Prom 49 - 19.08.13: Berlioz, Mendelssohn, Bach & Beethoven

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

7.00pm – c. 9.20pm
Royal Albert Hall

Berlioz
Overture 'King Lear' (16 mins)
Mendelssohn
Piano Concerto No. 1 in G minor (21 mins)
INTERVAL
Bach
The Art of Fugue – Canon and Fugue (orch. G. Benjamin) (8 mins)
Beethoven
Symphony No. 3 in E flat major, 'Eroica' (50 mins)

Stephen Hough piano
Scottish Chamber Orchestra
Robin Ticciati conductor

Stephen Hough makes his second Proms appearance this summer with Mendelssohn's Piano Concerto No 1, famously sight-read by Liszt in the Erard piano showroom in Paris in 1831. Under its Principal Conductor Robin Ticciati, the Scottish Chamber Orchestra performs another work of the same year: Berlioz's King Lear, alongside Beethoven's mighty "Eroica" symphony, described by Berlioz as 'a funeral oration for a great hero'. George Benjamin pays tribute to Bach with orchestrated excerpts from The Art of Fugue.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

Does anyone know the Bach-Benjamin orchestrations?

[Hornspieler]

Scottish Chamber Orchestra 19/ 8/

I quite enjoyed the Berlioz Overture.

The Piano concerto was scintillating and refreshing.

That Bach arrangement did the great man no favours.

Now listening to the Eroica.
Will someone please urge the cellos and bass(es) to play in tune with everyone else?

Sorry, but this HIPPS business just doesn't work for me in Beethoven - and I doubt if it would have worked for him either.

A good first half to this prom. An amusing interval discussion and then, for me, downhill all the way.

HS

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

I've just merged the two threads on this concert to avoid confusion.

[Hornspieler]

I've just merged the two threads on this concert to avoid confusion.

Thanks for that, EA. I could not find your original post.

I wish you could merge the variable pitch of the orchestra as easily.

As my Music Master at School (the late Antony Brown) told us.

If you play a note out of tune, it is just as much a wrong note as if you play the one above or below.

HS

[Alison]

Lots to enjoy in this Eroica I'd say. You can hear everything!

[gradus]

SCO Eroica 19 August

I hope others enjoyed this stirring performance as much as I did, it sounded so fresh and alive, nothing routine about it. The orchestra played their socks off and it was thrilling to hear. Well done to all concerned especially the astonishingly young Mr Ticciati. Really quite something.

[doversoul1]

the Bach-Benjamin orchestrations
Is that it? The Art of Fugue? Well….

I very much enjoyed the Eroica. Sorry, HS, but ignorance can be a great bliss sometimes

[jayne lee wilson]

EROICA - MAGNIFICO! A terrific performance of Beethoven's 3rd from Ticciati and the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, with every section of the orchestra ranging deep and wide from intimate dialoguing (strings at the start of the finale!) to blazing power and brilliance, showing as triumphantly as Marin Alsop and the OAE in Schumann 4 that you don't need even a hint of any rich and heavy Romantic texturing to find the emotional truth, and the musical architecture, of this remarkable music. I can't think of a single passage where Ticciati didn't find a perfect tempo giusto - the pacing and placing of the climaxes, never mind their punch and power, was stunningly exact. The playing was a wonder of sheer clarity too - almost an x-ray of the score.

A life-enhancing experience from an orchestra with a marvellous revisionist pedigree in their recorded catalogue with Mackerras and others, from Mozart through Beethoven to Brahms (Mackerras on Telarc, which I've recently been listening to again - I wish they'd try some Bruckner - maybe they feel Venzago has cornered the market).

R3 HDs Production?
The engineers for this concert should be awarded a Penguin Rosette or three - it sounded as though they'd set their mikes, found the right peak level, and left the rest to the performers. As natural, dynamic, spacious and precisely three-dimensional as one could wish - as good as I've heard this season.

[edashtav]

SCO Unseats Jockey Ticciati in the Eroica Stakes

Thanks for that, EA. I could not find your original post.

I wish you could merge the variable pitch of the orchestra as easily.

