Prom 75: VPO/Rattle - Elgar Dream of Gerontius (11.09.15)

[gedsmk]

Can I just, in this probably totally inappropriate place, thank all the members who year after year go to the Proms and pen wonderful reviews for the rest of us the great non-attenders. From ferretfancy to teamsaint and all those in between a heart felt thank you - it is very much appreciated ...........

I have enjoyed the conversations this year very much. Many thanks for the companionship.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

This is the performance I heard at home and the soloists didn't come across half as bad as is being reported from the hall.
Perhaps you didn't have to be there,which is why I started the other thread

That's surely because the balance we hear at home is an artificial one. We come expect the singers to sound as they do on our favourite recordings, but in truth, many of these are about as natural as a head transplant. I heard the same performers in Birmingham, and at times the soloists were ever so slightly swamped by the chorus and orchestra. That's reality - a solo singer is always going to be pushed to compete with a choir of 300 and an orchestra of 80. That these singers are able to do this just shows how capable they are. The tinkering of the sound engineers brought the 3 soloists forward, but much of the impact of the chorus was lost. I wish recording engineers would be less interventionalist. Unfortunately, when they do give us a natural concert hall balance, the critics moan about it. A good example was the RLPO/Handley VW Sea Symphony - a beautifully natural balance was achieved, but in the end it was remixed to sound just like any other recording.

[Alison]

I have enjoyed the conversations this year very much. Many thanks for the companionship.

Yes, very little animosity this year. Jolly good.

Nobody seems to have started a best Proms thread. It strikes me that this was a season with few really good concerts and correspondingly few poor ones.

[Pabmusic]

But Pab, surely what he wanted should be in big notes, with the easier, less preferred options in small? That's what's really puzzling me.

If what he really wanted was likely to prove tricky for the voice-type he'd selected, surely he'd either picked the wrong voice or the wrong key?

If it's the top A four bars before 118 that we're talking about, then I'm sure I'm right. It's an uncomfortable note for many mezzos - remember, EE writes low B (below middle C) a few pages later. But it's glorious when a singer can get the top A.

Here's the original passage (before EE had the row with Jaeger about "shirking" setting the vision of God) - it's typeset from the original proofs, not from the autograph score. You'll see the passage is notated the same as now. Elgar clearly knew of this, since he later rewrote the entire passage:




These extracts are from my preface to the edition published by MPH of Munich (a reproduction of the Novello full score). Here's the passage that deals with these extracts:

Elgar completed the vocal score on 6 June and sent the last pages to Jaeger (‘Nimrod’ of the Variations) with the ecstatic: “God bless you Minrod. Here’s the end”.

But it was not the end of composition. On 15 June, Jaeger confessed: “there is one page I can make nothing of…” He meant the point when the Soul “for one moment” goes before God (at page 159 of the original vocal score proofs). Next day he wrote: “Page 159: I have tried & tried, but it seems to me the weakest page in the work”. This drew the response: “Your impertinent note merits silence only, from its persecuted recipient” and later, “I can’t do this better if I wait for fifty years”. Jaeger countered with: “But, surely, the first sensations the soul would experience would be an awful, OVERWEALMING AGITATION!...Your treatment shirks all that” and reminded Elgar that Wagner revelled in ‘impossible’ situations and would have made it the climax of the work. The composer responded that he had “shirked” nothing, called Jaeger’s letter a “sermon which is very Nimrodisch” and sent these verses:

Old Jaeger preached
(as is his wont)
In Nimrodishest way;
And Elgar heard,
And blushed & squirmed,
And – took another day.

So Jaeger hoped
And thought it o’er,
And almost prayed the while;
Alas! The proofs came back untouched,
(Malvèrn is barren sile).

On 30 June, Jaeger wrote: “Good! So that Poem … has beaten you after all at its supremest climax! And you are no Wagner!”, to which Elgar responded: “Very well: here’s what I thought of at first”, and enclosed the passage from the present figures 118 to 121, with the instruction that “At 120 ‘for one moment’ must every instrument exert its fullest force”, [‘Bei 120 muss jedes instrument für einen einz’gen Augenblick seine äusserste Kraft entfallen’] including three extra trumpet parts and “any extra Timpani players” ad lib. It had been a re-run of the way Jaeger had cajoled Elgar into lengthening the Finale of the Enigma Variations a year earlier.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

Re the alternative top A, a comparison with previous similar Alleluias, between figures 12 & 14, suggests that at the climactic moment, Elgar preferred the higher note.

[MrGongGong]

But it's glorious when a singer can get the top A.

BINGO

And with that word (but good to see people actually talking about the music!) I win my bet.

