Prom 64 (31.8.12): Berlin Philharmonic – Brahms & Lutoslawski

[fugophile]

Water bottles seem to get everywhere and can be partly justified on health grounds, but are glasses of wine necessary?

Perhaps they have a chip in the shoulder because they cannot afford a box (I hasten to add that I cannot either), yet want to act the part of someone who can?

Is that string layout - violas on extreme right, rather than cellos or second violins - the regular one for this orchestra?

All I can say is that they had it both nights.

Is the delightful business of the players hugging at the end as a signal that "that's it - no more encores" - another of their habits?

Probably; I have seen LSO players do it too in a similar context.

For my part, I was impressed by the Berlin Philharmonic's tuning ritual: leader walks onstage; orchestra rises to its feet unprompted; tuning takes place, once the audience applause has stopped; and finally the conductor enters. It is so much more logical than the more common practice of having the leader immediately precede the conductor.

[Vile Consort]

Barbiriolli knew what to do with late-comers. Nobody would ever have dared to do it a second time.

[Tapiola]

Barbiriolli knew what to do with late-comers. Nobody would ever have dared to do it a second time.

I doubt Glorious J is doing anything at all at this point...

[Vile Consort]

I doubt Glorious J is doing anything at all at this point...

Indeed not, but when I refer to him in the past tense I am talking about when he was alive, not at 7.45 pm yesterday.

[Tapiola]

Indeed not, but when I refer to him in the past tense I am talking about when he was alive, not at 7.45 pm yesterday.

Thank you.

We live in the present, no?

There is a word called "humour" in the English language. Whether my comment attained that level is neither here nor there. However, your pomposity is in plain view

[VodkaDilc]

Wouldn't it be reasonable to say that late-comers would only be admitted between complete works? Otherwise there are television screens they could watch - or perhaps they could be allowed to stand in the Gallery until the interval.

[Tevot]

One last point: I was not surprised to be surrounded by Welsh voices in the Bernstein Prom, but I did not expect so many German speakers in the audience for this one. I wonder if they follow the orchestra or whether they are resident here.

I think I may have an answer to this question Vodka posed in # 13. For four years I lived in Beijing and had the wonderful opportunity of seeing The Chicago Symphony, Leipzig Gewandhaus, Vienna Philharmonic and Lucerne Festival Orchestras live in concert there. For each - getting tickets was no problem. Last November - the Berliners came to town and it was a very different story. The tickets were sold out months before the concert. A good proportion of tickets were block booked apparently by corporations such as Audi, Bayer and Siemens. Net result I didn't ever manage to see the Berliners perform Mahler 9 in Beijing - or Bruckner 9 the previous evening :-(

It may be the case that a similar thing happened for the Berliners' performances at the Proms. I note from the Berliners' website and Digital Concert Hall that they are in partnership with Deutsche Bank - so they too may get tickets reserved for the Orchestra's concerts.

As for the concert itself - I thought it was magnificent. Brahms has grown on me as I've got older - and Lutoslawski 3 has long been a favourite of mine - I have Salonen's recording coupled with Les Espaces du Sommeil - and in Rattle, Lutoslawski has another powerful champion. I hope there's more Lutoslawski at the Proms to mark his centenary next year.

It must have been a great concert to be at. As indeed the evening before.

Best Wishes,

Tevot

[bluestateprommer]

Very fine concert over iPlayer, although I'm sorry about the reports of disruptive latecomers (as well as Petrushka's report of the bothersome kiddies in the other thread). I'll confess that Brahms isn't one of my "desert island" composers, so I tend more to acknowledge his music with respect rather than affection (which puts me, I suppose, in the "non" camp of the "Aimez-vous Brahms?" question). However, regarding Brahms' Piano Concerto No. 2, I must say that I rather liked what I sensed to be the "chamber music" approach that SSR talked about in the pre-performance remarks with Andrew McGregor, and Bronfman seemed to embrace that aesthetic. I thought it worked quite well, and that he was overall better than Emanuel Ax last year.

I hadn't heard the Lutosławski Symphony No. 3 in ages, quite possibly since the 1980's, i.e. the time of its provenance, via radio broadcasts of the Chicago Symphony, if memory serves. What perhaps surprised me was that those final hammered notes were all that I seemed to remember from decades back, and what struck me now as all that I recognized. However, SSR and the Berlin Phil did it proud, so no complaints on the quality of performance.

Indeed, the encore was from the second set of Dvořák's Slavonic Dances, op. 72, no. 7, so Andrew McGregor called it correctly. I'm surprised that he seemed hesitant, since I would think that the Proms management would know about encores in advance, or at least if they've been planned, and thus announcers would be informed accordingly. With most broadcasts, the announcer says "and it looks like we're going to get an encore", which s/he then smoothly announces after the encore has been delivered.