Prom 61: San Francisco SO/Michael Tilson Thomas (31.08.15)

[Petrushka]

Is MTT going to turn round and tell the coughers to s t f u? I just wish a conductor had the guts to do this some time but MTT does at least have some form in this respect.

The coughing and 'noises off' during the second movement 0f the Bartok showed complete disrespect to the musicians and listeners in the hall and at home.

[gedsmk]

Is MTT going to turn round and tell the coughers to s t f u? I just wish a conductor had the guts to do this some time but MTT does at least have some form in this respect.

The coughing and 'noises off' during the second movement 0f the Bartok showed complete disrespect to the musicians and listeners in the hall and at home.

Total agreement there. I don't understand how they can think it is ok to cough so loudly. I don't remember loud coughing when Wand was conducting at the Proms. At MTT conducted concerts in SFO that I attended he would mimic loud coughing before the piece started to make the point, followed up with a glare (including turning round to face the audience while still conducting) if needed during the performance.

[Petrushka]

Total agreement there. I don't understand how they can think it is ok to cough so loudly. I don't remember loud coughing when Wand was conducting at the Proms. At MTT conducted concerts in SFO that I attended he would mimic loud coughing before the piece started to make the point, followed up with a glare (including turning round to face the audience while still conducting) if needed during the performance.

I wonder, then, if the coughing merchants are goading him into doing just that. If I was MTT I'd stop the performance and start the second movement again but perhaps as a guest of the BBC he doesn't feel he can take such steps? Really wish he would make a scene and get the issue into the open.

[BBMmk2]

Anyone that coughs should be chucked out! :)

[Tony Halstead]

Oh dear, Oh dear, here we have/ had the great 'dichotomy': the performance of movements 1-3 was superb.
BUT in the last movement everything seemed somehow trivialised. I didn't have a metronome immediately to hand but was fairly sure that Beethoven's MM mark had been exceeded.

[Petrushka]

Anyone that coughs should be chucked out! :)

I wouldn't go as far as this (though George Bernard Shaw advocated far worse - I'll try and find the quote which used to appear in concert programmes).

It really is time for an announcement from the stage pre-concert. At least a dozen coughers in the second movement of the Bartok seemed to have microphones dangling round their necks and sabotaged it completely. I wonder if that's why Miss Wang didn't give an encore?

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

Oh dear, Oh dear, here we have/ had the great 'dichotomy': the performance of movements 1-3 was superb.
BUT in the last movement everything seemed somehow trivialised. I didn't have a metronome immediately to hand but was fairly sure that Beethoven's MM mark had been exceeded.

Beethoven's metronome mark of minim = 76 was never quite reached, being mainly in the 66-70 region, but I've never taken this metro-obsession at all seriously, For the record, I thought this was a good rendering of the finale, and I'm not one for excessive speeds.

[pastoralguy]

I have to say that I attended both of MTT's and the San Francisco Orchestra's concerts at the EIF and there was not a peep from the audience...!

[jayne lee wilson]

PROM 61. SFSO/MTT. IVES,BARTOK,BEETHOVEN. (RADIO 3 HDs. Excellent sound again.)

MTT favoured clarity and tonal beauty over disruptive violence, even in the marching-band central episode of Ives' Decoration Day. This surely serves the music best, as an elegy for an older American culture, perhaps already lost when Ives composed it. Once again, MTT had judged the hall acoustics perfectly for balance and dynamics.