As you were Malvernistas

[Anastasius]

Reading the comments here I sometimes wonder if I was, in fact, at a completely different location, so utterly overwhelmed, as I was, by this emotional performance. The first half had tears running down this old softies face and I wasn't the only one in the audience. I have no musical training and so can't comment on the subtleties that others have found and commented on but if I was never to hear a live concert again then this was the concert to go out on.

Breathtakingly beautiful.

[Anastasius]

As far as the interval is concerned I'm not sure that the RAH makes that much money from the bars etc during it. The capacity isn't that huge and although the prices are eye-watering I doubt that as a revenue earner it features as far as length of interval is concerned. I discussed it with a chap sitting next to me who sings in the LSO Chorus/Choir and his view was that as a singer one needed a short break in order to get into focus for the second half but that 3-5 minutes was enough. But people do need comfort breaks!

I also thought that Rattle's command of the audience (who were incredibly quiet all the way through with nary a cough) was close to perfection because at the end of both halves he simply kept his baton held up in the air and that stopped the happy-clappers in their tracks. So it can be done.

[Petrushka]

Reading the comments here I sometimes wonder if I was, in fact, at a completely different location, so utterly overwhelmed, as I was, by this emotional performance. The first half had tears running down this old softies face and I wasn't the only one in the audience. I have no musical training and so can't comment on the subtleties that others have found and commented on but if I was never to hear a live concert again then this was the concert to go out on.

Breathtakingly beautiful.

Totally agree with this. The problem lies, in my view, with people comparing their favourite recordings (Baker, Lewis, Heddle Nash, Barbirolli etc, etc) with the live experience on Friday. The problem is then compounded with various issues concerning the BBC engineering as heard on the radio. As I make clear in my own comments on the concert, I had no problems whatever from my seat in the hall regarding the audibility of choir or soloists apart from Kozena in her lowest register. The orchestra was just wonderful.

I'd not heard Gerontius for several years until Friday and not since the death of my parents so, yes, it packed an emotional punch that it hadn't done before and 'breathtakingly beautiful' is spot on.

[MrGongGong]

The problem lies, in my view, with people comparing their favourite recordings (Baker, Lewis, Heddle Nash, Barbirolli etc, etc) with the live experience on Friday. .

[VodkaDilc]

I also thought that Rattle's command of the audience (who were incredibly quiet all the way through with nary a cough) was close to perfection because at the end of both halves he simply kept his baton held up in the air and that stopped the happy-clappers in their tracks. So it can be done.

I am trying to think of who did this last season - and, as far as I remember, for an even longer period of time. I think it was Nelsons after the War Requiem; and with the same choir, I believe.

Having read more of the reviews of last Friday's concert and looking back over my comments written here a few hours later, I think I might have been a bit hard on the choir. My criticism was not for their competence or musicality, but just for the lack of impact in the bigger choruses, where more mature voices have the edge. A small point really. What is more thrilling is that here we have a choir of 300, where many of the members will provide the amateur singers of the choirs of the future (and some professionals too). We see evidence of the future professional singers in our cathedral and college choirs, but it's reassuring to see that the large amateur choirs of the future are in capable hands. (And comparing well with the evidence i recently read of some Welsh Male Choirs having few members under 60.)

[Nick Armstrong]

I also thought that Rattle's command of the audience (who were incredibly quiet all the way through with nary a cough) was close to perfection because at the end of both halves he simply kept his baton held up in the air and that stopped the happy-clappers in their tracks. So it can be done.

... and to copy and paste my response elsewhere, he showed it's not that difficult. As you say, just keep both arms up as if something else is going to happen, and the numpties aren't sufficiently sure of themselves to flap their flippers or yelp like stuck pigs...

[Nick Armstrong]

Reading the comments here I sometimes wonder if I was, in fact, at a completely different location, so utterly overwhelmed, as I was, by this emotional performance. The first half had tears running down this old softies face and I wasn't the only one in the audience. I have no musical training and so can't comment on the subtleties that others have found and commented on but if I was never to hear a live concert again then this was the concert to go out on.

Breathtakingly beautiful.

[mercia]

probably the same as other people's scores, my Novello vocal score dated 2000 gives the provenance, by bar number, of each of 20 Ossie (the plural of ossia apparently) - whether each appears in the manuscript vocal score, vocal score proofs, first printed vocal score, manuscript full score, or printed full score, or a combination of these. I won't attempt to reproduce the list here.

[verismissimo]

I get the sense from the reports on the Prom that the soloists, underpowered for the hall, had to force things. Not a problem at Symphony Hall in Brum.