Prom 51: Boston SO/Nelsons (23.08.15)

[slarty]

The BSO/Nelsons recording of Shostakovich 10 got rave reviews, but I must admit to some disappointment. Perhaps it's the recording, but I found it unengaging (No. 10, unengaging?). Let's just say I was far from being swept away. Perhaps a live performance will be better. They're doing it at the Berlin Musikfest. Friends are going, but I can't join them.

Sorry to disappoint you DJ, but the recent DG issue is taken from three live performances.

[Stunsworth]

Sorry to disappoint you DJ, but the recent DG issue is taken from three live performances.

The applause at the end is a bit of a giveaway.

[mahlerei]

The applause at the end is a bit of a giveaway.

To be fair I assumed DJ meant live live, rather than recorded live...

[Alison]

Think I'd have preferred the London Symphony Orchestra this afternoon.

[Ferretfancy]

Think I'd have preferred the London Symphony Orchestra this afternoon.

The Haydn was very enjoyable in the hall. We should not have been taken by surprise at the end, it was mentioned in the programme notes, but I usually re4ad them in detail on the way home.

I was a little disappointed by the Shostakovich. The first movement seemed unduly long with little sense of gathering menace. The middle movements and finale went well. Frankly, I think that the orchestra sounded a little too polished, the playing was always beautiful, but a little bit of Soviet rough might not have gone amiss ( make of that what you will! )

[richardfinegold]

Sorry to disappoint you DJ, but the recent DG issue is taken from three live performances.

My CD has applause at the conclusion.
I had posted on a different thread that the sound is opaque. After a couple of listens, Regarding the performance, I find myself in agreement with DJ

[Alison]

I agree with you Ferret, very polished playing indeed and arguably not best suited to this afternoons symphony or last nights Mahler. I look forward to hearing the Haydn later.

As a pretty large generalisation, British orchestras can sound marvellous in Russian repertoire to my ears.

[Norrette]

I disagree, one of the best 10ths I've heard. Rest of the proms audience seemed to think so too.

[gradus]

Yes but how about those french horns! Not much evidence of cymbals over DAB but plenty of other percussion.

[Norrette]

Yes, I picked up the Mahler references at last (bit of a musical learner here). Cymbals were good from the second row stalls. Wished I was a couple of rows higher though - better view.

[mahlerei]

Alison

You may have a point about DSCH and US orchestras, although the Chicagoans did that terrific Seventh with Bernstein.

For me Nelsons' best recorded DSCH - the Eighth - has been with the Concertgebouw. I thought his CBSO Seventh was a train wreck.

[Simon B]

Nelsons went to considerable lengths to ensure the false ending was as big a trap as possible. It worked! I think he closed the score pretty much as soon as the false ending happened. All in good humour.

The BSO and Nelsons would have had to go a long way to top the blistering RLPO/Petrenko Shostakovich 10 of Proms 2012. And didn't. All IMO naturally.

Too polished and Nelsons cannot help but find the romance in everything, sometimes a virtue. That said he conducted two furiously angry Shostakovich 11s with the CBSO earlier this year, sadly not recorded or broadcast, so he has it in him now.

The latter movements fared better this afternoon. But yes, too polished, albeit an impressive orchestral display, especially from the rich and unanimous strings.

Roughly 7x the heft on cymbals required to crown some of the climaxes though!

Still enjoyed it a lot all the same.

[Alison]

Agree on all that Mahlerei, the Dutch orchestra sounds stupendous in that recording.

I enjoy most of AN's work but couldn't get past the first movement of his Leningrad, an oddly out of sorts affair.

I still think Edward Downes took a bit of beating in the Seventh, finding the right tempi and characterisation throughout.

Did you ever try the Nelsons Manfred Symphony? ( I haven't)

[gedsmk]

For me Nelsons' best recorded DSCH - the Eighth - has been with the Concertgebouw. I thought his CBSO Seventh was a train wreck.

That's odd because hearing it live in Symphony Hall it was for me perhaps the finest performance of (many) Shostakovich performances I've ever heard. This 10th did suffer from subdued cymbals in the hall which perhaps would have woken up the strings a bit to play more as if their lives depended on it. Despite brilliant work by timpani, horns, flutes, and stunning clarinet playing, the whole just simply wasn't "grab the throat" enough. Mr Nelsons is too much the nice chap to scare these musicians, even sharing a private joke throughout with the principal double bass. Imagine what effect a couple of "Toscanini Tantrums" might have, or is that simply not in his arsenal? I am reminded of Maris Jansons being unable to get the sound from the Concertgebouw that he got in Oslo or Pittsburgh (finest series of Tchaikowski symphonies at the Proms I've ever heard) or now gets from the BRSO.

[Tony Halstead]

"too much the nice chap to scare these musicians"
Very unfortunately this is the simple reason why 99% of 'modern' conductors don't and CAN'T achieve the results that their 'much less nice' predecessors were able to!
We live in a crazy world where 'orchestral managers' are allowed to - and even encouraged to - tell a conductor exactly how far he/ she is 'allowed to go' in terms of demanding 'improvements' and 'results' from the orchestral players.
Those truly great and 'demanding' conductors of the past must be spinning in their graves, e.g. Toscanini, Szell, Reiner, Horenstein, Silvestri, Bernstein, Barbirolli, Beecham, Furtwaengler, Jochum etc....!