It's a bit like the Brahms' Third: it doesn't end with a crash-bang-wallop to let the audience know it's time to clap; nor does it have the same sort of dim al niente Tchaikovsky #6 to let the clever clogs in the audience show that they know the work by being the first to burst out with applause.
Elgar: the 2nd Symphony
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Hornspieler
Originally posted by ferneyhoughgeliebte View Post. ..... (and those life-affirming Horn whoops: he wrote them for you, HS! ) and how this opening mood is just lost by the end of the work. So much more than just "commercial (bread-and-butter)" motivation here: it's the whole man himself!
"bread and butter"? Yes, maybe that was a bit of an exaggeration. Let's just say that, after the success of the 1st, he felt that another symphony was due (and that he had a bit more to say)
I first played this work in the RFH with the BBCSO under Malcolm Sargent (1956) but at that time, I was too busy sorting out some of those fast bits to enter into a real appreciation of the work. That came years later.
HS
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Originally posted by ferneyhoughgeliebte View Postdim al niente
Originally posted by Mandryka View PostI'm wondering whether a convincing explanation has ever been given for its underwhelming reception at its premiere (in front of the famous 'stuffed pigs' audience)? It's not like it's a 'difficult' work, or without hummable tunes.....and it's recognisably by the same man who wrote the all-conquering 1st.
But I picked up the cassette of Vernon Handley's wonderful performance (I have a feeling that at some point after going to the live concert, there was a Building a Library about it which prompted the purchase). I got heavily 'into' the slow movement...
And then it gave rise to one of my most memorable musical moments - after a year living and working in Paris, I was in the train about to return to England. I put Elgar 2 into my walkman (yup - it was the 80s). I happened to have a window seat facing back, and as the train pulled away from the station, that wonderful view of Sacré-Coeur rose up above the northern part of the city, with a glowing sunset... and the last movement came to its conclusion. It was a bit of an epiphany for an Englishman returning home after an intense and unforgettable year in Paris.
Hence:
Originally posted by Brassbandmaestro View PostIt seems to me like a requiem, for an end of an era.
pretty much hits the nail on the head in more ways than one, for me"...the isle is full of noises,
Sounds and sweet airs, that give delight and hurt not.
Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments
Will hum about mine ears, and sometime voices..."
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amateur51
Originally posted by Caliban View PostBit harsh. Al speaks very highly of you....
This is an interesting thread. I went to hear it live years ago, being a confirmed fan of No 1 but not knowing No 2 at all. It left me completely cold, it just seemed to be Elgar-sounding rambling.... I don't think it was a bad performance (Bryden Thomson I think).
But I picked up the cassette of Vernon Handley's wonderful performance (I have a feeling that at some point after going to the live concert, there was a Building a Library about it which prompted the purchase). I got heavily 'into' the slow movement...
And then it gave rise to one of my most memorable musical moments - after a year living and working in Paris, I was in the train about to return to England. I put Elgar 2 into my walkman (yup - it was the 80s). I happened to have a window seat facing back, and as the train pulled away from the station, that wonderful view of Sacré-Coeur rose up above the northern part of the city, with a glowing sunset... and the last movement came to its conclusion. It was a bit of an epiphany for an Englishman returning home after an intense and unforgettable year in Paris.
Hence:
pretty much hits the nail on the head in more ways than one, for me
That slow movement is a definite lump-in-the-throat job for me in a good performance. My last such was given by LSO with Sir Colin Davis at the Barbican quite a while ago
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amateur51
Originally posted by Northender View PostOh, I don't know.... I've learned a lot since joining the Forum. Vaughan Williams certainly paid handsome tribute to those 3 Welsh hymn tunes, don't you think?
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Extended Play
Originally posted by Caliban View Post[COLOR="#0000FF"]
...it just seemed to be Elgar-sounding rambling.... I don't think it was a bad performance (Bryden Thomson I think).
The original post has been buzzing in my head for hours. Whatever point Sir Mark Elder was trying to make is becoming more and more elusive to me, and it's rather irritating.
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Originally posted by ferneyhoughgeliebte View PostI also should have added RVW #7, which I think is a vastly under-appreciated and misrepresented masterpiece!
Originally posted by Brassbandmaestro View PostIt seems to me like a requiem, for an end of an era.
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Originally posted by Mandryka View PostI'm wondering whether a convincing explanation has ever been given for its underwhelming reception at its premiere (in front of the famous 'stuffed pigs' audience)?
It's not like it's a 'difficult' work, or without hummable tunes.....and it's recognisably by the same man who wrote the all-conquering 1st.
I can only offer my own experience as a possible explanation.
When I heard the 1st Symphony for the first time (April 1975, Solti recording) it blew my socks off. One of those incredibly thrilling first hearings. By contrast it took me a long, long time to 'get' the 2nd. One also remembers the description of the audience reaction to the first London performance of the 1st Symphony with people standing on chairs cheering. Perhaps EE expected a similar reception and was disappointed when the audience 'sat their like stuffed pigs'."The sound is the handwriting of the conductor" - Bernard Haitink
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Originally posted by ferneyhoughgeliebte View PostIt's a bit like the Brahms' Third: it doesn't end with a crash-bang-wallop to let the audience know it's time to clap; nor does it have the same sort of dim al niente Tchaikovsky #6 to let the clever clogs in the audience show that they know the work by being the first to burst out with applause.
Re the Tchakovsky, I prefer the clever clogs to the morons who clap between the movements - but only just.
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[QUOTE=Caliban;183022This is an interesting thread. I went to hear it live years ago, being a confirmed fan of No 1 but not knowing No 2 at all. It left me completely cold, it just seemed to be Elgar-sounding rambling.... I don't think it was a bad performance (Bryden Thomson I think).
[/QUOTE]
Cali
I always think that the Elgar Symphonies need breathing space - Barbirolli and Thomson suit me fine!
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Elgar's 2nd Symphony would be with me on the 'desert island'. It is the only piece of music which has ever moved me to tears listening to it on the car radio. Whenever I hear it live (as I did recently with the Halle and Mark Elder) the tears always flow during the slow movement, After Bruckner 8, I think it is the finest symphony ever written.
I regularly hear Mark Elder's 'talkettes'. Dvorak's 'Scherzo Capriccioso', Elgar's 'Sospiri', Shostakovich's Symphony No.5, Bax's 'Spring Fire' and a number of other works made all the more enjoyable because of the things he has had to say about them before they were played. I hope he continues to do so.
I still use a walkman. Can't get my head round how to transfer to my MP3 and when I do, all the movements seem to be in the wrong order.
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I tend to agree with Pab here. The initial post was about whether Elgar 2 was a 'great' symphony or (only) the 'greatest' by an Englishman. If Elder's pause before 'by an Englishman' was meant to imply 'merely', it seems rather an odd thing to say before conducting it ('Don't expect too much -- this isn't after all Beethoven, Brahms, Mahler ....'). But it's too easy to make the (to me arguable, and possibly unjustified) equation 'greatest' = 'the one(s) which have had most influence, the most 'advanced''). That may be just a tenet of modernism which, if so, is surely a product of its time, and although we are still living in the shadow of modernism, it seems to me that it's one of the better features of cultural life today that it's no longer accepted as self-evident.
Wonderful thread, this, though!
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