Prom 36 - 13.08.14: VW/Alwyn Prom, BBC SO, Jansen / Oramo

[cloughie]

Just caught up with this via the afternoon repeat - what a great concert! the RVW in exceelent performances and the Alwyn a good new work to my listening canon!

[Nick Armstrong]

I was enthralled by the radio broadcast, as I had been in the hall... and no one within ear shot was coughing or spluttering or scratching or farting! Bliss!

[bluestateprommer]

Finally caught up with the first half of this Prom, having essentially listened to it more of less in inverted order. Very fine work indeed from Oramo and the BBC SO; perhaps a small quibble that the very end of The Wasps overture was rushed a bit, but then I am used to the Boult recording of the whole suite.

I don't really think that the Telegraph critic was being unfair, since he appeared to have admired the performance while not responding to Alwyn's invention.

I found myself standing there praying for it to end in the absence of any truly memorable ideas. Surely a symphony should have thematic statements that stay in the mind, however complex the development might be. Alwyn was quoted in the past as saying that he had found a completely new way of composing symphonies, and that the future will have justified him, Well, the future had duly arrived, and I'm afraid it hasn't happened.

I find myself with Ferretfancy on this one, and it turns out that both Ivan Hewett in the Telegraph and Tim Ashley in The Guardian were on the same track in their evaluation of the Alwyn. I even gave my copy of Alwyn 1 another listen, in addition to hearing this Prom. It didn't get better with repeated listening. It's certainly well-crafted and nice to hear, and it's not bad, but that's pretty much it. The reasons for its relative neglect have nothing to do with it being tonal or a comparable reason like what the Glock-bashers (e.g. John Wilson, in another context) use, but simply because it's tunes and tonality aren't all that great. Alwyn admittedly got better in his later symphonies, avoiding the bombast that sometimes pops out in # 1, but his tunes didn't really get tremendously better or more catchy. Perhaps # 3 is the strongest overall, and would be the one most worth reviving. But if the next Proms Controller wants to put # 2 on a concert, fine by me (or maybe we can take this to the Fantasy Proms thread that I've been meaning to start).

[Barbirollians]

For Alwyn's First Symphony one to have is the 1949 Barbirolli recording.