Prom 56: Friday 26th August at 7.30 p.m. (Strauss, Mahler)

[BBMmk2]

Brassbandmaestro: If, as you've mentioned elsewhere, you think the BBCSO isn't sounding as convincing as in previous seasons we must be listening to different orchestras or something!

The transformation from the routinely lacklustre (and lacklustrely routine!) performances of the period around 5 years back (and rather too often during the Andrew Davis era too IMO) is very noticeable. Maybe the technical finesse isn't quite there to the same degree as e.g. the Philharmonia last week, but none of their Proms this season have sounded like the somewhat indifferent run-throughs of the past...

Mind you, Bychkov is clearly the business... Given that AIUI he's publicly stated he doesn't want the job of chief conductor of anything, let's hope that the BBCSO continue to book him for as many guest appearances as he's interested in making.

Yes with Semyon Bychkov, they seem to have a very good rapport. Just that, in some cases their playing not as is should be at times. I was thinking eg in the Britten concert, the o0pening Purcell/Joby Talbot. Perhaps I am being far too picky?

[salymap]

I was surprised to find I knew the Strauss Burleske quite well and am pretty sure I went to a performance of it. Don't know when but it woud have been the RAH years ago. Good to hear it again.

[Curalach]

Not heard it yet, sounds like it was a good performance , anyone have the timing?

Just burned a cd. 86.34. 1 = 24.03, 2 = 14.17, 3 = 16.43, 4 = 31.31
( 2 cd's actually)

[barber olly]

This is interesting, Im not sure how well the BBC Symphony or Bychkov know Mahler 6 , how many times they have played it recently and how much rehearsal time is planned. The Symphony has great intensity with the first movement almost a massive tone poem in its own right. As I'm sure many of you know it can be quite a test of stamina to listen to so one can only imagine what its like for players in non stop 85 minutes. I personally like my Mahler at a faster tempo than most conductors take it, for example Jarvi with the Royal Scottish did it in 72 minutes. I really hope the BBC Sym do it justice.

A fine performance by BBCSO and Bychkov but at 88 minutes not one for a single CD or the Guiness Book.

[barber olly]

Curalach my timing from iplayer obviously includes the long breaks, fortunately applause-free, between movements. 1 24.02, 2/3/4 64.13.

[Curalach]

I edited out some of the inter-movement coughing and the final applause.

[Bryn]

Having adjusted the levels to give a peak of -0.2dB during the symphony itself, I costructed 34 seconds of ambient from an 11.34 second sample between the end of the symphony and the start of the applause, and replaced the audience kerfuffle between movements with that. Currently burning to a '90 minute' overburn CD-R.

[Update - overburn completed successfully. Now playing back. ]

[Serial_Apologist]

Having adjusted the levels to give a peak of -0.2dB during the symphony itself, I costructed 34 seconds of ambient from an 11.34 second sample between the end of the symphony and the start of the applause, and replaced the audience kerfuffle between movements with that. Currently burning to a '90 minute' overburn CD-R.

[Update - overburn completed successfully. Now playing back. ]

Nothing compares to the fun of reconstructing history a posterior... I mean for posterity, eh?

[Chris Newman]

I think the orchestra has improved a lot in technical ability over recent months.

There seems to be a number of new players wth the brass in particular
being far more reliable this season.

It still needs a good conductor at the helm and tonight we got that in no uncertain fashion.

Hi, Alison,
Talking to a lot of Promenaders lately the general feeling is that Jiri Belohlavec has built up the BBCSO to the sort of discipline that we expected when Pierre Boulez (I would add Colin Davis and Gennady Rhozdezvensky) were in charge. It went through a period of "really nice guys" who let standards slip (Johh Pritchard, Andrew Davis and Leonard Slatkin) who all had superb interpretations of their favourite composers's works but were not dynamic builders of orchestras. JB has set a standard which really shows when he performs Czech music or when someone great like Bychkov or Gardner pops in. This season the BBCSO has sounded international class. The best Roger Wright and the orchestra can do is to hang on to the safest pair of hands they have had since Boulez.

bws
Chris.

[makropulos]

JB has set a standard which really shows when he performs Czech music or when someone great like Bychkov or Gardner pops in. This season the BBCSO has sounded international class. The best Roger Wright and the orchestra can do is to hang on to the safest pair of hands they have had since Boulez.

bws
Chris.

I know you addressed this to Alison, but I hope you don't mind a comment from someone else. If that improvement in playing standards is the result of Belohlavek's work with the orchestra, then good for him. The problem remains that (for me) he remains safe to the point of less-than-interesting most of the time. And I would include, alas, quite a lot of his conducting of Czech repertoire.

So, a couple of questions:
1. If it is his work that has improved the orchestra , then losing him might be unfortunate. But apart from talking to Prommers, what hard evidence is there for that being the case? Realistically, how much time does he spend with the BBCSO?
Perhaps more germane:
2. If one of the two people you mention as great (quite rightly, in my view) were to take over, wouldn't that be for the better?

