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

[Serial_Apologist]

I won't give up on Bruckner yet

Nor me neither, saly - especially after reading Jayne Lee Wilson's Msg 43, in which she, so to speak, put some meat on bones, where I always find just flab. Personally I wouldn't go to the many Bruckner concerts someone mentioned as coming up, but TTN often features Bruckner symphonies, so that will offer chances to familiarise myself.

[HighlandDougie]

I wouldn't normally take issue with Ferret Fancy (see msg 37) but I think that he's being a bit hard on David Fray when he compares him with the (to my ears) impressive but not really fully formed Mr Grosvenor. I agree that Fray isn't to everyone's taste (I think that his recording of the Schubert Moments Musicaux is quite sublime, for instance, but I'm sure that others would find it to be idiosyncratic). He brings great intelligence and feeling to his playing and is not all showy, at least not when I've heard him here in France. Jonathan Biss would be a better comparison. Neither at the Perahia/Curzon standard yet (Perahia incidentally in good form on Saturday night in Edinburgh in the Beethoven 2) but they will no doubt continue to mature.

As to Haas/Nowak, I must try Nowak again by listening to this performance. JLW has got me quite excited by the prospect, especially as to my Haas-indoctrinated ears, Nowak always seems to sell the symphony a bit short

[Nick Armstrong]

In 1970 ( 41 years ago) I played 5th horn/ 1st Wagner tuba in a prom concert of Bruckner's 8th symphony,the LSO conducted by the great Jascha Horenstein.

Waldhorn:

Do settle down...

I played 3rd horn in this symphony with the LPO under Sir George Solti...

Ventilhorn

Loving the sound of seasoned hornplayers locking antlers in this thread!!!



Maybe that should be horn-cases at ten paces? http://blog.whatfettle.com/archives/Footy/handbags.jpg

Anyway, I really must catch this concert on i-play-it-again

[Serial_Apologist]

I see that this Prom is to be re-broadcast between 2.30 and 4.30 pm tomorrow (Thursday). A great opportunity to compare my own impression of Bruckner 8 with cavatina's own of it having been prejudice-shattering, for her I guess she meant.

[gedsmk]

Er, um...that 'solo trombone' was actually a Wagner tuba.

Why yes, so it was. Well spotted! It doesn't say in the score "sit on front of stage" though

[Tony Halstead]

No, of course not, but owing to the way that the beast is held by the player, its bell pointing upward unlike a trombone bell, its sound may well have been directed towards one of the overhead microphones, giving the aural illusion of it being at the 'front of the stage'.
It certainly sounded at the front of the 'sound stage' and to my ears seemed unnaturally spotlit. Pity about the brass-band vibrato as well...

[Tony Halstead]

"Loving the sound of seasoned hornplayers locking antlers in this thread!!!
Maybe that should be horn-cases at ten paces?"

[Chris Newman]

OK, OK, Jayne, I will now tell you why it's so difficult for me to be 'objective' and dispassionate about tonight's Bruckner 8 performance:
In 1970 ( 41 years ago) I played 5th horn/ 1st Wagner tuba in a prom concert of Bruckner's 8th symphony,the LSO conducted by the great Jascha Horenstein. My memory is that he used the Haas not the Nowak version.
I may be wrong about this, of course, but I will look into it.

Yes, waldhorn. It was the Haas edition that JaschaH used in that memorable performance 1970 performance of the 8th. I just looked in the programme notes (which I still have) by Mosco Carner who hid the fact right in the middle of three pages of dense text. As Jayne says it is available on BBC Legends. Reggie Goodall gave us the 7th a month earlier. I am glad I have other Horenstein performances but that Eighth with the LSO has the best sound. Jaap van Zweden had three harps with his terrific Dutch band. Jascha managed very well with Osian Ellis on his own.

Thanks for that Bruckner and many other performances
bws
Chris.

[Tony Halstead]

Oh my goodness, Chris, if you have the Mosco Carner notes then you will have the programme booklet itself...
I'm sure I can count on your 'in confidence/ courtesy' not to 'out me'.
Thanks for your kind comments!

[Ferretfancy]

Highland Dougie,

Perhaps I was a bit ungenerous to David Fray, and I certainly don't mind you taking issue with me on any topic! I may have been influenced a little by memories of Benjamin Grosvenor's excellent playing in his two Proms this season. K503 is a great concerto, and I admire anyone who can do it justice, and I shall certainly look forward to hearing David Fray again. I'll also look out for the Schubert Moments Musicaux, you can never hear too many approaches to those.

