Prom 20: 30.07.16 - Berlioz: Romeo and Juliet

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

I don't think that's right richard - he wasn't an innovator for the sake of being an innovator (any more than Liszt, Wagner, Strauss, Mahler, etc. etc.....), he was a creative artist who happened to be highly original.

- but I didn't read a criticism in rfg's comment, just a contrast between Mendelssohn and Berlioz in Messageboardspeak.

He called R&J a symphony (in his Memoirs) - what right have we to call it an oratorio, cramming it into an antiquated box into which it doesn't fit?

[richardfinegold]

Well, that wasn't the original question. We weren't being asked, back in the second post, whether or not we had the right to call it anything. I will fully defer to call it whatever the Composer wanted to call it.
IIRC, the question posed was whether or not we, at this vantage point nearly two Centuries on, we're comfortable thinking of this work as a Symphony. My answer is that it strikes me as an Oratorio for the reasons that I listed above.
And I disagree with you that HB did not prize innovation for it 's own sake. From what I have read of HB ( primarily Jacques Barzun, but other sources as well) his ethos was that Romantic Artists had an obligation to be original and to serve art by innovating. He viewed the attempts to revive Bach and other then forgotten Composers with disdain, as misplaced energy

[richardfinegold]

- but I didn't read a criticism in rfg's comment, just a contrast between Mendelssohn and Berlioz in Messageboardspeak.

Exactly.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

Well, that was great, but I still don't think of it as a symphony.

[Bryn]

Sounded pretty together to me.

[LeMartinPecheur]

Well, that was great, but I still don't think of it as a symphony.

EA: can you please be more specific? Is this due to lack of thematic unity, emotional unity, or what?

(I guess I'm tilting back towards my slightly frivolous #9 above: what is it that makes a work a genuine symphony, or disqualifies it from being so regarded??)

[Maclintick]

[QUOTE=Richard Tarleton;572450]I don't think that's right richard - he wasn't an innovator for the sake of being an innovator (any more than Liszt, Wagner, Strauss, Mahler, etc. etc.....), he was a creative artist who happened to be highly original.

/QUOTE]

& yet many of of HB's "innovations", as it were, can be found to have musical antecedents in Beethoven ( esp "Pastoral'), Haydn, & his French predecessors Rameau, Lully et al ....

[Richard J.]

Very odd conducting arrangement this evening. On two occasions the small chorus and soloists were arranged at the front of the stage with Gardiner behind them. An assistant conductor stood on a small platform near the front of the arena to conduct the singers. But behind the assistant was a screen facing the singers showing a CCTV image of Gardiner, so why was the assistant conductor needed?

[maestro267]

Wonderful performance of a work I'm only just starting to get used to, having not too long ago purchased a recording featuring this very orchestra and conductor.

[Richard Tarleton]

[QUOTE=Maclintick;573146]

I don't think that's right richard - he wasn't an innovator for the sake of being an innovator (any more than Liszt, Wagner, Strauss, Mahler, etc. etc.....), he was a creative artist who happened to be highly original.

/QUOTE]

& yet many of of HB's "innovations", as it were, can be found to have musical antecedents in Beethoven ( esp "Pastoral'), Haydn, & his French predecessors Rameau, Lully et al ....

, Gluck....(and the same applies to Liszt - esp. Bach...)

[BBMmk2]

I'll be watching this on tv this evening.

[EnemyoftheStoat]

Very odd conducting arrangement this evening. On two occasions the small chorus and soloists were arranged at the front of the stage with Gardiner behind them. An assistant conductor stood on a small platform near the front of the arena to conduct the singers. But behind the assistant was a screen facing the singers showing a CCTV image of Gardiner, so why was the assistant conductor needed?

Apart from the CCTV, that sounds a lot like the layout specified by HB in the score.

[Ferretfancy]

It was an excellent performance, but in the Arena the front platform singers were rather too close. I found the opening fugato simply too fast, so that the rhythmic effect got lost in the hall. Gardiner did the same in the Queen Mab Scherzo, which was hurried so that the interplay was lost.

