As the business of Brexit gets going in earnest, Beethoven’s Ode to Joy is sounding, for many, more like a requiem, writes Robert Hewison.
Things got heated on 9 September. Overseas viewers who tuned in to that quintessentially British ritual, the BBC’s Last Night of the Proms, heard a sour note in this normally genial occasion. Protesters against Britain’s withdrawal from the European Union (EU) distributed 7,000 EU flags among the audience in London’s Royal Albert Hall, so that they could signal their objection to Brexit. This year’s Proms had already become politicised, with the enforced removal of large EU flags at one concert, a provocative encore at another of the EU anthem, Beethoven’s Ode to Joy, and a speech by the conductor Daniel Barenboim warning against “isolationist tendencies” at a third... Keep reading on The Art Newspaper
Things got heated on 9 September. Overseas viewers who tuned in to that quintessentially British ritual, the BBC’s Last Night of the Proms, heard a sour note in this normally genial occasion. Protesters against Britain’s withdrawal from the European Union (EU) distributed 7,000 EU flags among the audience in London’s Royal Albert Hall, so that they could signal their objection to Brexit. This year’s Proms had already become politicised, with the enforced removal of large EU flags at one concert, a provocative encore at another of the EU anthem, Beethoven’s Ode to Joy, and a speech by the conductor Daniel Barenboim warning against “isolationist tendencies” at a third... Keep reading on The Art Newspaper