Prom 71 - 4.09.13: Górecki, Vaughan Williams & Tchaikovsky

[LaurieWatt]

Well, there you go; I have to confess to enjoying the whole concert. all this pontificating about the Gorecki and, oh, dear me, its meaning, regardless of all that, I did not expect to enjoy it but was delighted and surprised by doing so. The VW songs were a trifle but a beautifully realised trifle, and, albeit I could have done with more abandon from the timps in the first movement I much enjoyed the Tchaikovsky.

[Richard Barrett]

Dawn Upshaw and David Zinman did it proud on that first ever recording.

That recording was made in 1991, but the first recording actually dates from 1978, featuring the Polish soprano Stefania Woytowicz - it took quite a long time for this work to be deemed to have commercial potential in the West.

[Nachtigall]

That recording was made in 1991, but the first recording actually dates from 1978, featuring the Polish soprano Stefania Woytowicz - it took quite a long time for this work to be deemed to have commercial potential in the West.

I stand corrected.

[jayne lee wilson]

Hmm. Well, it's the first time in my life that I've been accused of having a "reserved British emotional palate", so thanks for the new experience - but I was expressing a personal response to the sounds of the Gorecki. The "context"? As I've said, Nono (or Penderecki or even Reich) give me personally a greater sense of involvement in the context; the suggestion that the work benefits from a documentary about the composer does little to raise my regard for it.

Other features people have mentioned: the "folk material-based Symphony" - RVW and Sibelius and Nielsen did this much more convincingly. Canonic modal String writing? Lutoslawski (Musique Funebre) Britten (Phaedra) and Aldo Clementi did this much more successfully. Expression of a simple faith? I don't see the need for this: Stravinsky, Webern, Plainchant and Highland Keening are all crystal clear, and far much more interesting Music.

I'm honestly glad that there is such admiration for the work, but, for me it fails at every level - technical, emotional, expressive, aesthetic.

But it's in a completely different "tradition" from those composers - belonging more with Gubaidulina, Kancheli, Arvo Part, the Korndorf of Hymns 2 and 3...Part and Gorecki both began with very different, denser, far more eventful and aggressive modernist or postmodernist musical posturings (often serialist, or serialist-derived). It seems far more interesting to ask why this kind of "mystical minimalism" developed where and when it did, in Northern and Eastern Europe, Estonia, Russia, rather than comparing it to symphonic or serialist traditions it has no truck with.

If it seems to "fail at every level" maybe it is being held against the wrong standard. The description I once read of the 1st movement of Mahler's 3rd as a "total formal failure" made exactly the same mistake. If you want the Gorecki 3rd to be more concise or complex, more dialectical, more seamlessly a part of its folk tradition - you want it to be another work. But it makes no sense, surely, to compare Gorecki to Plainchant or Highland Keening which, like the monody in Max Davies' Worldes Blis, are placed in our culture as pure and ancient archetypes rather than original creations based on such sources.

Which is why I try to see all these styles as multiple and parallel "traditions", which can only exist alongside each other and shouldn't be measured against each other: they either succeed on their own terms, or not.

[Richard Barrett]

I try to see all these styles as multiple and parallel "traditions", which can only exist alongside each other and shouldn't be measured against each other: they either succeed on their own terms, or not.

But why shouldn't they be compared with one another? I won't speak for FG but personally I have a problem with almost all of the "tradition" you attach Górecki to. Why did it happen when and where it did? well, these were mostly places and times in which more "modernist" means of musical expression were discouraged, so that composers with a wish not to be subsumed by the dictates of officially-sanctioned style found another way to make a "different" music, maybe, I'm not an expert on this kind of stuff. Of course this excludes Górecki, given that Poland had been fertile ground for musical experimentation from the late 1950s onwards. I imagine he would have said hat he adopted this new stylistic direction in order to escape what he saw as restrictions in his previous music, although exchanging one set of restrictions for another (as many composers have done in retreating from a more challenging style, Penderecki being another example), especially when the "new" set of restrictions is actually not that different from a very old one, seems to me a somewhat defeatist direction to take.

[edashtav]

Ed, the first night and the concert concluding with the Enigma Variations were conducted by Sakari Oramo (and in contrast with your assessment, only a few of the subsequent concerts have eclipsed the first night's RVW for me).

Only last night was conducted by Osmo Vanska. By-the-by, his concerts don't usually do much for me, though I'm sure he'd get over that bombshell in femtoseconds if it came to it!

