Given how far in advance concert schedules get fixed, it’s good to know that things can sometimes happen on the spur of the moment – as they did when the new Proms season at the Albert Hall began with an unscheduled item: Fireworks with Flourish by the composer Oliver Knussen, who had died just a couple of
days earlier.
Knussen wasn’t, I suppose, a household name, but he was a significant figure in the British music world. He had burst on the scene as a 15-year-old, conducting the LSO in his own first symphony, and earned universal respect even though he developed problems in completing scores on time – or at all. As a result, his output wasn’t vast, but it was valued. And at 66 he died too soon.
