Concerts you're glad NOT to have (had) tickets for...

[Nick Armstrong]

A thread prompted by this scathing review:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/music/classicalconcertreviews/11434417/Ivo-Pogorelich-Royal-Festival-Hall-review-the-piano-seemed-to-have-gone-out-of-tune.html

Was any Forumite present?

[Nick Armstrong]

Here's another

http://www.violinschool.org/event/concert-club-lakatos-gypsy-violin-lso-barbican/

...despite the "FREE hot drink voucher!" ....

.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

This one.

http://www.classicalsource.com/db_control/db_concert_review.php?id=11845

[Barbirollians]

Any concert that includes Carmina Burana .I went to see it once in Hong Kong - David Atherton's conducting suggested he appeared even more bored by it than me !

[Bryn]

Any concert that includes Carmina Burana .I went to see it once in Hong Kong - David Atherton's conducting suggested he appeared even more bored by it than me !

Ah, that Orff full mangling. I rather like the Carmina Burana CD by Catherine Bott and a well known rapist.

[edashtav]

Hot and cold for all

Leeds Mercury Saturday 22nd October 1864
(from a letter to the paper)

Another matter which the Town Council would do well to look at is the ventilation of the hall [Leeds Town Hall], and especially of the organ. This subject has been urged in your columns on several occasions. On Saturday night the heat in the room was excessive; a very perceptible mist hung over the audience, and even before the performance began the reeds of the organ were thrown wholly out of tune. I need hardly add that before the end the effect was simply excruciating. The amateurs who were waiting in the orchestra not only felt their voices suffering grievously from the heat, but from the necessity of having open doors were exposed to a cold draught, which left them in considerable doubt as to whether they would have any voice left when their turn came to sing. I am sure the Town Council might employ time well in remedying this evil.
I am, Gentlemen, yours obediently, MUSICUS

I'm reminded that Buckingham Town Hall suffered from a similar defect. When the "movies" arrived it was converted to be the town's cinema. On wet, wintry days, the steam would rise from its audience. But... help was at hand, in the ice-cream interval some of the usherettes would spray the dank customers with free scent!

[Nick Armstrong]

Reminds one of another 19th century event (22 December 1808, to be precise) which though superficially attractive and historically fascinating, might have been a challenge even if one could go back with 21st Century thermal undergarments, headgear and footwear... The uncomfortable seating... the standard of the playing...

If the initial reviews failed to recognize it as one of the greatest pieces of music ever written, one needs to understand the adverse conditions under which the piece was first heard. The concert venue was freezing cold; it was more than two hours into a mammoth four-hour program before the piece began; and the orchestra played poorly enough that day to force the nearly deaf composer—also acting as conductor and pianist—to stop the ensemble partway into one passage and start again from the very beginning. It was, all in all, a very inauspicious beginning for what would soon become the world's most recognizable piece of classical music: Ludwig van Beethoven's Symphony No. 5 in C Minor, Op. 67—the "Fifth Symphony"—which received its world premiere on this day in 1808.

Also premiering that day at the Theater an der Wien in Vienna were Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 4 in G major, Op. 58, and the Symphony No. 6 in F major, Op. 68—the "Pastoral Symphony."

©History.com

But of course it's Off-Topic - if the Music Wizard offered one the chance to travel back in time and attend, who would say no?

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Reminds one of another 19th century event which though superficially attractive and historically fascinating, might have been a challenge even if one could go back with 21st Century thermal undergarments, headgear and footwear... The uncomfortable seating... the standard of the playing...

I was thinking of exactly this "event" when you posted, Cali!

Also premiering that day at the Theater an der Wien in Vienna were Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 4 in G major, Op. 58, and the Symphony No. 6 in F major, Op. 68—the "Pastoral Symphony."

AND three movements from the Mass in C,AND the Choral Fantasy, AND the concert aria "Ah! Perfido!" - together (IIRC) with some piano improvizations from the composer!

But of course it's Off-Topic - if the Music Wizard offered one the chance to travel back in time and attend, who would say no?

Not me - I'd leap at the chance!

[Bryn]

Ah, that Orff full mangling. I rather like the Carmina Burana CD by Catherine Bott and a well known rapist.

Sorry! Very OT, I know, but I could not resist:

[Flay]

Well this is also opposite-topic: I was given a couple of tickets to one of the RAH "Classical Spectacular" concerts as a leaving present when I retired from my practice (after 30 years) in 2013, so I was obliged to attend. They were good seats too.

But how strange it felt to be listening to an amplified orchestra. And yes it was packed with all the hackneyed favourites including O Fortuna from Carmina Burana, the Hebrew slaves, and the Intermezzo from Cav Rust. And of course there was a smarmy amplified violinist.

I know I'm being ungrateful, but ugh!

[french frank]

I know I'm being ungrateful, but ugh!

Ungrateful? I should say!
"With THUNDERING CANNONS AND INDOOR FIREWORKS"

[Flay]

THUNDERING CANNONS

Mrs Flay jumped out of her skin - I had not warned her about the 1812

[Bryn]

Mrs Flay jumped out of her skin - I had not warned her about the 1812

Anyone shoot the lark, or indeed was Max around to finish off and make a terrine from the "Dying[sic] Swan"?

[Flay]

Anyone shoot the lark?

No but perhaps somebody could compose "The Lark Descending." That poor creature must be exhausted by now - unless it returned on the Funiculì Funiculà.

was Max around to finish off and make a terrine from the "Dying[sic] Swan"?

No, he was cautioned and would not dare!

[Serial_Apologist]

This, in my translation from the Revue Musicale, 10 April to 10 May 1913, following the premieres of Jeux and Le Sacre du Printemps:

The Events of the Month
Summer sports: several readers have asked us for the rules of Russian tennis, which have cause anger, this season, in every stately mansion. They can be subsumed thus: the match is played at night, on baskets of flowers, illuminated by arc lights; it only involves three partners; the net is let down; the ball is replaced by a football; use of the racquet is forbidden. In one section, squashed into an extremity of the court, one notes an orchestra accompanying the volleys of the players. This sport has as its objective the development of an extreme suppleness in the movements of the wrist, neck and ankle. It has received the approval of the Academy of medecine. For performances of "Le Sacre du Printemps" the Theatre of the Champs Elysees has organised a special service of stretcher-bearers, charged with taking home professors of harmony for whom contact with the music of Stravinsky has triggered excessive emotions. The Society of Grand Rehearsals has justified its title with brilliant ingenuity by giving a huge concert where one could admire the biggest score and largest conductor's baton known to this day: superficial observers believed themselves to be witnessing on the rostrum a conductor of fish, with his rod paging its way through the Grand Book of public debt. Stop press: we learn that the "Sacre du Printemps", which has so violently stirred opinion, was a simple exploit of American publicity. This work was commissioned by the Galeries Lafayette in order, by way of an ironic consecration, to ridicule the fashions of a neighbouring establishment.

(From Debussy, Jean Barraque, Editions du Seuil, 167, Paris, no date.)