Prom 51 - 20.08.13: Tippett, Britten & Sibelius

[Alison]

I enjoyed the Tippett items most, I think. What perennially fresh music !

An interesting performance of Elgar 2. Liked the basic tempo of (I), free of gabble. Beautifully voiced ending to the work yet it still remained interesting rather than especially moving.

Is the LSO lacking just a little of its wow factor of yesteryear ?

[Petrushka]

I enjoyed the Tippett items most, I think. What perennially fresh music !

An interesting performance of Elgar 2. Liked the basic tempo of (I), free of gabble. Beautifully voiced ending to the work yet it still remained interesting rather than especially moving.

Is the LSO lacking just a little of its wow factor of yesteryear ?

That just about sums it up for me too. The long drawn out ending to the Elgar 2 puts me so much in mind of 'the lights are going out all over Europe' of 1914 and that feeling was especially strong tonight in what was an exceptionally beautiful coda. Odd that I've never attended a Prom performance of the Elgar 2...

[Master Jacques]

I was in the hall, close to the back of the 2nd violins for the Elgar Symphony. Interesting that Harding had the violins at the front on either side, old-style, which meant the antiphonal effects of the 1st movement came over well. Good on him.

As for The Spirit of Delight... well, she DID come tonight, though Master Harding I felt rather relied on the sheer brilliance of the LSO to get him through the Elgar in one piece. I've never before felt that the S.of D. perhaps hangs around for a little too long in the FIRST movement, but I did tonight, splendid though the big moments were. The slow movement came off magnificently, the rest (as too often) was an anticlimax. Superlative work from 1st clarinet (Andrew Marriner) and 1st oboe (Gordon Hunt).

It's hard to imagine Les Ills done better, though. Bostridge was in great voice (really resonant in the hall) and for once superbly cast - given the mix of affected poetry, exquisite yet bold music, and all in French so one didn't have to worry about his horrid way of randomly wrenching poetic syllables! The orchestral support was virtuosic. Harding was superbly precise. This was exactly how the work needs to be.

Ah... but the Tippett Double Concerto (at least the slow movement and finale) made me cry. The incomparable 1st cellist (Rebecca Gilliver) was responsible for much of that emotion. What wonderful playing, and what a moving work...

[Nick Armstrong]

Great review, Master J. Thank you

[LaurieWatt]

I was in the hall, close to the back of the 2nd violins for the Elgar Symphony. Interesting that Harding had the violins at the front on either side, old-style, which meant the antiphonal effects of the 1st movement came over well. Good on him.

As for The Spirit of Delight... well, she DID come tonight, though Master Harding I felt rather relied on the sheer brilliance of the LSO to get him through the Elgar in one piece. I've never before felt that the S.of D. perhaps hangs around for a little too long in the FIRST movement, but I did tonight, splendid though the big moments were. The slow movement came off magnificently, the rest (as too often) was an anticlimax. Superlative work from 1st clarinet (Andrew Marriner) and 1st oboe (Gordon Hunt).

It's hard to imagine Les Ills done better, though. Bostridge was in great voice (really resonant in the hall) and for once superbly cast - given the mix of affected poetry, exquisite yet bold music, and all in French so one didn't have to worry about his horrid way of randomly wrenching poetic syllables! The orchestral support was virtuosic. Harding was superbly precise. This was exactly how the work needs to be.

Ah... but the Tippett Double Concerto (at least the slow movement and finale) made me cry. The incomparable 1st cellist (Rebecca Gilliver) was responsible for much of that emotion. What wonderful playing, and what a moving work...

I haven't listened to it yet but that is a pleasure in store - or should be but I allowed the hour and a couple of minutes left on my DAT and came home to find that this was not enough time for the symphony! I have nine recordings on CD and the longest is just under 55 minutes so I am rather apprehensive....

[ucanseetheend]

I wonder what the TV Programming"butchers" will leave out for the BBC4 broadcast on the Sunday 25th?

[edashtav]

The Concerto for Double String Orch is just so jolly isn't it? A favourite of mine..

AMEN to that!

[Maclintick]

Now that is strange. Strauss and Elgar were (sort of) friends from the early 1900s, the Elgar's holidaying with the Strausses in Garmisch. Difficult not to see a little Strauss in the works from - say - 1904 onwards. Don't forget though that Bizet, Delibes and Massenet are greater influences. (Now that's contrversial!)

Surely the spirit of Wagner hangs over Elgar 2, especially at the end, where
in mood and orchestration the closing valediction becomes an Edwardian Gotterdammerung, the transfigured Spirit of Delight acquiring something of the character of the Valhalla theme, harps and strings swirling in the tuba-laden depths as the Thames rises to engulf a flaming Westminster ?....it's even in E flat, for goodness sake !

