Boom! Battle Proms back with a bang at Highclere Castle
Battle Proms
at Highclere Castle
on Saturday, August 3
Review by DEREK ANSELL
EARLY arrivals at Highclere saw the horsemen and horsewomen of Worcestershire giving a demonstration of British cavalry through the ages. This is the way it starts here. People flock to Battle Proms every year for the expected, not the unexpected.
Everything is geared to strong, lively performances of routines, now well practised and observed. Mostly, of course, it is a nostalgia trip for the days when Britain was engaged in a bitter war and there was a collective desire to get through it and win it. A fully together rather than a divided country.
It all went like clockwork.
After the cavalry we had the Red Devils, the British Army parachute display team, floating down from the sky with their colourful, red, white, and blue parachutes. One even had a Union Jack flag. There was a brief trip much further into the past as we heard the cannons associated with the Napoleonic wars firing.
The Gun Salute was fired this year in honour of those who fought on D-Day 80 years ago and in fond memory of Battle Proms founder John Slough and his colleague Dave Beeks, who both died in 2023.
We heard the Battle Proms Belles in full flow, belting out 1940s favourites like Roll Out the Barrel and It Had to Be You. And of course (There’ll Be) Bluebirds Over, The White Cliffs of Dover. Once the two singers Lizzie and Abi had dealt with Get Happy, it was time to do just that.
As soon as the New English Concert Orchestra had played the first few bars of Elgar’s Pomp and Circumstance March No 5, the flags were out, waving madly and continued until the end of the show.
Douglas Coombes conducted the orchestra vigorously through music by Von Suppe, the Mozart Clarinet Concerto in A Major, along with lighter material like the Downton Abbey Theme and George Gershwin’s unlikely Walkin’ The Dog. We had heavy cannon fire to accompany Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture and later the thunderous cannons along with Beethoven’s Wellington’s Victory-Battle Symphony.
After the interval we had Kenneth Alford’s Colonel Bogey March and then a selection of diverse popular classics such as Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess, a selection from The Sound Of Music by Richard Rogers and, of course, Eric Coates’ The Dambusters March. The usual favourites were brought out at the end with the Sailor’s Hornpipe, Jerusalem , Rule Britannia and Pomp and Circumstance, this time sung vividly on the night air by Denise Leigh.
Pam Rhodes was the compere and Emily Crook the clarinet soloist.
Seven thousand people enjoyed a great patriotic night out and doubtless were able to forget, for an hour or two, the horrors of recent events. It was all very enjoyable.
And a special, personal thank you to Lucinda, who I had never met before, honestly, who insisted on buying me an ice cream in the interval.
Oh yes... and flashing wild fireworks for the finale.