Prom 43: Sibelius – Symphonies 5, 6 & 7 (17.08.15)

[teamsaint]

Here's The Guardian review. Makes me wonder if we were at the same gig. Although his "....The usually heroic Fifth, however, was more muted and troubling than we sometimes experience it..." Could be his coded version of my 'seriously underwhelmed'.

He seems to imply that in the second half things picked up a bit - if so, I agree.

But of the seventh he says ".....The Seventh was a statement of great nobility, its emotional trajectory immediate and superbly negotiated, the drama and logic of its single-movement structure admirably focused and taut...." Saying this about S7 is so hackneyed that it has no value at all. I have about 23 recordings of S7 on my shelf that I could say that about - that's how Sibelius wrote the music! Any competent professional conductor should be able to do that.

Am I being naive about music journalists, or just wrong? Answers on a postcard..............

Oh you are quite right to have concerns about some professional reviews.
The same Tim Ashley from the Grauniad reviewed the Brahms VC /Mullova gig at the RFH in March.

http://www.theguardian.com/music/2015/mar/05/orchestra-age-of-enlightenment-adam-fischer-dvorak-brahms-selfie

as I mentioned at the time, his few words about the VC performance were nothing AT ALL to do with the performance,full of non specific twaddle, unlike the Bachtrack review which gave a pretty good and fair review of events,the events in this case being a rather uninspired performance of the VC.

Sorry, I am right out of postcards.

[Hornspieler]

As Bryn says, three different sets are available:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B0091JQH2Q

(the one Bryn favours, with a particularly fine Horn section - and almost obscenely cheap!)

Aw shucks, Fernie! We wouldna done it if we ain't good at it!

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

[Beef Oven!]

Oh you are quite right to have concerns about some professional reviews.
The same Tim Ashley from the Grauniad reviewed the Brahms VC /Mullova gig at the RFH in March.

http://www.theguardian.com/music/2015/mar/05/orchestra-age-of-enlightenment-adam-fischer-dvorak-brahms-selfie

as I mentioned at the time, his few words about the VC performance were nothing AT ALL to do with the performance,full of non specific twaddle, unlike the Bachtrack review which gave a pretty good and fair review of events,the events in this case being a rather uninspired performance of the VC.

Sorry, I am right out of postcards.

I'm probably looking back with rose-tinted spectacles, and possibly I have a more challenging disposition these days, but I never had a problem with rock journalism (or at least I don't remember having a problem).

I think it's your "non specific twaddle" that's the problem. Statements that appear plausible, sometimes impressive on first look, but are pretty meaningless when you scratch below the surface.

[jayne lee wilson]

I would defend Tim Ashley this time - he doesn't have much time or space to give a snapshot of what he heard, and he seems to have heard & responded to the second half as it sounded here at home. Perhaps he listened on iPlayer later too. The 7th can be hard to describe in performance, simply because the best accounts tend to present it plainly or "faithfully", rather than urging upon it any personality or rhetorical exaggeration. Writing about music is always a challenge!

(RE Rock Journalism - it is almost always focussed on content - the music itself and its background, and it's far easier to generate words on those aspects, than to describe a given interpretation of an oft-recorded-and-played classical work.)

[DracoM]

Crikey, how would R3 presenters get by without "non specific twaddle" !!

[Beef Oven!]

Crikey, how would R3 presenters get by without "non specific twaddle" !!

To be fair, the R3 presenters on Bal, for example, do a pretty fine job. There may be some exceptions now and again, but on balance I think their analyses and descriptions are pretty much the gold standard. This is where the bar should be set, IMV.

[HighlandDougie]

The sixth symphony is one of my desert island works. Given that, I've just bought tickets to hear Thomas Dausgaard and the BBC Scottish perform the same programme in early October. It will be hard to displace this Prom, though, with Osmo Vanska in magisterial form, especially in the 6th and 7th, some dodgy playing from the first violins at the start of the 6th notwithstanding. But, Jayne has said it all, really ...

I saw Paavo Berglund with the LPO in the RFH in what I think might have been one of his last concerts in the 6th and 7th (and Imogen Cooper in a Mozart Piano Concerto?? - or was the Mozart in a concert with Osmo V and the LPO, also in the RFH, with the Valse Triste to end all Valse Tristes as an encore?) but, pace earlier comments about Berglund, I think that OV now surpasses even him (OV's Minnesota Fourth is, in my wholly unhumble view, incomparable). But isn't it great that we have such a wealth of wonderful performances of Sibelius symphonies?