People who've never heard of Havergal Brian: Prom 4

While I was queuing last night for the Havergal Brian prom, the man in the queue ahead of me expressed his surprise that there were so few "Havergal Brian nerds" (him) in attendance and so many "people who've never heard of Havergal Brian" (me, by implication, and the woman next to me). Even if you postulate that all the hardcore Havergal Brian fans in the UK were in attendance, though, they can't have been that large a proportion of a audience composed of over four thousand people.

On reflection, my own conclusion about why the concert sold out so fast has nothing to do with the anoraks and nothing to do with people like me who read the articles in the newspapers and came to see a spectacle on a grand scale. It has to do with the simple fact that when you have lots of amateur choirs and lots of child choristers involved in a large and prestigious project, their families and friends are going to come and see them perform. I'd be willing to bet that a good percentage of those on-the-day ticket sales were to people who were determined to see little David or Jenny perform in the Royal Albert Hall. This is not to downplay the popularity of the concert, just to suggest that things may not be as they at first seem.

I was most stuck by the size of the choral forces amassed when I was outside queuing by the door for Gallery day tickets. Obviously the choirs' muster point was somewhere other than the hall itself, because half an hour before the concert they started filing past... and past... and past. "There are more of you than there are of us!" quipped one of the prommers. It's true that they had our queue beaten by miles.

Inside the hall, from the heights of a corner of the gallery, it was harder to get a full sense of the scene, especially with the baffles over the stage blocking a good portion of our view. I would have dearly loved to be in the arena for this one, but had been told by the stewards that there was a good chance no one in the arena day tickets queue would get in at all. As it was, despite having queued since 12.30pm for a 7pm concert, and being fifth in the gallery day tickets queue, I got one of the last, worst spots at the railing. (There's a post in here about the effect of weekend passes, but I'll save that for another time.)

So, how was the Gothic Symphony? It was... interesting. And loud. And long. I've never seen so many people bailing in the middle of a piece, although to be fair there was nowhere else they *could* bail if they couldn't handle the full two hours at a stretch.

It had some very striking moments, most of which were the ones where an individual performer stood out from the mass of sound. The solo violin at the beginning, so high and painfully attenuated in the immensity of the hall. The amazing xylophone solo in the third movement. The mysteriously absenting soprano, who sang as a gorgeous disembodied voice from somewhere I couldn't discern. These were the human moments. The mass of sound was just a mass, though who wouldn't love the organ and the thunder machine and the tubas and all those timpani?

Great moments, not sure whether the piece as a whole added up to anything in particular. To be fair it's hard to add up a two hour piece in your head on first listen, but I don't think I'm the only one who found the whole to be somewhat less than the sum of its parts. It was an experience well worth having but not one of my top proms concerts of all time.