Prom 6: Tuesday 19th July at 7.00 p.m. (Brahms, Stravinsky)

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

Presented by Rob Cowan

The most influential orchestral work of the 20th century is at the heart of tonight's Prom. Stravinsky's Rite caused a scandal at its premiere in 1913 and still sounds sensational nearly 100 years later. Myung-Whun Chung conducts the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France in this riot of orchestral colour.

The first half of the concert pairs works by German Romantics from either end of the 19th century, Weber's Oberon overture and Brahms's beautiful Double Concerto, featuring the brothers Capuçon as soloists. Brahms's final work for orchestra, the Double Concerto, was in part a gesture of reconciliation towards his friend the violinist Joseph Joachim and makes huge demands on both soloists.

Weber: Oberon - overture
Brahms: Concerto in A minor for Violin and Cello (Double Concerto)
Stravinsky: The Rite of Spring

Renaud Capuçon (violin)
Gautier Capuçon (cello)
Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France
Myung-Whun Chung (conductor)

[Threni]

Ah Stravinsky :-)

[Chris Newman]

What a lovely concert! Spoilt by the chicken engineers who fiddled about too much in the Rite where I had to rush forward and turn the volume up several times in the second part. The result was I was deafened when they struck up with the Toreador Song where I had to turn it down again. Weber: not bad. The Brahms was terrific: I do like the forthright, yet lyrical playing of the Capuçons. They are so rich toned and play together immaculately. The Rite where I could hear it sounded as good as the Raphael Fruhbeck de Burgos one at the Proms in the 70s. Rob Cowan thought it the best he had heard in the RAH.

L'Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France is a dark on horse this side of the channel. Only 27 years old it has a maturity of sound which belies its youth. To my ears the strings have something of a Central European richness combined with a "British" virtuosity. Nice refulgent woodwind and ripe brass as well. The amazing Capuçons are regular performers with and without them, both singly and together. I try to hear them roughly once a fortnight on ArteLive, the Franco-German TV Channel which unlike iPlayer lets you hear/watch concerts for several weeks. Indeed they sometimes have Proms for a month or more: last year's Lionel Bringuier Prom was there for ages in full...BBC 4 only had part of it late one evening.

[EdgeleyRob]

What a lovely concert!

Agreed I really enjoyed that.
Why does the Brahms double concerto get such a 'bad press' it is a lovely work and was performed really well tonight.
Also the Schubert quintet still to come later.Joy!

[Bryn]

What a lovely concert! Spoilt by the chicken engineers who fiddled about too much in the Rite where I had to rush forward and turn the volume up several times in the second part.

Eh? Via the HD Sound stream the engineering was superb, compared to the mess made of Proms 1 and 3. Massive range of dynamics. Not from engineers fiddling, but from the orchestra. Just to hammer the point home, tonight the peak level during The Rite, was way up at -1.3dB, with an average RMS value of -29.0dB, whereas for The Gothic it was a peak value of -9.7dB for an average RMS value as high as -27.0dB. For those not used to dealing with such measurements, that means that for The Rite, the overall level was considerably lower than The Gothic, but the peak levels was way, way higher, i.e. the engineers offered a much wider, far more realistic presentation of what was heard by those lucky enough to be in the RAH for The Rite, than was the case for The Gothic, which was effectively presented as if produced by an amateur pop producer.

[OldTechie]

I thought the HD sound was OK too. I did some comparisons with my local FM sound during the TX. My gain settings are such that speech is about the same level on FM and HD. Quiet music (in fact most of radio 3) is then much quieter on HD than on FM. Loud music is significantly louder on HD than on FM.

The opening notes of the Stravinsky were quieter than the hum that the BBC inserts on my local FM transmitter. Much quieter and devoid of hum on HD. Unfortunately nearly every crescendo during the piece was at a level where the Optimod in the FM chain completely cancelled the effect, but it was fine on HD. The HD only became louder than the FM at the very end (and for the encore!) so they were clear of any limiting effects throughout.

So I think that they had it right in the hall. I suspect Chris may have been listening to the FM (or DAB with the auto-gain feature turned on.)

The bit-rate compression on HD loses quite a lot campared with FM (though it is significantly better than Freeview or DAB.) However, the absence of the Optimod dynamic range compression and my local transmitter's hum makes HD my preferred choice. One day I'll work out how to use the Freeview feed to undo the mess the Optimod creates (and cancel out my local transmitter hum.)

I can't comment on the Gothic's sound quality - it was fine from my seat in the Albert Hall!

Eric

[Chris Newman]

Hi Eric,
I was listening on HD as a download. Radio reception is poor in my road. But the second half of the Rite did keep getting quieter as the brass receded before the usual loud bits and then gradually came back into focus.
I am not too keen on DAB (call me a Luddite).

