7 Sonnets of Michelangelo...orchestrated

[ardcarp]

Did anyone hear Colin Matthews' orchestration/slight re-jigging of Britten's 7 Sonnets this evening?

Pretty neat work, but (a) is it true to the spirit of Britten, and (b) did the tenor, Robert Murray, have to work even harder than usual in this new format? He had a strange 'change of gear' in the lower end of his compass. The range demanded by Britten is fairly extreme in these.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0b53kbd

[Nevilevelis]

They are first in a long line of song cycles suited to Pears's technique, but even he found them tricky, as Tony Rolfe Johnson pointed out to me when I studied them with him in Aldeburgh. I found Murray's forthright approach refreshing, if not entirely ideal. He seems happiest in heroic voice (impressive!) but unable to keep the tone even at the bottom and consistently spin a liquid line in piano, although some high quiet phrases were lovely. I'm not sure there was any need to sing that loudly all the time. The orchestration was not heavy.

I share Mathews' enthusiasm for them and I like his orchestration, except for bits he added - horrendous! The genius of the final song is how the unaccompanied vocal line blooms and soars out of the accompaniment until it returns with exquisite effect.

NVV

[ardcarp]

Spot on, NV

[Nevilevelis]

Spot on, NV

[BBMmk2]

I really enjoyed this transcription of the song cycle. It certainly made me have a better understanding of the music than in the original. It could be because of my background in my musical training, brass bands etc. I find that at times I preferred the brass band or whatever transcription than the original!

[Mary Chambers]

Interesting experiment, but I don’t quite get the point of orchestrating them. It removes the intimacy between voice and piano that was surely central to these songs.

It was well performed as far as I could tell, though I don’t really take to Murray’s voice.

[bluestateprommer]

Interesting experiment, but I don’t quite get the point of orchestrating them. It removes the intimacy between voice and piano that was surely central to these songs. It was well performed as far as I could tell, though I don’t really take to Murray’s voice.

One wonders if this was a case of the orchestration of the Michelangelo songs being on someone's docket somewhere, for some (read: any) composer to do. So when Colin Matthews got the request, maybe he thought something like "if I don't do this, someone else will do it much worse". That's just idle speculation on BSP's part, to state the amazingly obvious. That aside, I'm with MC on her "interesting experiment, but" evaluation. FWIW, RM actually sounded like 2 different singers at different points.

The rest of the concert was good. I don't rate JW that much as a conductor of orchestral repertoire, as he doesn't have much personality there (gently alluded to in the RVW 5 thread, which reminds me that I need to get to it before the 30-day deadline), or anywhere else. The one, perhaps only, advantage, though, of not having much personality as an interpreter is that he doesn't get in the way of the music, and the music comes through without many "tricks". That was the case here, with the soloists in Quiet City and CT in the Bernstein especially doing well.