Prom 35: Berg/Mahler, BBC SO, Josefowicz/A. Davis, 10 Aug 2023

[Pulcinella]

How easy would it have been for the BBCSO to find a conductor able to conduct Mahler/Cooke 10 when Sir Andrew's withdrawal was known? How much rehearsal time would such a conductor have had?

I wonder: but at least they're used to working with Oramo, which might not have been the case for another conductor who happened to be available and familiar with M10.

[bluestateprommer]

Fine reading of the Alban Berg concerto from Leila J., which must be a piece of cake for her compared to some of the contemporary violin concertos that she's done over the years (from memory, in many instances). Of course, "a piece of cake" is generally the last description that one would ever think to use for the Berg violin concerto. I wonder if LJ wasn't expecting to play an encore, and suddenly had to come up with a JSB solo violin movement that would somehow fit the occasion. It had to be a slow movement, and she chose well, it would seem.

Martin Handley takes the palm this summer, it seems, for meaty interval discussions, and it continues here (a miscue of a Mahler 7 excerpt aside), with Robert Samuels. (Cute story of arranging a bit of Mahler 7 for his wedding.)

[Alison]

Mahler 7 (i) lacking coherence for me and little sense of arrival at its conclusion.

[Ein Heldenleben]

Mahler 7 (i) lacking coherence for me and little sense of arrival at its conclusion.

Following on score and lost my place in 1st mvmt due to distraction and this is not the score in which to do that.

[edashtav]

Fine reading of the Alban Berg concerto from Leila J., which must be a piece of cake for her compared to some of the contemporary violin concertos that she's done over the years (from memory, in many instances). Of course, "a piece of cake" is generally the last description that one would ever think to use for the Berg violin concerto. I wonder if LJ wasn't expecting to play an encore, and suddenly had to come up with a JSB solo violin movement that would somehow fit the occasion. It had to be a slow movement, and she chose well, it would seem.

Martin Handley takes the palm this summer, it seems, for meaty interval discussions, and it continues here (a miscue of a Mahler 7 excerpt aside), with Robert Samuels. (Cute story of arranging a bit of Mahler 7 for his wedding.)

The last time I heard the Berg was with Kovakos the LPO and Jurowski in the RFH. Perfectly executed, lucid and and comprehensible, I thought it was matchless.

Untrue, LJ was magical. She started the arpeggio figure reflectively whereas LK was purposeful, quicker, and keen, apparently, to reach the development. LJ ‘s technique is excellenr but what sets her aside is the intensity if her insights. Absolutely splendid. I was shocked, when an encore was announced. Almost any choice would be antagonistic. However,LJ’s choice of the Largo from JSB’s 3rd violin sonata was wonderful and replete with stunning ppps,

My listening to the Mahler was interrupted by having to attend to a painful, wonky leg.
More later, I hope.

[Alison]

No complaints about the rest of the symphony. Fine playing by what has now become a favourite band, unrecognisable from the Slatkin era. A rousing finale indeed and I hope Gargoyle enjoyed his evening, especially with the fine Berg first half.

[Ein Heldenleben]

No complaints about the rest of the symphony. Fine playing by what has now become a favourite band, unrecognisable from the Slatkin era. A rousing finale indeed and I hope Gargoyle enjoyed his evening, especially with the fine Berg first half.

Yes particularly fine finale I thought.

[Petrushka]

Mahler 7 (i) lacking coherence for me and little sense of arrival at its conclusion.

Agree with you here, Alison. Perhaps the rehearsal time ran out! Things improved thereafter but that first movement made a poor impression and I feared the worst.

[Maclintick]

No complaints about the rest of the symphony. Fine playing by what has now become a favourite band, unrecognisable from the Slatkin era. A rousing finale indeed and I hope Gargoyle enjoyed his evening, especially with the fine Berg first half.

A really good evening, in what has been a succession of excellent concerts this season. Impressed by the way Oramo kept his powder dry until the finale, & unerringly charted his way through its contrapuntal extremities to that ambiguous coda. In this work I always feel that Nachtmusik I outstays its welcome by several minutes, and that Nachtmusik III has strayed from a draft of the Third...

