Prom 7: Delius/Nielsen/Wood/Ravel (22.07.15)

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Maybe Stanislaw Scrowaczewski and the Minnesota Orchestra? Highly regarded at the time - and still pretty good.

You're absolutely right:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B009ZEY37S?keywords=skrowaczewski%2C%20ravel&qid=1437598893&ref_=sr_1_11&s=music&sr=1-11

[Bryn]

You're absolutely right:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B...=music&sr=1-11

Later found on Vol 2 of a VoxBox survey of Ravel's orchestral music. Worth searching out. Downloadable from QOBUZ, for instance.

Also issued in SACD format, and still available at a somewhat inflated price.

[edashtav]

I too missed the start of this Prom, but caught most of Hugh Wood's Epithalamion. Very energetic, appealing and audience-friendly in its idiom, but not in any condescending or patronizing way. Happy to hear that HW is still going strong in his 80's, and got such a warm reception from the audience. Nice of Penny Gore to note that it's 50 years since HW's Scenes from Comus received its Proms premere, and it's interesting to think how much "mellower" HW's idiom is now compared to the denser chromaticism of the earlier work (recently listened to it on CD).

A fair, perhaps slightly generous assessment of Hugh Wood's latest work. His music is finely wrought but I didn't find this shed any new light on his music unlike the Birtwistle double Opera bill last weekend that confirmed a marvellously relaxed, lyrical Birtwistle, still adding to his store of wisdom and compositional craft. I want to hear another performance of the Wood because I found some tentative phrases from the choir about 20 mins in, specially in the upper lines. A more confident performance may add to the work's lustre.

I agree with those who wonder about the programming of the slight, slithery Delius piece before the exact, rigorous measures of Wood's new cantata. Some have suggested swapping the Wood with Nielsen's Clarinet Concerto. I fear that would have been just as bad: whilst Nielsen & Delius are near contemporaries their music is poles apart with misty chromaticism on the one hand and clear thrusting, tonal certainty on the other. I fear the programming was quixotic.

[Stanfordian]

A fair, perhaps slightly generous assessment of Hugh Wood's latest work. His music is finely wrought but I didn't find this shed any new light on his music unlike the Birtwistle double Opera bill last weekend that confirmed a marvellously relaxed, lyrical Birtwistle, still adding to his store of wisdom and compositional craft. I want to hear another performance of the Wood because I found some tentative phrases from the choir about 20 mins in, specially in the upper lines. A more confident performance may add to the work's lustre.

I agree with those who wonder about the programming of the slight, slithery Delius piece before the exact, rigorous measures of Wood's new cantata. Some have suggested swapping the Wood with Nielsen's Clarinet Concerto. I fear that would have been just as bad: whilst Nielsen & Delius are near contemporaries their music is poles apart with misty chromaticism on the one hand and clear thrusting, tonal certainty on the other. I fear the programming was quixotic.

That's the point I was trying to make earlier. To me the sound world of Nielsen & Delius jarred. Recently the BBC Philharmonic programmed the Nielsen symphonies with Mahler songs which seemed a clash of styles. This type of programming is increasingly common today.

[Ferretfancy]

I went to the RCM event before the concert, which was an Andrew McGregor interview with Hugh Wood featuring extracts from some of his chamber works performed by students from the college. I enjoyed the movement from his Horn Trio, and an excellent young tenor sang a couple of his songs. Hugh Wood was a quiet and modest interviewee.

It was an excellent Prom, starting with a beautiful performance of In a Summer Garden. I know that you either like Delius or loath him, I'm in the first category.

I'm afraid that Epithalamion struck me as music by the yard, well crafted but more for dutiful listening than pleasure.Others liked it more than I did, but I wondered at one stage whether we were going to get a close up of a revolver sticking through a curtain followed by a loud scream from Doris Day!

The Nielsen Clarinet Concerto after the interval came as a pungent and brilliant change with Mark Simpson as the superb soloist

The performance of Daphnis made me wish that they were playing the complete score, but at least there was an excellent chorus on hand which is so much more satisfying than the orchestra only version we sometimes hear. THe BBC SO is on good form at the moment.

I still have a happy memory of seeing Pierre Monteux conduct the complete ballet with the LSO at the RFH in ( I think) 1962 just before he recorded it for Decca. It was a memorable evening and the recording still makes a lovely souvenir.

[bluestateprommer]

It is sometimes done in this way. Barbirolli's Pye recording of the suite has the chorus.

Yes, I remember that now; just brain-lapsed about it at the time of my earlier post.

If anyone wants to follow along with the John Donne text, have a look at this link. From what I can tell, HW went whole hog (*) and set the entire poem, which may explain the more "dutiful" passages. Having caught up with the Delius to fill out the rest of my listening, I'm with EA's assertion that this was indeed a "well-balanced concert". To me, switching the HW and Nielsen from the original plan worked out just fine.

(*) Not correct, per EotS below

[EnemyoftheStoat]

HW went whole hog and set the entire poem, which may explain the more "dutiful" passages.

HW in fact omitted the seventh stanza. As for the comment earlier about wanting to hear another performance because this one wasn't confident enough (!?!), I'd suggest that the piece is a lot trickier chorally than the various reviewers seem to realise (it's on another level up from Spring Symphony, for example: a look at this may be informative http://issuu.com/scoresondemand/docs...278%2F14289740 ) and that therefore you may have some time to wait.

[Serial_Apologist]

Contrary to the experience expressed by some on here, I thought the Hugh Wood piece followed on from the Delius without jarring. Although Wood's harmonic sphere betrays his 12-tone phase, today it's closer to the English pastoral school represented by Delius and his followers than was once the case, though I also detected the influence of Holst's Choral Symphony more than Walton - those "sprung rhythms" and fourth-based chords - and not without some of its rambling tendencies! Interviewed later in the composer portrait, asked if titling his first string quartet String Quartet No 1 at its time of composition was sending out an important signal, Wood answered no, more a warning !

[clive heath]

The Wood, which I enjoyed well enough, prompted me to listen to another big choral and orchestral work from the 20th C also with 2 harps (!) which I have been meaning to put in one of the "neglected works/composers" threads, namely "Summer's Last Will and Testament" by Constant Lambert which I have on a Hyperion CD by the English Northern Philharmonia (?!) conducted by David Lloyd-Jones. I had forgotten what a pleasure this work is, with its pervading spirit of melancholy enlivened by some rumbustious dance rhythms. Based on a work by the Elizabethan writer Thomas Nashe, it includes a setting of "Spring, Sweet Spring" also set by Moeran in his "Songs of Springtime" and with similar tricky harmonies.

[Serial_Apologist]

The Wood, which I enjoyed well enough, prompted me to listen to another big choral and orchestral work from the 20th C also with 2 harps (!) which I have been meaning to put in one of the "neglected works/composers" threads, namely "Summer's Last Will and Testament" by Constant Lambert which I have on a Hyperion CD by the English Northern Philharmonia (?!) conducted by David Lloyd-Jones. I had forgotten what a pleasure this work is, with its pervading spirit of melancholy enlivened by some rumbustious dance rhythms. Based on a work by the Elizabethan writer Thomas Nashe, it includes a setting of "Spring, Sweet Spring" also set by Moeran in his "Songs of Springtime" and with similar tricky harmonies.

Oddly enough, I was thinking of including Lambert's "Rio Grande" in my comparisons with the Hugh Wood piece, reminding myself of Wood's love of jazz of different periods, which also comes through at times in his own music, though I have to admit to not having heard of the Lambert and Moeran works you mention.