Prom 52: J. Adolphe / R. Strauss / Prokofiev, Boston SO, Nelsons, Fri. 25 Aug 2023

[bluestateprommer]

Friday 25 August 2023
18:30
Royal Albert Hall

Julia Adolphe: Makeshift Castle (European premiere)
Richard Strauss: Tod und Verklärung (Death and Transfiguration), op. 24

interval

Prokofiev: Symphony No. 5 in Bb major, op. 100

Boston Symphony Orchestra
Andris Nelsons, conductor

https://www.bbc.co.uk/events/e82z3d

https://www.royalalberthall.com/tickets/proms/bbc-proms-2023/prom-52-the-boston-symphony-orchestra-play-prokofievs-fifth-symphony/

[french frank]

Friday 25th August, 18.30:

An earlier evening concert, prior to a late night Prom:

"The mighty Boston Symphony Orchestra returns to the Proms under Music Director Andris Nelsons for the first of two concerts – human resilience the theme.

" ‘I conceived of it as glorifying the grandeur of the human spirit,’ Prokofiev wrote of his Fifth Symphony, premiered in January 1945 at the start of the USSR’s successful final offensive against Nazi Germany. The defiant optimism of the finale is mirrored in Richard Strauss’s tone-poem Death and Transfiguration, in which a dying man gains a musical glimpse of eternity.

"Jointly commissioned by the BSO and the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, of which Nelsons is also Music Director, Julia Adolphe’s Makeshift Castle offers a contemporary meditation on fragility and endurance." [RAH website]

[edashtav]

The Boston Symphony Orchestra has details of Julia Adolphe’s piece , including:
”Commissioned by the BSO and the Gewandhausorchester Leipzig, Makeshift Castle was originally to have been premiered in Boston in January 2021, but pandemic-related delays allowed Adolphe to continue refining the piece until it reached its final state in 2022. It ultimately became a two-movement piece the composer describes as representing “contrasting states of permanence and ephemerality, of perseverance and disintegration, of determination and surrender.” The titles of the two movements, “Sandstone” and “Wooden Embers,” suggest the dichotomy, though it’s not an entirely simple question of permanence versus ephemerality. There is considerable dynamism and change in “Sandstone.” The movement opens with deep bass and sharply accented percussion giving way to a short, quiet, but anticipatory passage. The body of the movement engages the full orchestra, particularly the brass, with sporadic, pounding percussion creating a sense of both power and unpredictability. Within the massed instrumental sound, the music remains detailed and mercurial, a characteristic that continues into the following very quiet, sustained, and transparent episode that closes the movement.”

[edashtav]

Don’t forget that Boston Symphony Orchestra’s Prom starts at 6.30pm, tonight, with a new piece by Julia Adolphe, a member of that rare group ‘21st c. composers’ and Death and Transfiguration by R. Strauss,a remarkable piece for a young, secular composer to have written. On his own deathbed, Strauss testified to its accuracy, “dying is exactly as I composed it sixty years ago in Tod und Verklärung.”

[edashtav]

Makeshift Castle is in two movements and reflects on a moment of epiphany in the composer’s life : a wonderful sunset accompanying her father’s first observed tear.
The scoring is very colourful with brass and a vast kitchen department to the fore. Much of the music is consonant, harking back to 20th century models but obscured by effects: e.g. glissandi and heterophony. At one moment, I heard Robert Simpson on steroids in his ‘music of the spheres’ mode. A touch of Nørgård was succeeded by Holmboe. Diverting but of little substance. Disappointing as I had hoped that the BSO might have discovered a real piece of 21st century contemporary music. One fifth of this century’s music has already been written but where is it? There are times when I wished I had Tom Service’s deaf & blind faith.

On to Death and Transfiguration. I cannot tell you how often I have heard it. I didn’t absorb it with my mother’s milk but my father, who loved the work, ensured i
supped on it most years. I still love it for it’s so richly filled with great melodies and tells a strangely comforting story that becomes ever more vital as life flies by.

