Andrew Manze conducts the BBCSSO tonight 8th March at 19.30

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Yes, but perhaps not to play "pp" as "mf"?

Nor to play "pp" as "pppp"?

[jayne lee wilson]

"pppp"...? Excellent idea! Now that really WOULD be observing the spirit and not the letter.

Nor to play "pp" as "pppp"?

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

"pppp"...? Excellent idea! Now that really WOULD be observing the spirit and not the letter.

???????

It would appear that I have a more naïve respect for RVW's competence as a composer than you do, Jayne; I think he was perfectly capable of writing "pppp" if that had been true to "the spirit" of what his Music was supposed to communicate. As it is, I prefer to hear the entries; the notes that he carefully selected as representing what the spirit actually might be. You also referred to Mahler in #45, which is, I think, the crux of our divergence of views: I don't think the aesthetics of a composer for whose Music RVW had a very low opinion (poor chap!) are adaptable to RVW's Music.

(I was also puzzled by your two references to "audience restlessness" in #45. Was there any evidence of this in the Manze concert?)

Best Wishes.

[jayne lee wilson]

I wasn't referring to Mahler's "aesthetics" but to his practical experience as a conductor; i.e. to play a slow movement faster, or a very quiet movement louder, is to imply some unease over its true character which almost certainly won't encourage an audience to attend to it more closely. I judge the "spirit" of the 6th's epilogue both from the "senza espressivo" and "senza crescendo" markings, and - of course - from my own doubtless imperfect musical intuition about what a composer might want to follow three of the most violent, concisely eventful movements in symphonic history with: their complete opposite.

If you "prefer to hear the entries" I think you're taking a magnifying glass to the bark and missing the forest; for me, the poetic truth of the movement - it's bleakness, emptiness and utter lack of the usual human expressions of elegy and tragedy - is lost if it's too loud, or even loud at all. Which weakens the effect of an extraordinarily original utterance.

When Handley did it live at the RLPO, it was deathly quiet - I'm pleased to say that the audience matched its concentration.

???????

It would appear that I have a more naïve respect for RVW's competence as a composer than you do, Jayne; I think he was perfectly capable of writing "pppp" if that had been true to "the spirit" of what his Music was supposed to communicate. As it is, I prefer to hear the entries; the notes that he carefully selected as representing what the spirit actually might be. You also referred to Mahler in #45, which is, I think, the crux of our divergence of views: I don't think the aesthetics of a composer for whose Music RVW had a very low opinion (poor chap!) are adaptable to RVW's Music.

(I was also puzzled by your two references to "audience restlessness" in #45. Was there any evidence of this in the Manze concert?)

Best Wishes.

[Nick Armstrong]

I've just finished listening to this concert on the i-Player and wish to add my own applause for the RVW 6 to everyone else's. Absolute identification with the work from the very opening (which at first I thought a little too fast, but which gradually won me over) - the best performance of the work I can remember

Have only had time to iPlayer the first movement so far, but found it completely riveting, I loved the tempo and the clarity of the counterpoint. I would love to have the performance in permanent form... Might this turn up on the front of a BBC Music Magazine?

[jayne lee wilson]

Taking out the still remarkable (definitive! or rather, "definitive"...) 1953 Boult recording of No.6, I - of course - stumbled across the speech he gave to Boult and the Orchestra, thanking them "especially" for the "wonderful performance of the finale epilogue", going on to say "it was a wonderful feat of endurance to play an absolute pianissimo for 3 hours on end". Then "not merely not playing loud, but a positive, sensitive pianissimo full of meaning, and tension."

Trust VW to convey it all in a few gentlemanly words.

And the performance itself? One of the quietest, most tonally spare, on record, often subjectively below the level of the tape hiss.
Senza espressivo and senza crescendo indeed.

Of COURSE other conductors can conceive it differently, but here at least is a contribution from the horse's mouth.
And I don't feel there's that much leeway for different interpretations at this point, in this symphony.

[salymap]

Jayne, would that be my wonderful LSO10" LP BLP1001 where Sir Adrian gives no 6 his all. Several people have explained to me that Boult re-recorded no 6 with the LSO with the revised scherzo[?] because the LPO wasn't available as in his earlier recording?
Stupidly I didn't write down the story of this one-off recording but I treasure it. Wonderful 'sleeve/cover' too.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Senza espressivo and senza crescendo indeed.

