BBC SSO - Stenhammar, Nielsen, 16/Mar/2015

[amcluesent]

What an odd programme, as much for its short duration. By the sound of the desultory applause, the canny Glasgow audience must have clocked they were being short-changed, even at a tenner, and stayed away. They certainly didn't miss much!

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Oh, I dunno - the Stenhammar is a lovely piece, rarely played and given a very good performance tonight. I'd've been happy to fork out a tenner just for this.

[Roehre]

I'll give it an iPlayer treatment later, especially for the Nielsen

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

I'll give it an iPlayer treatment later, especially for the Nielsen

- oh, yes; I'd've stayed for the "coupling" and enjoyed it. My only reservation is that I'd've preferred my first Live Nielsen #6 to have been the original.

[Alain Maréchal]

I do not understand how audiences can resist Stenhammar; the Serenade bowled me over fifty years ago, and it has certainly had enough recordings for it to become well-known. The second symphony is extremely lyrical, and I have a fondness for "Midwinter", which is always billed as a Cantata - which it isn't - and that may put some audiences off. There is a short chorale in the middle of a work rather like an antidote to Alfven's "Midsummer Rhapsody".

[tigajen]

I do not understand how audiences can resist Stenhammar; the Serenade bowled me over fifty years ago, and it has certainly had enough recordings for it to become well-known. The second symphony is extremely lyrical, and I have a fondness for "Midwinter", which is always billed as a Cantata - which it isn't - and that may put some audiences off. There is a short chorale in the middle of a work rather like an antidote to Alfven's "Midsummer Rhapsody".

I completely agree with your opinion of Stenhammar's music and would add his first symphony to this.Not as accomplished as the second ,but extremely tuneful and a good introduction to his music. There is 4 disc BIS set containing a good selection of his works.

[Roehre]

I completely agree with your opinion of Stenhammar's music and would add his first symphony to this.Not as accomplished as the second ,but extremely tuneful and a good introduction to his music. There is 4 disc BIS set containing a good selection of his works.

the symphonies and concertos are in a Brilliant set - partly the same BIS recordings.

[Alain Maréchal]

the symphonies and concertos are in a Brilliant set - partly the same BIS recordings.

Thank you for clarifying the source of the Brilliant box - the same forces had rerecorded them for DG. I am now going to make the sort of comment that gives record collectors a bad name, but no recording of the second symphony comes anywhere near Westerberg's, nor Kubelik's of the Serenade. The drawback is that the latest remastering of the latter has dried out what had been a superb and appropriately resonant acoustic, which has also affected the Tor Mann recording of the 2nd symphony, with which it is coupled. There are earlier, better, CDs of both recordings.

[jayne lee wilson]

Just caught up on the Nielsen 6th Symphony in the arrangement for 18 players by Hans Abrahamsen...

I'm very fond of the piece - only yesterday I heard the excellent new NYPO/Gilbert recording, one of the best in an uneven cycle and gorgeously recorded, so I felt prepared - but what a truly bizarre, dispiriting experience this arrangement was.

The almost total lack of textural contrast, so essential a part of Nielsen's inspiration here between and within the 4 movements, was fatal to any atmosphere, intensity or - above all - emotional meaning. I'm afraid the playing seemed passionless too - almost apologetically cautious, only coming to life a little in the grotesquerie of the finale. The final bassoon-raspberry was meaningless, having no orchestral pomposity to make fun of; which also applied to the Humoreske, offering no textural or emotional contrast to the opening Tempo Giusto (which, given the stark post-Romantic tragedy of Nielsen's actual music, had been played with a painful lack of pain). What sounded like a hammond organ (maybe it really was a hammond organ...) only added to a sense of whimsicality about the enterprise.

Bit of a car-crash for me, a collector's item of misdirected energies which doesn't even seem to succeed on its own terms (which are hard to determine here). The composer spoke of making it sound more modern - but it had the opposite effect, giving the impression of a music-hall suite for theatre orchestra, executed by slightly bored musicians. (It's often this theatre-band sound that proves fatal to other such arrangements, such as those of Mahler 4 or Bruckner 2; it always ends up reminding me of Kurt Weill - to neither's benefit. I can only think of the Schoenberg/Johann Strauss arrangements as any that really work).

A justification is often offered of "laying bare the music's workings" etc. But this is pure cant, really - without the emotion, there is no music in works like these - whose workings should be quite "bare" enough in a half-decent performance anyway.

[Roehre]

I am very happy with this transciption, listening not only to it from an Abrahamsen point of view.
The music reduced to its nearly bare essence. The contrasts are sharper than in its original guise, especially in the Ivesian passages based on a waltz and contradicted by rhythmically unrelated marchlike interruptions e.g.
Missing the orchestral cover the music to me is much clearer - including the ironically meant "semplice" stretches, like the bassoon highlighted in the finale.

I do think the 18 players did a good job. I like the dry, neue-sachlichkeit-similar (1920s Hindemith, Eisler e.g.) atmosphere which I found at least as gripping as Nielsen's orchestration. The musical lines going in and out of focus, easier to follow in this way (almost Haupt- und Nebenstimme à la 2VS). Mind you, this is the type of orchestration en vogue as the Sinfonia semplice was composed (1925)

A nice addition to the repertoire IMO.

[bluestateprommer]

From hearing this concert on iPlayer a while back, this was definitely not a case of "less is more", but "less is less", in several senses. As noted at the start of the thread, this was definitely short measure for an evening's orchestral concert, even compared to US standards these days. If the BBC SSO programmers had included Stenhammar's "Reverenza" movement that he suppressed from the final version of his op. 31 Serenade, as a curtain-raiser, that would have been quite appropriate. Then after applause to allow late-comers to be seated, AM and the BBC SSO could then have launched into the Serenade, as published. Having said this, I agree that this was a fine performance, perhaps a bit indulgent in the slower movements, but what the heck. It would be great to feature the Serenade at The Proms, as it's never been done there. In fact, only 6 Stenhammar works show up in the Proms Archive. I think that Sakari Oramo could get either the BBC SO or the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic to do a great job with in at the RAH. The Stenhammar 150th anniversary year is 2021, so we might have to wait until then.

On the Hans Abrahamsen transcription of Carl Nielsen's Sinfonia semplice, I'm more in the JLW camp than the Roehre camp, in that while I agree with Roehre that the 18 BBC SSO musicians did a very nice job, I don't think the transcription served much purpose, and doesn't hold a candle to the original. Granted, at the very start, the minimal forces showed in what felt like a lack of weight in the musical presentation, not to mention somewhat steamrollered variety of sound. However, as the work progressed, I did begin to sense more variety in the timbre of the instrumentation. But in the end, it really just made me miss the original.

Still, even though this concert was short measure on multiple levels, points to the BBC SSO and AM for giving these works a shot.

[Barbirollians]

I should recommend the RFPO/Lindberg recording of the Serenade to anyone - a complete delight .

[jayne lee wilson]

I should recommend the RFPO/Lindberg recording of the Serenade to anyone - a complete delight .

As Rocket Racoon famously said, "Oh...YEAH!!!"
Very strongly seconded, an absolutely gorgeously played and recorded disc.

Bit churlish to say but shame they didn't include the Reverenza, the original 2nd movement, somewhere... there's plenty of room on the album.

[Barbirollians]

Stenhammar's second symphony is this month's BBCMM CD with the BBCSSO and Hannu Lintu sounded jolly good on first spin.

[Alison]

Stem hammer.s second symphony is this month's BBCMM CD with the BBCSSO and Hannu Lintu sounded jolly good on first spin.