Saturday Matinee Prom 2: 20th August at 3.00 p.m. (PMD, Aperghis, Birtwistle)

[Roehre]

Will the newly commisioned work be a rose between two thorns?

Well, 12 minutes PMD and 35 minutes Birtwistle (neither of them really new works) are enough to crunch any rosebud .
I am very looking forward to these, and like to be surprised by that easteuropean piece.

[Roehre]

That easteuropean piece turned out to be a piano concerto by a Greek born French composer . But I am afraid IMO it was the weakest piece of the concert, a kind of Messiaen light. It might be caused by the broadcast, but what's the actual role of the ensemble in this piece, with its continual piano part overruling the other instruments nearly all the time?
It is more a concert-sans-orchestre, not even a piano-contre-l'orchestre (or chant-contrechant, as the work is titled). It might be a kind of Le Réveil des Oiseaux, but I still have to discover that....

I knew the Maxwell Davies piece already, and it is in the same category as his Mass, and an enjoyable piece, but the main meal this afternoon without any doubt was Birtwistle's Angel Fighter, a cantata-like retelling of Jacob's fight against an angel.
I am much impressed by this very approachable but nevertheless very birtwistlian piece, Gawain and The Minotaur come to mind. But there are some other composers to be pointed at too, Schönberg (logically Moses), Britten (especially the parables, but Peter Grimes as well), Berio (Eindrücke, though this is a purely instumental piece), Stravinsky (Abraham and Isaac e.g.) and possibly Hartmann (Gesangszene) and Webern (1st Cantata op.29).
I think it is a strong work, e.g. the way the women's voice call for Jacob is very imaginatively done. It's got tension, a feeling something is going on.

[Serial_Apologist]

Even given that you seem to have partial knowledge of the pieces played at this afternoon's Cadogan concert - obviously apart from the Aperghis, which made a similar impression on me - I really have to hand it to you for attempting an assessment of what was quite difficult music. I feel stupid and inadequate now for some of my remarks on the Critics thread: they deserve praise if they've done their groundwork on new music that's hard to take in or describe on first hearing. I thought the performance of the Birtwistle was astonishing in the best sense. He really does relish stories of conflict though, Birtwistle, doesn't he? Much that I feel an undefinable "rightness" in the idiom every time I hear his music, I ask myself, is this a macho characteristic in the composer? I was left feeling rather as I did after The Minotaur last year: what's the point, exactly?