Prom 27: Ravi And Anoushka Shankar, Royal Albert Hall, London
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Your support makes all the difference.Busy strings disrupted her soft opening cascade, but when her sitar was allowed to take wing, the ideas developed in the North Indian manner. The harp became her accomplice, pizzicato cellos underpinned her, bassoons echoed her phrases: once she'd shown who was boss, things bowled sweetly along. This 30-year-old fusion had none of the pretentiousness of its contemporary equivalents: the two musics complemented each other's strengths.
When Ravi Shankar came to join her, he got an instant ovation: he had first brought us Indian music, and 50 years on is still its presiding deity. His voice is firm, his touch authoritative, and his invention still fresh. He may play like a 20-year-old, but he's 85: how much longer can he go on? No matter: his successor sits before us, embodying the music's inexhaustible vigour.
As Robert Maycock observes in his programme note, the North Indian tradition is as evolved as ours: Ravi Shankar's request that the audience should not eat or drink during the performance made the same point. This music is a sacred rite, not exotic food for jaded Western palates.
Every year, the Proms make a ritual nod toward the world's other classical musics: that was never enough, and now seems a dereliction of duty. The Proms supremo Nicholas Kenyon argues that his duty is to celebrate the Western classical tradition. I would argue that, in a changing world, that duty should be redefined. Let the other classical musics - Persian, Arabic, Indonesian, Japanese - be celebrated too.
The Proms can be heard at www.bbc.co.uk/proms
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