R3 in Concert one-stop shop

[JasonPalmer]

This evenings concert looks good but I fear I will be late to the party as on childcare duty.

[Bryn]

This evenings concert looks good but I fear I will be late to the party as on childcare duty.

That's what BBC sounds is for.

[JasonPalmer]

Indeed but with all this good stuff on 3 you have to find the time, fortunately things have conspired to make me ready for the 730 kick off.

[JasonPalmer]

Good stuff, nice addition by the presenter, I remember seeing Angela Hewitt at wigmore.

Ludwig van Beethoven
Cello Sonata in D major, Op.102`2 (1st mvt)
Performer: Daniel Müller‐Schott. Performer: Angela Hewitt.
BEETHOVEN: CELLO SONATA ETC: MULLER-SCHOTT/HEWITT. HYPERION. 8.

[JasonPalmer]

Tonight's concert looks good.

Music somehow not of this world, but from somewhere else above" - Diaghilev's words on hearing Stravinsky's music for the 1928 ballet Apollo, hinting at the unearthly nature of his first collaboration with choreographer George Balanchine in which the god Apollo shares the stage with three muses. Classical clarity, shape and form characterise this music's spirit. By way of contrast, Angela Hewitt joins the BBC Philharmonic and Sir Andrew Davis as soloist in Mozart's A major Piano Concerto (K 488), true classicism but enjoying an exploration of colour, harmony and melody. We hear music by Stravinsky of a different, more vivacious style, in his orchestrations of piano duets composed for children, his First Suite, first performed only three years before Apollo. Three of its numbers are inspired by national folk dances, a Napolitana, an Española and a Balalaika. The dance-infused keyboard music of eighteenth century France, provided the inspiration for Ravel's "Le tombeau de Couperin" though while writing it, Ravel turned the work into a homage for friends killed in the First World War. Clarity of texture and expression shine through his tributes to friends lost and to music of an earlier age. The "apotheosis of the Viennese Waltz" ends the evening - that was Ravel's own description of "La Valse" - music during which the accepted cultured vision of this highly civilised dance is exploded in an obscene orgy reflecting the fall of the Hapsburg Empire.

[JasonPalmer]

A marvellous introduction.....

[Beresford]

Jason: When you use quotations in your posts, it would be helpful, to me at least, if you could say where they came from.

[Ein Heldenleben]

Jason: When you use quotations in your posts, it would be helpful, to me at least, if you could say where they came from.

I think the blurb for last nights concert must have come from the BBC website . It was doing so well until the hyperbolic and tautological description of La Valse as an “obscene orgy “ . What would a non obscene orgy look like ?

[JasonPalmer]

I missed most of the concert as the wife wanted us to watch a telly program together, looks like lunchtime and afternoon concerts will be my focus in future.

[oddoneout]

I think the blurb for last nights concert must have come from the BBC website . It was doing so well until the hyperbolic and tautological description of La Valse as an “obscene orgy “ . What would a non obscene orgy look like ?

One to which the writer accepted an invitation and therefore approved of?

[Ein Heldenleben]

One to which the writer accepted an invitation and therefore approved of?

La Valse was never choreographed was it ? But at any stage did Diaghilev have an orgy in mind ?

Ravel on the work from Wiki

“While some discover an attempt at parody, indeed caricature, others categorically see a tragic allusion in it – the end of the Second Empire, the situation in Vienna after the war, etc... This dance may seem tragic, like any other emotion... pushed to the extreme. But one should only see in it what the music expresses: an ascending progression of sonority, to which the stage comes along to add light and movement."[2] He also commented, in 1922, that "It doesn't have anything to do with the present situation in Vienna, and it also doesn't have any symbolic meaning in that regard. In the course of La Valse, I did not envision a dance of death or a struggle between life and death. (The year of the choreographic setting, 1855, repudiates such an assumption.)"[3]

[Bryn]

La Valse was never choreographed was it ? But at any stage did Diaghilev have an orgy in mind ?

Ravel on the work from Wiki

“While some discover an attempt at parody, indeed caricature, others categorically see a tragic allusion in it – the end of the Second Empire, the situation in Vienna after the war, etc... This dance may seem tragic, like any other emotion... pushed to the extreme. But one should only see in it what the music expresses: an ascending progression of sonority, to which the stage comes along to add light and movement."[2] He also commented, in 1922, that "It doesn't have anything to do with the present situation in Vienna, and it also doesn't have any symbolic meaning in that regard. In the course of La Valse, I did not envision a dance of death or a struggle between life and death. (The year of the choreographic setting, 1855, repudiates such an assumption.)"[3]

Also from the same Wikipedia item:

The ballet was premiered in Antwerp in October 1926 by the Royal Flemish Opera Ballet, and there were later productions by the Ballets Ida Rubinstein in 1928 and 1931 with choreography by Bronislava Nijinska.[Deborah Mawer, The Ballets of Maurice Ravel: Creation and Interpretation (Ashgate, 2006), 157ff] The music was also used for ballets of the same title, one by George Balanchine, who had made dances for Diaghilev, in 1951 and the other by Frederick Ashton in 1958.

[Ein Heldenleben]

Also from the same Wikipedia item:

I think Diaghilev tried to and gave up because the musical work was a story in itself . It left dance nothing to add.

[french frank]

I think Diaghilev tried to and gave up because the musical work was a story in itself . It left dance nothing to add.

In Roger Nichols' Ravel Remembered he reports Poulenc's description of Diaghilev's reaction when he first heard it, played for him by Ravel and Michelle Meyer: "Ravel, it's a masterpiece ... but it's not a ballet ... it's the portrait of a ballet ... the painting of a ballet." (Poulenc, Moi et mes amis)

[JasonPalmer]

A live concert tonight, perhaps the trick with three is just to tune into concerts you fancy ?