Saturday 26/10/13 - Poulenc, Ravel, Roussel (BBCSO/Minkowski)

[Nick Armstrong]

Ravel’s Mother Goose was interpreted by Minkowski in a lovely, relaxed, dreamy, gentle fashion.

...there was delightful “give & take” between the various solo instruments...

The hunting horns were like miniature instruments, so delicate was their playing. Minkowski’s magic allowed the music to breathe organically....

The whole of the orchestra had bought the dream and played with united restraint and their grace was so Gallic.

The string interlude that leads to the coda moved me to tears.

Reader, I didn’t want the dream to end so I opted out of the robust matter of fact nature of Roussel’s Symphony. I shall catch up later, I hope.

My message to the BBC after this performance is make Marc Minkowski a regular channel-hopper – please get him back early and often!

100% agreement!

[Nick Armstrong]

Three of my French favourites in one concert. The slow movement of the Poulenc transports me to the banks of the Seine on a misty November late afternoon. A better work than the Piano Concerto, I'd suggest; its wistfulness is quintessentially French. Uniquely Poulencesque (sic).

Except the piano concerto first movement transports me to the deck of a yacht in the French Mediterranean on a cloudless June morning, and I think it's just as good!

[mercia]

would it be blasphemous to say I think I prefer the Goose Suite to the full ballet ? In the full ballet you don't get the magical key change from Beast to Garden which for me is the musical equivalent of sinking into a feather bed

this thread has been infected with purple prose

[Nick Armstrong]

would it be blasphemous to say I think I prefer the Goose Suite to the full ballet ? In the full ballet you don't get the magical key change from Beast to Garden which for me is the musical equivalent of sinking into a feather bed

this thread has been infected with purple prose

I was thinking last night how good it was to have that lovely transition; but please don't let me stop you tumbling onto your feather bed, mercs!

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

would it be blasphemous to say I think I prefer the Goose Suite to the full ballet ? In the full ballet you don't get the magical key change from Beast to Garden which for me is the musical equivalent of sinking into a feather bed

this thread has been infected with purple prose

I share your blasphemical opinion and will stand with you as they throw the stones.

Wasn't the Suite the original version (transcribed from the Piano Duet) with the accretions added for the choreographed version?

[Nick Armstrong]

Wasn't the Suite the original version (transcribed from the Piano Duet) with the accretions added for the choreographed version?

[edashtav]

I share your blasphemical opinion and will stand with you as they throw the stones.

Wasn't the Suite the original version (transcribed from the Piano Duet) with the accretions added for the choreographed version?

Yes, the Suite was the original concentrate and the ballet is its dilution. Good choice of word, Ferney. Accretions has a slimy sound, full of extraneous matter.

Sorry, this post is redundant - I hadn't noted Caliban's thumbs up.

[gedsmk]

I share your blasphemical opinion and will stand with you as they throw the stones.

Wasn't the Suite the original version (transcribed from the Piano Duet) with the accretions added for the choreographed version?

I heard the CBSO with Rattle do the "Garden" section as an encore in Boston Symphony Hall in 1991 (I think). It was a "coals to Newcastle" moment because in those days the BSO were thought to have the finest string section in the USA. I can still remember the physical thrill of the final chord in that wondrous acoustic.

[Nick Armstrong]

I heard the CBSO with Rattle do the "Garden" section ..... I can still remember the physical thrill of the final chord

I also heard SR/CBSO perform it, in London (RFH I think so not quite such a wondrous acoustic), but I too remember the visceral effect of that conclusion, whirling, shimmering, glittering percussion and glowing strings... Got to hand it to S'Simon - he got something out of it that most others don't reach, I haven't heard its like since: it's one of those moments one always wants to try and recapture....

[edashtav]

Minkowski got the BBC SO to play the Poulenc 2-Piano Concerto with truly Parisian gay abandon. Shades of! Etc. Exactly the right blend of tongue-in-cheek romance and clownish drama. The young soloists also did well, but were a little too respectful; I wanted more cod-melodramatic operatics - to sauce it up a little, as Sweet Sue might have said.
But they were warmly expressive and brought the 1st movement gamelan-episode off beautifully.

I prefer Poulenc’ Concerto for two pianos to his later one for solo instrument because it’s so cheeky and uproarious. Both works have a wealth of melody but the earlier one is more mercurial, the tail of the trite gets twisted more quickly, ensuring that the devil has the best tunes. I found the orchestral accompaniment provided by the BBC SO was more idiomatic than that of the LPO a few nights before in single concerto. Minkowski ensured that woodwind melodies floated in gracefully and didn’t erupt as if scored by Kurt Weill sharp-edged pen.

The two pianists excelled, I felt, in the slow movement. It was played with grace and affection leaving the orchestra to provide the chortles & snorts that stop the movement from being mere Mozartian pastiche. I enjoyed the manner in which Minkowski layered the balance, ensuring that foreground did not occlude background. Elsewhere, I think, that you were right,Jayne, thye two young soloists could have taken more risks.

The finale was carefree: a short trip in a fast machine around the fairs, circuses and dives of pre-War Paris. As always with Poulenc, there was a sentimental moment at the heart of things, quickly subsumed in the tide of humanity out for good time.

Yes, a gorgeous, sensuous, smoothly-contoured Mother Goose. I think those prominent winds were emphasised by Minkowski, with a magically apt sharpness and sparkle.

