Prom 54 (23.8.12): Davies, Delius & Shostakovich

[amateur51]

Softly, softly, Volti. You must not decry the learned words of the musical intelligensia among us. Be like those of us who read with wonder the erudite utterances of those who know better - even if they do not appear to have the slightest degree of discrimination between what is new, because it is new, and what is rubbish, because it is rubbish. We, who wallow on the lower deck of musical appreciation can only read with wonderment their authoratative appraisals of that which we are too deaf to understand.

Last night was an extravagance of musical fare, but it was not, for me, an Extravaganza.

E V

Naff off, you old scrote

[heliocentric]

pretty dreadful. A terrible cacophony with apparently a heavily laden political programme which was imperceptible in the music . His "music" is " Emperor's New Clothes " to my ears

I thought I was eavesdropping on the orchestra all practising at the same time in the band room

because it is rubbish

With accolades like this, it must be worth hearing! Time to get the iPlayer going.

[Extra Vaganza]

Naff off, you old scrote

There speaks a man after my own heart. (I do hope that's the only thing he's after)

I'd better take shelter in the seminary.

E V

[salymap]

I loved the Delius Violin Concerto when heard live, played by Jean Pougnet years ago, but last night's performance by Little passed me by.

Something missing, I'm not musician enough to say what.

[Dave2002]

Naff off, you old scrote

Not sure what that was about, but I suspect alter egoism EV/VS.

[heliocentric]

Well, I'm sorry to say I didn't experience the intensity described by Jayne. I haven't much liked anything I've heard from PMD since his second symphony, which is a long time ago now, it just all seems to me grey, tired and monotonous, an impression which was somehow not mitigated by the interruptions by extraneous material in the 9th symphony - no comparison whatsoever with the startlingly expressive use of pastiche in his music from the 1960s and 70s.

[Roehre]

Maxwell Davies' 9th Symphony has an intensity, a density of musical event, that marks it out as exceptional among his works. Not since the 5th Symphony has his music been so compressed, or sounded so fresh. I need to listen again (and again...) before having anything meaningful to say about it, but I wonder if other listeners were struck by the parallel (conceptual rather than musical) with Max's "St Thomas Wake: Foxtrot for Orchestra" where the danceband numbers are assaulted by the orchestral roarings of WW2 air-raids (including broken glass rattled in a tin!).

In the 9th, after an explosive opening which seems full of impending tragedy, the brass sextet's almost affectionate presentation of military marches (Max says in his note that, as Master of The Queen's Music, he has come to love the music of military bands) seems rapidly to bring the destructive effects of war down upon itself (dulce et decorum est pro patria mia...), until the pent-up aggressive energies finally drain away in a percussive decrescendo. In the slower 2nd part, Max's more lyrical and classical strain adapts the op.54/2 Haydn quartet in an attempt to pacify those very forces - forces we carry within ourselves. After the final climax (where the imploration for peace is even more assertive than Beethoven's "pa-cem!" in the Missa Solemnis), grandly integrating the warlike and classical forces with the slow introduction (in my end is my beginning...), the work ends with a gravely eloquent and pacific coup: a second decrescendo, for double-basses alone.

Petrenko guided the RLPO through this labyrinth with warmth, power and clarity; the spaces of the RAH responded vividly to their projection.

Max's 9th has a dark, uncompromising poetry, and a compressed intensity, which I haven't heard so vividly expressed in his orchestral work for some years now. The first section is shockingly violent, condensed and yes, complex - but remains clear in its emotional message and its musical trajectory. The work has no truck with the compromises of accessibilty. As an emotional and political statement (the personal is political) it is rare among today's compositions, certainly by a high-profile composer, in a work dedicated to the Queen...
(One regrets the absence of the 6th, 7th and 8th symphonies on disc to enable a more thorough investigation of its precedents, but I imagine No.9 would still stand apart - and as something of a peak).

Btw: for the Collins label the symphonies 1-6 were recorded, so a second hand copy of the sixth should be available somewhere.

[Volti Subito]

Maxwell Davies' 9th Symphony has an intensity, a density of musical event, that marks it out as exceptional among his works. Not since the 5th Symphony has his music been so compressed, or sounded so fresh. I need to listen again (and again...) before having anything meaningful to say about it, but I wonder if other listeners were struck by the parallel (conceptual rather than musical) with Max's "St Thomas Wake: Foxtrot for Orchestra" where the danceband numbers are assaulted by the orchestral roarings of WW2 air-raids (including broken glass rattled in a tin!).

