A Scouse Second Night Of The Proms, Royal Albert Hall, 22 July 1989

No doubt about it – Bobbie joined me for this one. She was keen to see the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic under the auspices of the great Czech conductor Libor Pešek. I was keen to see how he would deal with one of my favourite works, Smetana’s Má Vlast.

Here is a link to the BBC stub for this concert.

We heard:

• Benjamin Britten – Four Sea Interludes from ‘Peter Grimes’
• Sergey Rachmaninov – Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini
• Bedrich Smetana – From Má Vlast:
  1. * No. 6 Blaník
  2. * No. 3 Šárka
  3. * No. 2 Vltava
  4. * No. 4 From Bohemia’s Woods and Fields
• Bedrich Smetana – Skocná (Dance of the Comedians) from The Bartered Bride (encore)
• Julius Fučík – Entry of the Gladiators (second encore)

Why Libor Pešek chose those Má Vlast four movements, and in that order, I couldn’t say. It was all wonderful to hear, in any case.

William Leece in the Liverpool Echo suggested that the Liverpool mob under Pesek brought The Royal Albert hall down:

Pesek Prom Leece Echo 24 Jul 1989, Mon Liverpool Echo (Liverpool, Merseyside, England) Newspapers.com

Strangely, although the national papers promoted this concert widely in advance, none chose to review it by the looks of it. Typical.

Here’s one of the sea interludes performed by the very outfit we saw:

Here’s Stephen Hough with the BBC Symphony from the first night of the Proms 2013 with the Rachmaninov Paganini:

Here’s Libor Pesek and The Royal Liverpool mob playing their four movements of Ma Vlast in Libor Prom order:

Alternatively, if you want to hear that recording in full in Smetana sequence, I have made it available on this playlist – click here. Do not be put off if you see a seemingly erased link – you can hear it whether or not you have a YouTube Music account – you just get adverts of you don’t.

In truth I couldn’t bring to mind Skocná – Dance of the Comedians, but James Levine & the Vienna lot brought it all back to me:

I’m really not at all sure that Entry of the Gladiators belonged with this concert, but that’s what they did. The piece was originally written as a serious piece of military marching music, although how anyone with that moustache composing that piece expected to be taken seriously, even back then, I cannot imagine.

On reflection, I think the use of that piece as a second encore was a mistake. When Libor Pesek suggested that they play a second encore, one of the scouse musicians loudly expressed his discontent with the traditional local expletive, but unfortunately Pesek thought the fellow said:

Oh, Fučík!

It was a great concert nonetheless.