What was your last concert?

[EdgeleyRob]

Yesterday

Salford studio concert

Anton Webern
Passacaglia

Alban Berg
Three Fragments from Wozzeck

Joseph Marx
Feste im Herbst

BBC Philharmonic,Simone Young
Claire Booth (soprano)

Webern and Berg wonderfully performed.
I'd never heard of Joseph Marx ,tbh after a promising opening Feste im Herbst failed to hold my attention.
I've just tried again but gave up halfway through.

t

[Beef Oven!]

Rob, I've had a CD of Joseph Max's 'Nature Trilogy' for a few years now and really like it.

Try this, you may like it ...

[EdgeleyRob]

Thanks for that BeefO.

I have listened,Hmm I'll have to put it under music that doesn't grab me !

[Beef Oven!]

Thanks for that BeefO.

I have listened,Hmm I'll have to put it under music that doesn't grab me !

There's enough out there that will grab you, so no problem!

[Simon B]

As a side-note, there is a (extremely rare - it's the UK premiere) chance to hear Marx's Eine Herbstsymphonie at the RFH on 29/11 with Jurowski/LPO. http://lpo.org.uk/whats-on-and-ticke...-symphony.html It probably won't be to EdgeleyRob's taste as in very simplistic terms it is a bit like Feste Im Herbst extended to 60 minutes, and with even more lashings of ultra-romantic super-saturated orchestration that out-Strausses R Strauss, and for that matter Korngold. However, if you like that sort of thing, this is probably your first and last chance to hear it live.

[richardfinegold]

Stanford: Irish Rhapsody no. 1 op. 78
Saint-Saëns: Cello Concerto no. 1 in A minor op. 33*
Suk: Symphony no. 2 in C minor op. 27 ('Asrael')

Richard Harwood*, National Symphony Orchestra of Ireland / Case Scaglione

Just back from this wonderful concert in the National Concert Hall in Dublin. I went for the Suk (first time hearing it live), which was the undoubted highlight, but thoroughly enjoyed the whole programme. The conductor was unknown to me but I'd be happy to see him on the podium again. The orchestra certainly took to him and played magnificently throughout. Richard Harwood was excellent in the Saint-Saëns and came across as a pleasant person as well as a fine artist. He treated us to an encore of the first movement from Bach's first cello suite.

What a magnificent work the Suk is! I have several recordings (Libor Pešek with the RLPO still remains my favourite after 25 years), but no recording can compare with the experience of hearing it live, especially when performed with such passionate commitment as it was tonight. The melting conclusion of the work when it achieves C major after all the previous tumult was especially wonderful. All in all, a great night.

It would be nice to hear the Suk live. I can only remember seeing it programmed here once

[boilinthebag]

On Wednesday at a Liverpool Phil concert I heard the Sibelius concerto played by Henning Kraggerud. I've heard this concerto played many times in concert, by big names too, and I have been usually left feeling disappointed. No problems feeling the icy chill here ! This performance from Kraggerud was the finest I've heard. It was stunning!

I agree Stanfordian it was an intense performance. I'm not sure what the conductor thought when the soloist turned around and seemed to be conducting alongside him.Extraordinary! The Brahms 4 was given a good performance, the second movement superbly judged. Well balanced and wonderfully played.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

HCMF 2017: Red Note Ensemble

The first time I've ever heard "Scotland's foremost new Music ensemble" - it won't be the last. A disappointing pair of pieces by Swiss composer Stephanie Haensler began this year's Festival: neither was either objectionable or exceptional - "catalogue" works, in which various sounds familiar in much 21st Century Music were presented one after the other, with no discernible sense of "connection" between the various sections of the two works. There doesn't need to be, of course, but then the Music needs to create a very strong sense of identity within each of the sections: a "personality" strong enough to ensure that they stand alone in the procession. In neither piece did I feel any such "personality": they weren't "boring" as such, but neither were they thrilling or particularly interesting.

The pair of works for solo electric guitar which followed immediately demonstrated what had been missing from the Haenslers. Morton Feldman wrote his Possibility of a New Work for Electric Guitar in 1966 for his friend Christian Wolff, who had just bought an instrument. After a couple of rehearsals and performances, however, Wolff's instrument - together with the only copy of Feldman's manuscript - was stolen, and the work was presumed lost. In 2004, Christian Wolff himself wrote his own piece, Another Possibility, partly based on his memories of Feldman's original. Then a tape of one of the original informal performances was discovered, and guitarist Seth Josel created a "score" of the work from this recording. Both pieces were performed in tandem by Wiek Hijmans - and instantly, the Feldman did what the Haensler failed to do - took the listener into a unique aural landscape, one both completely aware of the expressive possibilities of the instrument, and yet also far away from the more "traditional" timbres associated with its more usual repertoires. Wolff's own piece worked in more of those "more usual" timbres, but these were accommodated with other sounds - at times "Webernesque", at others more "Darmstadtian" - but always with Wolff's own powerfully individual utilizing of time, timbre, and memory. The two pieces make an excellent composite "work", and they were performed superbly.

