Prince of the Pagodas (Hallé 2CD)

[Master Jacques]

Alerted to this complete new recording by last week's programme, heard this morning. Has anyone heard it, to comment on how it compares against the classic Knussen?

The 'guest reviewer' made some dispiriting, party-line remarks about "approved" users of eastern sonorities (Britten, Debussy, Poulenc) against such lazy "orientalists" as Meyerbeer and Delibes, playing one of the obvious gamalan sections, but leaving no room for any opinion as to the broader musical-dramatic qualities of this new recording. Sigh.

[Barbirollians]

Haven't heard but gets a very good review in this month's Gramophone.

[Pulcinella]

Lined up for streaming, but it's been ages since I've listened to either Knussen's or the composer's (abridged) version, so it won't be a particularly comparative listen!

[Ein Heldenleben]

Alerted to this complete new recording by last week's programme, heard this morning. Has anyone heard it, to comment on how it compares against the classic Knussen?

The 'guest reviewer' made some dispiriting, party-line remarks about "approved" users of eastern sonorities (Britten, Debussy, Poulenc) against such lazy "orientalists" as Meyerbeer and Delibes, playing one of the obvious gamalan sections, but leaving no room for any opinion as to the broader musical-dramatic qualities of this new recording. Sigh.

I can’t help wishing Britten and Macmillan had cooperated on more ballets . It works well in performance.
I can’t listen to Britten’s Balinese tone clusters without reluctantly recalling Humphrey Carpenter’s (?) rather overheated remarks about their erotico / paradisal underpinning.

[Master Jacques]

I can’t help wishing Britten and Macmillan had cooperated on more ballets . It works well in performance.
I can’t listen to Britten’s Balinese tone clusters without reluctantly recalling Humphrey Carpenter’s (?) rather overheated remarks about their erotico / paradisal underpinning.

That sounds like H. Carpenter, indeed!

The piece does work well in performance, though - talking of the Royal Opera's more recent production - I personally found Macmillan's revision of John Cranko's original scenario an unnecessary interference. And I'd love to see a revival using Cranko's original choreography, too, as his feeling for theatrical dance drama is more to my taste than Macmillan's comparative abstraction.

Anyway, thanks for these helpful replies - I'll probably order in the new Hallé recording as a Christmas treat.

[Ein Heldenleben]

That sounds like H. Carpenter, indeed!

The piece does work well in performance, though - talking of the Royal Opera's more recent production - I personally found Macmillan's revision of John Cranko's original scenario an unnecessary interference. And I'd love to see a revival using Cranko's original choreography, too, as his feeling for theatrical dance drama is more to my taste than Macmillan's comparative abstraction.

Anyway, thanks for these helpful replies - I'll probably order in the new Hallé recording as a Christmas treat.

I’d forgotten that it was a Cranko ballet . I’ve only ever seen the Macmillan.

It is Carpenter that I’ve sightly misremembered. But the original is even better …l

The Balinese style Bflat with added sixth that ends Noye’s Fludde represents “the real godliness” that “arises out of total acceptance of the sensual.” It contrasts pointedly with the “elaborate and overblown “ organ modulation into the final hymn - “portraying people who attain a sense of godliness (g major ) by repressing their real natures.”
Who would have thought a mere modulation could say so much ?

[Pulcinella]

I must confess that a little of this music goes a very long way: I much prefer the selection available on this CD, which I have in a different incarnation.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Britten-Gloriana-Suite-Prince-Pagodas/dp/B00008EU1N/ref=sr_1_7?crid=9XRN63HPM9A7&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.u3PwWcPhUCZK1taCoHd9bOnu3XOTcK0bOcO5QGWFgVBUSJDj-Gy7uiQv_rEi-VNHHRfn1MKjdMtRxj0oC3WqxXpzf4XaHn4zXFRvvU1E58gqxv3RE81dis534khlEQtBJEAEt62Mp7RI1fci1mibJbk0-TtAAbeV6tXE8E-q97H4z-aZgsbvjufcbh6wUyOK.OLw416sJ0xKuUETIz2wHqFKESb-P13UCkeK-AehPdqE&dib_tag=se&keywords=Prince+of+the+pagodas&nsdOptOutParam=true&qid=1731161981&s=music&sprefix=prince+of+the+pagodas%2Cpopular%2C89&sr=1-7

Perhaps I didn't play the new Hallé version loudly enough (partner upstairs on a business Zoom call) but I wasn't overly impressed: it all seemed a bit dull and uninspiring.

[Serial_Apologist]

I’d forgotten that it was a Cranko ballet . I’ve only ever seen the Macmillan.

