Prom 60: Tuesday 30th August at 7.30 p.m. (Mozart, Bruckner)

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

The young French pianist, David Fray, makes his Proms debut playing a grandly imposing Mozart concerto, and Jaap Van Zweden conducts Bruckner's Eighth Symphony - a momentous musical journey from darkness to life.

Tonight's conductor, Jaap van Zweden, was the youngest ever concertmaster of the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra and in that role played almost all the Bruckner symphonies under some of the greatest Bruckner interpreters. Now the conductor of the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra, he has been recording his own critically-acclaimed cycle of the Bruckner symphonies.

Mozart: Piano Concerto No. 25 in C major, K503
Bruckner: Symphony No. 8 in C minor

David Fray (piano)
Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra
Jaap van Zweden (conductor)

[Bryn]

Anyone here know which version of the Bruckner van Zweden will be conducting?

[makropulos]

Anyone here know which version of the Bruckner van Zweden will be conducting?

I've heard a broadcast with the Netherlands Radio PO and van Zweden doing No. 8 and it was Nowak (1890) - so my guess would be that this is the version they will use.

[Bryn]

Thanks makropulos, in that case I might just be able to get the penultimate, rather then the last bus home.

[makropulos]

Thanks makropulos, in that case I might just be able to get the penultimate, rather then the last bus home.

Indeed :)
By the way, there are some youtube clips of them rehearsing it from a few years ago:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fKcJfr_y-Fs&playnext=1&list=PL9D021908A68EB2D1

[bluestateprommer]

I've heard a broadcast with the Netherlands Radio PO and van Zweden doing No. 8 and it was Nowak (1890) - so my guess would be that this is the version they will use.

Yup, you got it . The program notes for this Prom indicate:

"Symphony No. 8 in C minor (1884-7, rev. 1889-90, ed. Nowak)"

http://www.bbc.co.uk/proms/whats-on/2011/august-30/71/programme-notes

BTW, apart from intrinsic musical merits, I hope that people fill the hall, as a sign of sticking it to the wingnut Dutch coalition government who wanted to budget-cut the Netherlands Radio PO out of existence in a few years. Filling the RAH would tell the Dutch government and Dutch people that music is important and deserves support.

[Ventilhorn]

Yup, you got it . The program notes for this Prom indicate:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/proms/whats-on/2011/august-30/71/programme-notes

BTW, apart from intrinsic musical merits, I hope that people fill the hall, as a sign of sticking it to the wingnut Dutch coalition government who wanted to budget-cut the Netherlands Radio PO out of existence in a few years. Filling the RAH would tell the Dutch government and Dutch people that music is important and deserves support.

So what's new?

Anyway, this is one to savour. It will certainly join the other worthwhile Proms of 2011 on my hard disk.

BTW

The interval talk on William Golding should be interesting. As a former pupil at the school where he taught (actually wrote "Lord of the Flies" during our English lessons while we got on with tasks set us) it was suggested to me that I might have something to contribute.

Not for me to get involved, I'm afraid, but I give you here an example of his obsession with the correct use of the English language, with a little snippet from my memoires:

Tony Brown, father of Iona, Timothy and Ian, was our school music master.
He, was a great friend of our English master, William (later Sir William) Golding; who was known affectionately throughout the school as `Scruff Golding', because he wore a shaggy beard in the days when it was usual for schoolmasters to be clean shaven.

`Scruff' was an accomplished pianist, a pretty good cellist and also played the oboe to a standard which was equal to the demands of our school orchestra.

When an orchestra tunes up it is, of course, the oboist who `gives the A, to which everyone else tunes his instrument.
At one particular rehearsal, the school orchestra was sounding even more excruciating than usual.

“Mr. Golding. Can you give us that `A' again, please?”

Golding was a stickler for correct English usage. “I'm afraid I can't give you that one,” he replied, “but I'll give you one like it!”

I hope you all enjoy this evening's offerings.

VH

[salymap]

Thanks VH, I certainly hope to listen to the Mozart and the interval talk, which will be interesting, I'm sure.

I'll save the Bruckner for another time.

BWS

[Bryn]

Again, I had intended to attend tonight, but the lack of sleeping time available between the time I would get home and the time I have to getup for work tomorrow has put a stop to that plan.

[Tony Halstead]

NOWAK is rubbish...!
I hope I'm not alone in finding this 'edition' of the 'only' great 8th symphony, with its irritating little gratuitious sub-themes and constipated 'counterpoints' to be trivialised and mauled almost beyond either recognition or redemption..?
Having got that off my chest, it seems to be very well played so far.

[Alison]

It's what I call a 'painting by numbers' performance.

Somehow it's mostly all there and yet I can't say Im really enjoying it ....

[Alison]

Thought you were on holiday, Bryn !

I fancy you're enjoying the Eighth more than me ...

[Tony Halstead]

Is anybody out there enjoying the rather strident and wobbly ( 'molto vibrato') Wagner Tuba playing?
I'm certainly not.

[Bryn]

Nowak, in each of the editions he prepared, offer Bruckner as Bruckner composed, then revised the work. Haas's pick and mix version, funded by you know who, is neither fish nor fowl, and though nearly everything in it originates from Bruckner's work, it is not a composition by Bruckner. I know Stephen Johnson likes to believe that Bruckner's striking out of the passages Haas 'restored' was something the composer regretted, but all Johnson offers in support of that view is supposition. Give me the two Nowak editions, and retain the Haas (preferably in a museum) as a curiosity as far as I'm concerned.

[Bryn]

Thought you were on holiday, Bryn !

I fancy you're enjoying the Eighth more than me ...

Well I approve of the edition used, (though I am more used to the 1887 score these days), but not a lot else, so far. I wish I could find where I have put the DG Jochum set.

My fortnight's holiday start on Saturday.