Chris

[pilamenon]

Massive range of dynamics. Not from engineers fiddling, but from the orchestra.

I don't have the measurements, but my ears tend to agree. Listening on HD through a computer, the dynamic range on the Rite was the most remarkable feature of the performance. Several times, one of my harman/kardon speakers cut out, unable to cope with the explosive bursts. It's very hard to please everybody on this issue, as discussions on these boards show. Some are very unhappy when the engineers compress the range, but elsewhere I've read similar anger about dynamics being too extreme, forcing listeners to keep adjusting their speakers.

[johnb]

I listened to the HD Sound on my audio system (care of Squeezebox) and certainly didn't notice any of the issues Chris has mentioned, even though it's something I am sensitive to.

Enjoyed The Rite very much. Will listen to the first half tomorrow.

[OldTechie]

Hi Chris,

If you are a luddite, then so am I. I can't find a good reason to buy a quality version, and the portable I have sounds awful. However, DAB does have the solution for people who want compressed dynamics - the intention is to transmait clean audio and a compression control signal that you can turn on and off at your choice in the better receivers.

Apart from that I find the dynamic range on all the digital methods seems to be consistent (except the podcasts and wlm streams.) That is Freeview, VirginMedia and any live aac Flash stream from the BBC site.

My ideal is that they set the level during rehearsal with enough headroom to allow for a slightly louder performance, and then leave it alone. From the really quiet first few notes of the Rite to the full modulation at the end I thought that was what they had done. However, I may have confused myself by switching to the FM feed in order to establish whether they were really doing something different as per the posts here about prom 4.

I'm sure they have not put the HD encoder I was listening to on the wrong side of the Optimod as I think they did on some transmissions at the start of the experiment last year.

The Optimod sounds just like an inexperienced engineer tweaking it. It has a delay in the sound, so it can reduce the level just before a peak arrives. That is much better than limiting it when the peak arrives!

It would be nice to be able to log the levels we are all receiving. Maybe it is not as consistent as we would expect. Maybe it depends on the aac decoder we are using. For instance if you use Triode's plugin for the squeezebox I think you can either use a decoder in the server, or one in the logitech box. I am using the standard Adobe Flash plugin on Windows 7 - and I don't know whether that uses its own decoder, or uses the Microsoft one. It might even be different on Windows XP. I thought the encore was at the same sort of level as the final peaks in the Rite, but you found it louder.

I'll have another listen to the iPlayer version (though 128kbps is not really enough for quality, but I think the levels should be the same as HD). I'll post back with whether I think that sounds ok for levels. Maybe we just have different opinions on the same sound. But maybe we are getting different sounds from the same digital source in which case it would be good to track the cause.

Eric

[Ventilhorn]

Presented by Rob Cowan

Weber: Oberon - overture
Brahms: Concerto in A minor for Violin and Cello (Double Concerto)
Stravinsky: The Rite of Spring

Renaud Capuçon (violin)
Gautier Capuçon (cello)
Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France
Myung-Whun Chung (conductor)

Wow!

At last we have settled in for a promenade concert without "unusual" content.

This is a very fine orchestra and they played superbly throughout.

A programme that anyone could enjoy.
The Weber; maybe not played often enough these days, but it makes a fine concert opening.
I have always liked the Brahms double concerto as much as I have always disliked the Beethoven triple of the previous evening and the brothers Capuçon were a magnificent partnership. Their encore demonstrated their complete musical understanding and was a joy to hear.

Then "The Rite". For myself, I have never heard a more exciting, electrifying performance, and I doubt if I ever will. Congratulations to Mr Chung.
After the experiments of the first 4 days (to which I have listened attentively), I feel that the Proms are now under way.

VH

[Bryn]

Not sure where you are based, Eric, but the 'listen again' iPlayer version of any Radio offering should be a 192kbps aac-lc if in the UK.

[OldTechie]

Hi Bryn,

If I right-click on the player it tells me it is 128kbps. I get 192kbps on the live feed. The pop-out Radio Player uses a different Flash swf file and does not tell me the data rate - but it gets it from the same Akamai source and the network traffic seems the same. Maybe they have decided the VirginMedia network in Guildford is abroad!

Eric

[Bryn]

Don't believe the Radio 3 iPlayer labelling when you right-click. It's been wrong from the start. The standard on demand ('listen again') iPlayer for Radio 3 is at 192kbps aac-lc (in an FLV 'wrapper').

[salymap]

Err, back to the music. I only managed to hear the Brahms Double concerto but it was a lovely performance.

My only quibble was the difficulty I had in hearing the violin soloist but that could have been my hearing.

I am please to discover I still have an LP of Francescatti, Fornier and Bruno Walter with the Columbia Symphony Orchestra, which I hope to listen to later. A lovely work I haven't heard for a while.