Nielsen Symphonies II - 2 & 5/ BBCPO/Storgards/Bridgewater 1930hrs/13/06/15 live r3

[jayne lee wilson]

The great composer Carl Nielsen goes on celebrating his 150th birthday somewhere beyond the stars. And in Manchester. Or on BBC Radio 3, Planet Earth, The Solar System, The Universe, etc...

Sorry to hammer on about it, but, this Danish guy, he wrote some great tunes, y'know? Almost a match for Previn conducting Rachmaninov, well, on a good day, with a few beers inside him....

http://www.bbc.co.uk/events/epmp5v

[richardfinegold]

The great composer Carl Nielsen goes on celebrating his 150th birthday somewhere beyond the stars. And in Manchester. Or on BBC Radio 3, Planet Earth, The Solar System, The Universe, etc...

Sorry to hammer on about it, but, this Danish guy, he wrote some great tunes, y'know? Almost a match for Previn conducting Rachmaninov, well, on a good day, with a few beers inside him....

http://www.bbc.co.uk/events/epmp5v

I think that the 5th has been on the CSO schedule 7 out of the last 9 years. Now if they would just routinely program the other 5...

[Stanfordian]

The great composer Carl Nielsen goes on celebrating his 150th birthday somewhere beyond the stars. And in Manchester. Or on BBC Radio 3, Planet Earth, The Solar System, The Universe, etc...

Sorry to hammer on about it, but, this Danish guy, he wrote some great tunes, y'know? Almost a match for Previn conducting Rachmaninov, well, on a good day, with a few beers inside him....

http://www.bbc.co.uk/events/epmp5v

Hiya JLW,

I will be there again, God willing. It's promising to be a excellent cycle.

[Dave2002]

Sorry to hammer on about it, but, this Danish guy, he wrote some great tunes, y'know? Almost a match for Previn conducting Rachmaninov, well, on a good day, with a few beers inside him....

http://www.bbc.co.uk/events/epmp5v

You can also preview Nielsen 5 right now from the TTN from a few few days back here - http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b05xq6mp I thought that was quite a decent performance, and also directed by a Danish conductor - Thomas Søndergård. I have to confess that since I didn't catch it quite at the start that it took me a few minutes to identify the piece (without cheating and looking it up) - at first I thought it might have been Shostakovich - but it was in the middle of the night.

[BBMmk2]

I hope to get around these Storgards recordings soon!

[Stanfordian]

I was at the Bridgewater Hall last night for the second concert in the Nielsen series of complete symphonies. John Storgårds conducted the well prepared and committed BBC Philharmonic with real assurance. A really excellent concert. Next it’s the symphonies No’s 3 & 6 on Thursday evening at the Bridgewater.

[HighlandDougie]

I thought that was quite a decent performance, and also directed by a Danish conductor - Thomas Søndergård.

In my unhumble opinion, one of the best performances of Nielsen 5 I've heard in a long time. Preserved on my i-Phone, great music for plane journeys, although you have to remember not to leap up from your seat at the end and start clapping.

[Sir Velo]

In my unhumble opinion, one of the best performances of Nielsen 5 I've heard in a long time. Preserved on my i-Phone, great music for plane journeys, although you have to remember not to leap up from your seat at the end and start clapping.

You can be thrown off planes for less these days, so I understand.

[richardfinegold]

Well, I'm contemplating a new Nielsen cycle, to update my 2 Blomstedt's. Orami, Storgaards or Gilbert? I have the first installment of the Gilbert and was pretty underwhelmed, but I see the next 2 volumes are going for fire sale price on Amazon...

[jayne lee wilson]

It may seem perverse to begin with the last movement we heard in this performance of Nielsen's 2nd and 5th Symphonies, but it was the best and easiest to describe: Part Two of Storgards' 5th leapt full-blooded from the blocks (and the speakers) with great power, drive and attack, orchestrally at the edge-of-control, the demon-fugue galumphing like a giant troll, the tranquillo with the sheen and intensity of a sunlit glacier, then the full orchestra surging back to a superbly focussed exultation. Music, like life....

I had mixed feelings about Part One.
Via HDs at least, the pp bassoons and flutes were too loud at the start against those less-than-icy strings, then the obstinate march seemed a little restrained - but compensated with big dynamic contrasts in the crescendi. For me, there wasn't enough sense of voices crying in the wilderness before the adagio began, the winds not desperate or primal enough as they cut across the rich, full song of the BBCPO strings. But here, the side-drum was terrific - as loud or louder than the whole orchestra - would there be enough power at the climax to sweep it away? Well, there was - just about, but it was full and rounded rather than blazingly triumphant; I was left wanting a little more. (I didn't detect any obvious caution from the soundbalancer).
Certainly I missed the savage precision, the taking to controlled extremes, of Oramo's BBCSO performance back in April.
(A second hearing of this Storgards 5th didn't change my impressions greatly, but did accentuate the positive! A fine performance).

