Mozart and Mahler live tonight from the Barbican

[salymap]

Of course some artists manage to retain good looks into maturity, combined with marvellous playing. Paul Lewis for example

[jayne lee wilson]

Totally disagree with all this, as I made clear last week, I thought it was a wonderful concert in which the orchestra played warmly, precisely and powerfully throughout. In the D minor Mozart, for me, the tragedy was palpable. The soloist was fine for me too, slight memory lapse aside.
It would be useful to know how you listened to it (live in the hall, iPlayer, HDs, FM etc...)

What on earth is "bad-Brahms phrasing"?
What does "clumsiness of articulation (not the playing exactly)" mean?
How was (or is) the 3rd movement "hardly troubled by modernist visions"? Do you mean the music or the performance?
What is a "plain nightmare"? As distinct from...?

Perhaps you just didn't feel like listening that night?

Yes, the Mahler looked up distinctly in the third movement, where the clumsiness of the articulation (not the playing exactly) fitted well with a plain nightmare vision, hardly troubled by modernist visions but quite exhilarating all the same. The fourth movement was voiced with great care, and again the finale had an uncomplicated exuberance that remained untroubled by its symphonic credentials or lack thereof (shades of concerto grosso). It ended a far cry from the lumpy, bad-Brahms phrasing of the first movement, let alone that grotesque travesty of the Mozart in the first half. Wasn't that unexpected, and awful? I'd never heard of the pianist, and arrived with no expectations beyond a professional and intelligent standard of Mozart playing that wasn't really met. Never mind the memory lapse; even the gabbled tempi could have been integrated into a dramatic vision of the piece, but this was porcelain Mozart, banal and untroubled by any sense of its D minor character. I wonder what DG think they have signed?

[John Skelton]

Transcriptions for concert grand and symphony orchestra of Mozart fortepiano concertos don't generally work very well. IMHO.

[jayne lee wilson]

Ah but which fortepiano, made by whom, in which year...? Authentic or repro? Usw, usw...

Usually I would agree with you JS, I've come largely to prefer HIPS in music before Beethoven (and often in LVB's music too); some of the Kolner Akademie/Willems/Brautigam Mozart Concerto series on BIS is very much to my taste, but on this Barbican BBCSO occasion, via HDs at least, the Orchestra came across very well, lithe, lively and expressive. Soloist - evidently dividing the listeners and critics...

Transcriptions for concert grand and symphony orchestra of Mozart fortepiano concertos don't generally work very well. IMHO.

[John Skelton]

Ah but which fortepiano, made by whom, in which year...? Authentic or repro? Usw, usw...

Very fair questions, Jayne . And the size of the hall is critical, too, of course. Not much point to a fortepiano, Schantz or Walter in the Barbican. I've liked what I've heard of Brautigam etc. but this https://secure.mdt.co.uk/MDTSite/pag...&prod=ACC24265 looks really interesting. I've long thought that the habit of playing the concertos with something like a 'period' chamber orchestra is wrong (or 'wrong' I suppose). Given that Mozart was hiring out of his own pocket I doubt he would have had multiple string desks and in any case this must balance with the fortepiano so much better. Schoonderwoerd / Cristofori's Beethoven concertos on Alpha are something special.

[Bryn]

Very fair questions, Jayne . And the size of the hall is critical, too, of course. Not much point to a fortepiano, Schantz or Walter in the Barbican. I've liked what I've heard of Brautigam etc. but this https://secure.mdt.co.uk/MDTSite/pag...&prod=ACC24265 looks really interesting. I've long thought that the habit of playing the concertos with something like a 'period' chamber orchestra is wrong (or 'wrong' I suppose). Given that Mozart was hiring out of his own pocket I doubt he would have had multiple string desks and in any case this must balance with the fortepiano so much better. Schoonderwoerd / Cristofori's Beethoven concertos on Alpha are something special.

Thanks for the alert re. the MOZART Piano Concertos KV. 466 & KV 467 (Arthur Schoonderwoerd). I have just 'pre-ordered' the disc from hmv.com (£8.99 including p&p). I also note that the Schoonderwoerd CD of Beethoven's 3rd and '6th' (Op. 61a) concertos is on offer at MDT:

http://www.mdt.co.uk/MDTSite/product//ALPHA122.htm

That's rather less than I paid at the time of its release.

[euthynicus]

It would be useful to know how you listened to it (live in the hall, iPlayer, HDs, FM etc...)