In the 9th, after an explosive opening which seems full of impending tragedy, the brass sextet's almost affectionate presentation of military marches (Max says in his note that, as Master of The Queen's Music, he has come to love the music of military bands) seems rapidly to bring the destructive effects of war down upon itself (dulce et decorum est pro patria mia...), until the pent-up aggressive energies finally drain away in a percussive decrescendo. In the slower 2nd part, Max's more lyrical and classical strain adapts the op.54/2 Haydn quartet in an attempt to pacify those very forces - forces we carry within ourselves. After the final climax (where the imploration for peace is even more assertive than Beethoven's "pa-cem!" in the Missa Solemnis), grandly integrating the warlike and classical forces with the slow introduction (in my end is my beginning...), the work ends with a gravely eloquent and pacific coup: a second decrescendo, for double-basses alone.

Petrenko guided the RLPO through this labyrinth with warmth, power and clarity; the spaces of the RAH responded vividly to their projection.

Max's 9th has a dark, uncompromising poetry, and a compressed intensity, which I haven't heard so vividly expressed in his orchestral work for some years now. The first section is shockingly violent, condensed and yes, complex - but remains clear in its emotional message and its musical trajectory. The work has no truck with the compromises of accessibilty. As an emotional and political statement (the personal is political) it is rare among today's compositions, certainly by a high-profile composer, in a work dedicated to the Queen...
(One regrets the absence of the 6th, 7th and 8th symphonies on disc to enable a more thorough investigation of its precedents, but I imagine No.9 would still stand apart - and as something of a peak).

The concert was a great one, even allowing for my bias in favour of our local band! The lovely Delius concerto was gorgeously, lingeringly beautiful, so delicately voiced by both soloist (Tasmin Little) and orchestra; the Shostakovich 10th, a reading well-known to liverpudlians after several live performances here, was delivered once again with a clean-edged power and precision, a cold-eyed analytical intensity which took it beyond even the Gramophone award-winning disc.

Jayne. Your description and analysis was very interesting, but I just hated the piece. My loss, I'm sure.

And I did think that Tasmin Little's rather scratchy sound was unworthy of the famous violin that she was using - even taking into account my rather basic speakers.

I shall turn quickly to another topic.

Volti

[Extra Vaganza]

Not sure what that was about, but I suspect aler egoism EV/VS.

?

Espliqué moi, s'il vous plait.

E V

[PJPJ]

With accolades like this, it must be worth hearing! Time to get the iPlayer going.

Perhaps it needs rather more than a single audition? I know it does in my case, so I recorded it from the iPlayer HD feed.

There was a patch of interference at about 1'50 during the broadcast - for those recording for posterity this may be irritating on repeated listening like a blemish on an LP. However, I have managed to remove this - perhaps better discussed off-board if anyone is interested.

[heliocentric]

Perhaps it needs rather more than a single audition?

But then it would have to have something about it to make that seem an attractive proposition! I have a lot of time for some of PMD's music, but all the works of his I like I've liked immediately, and all the ones I've returned to after a disappointing start have continued to disappoint, so that doesn't seem likely. Since you ask, though, I'll give it another try later on today.

[heliocentric]

Maxwell Davies in his introduction mentioned Sibelius' 7th as a point of departure, but after two listenings I can't hear that influence making it to the audible surface. To me the frequent juxtapositions between brass and the rest of the orchestra are in the opening stages reminiscent of the first movement of Tippett's 3rd, but much less angular and memorable; the various marches that break in later on seem so much more demure and anecdotal than what PMD used to do with this kind of thing, when his music almost always had an unsettling or even demonic edge to it; since he made the decision (I assume) to tame his earlier "excesses", it never really goes far enough in any direction to make much of an impact, on me anyway. Neither the orchestration nor the tone of expressive voice strike me as having much character (compared for example to Birtwistle's orchestral music), and though the deeper structure of the piece does have an interesting shape, the musical material seems to me to be content with filling it out, rather than bringing it to life. Anyway, that's my two cents' worth on a second hearing.

[Extra Vaganza]

I've just noticed that there is an asterisk against my name in the list of members on line. Can anyone tell me what it stands for?

Not a correction for my schoolgirl French, I hope.

E V

[salymap]

I've just noticed that there is an asterisk against my name in the list of members on line. Can anyone tell me what it stands for?
Not a correction for my schoolgirl French, I hope.

E V

EV it means you are invisible to everyone but yourself. bestio

[Extra Vaganza]

EV it means you are invisible to everyone but yourself. bestio

... just how I used to feel sitting in the 'stag line' at our local ballroom.

Thank you for that, Salymap. What does 'bestio' mean?

E V