Prom 69 - 8.09.14: Cleveland Orchestra, Widmann & Brahms, Welser-Möst

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

Monday, 8 September
7.00 p.m. – c. 9.10 p.m.
Royal Albert Hall

Brahms: Tragic Overture
Jörg Widmann: Teufel Amor (UK premiere)

Brahms: Symphony No. 2 in D, Op. 73

The Cleveland Orchestra
Franz Welser-Möst, conductor

The Cleveland Orchestra begins its second concert at the BBC Proms featuring music by Brahms and Jörg Widmann with Brahms's Tragic Overture, a work which lives up to its name with turbulent intensity. This year's cycle of Brahms symphonies is brought to a conclusion with a performance of the sunny Second. The composer was in unusually high spirits while composing it, joking with his publisher, 'I have never written anything so sad'. The result, in fact, sets aside Brahms's habitual seriousness and dramatic tensions in an open-hearted score of great warmth and appeal. In between these two works is young German Jörg Widmann's Teufel Amor - a musical account of the contradictions, tensions and resolutions of love, inspired by Schiller's lost poem.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

If we are talking about world orchestras - this is one from the top division.

[Petrushka]

Anybody?

Unfortunately I missed the 7pm start time so will listen on I-player at a later date.

[jayne lee wilson]

PROM 69. CLEVELAND ORCHESTRA/WELSER-MOST

BRAHMS SYMPHONY NO.2/JORG WIDMANN - TEUFEL AMOR.

Cooly beautiful with exquisitely-judged tempi, the 2nd Symphony was a perfect companion to No.1 in Prom 68; but with no exposition repeat, and despite satisfying energy & power in faster and climactic passages I never entirely escaped the impression of a slightly preludial 1st movement. Still, the coda blossomed nicely, and the wind codetta was pretty as a serenade.
The Clevelanders' gorgeous stringtone, a warm but textured ensemble of gifted individuals, gave us a lovely andante with marvellously subtle dynamics and a passionate climax. The heart of this reading. A buoyant, graceful allegretto, then a finale which needed no whipping-up of excitement as FWM effortlessly judged the rising intensity and level toward a truly brilliant end.

Overall, I preferred Welser-Most's Brahms to the lush swathes of sound that Fischer had indulged with his Budapest FO in 3 and 4; his tempi, clarity and directness in the Brahms here reminded me of the Bruckner 5th with the LPO, taped live in the Vienna Konzertsaal in 1994 and still one of the best. Clearly, for FWM, aesthetic rhymes with athletic.

I've only heard Widmann's Teufel Amor once, which is never enough for such a compelling piece. My first impression was of a vast, phantasmagorical tone poem of dark and angry passions, seeking but never finding either carnal or spiritual peace.
But as with Bach's Badinerie in Flute en Suite in Prom 68, I wasn't sure whether the Straussian climaxes that the earlier dreamy & violent fragments seemed to gather into really belonged here; the wilder, surrealistic nocturnes of abandonment seemed replaced, a shade undermined, by a cliche of Romantic passion.

But - I'm ahead of myself here, and Teufel Amor urgently demands a second hearing.


HDS RATINGS OVERALL: Performance and sound - 10/10 With Distinction. Perhaps the best sound balance of this variable season. I could scarcely fault it for clarity, neutrality, spaciousness or dynamic range.

[Rasluap]

Somewhat surprised that this concert has generated minimal comment. Maybe musical indigestion is setting in.

I strongly concur with Jayne's comments concerning the Symphony: burnished and satisfying - wonderful lower strings (maybe a red herring but the cellos are strongly male-dominated) and with the violas to the right of the conductor the sound in the arena (right of centre and three rows back) was magnificent.

Another surprise was the small size of the audience: swathes of empty seats in the Circle, the Choir somewhat more than half-full, and the arena with plenty of room to spare. On the seat front, the enhanced prices charged for the Clevelanders in a relatively short programme may have been a deterrent. They deserved a full house.

