Prom 26: Wednesday 3rd August at 7.30 p.m. (French music)

[makropulos]

Gallic music is, in general, all about colour and charm as opposed to structure and form and thus there is less to keep hold of one's attention and hence an audience's apparent disinterest.

Bit of a generalization here (to say the least)! - French music "all about colour and charm as opposed to structure and form"? That seems like a fairly daft thing to say about a work as beautifully constructed as Daphnis, or as symphonic as La Mer.

As for the concert, I found most of the performances respectable but ordinary and rather safe, especially the underwhelming account of Daphnis, but perhaps that's just how it came over on the radio.

[salymap]

Thank goodness some of the habits of theatre goers have gone out of fashion. No oranges sold or consumed at the Proms and as for other things they did in Shakespeare's time. 'nuff said

[amateur51]

Thank goodness some of the habits of theatre goers have gone out of fashion. No oranges sold or consumed at the Proms and as for other things they did in Shakespeare's time. 'nuff said

Quite so ...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6eofyiE5XxA

[barber olly]

This is one of the Proms aimed specifically at attracting new listeners to 'classical music', as noted in the Proms Prospectus and the Prom mini-guide booklet. The work credited with starting the modernist trend in 'classical music' and the ever popular Bolero (let's hoe it gets a fine, fixed paced performance tonight) are both fine choices for such a concert. To have them frame 'Tout un monde loinatain ... ', and cap the concert with the complete score of Daphnis & Chloe is near genius concert planning for those new to 'classical music' in my view.

You mean it was a great opportunity to hear the worst and best Ravel works in one concert! How could a composer write the perfection that is Daphnis and then put his name the the dreadful monotony of Bolero.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

How could a composer write the perfection that is Daphnis and then put his name the the dreadful monotony of Bolero.

Well, you could just call it minimalism, and then lots more people would be happy.

[Serial_Apologist]

Well, you could just call it minimalism, and then lots more people would be happy.

[Ventilhorn]

You mean it was a great opportunity to hear the worst and best Ravel works in one concert! How could a composer write the perfection that is Daphnis and then put his name to the dreadful monotony of Bolero?

barber olly:How very true!!! I've been wittering on about that dreadful piece for years.

I watched Daphnis & Chloe on TV last night. Splendid playing by the orchestra and a choir as good as we've heard so far on these Proms.

Special praise for the Principal Flute, but also hearty congratulations to David Flack (Principal Horn) for bringing off what is undoubtedly the most difficult of Ravel's notoriously extreme writing for horn in Part I (worse even than the Piano Concerto in G) and arguably as difficult as anything in the hornplayers' classical repertoire.

Runnicles is good and I think the BBCSSO have found a winner there.

VH

[Roslynmuse]

Am I the only person on here who is not ashamed to say he enjoys Bolero and thinks it is not only a good but possibly even a great piece? :cool2: Admittedly it doesn't often get the quality of performance it deserves - nor the sort of thoughtful programming that made Wednesday's concert such an attractive proposition.

I can understand why orchestral players dislike it though...

[barber olly]

Well, you could just call it minimalism, and then lots more people would be happy.

By that I assume you mean those who like minimalism can say the great Ravel was the role model.
...but those who don't like it can say he was the one who gave the 'Minimalst Composers' to be lazy, boring and repetitive and still call it music. And then there was John Cage who thought it even better when he wrote nothing at all but still published it.
I'll stick with Ravel as that French genius who, bar one piece, wrote great music and found time to set Vaughan Williams orchestral writing in the right direction.

[barber olly]

Am I the only person on here who is not ashamed to say he enjoys Bolero and thinks it is not only a good but possibly even a great piece?

Maybe but then Bolero is the Musical Marmite, love it, hate it even love to hate it. On balance I prefer Marmite to Bolero!

[RobertLeDiable]

I'd go with Gillian Moore in the presenter's box on TV and say that Bolero is genius. It's fine to say you don't like it, but you can't deny it's an extremely original conception, brilliantly carried out. It also happens to be hard to bring off well. Those solos are cruelly exposed and I've heard more than one good trombonist falling off his solo. Runnicles did a great job of building up the sheer wildness of the thing towards the end.

[PhilipT]

Maybe but then Bolero is the Musical Marmite, love it, hate it even love to hate it. On balance I prefer Marmite to Bolero!

How did you get your Marmite past the bag-checkers?

[Ferretfancy]

Surely the only real problem with Bolero is over exposure. Ravel was apparently disconcerted when in shortened form it became a dance band hit. If you can find a copy, have a listen to the Anima Eterna performance on Zig Zag Territories 060901. They play Ravel on the type of early 20th C. instruments that the composer would have known, and the results are fascinating. The CD includes the Left Hand Piano Concerto played on an Erard Grand from 1905, and a genuinely scary La Valse in which for once you can really hear what's going on in the bass at the outset. The other items are the Rapsodie Espagnole and the Pavane.
I'm certainly not a special pleader for so called authenticity in performance, but there are details in these performances that you don't always hear.

[Tristan Klingsor]

Bolero is surely significant as the first piece of music that sustains its argument entirely through the medium of orchestration, timbre and density. The key shift right at the end is a masterstroke of extraordinary genius too. Love it!

[Serial_Apologist]

Bolero is surely significant as the first piece of music that sustains its argument entirely through the medium of orchestration, timbre and density. The key shift right at the end is a masterstroke of extraordinary genius too. Love it!

What about "Farben" from Schoenberg's Orchestral Pieces Op 16?