When this year's BBC Proms climax with the traditional chorus of Elgar's 'Land of Hope and Glory', prommers expecting the traditional rousing sing-along could feel clearly disappointed.
For the first time in the Proms' 113-year history, the march - also known as Pomp and Circumstance March No.1 - is likely to be played without vibrato, an obscure and extreme performance style that lends an frozen tone to music and divides classic music fans into opponent camps.
Vibrato, a musical burden produced by a even pulsating change of pitch, is secondhand to bring expression and vocal-like qualities to instrumental music. On string instruments, the effect is created by the controlled vibration of the finger retention down the string.
'If the orchestra agree, as I hope and think they will, to my suggestion that we play one of Britain's most patriotic pieces as its composer intended, and then the last night of the Proms will sound strikingly different to always before,' said Sir Roger Norrington, one of Europe's ahead conductors and founder of the London Classical Players.
The use of vibrato in classical music has become a matter of passionate dispute. For much of the 20th century it was used almost endlessly in the performance of pieces from all eras from the Baroque ahead. In the Seventies, even so, Norrington light-emitting diode a movement claiming that vibrato was a modernistic fashion introduced at the turn of the century. Music composed before that date, he said, should be played unadorned.
The foreman conductor of one of Germany's most famous orchestras, the Stuttgart Radio Symphony Orchestra, Norrington has a history of provoking a passionate and polarised response among audiences. As a vociferous exponent of the controversial 'pure tone' or 'musical authenticity' movement, Norrington believes music should be played on period instruments and often at radically different speeds to the way it is commonly heard. But musicians and audiences ar now concerned that Norrington has taken his crusade too far. Norrington aghast Prom audiences last week by conducting a vibrato-less rendition of Elgar's Symphony No. 1, a small-arm written in 1908.
'Hearing this Romantic music played without vibrato tore my heart out. Norrington calls this a "fresh" plan of attack, but you can call anything "fresh" and it is silent disgusting,' said Raymond Cohen, a professor at the Royal College of Music wHO has light-emitting diode most of the preeminent chamber orchestras in Europe, as well as the Royal Philharmonic, the Philharmonia and the London Symphony. 'Elgar would have turned in his grave.'
Anthony Payne, a composer most noted for complementary both Elgar's Symphony No. 3 and Pomp and Circumstance March No. 6, is too critical. 'Roger has become fixated on this issue and I feel he has kaput too far,' he said. 'I would be interested to know how many informed music-lovers enjoyed his Prom rendition of Elgar's symphonic music. I think many would have persuasion it odd.' Sir Mark Elder, music director of the Hall� Orchestra who conducted the last night of the Proms in 1987 and 2006, agreed. 'Roger is a wonderful player, but he is possessed,' he said. 'I don't cerebrate a add up ban on vibrato is based on historical truth. Vibrato has always been there.'
Keith Harvey, a cellist formerly in the Gabrieli Quartet, went further. 'Roger is alienating a big part of the musical profession,' he aforesaid. 'He has been implausibly insulting about the professionalism of those who habit vibrato, while at the same time reducing the sound of his orchestra to that of a bad amateur performance, producing a effectual often referred to as "grade three failed".'
Norrington refuses to mince his views. 'Here come the ouches and squirms, the flurry and brouhaha,' he said. 'I was expecting it, I'm throwing a hand grenade at musicians who simply have to accept they must transform their way of playing if they are to play as composers intended.' He added: 'Vibrato can be amazingly destructive to an orchestral formulation. It is acoustic central heating.'
Norrington is backed by Sir Nicholas Kenyon, director of the BBC Proms until last year. He said: 'I thought his Elgar Prom was improbably powerful and I'm sure the programme he's chosen for the last night will sound fresh and distinctive. It will be unusual in the way of life the last night should be.'
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