It is Carpenter that I’ve sightly misremembered. But the original is even better …l

The Balinese style Bflat with added sixth that ends Noye’s Fludde represents “the real godliness” that “arises out of total acceptance of the sensual.” It contrasts pointedly with the “elaborate and overblown “ organ modulation into the final hymn - “portraying people who attain a sense of godliness (g major ) by repressing their real natures.”
Who would have thought a mere modulation could say so much ?

I've always understood Britten to have been something of a prude!

[oliver sudden]

Bb added sixth also ends the Berg violin concerto of course.

If I remember right, the big church bells in the Sunday Morning interlude from Peter Grimes are also Balinese-derived…

[Master Jacques]

Bb added sixth also ends the Berg violin concerto of course.

If I remember right, the big church bells in the Sunday Morning interlude from Peter Grimes are also Balinese-derived…

Although he didn't visit Bali until 1956, when preparing for The Prince of the Pagodas, his friendship with Colin McPhee dated back to 1939, so he certainly knew something about Balian music at the time he was writing his second opera. What Sunday morning shows, perhaps, is that bell-ringing is much the same the world over. Those wonderful Britten bells are certainly quite as much Blythburgh as Bali.

[Master Jacques]

The Balinese style Bflat with added sixth that ends Noye’s Fludde represents “the real godliness” that “arises out of total acceptance of the sensual.” It contrasts pointedly with the “elaborate and overblown “ organ modulation into the final hymn - “portraying people who attain a sense of godliness (g major ) by repressing their real natures.”
Who would have thought a mere modulation could say so much ?

Wonderful nonsense. And as Serial_Apologist says, an unlikely parsing of a composer famous for his prudish Anglicanism.

[Ein Heldenleben]

Wonderful nonsense. And as Serial_Apologist says, an unlikely parsing of a composer famous for his prudish Anglicanism.

Do you know I’ve been thinking about that? There is a subversive side to Britten as well. Grimes the outcast as hero . Albert Herring the strait laced carnival Queen gone rogue. Even the War Reqiuem goes off (Latin ) script . Death In Venice with its profoundly ambivalent non- hero. The prudish Anglican was a public mask wasn’t it really? Without going into the maze of Queer theory Britten wore many masks and the “truth “ only really comes out in the music.
But I didn’t think Balinese tone clusters quite have the paridisal symbolism HC finds in them.

[Pulcinella]

Although he didn't visit Bali until 1956, when preparing for The Prince of the Pagodas, his friendship with Colin McPhee dated back to 1939, so he certainly knew something about Balian music at the time he was writing his second opera. What Sunday morning shows, perhaps, is that bell-ringing is much the same the world over. Those wonderful Britten bells are certainly quite as much Blythburgh as Bali.

I think I'd dispute that to some extent: the typical Italianate clang (exemplified so successfully in Death in Venice) is worlds away from 'refined' English change-ringing, for example.
There are only two bells in 'Sunday morning': the slow deliberate bass B flat, heard first, then the faster more insistent E flat (minor third above middle C), and I associate them simply with a small parish church's summons to service/prayer (which is not in any way to dismiss their effectiveness in the score).

[Ein Heldenleben]

Although he didn't visit Bali until 1956, when preparing for The Prince of the Pagodas, his friendship with Colin McPhee dated back to 1939, so he certainly knew something about Balian music at the time he was writing his second opera. What Sunday morning shows, perhaps, is that bell-ringing is much the same the world over. Those wonderful Britten bells are certainly quite as much Blythburgh as Bali.

Mmm we could be getting close to the HC theory - the tones of Bali undermining good old fashioned Anglican change ringing. Of course with mistimed rings and out of tune bells English Church bells sometimes create their own (excruciating) tone clusters

[Master Jacques]

Do you know I’ve been thinking about that? There is a subversive side to Britten as well. Grimes the outcast as hero . Albert Herring the strait laced carnival Queen gone rogue. Even the War Reqiuem goes off (Latin ) script . Death In Venice with its profoundly ambivalent non- hero. The prudish Anglican was a public mask wasn’t it really? Without going into the maze of Queer theory Britten wore many masks and the “truth “ only really comes out in the music.
But I didn’t think Balinese tone clusters quite have the paridisal symbolism HC finds in them.

I think Britten's subversive side was called Peter Pears. Without the singer's encouragement, I wonder how many of the projects you (fairly) cite would have taken off?

As for masks, I find that they're there in Britten's music as much as his personality, to the extent that the idea of a "real Britten" somewhere under the masks is difficult to sustain. In truth, we are all of us a repository of masks, which is what makes Identity such an elusive, slippery and dangerous (even harmful) theory.