Jayne, this marking doesn't appear in the score. Nowhere in the "Epilogue" is there an instruction to play "without expression": not once!

"An absolute ... positive, sensitive pianissimo" means precisely that: NOT ppp or pppp, but a true pp as unexaggerated as the Moderato tempo marking. RVW knew what ppp meant and when to use it: it frequently occurs in the 4th and 5th Symphonies. The 6th never goes louder than ff or quieter than pp - except for one bar in one part: the Clarinet in the first bar of the Epilogue, surely showing that, had he wanted the whole orchestra to be quieter than pp he could easily have written this. Instead, the entire work demonstrates the power of restraint: the explosive ffs pitted against the eerie pps throughout the work.

Just as E minor is pitted against tonal centres a semitone away: f minor in the first bar, Eb major in the last. Just as the first three notes of the Epilogue are exactly the same as the first three notes of the First movement. Just as the quasi-fugal entries of the Epilogue (when you can hear them!) begin on F, then B (three bars later), B again (bar 9) and Bb (bar 13): a tritone followed by a semitone, just as the Scherzo had begun (and, indeed, ended in inversion on the solo clarinet). These are essential matters; they are what makes the work such an overwhelming Symphonic experience. And this is why disregarding them to focus on some imagined programme so infuriated the composer.

Of COURSE other conductors can conceive it differently

But Manze didn't! He didn't ignore a senza espressivo marking that doesn't exist in the score. He did realize a pp that does. Had he paid as close attention to the senza cresc markings, this would have been an unsurpassable performance of one of humanity's greatest statements about itself.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Jayne, would that be my wonderful LSO10" LP BLP1001 where Sir Adrian gives no 6 his all. Several people have explained to me that Boult re-recorded no 6 with the LSO with the revised scherzo[?] because the LPO wasn't available as in his earlier recording?
Stupidly I didn't write down the story of this one-off recording but I treasure it. Wonderful 'sleeve/cover' too.

Sals; Boult recorded RVW 6th three times, all for HMV.

The first was the one you have, originally issued as 78s in 1949. When RVW revised the scherzo, this was also recorded and issued separately. When this recording was re-released as a 10" LP, the original scherzo wasn't included. CD re-issues have included both versions of the Scherzo. As far as I can discover, only the LSO was involved in this version.

The second was the one Jayne referred to: recorded for LP with the LPO in 1954 in the presence of the composer.

The last was recorded in 1967 in stereo with the (New) Philharmonia Orchestra.

Best Wishes.

[Bryn]

Sals; Boult recorded RVW 6th three times, all for HMV.

The first was the one you have, originally issued as 78s in 1949. When RVW revised the scherzo, this was also recorded and issued separately. When this recording was re-released as a 10" LP, the original scherzo wasn't included. CD re-issues have included both versions of the Scherzo. As far as I can discover, only the LSO was involved in this version.

The second was the one Jayne referred to: recorded for LP with the LPO in 1954 in the presence of the composer.

The last was recorded in 1967 in stereo with the (New) Philharmonia Orchestra.

Best Wishes.

Hmm. If they were al recorded for HMV, why was the 1954 LPO recording issued by Decca?

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Hmm. If they were al recorded for HMV, why was the 1954 LPO recording issued by Decca?

An act of charity?

... quite correct; the magnificent LPO recording was part of DECCA's "complete" RVW Symphony cycle. (Not quite "complete": the Ninth was recorded by EVEREST.)

[salymap]

Thanks Ferney, the sleee of BLP1001 is the most regal thing imaginable. There are two Royal Coats of Arms in the top corners, in memory of the recently departed George VI and Queen Mary with the information that HMV were the 'Suppliers of Gramophones, Records, Radio and Television Apparatus to...' Somehow it is of its time, when HMV ruled supreme and everyone had a record player of three inch thick real wood in their living room/lounge.

[Bryn]

An act of charity?

... quite correct; the magnificent LPO recording was part of DECCA's "complete" RVW Symphony cycle. (Not quite "complete": the Ninth was recorded by EVEREST.)

And of the Decca recordings, only that of the 8th, made in September 1956, was in stereo. The Ace of Clubs(?) reissue of the 6th was my fist ever RVW LP.

[jayne lee wilson]

Goodness.