[Roehre]

...
I've only heard Widmann's [/I]Teufel Amor once, which is never enough for such a compelling piece. My first impression was of a vast, phantasmagorical tone poem of dark and angry passions, seeking but never finding either carnal or spiritual peace.
But as with Bach's Badinerie in Flute en Suite [I]in Prom 68, I wasn't sure whether the Straussian climaxes that the earlier dreamy & violent fragments seemed to gather into really belonged here; the wilder, surrealistic nocturnes of abandonment seemed replaced, a shade undermined, by a cliche of Romantic passion......

Listened to it a couple of times it re-affirms my appreciation of Widmann: gifted musician without an own style.
Again quoting other composer's styles without showing an own face Teufel Amor is a compelling piece at the first and the second hearing, but from the third onwards the lack of individuality for me makes it more and more an irritating showpiece for high- and post-romantic clichées. Beautifully orchestrated, but hardly own contents IMO.

[silvestrione]

PROM 69. CLEVELAND ORCHESTRA/WELSER-MOST

BRAHMS SYMPHONY NO.2/JORG WIDMANN - TEUFEL AMOR.

Cooly beautiful with exquisitely-judged tempi, the 2nd Symphony was a perfect companion to No.1 in Prom 68; but with no exposition repeat, and despite satisfying energy & power in faster and climactic passages I never entirely escaped the impression of a slightly preludial 1st movement. Still, the coda blossomed nicely, and the wind codetta was pretty as a serenade.
The Clevelanders' gorgeous stringtone, a warm but textured ensemble of gifted individuals, gave us a lovely andante with marvellously subtle dynamics and a passionate climax. The heart of this reading. A buoyant, graceful allegretto, then a finale which needed no whipping-up of excitement as FWM effortlessly judged the rising intensity and level toward a truly brilliant end.

Overall, I preferred Welser-Most's Brahms to the lush swathes of sound that Fischer had indulged with his Budapest FO in 3 and 4; his tempi, clarity and directness in the Brahms here reminded me of the Bruckner 5th with the LPO, taped live in the Vienna Konzertsaal in 1994 and still one of the best. Clearly, for FWM, aesthetic rhymes with athletic.

I've only heard Widmann's Teufel Amor once, which is never enough for such a compelling piece. My first impression was of a vast, phantasmagorical tone poem of dark and angry passions, seeking but never finding either carnal or spiritual peace.
But as with Bach's Badinerie in Flute en Suite in Prom 68, I wasn't sure whether the Straussian climaxes that the earlier dreamy & violent fragments seemed to gather into really belonged here; the wilder, surrealistic nocturnes of abandonment seemed replaced, a shade undermined, by a cliche of Romantic passion.

But - I'm ahead of myself here, and Teufel Amor urgently demands a second hearing.


HDS RATINGS OVERALL: Performance and sound - 10/10 With Distinction. Perhaps the best sound balance of this variable season. I could scarcely fault it for clarity, neutrality, spaciousness or dynamic range.

Yes I sat in my relatively small study with the sound up, and was entranced from first note to last (in the Brahms...absconded to football on TV for first half).
If there's a better performance of Brahms 2 I am yet to hear it. The orchestral sound was full but had clarity of line and detail, and a lovely warm Brahmsian sweep to the melodies and inner parts or counter-melodies, of which there seemed more of an abundance than usual.. As for the last movement and its coda...wow!

(Just leaves me wondering, as an aside, how on earth Karajan in his 1949 VPO version recently remastered managed to make this seem a disturbed, unsettling work)

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

(Just leaves me wondering, as an aside, how on earth Karajan in his 1949 VPO version recently remastered managed to make this seem a disturbed, unsettling work)

He's not the only one _ Furtwangler managed this in a Wartime broadcast with the BPO. Abbado got something of those shadows, too.

