Wayne Marshall

The PROMS

05 August, 2010

It is always exciting and a real honour to be asked to perform for the PROMS. This year I was asked to perform a programme of Wagner transcriptions. The pieces we chose were challenging yet good fun. The Royal Albert Hall Organ is the perfect instrument to perform these grandiose pieces.

The programme consisted of
Wagner arr. Lemare: The Mastersingers of Nuremberg Overture
Wagner arr. Lemare: Tannhauser Overture
Improvisation on themes from Wagner’s “Tristan and Isolde”
Wagner arr. Lemare: The Ride of the Valkyries from Die Walkure

The Royal Albert Hall is solidly booked for rehearsals and concerts during the PROMS season. The only time I could go and rehearse was after 1am. The building is very quiet during that time so it is always a bit surreal playing the loud and bombastic bits during the wee hours of the morning. Anyhow, even though it is tough registering and practicing during these ungodly hours one has to plod on. I arrived back to the hotel room at 7.30am ready to crash and to try and catch up on some sleep before the actual concert.

I was so pleased to see the Royal Albert Hall so well attended. The concert started at 4pm. The management from the BBC team was fantastic as always and I was very impressed by Louise Fryer’s introduction. She did it all from memory!

Lemare’s Wagner arrangements are quite impressive though at times not so pianistic. So I did have to re-arrange quite a lot of the transcriptions and make them my own. I did have to rewrite The Ride of the Valyries since I think his arrangement does not work so well for the organ. There are still a few more days left to listen to my PROM. The following is the link to listen to my concert http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00t1xxb

I am now in Stuttgart where I am performing another organ recital tomorrow and then am going to try and catch up on some summer nights in the Mediterranean.