Afternoon on 3 12.3.14 Melbourne

[Finzi4ever]

Poulenc
Organ Concerto in G minor
Cameron Carpenter (soloist)

Never heard such a travesty as Cameron Carpenter's ego-trip of performance - ridiculous registrations, cadenza. How Andrew Davis and orchestra coped, I've no idea. This was more re-arranged than Davis's own version of the Bach Passacaglia before it. I would welcome any defence that you may find...

[mercia]

yes, just listened on the iPlayer. "Eccentric" or "very individual" are the kindest words I can think of. I certainly object to all the added notes and little ornamentations not in the score, it was almost more Carpenter than Poulenc, which is surely the wrong way round. The only performance I have ever heard where the strings often drowned out the organ. I think we'll hear a more conventional performance from the Festival Hall in the next week or two.

[mercia]

I've found a third opinion

http://www.limelightmagazine.com.au/Article/306667,live-review-cameron-carpenter-and-the-mso.aspx

[edashtav]

I've found a third opinion
http://www.limelightmagazine.com.au/...d-the-mso.aspx

I anticipated that the Aussie third man would save the slashing four through the slips but he didn't - every bit as unbridled as the two boarders above.

His pay-off:

Far be it from me to criticise Carpenter’s shameless showmanship: the audience loved it to bits. Good luck to him: he will never be poor, for (to paraphrase H L Mencken) "nobody ever went broke underestimating the taste of the general public".

was a classic.

[Roger Judd]

That was unspeakably ghastly - what did Poulenc do to deserve that?

I shall be in the RFH in a couple of weeks to hear James O'Donnell play it 'properly', and obliterate all lingering memory of CC!
RJ

[Bryn]

I must give this Poulenc performance an audition. I wonder what its detractors might make of Rzewski's Beethoven, as but recently linked to on the "What are you listening to now?" thread.

[BBMmk2]

I did#nt much care for this. Usually, I find that Sir Andrew Davis has well well thought out planned and executed concert. I do not think much of his arrangement of the Bach. Wether it was thye orchestra's play6ing, which I thought was nearly around second rate? Dare I say?