closing do will mean he has conducted more Last Nights than any maestro other than Sir Malcolm Sargent (20) and Sir Henry Wood himself (47). Davis’s first
Last Night came in 1988, when he was the newly appointed music director of Glyndebourne, and his second in 1990, after he stepped in at late notice for Mark Elder, who had raised high-level hackles by
Sir Andrew became adored for the wittiness of his Last Night speeches
questioning the choice of some of the traditional Last Night music in the light of the impending
Gulf War. By then, Davis had also become the chief conductor of the BBC Symphony Orchestra, a post that, through his own decision, saw him take the reins of eight of the following nine Last Nights. After handing over the BBC SO baton to Leonard Slatkin, he returned in 2000 for one more go. He became adored by the Prommers, not least for the wittiness of his speeches, the most famous of which, in 1992, saw him adapt a line from Gilbert and Sullivan’s Pirates of Penzance to describe the Proms as ‘the very model of a modern music festival (With entertainment sonic, promenadable and aestival)’. After an 18 year break, Sir Andrew’s return will be a very welcome one.