[Serial_Apologist]

I missed the very start of the repeat of this Prom due to a neighbour's having problems with their chainsaw, so had to catch up on the slow opening movement of the Bruckner. I have not listened as much to Bruckner as I should as part of my musical self-education. Given my past dislike of this composer I really do want something interesting to come out of it. I was wrong discomparing this composer's music with Wagner's - there is a definite Wagnerian harmonic imprint, definnitely pre-"Tristan" - though Wagner would never have orchestrated in this heavy-handed late Schubertian way. Schubert is the greater influence of the two composers, I feel.

Then follows the scherzo, and I just manage to stay in the room as that dreadful repeated descending five-note figure which stands in for melodic development repeats again for the how many-eth time? The idiom is surprisingly Brahms-like in other respects - Scottycelt, please note; I clocked this earlier, and it is very noticeable in the trio section. To me repetitive music is boorish; there has to be something interesting to offset the repetitiousness, otherwise I might just as well be listening to heavy metal.

And now it is the slow movement, which so knocked one poster out. Clearly this is where Mahler gets his feel for slow movements from, as well as from Beethoven: the melody harmonised on sixths. I also hear where Schmidt was coming from in the long build ups in his fourth symphony, except that with Schmidt (and Mahler in a slightly different way) poignancy seems to arise from a sense of something beautiful that has gone and whose loss is deeply mourned, and he and mahler were great contrapuntalists, which Bruckner self-evidently from this listening was not. In Bruckner it is hard to figure what is being expressed, apart from that he can build an extended slow movement up to a big climax without having much of interest or fascination to say in melodic richness, harmonic surprise (it is all so predictable!) or orchestral colour. Which I can do at a piano with a few beers inside me. It is a shame that there is nothing memorable about the theme he builds up. There seems nothing universal about this music, and I honestly don't get what it is that has posters writing in swooning prose about it; I guess one has to find ones own meaning in it, without being able to put a finger on what it is that gets across to them.

Here comes the last movement. How one longs for some lightness! Mahler was able to say so much more than one spends an hour and a half of a life one will presumably one day have to account for, trying to discover what links one to ones fellow beings; I am glad Gustav added so much more to these bare Brucknerian bones; this is all too inflatedly pompous, unremittingly po-faced and bleedin' obvious quite frankly for me to want to pursue further, my friends.

Time for tea!

S-A

[HighlandDougie]

Oh dear - I guess Bruckner can't be the brand of tea which Serial Apologist is currently enjoying. Despite my prejudices about Nowak, I found this performance to be a bit of a revelation. As others have commented, brisk when it needed to be but this symphony can surely take this approach - it can seem to last forever but not this performance. I would love to have been there but listening via the i-tunes BBC HD stream with the volume turned up, the French doors wide open and a glorious sunny southern French afternoon was quite a good substitute. Many thanks to all posters for their enthusiasm as I would otherwise have missed this great concert (the Mozart was pretty good too).

[Serial_Apologist]

Oh dear - I guess Bruckner can't be the brand of tea which Serial Apologist is currently enjoying. Despite my prejudices about Nowak, I found this performance to be a bit of a revelation. As others have commented, brisk when it needed to be but this symphony can surely take this approach - it can seem to last forever but not this performance. I would love to have been there but listening via the i-tunes BBC HD stream with the volume turned up, the French doors wide open and a glorious sunny southern French afternoon was quite a good substitute. Many thanks to all posters for their enthusiasm as I would otherwise have missed this great concert (the Mozart was pretty good too).

Thanks for the sympathetic reading of my post, HighlandDougie! It is true that the 1 hour 20 minutes did seem to go quickly; but in my case I put it partly down to a long period of attention span cultivation on my part, and in part to the fact that I was writing at the same time as listening, because the music was so undemanding from a listening pov.

[salymap]

S_A Stick with the scherzos, Some of them taken on their own are quite tuneful [for Bruckner].

Sacrilege for Bruckner enthusiasts but who knows where it will lead.

[Serial_Apologist]

S_A Stick with the scherzos, Some of them taken on their own are quite tuneful [for Bruckner].

Sacrilege for Bruckner enthusiasts but who knows where it will lead.

Back across the ocean with a braided tasselled cushion, and so many happy memories, sal!