Prom 32 - 7.08.13: Lutosławski & Holst

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

7.30pm – c. 9.55pm
Royal Albert Hall

Lutosławski
Symphonic Variations (9 mins)
Holst
Egdon Heath (12 mins)
Lutosławski
Piano Concerto (25 mins)
INTERVAL
Holst
The Planets (50 mins)

Louis Lortie piano
BBC Symphony Chorus
BBC Symphony Orchestra
Edward Gardner conductor

Leading champion of Lutoslawski's music and Music Director of English National Opera, Edward Gardner conducts the BBC Symphony Orchestra in a programme contrasting one each of the Polish composer's earliest and latest works with music by the British composer Gustav Holst.

Completed shortly before the occupation of Poland, Lutoslawski's Symphonic Variations is juxtaposed with Holst's rarely heard tribute to Thomas Hardy, Egdon Heath. Louis Lortie is the soloist in Lutoslawski's monumental 1988 Piano Concerto in a concert that closes with Holst's extraordinarily visionary suite, The Planets.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

In my days as a classroom teacher, I had a pupil who was taken by his father to every performance of Holst's Planets, if at all possible. I imagine the family might be together again for this concert too.

[Petrushka]

This Prom is to be my next visit to the Albert Hall before Jansons and the BRSO on the next two days and am keen to hear Gardner live in Lutoslawski following his well-received CD recordngs on the Chandos label.

As it happens, and this is perfectly true, I've only ever heard the Planets live twice in 40 years and just once at the Proms (Haitink and the Philharmonia in 1984). Hoping for a good blast of the restored RAH organ.

[BBMmk2]

I will always remember the performance that Haitink gave of The Planets. A very hard one to beat, imo. I have EG's recordings of lutoslawski's music, so, hearing these ones live, be rather good!

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

I will always remember the performance that Haitink gave of The Planets. A very hard one to beat, imo.

5/4 - very tricky.

[Tapiola]

5/4 - very tricky.

Yes, too [sic] downbeat for me...

[Tapiola]

For me, two strange Luto works. The early Variations coupled with the late, accessible, allusion-ripe Piano Concerto. A newcomer to Lutoslawski may miss what he was all about at his whirlwind, hard-edged, metallic, aleatory best

[jayne lee wilson]

Yes, I agree - why not Symphony No.2, or Livre, Mi-Parti or even the later Chains and Partita? Did "Piano Concerto" and "Variations" seem a bit less daunting...? They aren't really Luto at his best...

[Tapiola]

why not Symphony No.2, or Livre, Mi-Parti or even the later Chains and Partita?

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

5/4 - very tricky.

I've seen it beat as 2 + 3, 3 + 2 and down-left-middle-right-up (which is unambiguous and logical).

[gedsmk]

A game of two halves. First half absorbing and well played. But the Planets ? Sounds like a different band. Have had misgivings about the BBCSO trumpet section after a disastrous Mahler 2 under Haitink in 2006. So far worst fears confirmed

[Rupert P Matley]

I caught Jupiter on the radio whilst a passenger in a car. I had no idea it was a trumpet concerto.

[edashtav]

One last crisis—the final Overthrow

A game of two halves. First half absorbing and well played. ...

I found the Lutoslawski Variations to be trivial - but nicely played.

Egdon Heath was masterful. The most chilling, barren performance that I've ever endured. The piece has a timeless, unworldly feel that was so well caught by Gardner and the BBC SO. It was Dorset, not as we know it, but at dead of night, illumined only by Neptune. Time and space was destroyed. I felt the ghost of music to come: a Harrison Birtwistle landscape, perhaps, flickered on its horizon and then disappeared into the future.
Thomas Hardy wrote of the Heath:
Every night its Titanic form seemed to await something; but it had waited thus, unmoved, during so many centuries, through the crises of so many things, that it could only be imagined to await one last crisis—the final overthrow.

Can music express such things? Holst's Egdon Heath did!

[Pabmusic]

I've seen it beat as 2 + 3, 3 + 2 and down-left-middle-right-up (which is unambiguous and logical).

Mars is 3 + 2 almost throughout (there's a few bars of 3/4). It's quite an easy beat when you get used to it (I was a percussionist as well as a conductor!). The awkward one (at first sight) is in Tchaikovsky's Pathetique, because in its outer sections it is 3 + 2 and 2 + 3, repeated continually. And it has to be smooth, like a waltz.

[Ferretfancy]

I caught Jupiter on the radio whilst a passenger in a car. I had no idea it was a trumpet concerto.

Oh please ! Car radios can be fine, burt surely not for judging balance!

In the hall the Planets was very good. I would like to have heard stronger strings, but in the Arena bodies can soak them up a bit, and they are not the BBC SO's strongest suit. They were fine in Egdon Heath, the masterpiece of the evening. Incidentally Louis Lortie used a Fazioli piano, and it's bright clean quality was ideal for the Lutoslawski concerto.