Things didn't go too well initially in the opening, neo-baroque allegro of Bartok's 2nd Piano Concerto, as Yuja Wang seemed often to go her own way and suffered a very early entry (or did MTT cue the brass in late?), less than a minute in - a bizarre effect indeed. The orchestra's ensemble occasionally sounded a little imprecise too. But she strengthened after this into a powerful cadenza and the orchestra recovered some poise and brilliance, if perhaps never quite at one with her (her freedom took some following...).
But soloist and orchestra were tenderly sensitive to the music and to each other in the hushed evocations of the adagio (the strings sent me back to the Ives...); Yuja Wang found a vivid palette of colours in the insect-episode, fiery and delicate, and her woodwind accompanists responded with the delicacy and wildness of dragonflies themselves. Wang played with a wide dynamic range here too (as throughout) - this adagio was a stunningly dramatic realisation of one of Bartok's finest inspirations.
Then the finale started with a thunderclap and proceeded with explosive brilliance. MTT drew an almost improvisatory wildness from his band to match Yuja Wang's very free shaping of the solo part - a welcome contrast to the less-than-ideal account of the allegro-barocco.

***

I usually prefer HIPPs or chamber-orchestras in classical repertoire up to Schumann or even Brahms, but the SFSO put their always-evident tonal beauty at the service of a leaner, swifter sound for the Beethoven 3rd Symphony. Plenty of bite, drive and dynamics here, to keep even my historically-conditioned ears happy (even if I would have liked a sharper edge to those brass dissonances at the 1st movement development's climax).
On its own terms this was a wonderful performance with some lovely details: the espressivo wind solos in the Marcia Funebre, oboe especially; (I could have done without MTT's ritardando leading into the first climax though - shades of yesterday's Mahler 1 finale).
This was an elegantly-balanced, Racinian view of the tragedy. Not much rawness or searing pain, more an Apollonian stoicism.

As with the Bartok finale, there was palpable sense of mounting excitement in the San Francisicans' playing as the scherzo (lovely playful horns and kittenish string responses here) and finale swept ahead (MTT didn't play these attacca, though; it feels so right that I always miss it when they don't!).
Overall, a beautifully-balanced Eroica with great energy and clarity to offset this band's so-characteristic warmth and polish.

[Gasteiner]

There's been too much coughing at this year's Proms generally. Just about every concert I've listened to has been affected in this way to varying degrees. As a recent example, the second movement of the Eroica last night was ruined for me by several coughs. It was much the same problem with the Sibelius symphonies the previous week. I don't know what the solution might be, other than possibly some kind of reminder to the audience that this kind of thing spoils the enjoyment for many others, just in case any of them happen to think it's not unacceptable behaviour.

[Stanfordian]

There's been too much coughing at this year's Proms generally. Just about every concert I've listened to has been affected in this way to varying degrees. As a recent example, the second movement of the Eroica last night was ruined for me by several coughs. It was much the same problem with the Sibelius symphonies the previous week. I don't know what the solution might be, other than possibly some kind of reminder to the audience that this kind of thing spoils the enjoyment for many others, just in case any of them happen to think it's not unacceptable behaviour.

Hiya Gasteiner,

At the Philharmonie, Berlin they have free Ricola original herbal sweets available in containers at several points. Not the complete answer to coughing I know but the sweets certainly seen to help.

[edashtav]

Just a few words on the Ives as I begin to catch up with this concert.

Jayne Lee Wilson caught it mood well when she wrote: <<MTT favoured clarity and tonal beauty over disruptive violence, even in the marching-band central episode of Ives' Decoration Day. This surely serves the music best, as an elegy for an older American culture, perhaps already lost when Ives composed it. Once again, MTT had judged the hall acoustics perfectly for balance and dynamics.>>

Frankly, MTT's restraint allied to a wonderfully painterly spectrum of colours caught me off-balance. I had, wrongly, anticipated a fast ride in a West Coast Barnum and Bailey Greatest Show On Earth. Full-marks to MTT and his band for engaging us intellectually, as well as emotionally.

[edashtav]

Bartok Second Piano Concerto

Yuja Wang sometimes attracts criticism for her fleet, accurate finger-work that can seem almost inhuman and robot. She showed us a different side to her playing in Bartok’s 2nd Concerto, especially in the first movement : capricious waywardness. The score is full of sudden changes of mood, colour and timbre. Yuja’s performance was high on “interpretation” but low on predictability. As Jayne Lee Wilson has noted, there were moments when unity with the orchestra was strained.

