Prom 5 (17.7.12): Strauss, Saariaho & Sibelius

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

Of course he is, Alpie!

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

[Wheels of Cheese]

Hey all - long time listener, first time poster. Really enjoying the thread. I'm currently doing an insane blog where I am attempting to listen to every piece of music in the June 2012 of Gramophone Magazine (because it's there!) but I'm taking time out to review the odd prom. here's my review of this one...

http://www.peter-salmon.co.uk/petersalmon/category/wheels-of-cheese/

Cheers all

Pete

[Nick Armstrong]

Hey all - long time listener, first time poster. Really enjoying the thread. I'm currently doing an insane blog where I am attempting to listen to every piece of music in the June 2012 of Gramophone Magazine (because it's there!) but I'm taking time out to review the odd prom. here's my review of this one...

http://www.peter-salmon.co.uk/petersalmon/category/wheels-of-cheese/

Cheers all

Pete

Crazy idea, crazy pseudonym... You'll get on well here!!

Look forward to reading

Keep posting!

[Mary Chambers]

On the BBC4 broadcast Petroc Trelawny did a short interview with Anna Schwanewilms, and she said she wasn't well. It seemed to be recorded before the performance, but I did wonder if it was done afterwards! It was very sad to see someone who is just right for these songs (rare enough!) so obviously not doing herself justice.

[Wheels of Cheese]

Thanks Caliban. Six weeks into the project, and halway down page one. Next, 17cds of Jacqueline du pre. Dear God... It could be a long journey...

Pete

[Nick Armstrong]

Thanks Caliban. Six weeks into the project, and halway down page one. Next, 17cds of Jacqueline du pre. Dear God... It could be a long journey...

Pete

[Wheels of Cheese]

Halfway, obviously. Not halway. Or hallway...

P

[Nick Armstrong]

Halfway, obviously. Not halway. Or hallway...

Quite

[cloughie]

On the BBC4 broadcast Petroc Trelawny did a short interview with Anna Schwanewilms, and she said she wasn't well. It seemed to be recorded before the performance, but I did wonder if it was done afterwards! It was very sad to see someone who is just right for these songs (rare enough!) so obviously not doing herself justice.

Mary, how right you are, the Proms over the last decade has delivered some very unsuitable voices in these songs. Only Renee Fleming and Soile Isokoski have got near. Anna is probably the best since Felicity Lott!

[jayne lee wilson]

A second hearing of the Saariaho only confirmed my disappointment with it... all those buzzwords - orchestral refinement and delicacy, fastidiousness, ravishing textures etc., are too easy to repeat. The piece seems to stay in one place for too long, but the drum fusillades and the quickening pace towards the close didn't produce any sense of conclusion or arrival. The sound-images created by the differing juxtaposed tempi and those shifting, drifting textures seemed neither as memorable or original as some of her earlier works. All too easy to hear the Varese or the Ligeti that are a part of its history - just try the opening of Varese's Arcana, which Saariaho seems almost to quote in Laterna - a striking resemblance. Earlier works like Lichtbogen may also relate closely to Ligeti, but manage to be striking creations in their own right.

Birtwistle has often juxtaposed the same ideas at different tempi, to great effect in many "processional" orchestral pieces; almost all of them have a clear sense of direction, emotionally and sonically, which you can perceive even when your understanding is very imperfect. But of course his voice is all his own.

You don't need formal structures to build a convincing emotional narrative; Delius or Debussy created many an organic, continuously evolving masterpiece.

I always hate to be ungenerous to contemporary creators (or performers), but this composer has given us more memorable sonic landscapes than this - Solar, Graal Theatre, a la fumee - and I hope she will again...

