Prom 30/7/11 - CBSO/Nelsons-Midori

[Barbirollians]

Caught this on BBC2 last night and thought it was a very good Prom. Midori played the Walton very well to my ears and Nelsons brought out some of the details in the orchestration I had not noticed before . The Prokofiev was rousing too and well sung I thought too.

Any other views ?

[Pianorak]

. . . Any other views ?

Yes, plenty.

http://www.for3.org/forums/showthread.php?2706-Prom-21-Saturday-30th-July-at-7.30-p.m.-%28Strauss-Walton-Prokofiev%29

[Norfolk Born]

Caught this on BBC2 last night and thought it was a very good Prom. Midori played the Walton very well to my ears and Nelsons brought out some of the details in the orchestration I had not noticed before . The Prokofiev was rousing too and well sung I thought too.

Any other views ?

Well ... in the words of Helen Reddy: 'it's you and me against the world'. Her performance has produced a positive (or do I mean negative?) torrent of scorn and opprobrium from most contributors to the existing thread devoted to this concert. I'm still not sure why this should be...

[Bryn]

Well it was certainly different.

[Ariosto]

Midori

I did hear this concert on TV tonight, on play it again. I was interested because Ferret and others had been pretty critical of her playing, and I was out at a "musical" last night (don't ask) and missed it.

It was interesting to hear this concerto, and I have to say it was not very good.

I admire her ability to perform this work from memory, but I had huge problems with her sound, which was I think produced in a very surface way, and not into the string. Maybe her fiddle's lousy as well, as it's a Guanarius Del Jesu ...

I think the problem is twofold. A very tense vibrato in the left hand, and a very inflexible and tense right hand bow hold. This resulted in poor contact with the strings, and a weak sound.

I also felt, I'm sorry to say, that she misunderstood the music. Flying around the instrument in a very surface sort of way and not recognising the harmonic meaning really does not make much sense of the musical line, and made the concerto sound, well, uninteresting.

I do have the Heifetz recording and his incredibly dazzling technique is never used at the expense of the musical line. But who am I to say, I've never played this concerto so I'm really speaking without too much insight.

[Bryn]

I find myself concurring with your fifth and sixth paragraphs there, aka. I'll take paragraphs three and four on trust.