Prom 72 - 10.09.14: BBC SO, Berthaud / Litton

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

Wednesday 10 September
7.30 p.m. – c. 9.55 p.m.
Royal Albert Hall

Vaughan Williams: Fantasia on 'Greensleeves'
Sir Harrison Birtwistle: Exody

Walton: Concerto for Viola
Vaughan Williams: Symphony No. 4 in F minor

Lise Berthaud, viola (Proms debut artist, New Generation Artist)
BBC Symphony Orchestra
Andrew Litton, conductor

The idyll of Vaughan Williams's Fantasia on 'Greensleeves' is soon abandoned in the composer's dark and questioning Symphony No. 4 and Birtwistle's Exody, an overwhelming musical labyrinth of sound.
This year's composer focus on William Walton continues with his much-loved Viola Concerto - a work that had its premiere at the Proms, conducted by the composer and featuring composer and violist Paul Hindemith as soloist. Powerful, often dark music that looks far beyond the pastoral stereotypes. Tonight it is performed by BBC Radio 3 New Generation Artist Lise Berthaud.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

If you want to programme two works by the same composer in the same concert, this would seem to be the best way to do it.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

A superb programme (one that I'd overlooked in the Proms Guide): two Lancastrians and a Southerner known to them both, and cracking pieces, too!

[Blotto]

A fair number of seats left so there shouldn't be any problem with a standing ticket for the first half and a surreptitious sit down in the second. Am I the only person who does this?

I can't afford seats often and eye them up from the gallery and if they're clearly free after the interval, I commonly take one. I'm doing my bit for the performers. Another listener for the orchestra to see.

I wish Exody was in the second half.

[Blotto]

There's a free Proms Plus event at 5.45 pm on Wednesday at the Royal College. Harrison Birtwistle and Andrew McGregor are introducing performances of his chamber music.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/proms/whats-on/2014/september-10/15236

Broadcast at 10.15 pm, after the main Prom.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b04gkb0s

[pureimagination]

If you want to programme two works by the same composer in the same concert, this would seem to be the best way to do it.

The very reason I'm not attending this prom. I certainly have no problem with 2,3 or 4 pieces by the same composer and do not feel they need to be kept apart. Again I have no problem with the Walton but I don't want to sit through 30 mins of Birtwistle's music. I've had this argument elsewhere and it is only my personal opinion after all. For those who like Birtwistle's music fair enough but for me it would be like attending, for example a concert by Jay-Z and having Neil Young come on in the middle, do one song and go off again [or indeed playing a cd at home]. In this case I like both artists but the juxtaposition is too extreme. Why do so many concerts have to have such contrast in musical styles. Are they the only way to get people to hear unfamiliar works? There are so many avenues available nowadays. Sometimes I have been surprised, but there's been an ever-growing number of proms/concerts I have attended where the 'new' pieces have been slotted in between some great works and I just can't see the connection (even noticing some orchestra members shrug their shoulders as though they too would rather be playing something else)

[mrbouffant]

A good to excuse to have a long relaxed drink the bar and then roll in for the second half, I would think...

[teamsaint]

A fair number of seats left so there shouldn't be any problem with a standing ticket for the first half and a surreptitious sit down in the second. Am I the only person who does this?

I can't afford seats often and eye them up from the gallery and if they're clearly free after the interval, I commonly take one. I'm doing my bit for the performers. Another listener for the orchestra to see.

I wish Exody was in the second half.

http://www.for3.org/forums/showthread.php?11083-Moving-seats-at-concerts&highlight=Moving+seats

Never tried this at the proms, though.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

Is VW4 the greatest British Symphony?

[Blotto]

I'm sorry to say it but I found this an outstandingly dull evening. I was in the cellar for the first half and the rafters for the second.

My Birtwistle phase feels as if it ended tonight. HB said he wanted to write a piece which kept tightening the screw but in the pre-Prom talk at the Royal Academy (broadcast after the concert with some good live music) he said Exody doesn't really work. There seemed to be widespread agreement in the half-full hall about that. After the opening bars, all I could discern were two alternating dynamics - long, louder sections interspersed with short, quiet bits. There was a monotonous constancy to the texture and musical movement that made it utterly uninteresting and if tension was meant to grow through the half hour, I think it can only be from an intentional tediousness rather than from some more interesting musical force or form. I don't say that to disparage either the piece or its maker. I'm sincere; it's the only explanation I'm able to come up with.

Vaughan Williams lovers please don't read what follows because it's not appreciative and won't cheer you up.

