What was your last concert?

[mercia]

The most electrifying Rite of Spring I've ever heard live

I was about to ask - including Les Siecles/Roth Proms 2013? - but perhaps you didn't hear that live

[Nick Armstrong]

I was about to ask - including Les Siecles/Roth Proms 2013? - but perhaps you didn't hear that live

I did hear it live - that was the other one I went to lately. It was engrossing but not with the sheer visceral punch of the Salonen performance the other night

[Flosshilde]

BBCSSO 19/5/16 Brahms & Mahler

The concert had Brahms piano concerto 2 in the first half, which I skipped so can't comment on. The Mahler 1 was amazing, fabulous, etc etc. The opening was wonderfully hushed (audience as well ), lovely off-stage brass, all the delicacy & power you could want. Runnicles is good at whipping up the excitement, but also good at the quiet reflection. Not broadcast, but the microphones were out so presumably being recorded for future broadcast. Well worth catching.

[Beef Oven!]

The concert had Brahms piano concerto 2 in the first half, which I skipped so can't comment on. The Mahler 1 was amazing, fabulous, etc etc. The opening was wonderfully hushed (audience as well ), lovely off-stage brass, all the delicacy & power you could want. Runnicles is good at whipping up the excitement, but also good at the quiet reflection. Not broadcast, but the microphones were out so presumably being recorded for future broadcast. Well worth catching.

Good call on the first half. Runnicles delivered an amazing Mahler 5 at last summer’s Proms, so I’d be very interested if your concert gets broadcast later.

[Flosshilde]

If they're not broadcast live (& even if they are) the concerts usually pop up during the afternoon programme.

[Stanley Stewart]

Good call on the first half. Runnicles delivered an amazing Mahler 5 at last summer’s Proms, so I’d be very interested if your concert gets broadcast later.

Worth noting that Runnicles is conducting the BBC SSO in Mahler 9, the bonus disc on the July MM, published 8 June. I also treasure an off-air DVD recording of his Mahler 3 from a 2010 Prom with the same forces.

[Ferretfancy]

Something almost unheard of these days, a concert starting with a Haydn symphony! This was at the RFH on Thursday evening, with the Philharmonia conducted by Paavo, Jarvi, and it was a resplendent evening. Jarvi divides the firsts and seconds, with cellos and violas in the middle and the basses at left rear of the platform, giving a beautiful balance which was especially effective with the smaller forces used in the Haydn ( No. 83 'la Poule')

Next on the programme was Nielsen's Clarinet Concerto, with wonderfully agile playing by Mark van de Wiel, who is the Philharmonia's Principal clarinet.

After the interval came Nielsen's Third Symphony, which I couldn't imagine better played.

This was the first time I've seen Paavo Jarvi conduct, and I want more!

I was surprised to see a slightly sparse attendance last night. Is it really true that Haydn empties concert halls? A guy in the interval said that he thought that Haydn was a bit overrated these days, I was lost for words !

[Bryn]

Following John Butcher, Thomas Lehn and John Tilbury at Cafe OTO on Thursday night, Friday it was Ian Pace in two Michael Finnissy concerts at the Cily University Performance Space. Last night the venue was IKLECTIK, and the performers were John Butcher, N O Moore and Eddie Prevost (an open recording session). Amazing how quiet IKLECTIK is inside, it being so close to the massed railway tracks leading into Waterloo Station. Fine acoustic properties, too.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Following John Butcher, Thomas Lehn and John Tilbury at Cafe OTO on Thursday night, Friday it was Ian Pace in two Michael Finnissy concerts at the Cily University Performance Space. Last night the venue was IKLECTIK, and the performers were John Butcher, N O Moore and Eddie Prevost (an open recording session). Amazing how quiet IKLECTIK is inside, it being so close to the massed railway tracks leading into Waterloo Station. Fine acoustic properties, too.

Great stuff, Bryn - and to hear that London has regular performances of Music so overlooked by broadcasters. It's been about five years since I last heard Ian Pace performing (other than on recordings) - must try and update that omission.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

A concert in Edinburgh's Queen's Hall given on Wednesday 25th May by the Edinburgh String Quartet.

They began with Mozart's Dissonance Quartet - a performance that didn't quite seem to know how it wanted to present this Music: the speeds and attitude to structure were clearly influenced by HIPP discoveries, but this was countered by a smearing of uniform, unvaried vibrato from the pre-HIPP styles. I couldn't help feeling that the performance would have been better if they'd relaxed the tempo a little and gone for an "all-out 'traditionalist'" approach, especially in the second movement, where the tempo jarred with the expressive vibrato. Or if there'd been a greater variety of vibrato - there were some lovely touches of portamento in the middle movements; had the vibrato been as judiciously applied the tempi mightn't have seemed so brusque. But it is a fantastic piece, and my sense of conflicting styles didn't prevent the myriad marvels of this euphoric and disturbing masterpiece from coming across - and the impudent, teasing conjuring tricks of the Finale were brilliantly communicated.

This joy was also present in the last work on the programme - Dvorak's American Quartet (wrongly described as the "American Quintet" in the publicity - so a moment of momentary disappointment: I adore both works, but I've never heard the Quintet in performance). Perpetually enjoyable, it received a near-perfect performance (if the 'cellist had devoted a little more of his attention to stopping the strings that he'd bashed by mistake in his enthusiasm rather than exchanging looks with the audience, and if they'd spent a little more time exploring the expressive potential of different types of vibrato, it would have been ideal).


