大象传媒

A lot of people really did panic during the premiere of Harrison Birtwistle鈥檚 new piece at the Last Night of the Proms in 1995. But there was really no need.

The title had a perfectly academic explanation. Birtwistle's new piece was a dithyramb - a choric song in honour of Dionysus, god of wine, fertility, theatre, religious ecstasy and ritual madness. In this music, wild exuberance runs riot. Birtwistle's saxophone soloist was the ring leader, representing Pan (the god "spreading ruin and scattering ban鈥�, according to the quotation that prefaces the score). Animals in the night are whipped up into feelings of exhilaration and terror by the sound of Pan鈥檚 music. That鈥檚 the panic.

The piece, written for John Harle (a man described by Birtwistle as a 鈥渇ull frontal saxophone player), had been commissioned by John Drummond, who knew perfectly well that it would cause a stir on the Last Night of the Proms. A whole nation tuned into 大象传媒 One for the second half of the concert, expecting to be cheerily bombarded with patriotic pomp and Jerusalem. Instead, they got Panic.

What ensued was the kind of outrage that used to be standard practise in Paris in the early decades of the 20th century. There were thousands of public complaints. Millions of people simply switched off their televisions in shock. Some reviewers recognised the music for the blazing dynamic brilliance it was. Others reached for phrases like 鈥渟onic sewage鈥� and 鈥渃old sick鈥�. One reviewer described 鈥渁n obsessed-looking saxophonist wandering around bellowing like a bull in a field of cattle鈥�.

Birtwistle himself says he didn鈥檛 see what all the fuss was about. 鈥滻 thought it was fun,鈥� he said. In any case, the more immediate scandal of the night was happening outside the concert hall, where a stag party had tied a husband-to-be to the front of the Royal Albert Hall, totally naked.

This is one of 100 significant musical moments explored by 大象传媒 Radio 3鈥檚 Essential Classics as part of Our Classical Century, a 大象传媒 season celebrating a momentous 100 years in music from 1918 to 2018. Visit bbc.co.uk/ourclassicalcentury to watch and listen to all programmes in the season.

This is an archive recording by the 大象传媒 Symphony Orchestra with conductor Andrew Davis and soloist John Harle.

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