Prom 56 (25.8.12): Goehr, Knussen, Grime & Debussy

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

Saturday 25 August at 7.30 p.m.
Royal Albert Hall

Alexander Goehr: Metamorphosis/Dance (19 mins)
Oliver Knussen: Symphony No. 3 (15 mins)
Helen Grime: Night Songs (c10 mins) - BBC Commission, World Premiere
Debussy: The Martyrdom of St Sebastian (52 mins) - complete incidental music, without narration

Claire Booth soprano
Polly May mezzo-soprano
Clare McCaldin mezzo-soprano
New London Chamber Choir
BBC National Chorus of Wales
BBC Symphony Orchestra
Oliver Knussen conductor

Oliver Knussen celebrates his 60th birthday with the BBC Symphony Orchestra performing his own 3rd Symphony, works by Alexander Goehr, Helen Grime and Debussy's The Martyrdom of St Sebastian.

Alexander Goehr's 80th birthday is marked by a revival of his imaginary ballet, and there's the world premiere of Helen Grime's Night Songs. Debussy's exquisite and refined incidental music for a mystery play appears complete for the first time at the Proms - with the BBC National Chorus of Wales and the New London Chamber Choir joining the three British soloists.

[Petrushka]

Looking forward to the first half of this one but the second doesn't appeal.

[jayne lee wilson]

A late dinner beckons (but a brand new wok to cook with) but I must say no orchestra this season has sounded more glowingly beautiful than the BBCSO in Debussy's Le Martyre. A lovely concert, if made rather challenging by some problems with the AAC... had to slum it on FM - which given the relatively undynamic nature of the Debussy, and the sheer gorgeousness of the music, was far more enjoyable than I expected!

Will try to hear part 1 again (uninterrupted I hope) later...

[Belgrove]

... I must say no orchestra this season has sounded more glowingly beautiful than the BBCSO in Debussy's Le Martyre. A lovely concert...

Quite so Jayne.

I was in the hall for this and thought that Knussen conducted the BBCSO in a lovely performance of neglected work that I have not seen performed live before. A work one might have expected to feature in the Proms more often over the years. The inclusion of a narrator can provide a greater emotional punch. Beautiful integration of the orchestra and chorus.

Enjoyed the other works too, all glittering with exotic percussive effects which will repay repeated listening.

[Boilk]

Enjoyed the other works too, all glittering with exotic percussive effects which will repay repeated listening.

Knussen's Third Symphony is a remarkable work, and also remarkable for a 21-27 year old, its orchestration as exquisite as the much lauded Ringed by the Flat Horizon of the equally precocious (and slow-working) George Benjamin.

The big climax that comes and sweeps everything away half-way through, leaving in its wake a sense of disintegration (percussive pointillisms) is, I'm almost certain, an idea taken from the transition between the first and second movements of Tipett's Third Symphony, from a year earlier (in fact Knussen's father may still have been Principal double bass with the LSO when it was premiered by them in Summer 1972 under Colin Davis). Imitatative or not, it works beautifully.

[Vile Consort]

Why exactly did we hear the Helen Grime work twice?

Not that I am complaining. Pieces always come out much better (and apparently shorter) at second hearing.

[jayne lee wilson]

It's an old Ollie Knussen party trick, might have been something wrong there, sure we could do it better, we'll play it again just to make sure...
He's done this with the Stravinsky "Huxley" Variations (much-unplayed masterpiece - IS himself suggested a double performance), Zvezdoliki possibly, and I'm sure other neutron-star orchestral works too. I think the Helen Grime work certainly deserved it.

[jayne lee wilson]

Glittering, diamond-cut precision from the BBCSO in the Goehr and Knussen works in Part 1, both of which integrate variation-form into a more elaborate structure.

Metamorphosis/Dance can be seen as a late addition to the tradition of variations, with intro. and finale, which include the Brahms St Anthony set and the Schoenberg Op.31. Tippett's ballet music from Midsummer Marriage, the Ritual Dances, might also come to mind.
You can certainly imagine sorcery and squealing if you have a look at the inspiration for the piece in the programme note (Circe turning Odysseus' men into pigs), but it's probably best to listen to it as an abstract orchestral work, full of marvellously inventive wind solos, sudden episodes of calm, explosions of anguish and violence before order is uneasily restored. With the striking repeated figures and refrains, it leaves a vivid impression of wild emotion and extreme experiences taking wing from a rigorous compositional logic.