I hadn't heard the whole of the 4th symphony before though I knew something of its reputation as a very serious piece which some regard as notable. I really found it a bit ridiculous. The first movement is tremendously melodramatic with no more significant feeling than someone with a modest anxiety disorder who's a few days behind with the rent. It really feels like trivial music of personal maladjustment than anything more serious or external. It put me in mind of Tony Hancock, struggling in a high wind to get to the shops before they shut. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R8dO5wKp5H0 The high point and the low point of the symphony came at the same moment. I didn't know the structure of the piece but it seemed as it proceeded that VW might have taken inspiration from the conjoined scherzo/finale of Beethoven's 5th. Oh, God! but the thought rendered what followed comical. Rather than Beethoven's glory, what we get instead is the sudden appearance of an oom-pah band which starts to play "Roll out the barrel". Melodically, the symphony wasn't bad - it wasn't much but was the more satisfactory piece of the evening - but rhythmically it's absolutely uninteresting, I thought.

The Walton struck me as banal.

I went expecting to be interested and rarely remember a less rewarding musical evening. A grim night.

[pastoralguy]

I'm sorry to say it but I found this an outstandingly dull evening. I was in the cellar for the first half and the rafters for the second.

My Birtwistle phase feels as if it ended tonight. HB said he wanted to write a piece which kept tightening the screw but in the pre-Prom talk at the Royal Academy (broadcast after the concert with some good live music) he said Exody doesn't really work. There seemed to be widespread agreement in the half-full hall about that. After the opening bars, all I could discern were two alternating dynamics - long, louder sections interspersed with short, quiet bits. There was a monotonous constancy to the texture and musical movement that made it utterly uninteresting and if tension was meant to grow through the half hour, I think it can only be from an intentional tediousness rather than from some more interesting musical force or form. I don't say that to disparage either the piece or its maker. I'm sincere; it's the only explanation I'm able to come up with.

Vaughan Williams lovers please don't read what follows because it's not appreciative and won't cheer you up.

I hadn't heard the whole of the 4th symphony before though I knew something of its reputation as a very serious piece which some regard as notable. I really found it a bit ridiculous. The first movement is tremendously melodramatic with no more significant feeling than someone with a modest anxiety disorder who's a few days behind with the rent. It really feels like trivial music of personal maladjustment than anything more serious or external. It put me in mind of Tony Hancock, struggling in a high wind to get to the shops before they shut. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R8dO5wKp5H0 The high point and the low point of the symphony came at the same moment. I didn't know the structure of the piece but it seemed as it proceeded that VW might have taken inspiration from the conjoined scherzo/finale of Beethoven's 5th. Oh, God! but the thought rendered what followed comical. Rather than Beethoven's glory, what we get instead is the sudden appearance of an oom-pah band which starts to play "Roll out the barrel". Melodically, the symphony wasn't bad - it wasn't much but was the more satisfactory piece of the evening - but rhythmically it's absolutely uninteresting, I thought.

The Walton struck me as banal.

I went expecting to be interested and rarely remember a less rewarding musical evening. A grim night.

Wow! That's quite an assessment! Just woken up after a nightmare and reached for ipad. Must listen to VW 4.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

I recall similarly vitriolic critiques from Arthur Jacobs on a bad night.

[mrbouffant]

Is VW4 the greatest British Symphony?

Nah. Arnold 7, surely?

An interesting concert. The Birtwistle left me cold - my attention wandered after about 5 minutes when percussionist no. 9 (or whatever number it was) was seen to play two 'notes' on the woodblock which was inaudible beneath the rest of the tumult that raged around it. I was just left thinking that the work was an essay in effect for effect's sake. If one believes (as I do) that music should communicate with the listener, this just felt like someone shouting at me for 31 minutes.

The second half improved things somewhat, but then again I am a sucker for Walton and RVW even if the interpretations of both works were not necessarily to my exact taste.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Is VW4 the greatest British Symphony?

No.

[HighlandDougie]

I was also there (my one Prom) and, while I'm a much bigger enthusiast for the Walton Viola Concerto and the V-W 4 than Blotto, I'm with him on the Birtwhistle. I wondered if it was Andrew Litton who was being dutiful in getting through it but was finding it a bit hard going but I think that I was trying not to admit to myself that it is simply not a very interesting piece of music. Is it something to do with commissions from well-endowed orchestras for half-hour pieces sometimes making composers just a touch lazy? But then, I suppose, we have Tippett (another CSO-funded work, "Byzantium") or Bartok (Conc for Orch) as evidence to the contrary. Tha cavernousness of the RAH didn't help the work either.