Prom 15 - 28.07.14: BBC SO, Fliter / Pons

[teamsaint]

since it was the complete ballet, I for one would have found it interesting/helpful to have the story appear onscreen as surtitles in the way that appears in the score at various moments (an opportunity missed ? )

Good idea.

[Hornspieler]

I think you mean Nick - both very fine players, although Martin is up there with the best IMHO.

Yes, of course - and my apologies to Nicholas Korth.

Don't know why I called the Leader Chloe. I was reading from the subtitles as they raced through too fast as usual. Should have gone to Spec..... (No advertising allowed on this forum)

HS

[Petrushka]

since it was the complete ballet, I for one would have found it interesting/helpful to have the story appear onscreen as surtitles in the way that it appears in the score at various moments (an opportunity missed ? )

An interesting idea certainly but, as with the Rite of Spring, the story doesn't much make itself felt for me except in a generalised way. Petrushka I find to be a very different kettle of fish in this respect because the story is integral to understanding the music.

[Simon Biazeck]

In 3 movements, 2 and 3 attacca, Jonathan Dove's Gaia sounded straight off a generalised Reich-Adams production line, rather too obviously derivative of more strikingly original composition from the two American Minimalist masters, specifically their more ambitious and extended projects: the Reich of Desert Music (which Gaia almost quotes at times); and the Adams of Harmonielehre, and Naive and Sentimental Music, both of these on the symphonic, largescale fast-slow-fast structure, both with intensely expressive, postRomantic slow movements - all of which Gaia appears to at least adumbrate.

It is in the nature of such works to be a one-off; they work out and through their often simple materials exhaustively (and often thrillingly). So a later work modelled upon them could seem rather more redundant than music in other influential contexts; (eg, David Matthews catching up the odd hommagiste textural echo from Tippett).

Gaia is - easy on the ears, pleasantly foot-tapping in Part 1 at least, wellknit from its 4 or 5 distinct elements and reaching a finely-worked climax; but Part 3 seemed to try too hard to introduce too many new ideas, and lacked the cumulative strength of the opening section. Part 2 did - well, what you'd expect a prettily-scored postRomantic respite to do. Almost inevitably, the music seemed often very static harmonically.

As a suite from a film score one would have little objection to this music, but, presented here with a great verbal flourish of what it all means, as a sort of promo for planetary wellbeing, I'm afraid my disappointment feels all the deeper at its lack of original musical substance.
Sorry to be so critical of new creation, but after 2 hearings I've found little to encourage a third...

I totally agree - it just left me cold, but I am rather allergic to this sort of minimalism. Try Sculthorpe's Kakadu or Mangrove. He just died, BTW.