MTT and his orchestra projected very well the spectral palette of half-tones and insect noises in the slow movement, freeing Yuja to execute the more intellectual piano part with aplomb and authority. I thought this was the most successful part of the evening’s performance. Yuja’s ability to cleanly articulate repeated notes was stunning in the faster sections.

Jayne has written of the 3rd movt.: << Then the finale started with a thunderclap and proceeded with explosive brilliance. MTT drew an almost improvisatory wildness from his band to match Yuja Wang's very free shaping of the solo part - a welcome contrast to the less-than-ideal account of the allegro-barocco. >> Quite right, there was a mood close to "gay abandon" that brought the performance to a thrilling end.

I do feel that Yuja who has very great potential but she's still developing and integrating her performances. I welcome her new, freer approach but in concerti whim-wham bang needs to be planned and inconstancy needs to be flagged in rehearsal if it's to be "bang on" "on the night".

[Darkbloom]

I was going to say I was 'disappointed' by the Beethoven, but I found it mainly lived down to my expectations. Perhaps I have been listening to too much Furtwangler recently, but I found the lack of imagination, or any sense of emotional engagement with the music, quite repellent. MTT's probably been in the job too long now, and the whole approach to music making seems rooted in blandness (I've not heard the Mahler yet) and superficiality. I didn't think we were exactly on the right track when MTT described the Eroica as beginning 'gently'. Does the SFSO even have a double-bass section? The sound was so light that any sense of drama or struggle was totally absent.

I think it will be a long time before I hear another American orchestra. For all their consummate technical skill they never get inside the music, and it all sounds too easy. Quite what has happened over there is a mystery, when you had awesome bands like Szell's Cleveland and Reiner's Chicago in the past. I heard an Ormandy Concerto for Orchestra with the Philadelphia the other day that was absolutely thrilling. These days all we seem to get is heartless virtuosity with no commitment.

For all the talk about bringing in a younger audience with innovations like an internet orchestra and all the rest of it, I think the priority should be producing exciting performances that make you want to go back again. They seem too caught up in a subscriber concert mindset, where they give multiiple performances of the same programme, usually on auto-pilot for an audience of wealthy philistines. In that kind of atmosphere, the emphasis is bound to be on competence and away from risk-taking or passionate engagement.

OK, rant over!

[silvestrione]

PROM 61. SFSO/MTT. IVES,BARTOK,BEETHOVEN. (RADIO 3 HDs. Excellent sound again.)



***

I usually prefer HIPPs or chamber-orchestras in classical repertoire up to Schumann or even Brahms, but the SFSO put their always-evident tonal beauty at the service of a leaner, swifter sound for the Beethoven 3rd Symphony. Plenty of bite, drive and dynamics here, to keep even my historically-conditioned ears happy (even if I would have liked a sharper edge to those brass dissonances at the 1st movement development's climax).
On its own terms this was a wonderful performance with some lovely details: the espressivo wind solos in the Marcia Funebre, oboe especially; (I could have done without MTT's ritardando leading into the first climax though - shades of yesterday's Mahler 1 finale).
This was an elegantly-balanced, Racinian view of the tragedy. Not much rawness or searing pain, more an Apollonian stoicism.

As with the Bartok finale, there was palpable sense of mounting excitement in the San Francisicans' playing as the scherzo (lovely playful horns and kittenish string responses here) and finale swept ahead (MTT didn't play these attacca, though; it feels so right that I always miss it when they don't!).
Overall, a beautifully-balanced Eroica with great energy and clarity to offset this band's so-characteristic warmth and polish.

Marvellous review...but I would perhaps say that, as I agree almost entirely! The silly little ritardandos were a shame: there was another one in the Scherzo. And I too missed the attacca. Otherwise a luminous, Apollonian performance. Nothing 'bland' here for me.