[Maclintick]

If there's a better performance of Brahms 2 I am yet to hear it. The orchestral sound was full but had clarity of line and detail, and a lovely warm Brahmsian sweep to the melodies and inner parts or counter-melodies, of which there seemed more of an abundance than usual.. As for the last movement and its coda...wow!

(Just leaves me wondering, as an aside, how on earth Karajan in his 1949 VPO version recently remastered managed to make this seem a disturbed, unsettling work)

An evening of extraordinary musicianship. If anything were calculated to explode the prevalent myth of the "maestro", qv. the Svengali-like puppeteer who by indefinable magic alchemically conjures musical gold from the base material of his presumably less-than-godlike players - this was it. Welser-Most was an encourager, an enabler, who coaxed his orchestra ( & what players !) failing even to display the modicum of vanity necessary to dispense with the score. Some critics would mark him down as being insufficiently demonstrative/ histrionic - you takes yer choice - but it meant that the individual players of the Cleveland were able to subsume their separate identities towards a total identification with the composers' vision. True, there was absolute unanimity of bowing such as Brahms would never have observed, & classicism rather than romanticism dominated, but the agility of the playing made for an exhilarating reading, trombones tolling like joyous bells in the coda of the finale, not the raucous exhibitionists one sometimes hears.

In the UK the Cleveland are often accused of being "clinical" or "regimented". It's a double-edged accusation. Do we British prefer imprecision to unanimity of execution ? Do we prefer sloppiness to rigour ? Or, is there some indefinable quality which relies on the millisecond differences in attack which causes us to find blurred lines preferable to sharper ones ? The Furtwanglerian vs. Toscaninian, perhaps ? Maybe there's a English preference for amateurism over professionalism, which is is usually viewed as suspect, for a variety of cultural and historical reasons.

As JLW has observed, the Widmann last night was an episodic & wry 21st cent tribute to Strauss in his anniversary year - the Strauss of Don Quixote in its phantasmagorical, wildly allusive nature. Devilish goings-on were capped by a love-interest which veered more towards Alma Mahler than Dulcinea del Tobosa in the Bergian passages late in the piece, but these were wittily interspersed with dashes of snippety Schnittkerian collage. I could have watched the dextrous antics of the percussion duo all evening - one imposing but extremely nimble guy on the left of the array of toys demanded by Widmann displaying phenomenal multi-instrumental virtuosity & versatility. In earlier generations he might have found gainful employment with Spike Jones or The Goons, hopping between swizzle-sticks & deeply resonant gongs with miraculous aplomb. If ever a piece needed the precision of the Clevelanders, this was it.

As others have mentioned, shame it wasn't a full house.

[vibratoforever]

An evening of extraordinary musicianship. If anything were calculated to explode the prevalent myth of the "maestro", qv. the Svengali-like puppeteer who by indefinable magic alchemically conjures musical gold from the base material of his presumably less-than-godlike players - this was it. Welser-Most was an encourager, an enabler, who coaxed his orchestra ( & what players !) failing even to display the modicum of vanity necessary to dispense with the score. Some critics would mark him down as being insufficiently demonstrative/ histrionic - you takes yer choice - but it meant that the individual players of the Cleveland were able to subsume their separate identities towards a total identification with the composers' vision. True, there was absolute unanimity of bowing such as Brahms would never have observed, & classicism rather than romanticism dominated, but the agility of the playing made for an exhilarating reading, trombones tolling like joyous bells in the coda of the finale, not the raucous exhibitionists one sometimes hears.

In the UK the Cleveland are often accused of being "clinical" or "regimented". It's a double-edged accusation. Do we British prefer imprecision to unanimity of execution ? Do we prefer sloppiness to rigour ? Or, is there some indefinable quality which relies on the millisecond differences in attack which causes us to find blurred lines preferable to sharper ones ? The Furtwanglerian vs. Toscaninian, perhaps ? Maybe there's a English preference for amateurism over professionalism, which is is usually viewed as suspect, for a variety of cultural and historical reasons.

