Sakari Oramo Nielsen 6...23/05/15 barbican 1930 hrs...

[teamsaint]

It's on my list to listen to, Jayne, so thanks for flagging it up.

Good thread,interesting concert programme, and the symphony does seem hard to pin down, both for performers and listeners.
But easy to pin down wouldn't sell it to me anyway.

[Maclintick]

Evidently not about to start a FoR3 Nielsen fan club anytime soon

I’ll put my hand up to declare membership of the Nielsen & Sibelius fanclub. Thanks for your habitually illuminating & perceptive posts, JLW & Ed. The Gluck/Sgambati encore was, as you say, Ed, an injection of calm interposed between these very different examples of early 20^th cent. Nordic angst -- Sibelius’s ostensibly impressionistic vision of an arctic landscape, but more significantly a terrifying expressionist psychodrama of loneliness & mental collapse, perhaps the musical equivalent of Edvard Munch’s “The Scream”, the snowstorm exposing a mind unravelling before quintuple hammer-blows as shattering as those in Mahler 6. Then the jazzy-melancholic, deracinated Rachmaninov, caught between Old Mother Russia & the Brave New World. This concerto & other later pieces, the Symphonic Dances & Paganini Variations, scurrying in perpetual flux between fleeting romantic gestures & contrasting bursts of nervous energy, have almost greater appeal IMHO than the earlier Russian-era compositions, wonderful though they are.

Finally, Nielsen 6. Mahlerian & Ivesian echoes, & uncanny pre-echoes of Shostakovich’s last symphony, the closest parallel to the emotional world Nielsen inhabits in this symphony being the Soviet composer’s 15^th, with its grotesquely ticking percussion, pseudo-quotations from the musical-museum of the past, & palpable disintegration beckoning. Bleak stuff, but the Great Dane got there first !

[BBMmk2]

As ever, JLW, thank you for highlighting recordings. I am expecting to get the Neeme Jarvi/Myung Whun Chung cycle or set, I should say but wondering whether the new Chandos Storgards cycle be worth getting as well?

[Roehre]

....
Finally, Nielsen 6. Mahlerian & Ivesian echoes, & uncanny pre-echoes of Shostakovich’s last symphony, the closest parallel to the emotional world Nielsen inhabits in this symphony being the Soviet composer’s 15^th, with its grotesquely ticking percussion, pseudo-quotations from the musical-museum of the past, & palpable disintegration beckoning. Bleak stuff, but the Great Dane got there first !

It's slight more complicated than this.
Ives' orchestral works cannot have been known to Nielsen.

DSCH 15 was composed in 1971, i.e. 5 years after the first recording of Mahler 10 in the Cooke 1 version. Shostakovich had been also approached to orchestrate Mahler's 10-torso. He declined. But one of the places where Mahler's continuity draft contains clues for the orchestration, is at the end of Scherzo II: timpani+triangle+snare drum.
IMO not by chance the same percussion used at the end of DSCH 15.

It is unlikely that Nielsen knew this Mahler fragment, but it cannot be excluded fully.
Therefore he likely invented these sounds himself - not echoing Ives and not pre-echoing Shostakovich.
But he wasn't the first to get there.

This obviously doesn't affect in any way the qualities of this symphony of his - IMO a kind of internationally recognized one-fingered obscene gesture to the rest of the world.

[edashtav]

<Then the jazzy-melancholic, deracinated Rachmaninov, caught between Old Mother Russia & the Brave New World.>

How I admire that one sentence distillation of Rachmaninov,Maclintick, that pivots so beautifully about "deracinated".

Splendid!

[Maclintick]

<Then the jazzy-melancholic, deracinated Rachmaninov, caught between Old Mother Russia & the Brave New World.>

How I admire that one sentence distillation of Rachmaninov,Maclintick, that pivots so beautifully about "deracinated".

Splendid!

Thanks Ed...It IS actually quite good, isn't it ? Can't remember where I read it ...

[Maclintick]

It's slight more complicated than this.
Ives' orchestral works cannot have been known to Nielsen.

DSCH 15 was composed in 1971, i.e. 5 years after the first recording of Mahler 10 in the Cooke 1 version. Shostakovich had been also approached to orchestrate Mahler's 10-torso. He declined. But one of the places where Mahler's continuity draft contains clues for the orchestration, is at the end of Scherzo II: timpani+triangle+snare drum.
IMO not by chance the same percussion used at the end of DSCH 15.

It is unlikely that Nielsen knew this Mahler fragment, but it cannot be excluded fully.
Therefore he likely invented these sounds himself - not echoing Ives and not pre-echoing Shostakovich.
But he wasn't the first to get there.

This obviously doesn't affect in any way the qualities of this symphony of his - IMO a kind of internationally recognized one-fingered obscene gesture to the rest of the world.

OK Roehre, it's a fair cop. I plead guilty to a terminological inexactitude in describing Nielsen's 6th as either "echoing" or "pre-echoing" the works of earlier & later composers, in the sense of consciously aping them, but I think you're crediting me with too much literalness. Please substitute "prefiguring" or or "foreshadowing" for what I was inadequately attempting to describe as "pre-echoing", which was a perception of striking affinities between Nielsen 6 & Shostakovich 15.

Both are final symphonies by disillusioned men of approximately the same age & living under the shadow of ill-health. Like Mahler, they juxtapose seriousness with parodic or highly satirical elements. Both symphonies feature skeletally, tick-tocking percussion, & subvert conventional symphonic flow with abrupt disjunctions or discontinuities.

