Prom 5 (17.7.12): Strauss, Saariaho & Sibelius

[MrGongGong]

Re. the programming of new and frequently 'difficult' works, I've always thought it goes like this. Dont put the latest bit of dodecacophony on first, or it will upset the audience so much that they wont clap the Tchaikovsky that follows. Dont put it on last, or everyone will simply leave early and the orchestra will play to an empty house. So, you trap it between two outer layers of sugar and the audience will endure it because they want the second helping of sugar. After the Rossini overture and before the interval is best, then everyone can go and have a drink to recover and tell their friends how awful it was.

Sadly the old buffers who seem to think that they somehow "Own" music still try to do this nonsense.
Confusing difficult to play,read,conduct with "difficult" to listen to is a mistake that one would hope had faded away by now !!!

Xenakis (for example) isn't in any way "difficult" , his music is always clear unlike (for example) Richard Strauss. To find Webern "difficult" seems to indicate a lack of listening more than anything else. Whether you "LIKE" it or whether it's any "GOOD" or not is another matter all together.........

[umslopogaas]

Mr GG #46 this is fascinating stuff, for me at any rate. For me, as a non-musician who happens to be someone who just loves the noise music makes, Xenakis IS difficult, because he creates sounds within the larger framework of what I understand to be 'music', but what he creates is not the music I think I know. Whereas R. Strauss writes sounds that are familiar, knowable. I cant pass judgement on whether Strauss is a better or worse composer than Xenakis, but I was brought up in a tradition and in it Strauss is familiar, Xenakis isnt. So Xenakis is difficult, adventurous, 'modernist', whereas Strauss is relaxing, safe, 'traditional'. Despite the fact that 'Salome' and 'Elektra' are two of the most (in their time) most shocking bits of modernism ever written.

And for us non-musicians, I speak not for my colleagues, but for me, Webern IS difficult, though I shall persevere. And if I fail, at least I know he is mercifully brief.

[MrGongGong]

Mr GG #46 this is fascinating stuff, for me at any rate. For me, as a non-musician who happens to be someone who just loves the noise music makes, Xenakis IS difficult, because he creates sounds within the larger framework of what I understand to be 'music', but what he creates is not the music I think I know. Whereas R. Strauss writes sounds that are familiar, knowable. I cant pass judgement on whether Strauss is a better or worse composer than Xenakis, but I was brought up in a tradition and in it Strauss is familiar, Xenakis isnt. So Xenakis is difficult, adventurous, 'modernist', whereas Strauss is relaxing, safe, 'traditional'. Despite the fact that 'Salome' and 'Elektra' are two of the most (in their time) most shocking bits of modernism ever written.

And for us non-musicians, I speak not for my colleagues, but for me, Webern IS difficult, though I shall persevere. And if I fail, at least I know he is mercifully brief.

My point about Xenakis is that the soundworld of the music isn't unfamiliar to anyone who has been to the cinema in the last 50 years which is a considerably larger number of people than those who have been inside an opera house.
The question maybe is why do people think that "unknown" sounds are difficult ?
Given that the sounds themselves aren't "unknown" (Ligeti in 2001 etc etc ) why is it when one presents these in a different context do people have "difficulty" with them ?
and
What exactly do people mean when they say that some music is "difficult" ? Most of the children and teenagers i've played Xenakis to instantly "get" it whereas with Richard Strauss (for example) or even Mozart the "understanding" of the music is far more obscure. AT what age does this happen ? or is it a "problem" of the past given that there is no one alive today (in the West at least) who hasn't heard an electric guitar ?

[umslopogaas]

#48 Mr GG, maybe sounds are not strange, because they have been around for ever and therefore must be familiar to all of us? Our ancestors heard sound, its how you recognise the universe and the life you are given. I suppose it is not a question of how young people hear something entirely alien to their consciousness, like 'Metastasis', 'Pithoprakta', 'Eonta', 'Synaphai', 'Aroura', 'Antithon' (that's all the Xenakis I've got on record), but how they interpret those sounds and somehow relate them to their lives.

Go well, I wouldnt like to try and interest a bunch of mutinous young I Phone fiddlers in difficult sounds. But any time they need a lecture on the biological control of insect pests with entomopathogenic fungi, I could probably put in a decent performance.

[french frank]

why is it when one presents these in a different context do people have "difficulty" with them ?

If they are part of the soundtrack to a film, most of the time they will not be the focus of your attention. Imagine sitting in a crowd staring at a football pitch without the play - people will get restive even if there are things to look at .

[MrGongGong]

If they are part of the soundtrack to a film, most of the time they will not be the focus of your attention. Imagine sitting in a crowd staring at a football pitch without the play - people will get restive even if there are things to look at .

Indeed

I do think it's important to try and counter the idea that somehow some music is "difficult" , in my experience the difficulty usually (but not always) is down to confusing the context rather than something in the music itself.
but tis late now
and the symphony beckons

[cloughie]

I only heard Im Abendrot - the tempo seemed very slow to me .

I like it slow!

