LPO Wed 12th at 7.30

[Petrushka]

Now let's see Bernard Haitink back at the RFH with the London Philharmonic !!

Yes please! Wholeheartedly agree. I wonder if the LPO have tried...? Should any member of the LPO board be reading this (Laurie Watt?) perhaps they will take the hint.

[Hornspieler]

The programme I've seen says Part 1 is a work by Gérard Grisey: Quatre chants pour franchir le seuil, which isn't a "pick and mix assortment". Has the programme been changed?

No.

That was my little ploy to arouse a little pre-performance interest in this concert.

Seems to have worked, doesn't it?

HS

[BBMmk2]

Yes please! Wholeheartedly agree. I wonder if the LPO have tried...? Should any member of the LPO board be reading this (Laurie Watt?) perhaps they will take the hint.

I could put feelers out?

[Petrushka]

At last! A conductor who gets the tempi exactly right for both scherzo and adagietto in Mahler 5. Mahler feared that the scherzo would be played too fast and it usually is but tonight it felt just right. As for the famous adagietto it became the love-song it is and not the Death in Venice funeral dirge so often heard.

Safely stored on my hard-drive, I will be keeping this one.

[Alison]

A deep, dark and ultimately exhilarating Mahler 5. Certainly not the easiest of listens and to be reassessed when feeling less fatigued.
Not sure about the engineering tonight: not a very coherent soundstage ? Or so it seemed on my smallish bedroom system.

[Nick Armstrong]

At last! A conductor who gets the tempi exactly right for both scherzo and adagietto in Mahler 5. Mahler feared that the scherzo would be played too fast and it usually is but tonight it felt just right. As for the famous adagietto it became the love-song it is and not the Death in Venice funeral dirge so often heard.

Safely stored on my hard-drive, I will be keeping this one.

Moi aussi. I was only home in time to hear the last part, sounded pretty fine to me

[Petrushka]

A deep, dark and ultimately exhilarating Mahler 5. Certainly not the easiest of listens and to be reassessed when feeling less fatigued.
Not sure about the engineering tonight: not a very coherent soundstage ?

Re the engineering, I had to bump up the volume considerably to bring the sound into proper focus (listening via Freeview connected to my hi-fi) but once I'd found the right level it sounded pretty good. Know what you mean about fatigue. It's been a long day in the office, a dark, cold train journey home, a quick meal and straight to Po3 - and it's practically bedtime again!

[jayne lee wilson]

A strange and uneven evening, just about worth persevering with for an ultimately satsifying conclusion to the Mahler 5, if not quite as blazingly triumphant as I would like (and so rarely experience)...

Part One of the Mahler (i-ii) was alarmingly slipshod, marred by too many approximations of both pitch and rhythm, loss of definition in quicker passages - it was simply not tight enough. An under-rehearsed feel. (And it always seems a mistake to pause for so long before plunging into the sturmisch bewegt).
After a prolonged tune-up before Part 2 (the scherzo, which in interview Jurowski interestingly related to the "Animals" movement of the 3rd Symphony) both mood and phrase were in much sharper focus, the waltzes, alpine horncalls and animalistic patterings vividly evoked - what an extraordinarily original creation it is. The adagietto came off well, a true chant d'amour, beautifully paced; apart from a rather odd moment of improvisation from a bassoon at the start of the finale this was mostly a success too, rhythmically buoyant, richly and resonantly voiced, if still ultimately lacking the definitional edge, clarity and dynamic subtlety that lifts a performance from the merely good - even very good - into the category of special experiences.
(Am I alone in finding tuning between movements so distracting? It really does break the spell, especially between scherzo and adagietto of Mahler's 5th...)

Vladimir Jurowski felt the need to provide an introductory talk to the Grisey Quatre Chants Pour Franchir le Seuil; some 15 minutes or more, touching on the 12/12/12 phenomenon amongst other, more musically relevant, commentary. I can't imagine this helped a listener new to the piece though; glowering and lowering like a low grey sky, sometimes sparking with lightning, briefly threatening thunder, the first three songs are atmospheric and poetic in their intimations of mortality; a wordy intro was self-defeating, I felt.
In the last song, "The Death of Humanity", the text describes the storm from Gilgamesh, and the violent eruptions seem to summon up the gibbering imp of the perverse, like Mahler's ape squatting on the gravestones; finally, the Earth is cleansed of human chaos: only natural phenomena, the calm sea, remain... a berceuse for an empty cradle, floating away on the ebb.

The performance was, inevitably, less dramatic or clearcut than the single extant recording (Cambreling/Dubosc on Kairos) but Jurowski balanced the complex array of reduced forces well, and I liked the HDs webcast balance which ensured that the soprano was set back with the orchestra, not too forward in the soundstage. But this is an overwhelming modern masterpiece - how wonderful that Jurowski should present it here tonight. 12 out of 12 out of 12...

[Hornspieler]

A strange and uneven evening, just about worth persevering with for an ultimately satsifying conclusion to the Mahler 5, if not quite as blazingly triumphant as I would like (and so rarely experience)...

