Saturday Matinee Prom 3: 27th August at 3.00(Hildegard, Britten, Birtwistle, Wishart)

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

Medieval and modern, mystical and material all collide in this Prom which has as its focus songs by the 11th century German Abbess Hildegard of Bingen, performed both in their original versions and as re-imagined in a brand new work by Stevie Wishart. Her BBC commission takes Hildegard's words to create "a sonic tapestry of frayed threads from hundreds of years ago, woven into a new pattern".

Completing the programme, two modern works which also have their roots in the medieval world - Britten's cycle wittily juxtaposes sacred and secular lyrics and is one of his last works, while Harrison Birtwistle's setting takes words from a source that was to become a well-spring of inspiration in his later career - the legend of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight - and is one of his earliest published pieces

Hildegard of Bingen: Symphonia armonie celestium revelationum - selection
Britten: Sacred and Profane
Sir Harrison Birtwistle: Narration: A Description of the Passing of a Year
Stevie Wishart: Out of This World (BBC Commission; world premiere)

BBC Singers
Sinfonye
Stevie Wishart (director)
Robert Hollingworth (conductor).

[Serial_Apologist]

Saturday 27 August Chamber Prom

Cadogan Hall - 3 pm (Going out live)

BBC Singers, director Stevie Wishart, Conductor Robert Hollingsworth

Hildegard of Bingen - Symphonia armonie celestium revelatorum (excerpts)
Britten - Sacred and Profane
Harrison Birtwistle - Narration: A Description of the Passing of a Year
Stevie Wishart - Out of This World (BBC commission, first performance)

I am partial to mediaeval music, and have not yet heard H of B's music. The Britten too will be new to me. The Birtwistle piece is an early work - more obviously in the post-Webern idiom than a lot of the later stuff that seems to upset quite a few. Stevie Wishart is NOT Trevor Wishart, the avant-garde British composer. (We should hear more of his amazing music imv).

Maybe see one or two of you there?

S-A

[Serial_Apologist]

Did no one else (apart from Roehr, on another thread) hear on radio or attend this? Any views, out there?

[Roehre]

Did no one else (apart from Roehr, on another thread) hear on radio or attend this? Any views, out there?

My view, as originally written:

Grosso modo: I like the Birtwistle, but knowing that and the Hildegard pieces, not really fond of the Britten (for some reason it leaves me cold, contrary to e.g. the contemporary 3rd quartet or the bleak A time there was), I hoped the Wishart would be someting "up-to-date". Which it isn't as you rightly discovered as well. I thought the performances well done btw.

[Alf-Prufrock]

I very much enjoyed all this programme, which seemed to me to hang together very nicely.

But I have one complaint, and I am afraid I have banged on about it among friends before - inadequate documentation of what was performed. What were the three items by Hildegard called? The announcer did not tell us, the schedule does not say. We are fobbed off with 'a selection'. Is this vagueness an anti-elitist attempt by the BBC to eliminate Latin altogether? Or is it an anti-feminist move to reduce the importance of a surprisingly female composer from the Middle Ages? Or simply a misguided attempt to give unpractised listeners nothing to get alarmed about?

I am of course guying the decision-makers at the BBC. But someone did make the decision not to tell us what those three items were. I think such persons need to be victimised and persecuted.

If Stevie Wishart and her group made late decisions as to what they were going to sing and did not wish to be tied down beforehand, we should still have been told afterwards.

[Serial_Apologist]

I agree about the pamphlet, AP. The young chap I was sat beside said, "It tells you nothing at all about the pieces". All that was in the read-out script: if you couldn't keep up, you missed out!

However, I was not much impressed by the music, apart from the H von B. As I wrote elsewhere on here, the pieces, including the Birtwistle, were conventionally written - it was as if Messiaen's "Cinq Rechants" had never been composed - and, given Ms Wishart's previous association with electronic, experimental and improvised musics, this was disappointing for me, however well the BBC Singers performed, which they did well. Ironically the most "modern" work seemed to be the Hildegard von Bingham, which required litening to without the goal-centred direction provided by the other scores, the way one might an integrated serial work from early 1950s Darmstadt.

S-A

[Roslynmuse]

Stevie Wishart's piece caught me in a more positively receptive mood than the other posters. Of course, it's not chorally radical, but it seems to achieve what it sets out to do ie a meeting between fairly fluid use of drones and chant-like material on the one hand and some 'denser-than-Part' harmonic writing on the other. It struck me as a refreshingly honest take on ancient-meets-modern, less self-consciously polished than Arvo, or Tavener, or some others; and if it lacked something in memorability, it was interesting enough for me to want to listen again.