Newcastle audience celebrates Proms
Oct 18 2010 by David Whetstone, The Journal
THERE was great music and birthday cake for everybody at Newcastle City Hall on Saturday night as a large audience celebrated the 21st George Walker Last Night of the Proms.
A concert first staged in 1990 as a one-off has become established as a popular event in the North East calendar.
Rosalynde Walker, George’s widow, recalled that it might have remained a one-off if someone hadn’t shouted from the audience after that very first concert: “We want more.”
“It’s amazing how the time has flown,” she said.
“I don’t think George ever thought it could go on for so long.”
She said the initial aim had been to raise £10,000 to say thank you to Prof Steve Proctor and his team at Newcastle University who successfully treated George for the blood cancer non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.
He died in 2001 but that was 13 years after the initial diagnosis when he had been given just weeks to live.
Since then, Rosalynde has been the driving force in keeping the Proms concert going.
It isn’t only music-lovers who look out for it. During the last 20 years more than £1.25m has been raised for cancer research and for the care of people suffering from the disease.
Prof Proctor, strategic research adviser for the Northern Institute for Cancer Research, offered his own thanks at the start of the 21st North East Proms concert.
In his letter in the concert programme he explained that money raised by the Proms and the charity which supports it, North East Promenaders Against Cancer (Nepac), had helped to fund important appointments to the research team he assembled at Newcastle University.
He said money raised on Saturday would help to fund a new four-year clinical lectureship post which Dr Venetia Bigley would take up in January next year.
Prof Proctor, who has now reached retirement age, said he intended to carry on his own research work with the support of Nepac.
Saturday’s concert began in rousing style with Fanfare for the Common Man performed by the English Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by David Haslam.
Also on stage was a large chorus drawn from several North East choirs, including those based in Hexham, Ryton and Bishopwearmouth. The celebrated soloists were sopranos Janice Cairns and Suzanne Manuell who were joined by baritone James Cleverton, making his third North East Proms appearance, and the London-based Korean tenor Jaewoo Kim.
Not fazed by the complexities of Blaydon Races, the bespectacled tenor won rousing applause for his performance of the popular aria O Sole Mio.
There was also warm applause for Proms newcomer Rachel Dyson.
The Northumberland-born soprano was performing in front of her biggest audience and seemed to enjoy it as much as everybody else.
Janice Cairns was also born in Northumberland. Greeted by a wolf whistle, she laughed and thrust a knee coquettishly from her Oriental-style gown.
You may not get away with that kind of interaction at the Royal Opera House – nor the audience participation rendition of The Toy Symphony with rattles and whistles.
But that is one reason why this concert remains so popular.
It ended, as ever, with patriotic balloons, flag waving and Auld Lang Syne.
