LSO/Rattle Jan 15 2015 A Ten Star Evening

[underthecountertenor]

I was there too, and can add nothing to the terrific reviews above, save to say that from my seat (central and near the front of the stalls) I caught the leader and his partner exchanging eyes to heaven glances during the coughing fits in the Webern. [The leader also had to borrow his colleague's mute when his own landed somewhere in the stalls just before his solo in the same piece. Much amusement afterwards, but the performance itself was utterly professional and wonderful, despite the coughing]. I remember Rattle coming on after the interval in Pelleas at the ROH and, after acknowledging the applause, reminding the audience that it is a particularly subtle opera, and that coughing was therefore more disruptive even than usual....

[teamsaint]

Oh, just to add, on this occasion quite impressed by the Barbican/ LSO concert experience.
A very decent free programme, ( do they always do this?) and an actually interesting follow up email thanking people for coming, links to several reviews, a free PDF of the concert programme,metc.

Very good .

[bluestateprommer]

Thanks too from me for the reviews. What a pity R3 were not there to broadcast the concert. I couldn't get to it, but I enjoyed the performance of Schumann's Das Paradies und die Peri with Rattle and the LSO that was broadcast on Sunday; it illuminated a work that has perhaps suffered from undue neglect. These two concerts seem to bode well for the Rattle/LSO collaboration if he is indeed to take over from Gergiev.

I heard the iPlayer recording of Das Paradies und die Peri, and agree with aeolium's evaluation; splendid work all around, with Rattle getting a very fine sound indeed from the LSO, which Andrew Clements alluded to in his Guardian review, in a dry dig at Gergiev:

".....the refinement of the strings and especially the tactfulness of the brass showed what the orchestra is still capable of when playing for a conductor who actually cares about the sound it is making."

On the 2nd concert which Petrushka was fortunate enough to attend, and addressing aeolium's point, my guess is that R3 couldn't do both concerts, and had to choose just one. In terms of enterprising repertoire, R3 probably made the wise choice, given the rarity of hearing the Schumann oratorio live. (Although ironically, I heard Andrew McGregor comment in that relay that this Schumann performance may well become an LSO Live set.) Even if live performances of the Ligeti are rare (and it would be something to hear Barbara Hannigan perform it on the radio), the fact that this would have been an R3 relay with "yet another" performance of The Rite of Spring might have been a factor. Or maybe, at a huge stretch, Barbara Hannigan might have said "no" to being broadcast, to come up with another hypothetical possibility totally out of left field. The real point here is that for such a concert as this one, the radio isn't good enough. You really have to be there, which several boarders here were obviously lucky enough to be.

[LHC]

I heard the iPlayer recording of Das Paradies und die Peri, and agree with aeolium's evaluation; splendid work all around, with Rattle getting a very fine sound indeed from the LSO, which Andrew Clements alluded to in his Guardian review, in a dry dig at Gergiev:



On the 2nd concert which Petrushka was fortunate enough to attend, and addressing aeolium's point, my guess is that R3 couldn't do both concerts, and had to choose just one. In terms of enterprising repertoire, R3 probably made the wise choice, given the rarity of hearing the Schumann oratorio live. (Although ironically, I heard Andrew McGregor comment in that relay that this Schumann performance may well become an LSO Live set.) Even if live performances of the Ligeti are rare (and it would be something to hear Barbara Hannigan perform it on the radio), the fact that this would have been an R3 relay with "yet another" performance of The Rite of Spring might have been a factor. Or maybe, at a huge stretch, Barbara Hannigan might have said "no" to being broadcast, to come up with another hypothetical possibility totally out of left field. The real point here is that for such a concert as this one, the radio isn't good enough. You really have to be there, which several boarders here were obviously lucky enough to be.

The concert was broadcast live across Europe (except in the UK naturally) on the Mezzo TV channel. This probably made it impossible to also have a R3 broadcast. Hopefully it will be released on DVD in due course, or as an extra on an LSO Live blu ray release, as with their recent Mendelssohn release.

[gurnemanz]

We also greatly enjoyed Rattle's Paradies aand Peri, a work I've been wanting to hear live since getting to know it on disc. We went with our daughter and her friend, a film maker who is not greatly into classical music let alone unfamiliar Schumann, was really entranced by the work.