Andris Nelsons had the measure of it and his orchestra played ‘con amore’. I love works which demand a good, strong bass line, that’s what first convinced me of the value of Havergal Brian’s music, and this evening, the bottom of the orchestra sound black and threatening. Nothing was rushed or hurried, the whole piece evolved organically, and the brashness that we heard in Julia Adolphe’s piece was missing. Orchestral playing and direction of the highest quality.

It was neat programming to shape the first half from two works of two movements. However, Adolfe’s Castles crumbled to dust when succeeded by a masterpiece that encompassed such a profound message.

[bluestateprommer]

JA's Makeshift Castle didn't particularly impress me either, based on just this one hearing. Maybe I'll give it a 2nd chance later, in addition to all the other Proms catch-up that I need to do. Nelsons and the Boston SO served the work well, though. Somewhat by contrast, and maybe it's just my mood, but AN's reading of Death and Transfiguration sounded maybe a bit too comfortable. Orchestra still sounds great, of course. Always good to hear Marina Frolova-Walker during these Proms interval features.

[gedsmk]

“I still love it for its so richly filled with great melodies and tells a strangely comforting story that becomes ever more vital as life flies by.” How wonderful that the composer quotes the Transfiguration theme in the final passage of the four last songs.

[Ein Heldenleben]

The string sound that Nelsons is drawing from the BSO in this Prokofiev 5 is so luscious as to be almost intoxicating. Is it almost too much vibrato ? A wonderful conductor but he joins the long list of those who don’t seem to be able to sing accurately the main themes of the work he is about to conduct masterfully.

[Alison]

Elements of overcalculation in both main works perhaps. Happy even so to add these to the list of excellent performances this season. Four out of five stars.

[edashtav]

The string sound that Nelsons is drawing from the BSO in this Prokofiev 5 is so luscious as to be almost intoxicating. Is it almost too much vibrato ? A wonderful conductor but he joins the long list of those who don’t seem to be able to sing accurately the main themes of the work he is about to conduct masterfully.

Yes, his singing was confident but all over the shop.

[alywin]

Somewhat by contrast, and maybe it's just my mood, but AN's reading of Death and Transfiguration sounded maybe a bit too comfortable.

Yes. I found myself harking back to the first time I heard the work, in the hands of his mentor and compatriot, Mariss Jansons. I didn't think this was on the same sort of level. Really enjoyed the Prokofiev, though :)

[parkepr]

I see they brought there own podium. Does it have special significance? Do any other orchestras bring there own podium?

[Maclintick]

On to Death and Transfiguration. I cannot tell you how often I have heard it. I didn’t absorb it with my mother’s milk but my father, who loved the work, ensured i
supped on it most years. I still love it for it’s so richly filled with great melodies and tells a strangely comforting story that becomes ever more vital as life flies by.

Andris Nelsons had the measure of it and his orchestra played ‘con amore’. I love works which demand a good, strong bass line, that’s what first convinced me of the value of Havergal Brian’s music, and this evening, the bottom of the orchestra sound black and threatening. Nothing was rushed or hurried, the whole piece evolved organically, and the brashness that we heard in Julia Adolphe’s piece was missing. Orchestral playing and direction of the highest quality.

As you say, Ed, music-making of the highest calibre on show last night -- I counted 10 doublebasses onstage. Pace some forumites who found it all a mite "comfortable", I'd issue a mild caveat that if I was being really picky I could have done with more spikiness from woodwind interjections in the Prokofiev, esp. from the 1st flute, whose immaculate contributions lacked projection as heard from my position at the rear of 'O' stalls. OTOH, it's perfectly possible that this was due to one of those RAH quirks of acoustic...

[Barbirollians]

I thought Death and Transfiguration which can be a bit gloopy was thrillingly and sensitively played and although I thought the first movement of the Prokofiev was a bit subdued the rest of the symphony was excellent