Tippett's 1st Symphony

[ardcarp]

I don't know the piece well, but was very impressed with its performance tonight. Brass of the BBCSSO on cracking form, especially the tuba player!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0833y09

[Alison]

I love the piece. Intelligent conducting as ever from Brabbo. The programme worked very well.

[Colonel Danby]

I love Tippett's symphonies to bits and pieces, except perhaps the final movement of the third, with the denial of Beethoven a little too much to bear. Otherwise, excellent: I've got the complete set with Hickox on Chandos, but also the composer on 2 and 4 on the BBC Music Label, and Sir Georg Solti on Decca too in his last. In fact, my first encounter with the works of Sir Michael and Lady With-it was in a school assembly, when the headmaster played the Processional and Dance from the Suite in D for the Birthday of Prince Charles. I was moved to tears, and rushed out immediately after to get this recording, with the coupling which just happened to be 4. And, as they say, the rest is history. I was present too at the world premiere of 'Rose Lake' with the composer in the audience: there was a small succese de scandal when some idiot shouted out "Visions of Hell" at the end of the piece, and he was escorted from the hall by two burly security guards, while the rest of us were on our feet, wildly cheering. Those were the days...

[Stanley Stewart]

Yes, indeed, a most vibrant performance and good news that it also launches the
BBC Scottish SO's Tippett symphony cycle. Encouraged me to revisit MT's autobiography, Those Twentieth Century Blues, (1991) Hutchinson. Still seems like yesterday when he used to nimbly manage the steps of the RAH after a Proms performance of one of his works!

[EdgeleyRob]

I love the piece. Intelligent conducting as ever from Brabbo. The programme worked very well.

So do I Alison.
Yes the programme was good,thrilling Tippett (Brabbo is right,it's a masterpiece)and Ravel,just the Haydn performance seemed a bit ordinary to me.
Good interval interviews and Tippett snippets too.

[Alison]

Tempted to get the recent Brabbo Elgar disc. The little extras look intriguing.

Carillon
Pleading
Une voix dans le desert
Le drapeau belge

[LeMartinPecheur]

Tippett 1 has deep memories for Mrs LMP as well as for me.

Shortly after we met (2/4/73 to be precise) we heard it together from on high in the Sheldonian Theatre, Oxford, NPO under Del Mar. As we listened I thought her face mirrored my own elation...

...but afterwards I learned that for her it had been agony, not ecstasy

Fortunately, we found common ground soon enough in (e.g.) Schubert D894 and the Ravel quartet

40+ years later she still doesn't like T1 though...

[ardcarp]

Good interval interviews and Tippett snippets too.

Yes, except Andrew, before playing a bit from A Child of Our Time, said it was based on the pattern of Handel's Messiah except it used Spirituals instead of Chorales. (I hadn't noticed any Chorales in Messiah..... not last time I sang it anyway.)

for her it had been agony, not ecstasy

The two are so close......

[EdgeleyRob]

Yes, except Andrew, before playing a bit from A Child of Our Time, said it was based on the pattern of Handel's Messiah except it used Spirituals instead of Chorales. (I hadn't noticed any Chorales in Messiah..... not last time I sang it anyway.)
..

Yes sloppy

[Petrushka]

A Tippett symphonic cycle is very timely right now with him needing to be rescued from the usual neglect that follows a composer's death. I was unable to catch this concert but will make time for it over the weekend.

I was so fortunate to have been present at the UK premiere of the 4th Symphony with Solti and the Chicago SO at the 1978 Proms and thought then, as I do now, that it is a real masterpiece and the best of the cycle. I've since heard Sir Simon Rattle and Sir Colin Davis conduct it.

[antongould]

Listened last night and enjoyed it very much .... must give No.4 a try .......

[BBMmk2]

Thanks for the heads up hear. Again a lot of good things on R3 just of late.

[Pulcinella]

Listened last night and enjoyed it very much .... must give No.4 a try .......

Yes you must!


I wonder how the BBCSSO will do the 'breathing' effects?
Tippett's own recording with the BBCSO, initially a BBC MM CD, now on NMC, uses (for the first time, the notes say) sampled sounds reproduced on a midi-keyboard.
Hickox uses an amplified vocalist.
The notes for the original Solti recording do not mention how they created the effects.

(Apologies for going off topic. I caught the first half of the concert live but not the Tippett: must catch up!)

Edit: Have done, as mentioned on the WAYLTN thread.

[Richard Barrett]

The notes for the original Solti recording do not mention how they created the effects.

That was a recorded voice (ie. equivalent to the sampled sounds used in Tippett's recording). Of all the performances I've heard, Hickox's sounds most effective to me.

The 1st though - that's the one I don't know at all. Must put that right some time although early Tippett generally isn't my cup of tea, the 2nd is the ear;iest piece of his that makes an impact.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

The 1st though - that's the one I don't know at all. Must put that right some time although early Tippett generally isn't my cup of tea, the 2nd is the ear;iest piece of his that makes an impact.

I think from the aspect of "impact" that the very end of the First is something that might well impress itself, Richard. One of the most extraordinary sounds produced in British orchestral writing before 1960.