Prom 7: 20.07.16 - Faure, Stravinsky and Poulenc

[edashtav]

I suspect that by the time this fine concert has ended, the audience will have enjoyed at least two dozen movements. Is that an excess? I'm finding it a tiring irritant. Perhaps, a better balanced programme would have featured one work with few, but extended movements. Do other boarders share my concern?

[Bryn]

I suspect that by the time this fine concert has ended, the audience will have enjoyed at least two dozen movements. Is that an excess? I'm finding it a tiring irritant. Perhaps, a better balanced programme would have featured one work with few, but extended movements. Do other boarders share my concern?

Listening to Monday night's via the iPlayer at the moment. Are the audience remembering to applaud between said score and more movements?

[edashtav]

Listening to Monday night's via the iPlayer at the moment. Are the audience remembering to applaud between said score and more movements?

No, clearly they don't attend Happy Clappy churches. Thank God!

[Pulcinella]

Other boarders have grumbled over opportunity lost by not programming the complete Stravinsky ballet. I endorse their thoughts. Given the brilliance of Minkowski's performance of the suite, that loss was all the greater. Minkowski used his encyclopaedic knowledge of HIP baroque to shape and delineate the music in a tremendous fashion. This was the finest performance that I've heard. Except for a bassoon tiring momentarily during its ostinato plus, the solo instrumentalists of the BBC SO were exceptionally good.

But was it how Stravinsky would have expected it or wanted it to sound?
From his own recordings, I would think not.
And thank heavens (imo) that we didn't have that soprano soloist in a full ballet version.

That said, at least for once I could endure the BBCS (though more attention to the dymanics that were printed in the vocal score I was following would not have come amiss).
I agree with your comments about the number of movements, though; I have always (well, since I first heard it!) thought the Poulenc Stabat Mater to be a rather incoherent 'bitty' piece.

[edashtav]

But was it how Stravinsky would have expected it or wanted it to sound?
From his own recordings, I would think not.
And thank heavens (imo) that we didn't have that soprano soloist in a full ballet version.

That said, at least for once I could endure the BBCS (though more attention to the dymanics that were printed in the vocal score I was following would not have come amiss).
I agree with your comments about the number of movements, though; I have always (well, since I first heard it!) thought the Poulenc Stabat Mater to be a rather incoherent 'bitty' piece.

I agree the soprano would not have added to Pulcinela.
Your point about the Poulenc is well made. Bitttiness was endemic amongst French influenced choral music of the 20th century. I love Honegger but his pseudo-oratorios are wrecked by their frequent use of bite-sized movements.
I don't think Stravinsky's performances are definitive, do you?

[Bryn]

They are somewhat hammering the lack of a full Pulcinella home by following the Prom with IS's Suite italienne.

[Pulcinella]

I don't think Stravinsky's performances are definitive, do you?

Well, probably/possibly more than you do, it might appear.

He might not have been the best conductor or interpreter of his own works, as many composers seem not to be, but I would have thought that the sort of sound and definition we hear in his recordings says a lot, and I didn't enjoy those aspects in tonight's performance, however 'authentic' it might have presumed to have been. But I was glad we got the repeat in the Tarantella, even if not enough was made of the two against three section that followed (for my taste).

[edashtav]

Before I dig a hole for myself larger than a WWI trench, I need to put it on record that the two LP versions that I own of Pulcinella were conducted by IGOR (helped by ROBERT?) and, wait for it.... OTTO!

I enjoyed both of those and, in an entirely different way, I loved Minkowski, tonight.

But, Pulcinella, I' m not a Pulcinella expert.
I'm awaiting delivery of Suzuki's recent recording. That should put Ed back into EDucation.

[Pulcinella]

Before I dig a hole for myself larger than a WWI trench, I need to put it on record that the two LP versions that I own of Pulcinella were conducted by IGOR (helped by ROBERT?) and, wait for it.... OTTO!

I enjoyed both of those and, in an entirely different way, I loved Minkowski, tonight.

But, Pulcinella, I' m not a Pulcinella expert.
I'm awaiting delivery of Suzuki's recent recording. That should put Ed back into EDucation.

Oh, I used to have that Klemperer recording on LP: coupled with the Symphony in three movements, I think, with Picasso's Three Musicians as the cover art? Incredibly slow, I seem to recall (or was that just the symphony?)! But revealing.
I look forward to reports of the Suzuki recording; I value jlw's judgements, but don't really need another version.
I hope you enjoy getting to know the piece better.

Just one more late night thought.
What we are used to hearing is of course the revised 1949 version.
I hope I'm not doing Minkowski an injustice if what we heard tonight was the original 1924 version.
I must investigate what the revisions were; most likely minor, just to produce a new edition for the US to bring in more dosh, though the score says that the copyright of the 1924 edition (Edition Russe de Musique (Russischer Musikverlag)) was assigned to Boosey and Hawkes Inc for all countries in 1947.