I have to defer to your vastly greater analytical understanding here. If I tried to follow all those harmonic changes whilst listening I'd never respond to a note.

I tried to quote the relevant parts of VW's speech as fully as possible, but what strikes me about it is how much he acclaimed a performance which could scarcely be any quieter, even if it were marked "pppp". Why otherwise would he refer to an "absolute pianissimo"?(These "p's" aren't after all, measurable dB levels). Interestingly, the earliest reviews of the 1949 recording referred to the failure to maintain a "consistent pianissimo" throughout as its only fault, saying that the woodwind near the close were "distractingly near".
I intuit from that (and actually listening to the 1949/1953 recordings of course!) why VW took such pleasure in Boult's 2nd recording achieving exactly what he seems to have had in mind.

I don't know if that "senza espressivo" is simply a mistake which gets copied into programme notes and wikipedia - I wonder if it was in some other edition of a score? Never mind, the spirit not the letter, right? We just have to intuit it by listening a bit more.

I did listen again to Manze's fine performance. I began to warm to the epilogue a little more, so transparent and beautifully phrased (too beautifully?) as it was. But when the winds and lower pitches began to enter I thought again, "this is WAY too loud!" - (Trying my best not to listen to confirm my own views of course....)
Perhaps Manze is still learning how to play the hall - a smallish shoebox will have very good projection, just the thing for pushing the winds at you in subtler moments.

So there you have it... Handley's RLPO recording in the Liverpool hall is quiet enough for Myrtle Street Traffic to be audible, and I could even hear it during the live performance; for me, this only added to the epilogue's unique effect.

Jayne, this marking doesn't appear in the score. Nowhere in the "Epilogue" is there an instruction to play "without expression": not once!

"An absolute ... positive, sensitive pianissimo" means precisely that: NOT ppp or pppp, but a true pp as unexaggerated as the Moderato tempo marking. RVW knew what ppp meant and when to use it: it frequently occurs in the 4th and 5th Symphonies. The 6th never goes louder than ff or quieter than pp - except for one bar in one part: the Clarinet in the first bar of the Epilogue, surely showing that, had he wanted the whole orchestra to be quieter than pp he could easily have written this. Instead, the entire work demonstrates the power of restraint: the explosive ffs pitted against the eerie pps throughout the work.

Just as E minor is pitted against tonal centres a semitone away: f minor in the first bar, Eb major in the last. Just as the first three notes of the Epilogue are exactly the same as the first three notes of the First movement. Just as the quasi-fugal entries of the Epilogue (when you can hear them!) begin on F, then B (three bars later), B again (bar 9) and Bb (bar 13): a tritone followed by a semitone, just as the Scherzo had begun (and, indeed, ended in inversion on the solo clarinet). These are essential matters; they are what makes the work such an overwhelming Symphonic experience. And this is why disregarding them to focus on some imagined programme so infuriated the composer.


But Manze didn't! He didn't ignore a senza espressivo marking that doesn't exist in the score. He did realize a pp that does. Had he paid as close attention to the senza cresc markings, this would have been an unsurpassable performance of one of humanity's greatest statements about itself.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

but what strikes me about it is how much he acclaimed a performance which could scarcely be any quieter, even if it were marked "pppp". Why otherwise would he refer to an "absolute pianissimo"?(These "p's" aren't after all, measurable dB levels). Interestingly, the earliest reviews of the 1949 recording referred to the failure to maintain a "consistent pianissimo" throughout as its only fault, saying that the woodwind near the close were "distractingly near".
I intuit from that (and actually listening to the 1949/1953 recordings of course!) why VW took such pleasure in Boult's 2nd recording achieving exactly what he seems to have had in mind.

Yes; it strikes me, too. Maybe his hearing aid was faulty? Maybe he wanted to be polite to the players after all their efforts? Or maybe he'd grown to prefer the work played that quietly? After all, it is such strange Music - nothing really like it (Holst's Neptune/Ode on a Grecian Urn; the finale of Bartok's Sixth Quartet are sort-of similar, but the differences are as telling as the similarities) - so perhaps as he wrote the score he was more restrained in his expectations of how the Music would work?

Perhaps Manze is still learning how to play the hall - a smallish shoebox will have very good projection, just the thing for pushing the winds at you in subtler moments.

Very possibly.

Thanks for your response.