Saturday evening 12th September 2020 saw the final concert in the BBC Proms series for this year. Due to corona measures, it was performed without an audience in the Royal Albert Hall, London.

The orchestra was pared back to around a fifth of its number, spaced out on an extended stage. A small contingent of the BBC Singers were spaced out in the stalls to provide at least some singing in the hall.

What follows are my thoughts on the concert as a whole and on some of the items in particular.

Given the challenge of such a large space and so few players and singers, the result was generally quite pleasing. It did play a little havoc with the tempi of certain items, but that is understandable. The conductor, the Fin Dalia Stasevska, tried valiantly to make the best of the circumstances, but did warrant the L plate jokingly included on the decorated railings behind her.

Only one instrument was completely at home in that giant space and that was the magnificent organ of course. In a surprise twist, Jerusalem was performed as a hymn with simply organ accompaniment to the BBC singers. As a church organist myself, I was delighted at this innovation. It worked for me, at least.

Two items had been commissioned by the BBC. What I fail to understand is why either of them were guaranteed a place in the programme. Solus by Andrea Tarrodi, an intended reflection on the intrusion of the corona virus into our lives, was really quite mediocre. I did not find it evocative at all, and even as an example of modern orchestral music, it failed abysmally.

Errollyn Wallen was commissioned to write a reworking of Jerusalem. For me, it was the low point in the whole programme. I apologise to Ms Wallen, but it was absolutely awful. The BBC stupidly included it on the same programme as the traditional version performed later on.

I got the impression that the soloist, Golda Schultz, who otherwise delighted us with her singing during the rest of the evening, was not entirely into the piece – to put it mildly. This piece should not have been included in this programme. It was a veiled political statement and the BBC should be disgusted with itself. We sat through it as a kind of penance to make up for the fact that Land of Hope and Glory, Jerusalem, Rule, Brittania and the National Anthem had not been removed from the programme.

The group of British Sea Songs included a couple of offerings recorded outside on location, but considering the unusual circumstances of this concert, that was not a problem.

In the programme notes we were informed that Anne Dudley had arranged the Elgar (Land of Hope and Glory) especially for the evening. The term ‘arranged’ was overdoing it. Essentially, the whole piece was performed in the way we know it. She may have done the orchestration, but there was no radical reworking of the piece to qualify it as a new arrangement.

As a stand-in concert fulfilling the role of the closing Promenade concert in these ‘corona times’, it was generally worth listening to. The offerings from The Marriage of Figaro (Mozart), A Little Night music (Sondheim) and Carousel (Rodgers & Hammerstein) were a delight. Surprisingly, Benjamin Britten’s arrangement of the National Anthem did not work as well as one might expect. I now appreciate the restrained first verse performed on other Last Nights by a full orchestra and chorus even more, even though I originally had my reservations when it was first introduced years ago. With such a small choir and reduced orchestra, that first verse didn’t quite make it, musically speaking, and the climax of the second verse didn’t either.

We are all used to traditional things sounding and looking different during the corona restrictions. This was a brave attempt to satisfy a need, even though some bad decisions had been allowed to make it through the selection. Most of the disappointment was thus caused by the planners of the concert, not the performers.