Prom 18 - 30.07.14: BBC Phil, Tharaud / Mena

[Nick Armstrong]

Seems almost as if Ivan H heard a different concert from the rest of us....

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/music/proms/11002671/BBC-Prom-18-BBC-Philharmonic-Orchestra-Mena-review-lo-fat.html

[Tevot]

Seems almost as if Ivan H heard a different concert from the rest of us....
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/m...ew-lo-fat.html

Thanks for the link Cali...

All in all I'm looking forward to listening to this concert - especially after the wildly divergent reports on Mahler 5....

Currently listening on You Tube to Night's Black Bird - and loving it

Then again - I'm as mad as a box of frogs

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-g3oGepuKug

Best Wishes,

Tevot

[Serial_Apologist]

Currently listening on You Tube to Night's Black Bird - and loving it

Then again - I'm as mad as a box of frogs

Join the club Tevot - that makes two of us!

[Nick Armstrong]

Thanks for the link Cali...

... the wildly divergent reports on Mahler 5....

You are welcome

I can only think that the very bizarre acoustics of the RAH account for the fact that "the harsh, biting tone of trumpeter Jamie Prophet" (as mentioned by Ivan H) sounded to me ripe, resonant and evocative....

I too shall be fascinated to hear what the radio & TV microphones made of it all.

[Lento]

Apparently Cortot did - Ravel was furious.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FMO3HT9T2Tg

It seems Ravel got angry with many pianists. I think Wittgenstein told him "I'm not your servant" (or words to that effect) to which Ravel replied "you are my servant".

[Maclintick]

It seems Ravel got angry with many pianists. I think Wittgenstein told him "I'm not your servant" (or words to that effect) to which Ravel replied "you are my servant".

Ravel's disagreement with Paul Wittgenstein stemmed from his reluctance to allow the pianist to re-compose the concerto. Wittgenstein often demanded re-writes & sometimes fell out with the distinguished composers he commissioned, writing to Prokofiev "Thank you for the concerto, but I do not understand a single note of it and I shall not play it "

Apropos of Cali's on-the-spot review. Hearing the concerto on-air, where the piano might have fared rather better than in the variable Albert Hall acoustic, I share Ivan's more charitable assessment of Alexandre Tharaud's performance.

[teamsaint]

Just back from the hall after recovering and eating ... and yes, Jane, we thought it was a wonderful Mahler 5. With the possible exception of the word 'sleekly' which wouldn't have occurred to me, I would agree with everything you say - absorbing sense of pace and pulse throughout, with no loss of expressivity - urgent and intense is right. And yes, a ravishing Adagietto, again the tempo felt... giusto! We had extraordinary seats, right at the end of the horseshoe, just behind the back desk of cellos (we could read their music) and it was a mesmerising place to sit for that movement - and electrifying to feel one was in the 'engine room' for the rest of the piece - cellos in front of us, basses to the right and behind them the magnificent trumpets and trombones, and a direct line through to all the chattering and shrieking woodwind. Fascinating. The principal trumpet had an amazing evening, not a note out of place and a wonderful, slightly ripe, cornet-like tone - wonderful. The solo horn had a slightly less successful evening... but it didn't matter in the overall scheme of things.

The Ravel concerto was a rather different kettle of fish. It sounded under-rehearsed, and the soloist - like the orchestra - didn't sound 'inside' the music (he was reading off the music). Tharaud didn't have the bite, the 'grunt' necessary in the trenchant sections - the opening five minutes were disappointing. But he played beautifully in the more lyrical tender passages, and the orchestra, once it had settled down, did the motoric sections and climaxes very well. But overall - not the finished article.

I didn't feel strongly about the Birtwistle...

Lovely review, Cals. Hoping to catch this one properly soon,but time seems short just now. What I heard of the Mahler, (about half of it) sounded excellent.

[jayne lee wilson]

Ivan Hewitt's Telegraph review says, "The closing bars of the finale, where Mahler can't resist inserting a triumphal chorale, like Mendelssohn on steroids"...
Apart from that bizarre comparison (perhaps he should try the end of the Reformation Symphony if he likes actual Mendelssohn on steroids...) he fails to note (or worse, notice) that this "inserted" chorale is the 5th's structural crossbeam - the apotheosis of that chorale from the end of the 2nd movement. It's a Great Moment in Symphonies, where anticipation is wonderfully fulfilled.

* * *

Apart from that, his review shows again how difficult it is to compare notes from the Hall to those from the Home Concert Hall. Here, on HDs as usual, Birtwistle's Night's Black Bird came over with terriific brilliance and poetry - with a real cutting edge to the brasses that Hewitt heard in-hall as "muffled". Mena's performance was easily the equal of the closer-focussed NMC CD from R.Wigglesworth and the Halle. I've played this piece 4 times this week, twice CD twice Prom, and found the live performance wanting for nothing. Really well done!