In Knussen's 3rd Symphony, the firebird shimmerings of the first few bars are soon swept aside by a series of wildly energetic and variable textures (strings swoop and soar, flutes gabble and shriek, celesta, guitar and harp reflect a cool beauty... ) before a massive climax leaves us floating in wide harmonic spaces... Ophelia in the water, or the listener hovering between late-romantic and modern...
Perhaps Tippett's Concerto for Orchestra is antecedent, with its juxtaposed blocks of contrasting textures and ideas. But here, those instrumental blocks develop across each other furiously.
The variations which proceed from (and impose themselves over) those drifting chords are highly compressed and dovetailed, growing in excitement before climaxing in those whooping horns that may again bring Tippett to mind. The great tradition of English Symphonic Originals continues...
The last bars recall the shimmering strings and ominous murmurings of the winds from the beginning: the fantasy and the drama of Ophelia's death are over; time and the river flow on...

... I've just been back to hear it again; how it grows in power and beauty as you listen!

Anyone who doesn't normally listen to this repertoire, which is certainly something of an endangered species - go on, just plunge in and let go! Listen once, then read the notes, listen again; you might surprise yourself.

[kcostell]

Why exactly did we hear the Helen Grime work twice?

Not that I am complaining. Pieces always come out much better (and apparently shorter) at second hearing.

From a New York times review of a Kirill Gerstein concert a couple years back:

Each half of Mr. Gerstein’s fascinatingly constructed program began with a Busoni sonatina, followed by Oliver Knussen’s “Ophelia’s Last Dance” (Op. 32) — that’s right, he played it twice — and then a large Romantic work. The Knussen piece was written for Mr. Gerstein, who gave its premiere at the Gilmore festival on May 3, and he said he felt it deserved to have an immediate second hearing. Given its six-minute length, that was hardly too much to ask.

Now I'm curious if maybe this rubbed off from Knussen to Gerstein.

[Volti Subito]

.... Anyone who doesn't normally listen to this repertoire, which is certainly something of an endangered species - go on, just plunge in and let go! Listen once, then read the notes, listen again; you might surprise yourself.

Like visiting Scotland? I don't think so, somehow.

V S

[Roehre]

It's an old Ollie Knussen party trick, might have been something wrong there, sure we could do it better, we'll play it again just to make sure...
He's done this with the Stravinsky "Huxley" Variations......

I recall at least two occasions, of which one in Amsterdam with the Concertgebouw orchestra (as far back as 1981).
Michael Tilson Thomas sometimes does this as well.

[Roehre]

Like visiting Scotland? I don't think so, somehow.

V S

Your loss, I'm sure.

[Boilk]

... growing in excitement before climaxing in those whooping horns that may again bring Tippett to mind...

Those whooping horns sound uncannily like humpback whales too - their upward glissandi can morph into arpeggios. I've heard whales doing major arpeggios with a flattened seventh (i.e. part of the harmonic series), which is what we get in the Knussen (at about 42' on Listen Again).

[bluestateprommer]

Presumably RW feels that if sufficient other Proms sell well/sell out, he can afford to let Oliver Knussen have his "party" with his annual Prom, which is always intelligently thought out and imaginative, and thus correspondingly has a smaller audience, as Martin Kettle noted in his Guardian review:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2012/aug/26/prom-56-bbcso-knussen

'......sadly, all too often, attendance is small but select. "No one empties a hall quite like Olly," one of his admirers admitted on Saturday. But some of the giants of Knussen's generation were there all the same.

And one more thing – the Olly Prom is always a big musical learning experience in a way few concerts are. Knussen doesn't just conduct his own concerts; he curates them, too. There's a real sense of them reflecting his formidable mind and his interests. It's impossible not to be drawn in. Not enough people come. But I bet none of them leave early.'

It sounded excellent on iPlayer, and I heartily concur with the warm sound OK conjured in particular in the Debussy. Nice also that Alexander Goehr was present to take a bow after his Metamorphosis/Dance.

Why exactly did we hear the Helen Grime work twice?

Not that I am complaining. Pieces always come out much better (and apparently shorter) at second hearing.

OK used a tale of his glasses not being quite where they should have been as the "excuse" for giving the Helen Grime a second go. I assume that the BBC SO and RW were aware in advance that OK would do this, in the same way that they are informed in advance of any planned encores by visiting artists.

Hearing this performance makes it the more disappointing that OK didn't get to Santa Fe this summer for the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival, as originally intended. He would have conducted his own Songs for Sue and the Alban Berg Chamber Concerto, but subs had to be called in. I asked someone connected to the Festival what happened, and the official explanation that I got was that OK had an attack of gout. For those at the RAH, how did he seem, walking to the podium, and his general manner? If there were no signs of ill health, one then wonders. It's perfectly understandable if he decided that a trans-Atlantic trip was too much to handle, but then I don't know how much international travel he does these days.

[Belgrove]

For those at the RAH, how did he seem, walking to the podium, and his general manner?

He did not look especially agile coming onto and off of the platform. He sat at the podium. His conducting style was understated elegance, being precise, clear and economical of gesture.

The rigours of a long-haul flight are arduous enough young and fit, let alone all the protracted business that attends getting on and off the plane.