In the Roussel 3rd, Minkowski produced a cooler and more percussive sonority - it didn't sound like Ravel or Poulenc - good. Terrific weight and impact in the allegro vivo but with space to breathe and relax in the lyrical episodes, not too relentless. Impressive textural clarity again. The BBCSO strings were both elegant and ardent as they sung out the adagio, and the tempi changes were well judged with a brilliant colorific contrast in the fast central episode; but the trumpets failed to cut through and crown the climax here, only managing this in the 2nd climax before the movement's end. The brasses were strikingly sharp, lean, almost nasal - a properly French sound, not too full or rounded.

Minor slips aside the last two movements again balanced weight with clarity, and the violin solo, reflecting upon the motto at the finale's heart, was beautifully done; but Minkowski didn't create quite enough tension as we approached the coda, and rushed one or two phrases within it, slightly lessening its impact.

An excellent analysis with some depth, Jayne, with which I agree.

Albert Roussel’s music is sturdy, logical, and well-constructed. I admire his 3rd Symphony, but I hadn’t realised before this decent performance how much Prokofiev Albert had absorbed in the 1920s. Had Petroc announced that the 3rd Symphony, left in sketch form by its composer, had been realised by Prokofiev, I might have believed him!

In concert-planning I found it to be a contrast to the earlier Poulenc rather than complementary to it, but I did feel a little link in the finale when the main theme is surprisingly “cheap” by Roussel’s standards and might be characterised as by Poulenc out of Berlioz.

I didn’t feel that Minkowski’s performance of this symphony was quite on a par with what had gone earlier. Perhaps, rehearsal time had been a bit tight. One or two gear changes were not completed smoothly. Nevertheless, an adequate performance to end an enterprising programme delivered with love and understanding. I thought the BBC SO had been away on a tour of the Middle & Far East. After these performances, I wondered if that some of them had jumped ship in Paris to join a Gallic boot camp run by Marc Minkowski.

[gedsmk]

I also heard SR/CBSO perform it, in London (RFH I think so not quite such a wondrous acoustic), but I too remember the visceral effect of that conclusion, whirling, shimmering, glittering percussion and glowing strings... Got to hand it to S'Simon - he got something out of it that most others don't reach, I haven't heard its like since: it's one of those moments one always wants to try and recapture....

Yes, and talking of recapturing, the BBC iplayer now cannot reproduce classical music without adding a cellophane crackling during complex moments. Try 1 hr 46 minutes of the concert on listen again with headphones and you hear it distinctly. This problem has been prevalent for several weeks, unfortunately, so the bbc don't seem to care...

[Serial_Apologist]

I hadn’t realised before this decent performance how much Prokofiev Albert had absorbed in the 1920s.

Funny you should say that; I'm pretty sure the original influence went the other way, from having listened to the Suite Op 14 of 1909: a work which looks forward to the Prokofiev and the Roussel of the 1920s and way beyond, beyond the impressionism of "Le Festin" of 1912:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jpbDcfAKIAk

The modernism and independence of these pieces for a French composer at that point in time is striking.

[edashtav]

Funny you should say that; I'm pretty sure the original influence went the other way, from having listened to the Suite Op 14 of 1909: a work which looks forward to the Prokofiev and the Roussel of the 1920s and way beyond, beyond the impressionism of "Le Festin" of 1912:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jpbDcfAKIAk

The modernism and independence of these pieces for a French composer at that point in time is striking.

My word - that's an interesting thought, S-A - I must investigate further - I had assumed that Roussel's "modernism" was post WWI, that's to say succeeded his impressionist phase.

[Maclintick]

I heard the CBSO with Rattle do the "Garden" section as an encore in Boston Symphony Hall in 1991 (I think). It was a "coals to Newcastle" moment because in those days the BSO were thought to have the finest string section in the USA. I can still remember the physical thrill of the final chord in that wondrous acoustic.

The BSO returned the compliment in one of their all-too-infrequent appearances this side of the pond in at the Proms in 2001, when they gave the complete "Daphnis" under Haitink, with the Tanglewood chorus. The Boston Symphony were THE French orchestra for many years under Charles Munch, of course - a pedigree going back to the early 20th-cent & Pierre Monteux.The miraculous refinement of their playing under BH at that Prom has stayed with me ever since.

[bluestateprommer]

would it be blasphemous to say I think I prefer the Goose Suite to the full ballet ? In the full ballet you don't get the magical key change from Beast to Garden which for me is the musical equivalent of sinking into a feather bed

No, not blasphemous, but an opinion where you won't necessarily get universal approbation (or disagreement). I consider both forms of Ma mere l'oye, the suite and the expanded ballet, to be marvelous each in its own right. I respectfully disagree with the previous poster who considered the expanded ballet a "dilution". The longer version is no such thing, and is entirely unworthy of such a diminutive description. I accept each version on its own terms, and would actually be first in line if the expanded version were ever to be programmed locally, which unfortunately looks to be once in a blue moon, as full performances at least on this side of the pond of the expanded version lag far behind the suite version.

However, I will happily agree that the BBC SO should engage Marc Minkowski regularly. I remember (even this long after the event) that MM mentioned that he had guested with the BBC SO twice prior, which obviously made this concert his 3rd guest appearance with them. I don't doubt, based on the quality of this concert, that a 4th guest appearance will be in the works down the line.