The central work on the programme was James MacMillan's Third String Quartet. I'd been wary before hearing this piece - having found MacMillan's recent work very disappointing, I didn't have high hopes or expectations. As it turned out, I greatly enjoyed the piece - if it had been a recently-discovered work from a Hungarian composer written in, say, 1948 before he was arrested and "vanished" after the uprising, then I would have been even more enthusiastic. The outer movements have the soundworld of a composer bridging the "gap" between late Bartok and early Ligeti - the central movement is closer in sound to what Crumb achieved in Black Angels at the end of the '60s.

And, as I have been so often before with "new" works (the MacMillan was written in 2011), I couldn't help but be troubled by how "old" the ideas and techniques seemed. Would a composer writing in 1948 have created work whose expressive "world" dated from seventy years earlier? Would Bartok, had he lived until 1948, have written in a style redolent of, say, Brahms seventy years earlier? Or Crumb produce a work that could have been confused with something written in 1920? I do find it difficult to see so many composers working today neither responding positively to what is most new in the work of living composers, nor rejecting these ideas with something equally new of their own.

Wha'evva my very strong aesthetic reservations, I greatly enjoyed the piece itself - the first work of MacMillan's that I have been keen to hear again in over twenty years: I even bought the CD of the work! It made for an interesting and greatly involving concert - a memorable event in what was my first visit to the Scottish Capital.

[Demetrius]

Yesterday, MDR SO, Kristjan Järvi

Pyarelal Ramprasad Sharma: Symphony No 1
Pyarelal Ramprasad Sharma: Symphony No 2

Interval

Ravi Shankar Concerto for Sitar and Orchestra No 2 "Raga Mala"
(played by his daughter Anoushka Shankar)

The two symphonies were first performances. In the introduction before the concert, which usually features short sound bites and a quick and rather general analysis of the pieces to be played, the lecturer instead spend most of the time cautioning the audience not to expect "new" pieces in the tradition of the "50/60s avantgarde" (meaning that this version of "new" was around when my father was conceived), and she is right, these symphonies certainly aren't that. More and more, however, I wonder whether the concept of a linear progression in arts (of any kind) has run its course. Do I really have to care when a piece of music was written? Is it really necessary to spend time on a lengthy apology before you can talk about music if it doesn't try to use Boulez as a starting point to create the great new idea? (As I did just now)

I found these symphonies ... enjoyable might be the best word for it. A 6-year old a few seats from me couldn't keep from tapping her feet through big parts of the first one (which was much less annoying than her talking parents); it is highly attractive music (even if parts of it are a bit over the top).

The lecturer was much more at ease with the sitar concerto (thought I don't see too much "avantgarde" there, either), which was brilliant and is possibly quality-wise above the symphonies that preceded it. Still, I think they were more than valid and deserved the applause they and their composer got.

The full concert is available as video on the MDR-website:

http://www.mdr.de/konzerte/mdrplus-sendung-146_zc-c5e8e2ee_zs-37fbfd50.html

it will also be on MDR Klassik in a few hours (19:30 MET):

http://www.mdr.de/mdr-klassik-radio/ipg/sendung664640_ipgctx-true_zc-4cd383ea.html

[Richard Tarleton]

Last night - to Rhosygilwen near Cardigan for a recital by Roman Rabinovich, 2008 Artur Rubinstein Piano Comp winner. Playing in the mansion drawing room on the 9ft Bösendorfer (the concert hall where the Steinway lives was taken over by preparations for a wedding reception ) he played a programme of Schumann, Haydn and Stravinsky (Petrushka), plus a piece written for him by Michael Brown. Encores were a piece of his own composition, and his arrangement of a movement from Ravel Daphnis and Chloë. He has a considerable career already but the first time I'd come across him. A fine pianist - huge virtuosity, delicacy and finesse, expressiveness....

[Richard Tarleton]

To Swansea last night for the BBC National Orchestra of Wales's last concert of the season, under their principal conductor Thomas Søndergård, listening to the dreadful news on the car radio as it came in.

First half was Szymanowski's second violin concerto, played fabulously by Nicola Benedetti. I had only heard the work once before, on YouTube, in preparation for this concert, and she is a powerful advocate for it. Sitting well down the hall in row Y I appreciated her beauty of tone and projection, her playing on her 1717 Strad was immaculate.

Part 2 was a blazing performance of Mahler 1, with all sections at the top of their game. The Brangwyn Hall with its traditional shoebox shape has a marvellous acoustic, both bright and resonant, and orchestras and conductors love playing there (I've heard a good few chamber concerts there also), and its sprung wooden floor means you also feel loud orchestral climaxes through the soles of your feet. TS's first gesture during the thunderous ovation at the end was to stride through to shake the hands of the double basses. I'm pleased to see they'll be doing Mahler 6 next season, around my birthday.

Ovations really are thunderous in the Brangwyn, as local custom is to stamp your feet as well as applaud, and the reception for both orchestra and Ms Benedetti was nothing short of rapturous.

But back to the road, and more heartbreaking analysis on the World Tonight.

[marvin]

My local, Fairfield Halls closes on July 15th for 2years complete refurbishment. I'll be 80 when it reopens but who knows whether I'll still be fit to attend. I wonder whether the closure will affect future attendance.

[HighlandDougie]

Julia Fischer and Igor Levit in Beethoven's "Kreutzer" Sonata and its successor, tonight at the Wigmore Hall. As the late and much-missed Caroline Aherne might have said, "Scorchio!". Seriously fine playing from the pair of them, who clearly knock sparks off each other. JF has the most beautiful tone, coupled with a pretty forthright playing style. IL is like a weird combination of Richter and Glenn Gould. Put together, they just fizz. No recording this evening, alas, but the first recital is on I-Player.