Prom 6- 16.07.13: David Matthews, Rachmaninov & Nielsen

[Dave2002]

I usually boost the volume for live concerts and it does the trick.

I agree that if I could have pushed the volume up quite a bit further it might have been impressive. How would I then have coped with Petroc's voice at the end, though? Do you find you have to anticipate the announcers, and rush about turning the volume down whenever you think there's about to be an announcement? I suppose it's possible the relative levels of speech and music are different on the internet HD channel.

At present I don't think there's an easy answer for me anyway, as the amp I use most of the time clearly doesn't have enough gain and or power for anything with real impact. I have others, but they have other faults. I guess I'll have to go back to headphones, and anticipate the level changes.

[PJPJ]

HOWEVER .... at the end of the concert the announcer - Petroc Trelawney was positively belting it out.

I really wish he wouldn't, not that he's the only one. I realise it's due to announcing from the middle of a large, noisy crowd, and the solution seems quite simple.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

What about the Verdi Requiem trailer at the end? The announcer seemed to think the Dies Irae (being played) was the Libera Me.

[jayne lee wilson]

Just to confirm - identical dropouts via FM and HDs webstream. Soon disappeared here, anyway, so I stayed with HDs as usual. I did wonder briefly after the Matthews if the wrong programme had been dropped in!

Nielsen's 4th Symphony is one of the greatest of the 20th Century - take time to get to know it, it will reward you well. But it's both hard to play and, seemingly, to listen to for many. It can sweep past like a meteorite, leaving witnesses dazed and confused. For me, its phenomenal energy and far-reaching motivic unity had an immediate appeal. It's nature music really, but about a larger sense of the "life-force" - destructive and creative forces rather than specific quails or cuckoos!

I got to know it from broadcasts in the 70s, and from Karajan's Berlin Phil LP; Mena and the BBC Phil initially reminded me of the Karajan in their power and fullness of tone, a very promising start which had me thinking, this should be good. But sadly the quality was not maintained. The allegretto was nicely done, fresh and delicate. But the poco adagio seemed neither subtle nor powerful enough, the timpani too dominant of the brass at what should be an overwhelming climax.
In the finale , there was a degree of disorganisation, poor internal balance which muddled both texture and argument. I involuntarily shook my head. The timpani were again very pronounced, but the mysterious central episode held little tension or anticipation of the final blaze; "quiet" is not the same as "tense" and there was not much sense of a "gleam of distant light...extraordinary grace and subdued power" as Robert Simpson has it.
"Yet again" I thought, as the triumphant statement of the motto theme failed to take off, the brass far too rounded down into the tutti. Even the final crescendo didn't arrive at full power. I've so often heard this happen in live performance, making me wonder if conductors need to over-emphasise the brass here to make it really tell. But it's a failure of musical understanding, to rush so crudely through a finale which has far more to offer than a timpani duel.
(Possibly the heat, or engineering, may have been a factor. Hall reports would be useful).

The orchestra seemed more subtle, polished and even beautiful in David Matthews' impressive A Vision of the Sea. As with most of his so subtly-crafted work, it will need more than one hearing to reveal its secrets, but I was struck by that change of colour and atmosphere around 20' in, a hushed start to a darkly elemental coda, where birdcalls evoked calm, space and distance before that final blaze. It's the latest in a series of haunted pastorals which include In The Dark Time and the stunning Music of Dawn.

Here's a sequence of Matthews' paintings which fed into his inspiration, with some comments on the piece. (Herring Gulls! An immature bird dropped into my garden yesterday to grab a chunk of bread, then swept up to a chimney where it wailed, barked and laughed as two dozen ferals looked on meekly.)
http://david-mathews.co.uk/news/newsitem.asp?newsid=526&year=0

[mercia]

What about the Verdi Requiem trailer at the end? The announcer seemed to think the Dies Irae (being played) was the Libera Me.

that occured to me ......... except that the Dies Irae does make a reappearance in the Libera Me section, so I guess we can forgive them

[amcluesent]

Do you find you have to anticipate the announcers, and rush about turning the volume down

Sadly, yes. However, Petroc is by far the worst for bellowing over the top of the applause and in seconds spoiling the whole concert.

[Bryn]

In the 'Listen Again' HS Sound version on the iPlayer, the drop-out (beginning with a 'clack') during the performance lasts about 3.5 seconds. That during the applause is slightly shorter (3.2 seconds).

[jayne lee wilson]

I see that David Matthews' Vision of the Sea joins Lachenmann's Tanzlied as another victim of the TV Censorship of Difficult Modern Music, edited out of the BBC4 broadcast, though this time without the carefully-reasoned critical appraisal of Patrick Mulkhern (now there's a name to conjure with....)

I think its time to start a TV Proms 2013 List, we could call it Entartete Musik...