I heard it in the hall, middle of the stalls.

Perhaps you just didn't feel like listening that night?

No, I did. And as I said, I enjoyed the Mahler. And I'm pleased you enjoyed the Mozart.

What on earth is "bad-Brahms phrasing"?

Just an off-hand contraction for the kind of Romantic phrasing turned lumpy exemplified by the tenor-horn in her presentation of the opening theme, and its subsequent development, at least until the intermezzo passage. Is that theme halting and lugubrious, or should it flower with relatively conventional legato freedom?

What does "clumsiness of articulation (not the playing exactly)" mean?
How was (or is) the 3rd movement "hardly troubled by modernist visions"? Do you mean the music or the performance?
What is a "plain nightmare"? As distinct from...?

That is, the playing itself was not inaccurate – indeed, following with the score, I found it quite exact – but as his his wont, JB does not scintillate in this music: proto-modernist premonitions are not for him, as they are for commentators such as Adorno or conductors such as Metzmacher and Boulez. The dynamic variation, which lends such bite and indeed nightmarish contours to the readings of Abbado and Rattle (and to a lesser extent others, say Volkov and Noseda), was absent, not only from the Scherzo but most evidently at that point. At the same time, it's not enough to say that JB 'merely' presents the notes, not least because this is no more nor less than any conductor would probably claim. In music which is intrinsically hedged about with irony and ambiguity, straightforward presentations are unlikely not to say impossible. Plainness happens to be one word which I'd use about JB's interpretative standpoint, and not just about Mahler. Considering iii again there can, for example, be a La-Valse like distortion of pre-existing forms such as Scherzo and Valse; but I didn't hear echoes of those forms on Friday but rather more of a narrative development, as though the movement had a subtext like the comparable movement in the Second.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

I enjoyed the Mahler.

...

the playing itself was not inaccurate – indeed, following with the score, I found it quite exact – but as his his wont, JB does not scintillate in this music: proto-modernist premonitions are not for him, as they are for commentators such as Adorno or conductors such as Metzmacher and Boulez. The dynamic variation, which lends such bite and indeed nightmarish contours to the readings of Abbado and Rattle (and to a lesser extent others, say Volkov and Noseda), was absent, not only from the Scherzo but most evidently at that point. At the same time, it's not enough to say that JB 'merely' presents the notes, not least because this is no more nor less than any conductor would probably claim. In music which is intrinsically hedged about with irony and ambiguity, straightforward presentations are unlikely not to say impossible. Plainness happens to be one word which I'd use about JB's interpretative standpoint, and not just about Mahler. Considering iii again there can, for example, be a La-Valse like distortion of pre-existing forms such as Scherzo and Valse; but I didn't hear echoes of those forms on Friday but rather more of a narrative development, as though the movement had a subtext like the comparable movement in the Second.

Blimey! How do you respond to performances you don't enjoy, euthy?

All I can say is that I just didn't hear the performance you did; what I heard was an explosive, Hoffmannesque performance that dared take risks but kept its ear on the celebratory conclusions that many other performances don't succeed in realizing because they're too caught up in momentary effects. My "benchmarks" are Horenstein, Bernstein and Boulez and I thought this performance held its own in that august company.

Sorry.

Best Wishes.

[3rd Viennese School]

That performance of Mahler 7 was straight out the box!
There was even clapping in the first mvt, but let the audience off this one, they were probably astounded!

Even the Discovering Music was good for a 20 minute programme.

well done all!

3VS

[Nick Armstrong]

That performance of Mahler 7 was straight out the box!

Meaning....? Outside the box i.e. very individual? or just out of the box i.e. not tinkered around with?

I'm going to have to try and hear this performance, given all the controversy...

Mahler 7 is a favourite of mine, it has a dark, glittering glamour all its own - it always seems to inhabit a different space than his others - more ironic, almost like Mahler delivering a parody of a Mahler symphony, everything just pushed to extremes, as if we were seeing the 5th Symphony in a series of distorting mirrors... Love it!

[jayne lee wilson]

Thankyou for taking time to elaborate, Euthynicus.

One is left to wonder if, as can often happen with Proms relays, listeners at home got the best of this concert (to judge from other reponses, very much the best!) The Mozart was certainly balanced more closely than some Barbican efforts, greatly to the orchestra's benefit in the Mozart; this is also why the soloist's LVB cadenzas seemed so very powerful.