Part One of the Mahler (i-ii) was alarmingly slipshod, marred by too many approximations of both pitch and rhythm, loss of definition in quicker passages - it was simply not tight enough. An under-rehearsed feel. (And it always seems a mistake to pause for so long before plunging into the sturmisch bewegt).
After a prolonged tune-up before Part 2 (the scherzo, which in interview Jurowski interestingly related to the "Animals" movement of the 3rd Symphony) both mood and phrase were in much sharper focus, the waltzes, alpine horncalls and animalistic patterings vividly evoked - what an extraordinarily original creation it is. The adagietto came off well, a true chant d'amour, beautifully paced; apart from a rather odd moment of improvisation from a bassoon at the start of the finale this was mostly a success too, rhythmically buoyant, richly and resonantly voiced, if still ultimately lacking the definitional edge, clarity and dynamic subtlety that lifts a performance from the merely good - even very good - into the category of special experiences.
(Am I alone in finding tuning between movements so distracting? It really does break the spell, especially between scherzo and adagietto of Mahler's 5th...)

Vladimir Jurowski felt the need to provide an introductory talk to the Grisey Quatre Chants Pour Franchir le Seuil; some 15 minutes or more, touching on the 12/12/12 phenomenon amongst other, more musically relevant, commentary. I can't imagine this helped a listener new to the piece though; glowering and lowering like a low grey sky, sometimes sparking with lightning, briefly threatening thunder, the first three songs are atmospheric and poetic in their intimations of mortality; a wordy intro was self-defeating, I felt.
In the last song, "The Death of Humanity", the text describes the storm from Gilgamesh, and the violent eruptions seem to summon up the gibbering imp of the perverse, like Mahler's ape squatting on the gravestones; finally, the Earth is cleansed of human chaos: only natural phenomena, the calm sea, remain... a berceuse for an empty cradle, floating away on the ebb.

The performance was, inevitably, less dramatic or clearcut than the single extant recording (Cambreling/Dubosc on Kairos) but Jurowski balanced the complex array of reduced forces well, and I liked the HDs webcast balance which ensured that the soprano was set back with the orchestra, not too forward in the soundstage. But this is an overwhelming modern masterpiece - how wonderful that Jurowski should present it here tonight. 12 out of 12 out of 12...

Message #23:

I agree almost completely about the Mahler. Except that for me, the main interest was in the playing of David Pyatt, which I thought was quite outstanding. Technically speaking, the horn obligato is not a challenge for a competent player - the problems are (a) Waiting to play it (rather like the quoniam in Bach's B minor Mass and coincidentally in the same key) and (b) The length of the piece - you just feel you're never going to come to the end.

I've heard Mahler 5 played a lot better than this and I was disappointed.

Regarding the Grisey:

I turned on at 7.30 and sat frustrated for twenty minutes while Maestro Jurowsky did his stumbling account for the benefit of the audience in the RFH.
I would have thought that he could have done that before the broadcast started or, better still, have it all printed in the Programme Notes.

Not my kind of music, I'm afraid, but I did think that the playing was excellent (I assume they were all playing the right notes )

I have kept the Mahler on record and will listen again. The Grisey will, I'm afraid, will be confined to "Room 101"

HS

[DracoM]

Maestro chatting to audience is very American, but, honestly, at that length and for national radio, he really needs a better script writer. That was an aching ramble.

[Flosshilde]

I turned on at 7.30 and sat frustrated for twenty minutes while Maestro Jurowsky did his stumbling account for the benefit of the audience in the RFH.
I would have thought that he could have done that before the broadcast started or, better still, have it all printed in the Programme Notes.

I didn't hear the introduction (& only caught the end of the piece), but if he's going to do it, why deprive the radio audience of the benefit? They will know as much, or as little, about the piece.

[rauschwerk]

Maestro chatting to audience is very American, but, honestly, at that length and for national radio, he really needs a better script writer. That was an aching ramble.

This neatly encapsulates my reservations about the fashionable idea that all performers in whatever circumstances and whatever their native language, should chat to the audience. Why could the LPO not arrange a pre-concert talk with suitable people (not necessarily the conductor or the composer) to introduce the new work?

[Roehre]

Listened to the Grisey -and the introduction given by the conductor and a bit by the presenter- and I must say that IMO the performance of this devillish score was very good indeed (though not on par with Cambreling/Dubosc). Though knowing the work reasonably well I did appreciate the introductions too, but whether it should be the conductor giving this introduction is another question. IMHO someone else, with more presenting skills (like Graham Johnson), were preferable.

I haven't listened to Mahler 5. There was a time (only some 30- 35 years ago) that a Mahler symphony was a major treat. Now for me they have become a bore.

[Hornspieler]

Message #23:

I have kept the Mahler on record and will listen again. The Grisey will, I'm afraid, will be confined to Paul Merton's "Room 101"

HS

I forgot to mention that for me, the highlight of last nights broadcast was the superb playing of Katarina Wolpe during the interval.

Such effortless musicianship in that Schubert!

[DracoM]

And the Schoenberg, actually.