[hedgehog]

I agree jayne lee wilson, Saariaho's Laterna Magica was a little disappointing. I think one of the problems was that the underlying progressions from note centres/harmonies remained slow, to slowish throughout the whole piece so that the idea of faster and slower tempi/rhythms didn't actually materialise as one might have hoped for. Also though I don't have a problem with texts being used for symbolic or sonic value as opposed to a combination of content with sound, the way she used it - as a kind of chant, implied- to my ears- that the words themselves were important. Or to put it another way, the sonorities created from the text and music combination weren't varied enough for the length of the text. Also the short melodies were fairly predictable. Goodness I'm being harsh Of course there was lots to enjoy, subtleties and combinations of colours, tensions between sections & etc, It just sounded a little tired. I have however great respect for her music, I think L'amour de loin is a true masterpiece of opera, combining older and new styles of composing in a wonderful way, daring to encroach on the territory of Tristan und Isolde and pulling it off. I will always listen with interest to a new piece of hers!

[Richard Tarleton]

Mary, how right you are, the Proms over the last decade has delivered some very unsuitable voices in these songs. Only Renee Fleming and Soile Isokoski have got near. Anna is probably the best since Felicity Lott!

Mary and cloughie both, I would love to have heard her sing FLS on a good night - a lovely voice. Most unfortunate. I preserved Fleming's Proms FLS on VHS for a while, she sang another Strauss song as an encore - a great all-round performance that was.

( Flott - I heard her do FLS with Masur quite a few years ago).

[Wheels of Cheese]

Quite

Just thought I should let you know there's a new Wheels of Cheese entry. Doesn't belong in this forum. So I'll go now...

http://www.peter-salmon.co.uk/petersalmon/category/wheels-of-cheese/

Cheers

Pete

[Pianorak]

[A slice of Cheese on Wheels] As someone who is always annoyed by extra-musical descriptions of music – don’t get me started on Debussy’s La Mer – ,

Quite

[edashtav]

Having now experienced this concert in the RAH on the radioplayer and the BBC4 telecast via the Beeb’s iPlayer, I feel it’s time to sum it up.

Also Spracht Zarathustra justified its place through its orchestration (organ included) that positively demands the Albert Hall as its venue. Mena’s performance had appropriate Olympian proportions but his attempt at handing on the baton could have caused instant disqualification for his team.

Anne Schwanewilms’ version of the 4 Last Songs turned into Ives The Unanswered Question. And that question remains. Having admitted to Petroc Trelawny in a pre-Concert interview that she wasn’t well, why did she continue? Why risk career & reputation? From this thread, it’s obvious that I was not alone in the RAH in not being able to hear her. Is it fair to the audience to soldier on, in the hope that “it’ll be alright on the night”? What of the denial of a first rung on the ladder for a latter-day Thomas Allen? Did the BBC have a duty to explain the fraught circumstances to the audience in the Hall and those listening live?

I have another more fundamental question that remains unanswered: is the RAH too big a venue for some lyric sopranos who are used to refining a line to a silvery thread of finest silk? I have been disappointed by Renee Fleming “live” in the past and I wonder whether a fully fit Anne Schwanewilms doesn’t fall into the same category? To turn my point about ASZ on its head: is RAH too big for 4LS? Must one sacrifice the voice one craves and install a bigger and coarser singer?

Saariaho’s Magic Lantern piece has sustained my interest through several hearings. I think it is wrong to compare her, possibly unfavourably, with Harrison Birtwistle. Superficial similarities in terms of different layers moving at different speeds are less important than difference in the manner of application and materials. Harrison loads his canvas with mountain ranges of paint using a palette knife, whilst Kaija slowly finesses her filigree patterns using the finest camel-hair brush. Birtwistle is more craggy and Northern than the Finn Saariaho who has absorbed much Gallic spirit in her thirty years spent in Paris. Curiously, Harrison emerged from his “hedgehog” period curled up in a French shed, looking and sounding more British!

Reviewing Mena’s Sibelius, I find that its stature and merits have diminished with repetition, and its vices, too much warmth and a tendency towards sounding disjointed and episodic, have grown.