The 2006 BBC Proms Guide is now on sale, giving you full season listings and booking
information on all 73 Proms, five Proms in the Park, eight Proms Chamber Music
concerts and much, much more.

The season features the traditional mixture of great music, artists and events,
including birthday celebrations for Mozart and Shostakovich, an 80th birthday
concert for The Queen, a day devoted to The Voice and the world premiere of Elgar's
Pomp and Circumstance March No. 6.

Advance booking for all concerts opens on 15 May, from which point you can apply for
tickets online, by post or by fax. Applications will be processed and tickets will
be allocated subject to availability. This booking period represents the best chance
of getting the seats you want.

NEW MUSIC
The world premieres of Elgar's Pomp and Circumstance March No. 6 (completed by
Anthony Payne), Sir Peter Maxwell Davies's new work for The Queen's 80th birthday,
and a new version of the Blue Peter theme are just three new music highlights in
2006. We also have UK premieres from such leading living composers as Osvaldo
Golijov, HK Gruber and Magnus Lindberg, as well as original new voices Dai Fujikura
and Benjamin Wallfisch, plus BBC commissions from British talents Julian Anderson,
George Benjamin, James Dillon, Mark-Anthony Turnage and Ian Wilson.

VISITING ARTISTS
This year, international artistic talent includes Christoph Eschenbach (carrying
forward the four-year-long Proms Ring cycle), Bernard Haitink, Kurt Masur, and Sir
Simon Rattle along with a host of other leading names. Visiting orchestras – from
Bamberg under Jonathan Nott and Budapest under Iván Fischer, to Pittsburgh under Sir
Andrew Davis and Minnesota under Osmo Vänskä – plus Proms debuts from Stéphane
Denève with the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, Philippe Jordan with the Gustav
Mahler Youth Orchestra and many other major artists, together with a late-night
celebration of Islamic music and culture, all add up to a truly international
festival of outstanding talent in 2006. The full roster of artists can be seen at
www.bbc.co.uk/proms/whatson/atoz_artist.shtml.

PROMS SATURDAY MATINEES
Following the success of last season’s Proms Chamber Music series in its new venue
at Cadogan Hall, we’re very pleased to launch a new series: four Saturday matinee
concerts highlighting the music of this year’s anniversary composers Mozart and
Shostakovich in performances by leading British chamber orchestras. Read more about
the Saturday Matinees and all the other Proms Extras events at
www.bbc.co.uk/proms/whatson/talks.shtml.

THE VOICE
This year, we’re inviting Prommers to sing at the Proms for the first time
(officially!) as part of a day devoted to the human voice. We are undertaking our
biggest and boldest creative project to date – calling on more than 800 amateur
singers drawn from a wide variety of singing backgrounds, and including 100
Prommers, two symphony orchestras, two conductors and the professional choir The
Shout. Together, in two separate concerts, they perform two versions of a new work
by Orlando Gough with a text by renowned playwright Caryl Churchill. You can find
out more and apply to participate at www.bbc.co.uk/proms/newhorizons/thevoice.shtml.

The BBC Proms Guide contains full details of the complete programme of concerts,
along with articles about the music and artists, and an advance booking form. Priced
£5, the same price as a Promming ticket, it is available from all good bookshops and
can be ordered from the BBC Shop, 50 Margaret Street, W1W 8SF, or by telephone on
0870 241 5490. Alternatively, you can see all the concert listings and booking
information online at bbc.co.uk/proms.

BBC PROMS: FRIDAY 14 JULY – SATURDAY 9 SEPTEMBER 2006
THE WORLD’S GREATEST MUSIC FESTIVAL

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Sounds like a contradiction in terms, doesn't it?:p
It's an article in today's Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/food/Story/0,,1761530,00.html

about cafes which serve REAL food (often veggie or vegan) at reasonably low prices, so there is NO NEED for anyone ever to go to Macdonalds!

I note it lists my favourite cafe in Edinburgh, THE BAKED POTATO SHOP, which does wonderful veggie fillings.
(Including "vegetarian haggis" which sounds like a contradiction in terms, and which I haven't ventured to try yet).

While in Italy, I obtained these recordings on special offer with the local paper!:pD (Il TIRRENO)

iii) CARMEN with Callas and Gedda, cond. Georges Pretre, with Orchestre du Theatre National de l'Orchestre de Paris (1964)

Prodi has been confirmed as the victor by the Appeals Court (Cassazione). Here is an article from the BBC Webpage

Nevertheless. Berlusconi is STILL refusing to concede defeat! He has also refused to telephone Prodi to congratulate him.

