BBC4 "Symphony" with Simon Russell Beale

[jayne lee wilson]

Broadly I agree with Makropulos - it would be hard to do more without far more time... possibly BBC4 doesn't have the budget for greater length and depth.

Highlight - Sir mark Elder's commentaries, always succinct and striking both expressively and technically. He has a very good screen presence! "An eye like Mars to threaten and command".
Worst omission for me - Nielsen! Pace suffolkcoastal, a far greater symphonist than Prokofiev, Nielsen both took up the classical tradition and developed the form in very original ways. That great Mahlerian Deryck Cooke once described Nielsen's 5th as "the greatest symphony of the 20th Century!

Interesting to know how they decided what to include, possibly they felt that Prokofiev or Nielsen weren't mainstream enough?! But Prok 5 & 6 should have been there, and almost all of Nielsen... the contrasts between Nielsen 4/5, and then the shockingly different 6th, would have been a fascinating narrative within the general context of the 20th century.

But incidentally lovely to see Ives 2 in there, it's a very lovable piece.

[Suffolkcoastal]

I do agree about Nielsen, his 4th & 5th symphonies are also among the greatest of 20th century symphonies I can't see the point in Ives being in the programme with the exception of the 4th which as I've mentioned earlier is only really influential on the post 1950's symphonic scene. Ives's 2nd symphony is a pleasant and enjoyable enough score but marred by the silly last chord, which maybe Ives blowing a raspberry at the romantic symphony but as a joke doesn't really come off.
Ferretfancy, Honegger's symphonies haven'r really featured regularly in the concert halls of this country or on R3, no Honegger symphony been performed on R3 this year and Roussel hasn't featured much since he was COTW in 2009.

[MrGongGong]

I really disagree about Ives
what I got from the focus on his music was as much to do with the changing role of the composer in society as much as the sound of the music itself
furthermore the collision of elements that are so much a part of Ives's music is one of the defining themes of much of the music of the 20th Century
Ives was also very much an outsider as a composer something that has also had a huge influence on many subsequent composers

[Suffolkcoastal]

Yet again my post has been misunderstood! Yes Ives is influential on later composers as I state above, composers post 1950, because very little of his symphonic music was played prior to this, his impact on the symphonic world of his contemporaries and the next generation was non-existant as his orchestral music was virtually unknown to them so placing him chronologically when doing a history of the development of the symphony doesn't come off. Once his symphonies became better known in the 1960's their impact, especially the 4th, was then considerable. So Ives would need to be considered in a programme charting the symphony post 1950/60. You could argue that Mahler didn't have much impact until the 1960's, but his symphonies were at least known to his contemporaries and the next generation and performed though not as frequently as later. Of course the music would have been considered too scary for BBC4 or even R3 daytime listeners so the series has ignored this.

[Bryn]

I can't see the point in Ives being in the programme with the exception of the 4th which as I've mentioned earlier is only really influential on the post 1950's symphonic scene. Ives's 2nd symphony is a pleasant and enjoyable enough score but marred by the silly last chord, which maybe Ives blowing a raspberry at the romantic symphony but as a joke doesn't really come off.

The 'problem' with that final chord is not Ives's, it's Bernstein's. He extended it in every recorded performance of his I have heard. Others then repeated this distortion. Played curtly, as written, it works beautifully. Try, for instance, the late Kenneth Schermerhorn's recording of Jonathan Elkus's critical edition (Naxos).

The performance given by the BBC Symphony Orchestra under Andrew Davis during the Radio 3 Ives Weekend at the Barbican in 1996 is similarly effective with respect to that final chord. Just been spinning it from my CD-R of the 2nd and 4th (ex FM via Dolby S cassette).

[Ferretfancy]

Suffolkcoastal,

I was probably recollecting the number of recordings of Roussel and Honegger that we can find now, rather than the infrequent live performances and broadcasts. Since my last posting, Martinu has sprung to mind, though luckily he has received some good BBC SO performances in the last couple of years.

[jayne lee wilson]

Bryn, it may or may not amuse you to know that Mark Elder recommended it played long, and demonstrated this in the programme!

I'm sure I remember reading - a long time ago in a galaxy far away - that dance bands used to signal the end of the evening by blasting out such a discord - just to say to people on the floor, that's really it, no more!
But I can't trace a reference now...

Long or short (I prefer short), it works for me - one has to ask what else he could have done here? Surely not a safely harmonious shout of American rabble-rousing?! After the gleefully noisy contrapuntal crowning of the symphony ( quite as joyfully fulfilling as the Jupiter Symphony's coda) I think he did the only thing HE could. "That's it, it's over!"

So if you hear it as blowing a raspberry, and I'm not sure I always do, either at the audience or The Symphony - it has to be something more.
(But if Roger Norrington ever conducts it, maybe he should turn to the audience at the end and give a Nelsonesque "Ha-Ha!")

The 'problem' with that final chord is not Ives's, it's Bernstein's. He extended it in every recorded performance of his I have heard. Others then repeated this distortion. Played curtly, as written, it works beautifully. Try, for instance, the late Kenneth Schermerhorn's recording of Jonathan Elkus's critical edition (Naxos).