The main work of the concert, though, was the world premiere of James Dillon's Tanz/haus - triptych. I have an ambiguous "history" with Dillon's work (much of it I find as powerful and astonishing an experience as any Music that I know - but there are other works that have left me very cold and greatly disappointed) so I always anticipate a new work of his with ambiguous feelings. No need to worry with this new piece - it was completely successful: one of those works that grabs you immediately and leaves you - forty minutes later - with the sense that you must have been holding your breath in all that time. Dillon's textures are immaculate - the way instruments can be playing independently at one moment, then suddenly you're aware that the clarinet and flute have become involved in a duet - and then the clarinet has dropped out and the flute is now duetting with the violin. Or the way a highly elaborate, intricately active line can suddenly "freeze" - and the Music has moved into a completely different "zone". Or the way Dillon makes reference to earlier Musics (there is a section when the 'cello and Double Bass play in octaves, as if they've decided to remember the old days - another where the electric keyboard - in "Hammond Organ" mode - introduces a high, sustained major triad as if remembering Dark Side of the Moon). These "references" manage to be simultaneously cheeky and intensely moving - and the whole work is a fantastic amalgam of visceral energy, tender reflection, and sheer enjoyment of the process of making Music. It's an important work - magnificently performed by the ensemble (who all looked as if they'd had the time of their lives) and enthusiastically received by the audience at the packed ("overflow" seating in full use) St Paul's Hall. A great start to the fortieth Festival!

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Linda Catlin Smith; HCMF, St Paul's Hall, Huddersfield, Sat 18 & Sun 19/11/17

Encouraged by Simon Reynell's recommendation, last year I bought the anothertimbre CD of Smith's Dirt Road - so impressed have I been since by this wonderful Music, that I was very excited to see that the composer was to be featured at this year's Festival; an anticipation that fully lived up to my highest expectations.

As a "header" to the concerts, the composer gave an informal talk with Sara Mohr-Pietsche ("off-duty" from her BBC work at the Festival, she agreed to conduct the talk at the invitation of the Festival, because she is interested in the composer and her work and thought). This was a lyrically insightful introduction to the composer's life and work, with SM-P gently coaxing Smith to explore and illustrate/explain her methods and aesthetics ("I didn't know that I was going to say that", she said at a couple of points) and to share some engaging reminiscences - those connected with Morton Feldman particularly so (offering the best encouragement anyone can give a creative artist: "You have here the skills and ability to produce a world entirely of your own making - if you dare").

This talk immediately preceded a performance of two of Smith's piano works, given by Eve Egoyen. The Underfolding is a twenty-minute single work - quite different from what I'd been expecting from Dirt Road - gentle, Messiaen-like chords (but, thankfully, without the birdsong) blend, blur, and merge with each other in a hypnotic, beguiling procession which seemed to be over much sooner than the time elapsed. By contrast, Nocturnes and Chorales is a sequence of nine shorter pieces/movements lasting 25 minutes.

The soundworld of the works in the second concert were much closer to that (or, rather, "those") of Dirt Road. Two works for String Quartet (Gondola from 2007, and Folkestone from 1999) flanked the Piano Quintet of 2014 - all played by the performers who commissioned two of the works, the Bozzini Quartet and Philip Thomas. This is such a magical world - "simple" (the composer's adjective) in its working methods, but profoundly moving and totally captivating: a Music of life, love, longing, and loss - and of growth, grief, and gratitude. Which description makes it sound "samey", but the composer has a rich reservoir of nuance and contrast to offer - the endings of all three works felt like a wrench from a place of intense beauty and security: I didn't want to clap - not because the works or performances didn't merit it* (exactly the opposite) but because it seemed so rude/impolite to reply to such gently lyrical Music with the vulgar racket of bashing hands together.

Experiencing this lovely Music at close hand will be one of my treasured memories ... and not from this year's Festival.


* = So merit-worthy, in fact, that one twonk actually started clapping during one of the "pauses for breath" towards the end of the final piece! With a weaker work, this would have ruined the effect, but so quietly powerful is this piece that, after the rude disruption, the continuation of the sounds quickly restored the sense of calm, quiet security. We should be sort-of grateful to the over-enthusiastic seal for enabling us to realize this - and I might be, given enough time!

[pastoralguy]

The Northern Sinfonia directed from the violin by Bradley Cresswick. Brunton Halls. Musselburgh.