PS: Memory was right; here's a link to the Klemperer recording

https://www.discogs.com/Stravinsky-Otto-Klemperer-Philharmonia-Orchestra-Symphony-In-Three-Movements-Pulcinella-Suite/master/678829

[Bryn]

According to EWW the 1947 revision is textually almost identical to the original but with added metronome markings and with the Duette retitled as Vivo. It was Klemperer who intoduced Pulcinella to the Soviet Union.

[Maclintick]

THIS came out earlier this year....



.... musically & technically, as stunning a Stravinsky anthology as you'll hear - all the fresher for being Maestro Suzuki's debut in 20thC repertoire...

http://www.eclassical.com/labels/bis/stravinsky-pulcinella-suite-2.html

I guess MM could have left the brief Shylock Suite out, and given us Pulcinella complete? Well, there you go.... and the Poulenc Stabat Mater is gorgeous, possibly my favourite of all this composer's so-adorable works.

Anyone else sick of "edited to death" recordings being compared with the live fare on offer at the Proms. When Maestro Suzuki & Bach Collegium Japan visited this festival a couple of years ago I was completely underwhelmed...

[jayne lee wilson]

Looking back at my #9, I can't make out any Proms/New Releases comparisons going on....(but what's wrong with comparing recordings to live relays anyway, at the very least from a stylistic/interpretative viewpoint?)

.... anyway Mac, have you heard the BIS/Tapiola/Suzuki Stravinsky set? Where do these deadly edits supposedly fall?

[jayne lee wilson]

PROM 7: POULENC :STABAT MATER. BBCSO/BBC SINGERS/SOLOISTS/MARK MINKOWSKI.

Only a few years ago, it was quite hard to find good recordings of Poulenc's sublime, hauntingly lovely Stabat Mater. You had to go back to Baudo for the truth of it, really. But just in the last two years, two excellent new accounts appeared, from Stephane Deneve and Daniel Reuss.
So tonight's performance was hitting a discriminating, 24-bit saturated, Poulencian's ear. But so immaculately conceived was Minkowski's presentation, it scarcely suffered even in the loss of digital resolution in this 320 kbps webcast Prom. Minkowski's sonic signatures of precise, tonally pure articulation, rhythmic buoyancy and textural lightness, a catlike dynamic agility, all served to draw out an utterly idiomatic, chaste intensity in both text and music. (So clear was the choral articulation I could hear almost every word at home - more clearly than on the Estonia/Reuss HM recording - which sounded too rich, too operatic, in comparison to this Prom.).

The work has a fluid, organic form all of its own as the music follows the text closely (devotionally - though certainly not slavishly: witness the distancing, insouciant grace of the quae moerebat; or the trombone glissandi at the end of the Eja Mater, cocking the snook while the vicar's back is turned) to create a flowing narrative of mourning: observation of the mother, identification with her grief, the need to share her burden and conjoin in prayer; finally the desire for death itself, to be with Christ. So I'm surprised anyone would call it "bitty"; especially as it also has a very homogenous, warmly unified sound, both orchestrally and vocally.
So many outstanding moments... The BBC Singers produced a lovely purity in the a cappella quam tristis, sudden sharp attack at Quis est homo, then a marvellously alert response to the morientum desolatum. So tender too, in ut sibi complaceam. I thought the soprano, Julie Fuchs, outstanding in her sweetness and purity of tone (in the vidit suum, for example): again, perfect for the music's intensity and restraint. The orchestra matched all this with a lovely elegance, suavity and gravity at the fac ut portem; then a 1960s Parisian-au-Lamoureux retro-coloristic brassy brilliance in the Inflammatus. The final gathering of strength, the summoning up of courage through tears in Paradisi gloria was overwhelming; precise yet passionate, an epitome of the whole performance. Minkowski pitched it, and voiced it, perfectly.

But then I adore Poulenc, and perhaps this piece above all; as with Mendelssohn, some listeners seem to find his sheer deftness, danceability and lightness of touch evidencing a lack of depth or "profundity". Well, not me - and certainly not in the Stabat Mater or what seems to me its stark alter ego, shadow-self companion piece, the Sept Repons...

***Far better sound-balance from the Hall tonight via HDs at 320 kbps; definition, immediacy and image precision a distinct improvement over the Missa Solemnis production in Prom 5***

[Pulcinella]

Thanks for your comments, jayne.
I know from previous postings that the Stabat Mater is a very special piece of Poulenc for you, and I was trying to find out why, last night.
But whatever magic it has for you just doesn't do it for me, whereas (to name just one of his other works that I do adore) the Gloria hits the spot right away, it too being in several short (but not so short?) sections, with (again for me) what seems to be a better overall structure.
But yes: the ending is a glorious depiction of Paradise.

[mrbouffant]

A decent Prom. Good performances, not too hot in the hall. Shame about the patron sat to my right who dozed off 5 mins into Shylock and started snoring prodigiously...