As my Music Master at School (the late Antony Brown) told us.

If you play a note out of tune, it is just as much a wrong note as if you play the one above or below.

HS

EROICA - MAGNIFICO! A terrific performance of Beethoven's 3rd from Ticciati and the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, with every section of the orchestra ranging deep and wide from intimate dialoguing (strings at the start of the finale!) to blazing power and brilliance, showing as triumphantly as Marin Alsop and the OAE in Schumann 4 that you don't need even a hint of any rich and heavy Romantic texturing to find the emotional truth, and the musical architecture, of this remarkable music. I can't think of a single passage where Ticciati didn't find a perfect tempo giusto - the pacing and placing of the climaxes, never mind their punch and power, was stunningly exact. The playing was a wonder of sheer clarity too - almost an x-ray of the score.

A life-enhancing experience from an orchestra with a marvellous revisionist pedigree in their recorded catalogue with Mackerras and others, from Mozart through Beethoven to Brahms (Mackerras on Telarc, which I've recently been listening to again - I wish they'd try some Bruckner - maybe they feel Venzago has cornered the market).

R3 HDs Production?
The engineers for this concert should be awarded a Penguin Rosette or three - it sounded as though they'd set their mikes, found the right peak level, and left the rest to the performers. As natural, dynamic, spacious and precisely three-dimensional as one could wish - as good as I've heard this season.

Sorry Jayne, I'm 100% with Hornspieler on the Eroica Symphony. I thoroughly enjoyed Marin Alsop's new broom in Schumann's D minor the other evening but Ticciati's version of the Eroica with a similar sized band fell flat on its face for me. I respond favourably to brisk speeds but Ticciati's tempi resulted in rushed playing, players were scampering for their notes and truncating them before they were established with full weight & length , the better to hit the succeeding one. As Hornspieler has intimated, players were so busy they were not listening to other parts and intonation suffered badly. Napoleon was a portly man but this version sounded like a symphony dedicated to a speed merchant - Usain Bolt, perhaps. The last time I heard the Eroica live at the Proms - I think it was Thierry Fischer and the BBC Welsh SO - I found it was Beethoven-lite. This interpretation wasn't as lite, but it was pretty weightless. Not for me, I'm afraid - bring back Otto Klemperer - all is forgiven.

[Nick Armstrong]

Interesting divergences of view on this Eroica...

Might have to have a listen to make up my mind.

[amac4165]

Sorry Jayne, I'm 100% with Hornspieler on the Eroica Symphony. I thoroughly enjoyed Marin Alsop's new broom in Schumann's D minor the other evening but Ticciati's version of the Eroica with a similar sized band fell flat on its face for me. I respond favourably to brisk speeds but Ticciati's tempi resulted in rushed playing, players were scampering for their notes and truncating them before they were established with full weight & length , the better to hit the succeeding one. As Hornspieler has intimated, players were so busy they were not listening to other parts and intonation suffered badly. Napoleon was a portly man but this version sounded like a symphony dedicated to a speed merchant - Usain Bolt, perhaps.

The Eroica was pretty awful in the hall - the first movement seemed rushed beyond belief and the rest did not really ever get a grip on the piece. The arena was strangely packed (numerous altercations with stewards trying to get people to stand up etc) far beyond what you might expect from the bill.

I thought I might have a listen on the iPlayer just to see what the sound engineers made of it - i did think that the RAH acoustics might have had a hand in it - but not holding out much hope.

[RobertLeDiable]

I'm fed up with this (relatively) recent habit of chamber orchestras dipping into repertoire that was clearly intended for larger ensembles with bigger string sections. To me the Berlioz overture sounded faintly ridiculous on the radio, as if it was being played by a toy orchestra. The string sound was clean and expressive, but too small in relation to the winds and brass. Whenever this sort of thing is done by orchestras with ten or fewer first violins and perhaps three double basses we're told that it produces a wonderful 'chamber music-like transparency'. But it's the WRONG sound quality. No matter how good the string players are, they can't make the kind of sonority a Berlioz or a Brahms or a Sibelius was looking for, especially in pianissimos. I can admire the detail in Mackerras's or Berglund's chamber orchestra recordings of Brahms and Sibelius symphonies, but it's not the right sound.

