BBC Proms 2016 - David Bowie

[Nigel182]

yep still on iPlayer Downloading it now

 

[srw]

If the material is any good it will stand up to any number of performance practices. As Radio 3 and the proms demonstrate all the time. If it didn't, and the artists and arrangers were capable, then the music must be duff.

In the interests of knowing what I'm talking about, I listened to the Prom this afternoon while I was in the garden. The music isn't duff - far from it.

I thought I knew precisely two Bowie numbers - Is there Life on Mars? (thanks to an arrangement on a Kings Singers LP I grew up with), and Starman (thanks to the tributes). It turns out that I knew three - I'd picked up Heroes, again thanks to the tributes. That ignorance probably puts me in a minority of one...

Ironically, the only two duff numbers in the concert were the two I knew I knew. And that was nothing to do with Bowie as composer or Anna Meredith as (very imaginative) arranger, but to do with Marc Almond as singer, who simply couldn't hold the tune. Dark Star outstayed its welcome a bit, but everything else was extremely high quality - imaginative music, stonkingly well arranged and sung by talented musicians. I was particularly taken by the number Philippe Jaroussky sung - Bowie as lute song, near enough. I have to admit hankering for a big rock-and-roll number; just before the big rock-and-roll number arrived.

I doubt I'll go back to the originals, because one of the things I appreciated was the nearly complete absence of my least favourite three inventions in music - the drum kit, the electric guitar and the synthesiser. And I may not know a great deal about David Bowie, but I know that all three feature large on his songs.