Otherwise it was a terrific performance, even if Berlioz did rather need an editor!

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

Otherwise it was a terrific performance, even if Berlioz did rather need an editor!

Could you elaborate?

[jayne lee wilson]

PROM 20 ORR/JEG/MONTEVERDI CHOIR/SOLOISTS. BERLIN - ROMEO AND JULIET. R3 RADIOPLAYER LIVE @320kbps.,
(audio - excellent clarity, spaciousness, very wide dynamic range.)

With JEG’s interpretations, it’s often hard to single out a phrase or section for detailed comment, as he is not an artist who often moulds or phrases affectionately or in any obviously expressive way, tending to use tempi, dynamic contrast and sheer rhythmic energy to make his musical points or structural landmarks.
So, perhaps better in the epic or dramatic passages rather than lyrical ones?

So it often seemed in this performance of Berlioz’ Romeo et Juliette, apparent from the very start with frantic, scrambling lean-bodied strings against weighty, magniloquent brass. The winds were clear and colourful, if a little small-voiced in the big arena. Trademark precision and articulation from the Monteverdi Choir, pure and delicate string-section and instrumental accompaniments to their narrations, and to the tenor and mezzo as well (I was a bit surprised though to note a throb in her voice, especially in a JEG performance).

A lovely oboe solo in Romeo Alone; the instrument projected beautifully into the palpably large webcast acoustic. Then a sudden surge of power and energy as the Grand Fete loomed into cinematically brilliant view, with a savage snap and shine to the brass, although (as with many a performance, not only HIPPs ones), despite the cross-rhythmical clarity, I could have done with more body from the strings as they drove the dancing along.
So to the Love Scene…. eloquently voiced, yes, clearly layered orchestrally but - wasn’t it all just a little…chaste? The climaxes too forcibly hard-edged to be yieldingly seductive (not to mention sexy)… cello, flute and oboe soloists sang clearly and purely but - perhaps not quite confident of their lovemaking style?
Yes, I know it’s not the ORR’s way, but perhaps this sound and interpretative approach doesn’t quite get the most out of the physical side of the relationship here.
(I should add that I’m a great admirer of JEG and this band: all those recent live issues of Beethoven Symphonies, the live Brahms Requiem, the live Missa Solemnis, are all listened to here with excitement and devotion!)
***

But clean and lean, whether feathery-light or gutty, are great for Queen Mab, and intense enough for the lethal-edged trombone snarls, in the Tombeau - and here, at the anti-liebestod climax, in the frantic recall of the love-music, from the deadly woodwind stabs and interjections to the fading pathos of the oboe, the ORR’s playing was at its most gripping and assured.
But if I have a favourite part, it’s probably the Funeral Procession - that strange, detached choral monotone with its light-touch orchestral commentary. (I always recall the (perhaps musically superior, certainly more inspired, it’s just stopped me dead writing this now!) Offertorium from the Requiem at this point). Again, superbly clean intonation and articulation from the ORR and the Monteverdi Choir as they soared into their climax of grief and regret, then the switch to stillness and withdrawal in the plainchant-like coda.
***

Is it a bird, is it a plane, no it's a....symphony?
What is a symphony? Apparently, by 2016 (well, much earlier really) anything a composer chooses to call a symphony. A dadaist concept - it’s art because I say it is - that I might usually enjoy. At least, if I’m in the mood. Berlioz’ work is after all very open-ended, in terms of what it actually presents as a musical sequence. Despite thematically cyclical in my-end-is-my-beginning references the piece doesn’t feel symphonically or dramatically conclusive, and the Friends Forever final chorus feels like a truce rather than a lasting peace. Personally, I never find the supposed reconciliation musically or emotionally convincing.


“Scenes and Commentaries from Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet”… would just about cover it. Not very catchy. Berlioz might have done better to call it a Masque, as in Birtwistle’s Mask of Orpheus, with which Berlioz’ work may have at least one thing in common - the viewing or representation of the given narrative from various points-of-view. If you see Berlioz as an innovator, this would do him the further credit being of being farsightedly futuristic too.