[Richard J.]

I was in the hall tonight, and I'm with Jayne on the Eroica. A performance of passion and clarity that I found refreshing and inspiring. The natural horns in particular came through so much more effectively than modern valve horns in this music..

I was less happy with Stephen Hough's performance of the Mendelssohn Piano Concerto. Particularly in the last movement, his exaggerated rallentandos destroyed the momentum that is the essence of this movement. And in the first movement, he slowed the tempo on his first entry, and the "con fuoco" wasn't there. Disappointing.

A lot of uncovered coughs in the hall tonight. I hope the BBC managed to avoid them on R3.

[jayne lee wilson]

I'm fed up with this (relatively) recent habit of chamber orchestras dipping into repertoire that was clearly intended for larger ensembles with bigger string sections. To me the Berlioz overture sounded faintly ridiculous on the radio, as if it was being played by a toy orchestra. The string sound was clean and expressive, but too small in relation to the winds and brass. Whenever this sort of thing is done by orchestras with ten or fewer first violins and perhaps three double basses we're told that it produces a wonderful 'chamber music-like transparency'. But it's the WRONG sound quality. No matter how good the string players are, they can't make the kind of sonority a Berlioz or a Brahms or a Sibelius was looking for, especially in pianissimos. I can admire the detail in Mackerras's or Berglund's chamber orchestra recordings of Brahms and Sibelius symphonies, but it's not the right sound.

No-one minds if you don't like this music played on smaller ensembles, but if you declare that it's "the wrong sound quality" or make sweeping statements about what ensemble it was intended for, you need to be able to back it up with a bit more research, never mind more listening to refresh the ears and the responses.

Brahms was extremely flexible about how his music should be performed, but seems (if he had a choice) to have preferred smaller ensembles in which strings would not dominate winds. He conducted it with orchestras ranging from 49 players in Karlsruhe (strings 9-9-4-4-4 in the premiere of No.1) and Meiningen, to 113 players in Hamburg for No.2 at a festival in 1878. Playing the 4th in Meiningen (an orchestra he especially loved to work with) in 1886 he declined an offer to augment the string section. (There's much more about this in the notes to the Mackerras SCO cycle - strings 10-8-6-6-4). A main thrust of the HIPS movement was - precisely - to rebalance the orchestra in favour of winds and brass. Which I often find very convincing and thrilling.

As for Beethoven, his music was premiered on ensembles of even greater variety of size and quality, and the controversy about tempi indications should be well-enough-known to render categorical dismissals about "fast tempi" invalid. There isn't a single right way to play his, or Brahms', symphonies. But many listeners have been so ear-washed by the larger-scale, Heroic/Epic/Romantic performances which formed the canonical credo of the recording catalogues for so many decades before the challenges of Norrington, Gardiner, Bruggen, Harnoncourt et al, that they can only hear performances like Ticciati's as a betrayal of their emotional investment - in their purchased collections of Furtwangler, Klemperer, Karajan etc., and in their love of that particular sound. (Which is not to forget those older conductors who related to a leaner & fitter tradition - Scherchen, Rene Leibowitz, Dorati, at times even Toscanini or Erich Kleiber).

I count myself lucky to have heard Norrington's Eroica early enough to be excited by it, rather than shocked. It now surprises me that anyone would find Ticciati's first movement too fast or lean (those pianissimos registered in my room as magically soft AND clear, the fortissimos thrillingly contrasted), or those of Zinman or Krivine.
(I once recommended the Zinman 3&4 (with reference to Rob Cowan's review) to a musiclover, who called me a few days later to relate, a little tetchily, how much he had hated it, and the time & trouble it had caused him to return to HMV to exchange it for the 1959 Klemperer!)

So these things are indeed very personal; but if you wish to judge a given performance (rather than ticking the like/dislike box), whether in sound or tempi, it is usually best to do so from a perspective of some breadth and depth.