BBC PO Strauss season

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

A woman started making, er, rude noises toward the stage, saying things in a loud voice during the pauses and the music, flashing a torch at the stage, was spoken to by an usher, eventually stormed out noisily...

A disappointed Sue Gritton fan? (Or Harriet Harvard? )

Would never happen in Leeds, of course.

[Stanfordian]

Looking at the scoring for the Strauss Symphonia domestica I noticed that Strauss asks for 4 saxophones. As is often the case these days the BBC Phil didn't use saxophones. I was wondering if this is a decison made on practical, cost or artistic grounds?

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

Would never happen in Leeds, of course.

Far worse there in my experience.

[Petrushka]

Looking at the scoring for the Strauss Symphonia domestica I noticed that Strauss asks for 4 saxophones. As is often the case these days the BBC Phil didn't use saxophones. I was wondering if this is a decison made on practical, cost or artistic grounds?

This is odd. The saxophone has quite a unique sound, much thicker than clarinets and 4 of them would give out a hefty racket. I don't particularly care for the Domestica so am not that aware of how crucial the peculiar saxophone timbre is in the piece. What replaced them? Or are they just omitted? Does Strauss provide an alternative scoring if they are not available?

[Alison]

I believe the saxophone parts are marked ad lib with the implication that they may be omitted.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

This is odd. The saxophone has quite a unique sound, much thicker than clarinets and 4 of them would give out a hefty racket. I don't particularly care for the Domestica so am not that aware of how crucial the peculiar saxophone timbre is in the piece. What replaced them? Or are they just omitted? Does Strauss provide an alternative scoring if they are not available?

This is strange indeed. It is unlikely it was done to save on costs. Just two weeks earlier, there we two full orchestras on stage, yet they omitted the wimd machine.

[Petrushka]

I believe the saxophone parts are marked ad lib with the implication that they may be omitted.

Thanks, Alison. I know you are keener on the Domestica than I am! A bit strange of Strauss to throw them in if they can be so easily omitted.

[Stanfordian]

This is strange indeed. It is unlikely it was done to save on costs. Just two weeks earlier, there we two full orchestras on stage, yet they omitted the wimd machine.

The 3 wind machines they used in Don Quixote the other week were has good as useless. I was in the rehersal studio and could hardly hear them. For Saturday's concert of the Symphonia Domestica they dropped the 4 saxes and from what I could see added an extra clarinet, extra horn and extra trumpet, not sure about the oboes.

[Petrushka]

The 3 wind machines they used in Don Quixote the other week were has good as useless. I was in the rehersal studio and could hardly hear them. For Saturday's concert of the Symphonia Domestica they dropped the 4 saxes and from what I could see added an extra clarinet, extra horn and extra trumpet, not sure about the oboes.

I've heard both Don Quixote and the Alpensinfonie in the concert hall (not to mention Ravel's Daphnis which also uses the contraption) and have found that the sound of the wind machine cuts through the texture like a scythe. Three of the things should have created a tidal surge!

For a Strauss Festival one should expect the orchestras to have the correct kit otherwise what's the point in putting it on?

[EdgeleyRob]

Let's hope they don't forget to book the Saxophones for RVW 9 on 23rd May

[Stanfordian]

I've heard both Don Quixote and the Alpensinfonie in the concert hall (not to mention Ravel's Daphnis which also uses the contraption) and have found that the sound of the wind machine cuts through the texture like a scythe. Three of the things should have created a tidal surge!

For a Strauss Festival one should expect the orchestras to have the correct kit otherwise what's the point in putting it on?

Hiya Petrushka, In that case they clearly used the inferior type of wind machines rather than the deluxe models. A friend who attended the Don Quixote concert at the Bridgewater hadn't realised that they had used wind machines.

[Simon B]

The 3 wind machines they used in Don Quixote the other week were has good as useless. I was in the rehersal studio and could hardly hear them. For Saturday's concert of the Symphonia Domestica they dropped the 4 saxes and from what I could see added an extra clarinet, extra horn and extra trumpet, not sure about the oboes.

The sax parts in the Sinfonia Domestica are almost always left out, a bit like the organ in Elgar's 2nd symphony. The received wisdom is that Strauss bunged them in on an "everything including the kitchen sink" basis. Essentially all they do is double (or triple or quadruple or...) lines which are already present, only in the finale and only in the loudest bits. IIRC this was discussed with Mark Elder in an interval feature of the televised Prom in 1999 in which he conducted Sinfonia Domestica with the BBCPO. The upshot was - you can barely hear them at all anyway, so their inclusion is essentially pointless. This is underlined by easily found discussions on various web fora in which people compare notes on whether they can hear the saxes on recordings definitively known to include them - usual answer, no.

The extra horn and trumpet were just the standard orchestral practice of having bumpers in pieces like this. Otherwise, after such a big blow the principal horn and trumpet would need to lie down in a darkened room for a week with a vaseline pack on their embouchures to get over it...

The wind machines in Don Quixote were entirely standard - just like the type the default source, Bell Percussion in London hires out - http://www.bellperc.com/hire/sound-fx/wind-machine.html. These quality of sound these things make things make is surprisingly effective, but there's really not that much of it. They also hurt your arm. They fit neatly into the set of "percussion instruments which deliver less than they promise". Thunder sheets also belong in this set. Given a large enough sheet and a percussionist with sufficiently severe anger management issues they can at least sound like someone battering seven kinds of Hell out of a large sheet of metal. This is better than nothing, albeit almost but not quite entirely unlike thunder. At least there aren't mountain lions in the Alps, so Strauss didn't bung a "lion's roar" into the Alpine Symphony for good measure. If you can hear this at all, it invariably sounds like something that's emanating from the wrong end of said lion. The biggest technical challenge it presents is keeping a straight face.

All of these things sound more impressive on recordings than they ever can in reality, owing to having a microphone shoved right in front of them. This, from VPO/Haitink http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FQhpWsRhQGs is at 40:49 about as good an effort as they come, but the mics are still making it sound more impressive than the reality did about 20 feet from the stage!

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

The sax parts in the Sinfonia Domestica are almost always left out, a bit like the organ in Elgar's 2nd symphony.

The analogy is not quite correct. There is no organ part scored in Elgar 2, though the assumption is understandable in view of the habit of a few conductors to add one.

[Simon B]

The analogy is not quite correct. There is no organ part scored in Elgar 2, though the assumption is understandable in view of the habit of a few conductors to add one.

Um, yes, ok guilty there. Though I did say "a bit like" - for which read "not much like"! Was it Boult who first noted that Elgar would have liked this addition where possible, and it is thus "sanctioned by the composer"? Ok, how about the synaesthetic light organ thingy in Scriabin's Prometheus instead?