[bluestateprommer]

I found Oramo's reading of the 1st movement of Mahler 7 rather wayward, so I'm in alignment with Alison there. But I'm also with Alison in finding the rest of the symphony to have no such concerns. Sakari Oramo really stretched out the penultimate chord as long as he dared.

I was willing to cut Oramo and the BBC SO some slack, given the relatively short notice of the program change. It was interesting to hear Martin Handley mentioned that Oramo got the call on something like 6 days' notice, i.e. less than a week, as Oramo was in Savonlinna for an opera festival. But the orchestra sounds indeed on very fine form, some quite minor blips aside. This is also not long after the Berlin Philharmonic / Kirill Petrenko Mahler 7 Prom last summer.

BTW, if anyone wants to "compare and contrast", YT has this Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra performance with Oramo of Mahler 7:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JvGc-5iKocM

[Nachtigall]

I was in Row 8 of the Side Stalls overlooking the orchestra for last night's performance and was hugely impressed by the sheer concentration demanded by Mahler both of the orchestra and of the audience for this, possibly his most revolutionary, symphony and by the BBC Symphony Orchestra's outstanding performance and Oramo's masterly and tireless conducting. (Where was Richard Morrison, the Times music critic, I wonder? He awarded only three stars to a "swampy" performance.) While one can always tell a bad or shaky performance (did Klemperer ever understand this symphony, for instance?) I sometimes wonder whether the quest for "coherence" (Alison) actually misses the point here. Isn't the disjointedness perhaps part of the point or even the point, the sudden switches of tempo and mood, the obsessive repetitions, the striking contrasts between violent orchestral tuttis and chamber music interludes? These seem to me to be hallmarks of expressionism and it is surely an expressionist symphony. I'm happy for others to disagree, however.

[Alison]

FWIW I’d agree with Nachtigall after the first movement which can achieve, under the right direction, a thrilling cumulative symphonic thrust.

Not sure what RM meant by ‘swampy’. I don’t like to hear (ii) to (iv) over interpreted in the Rattle manner, and here Oramo seemed exemplary, while the finale had just the right degree of incoherence.

[Alison]

Apart from the Ormandy I've enjoyed Rattle/Berlin and a Mark Wigglesworth live broadcast released on a BBC Music Magazine disc .

The Wigglesworth would win my Building a Library! An altogether wonderful performance.

[Gargoyle]

No complaints about the rest of the symphony. Fine playing by what has now become a favourite band, unrecognisable from the Slatkin era. A rousing finale indeed and I hope Gargoyle enjoyed his evening, especially with the fine Berg first half.

I enjoyed the performance very much indeed and enjoyed a good seat in the stalls for a change (I normally prom). But I must say that I found the first movement the most perfect of all the performances I've ever attended!



"Although the first movement is a steadily progressing procession, a tragic night without stars or moon, it is also a bizarrely scored nightmare and is oddly immobile, travelling in circles''


and at the end of the movement:


".....[the C Major melody] is swept away [by the principal subject] sucking the movement into its own coda, where the main theme reconditions to close in a glittering, elusive E major. The movement has gone everywhere and nowhere"

(Beauty and Sadness: Mahler's 11 Symphonies, David Vernon)


There is something deliberately unruly and stubbornly 'incoherent' in Mahler's musical syntax for the first movement that rules out any 'arrival'. What may appear as disjointed music is actually the point. Only a view, nothing certain, but on that basis, I was enthralled by the first movement especially.

[edashtav]

A really good evening, in what has been a succession of excellent concerts this season. Impressed by the way Oramo kept his powder dry until the finale, & unerringly charted his way through its contrapuntal extremities to that ambiguous coda. In this work I always feel that Nachtmusik I outstays its welcome by several minutes, and that Nachtmusik III has strayed from a draft of the Third...

Yes, indeed, Oramo excelled in the finale where many conductors fail!