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Music

Couldn't the BBC have filled at least some of the seats? First night of the Proms reviewed

5 September 2020

9:00 AM

5 September 2020

9:00 AM

BBC Symphony Orchestra, Oramo

Royal Albert Hall, via iPlayer and Radio 3

London Symphony Orchestra, Rattle, Uchida

Royal Albert Hall, via iPlayer and Radio 3

The Royal Albert Hall, as Douglas Adams never wrote, is big. Really big. You just won’t believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. Which is great if you want a colossal audience; less great as a venue for classical music. True, sound engineers have brought us a long way from the 19th century, when one critic (it might have been Bernard Shaw) described a Weber overture wafting around that cavernous acoustic like a feather caught in a draught.

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