I love this symphony & hadn't heard it in a while, but enjoyed the LSO's performance, & certainly admired their stamina in keeping up with Daniel Harding's breakneck tempo in the scherzo. Bit of a muddle in the first movement coda, where half the players decided to follow the maestro & the others decided to be sensible, but they soon re-grouped. Wonderful slow movement.

(For those with long memories -- I attended an incandescent performance given by Solti & the LPO in the Festival Hall in ('75 or '76 ?) where the contrast between this conductor's characteristically sinewy projection of the symphony's drama and the tender resignation of its ending had many in the audience reaching for their handkerchiefs )

[Ferretfancy]

I was unable to stay for the Elgar, although I would have liked to. The first half was good, although it did strike me that Britten's string writing was so much more involving than Tippet's. I'm not sure what the television cameras will have made of Ian Bostridge's rather tortured facial expressions in Les Illuminations. I know that he has made a careful study of all the meanings within Rimbaud's verse, and carefully applied this to his performance. This care for words obviously matters, but I did feel last night that some points were hammered home in a rather grotesque way. I know that the text is full of fantasy, but this seemed a little overworked against the poetry in the music, and why "La CLEEF de cette parade" ?

[Serial_Apologist]

Surely the spirit of Wagner hangs over Elgar 2, especially at the end, where
in mood and orchestration the closing valediction becomes an Edwardian Gotterdammerung,

For me it's the final resolution in the Liebestod of Tristan.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

It's interesting that Maclintick and S_A hear echoes of Wagner in the closing pages of Elgar #2; to me it's much more intimate and subdued - a gentle sense of loss, generous in its acceptance. I knew the Elgar long before my "conversion" to Wagner - so the whole work sounds like nobody else to me.

[Nick Armstrong]

It's interesting that Maclintick and S_A hear echoes of Wagner in the closing pages of Elgar #2; to me it's much more intimate and subdued - a gentle sense of loss, generous in its acceptance. I knew the Elgar long before my "conversion" to Wagner - so the whole work sounds like nobody else to me.

Same here.

[teamsaint]

to me , Elgar seems to self reference as much as anything, particularly in the symphonies.

[Maclintick]

It's interesting that Maclintick and S_A hear echoes of Wagner in the closing pages of Elgar #2; to me it's much more intimate and subdued - a gentle sense of loss, generous in its acceptance. I knew the Elgar long before my "conversion" to Wagner - so the whole work sounds like nobody else to me.

It's true, of course, FHG, that Elgar's musical landscape is, well, uniquely Elgarian. Like all great composers he remains his own man, with an inimitable musical personality & fingerprints, cf. the melancholic wistfulness permeating the second symphony, but it's not exactly an original observation on my part to perceive clear Wagnerian, or indeed Brahmsian, antecedents, any more than it would be if I pointed out that Tippett's sound-world, on whose wonderful second symphony JLW & Edashtav have discoursed so eloquently on these boards, springs from Stravinsky, Bartok & Hindemith.

Simon Rattle in interview once wryly observed that on first encountering 'Parsifal' he'd been wonderstruck at Wagner's spookily prescient foreshadowing of "The Dream of Gerontius". Similarly, I suppose many will have experienced that moment when a work hitherto regarded as sui generis is revealed to be derivative. I'm willing to admit that I'd heard oodles of one jazz-influenced Brtitish composer's oeuvre without ever being able reference it, until recent acquaintance cured my lamentable ignorance, to Stravinsky's Ebony Concerto.

[secondfiddle]

Wonderful slow movement.

()

I missed the live broadcast but have just caught the second half of the televised concert. A splendid performance of the Elgar, of the last movement as well as the slow one. A fitting tribute to Colin Davis. People forget (or may not know) what a devoted Elgarian he was. In the 60s he almost revived the First Symphony, taking it to the RFH, the Proms and the Edinburgh Festival. I remember a review headed 'A Young Man's Elgar' or something similar. At the same time he gave the Second Symphony several times, and he was a fine interpreter of The Dream of Gerontius which he gave many times, with a superb performance in Boston in 1982 that was once broadcast over here. His performances of Elgar were even more frequent in his last years. Mozart, Tippett, Sibelius, Berlioz, Elgar, he excelled in all of them. What a pleasure his concerts were.

As for this evening's broadcast, what stupidity and complete lack of any sensitivity allowed Tom Service to burst in before the music had hardly even finished with a quite unnecessary announcement? This was crass idiocy, too typical of the BBC.