I would add to those Mahler 7ths you mention the earlier Bernstein with the NYPO - but ONLY in the latest DSD remaster which utterly transforms the recording, away from the strange patina of dullness which falls across the Bernstein Century edition. I don't always enjoy his Mahler (and apart from 5 & 6 almost none of the later set) but his earlier NY performances of 6 & 7 in refurbished sound are among the best, precisely because they do "tell the tale" - they relay that strange Mahlerian narrative so vividly ("Hoffmanesque" indeed, fhg, and you're spot-on about the "celebratory conclusions" too.).

I haven't heard all Boulez' VPO/Cleveland Mahler but it always seemed to me, going back as far as his BBCSO concerts in the 70s, that the "narrative" was exactly what he left out - his readings struck me as very flat and colourless, however transparently balanced. I recall Hans Keller commenting that "Boulez cannot phrase" going on to say that his own music, "remarkable in other respects" didn't stand in need of phrasing anyway!

I heard it in the hall, middle of the stalls.

No, I did. And as I said, I enjoyed the Mahler. And I'm pleased you enjoyed the Mozart.


Just an off-hand contraction for the kind of Romantic phrasing turned lumpy exemplified by the tenor-horn in her presentation of the opening theme, and its subsequent development, at least until the intermezzo passage. Is that theme halting and lugubrious, or should it flower with relatively conventional legato freedom?



That is, the playing itself was not inaccurate – indeed, following with the score, I found it quite exact – but as his his wont, JB does not scintillate in this music: proto-modernist premonitions are not for him, as they are for commentators such as Adorno or conductors such as Metzmacher and Boulez. The dynamic variation, which lends such bite and indeed nightmarish contours to the readings of Abbado and Rattle (and to a lesser extent others, say Volkov and Noseda), was absent, not only from the Scherzo but most evidently at that point. At the same time, it's not enough to say that JB 'merely' presents the notes, not least because this is no more nor less than any conductor would probably claim. In music which is intrinsically hedged about with irony and ambiguity, straightforward presentations are unlikely not to say impossible. Plainness happens to be one word which I'd use about JB's interpretative standpoint, and not just about Mahler. Considering iii again there can, for example, be a La-Valse like distortion of pre-existing forms such as Scherzo and Valse; but I didn't hear echoes of those forms on Friday but rather more of a narrative development, as though the movement had a subtext like the comparable movement in the Second.

[jayne lee wilson]

Very fair questions, Jayne . And the size of the hall is critical, too, of course. Not much point to a fortepiano, Schantz or Walter in the Barbican. I've liked what I've heard of Brautigam etc. but this https://secure.mdt.co.uk/MDTSite/pag...g=∏=ACC24265 looks really interesting. I've long thought that the habit of playing the concertos with something like a 'period' chamber orchestra is wrong (or 'wrong' I suppose). Given that Mozart was hiring out of his own pocket I doubt he would have had multiple string desks and in any case this must balance with the fortepiano so much better. Schoonderwoerd / Cristofori's Beethoven concertos on Alpha are something special.

I LOVE that Schoonderwoerd/Cristofori Beethoven! I could listen to no other for weeks after getting it. Performances of stunning musicality, impact and definition - gorgeously presented on Alpha... I hope they take their engineers with them to Accent...

That Beethoven cycle never really got its due apart from IRR reviews, did it? Quite wonderful.

[3rd Viennese School]

" straight out the box" = fantastic!

A catchphrase I adopted after its overuse at an AutoCAD seminar on HMS Belfast on the River Thames.

First time I heard Mahler 7 was on a train trip to West Wales. It lasted all the way to Swansea.

Exhausting to some, I followed this up with my then war horse Mahler 6 (still is!) all the way to Milford Haven.

3VS

[remdataram]

I LOVE that Schoonderwoerd/Cristofori Beethoven! I could listen to no other for weeks after getting it. Performances of stunning musicality, impact and definition - gorgeously presented on Alpha... I hope they take their engineers with them to Accent...

That Beethoven cycle never really got its due apart from IRR reviews, did it? Quite wonderful.

Speaking of IRR, does anyone know what has happened to the March edition?

[amateur51]

Speaking of IRR, does anyone know what has happened to the March edition?

Mine arrived quite a while ago, remdataram - José Serebrier adorning the cover.

If you're a subscriber, give them a ring