Harry's VC

[Bryn]

Harrison Birtwistle's new Violin Concerto will be transmitted live from Boston Symphony Hall tonight on 99.5 All Classical. The live Internet stream appears to be at around 112kbps mp3. The start time is given as 7.00pm (local time) which would be midnight GMT, I guess.

[french frank]

Information from the Boosey & Hawkes website. It seems this will be its third performance in three days ... ??

And a review from the premiere on 3 March in the Boston Globe.

[Paul Sherratt]

Are medals awarded for listening ?

[Pianorak]

Are medals awarded for listening ?

Medals? - A Knighthood!

[Bryn]

From the Boston Globe review:

Lehninger conducted capably throughout the night, though in the Bartok he was too often slightly behind the soloist, and allowed the orchestra to come across as more of a responsive accompanist than a co-participant in the creation of the evolving drama.

Hmm, could it not be that Tetzlaff allowed himself to get ahead of the orchestra?

[Bryn]

Are medals awarded for listening ?

Listening certainly helps. So many only manage to get as far as hearing.

[Flosshilde]

Oh dear - when I saw the thread title I thought that a certain royal personage, who's brother is shortly to get hitched, had been awarded a medal fo heaven knows what.

[Cellini]

From the Boston Globe review:



Hmm, could it not be that Tetzlaff allowed himself to get ahead of the orchestra?

This easily done as I was told I was slightly ahead of the other players in a quartet concert the other day, but I put this down to fact that the other buggers are always dragging and I break my back trying to get them up to speed. So it could be that Mr T wanted it faster but the carver couldn't hack it ...

[Petrushka]

Hmmm the concert itself appears to begin at 8pm, which is 1am over here. I can't see any sign of a 'listen again' facility so it looks like being a long night for prospective listeners of which I would hope to be one.

[BBMmk2]

Doesnt look as thjough I would be able tpo, I likke HM's music, buit me knackered from yesterdays mountain of work tha needed for the Open Day at the posh school where I work!

[Bryn]

Here it is, as grabbed in the early hours, edited into intro, performance and outro (without transcoding from the mp3 stream as transmitted) and zipped up. Much better audio quality than the Beeb offers overseas listeners Boston's 99.5 uses a VBR mp3 stream with a base rate of 112kbps (and a top limit of 128kbps) joint stereo mp3 (i.e. effectively somewhere between Radio 3's two levels of DAB audio quality of 160kbps intensity 'stereo' mp2 and 192kbps discrete stereo mp2). For last night's Violin Concerto itself, the average mp3 data rate was 114kbps.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

Medals? - A Knighthood!

Or even a "VC" :

But, no. As others have implied, one should should listen before passing judgement.

Oh dear - when I saw the thread title I thought that a certain royal personage, who's brother is shortly to get hitched, had been awarded a medal fo heaven knows what.

That was my initial reaction too.

[french frank]

Thanks, Bryn

[Cellini]

Bryn! Thanks for your community spirit in capturing this new work!

I've listened to half of the concerto. Interesting! More later.

I'm not sure if fiddlers will be lining up to learn this piece, but I could be wrong. (I didn't notice the orchestra behind the soloist, at all, by the way).

[Petrushka]

I stayed up for this and heard it live from Boston but went to bed after the Birtwistle at around 1.45am having downloaded it to my hard drive. The Boston radio announcer informed us that colleagues from BBC Radio 3 were there so we can expect to hear this at some stage. Is a UK performance in the pipeline? Proms perhaps?