The performance given by the BBC Symphony Orchestra under Andrew Davis during the Radio 3 Ives Weekend at the Barbican in 1996 is similarly effective with respect to that final chord. Just been spinning it from my CD-R of the 2nd and 4th (ex FM via Dolby S cassette).

[Bryn]

jlw, having missed the earlier transmissions I managed to catch the final showing of the programme in the early hours this morning. I did have to smile when Elder supported Bernstein's 'improvement' on what Ives wrote. The gurn which he then treated us to put RN's in the shade. I suppose that final chaord does lend itself more to the interpretation of 'raspberry' if played in Bernstein's revision, but I do not take the view that Ives was so crass. He would have wanted the listeners to use their ears like mature adults, not to need their aural winks underlined in heavy crayon.

[MrGongGong]

Indeed Bryn , wasn't it Bernstein who recorded the version of Beethoven 7 where the slow movement is almost at 1/2 speed ? (he had obviously been listening to La Monte Young )


I think what was so good in having the focus on Ives was the way (and I had forgotten some of this ) in which he really relishes the sounds of the world. Rather than isolating himself in a hut screaming at the world to go away there is a real engagement with the wider sonic landscape, something that is an obvious precursor of so much of the sound art we hear today. The idea that a composer would really love the sound of three brass bands all playing different things at the same time is revolutionary......... embrace the chaos indeed

[Serial_Apologist]

Indeed Bryn , wasn't it Bernstein who recorded the version of Beethoven 7 where the slow movement is almost at 1/2 speed ? (he had obviously been listening to La Monte Young )


I think what was so good in having the focus on Ives was the way (and I had forgotten some of this ) in which he really relishes the sounds of the world. Rather than isolating himself in a hut screaming at the world to go away there is a real engagement with the wider sonic landscape, something that is an obvious precursor of so much of the sound art we hear today. The idea that a composer would really love the sound of three brass bands all playing different things at the same time is revolutionary......... embrace the chaos indeed

I would personally have to draw a line at three brass bands all playing different things at the same time. In fact, I'd probably draw the line at one, maybe even less...

[MrGongGong]

Come on S_A
live a bit and embrace the chaos
there's that fantastic Berio piece for 4 wind bands that i've completely forgotten the name of that owes much to Ives !
and Cage...... Musicircus etc

and Gruppen (Partly !)
etc
etc

[Serial_Apologist]

Come on S_A
live a bit and embrace the chaos
there's that fantastic Berio piece for 4 wind bands that i've completely forgotten the name of that owes much to Ives !
and Cage...... Musicircus etc

and Gruppen (Partly !)
etc
etc

Oh come on Mr GG! There's surely a big distinction to be made between "Gruppen" and e.g. parts of Ives's "Three Places in New England" in which simultaneities come about without anything approaching the kind of integration Stocky was after in 1954. Mind you, I am on Cage's side where he said (words to the effect of) "Come on, Karlheinz, stop pushing the notes around"! They all (the integral serialists) came to understand the practicable limits of control. Unfortunately those "controlling" the markets have transliterated this notion into another sphere where it doesn't apply!

[Boilk]

From Episode 4 I deduced striking similarities between Mahler and Ives that I'd not really thought about before ... and the programme should have made something of this. The militaristic music of their childhoods creeping into the symphonic works, bold musical irony, the overlap of secular and 'academic' musical idioms (albeit not poly-time signatures in Mahler), deliberate 'wrong-note' dissonances, and the symphony as melting pot for life, the universe and almost everything. And they were near contemporaries too, having been born 14 years apart.

[MrGongGong]

Oh come on Mr GG! There's surely a big distinction to be made between "Gruppen" and e.g. parts of Ives's "Three Places in New England" in which simultaneities come about without anything approaching the kind of integration Stocky was after in 1954. Mind you, I am on Cage's side where he said (words to the effect of) "Come on, Karlheinz, stop pushing the notes around"! They all (the integral serialists) came to understand the practicable limits of control. Unfortunately those "controlling" the markets have transliterated this notion into another sphere where it doesn't apply!

Yes there is
which is why I said (partly)

[Norfolk Born]

I do agree about Nielsen, his 4th & 5th symphonies are also among the greatest of 20th century symphonies I can't see the point in Ives being in the programme with the exception of the 4th which as I've mentioned earlier is only really influential on the post 1950's symphonic scene. Ives's 2nd symphony is a pleasant and enjoyable enough score but marred by the silly last chord, which maybe Ives blowing a raspberry at the romantic symphony but as a joke doesn't really come off.
Ferretfancy, Honegger's symphonies haven'r really featured regularly in the concert halls of this country or on R3, no Honegger symphony been performed on R3 this year and Roussel hasn't featured much since he was COTW in 2009.

....Possibly in the hope that an enterprising US network or station might buy the series? (The BBC tried something similar years ago when they gave Robert Wagner a leading role in 'Colditz' - as far as I know, the place never contained any American prisoners - in the hope of selling the series States-side. The ploy didn't work).