As JLW has observed, the Widmann last night was an episodic & wry 21st cent tribute to Strauss in his anniversary year - the Strauss of Don Quixote in its phantasmagorical, wildly allusive nature. Devilish goings-on were capped by a love-interest which veered more towards Alma Mahler than Dulcinea del Tobosa in the Bergian passages late in the piece, but these were wittily interspersed with dashes of snippety Schnittkerian collage. I could have watched the dextrous antics of the percussion duo all evening - one imposing but extremely nimble guy on the left of the array of toys demanded by Widmann displaying phenomenal multi-instrumental virtuosity & versatility. In earlier generations he might have found gainful employment with Spike Jones or The Goons, hopping between swizzle-sticks & deeply resonant gongs with miraculous aplomb. If ever a piece needed the precision of the Clevelanders, this was it.

As others have mentioned, shame it wasn't a full house.

I cannot comment on the visual impact of the conductor on the podium as I listened only listened to the Brahms on iplayer but I regard such stuff as irrelevant anyway.
As for the performance, whilst not denying how good it was technically, routine and boring spring to mind given the absence of any interpretative spark.

[Hornspieler]

We appear to have two threads pertaining to the Cleveland Orchestras Prom.

Perhaps one of our esteemed hosts could combine the two under one heading?

HS

[Sir Velo]

We appear to have two threads pertaining to the Cleveland Orchestras Prom.

Perhaps one of our esteemed hosts could combine the two under one heading?

HS

Weren't there two proms?

[Nick Armstrong]

We appear to have two threads pertaining to the Cleveland Orchestras Prom.

Perhaps one of our esteemed hosts could combine the two under one heading?

HS

As Sir Velo said, there's one thread per Prom - 68 & 69 respectively, both Brahms & Widmann programmes.

There is an interesting cross-over though, HS - I was intrigued by the fact that you found the Brahms 1 'untidy' whereas the Brahms 2 appealed to you more, and indeed comments above refer to

the Cleveland ... often accused of being "clinical" or "regimented".

Did you (and other Forumites) think the Brahms 1 constituted an 'off night' in terms of precision?

In which case I really need to hear this Brahms 2, because I did hear No 1 and it seemed pretty tight to me - if a bit 'trim' and 'throwaway' (the climax of the finale slightly going for naught). Sounds from all reports that No 2 was unequivocally a special performance.

[Hornspieler]

As Sir Velo said, there's one thread per Prom - 68 & 69 respectively, both Brahms & Widmann programmes.

There is an interesting cross-over though, HS - I was intrigued by the fact that you found the Brahms 1 'untidy' whereas the Brahms 2 appealed to you more, and indeed comments above refer to



Did you (and other Forumites) think the Brahms 1 constituted an 'off night' in terms of precision?

In which case I really need to hear this Brahms 2, because I did hear No 1 and it seemed pretty tight to me - if a bit 'trim' and 'throwaway' (the climax of the finale slightly going for naught). Sounds from all reports that No 2 was unequivocally a special performance.

My remark "Untidy" referred to the whole televised prom, from the start of the AF overture. Some good moments: that vile trombone entry in the finale was excellently played (you should know, Cali) but the only playing that "lit my fire" was the magnificently played encore, when the orchestra and conductor found themselves on home ground and thrilled the audience with their brilliance and panache.

Yes, the BBC Schedule confused me. Was the live TV prom played on the 8th September? Or was it "recorded live" on the previous day?

And there again, the iplayer only listed the Brahms 2nd symphony, not the whole prom, although there was a chunk of the interval talk before the start of the symphony.

Anyway, my overall remarks are simply based on what I heard, regardless of when the performances took place.

HS

[Nick Armstrong]

that vile trombone entry in the finale was excellently played (you should know, Cali)

Yes!! Almost as good as my two shots at it on the two occasions I've performed in the piece! Joking aside, indeed it was beautifully done, and the sound of the three of them was gorgeous I thought!