Britten does nationalism

[sawyl]

Finally caught up with the Last Night of the Prom, an event about which I'm largely ambivalent — uninteresting musical choices and far more blather from the presenters than is normal while the performers on stage shuffle from one configuration to another.

But having bothered to listen in, I now understand Tom McKinney's comment during last Sunday's Breakfast that he'd forgotten just how good Benjamin Britten's arrangement of God Save the Queen is; in Britten's hands, the dreadful old dirge becomes almost tolerable...