Tag: Michael Davis

The Rehearsal by Jean Anouilh, Questors Theatre, 8 February 1997

My log suggests that I lost the programme and therefore all record of this event, but thanks to those wonderful people at The Questors Theatre who seem to archive absolutely everything, I have been able to retrieve the programme and all the details of the cast and creatives – click here for the Questors archive link.

Click here for the Questors programme, just in case it is no longer available through the above link.

I have always had a soft spot for Anouilh, ever since I saw his Antigone at Alleyn’s in my first year of secondary school.

I must admit, though, that lighter, lesser Anouilh has not dated as well as his more serious work. The Rehearsal falls into the “lighter work” category. It seems extraordinary today that this play fell foul of the British theatre censors until the 1960s.

Still, my vague recollection of this production was that it was quite eye-catching and held our attention.

The diary is silent on where we ate afterwards.

The deal with Pauline on Questors nights was that she did the theatre tickets, Janie did the interval drinks and I did the dinners. No sign of me putting a credit card down for a fancy meal that night, so I’m guessing that we had a modest dinner at Wine & Moussaka, which I recall us doing occasionally after the Questors.

The Night That Günter Wand Changed The Programme & Conducted His Last Prom, Royal Albert Hall, 9 September 1995

The BBC Proms stub for this concert – click here – reminds me that we had booked to see  Mozart’s Symphony No. 40 in G minor, as well as Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 5. But instead we got:

Anton Bruckner – Symphony No. 8 in C minor (1890 version, ed. Nowak)

My log note describes “Brucknergate” as follws:

It was meant to be a different programme, but Gunter changed it.

Well, I suppose Günter was a Bruckner specialist and I quite often booked to see him conduct Bruckner’s works anyway.

Mercifully, The Duchess (Janie’s mum, Pauline) seemed to accept the change with grace at that time. She possibly felt that the change meant that she had dodged a bullet in the matter of procuring interval drinks, as there was no interval given that it was a one piece concert. Pauline’s idea of a fair deal was for me or Janie to buy the tickets, the other of me or Janie to buy the dinner and she would buy the interval drinks…

…unless we were at The Questors Theatre, where she was a member, in which case she would do the theatre tickets, while Janie and I would procure the drinks and meal. (The Duchess received a few free guest tickets each year as part of her membership package, we later discovered.)

But I digress.

Strangely, I have found a recording of this very concert on YouTube, which I can share with you right here:

According to the accompanying verbiage, this concert turned out to be Günter Wand’s last stand…in the matter of conducting BBC Proms.

Rick Jones waxed lyrical about this concert in his trio of Standard Proms reviews:

Wand Prom Jones StandardWand Prom Jones Standard 11 Sep 1995, Mon Evening Standard (London, Greater London, England) Newspapers.com

Martin Kettle in The Guardian compared this Wand performance of Bruckner 8 with previous ones a little unfavourably while still praising the performance. A case of “the Kettle calling the Wand slack” or something like that:

Wand Prom Kettle GuardianWand Prom Kettle Guardian 12 Sep 1995, Tue The Guardian (London, Greater London, England) Newspapers.com

In the end, I suppose I should be glad to have been there for this one. I had been following Günter Wand around the Proms for best part of a decade by then.

A Bit Of Schumann & Brahms, Royal Albert Hall, 4 September 1993

Janie’s first encounter with Günter, was this. Possibly Pauline’s too, although she “will have done all that” with Janie’s father decades earlier, no doubt.

Günter Wand had a close working relationship with the BBC Symphony Orchestra for the Proms for a long time.

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

We heard:

  • Robert Schumann – Symphony No. 4 in D minor
  • Johannes Brahms – Symphony No 1 in C minor

It was good.

Robert Henderson in the Telegraph also thought it was good:

Wand Prom Henderson TelegraphWand Prom Henderson Telegraph 08 Sep 1993, Wed The Daily Telegraph (London, Greater London, England) Newspapers.com

So that proves it.