Prom 24: MacMillan/Mahler (3.08.15)

[EdgeleyRob]

Both halves for me in this concert , though I suspect from earlier comments, it will be part (not "episode" ) 2 only for many others.

1st half only,bit of a mish mash.
Sounded like something thrown together in a hurry,which I'm sure it wasn't.

[edashtav]

James MacMillan - Symphony no 4

BBC SO Donald Runnicles

MacMillan claimed that this piece was more abstract than much of his music. I didn’t hear it as absolute music but a further development of MacMillan’s fusion technique.

The slow start reveals another of Jimmy’s Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoats but the cynic in me asked, “How interesting would this be if played in a piano reduction?” All that glitters is not gold. Violins started a descending scalic passage that derived from Arvo Part, and that became more complex as Edgar Varese took a bow. Oh dear, it’s all so facile: striking and colourful, certainly, but without a core. I think fhg has mentioned “one darn thing after another”. There’s enough material to produce dozens of symphonies but nothing is explored in depth. Mere recycled novelty tires the ear and evacuates the brain. I think McClintick identified busy string figures that Tippett employed and developed so well. As with virtually all MacMillan, the liturgical is invoked as a litany – a series of unrelated prayers intoned one after another. Gosh, there’s Aaron Copland on speed. Several moments of Carver are very pretty.

My subtitle: “Rituals in a Relentless but Fruitless Search for Symphonic Form”

C’mon Jimmy – dig deeper, don’t be afraid to ask your listeners to think, perhaps, challenge them to stay the course by perplexing them at the first performance.

[teamsaint]

didn't the Macmillan have anybody else thinking " I'll listen to some actual Schnittke" later on?

maybe just me then?

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

didn't the Macmillan have anybody else thinking " I'll listen to some actual Schnittke" later on?

maybe just me then?

Ah! I'm not very familiar with Schnittke - maybe that was the bit I thought was "original MacMillan". Do you know the Panufnik Sinfonia Sacra, ts? Well worth hearing if you haven't. (And, indeed, even if you have!)

[teamsaint]

Ah! I'm not very familiar with Schnittke - maybe that was the bit I thought was "original MacMillan". Do you know the Panufnik Sinfonia Sacra, ts? Well worth hearing if you haven't. (And, indeed, even if you have!)

i had put a listen to the Panufnik on my list already thanks Ferney.

it was just the styling of the symphony that put me in mind of Schnittke. i listened to Schnittke's Piano Quintet shortly afterwards, and It was like seeing the real thing in blazing sunshine, instead of looking an artists hastily drawn impression .

[Beef Oven!]

Went along to the RAH for this concert.

The best Mahler 5 I've ever attended! Runnicles is my new hero! He even jumped in the air towards the end of the third movement - both feet left the podium!

Not much to add to what others have said, except he clearly held back a little at the beginning of the finale in order to leave somewhere to go at the end - and boy did they go - Electrifying!

What an amazing orchestra. World class? I think so.

I did not enjoy the Macmillan. I think that ferney and edashtav summed it up.

Shame I didn't have a better camera with me, only my iPhone.

[Nick Armstrong]

Bravo Beefo !

Glad you had such a good time - after the interval, at least. Great spot you were in, too - perfect for full immersion - and it's excellent to have that 'Beef's-Eye View'

[Beef Oven!]

Bravo Beefo !

Glad you had such a good time - after the interval, at least. Great spot you were in, too - perfect for full immersion - and it's excellent to have that 'Beef's-Eye View'

Captain Beef-eye!

[edashtav]

Great picture, Beefy - puffed with pride that comes from real achievement.

[edashtav]

[QUOTE=teamsaint;500896}

it was just the styling of the symphony that put me in mind of Schnittke. i listened to Schnittke's Piano Quintet shortly afterwards, and It was like seeing the real thing in blazing sunshine, instead of looking an artists hastily drawn impression .[/QUOTE]
Well fingered, Teamsaint. Boneless Schnittke - now available in ring-pull cans from your local MacFisheries.

[Beef Oven!]

it was just the styling of the symphony that put me in mind of Schnittke. i listened to Schnittke's Piano Quintet shortly afterwards, and It was like seeing the real thing in blazing sunshine, instead of looking an artists hastily drawn impression .

Schnittke's Piano Quintet is a veritable masterpiece. Macmillan's Symphony #4 needs, ahem, editing.

[Beef Oven!]

