SEEN AND HEARD INTERNATIONAL

Prom 13, The Dr Who Prom : Music by Gold, Copland, Turnage, Holst, Wagner, Prokofiev, Grainer: Various artists and presenters, London Philharmonic Choir, BBC Philharmonic Orchestra; Stephen Bell and Ben Foster (conductors). Royal Albert Hall, London 27.7.2008 (JPr)


On the 23 November 1963 the quintessentially British Sci-Fi programme Dr Who was first broadcast on BBC TV. Nearly 45 years later having completed the fourth season of its reinvention which began in 2005 – for the first time in this long history it was recently  No.1 in the  chart for most watched programme of the week -  it now had an entire Prom all to itself. The current series is not a re-imagining because it is a direct continuation of the classic series which  ran from 1963 to 1989 and still has the mysterious alien Time Lord, a time-traveller and the last of his line from the distant planet  Gallifrey known as the ‘Doctor’. He travels in his time and space-ship the Tardis , which for reasons too complicated to go into - but involving the failure of something called the ‘chameleon circuit’ - still has the exterior of a 1960’s blue police box. The Doctore travels with companions  solving problems, facing monsters and more often than not saving Planet Earth, to which he frequently returns, from destruction.

Many who filled the Royal Albert Hall early last Sunday morning where not old enough to have any experience of the 1980s series apart from on DVD and the young families (including mothers and fathers) were in a world of their own as they encountered the rhino-headed Judoon, the tentacle-faced Ood, the cyborg Cybermen and ‘baked potato headed’ Sontarans that roamed from time to time throughout the auditorium. To their little charges the parents would say ‘Go stand in front of it and shake its hand’ when the Ood reappeared, wishing for all the world they could be in their son, daughter, niece or nephew’s places.

The budget for this event must have been, well astronomical.  On entering the auditorium we found  were roving searchlights, video-screens of varying sizes, a replica of the Tardis illuminated to the side of the bust of Henry Wood with the police box’s incessant throbbing sound the evident background noise. I wonder what Sir Henry Wood’s view on all this would have been. Indeed at the start of the second half,  t the most famous of the Doctor’s enemies appeared with their creator Davros to announce ‘We have gone back in time and captured Henry Wood. From now on, only  Dalek music will be played.’

Since  the current Doctor, David Tennant could not be present due to the minor matter of playing Hamlet for the Royal Shakespeare Company,  the main presenting duties fell to Freema Agyeman, a recent companion, Martha Jones. She announced that we would be listening ‘to some of the classical music pieces the Doctor likes listening to while traveling in the Tardis.

It was all very much a celebration of Murray Gold’s incidental music for the four recent seasons, illustrating themed aspects of the Doctor’s loves and travails to well chosen short excerpts from the series. For a while I thought Christopher Eccleston’s contribution during the first year as the Ninth Doctor would not be acknowledged since in one of the worst career choices ever,  he left to be replaced by the brilliant David Tennant as the Tenth incarnation. This became more balanced later on particularly in the section titled ‘Rose’ about the companion first played in 2005, and subsequently, by Billie Piper. Whether it is music of love or of destruction,  Murray Gold’s scores are often lyrical, romantic and richly evocative. There were often soaring choral moments involving the enthusiastic London Philharmonic Choir and ethereal vocalizing from Melanie Pappenheim; late on the composer himself augmented the orchestra from the keyboard. I found much of the music in the TV  programmes too intrusive  - as if the producers did not trust the gobbledygook they put in the mouth of their actors -  but here it seemed highly apt. Ben Foster conducted the highly animated BBC Philharmonic very assuredly with one eye on the score and the other on his video monitor.

In between the many Dr Who compositions were performances of classical pieces from the standard repertoire.  In the first half these were Copland’s Fanfare for the Common Man and Holst’s Jupiter with the UK première of Mark-Anthony Turnage’s The Torino Scale composed in 2005 placed in between. In such circumstances it is difficult to assess a new piece but it certainly had Sci-Fi credentials since the Torino Scale is a measurement of the chances of the Earth being hit by an asteroid. It was not unlike some of the musical textures of the Adès music in Prom 12; xylophone, tuba and anvil again featured prominently and this time there was a rattle employed. What a contrast Jupiter from The Planets was and the organizers should have trusted the music more at that point. They spoiled the concluding minutes by bringing in the Ood again. As ‘The Bringer of Jollity’ this is music that - as in the words of that oft-used phrase – does what it says on the tin! For the non-Dr Who music, the orchestra was given over to Stephen Bell who conducted with the assurance of someone with considerable experience of special concerts like this.

In the interval I overheard an audience member commenting that ‘Because you have such a young audience you cannot just play the music’. Au contraire; none of the regular classical music items were so long that they needed the children to be visually stimulated. Here we have a vicious circle in which the expectation that  children may not concentrate on the music, the visuals distract them and therefore do not. Fortunately in the second half,  Wagner’s Ride of the Valkyries and Prokofiev’s ‘Montagues and Capulets’ from Romeo and Juliet were left alone to make their own impact. The Wagner incidentally - to the probable delight of the new first lady of Bayreuth, Katharina Wagner, who is determined to bring the Festival kicking and screaming into the twenty-first century -  had four horn players in Viking helmets and the guest presenters Noel Clarke and Camille Coduri (Mickey Smith and Jackie Tyler in the show) made out a good case for the Ring Cycle being like Dr Who!

The highlight of this Prom for many was when a portal in time opened (!) The Doctor himself  addressed the audience from inside the Tardis in a especially filmed scene written by Russell T Davies. We were told the Doctor played a tuba in the first Prom in 1895 and he wanted us to hear the worldwide première of his composition ‘Ode to the Universe’ which  he then proceeded to conduct with his sonic screwdriver. It sounded dreadful  but who (?) knows whether it might indeed be the music of the future.  As David Tennant’s Doctor sagely concluded: ‘The music of the spheres is inside your head. Everyone is a musician; everyone has a song inside of them. Even you!’

Jim Pritchard