Well corrected, Simon. I hope my confusion will pass. I realise that I'm in a minority over the Sea Symphony on the first night - many of my friends have told me that they thought it was a great performance.

[Nick Armstrong]

hypertrophy

femtoseconds *

I shall be going to bed less ignorant thanks to this thread








*"a femtosecond is to a second what a second is to about 31.7 million years".... Love it!

[Roehre]

That recording was made in 1991, but the first recording actually dates from 1978, featuring the Polish soprano Stefania Woytowicz - it took quite a long time for this work to be deemed to have commercial potential in the West.

The recording I got in 1980, both as Polskie Nagrania and Koch/Schwann LPs.
I listened to these and the Upshaw ones a decade later, and they are shelved ever since.
I am afraid this is one of those rare works for which I don't have any respect whatsoever, as in my humble opinion especially the texts from the Gestapo-prison are (again IMHO) commercialised. Again IMHO that's not done. Full stop.
On top of that: Musically i find the work boring and not attractive at all.

From this concert I only listened to the RVW/Payne, as I am afraid I have been over-exposed to Tchaikovsky 6 (but it IS a master work)

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

If it seems to "fail at every level" maybe it is being held against the wrong standard.

No, it isn't - it's being held against my standards. And by my standards it fails at every level. You have different standards, so it doesn't "fail" - those are no more the "right" standard than mine is the "wrong" one. Yes, I do want it to be "another work" - one I found worth listening to, one that I could believe actually did "succeed in its own terms"- and it makes sense to compare it to Music that I think wipes the floor with its feeble, inadequate whinging because that's the Music I'm comparing it with. I don't listen to Freddie & the Dreamers, Bob the Builder, the Birdie Song or Mr Blobby's Christmas Album, either. No doubt that is all from the wrong standard", as well by your argument. There's so much more Music that is so much better, by my standard, that, if you don't mind (and even if you do) I'll devote myself to.

[Serial_Apologist]

No, it isn't - it's being held against my standards. And by my standards it fails at every level. You have different standards, so it doesn't "fail" - those are no more the "right" standard than mine is the "wrong" one. Yes, I do want it to be "another work" - one I found worth listening to, one that I could believe actually did "succeed in its own terms"- and it makes sense to compare it to Music that I think wipes the floor with its feeble, inadequate whinging because that's the Music I'm comparing it with. I don't listen to Freddie & the Dreamers, Bob the Builder, the Birdie Song or Mr Blobby's Christmas Album, either. No doubt that is all from the wrong standard", as well by your argument. There's so much more Music that is so much better, by my standard, that, if you don't mind (and even if you do) I'll devote myself to.

My standard for what it's worth would be music that recognised or incoprporated advances in the vocabulary of music which have added to music's form and expressivity, as all the greats from the 15th to the 20th century have done, as opposed to those who seem concerned to compose music which acts as though some of the - to me at any rate - greatest enrichments to musical vocabulary have not, or maybe should have not, taken place.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

My standard for what it's worth would be music that recognised or incoprporated advances in the vocabulary of music which have added to music's form and expressivity, as all the greats from the 15th to the 20th century have done, as opposed to those who seem concerned to compose music which acts as though some of the - to me at any rate - greatest enrichments to musical vocabulary have not, or maybe should have not, taken place.

Yeah; that, too!

[Nick Armstrong]

Am I wrong to have the Gorecki bracketed in my mind with Tavener's 'Protecting Veil' - they seemed to come out around the same time and appeal to the same sort of responses.

[Roehre]

My standard for what it's worth would be music that recognised or incoprporated advances in the vocabulary of music which have added to music's form and expressivity, as all the greats from the 15th to the 20th century have done, as opposed to those who seem concerned to compose music which acts as though some of the - to me at any rate - greatest enrichments to musical vocabulary have not, or maybe should have not, taken place.

I concur grosso modo with these thoughts.

[Serial_Apologist]

Am I wrong to have the Gorecki bracketed in my mind with Tavener's 'Protecting Veil' - they seemed to come out around the same time and appeal to the same sort of responses.

I once heard this Tavener work described in unctuous tones as restoring to choral writing certain "timeless" qualities that had been lost to all choral music since the time of the Renaissance: a pov with which JLW would not I assume from an earlier post concur regarding Gorecki's choral writing.

[Richard Barrett]

music which acts as though some of the - to me at any rate - greatest enrichments to musical vocabulary have not, or maybe should have not, taken place.

Paul Griffiths makes exactly this point in relation to Pärt in his Modern Music and After.