I've been an admirer of Bradley Cresswick for many years but, alas, I was quite disappointed last night. First half was Brandenburg 1 and Bruch's first violin concerto. Thin, scratchy tone in the Bach and a workman like Bruch. Some fluffed passages and unreliable intonation. Just too many fluffs for comfortable listening. A great shame for such distinguished player.

The orchestra played really well throughout and were exceptional in Mendelssohn's 1st symphony. (The first time I've heard it live iirc.)

[bluestateprommer]

A free Juilliard concert of Brahms songs tonight, with 12 student singers in 11 songs (1 song was a duet) in Part I, and the op. 52 Liebeslieder Waltzes in Part II.

[EdgeleyRob]

Salford freebie live on Radio 3 yesterday afternoon

Lyadov: Kikimora
Sofia Gubaidulina: Viola Concerto
Ravel: Rapsodie espagnole
Ibert: Escales

Lawrence Power (viola)
BBC Philharmonic
Ludovic Morlot (conductor).

The Lyadov,Ravel and Ibert were wonderfully played.
Really brightened up a miserable wet afternoon.
Gubaidulina's Concerto I struggled with.
Some really interesting sounds effects and episodes,there seemed to be a bit of DSCH motif going on at times too,and great to watch Lawrence Power making the solo part look so easy,which it clearly isn't,but that's about all I could make of it.
Oh and one of the tubular bells fell off it's hook/holder during the concerto with an almighty crash ( which I assume is not in the score)during a quiet bit.
Don't know if that came across in the radio but it stopped an elderly chap near me from nodding off,seriously !

[Ferretfancy]

The LPO concert broadcast from the RFH on Wednesday. This was my first opportunity to see Vladimir Jurowski's father, Michail conduct. Bridge's Summer is a pleasantly atmospheric piece, not very memorable. Then came Beatrice Rana playing Prokofiev's 3rd Piano Concerto. This was a terrible performance of a work I have heard many times, I just wanted to put my hands over my ears. The lady can certainly play, but without any sense of light and shade in this admittedly noisy work. This robotic playing was nearly all far too fast, while Jurowski gave the orchestra its head to thump everything out.
Ms Rana gave a Debussy encore which was, if anything, even worse!
Luckily we heard a nice performance of Tchaikovsky's first symphony after the interval.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Philip Thomas & Bozzini 4tet; HCMF, Tuesday, 21/11/17

Two remarkable new Piano Quintets by British composers received their UK premieres at this concert, held in St Paul's Hall, Huddersfield.

Mary Bellamy is a composer whose name I have frequently encountered, but my knowledge of her work had previously been limited to her solo 'cello piece of 2010, Transference (as played by Severine Ballon on the HCR disc with that title). Her 20-minute new work, beneath an ocean of air certainly makes me keen to hear more of her Music - delicate whispering string harmonics, perfectly poised with iridescent piano sounds; the verbal descriptions make it sound like the sort of "extended techniques piece" familiar to New Music audiences - but the success the composer achieved with these sounds (the pacing and growth of the Music within a unified tonal palette - fragments of melodic material emerging from the soundmist) made for a breath-holding experience. It's a work I would gladly like to hear again.

I'm much more familiar with Bryn Harrison's Music, having followed this composer's development at Huddersfield events for well over a decade; his 70-minute piano work, Vessels (recorded on - of course - Another Timbre played by Philip Thomas) has become particularly important to me in the four years since I bought it. Initially, the new Piano Quintet (called ... err ... Piano Quintet) seemed a little disappointing - too similar to the Violin and Piano work Receiving the Approaching Memory of 2014, I thought: the piano rotating a two-part invention of slowly-evolving notes, avoiding the lower registers; the Quartet extending the solo violin material of the earlier work. But as the hour-long piece progressed, such similarities dissolved and the individuality of the new work became the focus of attention. The "two-part Invention" in the piano continued throughout the whole piece, against which the Quartet material caressed its way through a gradual process of metamorphosis - about three-quarters of an hour into the piece, everything stopped abruptly (a feature of Harrison's work that I think is in danger of becoming a mannerism) before resuming, and settling into a long Coda in which the Quartet play ascending and descending scales, each at slightly different moments of synchronicity, never exactly the same. After a couple of minutes, I confess that I thought "Hey Jude" - it did seem as if just the same phrase was being annoyingly repeated over and over again. But the Music's relentless pursuit of its material forced the attention to realize that we weren't being presented with identical repetitions - more the aural effect of leaves or snowflakes: a mass of similar-but-different individual phrases accumulating to create a whole very much greater than the sum of its parts.

I hope that both works receive the further performances that they merit and the recordings that they need - both are important additions to the Piano Quintet repertoire; revealing new and rewarding possibilities for the ensemble.

[Beef Oven!]

Thanks ferney

I found this 10 minute extract from Vessels on YouTube. Excellent music.