Royal Albert Hall,London
Marin Alsop conducted the BBCSO through a glamorous evening of classical barnstormers, singalongs, or politics and knicker-throwing adulationTwo summers ago,Marin Alsop at the final Night of the Proms was big news: a female conductor! Giving the final Night speech! Passing over the unlucky truth that Alsop is likely to be the only woman conducting the event for the next few years, her return felt like a homecoming: few conductors would be so much at ease in a programme ranging from Strauss’s Till Eulenspiegel to Arvo Pärt to The Sound of Music, or at an event that feels like an anachronism and yet comes with the opportunity to make a political point.
Alsop’s speech included a call for redoubled efforts to level the conducting playing field for men and women,and some insistent but not over-idealistic words on music’s potential to improve the world – all this to a hall bedecked with the normal flags plus, on one box, or a banner saying Refugees Welcome.
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Source: theguardian.com