I also listened to the companion piece to Night's Black Bird, The Shadow of Night. Actually composed first and twice the length, it can be a more rewarding listen: the cantilena-like string melodies, interspersed with glittering orchestral fantasies and sudden, baleful climaxes, are more telling at greater length; the processional structure, within and around which the musical building blocks vary in pace and shape, always with a dreamlike, narrow-eyed sense of "I think we've been here before, but..." are clearer at greater length and variation. The episodes are wilder, less predictable, the musical threads less neatly tied, than in NBB. The naturlauts of the shorter work are mostly absent - in their place, something darker, yet more human - the climaxes more frequent, overwhelming and fulfilling.

I sometimes see - or hear - a Birtwistle orchestral work as a sound-sculpture, a multifaceted shape that moves through time; but one that twists or writhes, like a stormcloud, or a god becoming a reptile.
But the "meaning" of such pieces, beyond the composer's avowed sources in Elizabethan concepts of Melencholia (or sonic inspirations from Industrial North Lancashire), is no more or less decodable verbally than that of a Ravel Piano Concerto. Still, if you can't find a way in, you could try listening to Dowland's "Flow My Tears" before Night's Black Bird, which Birtwistle has woven through it. ("In Darkness let me Dwell", mentioned in the R3 introduction to the concert, is part of the thematic basis for Shadow of Night).

Listen to both, and consider the work as a "Fantasia on a theme of John Dowland" placed in the tradition of betterknown creations by Vaughn Williams and Maxwell Davies...

[Nick Armstrong]

With a right hand free to turn the pages perhaps there is no incentive to commit to memory?

NB as the Guardian review tells us "Alexandre Tharaud used his left hand for everything, even to turn the pages."

Even his encore was Scriabin's Prelude for the Left Hand!

[Sir Velo]

I missed hearing the first part of the concert. I wonder why that was?

HS

You don't like Ravel?

[Maclintick]

NB as the Guardian review tells us "Alexandre Tharaud used his left hand for everything, even to turn the pages."

Even his encore was Scriabin's Prelude for the Left Hand!

Chastising Alexandre Tharaud for using a score perhaps shows a lack of historical perspective. True, it was much more common in the past for concerto soloists (e.g. Clifford Curzon) to have the music propped up in front of them - an insurance-policy against the kind of unpredictable memory-lapse which afflicted Ingrid Fliter the other night, but it's surely a regrettable prejudice to subtract marks from a performer for referring to the notes the composer wrote. By the way, one can't make an assumption that Tharaud hadn't committed the concerto to memory, just because he had an aide-memoire to hand (his left one, of course).

Similarly, it seems to be the norm today that score-less conductors are more highly esteemed than their page-turning counterparts, even if the stick-waver has missed a beat & caused a pile-up in the coda. This wasn't always the case. When once someone had the temerity to ask Sir Adrian Boult why he used a score, when so many of his contemporaries didn't, he replied brusquely "Because I can read one" .

[Flosshilde]

Listening to the Mahler now - are they playing the recording at the right speed? It must be the slowest first movement ever - it's in danger of collapsing any minute.

[Lento]

Ravel's disagreement with Paul Wittgenstein stemmed from his reluctance to allow the pianist to re-compose the concerto. Wittgenstein often demanded re-writes & sometimes fell out with the distinguished composers he commissioned, writing to Prokofiev "Thank you for the concerto, but I do not understand a single note of it and I shall not play it "

Bolshie so-and-so wasn't he, so Ravel's remarks justified.

Re the Mahler 5, Neil Fisher in the Times seemed to have liked the middle mvts the most, complimenting the solo trumpet, but giving the concert 2 stars, making observations about things that passed me by, listening on the radio, and thoroughly absorbed. In the Mahler, Mena, he says, seemed "rather than (to) command the battlefield" was "more like .... in retreat" (alluding to a humorous cartoon). He calls the interpretation "curiously defanged", considers the the finale "too generously paced to intoxicate", and refers to there being "too many worrying slips in ensemble". Oh, and the HB piece was apparently "unpicked by Mena without much conviction". So he'll be going to his next concert then!

[Pianorak]

I'm sure M. Tharaud will give M. Thibaudet a run for his money...

Not sure he did!

The Ravel concerto was a rather different kettle of fish. It sounded under-rehearsed, and the soloist - like the orchestra - didn't sound 'inside' the music (he was reading off the music). Tharaud didn't have the bite, the 'grunt' necessary in the trenchant sections - the opening five minutes were disappointing. But he played beautifully in the more lyrical tender passages, and the orchestra, once it had settled down, did the motoric sections and climaxes very well. But overall - not the finished article.

My impression exactly on a first hearing - confirmed today on a second hearing.

[Lento]

Ivan Hewitt's Telegraph review....fails to note (or worse, notice) that this "inserted" chorale is the 5th's structural crossbeam - the apotheosis of that chorale from the end of the 2nd movement

I wondered about that too. You don't think he omitted to mention the link in order to make better copy (well, hush my mouth)?