68th SEASON OF PROMS

Press, Volume XCIX, Issue 29278, 9 August 1960, Page 11

68th SEASON OF PROMS

Greater VarietyIn Programmes

The 1960 season of Henry Wood Promenade Concerts, being presented by the 8.8. C. in the Royal Albert Hall, London, between July 23 and September 17, is the sixty-sixth since the young Henry Wood inaugurated this unque musical tradition in 1895. In introducing the syllabus, Mr William Glock, who was appointed controller of music for the 8.8. C. last year, said that there had been an enthusiastic campaign to make 1960 a landmark in the history of the proms, to give them a bolder purpose and aim at the highest possible standards. The basic principle remained unchanged. “They must represent all that it most vital in orchestral music from the 18th century up to the present day,” he said. But immense variations in programme building were possible, and an attempt had been made “to include a higher proportion of great music both past and present, and to cast it into rounded and vigorous programmes.”

Thus, apart from Haydn’s “The Creation” and an evening of Gilbert and Sullivan, no evenings would be devoted to a single, composer, Beethoven would not be more or less confined to Fridays, and contemporary evenings would not be “cordoned off.” Works in this year's programme never performed at the proms before include Schoenberg’s Orchestra Variations, Webern’s Six Orchestral Pieces, Stravinsky’s Symphony in C, Symphony in Three Movements and “Oedipus Rex;” Beethoven’s “Missa Solemnis,” the Berlioz "Requiem,” and Mozart’s C Major Piano Concerto, K. 503. An electronic work “Gesang der Junglinge” by the German composer, Stockhausen, will have its first public hearing in Britain at the proms.

An important innovation is the use of more young conductors, who include Colin Davis, Alexander Gibson and John Pritchard. In all, no fewer than nine conductors—six of them conducting at the proms for the first time—will share the burden of an exacting repertory with Sir Malcolm Sargent, conductor in chief of the proms, and Basil Cameron, who this year celebrates his twenty-first season with the proms and 50 years as a conductor.

The 8.8. C. Symphony Orchestra will give 27 of the 49 concerts. The other orchestras are the London Symphony Orchestra, the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, and the Orchestra of the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, which is appearing -t the proms for the first time. Another new departure is the allocation of funds by the 8.8. C which will enable two or three new works by British composers to be specially commissioned for the proms in future seasons.