Proms 67 - My First Atonal Concert

The BBC Proms, or Promenades, are held at the Royal Albert Hall. His memorial is right across the street:

I had been to Proms 40 years ago and wanted to return. I made a reservation for the stalls, the tier just above the floor. You can see some of the concert goers in these pictures lying on the floor:

 

I had made a reservation for dinner at 5 PM at the Elgar Restaurant. I arrived and had no idea where the entrance was. The address appeared to be the Royal Albert Hall. Fortunately, I spotted a man by Door 8 and hurried over to ask him if he knew. Viola, Door 8 was the exact spot (unlabeled) for the lift to the Elgar Restaurant. 

The restaurant had a wonderful view, and the menu had lots of choices: 

First came bread and then the appetizer I ordered, salmon cerviche.

I think those are banana crisps. They went well with the cerviche, which was quite spicy. I removed the red jalapeno peppers.

Next was trout with potatoes and broccoli and brownie sundae for dessert. Baked Alaska was also on the menu and was my first choice until the waiter told me it was served "British Style." This means a thick, softer marshmallow meringue instead of the hard meringue.

Next was the performance of Proms 67 which featured:

The BBC. symphony

Vaughan Williams Fantasia on ‘Greensleeves’ 4’

Schoenberg Violin Concerto 32’

Interval

Shostakovich Symphony No. 5 in D minor 44’

At the interval, people gathered for drinks and snacks. 

Greensleeves was lovely, but the Schoenberg Concerto was like nothing I had ever heard. My seatmate had gotten his dissertation on acoustics and explained that Schoenberg used an atonal method.

Wikipedia says this about it: Schoenberg is an expressionist composer, which means that his music is characterized by a plethora is dissonance and disturbance (Kamien). Traditionally, this approach would mean that compositions should not sound good, but Schoenberg mastered atonality to a point where his works are cohesive and excellent in sound.

The violinist was lively and quite physical with her performance, but I felt the music was simply awful. It was filled with squeaky dissonance. Perhaps I didn't understand it. But I certainly learned something about atonal works.  The crowd was ecstatic, so maybe this type of music needs to grow on you. The violinist returned to the stage over and over again - probably for 15 minutes or more, at one point participating in a call and response of violin and guttural utterings from the conductor. 

The final piece, a Shostakovich symphony, was more traditional but dealt with Shostakovich’s bid to save his own life in the face of Stalin’s wrath... 

Limited peaceful interludes for this performance. Still, I enjoyed the dinner, the beautiful hall, conversation with my seatmate, and some of the music.