(...PS don't forget to have a look at those sea-paintings - it's OK, they're not Modern or Difficult or anything!)

[edashtav]

I see that David Matthews' Vision of the Sea joins Lachenmann's Tanzlied as another victim of the TV Censorship of Difficult Modern Music, edited out of the BBC4 broadcast, though this time without the carefully-reasoned critical appraisal of Patrick Mulkhern (now there's a name to conjure with....)

I think its time to start a TV Proms 2013 List, we could call it Entartete Musik...

Hear, Hear, or as the BBC "Entartete Musik" Czar writes, "Not here, NOT HERE."

[ahinton]

I see that David Matthews' Vision of the Sea joins Lachenmann's Tanzlied as another victim of the TV Censorship of Difficult Modern Music, edited out of the BBC4 broadcast, though this time without the carefully-reasoned critical appraisal of Patrick Mulkhern (now there's a name to conjure with....)

I think its time to start a TV Proms 2013 List, we could call it Entartete Musik...

(...PS don't forget to have a look at those sea-paintings - it's OK, they're not Modern or Difficult or anything!)

David Matthews: Difficult Modern Music.
Chalk: Cheese.
Liverpool: Garonne.
I rest my case.

But yes, do look at the paintings on Matthews's site; if one thinks of living English composers in tune with nature, David Matthews must surely top the list (if indeed there would be such a list!)...

[edashtav]

David Matthews: Difficult Modern Music.


But yes, do look at the paintings on Matthews's site; if one thinks of living English composers in tune with nature, David Matthews must surely top the list (if indeed there would be such a list!)...

Come on,Mr. Hinton, you've dozed off in the heatwave and discounted Edward Cowie. As Wikipedia says:


Edward Cowie (born 17 August 1943) is an English composer, author, Natural Scientist, and painter.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Come on,Mr. Hinton, you've dozed off in the heatwave and discounted Edward Cowie. As Wikipedia says:


Edward Cowie (born 17 August 1943) is an English composer, author, Natural Scientist, and painter.

Don't know about "dozing off", but I agree that Cowie is an excellent composer whose observations (visual and aural) of the Natural World informs his Music with results that are second-to-none ...


... except, of course, Birtwistle - whose Geological forms must surely count as an aspect of the "Natural World"?

[edashtav]

Don't know about "dozing off", but I agree that Cowie is an excellent composer whose observations (visual and aural) of the Natural World informs his Music with results that are second-to-none ...


... except, of course, Birtwistle - whose Geological forms must surely count as an aspect of the "Natural World"?

A good play, possibly match point to you! Isn't Harry a rare human, hedgehog?

[jayne lee wilson]

Well, I listened again to David Matthews' A Vision of the Sea. I was almost ashamed at how much I had missed in it the first time. It has a craggy, wild beauty and much orchestral colour of a subtle originality, an evocation with at least as many natural and elemental presences above (and maybe below) the waves as human ones floating upon them. I loved the way those Herring Gulls run through the piece like a motif, raucously calling our attention to the start of a shadowy, atmospheric coda which at first made me think of darkness falling on an ebb tide, but climaxes with a sunrise, the blaze ending abruptly, like a directorial "cut!". (Would the composer mind if I think of the coda as a "Night Tide and Sunrise"?)
I could almost say that this coda, marvellously unexpected as it steals in, is the point of the piece - changing your view of all that's gone before. But you'll have to hear it to appreciate that, won't you?
Yes, it will sound better when the BBCPO (or any orchestra) play its solos with a tighter confidence, and find a more virtuoso orchestral abandon. It could really sweep you away then.

But - so much for the poor words; I urge anyone who loves music to listen to it. For me, it takes its place in a great tradition stretching back to Glazunov, Ciurlionis and Debussy. How sadly predictable that one critic should say that "it might have been composed at almost any time in the last century", as if a composer has to invent a new idiom every time they begin, or to use an "advanced language"...
It ain't what you do...

[Sir Velo]

I'm not sure why the Nielsen symphony gets such a bum rap from listeners. Certainly the old canard about the "Indistinguishable" is palpably nonsensical. It only holds sway because of the similarity between the two words. Had Nielsen subtitled the symphony "The Will to Life", as he might well have done, none of the jokes about the symphony's name would have arisen. It's a salient point that the greatest criticism seems to come from admirers of Shostakovich who see Nielsen as a pale imitiation of their man. However, what always strikes the listener is the way Nielsen in this symphony creates an epic structure with total credibility in half the time it takes one of Shostakovich's rambling journeys to make their mark. "Like an eagle riding on the wind" was the memorable phrase Nielsen used to describe the majestically soaring cantilena in the poco adagio section. I can think of no better description than that to describe the effect of the whole work.