Holy
Moses! Today it is Pentecost and time
for contemplation. Today, a message
arrived in the inbox from someone I know in New Hampshire
The Nashua
Telegraph, a local paper that carries more real news than most of our UK
It is a
parable for our times. He suggested that
the Vatican Bank needs a good Compliance Officer to sort things out and knows
just the person to do it.
Also, that
person would make an excellent Cardinal who can tell the difference between
dogma and doctored accounts.
The only
snag is that there seems to be a technical problem of status that would debar
her. Surely, the EU must have a
Directive or law to forbid this?
So tonight
perhaps the bootleg recording of the BBC Prom of Sir Simon Rattle with the
National Youth Orchestra on 11 August 2002 doing Mahler’s 8th, with
the hymn “Veni Creator Spiritus”. It was
a wonderful performance.
On his way
into the Royal Albert Hall he encountered us outside. “You know, you Prommers are all mad.” He said, having done time in the Arena. “It takes one to know one” was my reply. After all, beneath the style, he remains a
Scouser.
Gustav
Mahler, I believe, had his vision of Europe ,
but preferred to keep his cash reserves in Maria Theresa Thaler’s. What he would have made of the Vatican
Perhaps he
would have written something based on Machiavelli or Dante instead.
As an unabashed Yank, I was screwing up my courage to ask what the hell a prommer was. Instead I did a google search and found this:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.scena.org/columns/lebrecht/030806-NL-prommers.html
Now I want to be a prommer. If this pompous airbag doesn't like you, you really must be my kind of folks.
Keep it up.
This drew a complaint to the Press Council and the BBC. The standing Arena costs £5 ($7) a ticket for day entry, season tickets cost less on average. So The Prommers are a pretty mixed ordinary bunch who just like music and in fact from many places. As you might expect there are a number of former refugees. One we knew well had been a child at Auschwitz and there were quite a few WW2 vets. Not quite what Lebrecht was suggesting. One thing is that the Last Night audience is not the same as the regulars, many of whom skip it.
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