But in the 5th and earlier, the 2nd, Storgards' approach is becoming clearer: Daringly wide tempi variations trying to explore the music's moodswings and coloristic contrasts more adventurously, on a moderate basic pulse. Courting a loss of momentum sometimes, but concentrating power and intensity into climaxes and codas. Storgards' vision does make sense. He wants to reveal more of Nielsen's expressive range, rather than merely following interpretative precedent.

So what seemed at first a rather grand and noble account of No.2 was more than usually centred on the andante, beautifully done and, I felt, close to the maestro's heart - with a strikingly swift and fluid 2nd group, clarifying the movement's shape as the grandeur of melancholy returned, expressively convincing where the rubato in the Allegro Collerico wasn't quite: very slow into the development and agogically so for the recap, the coda posing grandly in its anger (where I would prefer it bloody furious...).
Still, the flemmatico had a nice light lilt and the finale was off-the-leash from the start, light and hearty but with time for darker thoughts, even a bit of melancholy, itself.

Loveliest of all in The Four Temperaments... the coda to the andante; Nielsen does make a special poetry out of slow-movement codas....

(R3 HDs 320kbps, direct from R3 Homepage radio player. Impressive bass again, and very impressive resolution of vanishing-point pps!)

[BBMmk2]

I'm tempted to get both! :)

[CallMePaul]

I have been to both concerts so far and enjoyed them. I am not too familiar with Nielsen's first 2 symphonies but both seemed to be very good performances; those who criticised the orchestral balance on the radio may have felt differently had they been at the concerts. However, I am on more familiar ground with nos 4 and 5; the fourth symphony received the finest performance I have evber heard and the fifth was one of the best. I will definitely be buying the set. The Bridgewater Hall shop was selling it on Saturday at £29.50, which is £8 more than Presto!

As for Mahler, I was underwhelmed by Roddy Williams, who seemed to have difficulty projecting his voice in the hall, which should not have been a problem for such an experienced baritone with a reduced orchestra. Florian Boesch on the other hand, impressed me enormously and it was very plain why he is regarded in some circles as the finest current performer of German Lieder. Perhaps being a native German speaker helps, buty he also projected his voice well over a larger orchestra than that for the songs Roderick Williams sang.

I have to say that I was very disappointed with the size of the audience for both concerts. On Tuesday the hall was less than a third full and it appeared to be only slightly fuller on Saturday - certainly well under half. Music-making of this quality deserves a much bigger audience! The ticket prices were very reasonable (considerably lower than for the Hallé which generally pulls in bigger audiences) so this cannot be the issue. Did the knowledge that these concerts went out live on R3 keep some people at home. If so they missed 2 great concerts!

[Black Swan]

[


As for Mahler, I was underwhelmed by Roddy Williams, who seemed to have difficulty projecting his voice in the hall, which should not have been a problem for such an experienced baritone with a reduced orchestra. Florian Boesch on the other hand, impressed me enormously and it was very plain why he is regarded in some circles as the finest current performer of German Lieder. Perhaps being a native German speaker helps, buty he also projected his voice well over a larger orchestra than that for the songs Roderick Williams sang.

I have to say that I was very disappointed with the size of the audience for both concerts. On Tuesday the hall was less than a third full and it appeared to be only slightly fuller on Saturday - certainly well under half. Music-making of this quality deserves a much bigger audience! The ticket prices were very reasonable (considerably lower than for the Hallé which generally pulls in bigger audiences) so this cannot be the issue. Did the knowledge that these concerts went out live on R3 keep some people at home. If so they missed 2 great concerts![/QUOTE]

I did not attend the 2 performance but I often find that singers do not project well in the Bridgewater Hall. I don't really understand why this occurs. As for the audience, this is common. I often am disappointed at the attendance. The Bridgewater audience seems to be very traditional and does not turn out often for really excellent concerts.

[richardfinegold]

I had ordered the Gilbert disc of 5&6, for $5 on Amazon. Pretty tame stuff, especially 5/I. No competition for Horenstein, Bernstein, or Blomstedt (I or II).

[mahlerei]

Evenin' all :)

Interesting discussion on Nielsen....