Florence + The Machine Paint Proms Blood Red

Florence Welch is known for her commanding stage presence: she twirls around the stage in a blur of silks and dances so intensely that it is prone TO break bones.

But for her BBC Proms debut, the red-haired singer was uncharacteristically restrained. She barely moved from behind her microphone, letting the music convey the drama.

The concert was an orchestral reimagining of Florence + The Machine’s now 15-year-old Brit Award-winning debut album Lungs and a document of the star’s “messy and chaotic” teenage years.

His wildly combustible songs were perfect material for Jules Buckley’s orchestra, which heightened the album’s gothic tones with harpsichords, lutes and long percussion crescendos.

Kiss With A Fist became a kind of witches’ ball, Blinding opened with a sinister cacophony of whispered incantations and You Got The Love made extensive use of the Royal Albert Hall’s “Voice of Jupiter” pipe organ.

To accentuate the eerie atmosphere, the venue was flooded with blood-red lights throughout the concert, with Florence wearing a long purple dress, whose sleeves fluttered to the beat of the music.

The audience also got carried away by the atmosphere, wearing Pre-Raphaelite dresses, Torero jackets, flower crowns and, in one case, wearing fairy lights from head to toe.

It was the perfect marriage of material and setting. “The Renaissance meets rock,” as Radio 3 presenter Georgia Mann put it.

Billed as Symphony Of Lungs, the concert was the most requested Prom of the 2024 season.

Tickets originally available in May were snapped up within hours and on Wednesday morning more than 20,000 people queued online to buy tickets for the upcoming match, which cost just £8.

The concert was Florence + The Machine’s only UK show in 2024, in what was supposed to be a year off.

“When [the invitation] I walked in, and they said, “We know you’re out, but could you…?” And I said, “Yes!” told Vogue magazine.

The orchestral score was created over several months of drafts, revisions and rehearsals, under the supervision of Jules Buckley, the conductor charged with “tearing up the Proms rulebook”.

Over the past decade he has organised concerts based on the music of Stevie Wonder and Nick Drake, as well as Proms dedicated to grime and dance music.

He said that Florence’s music was particularly well suited to orchestral treatment.

“You have this incredible virtuosic harp playing, a whole range of percussion and the harmonic sequences of the songs, which are often very romantic,” she told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme ahead of the concert.

“We’re not going to make it all pretty and quaint. We’re pushing the accelerator.”

He wasn’t exaggerating.

When classical music meets pop, it often feels like the songs are drowning in molasses.

But Buckley respected what Florence called the “hand-crafted, personal, slightly rough” arrangements he had written early in his career; letting the melodies breathe and holding the orchestra back until it was really necessary.

Highlights included a muscular version of Drumming Song, with soaring harmonies from the London Contemporary Voices Choir; and a joyful huge disposition of Cosmic Love.

The One-Eyed Girl, in which Florence gouges out the eye of a rival in love, was punctuated by blasts of tuba and a glittering harpsichord, which accentuated the black comedy of the text with a musical nod to the Addams Family theme.

And the hit singles Dog Days Are Over and Rabbit Heart (Raise It Up)

The singer seemed to relish the opportunity to revisit her old songs, even performing Howl, a song she had previously banned from her repertoire.because it’s really hard on my voice“.

There was only one small misstep when he launched into the bridge of Rabbit Heart (Raise It Up) too early.

“I’ve been practicing my signals with Jules all day and sometimes I’m still a little confused,” she said, laughing.

“Jules says, ‘You’ll be in eight bars,’ and I say, ‘What does that mean?!'”

If the audience noticed that tension, they didn’t care.

As they launched into a feverish version of Dog Days Are Over and indulged in the gothic romanticism of Between Two Lungs, it was clear why Florence still inspires such devotion.

Fifteen years after Lungs made her a star, the power of her voice and the passion of her lyrics are still intact.

I only have one question left: why did he never record a Bond soundtrack?

1. Drum song

2. My boyfriend builds coffins

3. You have love

4. Birdsong

5. Swimming

6. I’m not calling you a liar

7. Kiss with a fist

8. Scream

9. The One-Eyed Girl

10. The hardest hearts

11. Rabbit Heart

12. Blinding

13. Hurricane Drunk

14. Cosmic Love

15. Between two lungs

16. Dog Days

17. Fall

You can listen to the concert again on Sounds of the BBC.