I went with my daughter to this Prom (BBCSO conducted by Knussen) and I think we chose well.
We enjoyed Schoenberg’s Five Orchestral Pieces the most. I don’t know these as well as I should; they’re a bit less in-your-face than Berg’s Three Pieces which I heard a couple of years ago.
This year’s violin concerto (I’ve heard several of these at the Proms over the years) was Knussen’s own. I think I wasn’t in the best location to appreciate this as the orchestra seemed to overpower the soloist at times. The new piece by Henze was unobjectionable without containing anything that couldn’t have been written thirty years ago.
The Rite of Spring was performed in the later revision, and I rather missed the rawness of the original version. This performance favoured tone colour over drama. Now was whoever put the inflatable dinosaur in the fountain thinking of the use of this music in Fantasia? And do the lights at the very top of the Royal Albert Hall always change colour from yellow to purple and back again for each piece performed?
These days if you collect tickets from the box office you must produce the card you booked them with, which means you can’t buy them for someone else (unless you give them your card for the evening). The Guardian reviewed the concert here.