Strictly on the Radio

Last night’s Strictly Prom featuring the nimble footwork of Radio 3 presenter Katie Derham is broadcast on BBC Four later tonight. For some of us who slavishly work our way through the summer using the Proms brochure as a guide, the party atmosphere in last night’s concert was an early Last Night of the Proms – a little treat at the end of the first week of concert-going.

There should be more parties during the summer, I think. Sometimes, the sound of a lavish Rodgers and Hammerstein melody or the tub-thumping exuberance of 42nd Street helps turn a school night into something of an occasion.

And a sense of occasion suits classical music well. That’s why some of my most favourite spaces to sit in are concert halls. Often cathedral-like spaces, there are few other opportunities which bring thousands of people together and, at various points in time, have them sat in contemplative silence.

That is an infectious experience. There is nothing quite like it. Similarly, when you find yourself in amongst an audience who aren’t prepared for the French national anthem and, almost as one, they stand up sweeping you up at the same time. Just as we did on the First Night. 

As I have got older, so I’ve come to appreciate that there is, in addition to those on the stage, another ‘artist’ in a concert hall – the audience. And when the audience moves as one entity, injecting all sorts of emotions into proceedings, so the concert hall experience is elevated.

I hear that in the Proms broadcast. It is the surge of the audience at the end of a piece which I find myself more and more attuned to. The question comes from the stage: the answer from the audience. And sometimes, there’s a palpable rush I experience that emanates from deep inside to the back of my throat. A gasp usually follows, just as it did listening to the Strictly Prom. The excitement in Katie Derham's voice is obvious, and that is reflected in the audience applause. I listen to this standing in my kitchen staring out at a garden withering after a week of intense heat, reminded of how the Proms deliciously combines so many different potent elements of summer.

The cheers in this Prom are a response to the music and the dance at the Albert Hall. I can’t see the dance, obviously, but I can sense it through the crowd who, from time to time, whoop with excitement whenever a recognisable face bounds onto stage. Completing my imaginary tableau is the music. Familiar numbers from a sequined back catalogue featuring Tchaikovsky, and Khachaturian, South American dance rhythms and musical theatre classics. All lined up back to back, they give me a much-needed lift at the end of a long day at work.

The running order also reminds me of something else. Years ago – sometime in the mid-eighties – a similar programme of classical music aired on BBC Radio 2. Flautist James Galway powered through a number of arrangements of classic tunes arranged for him and the BBC Concert Orchestra in a special concert aired in the weeks before Christmas. Mum got me to record it so she could play it on the car stereo. I enjoyed listening to it so much that the tape never made it out of my tape recorder. And there it stayed until the tape recorder, through repeat listens and rewinds, ended up chewing up the tape itself.

The music in that James Galway concert - some of which features in the Strictly Prom - is now so familiar to me that it risks suffering the same fate Vivaldi’s Four Seasons. But what reinvigorates all of these tunes are the arrangements made by expert orchestrators. Scrunchy harmonies and unexpected textures breathe new life into familiar old friends. My pulse races as a result, James Galway and the Strictly Prom now inextricably linked.

Then I imagine just one lifelong devotee reflecting on their love of classical music in thirty or so years’ time, and wonder whether that devotion might have started at the Strictly Prom.

Jon Jacob is Editor, About the BBC Blog

• Watch the Strictly Come Dancing Prom on BBC Four from 7.30pm on Friday 22 July 2016.
• Listen to the live radio broadcast of the Strictly Prom via BBC iPlayer