I hate to sound so curmudgeonly - but JB just never quite delivers for me, whether in opera or concert. He's good-ish (at least), but I find that's about all.

[Norfolk Born]

Interesting (and strange!) - the sound was extremely good tonight on Freeview here at the volume I usually have it. I hadn't thought there would be regional differences, but perhaps there are.

Still shattered (in a good way) from the concert.

I was once told by a TV engineer that the comparative strength and/or quality of Freeview channels vary, depending on where you live. In some areas, BBC channels are stronger and ITV channels weaker, while the reverse applies in other areas. (It was partly to avoid this problem that I switched to Freesat, where this problem does not arise).

[Simon B]

I was once told by a TV engineer that the comparative strength and/or quality of Freeview channels vary, depending on where you live. In some areas, BBC channels are stronger and ITV channels weaker, while the reverse applies in other areas. (It was partly to avoid this problem that I switched to Freesat, where this problem does not arise).

Apologies in advance for the off-topic techno mumble to those not interested...

This is true in a particular technical context, but (unlike in e.g. analogue FM radio) there's no link between the "strength" you're referring to here and the "strength" of the audio signal the end user will perceive. On a given delivery mechanism (e.g. terrestrial Freeview) an identical digital audio signal will be transmitted to everyone, everywhere.

What varies geographically is the transmit power and other parameters of the radio signal (i.e. "strength" in simplified terms) sent from the transmitter mast for a particular MUX (i.e. a load of stations aggregated together, such as all BBC). The objective is to try to make the signal good enough at the point of reception for as many users as possible's set-top-boxes to be able to decode it ok. In practice it's impossible to achieve this for 100% of users who'd like to be able to receive it.

Bear in mind that, like all digital systems, Freeview is essentially all-or-nothing. The video/audio signal your set-top-box ultimately recovers from what it receives at its antenna will either be an almost exact replica of what was sent out by the BBC, or it'll be a serious mess. Serious mess = picture breaking up, squealing, popping, "boiling-mud" on audio etc. Unlike e.g. FM radio, there isn't a graceful degradation mode where the audio volume might be percevied as dropping.*

What individual set top boxes subsequently do with the approximately identical recovered digital audio signal is a different matter entirely, and the point at which all sorts of variations come in. Especially so in cheap equipment with audio subsystems at the cheap-and-nasty end of the spectrum...


*Note to any tecchies or anyone else still awake at this point, yes ok there is a narrow grey area, but this is too complicated already without banging on about Viterbi & Reed-Solomon decoders and what happens to MPEG decoders when the input is on the threshold of not being QEF anymore etc etc. For these purposes, the upshot is the same...

[bluestateprommer]

From hearing the iPlayer archive of this BBC SO Prom, I have to confess that the Strauss wasn't quite as swaggering as I hoped it would be, given that the Burleske is kind of a "cheap thrills" work, and I was hoping for more showiness from KG, since that is what the work really needs, IMHO. On its own terms, though, it was fine, and a tip of the hat to the BBC SO's timpanist as well, in this near 'double concerto'.

The Mahler 6 was very nicely done, with the order of the middle movements as I like them , well paced, admittedly with the first movement starting a bit faster than what I'm used to hearing live, the few times I've heard it live, and on record. For those in the hall, I'd like to ask: how much bell-raising from the winds and horns was there? For those who could see them, that is. The 15 seconds or so of silence after the very end also spoke well to Bychkov's "crowd control".

There has been a transformation in the BBCSO and if this is the quiet work of Belolhavek then all credit to him.

Talking to a lot of Promenaders lately the general feeling is that Jiri [Belohlavek] has built up the BBCSO to the sort of discipline that we expected when Pierre Boulez (I would add Colin Davis and Gennady [Rozhdestvensky]) were in charge. It went through a period of "really nice guys" who let standards slip (John Pritchard, Andrew Davis and Leonard Slatkin) who all had superb interpretations of their favourite composers's works but were not dynamic builders of orchestras....This season the BBCSO has sounded international class. The best Roger Wright and the orchestra can do is to hang on to the safest pair of hands they have had since Boulez.

Granted, I don't have first hand experience of the BBC SO from earlier days, but from what I understand, maybe I can give some third-hand-filtered context. By most accounts, the Slatkin years (2000-2004) were a mess, so it may well be that the BBC SO needed a safe pair of hands as their next chief conductor. Belohlavek had 5 years experience as the BBC SO's principal guest conductor from 1995-2000, so he had a good idea of what he was getting into when he was offered the top job there. JB also did have past success as an orchestra builder, as he built one in the 1990's literally from scratch, namely the Prague Philharmonia.

It's true that JB isn't the type of conductor who goes for cheap thrills, and his stage manner can come off as a bit dour. However, he's also, in the best sense, there for the music and not for himself. In fact, his qualities of being self-effacing and making just what gestures the orchestra needs may remind some of an older conductor with very similar qualities of quiet integrity, if I dare make the comparison, a conductor born just a tad under 17 years earlier, with the initials BH.