MUSIC: Last Night of the Summer Pops, Philharmonic Hall, Liverpool

Jul 21 2008 by Laura David, Liverpool Daily Post

DON’T let the title confuse you, the Pops are not yet over, instead the concert was named after the grand finale of the Proms at the Royal Albert Hall.

But while it had all the patriotic fervour of its London cousin, there was none of its British stiff upper lip in a programme that included the theme to 80s cult show The A Team as its second encore and an orchestra leader playing the fool at the same time as the violin.

Film and television was a strong theme throughout, with Nino Rota’s bittersweet theme from Romeo and Juliet, written for Zeffirelli’s 1968 adaptation, and a far more exciting version of the currently sanitised title music from The Bill. You could just imagine athletic detectives in brown leather jackets racing after villains to the dramatic rhythm of the string section.

Guest conductor Carl Davis’s own Bafta-shortlisted soundscape for the BBC series Cranford also featured, the flirtatious opening contrasting with the more meditative finale.

This was a programme designed to heighten the emotions – with enough spirit-raising crescendos, prolonged closes and crashing symbols to shake a conductor’s baton at.

Except Davis was steadfastly without baton, expressively steering the orchestra with his empty hands between his many costume changes – his chocolate wrapper purple and blue cloaks finally whipped off to reveal a Union Jack waistcoat.

Tribute was paid to Liverpool’s two great passions – through overlapping terrace chants, not all of them polite, in Fantasia on British Football Songs, then Fantasia on British Sea Songs starring RLPO leader James Clark in a pantomime performance as the orchestra’s very own drunken sailor.

Finally it was time for plenty of flag waving as soloist Frances McCafferty led the audience in the crucial patriotic trio – Rule, Britannia!, Jerusalem, and Pomp and Circumstancee – until even the most emotionally restrained were digging their nails into their palms to stop themselves pinching their neighbour’s Union Jack.

lauradavis@dailypost.co.uk