[trbcm]

Prom 5

Like your correspondent edashtav, I was at the front of the circle, and could not hear the soprano in Strauss' Four Last Songs. The consensus is that she and/or her voice was unwell. Therefore, I am much concerned that this performance is scheduled for BBC4 TV tonight, so here is a plea that it is omitted, with a broadcast explanation, for several reasons:

1) It would be unfair on the singer.
2) It would be unfair on the composer: TV has a different audience from Radio 3, and "Rookie Strauss listeners" might be put off the work for life, as a consequence of not realising that the soloist was physically unable to deliver.
3) The TV Proms "marketing strategy" of indiscriminate total praise for every performance might swing into action. The greatest disaster is to over-praise the mediocre, as history has repeatedly demonstrated, in all walks of life.

As for the concert overall, firstly another plea. Please never again resort to such puerile gimmicks as playing around with lighting, and, worst of all, bringing up those physically painful TV lights as the music itself was still being performed. It might look terribly clever in a control room, but we come to hear the music, not to have our eyeballs singed and our concentration destroyed. The whole artistic concept (if there was one) was naive. Or was it a technical fault - the only acceptable explanation?

I enjoyed the new work by Saariaho (what an ear she has, especially for subtle percussive sound), but I would have done so even more if some of the time at the pre-Prom talk had been devoted to it, instead of to Tom Service's misdirected questions to the composer, who was simply not on his wavelength. Am I alone in thinking that the first priority of a pre-Prom talk is to enlighten the listener to the more unfamiliar music being performed later?

There were many virtues in the Sibelius S7 performance, but I too felt that it showed a conductor who needs a long vacation in the northern wastes, far from his sunny origins. It was often closer to Mendelssohn in Italy than to craggy Sibelian landscapes. But so musical a conductor is he that I look forward to his revisiting Sibelius in a few years time.

The overriding positive for me was the orchestra - hard work and strong rapport with its gifted new conductor produced an evening of beautifully balanced, expertly executed, genuine music-making. Has the BBC Phil ever sounded better, or indeed as good as this? Bravo!

[Nick Armstrong]

indiscriminate total praise for every performance

Another most interesting début post! Great to read. Another wise soul aboard HMS Radio3Forum.

The above point had been going through my mind too - how will the crinkly-eyed smiley-voiced Derham deal with the issue... one imagines her mask of saccharine delight becoming fixed, slipping slightly, and a crack appearing ...

Let's see how the BBC deals with a tricky situation.

Can't wait to hear the ASZ and Sibelius 7 which I missed on the radio. What a very good orchestra it is.

[Richard Tarleton]

Another most interesting début post! Great to read. Another wise soul aboard HMS Radio3Forum.

The above point had been going through my mind too - how will the crinkly-eyed smiley-voiced Derham deal with the issue... one imagines her mask of saccharine delight becoming fixed, slipping slightly, and a crack appearing ...

Let's see how the BBC deals with a tricky situation.

Likewise, two great debut posts.

The concert is being repeated now on R3 apparently uncut.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

Prom 5

Like your correspondent edashtav, I was at the front of the circle, and could not hear the soprano in Strauss' Four Last Songs. The consensus is that she and/or her voice was unwell. Therefore, I am much concerned that this performance is scheduled for BBC4 TV tonight, so here is a plea that it is omitted, with a broadcast explanation, for several reasons:

1) It would be unfair on the singer.
2) It would be unfair on the composer: TV has a different audience from Radio 3, and "Rookie Strauss listeners" might be put off the work for life, as a consequence of not realising that the soloist was physically unable to deliver.
3) The TV Proms "marketing strategy" of indiscriminate total praise for every performance might swing into action. The greatest disaster is to over-praise the mediocre, as history has repeatedly demonstrated, in all walks of life.

Good reasoning there, I think (and welcome to the Forum, trbcm). I heard this afternoon's repeat broadcast and it was clear that the soprano was closely miked.

If they do televise the performance, they should do the decent thing and not focus on the singer at, or around the dodgy moments (of which there were very few).

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

I like it slow!

You're not allowed to say that nowadays.

[Serial_Apologist]

Good reasoning there, I think (and welcome to the Forum, trbcm). I heard this afternoon's repeat broadcast and it was clear that the soprano was closely miked.

If they do televise the performance, they should do the decent thing and not focus on the singer at, or around the dodgy moments (of which there were very few).

If only one set of camera sequences was retained, the glaring bits will be impossible to edit out.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

You're not allowed to say that nowadays.

Of course he is, Alpie!



But I'm making notes and his name has gone on my list.

[edashtav]

Prom 5


3) The TV Proms "marketing strategy" of indiscriminate total praise for every performance might swing into action. The greatest disaster is to over-praise the mediocre, as history has repeatedly demonstrated, in all walks of life.

I agree entirely, trbcm, as I do with Caliban's careful calibration of the faces of Katie Derham.

It may interest you two and other readers that whilst I waited outside the RAH for this concert who should be loitering with intent to enter but the great writer & film director- Mike Leigh. Good to see creative artists keeping abreast of current developments. No doubt, he was there to sample Kaija Saariaho's Laterna Magica (Magic Lantern) which draws nourishment from Ingmar Bergman's film techniques. Didn't I also spy the English composer Richard Blackford at the earlier Saariaho- Service talk at the RCM ? If so, I hope he found it more enlightening than I did.