Prom 16: Cassandra Miller / Shostakovich, BBC Philharmonic, Power / Storgårds

[Nick Armstrong]

Agreed - terrific performance, even though in the hall much of the detail is lost.

I confess, though a die-hard DSCH fan since my teens (his 15th was my way in to music, etc etc as recounted before in this forum), I have never been able to find a way into his 4th… despite the Haitink recording, a Russian one (can’t remember who, Kondrashin maybe) and a live prom (also can’t remember who).

Could this be the performance to unlock it for me?

Haven’t listened yet - though I did catch the interval discussion which was illuminating

[Nick Armstrong]

I haven't attempted to count them but I must have at least 30 recordings of this symphony

[Simon B]

Just how does the cymbal player get that crash during the hectic string passage in the first movement to time just right? Do they have to count like mad and hope for the best?

In all probability, by employing the percussionist's credo: "Count and Smash". In a piece like this, chances are most players in the wind and percussion are counting a lot, even when it's well rehearsed.

The conductor's cue is just reassurance, never to be relied on.

Maybe in a front rank professional orchestra more of it is done on instinct. That said, if you know what to look for you can see even the best visibly counting sometimes. A recent performance of John Adams Harmonielehre by a top orchestra comes to mind. Entire percussion section all playing like fury and visibly muttering "1-2, 2-2, 3-2, 4-2,...,27-2" to make sure they all finished an ostinato at the right time. "I've got repetitive counting injury" one of them joked afterwards.

That bit in Shostakovich 4 is relatively easy in the scheme of things. The strings start playing a blizzard of semiquavers (or whatever) with an obvious starting point and in a regular metre so it's just 1-2, 2-2, 3-2 ... smash.

What marks out the top notch pro is the confidence and flair to attack it and to anticipate by the right amount to deal with the acoustic (big delays and echo in the Albert Hall) and how much a particular orchestra collectively plays ahead of or behind a conductor's beat, when to watch the leader and not the conductor, etc. Belief in their own counting is a good chunk of the battle. Good luck to them. Not for the nervous.

This particular performance of Shostakovich 4 seemed to me to be more dogged than threatening and as such it didn't really hit the mark. The sense of dazed numbness thus seemed absent from symphonic music's possible greatest non sequitur - i.e. the sometimes astonishing coda. If cogence and consistency is more your thing than a wild rollercoaster approach in this work then I can see how it might have appealed.

[EnemyoftheStoat]

In all probability, by employing the percussionist's credo: "Count and Smash". In a piece like this, chances are most players in the wind and percussion are counting a lot, even when it's well rehearsed.

The conductor's cue is just reassurance, never to be relied on.

I was a latecomer to orchestral playing after a good number of years in choral singing, where you don't usually have to count bars thanks to having the whole vocal score in front of you.

I initially had to discipline myself to count rests religiously, as those rests are often packed in user-hostile 'boxes' of bars (e.g. ten) that don't correspond to the musical structure. (That's unlike the brass band music that I used to play a lot of, which was unbelievably user-friendly in retrospect.)

Now it happens more or less automatically - which is useful when dropping in as a dep on performance day with only the one rehearsal - and if I were playing as a pro it would have no doubt become second nature over the years.

[oliver sudden]

if I were playing as a pro it would have no doubt become second nature over the years.

Can confirm. It happens pretty early in proceedings.

[Barbirollians]

My slow progress catching up with Proms continues . I enjoyed this one - I agree it was a bit soft edged for Shostakovich 4 but I enjoyed it a lot. The concerto was fascinating - stunningly played and deserves a revisit .