During our stay in Italy we visited San Gimignano, a small hill-town in Tuscany. There are some wonderful frescoes in the Cathedral, and a museum about the history of the town from the Medieval period. (there are fewer Etruscan antiquities than in Volterra, however).
Just before lunch, we listened to a woman playing a harp in the piazza...was wonderful, such a peaceful sound. Later she came into the restaurant, so I was able to speak to her and buy her CD.

We bought MANDORLATA from this pasticceria!:p It's a type of Pan Forte, but it's a special type that you can only get here - it's made with almonds. (I love almonds).

yes, that's correct....never a dull moment!!
There was an EARTHQUAKE in Livorno last night ..in fact all along the Tuscan coast. Measured 4.1 on the Richter scale..Fortunately no-one was injured.:p

I have forwarded this from OPERA NOW, and I DO HOPE I have not broken any copyright regulations...I couldn't get in to OPERA NOW to ask permission....
It's such a fascinating recording...and it covers my interest in gardening, as well as my interest in music!

********

The Rose, the Lily & the Whortleberry: Medieval Gardens
Holding “The Rose, the Lily & the Whortleberry” in my hands, I pondered for a moment whether it belonged on my bookshelf or in the CD cabinet.

The Rose, the Lily & the Whortleberry: Medieval Gardens

The Orlando Consort

Harmonia Mundi HMU 907398 [CD]

$16.99 Click to buy
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The recording is housed in a handsome, finely illustrated, hard-bound volume, admittedly jewel-case sized, but running to over 100 pages by the time translations are included—substantial enough to suggest this might be a book accompanied by a CD, rather than the other way around, although it is clear that it is the musical program that has elicited the text. More close to the mark is that “The Rose, the Lily & the Whortleberry” is something of a well-cultivated garden itself, where diverse elements—literary, iconographic, horticultural, and musical—blossom into a satisfyingly harmonious whole. Or, to adopt a more explicitly musical metaphor, the production offers a fantasia on gardens in the pre-modern world.

The diversity of the anthology is impressive. Although thematically unified around horticultural images, the music ranges over a three-hundred-year span from c. 1250 to the 1560’s and represents six national styles; the musical texts themselves move between the suffering pangs of amour courtois, the spiritual eroticism of the Song of Songs, and more earthly forms of conjugal pleasure. Additionally, the book presents short essays by various authors on the history and literary sources of the medieval garden, a modern evocation of the medieval garden, and extensive program notes on the music, published with handsome reproductions of period iconography and photographs of historic gardens. Interestingly, the recording and book are suggestive of the ways in which music was heard, not in isolation, but always in a context, and it further reminds us that gardens were not only images in musical texts, but also sensory-rich sites for music making. Our modern propensity for i-Pods and the like gives music a mobility that opens it to seemingly limitless numbers of potential contexts, but at the same time, mediated through the personal headset, the music and the hearer are both artificially isolated from surroundings. By contrast, it is the rich interaction of surroundings and music that the Orlando Consort so splendidly evokes and celebrates here.

The singing of the Orlando Consort is highly accomplished, characterized by both naturalness and flair. The ensemble sound is full and free in tone, vibrant and resonant, though with a tight focus. The fullness of sound can leave one wanting a taste of simpler, clearer timbres from time to time, but the characteristic exuberance is easy to appreciate.

One of the difficulties of anthology programs is making sufficient stylistic distinction between pieces, and admittedly, there is a strong degree of similarity in the Consort’s approach to the different works here. The use of period vernacular and geographically inflected Latin pronunciations adds a measure of distinction, certainly, but one wonders if the musical palette itself might have also been more varied. In the end, however, these are compelling and highly committed performances. In context of a so well conceived and richly produced program, it is an offering you will want for either your bookshelf or your CD cabinet . . . or perhaps even both.

Steven Plank
Oberlin College

Berlusconi still hasn't admitted defeat.....
anyone see the ghost of a Hanging Chad here?

Today I bought a wonderful t-shirt, with a logo reading

BELLA CIAO, SILVIO!!

:D:D:D:D

Esultate!! (I think)

Prodi has definitely won, but Berlusconi still won't concede defeat...
here's a news item from Yahoo.
http://uk.news.yahoo.com/12042006/325/italy-vote-dispute-rages.html