...........puffed with pride that comes from real achievement.

[jayne lee wilson]

Not many premiere-positives here either, I'm afraid...

An extended, restless, often ecstatic meditation, MacMillan's 4th assembles a kaleidoscope of influences, quotes or echoes from The Book of Spiritual Minimalism: several passages sounded like paraphrases of Arvo Part's Cantus In Memoriam Benjamin Britten; John Tavener and Kancheli rotated by..... oh, I could even catch some Nikolai Korndorf (Hymn 3) if I wanted... and yet another burst of Messiaen-ic birdsongs; they seem to pass among composers like a migrating virus.
After half an hour I felt "well, this could go on indefinitely, but all its elements will probably just circle round once more, hit a climax and then stop..."

"Unpredictable Inevitability" is a quality one might associate with worthwhile works of art; this symphony seems to embody just the opposite...

[ahinton]

Not many premiere-positives here either, I'm afraid...

An extended, restless, often ecstatic meditation, MacMillan's 4th assembles a kaleidoscope of influences, quotes or echoes from The Book of Spiritual Minimalism: several passages sounded like paraphrases of Arvo Part's Cantus In Memoriam Benjamin Britten; John Tavener and Kancheli rotated by..... oh, I could even catch some Nikolai Korndorf (Hymn 3) if I wanted... and yet another burst of Messiaen-ic birdsongs; they seem to pass among composers like a migrating virus.
After half an hour I felt "well, this could go on indefinitely, but all its elements will probably just circle round once more, hit a climax and then stop..."

"Unpredictable Inevitability" is a quality one might associate with worthwhile works of art; this symphony seems to embody just the opposite...

Well, in joining fhg, edashtav and others here you are threatening to turn this into a veritable chorus of disappointment at Big Mac's latest. I'm no sure about The Book of Minimal Spiritualism but The Oxford Companion to Referentiality does appear to have occupied a prominent place on his bookshelves while he was writing the piece. I don't think that it actually occupied as much as half an hour (although I wasn't counting, despite the fact that there seemed to be little better to do at the time) but I can see how and why it might have felt as though it did.

But I take issue with - or rather question - your one positive observation here - namely that of "ecstatic meditation"; there seemed to me little of genuinely ecstatic mould and, in any case, a "meditation" upon what? Meditation is one thing but going casually through a series of motions in no particular order seems to me to be quite another and, in this work, the composer seems to have opted for the latter; perhaps he wrote it over a weekend, like Shostakovich surely didn't do with his 12th symphony! "Emetic mediation" might better have been the order of the day. The Tippettian bits were perhaps the most unforgivably cribbed of all and I take leave to doubt that Tippett would have been remotely flattered by them; they seem also to be almost a random throw-in to such recipe as the piece has (more Jamie Oliver than Jamie MacMillan, one might say) - the very opposite, indeed, of the thoroughly absorbed Tippett influence that can be identified in certain works by a real symphonist, David Matthews (a name conspicuous by its absence from the "the symphony is still alive today" stuff that he came up with in his R4 Front Row interview about the piece just before the concert, PMD and Schnittke apparently sufficing in order to make his point, such as it was).

Oh, dear; James McM can surely do better than this "I'm doing it like this because I find that I can" expression! I felt seriously short-changed. Yes, the symphony is still alive today, but this piece is hardly proof thereof...

I was sadly unable to listen to all of the Mahler but such as I did hear was impressive indeed! - and I did try not to think "now THIS is how to write a symphony" while listening to it! A formidable performance up with the remainder of which I look forward to catching.

[edashtav]

Well, in joining fhg, edashtav and others here you are threatening to turn this into a veritable chorus of disappointment at Big Mac's latest. I'm no sure about The Book of Minimal Spiritualism but The Oxford Companion to Referentiality does appear to have occupied a prominent place on his bookshelves while he was writing the piece. I don't think that it actually occupied as much as half an hour (although I wasn't counting, despite the fact that there seemed to be little better to do at the time) but I can see how and why it might have felt as though it did.

I've checked the timing of this symphony, that had been advertised as c. 25 mins, and found that it took 37 minutes and 9 seconds.

Whilst works can luxuriate in the ample acoustics of the RAH, Runnicles's performance neither sounded slow nor was it tentative / careful i.e. retarded by lack of preparation, so I suspect that MacMillan's 4th symphony will take over 30 minutes in subsequent performances.