As you say, Nielsen would not have been familiar with any of Ives's tumultuous creations, but the moment in the finale of the 6th at Var VII where the lamely waltzing cafe musicians holding sway until that moment are banjaxed by a marching band of uproarious trombonists, egged on by a mischievous piccolo, is pure Ives in spirit -- the same anarchic spirit animating Mahler's Klezmer band in the slow movement of his 1st, or Petrushka, for that matter.

Someone else put it rather better than I've been attempting to do -- the music was "in the air" around both these composers, at similar points in their lives.

[Nick Armstrong]

Finally, I've caught up with Rachmaninov's 4th Piano Concerto in the safe hands of Denis Kozhukhin. He projected the work with precision and clarity. The orchestral's contribution didn't quite match the pianist. It may be that Sakari Oramo's vision of the work was different from Kozukhin's or perhaps the rehearsal time for the concerto had been limited in some way but things were not always in synch between soloist and the accompaniment. The encore - an arrangement by Sgambati of Gluck's Dance of the Blessed Spirits was delightful - full of the most sensitive pianism with lines spun as if from silk. In a concert containing three works riddled with angst, it was especially welcome to have this oasis of calm delight. I shall look forward to Kozhukin's next broadcast with increased expectation.

I have so far only managed to find time to hear the first half of the concert. Tapiola was, as stated above, magnificent. Rachmaninov's 4th concerto left me cold, perhaps for the reasons you mention Ed, but probably more so because I have an antipathy to this piece which is almost as strong as my absolute adoration of the 3rd concerto. ("jazzy-melancholic, deracinated Rachmaninov, caught between Old Mother Russia & the Brave New World" is indeed a great phrase, about the 4th). To my ears, it's amazing that a composer could get it so right in the 3rd and so subtly but totally wrong in the 4th. Hey ho - but I didn't come here to say that.

I just wanted to echo that for me the best thing about the first half was the encore. What 'piano magic' in the playing of that touching transcription. Fortunately I had the presence of mind to hit 'record' (after missing some bars at the start ) and have listened to the performance maybe 20 times since. Mesmerising! The tone of the melody, the layering of the accompaniment. A great adjunct to the performance of the piece I knew before, by Alessio Bax.

(I've got the score of the Sgambati - it's hideously difficult to play, despite sounding so transparent and straightforward. From memory, it's written on 3 staves: the bottom two are already more than enough... then the tune has to be dealt with on the top one )

[Roehre]

I.....To my ears, it's amazing that a composer could get it so right in the 3rd and so subtly but totally wrong in the 4th.

Caliban, this is an opinion which I share with you. But this applies to the revised (and almost exclusively performed) cut version of the concerto - I actually like the original 1927 score: it is balanced as the 3rd concerto. But -if I understand correctly- the composer has more or less forbidden to perform it (like Sibelius in similar cases). IIRC so far only two recordings have been made, on Chandos and on Ondine (the latter c/w an unrevised 1891 score of the 1st concerto, not the usual 1917).

[bluestateprommer]

If people want, Sakari Oramo had a blog post on the R3 blogs page where people can leave comments:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/radio3/entries/941eba6e-05c9-4ef7-b1f8-2aa6c74947b9

Anyone who had a login and ID on the old forum from the BBC's own chat pages can log in with the same past login and ID. (And be nice to him ;) .)

[jayne lee wilson]

Caliban, this is an opinion which I share with you. But this applies to the revised (and almost exclusively performed) cut version of the concerto - I actually like the original 1927 score: it is balanced as the 3rd concerto. But -if I understand correctly- the composer has more or less forbidden to perform it (like Sibelius in similar cases). IIRC so far only two recordings have been made, on Chandos and on Ondine (the latter c/w an unrevised 1891 score of the 1st concerto, not the usual 1917).

Here's a more recent one... I bought this & it fully deserves its many garlands...

http://www.eclassical.com/performers/sudbin-yevgeny/rachmaninov-4-medtner-2.html

[Nick Armstrong]

Here's a more recent one... I bought this & it fully deserves its many garlands...
http://www.eclassical.com/performers...medtner-2.html

Yes I have that too. The Rach 4... meh.....

(I bought it for the Medtner... ...like Kenneth Horne, who used to buy e.g. Rippling Muscle and Health Pictorial Monthly - for the gardening section )

[jayne lee wilson]

Yes I have that too. The Rach 4... meh.....

(I bought it for the Medtner... ...like Kenneth Horne, who used to buy e.g. Rippling Muscle and Health Pictorial Monthly - for the gardening section )

....I left the Medtner out - only downloaded the Rachmaninov...

[edashtav]

I'm fascinated to hear the "3 cheers" for Rachmaninov's 3rd Concerto from Caliban & Co. How lucky they all are not to have been a post-WWII babe in Bournemouth like me. By the age of majority, subsidised by the miraculous Junior Western Orchestral Society pass (all but the best tickets for the BSO at 2/6 a throw), I and some of my friends were on the rack, Rach-ed out by an interminable succession of Rach PC#3s (sometimes, I swear, more than one performance per season). They came in all forms: the virtuosic, the introspective, the long (with no cuts), the short (trimmed with neat back & sides), the barn-storming and the best forgotten .
"Good God,grant me one PC#4 before I pass on", became almost a litany, so unchanging and predictable was our Concert Prospectus. Truly, I've not sat through one live performance of the 3rd these past 45 years. Now, I'm feel I'm in recovery: I've bought a B&H pocket score, read it through and been "impressed" and I'm ready to "scale" the peaks of PC#3. Yet, well-prepared as I am, I'm yet to take the plunge, buy my ticket and take my pew in the stalls, circle or up "in the Gods".

I'll report , again, if I'm a Survivor.

[Nick Armstrong]

....I left the Medtner out - only downloaded the Rachmaninov...