Terfel

[John Skelton]

That link is below the belt. How is a fellow to know what's coming?

My point about the bass flute is simply that it's available to the contemporary composer because it can be brought up in the mix. It wasn't available to Wagner because he didn't have a mix to bring it up in; it hadn't been invented. So it's like the contemporary composer writing with a view to electronics.

The more interesting question is whether it's right to try to improve a performance of a Wagner opera by using a medium that wasn't available to him. The answer to that is obvious. Of course it is. We use modern instruments and we have imaginative productions derived from psychoanalytic theory or set in 1970s Timbuktu or whatever. So it's entirely an aesthetic judgment. Does it sound better or worse if you make an adjustment that Wagner couldn't make but might have been glad to be able to make? Different people draw it at different places on the graph, and to judge by the other posts I am at one end...

I'm sure some of the difficulties you describe / experience with performances of Wagner have to do with modern technology, or with modern instruments of a certain kind. Gut strings and nineteenth century woodwind / brass make the balance with a singer more 'natural': the sheer volume of later instruments creates some of the problem (I suppose Wagner might be thought of as the composer at a musical technological crossroads). Roger Norrington made a fine record with the London Classical Players of Wagner 'extracts', with the Liebestod sung by Jane Eaglen, which is worth hearing in this (and plenty of other) respects.

Did you have Nono specifically in mind thinking of the bass flute?

[Princess Hello]

I'm sure some of the difficulties you describe / experience with performances of Wagner have to do with modern technology, or with modern instruments of a certain kind. Gut strings and nineteenth century woodwind / brass make the balance with a singer more 'natural': the sheer volume of later instruments creates some of the problem (I suppose Wagner might be thought of as the composer at a musical technological crossroads). Roger Norrington made a fine record with the London Classical Players of Wagner 'extracts', with the Liebestod sung by Jane Eaglen, which is worth hearing in this (and plenty of other) respects.

Did you have Nono specifically in mind thinking of the bass flute?

Thanks. I hadn't thought of that. It makes good sense and I'll follow it up.

Not Nono, I'm afraid, but film music. Is there anything specific of Nono's that I should listen to -as regards bass flutes?

[John Skelton]

I was thinking of the two works on this CD http://www.prestoclassical.co.uk/w/168353.

The remarkable Roberto Fabbriciani plays the hyperbass flute on this http://www.mdt.co.uk/MDTSite/product//WWE1CD20254.htm!

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

The Nono pieces are glorious works. I first heard them at their UK premiere in Huddersfield in 1995 (the first time I visited the Festival) and they changed my life for the better.

Don't be put off by the BBC Magazine's "austere" blurb: in comparison with Wagnerian opulence, this is possibly a fair description, but for anyone moved by Tenebrae's performance of Victoria, Nono's language isn't so far removed.

[Nick Armstrong]

the hyperbass flute

Are you being serious ?!?!


EDIT: I see you are!! http://www.lowflutes.com/images/hyper_1_resized.JPG

Presumably you don't get it tuned, you just call Dyno-Rod.... !!

[Princess Hello]

I was thinking of the two works on this CD http://www.prestoclassical.co.uk/w/168353.

The remarkable Roberto Fabbriciani plays the hyperbass flute on this http://www.mdt.co.uk/MDTSite/product//WWE1CD20254.htm!

Thanks!

I have been fascinated by bass flutes ever since walking at an impressionable age past a shop in New York,in the window of which was a big red sign, which read: 'GRAND BASS FLUTE SALE!'.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Is the "hyperbass Flute" the same as the "Contrabass Flute": that elaborate piece of plumbing that looks like a large bathroom towel heater and sounds like a distant, breathy Siren, luring unwary seafarers onto the rocks?

Carla Rees used to own the only(?) such instrument in the UK before this:

http://www.justflutes.com/fund-for-carla-rees-page66.html

[Princess Hello]

At the risk of getting intolerably far from Bryn Terfel, there is, now I think of it, wonderful bass and alto flute on Morton Feldman's late trio pieces, like Why Patterns?, Crippled Symmetry and For Philip Guston. The last, although a challenge at nearly four and a half hours long, is in my humble opinion one of the defining works by one of the very greatest composers of the century.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

I find this all much more interesting than squabbling over Bryn Terfel, oh Royal Greeting!

Totally agree with you about Feldman; anyone who "gets" For Philip Guston won't have a problem with Nono.

[John Skelton]

That was a terrible thing - I hope the donations for Carla Rees are coming in. Here's a small picture of Fabbriciani with the beast http://musiccatalog.info/wp-content/...hyperbass1.jpg

For Philip Guston. The last, although a challenge at nearly four and a half hours long, is in my humble opinion one of the defining works by one of the very greatest composers of the century.

[Bryn]

For Philip Guston. The last, although a challenge at nearly four and a half hours long, is in my humble opinion one of the defining works by one of the very greatest composers of the century.

I'll drink to that, though I have only ever heard it via the recordings by the California EAR Unit (Bridge) and Breuer, Engler & Schramel on Wergo. One day ...

In the meantime, I take it you will be in Glasgow next spring for the Smith Quartet playing SQ2.

Oh, I forgot to mention, re. bring the bass flute up in the mix, that I heard no such need when Nigel Osborne's Sinfonia (number 1) was premièred at the Proms in 1982.

[Princess Hello]

I'll drink to that, though I have only ever heard it via the recordings by the California EAR Unit (Bridge) and Breuer, Engler & Schramel on Wergo. One day ...

In the meantime, I take it you will be in Glasgow next spring for the Smith Quartet playing SQ2.

Oh, I forgot to mention, re. bring the bass flute up in the mix, that I heard no such need when Nigel Osborne's Sinfonia (number 1) was premièred at the Proms in 1982.

I have the Hat Now recording with Eberhard Blum, Nils Vigeland and Jan Williams.

SQ2 in Glasgow sounds unmissable. Do you have a link?

[bluestateprommer]

Terfel is wonderful.

One illustration of CD's statement, in a professional context, is from the recent Proms Walkure, as Fiona Maddocks noted in The Observer here:

http://www.theguardian.com/music/2013/jul/28/proms-ring-barenboim-walkure-review

"The admirable Terfel showed another side too. It underlined the collegiate nature essential to any music-making. Nina Stemme, ardent and accomplished as Brünnhilde, even if the limited staging did not quite unleash her full dramatic potential, missed an entry – in that heat, made worse by bright stage lights, anyone would sympathise. The only point in mentioning it is to note Terfel's professionalism. Barenboim tried to cue her. Without losing a beat, Terfel saw Stemme's situation and started singing her line himself (would all singers have known the words? Probably not.) A few seconds later she regained her poise and took over."

The terms "nogood boyo" and "boy-child" don't really apply here, do they? Is BT an infallible god of opera? Certainly not. But is he an excellent professional? Yes.

[BBMmk2]

Good for Terfel! I do not think, or have heard many, if any, other singers take over another's line, word perfect and pitch, at a such a moment's notice!