Prom 32: 8.08.16 - Esa-Pekka Salonen conducts Schoenberg, Dutilleux and Mahler

[jayne lee wilson]

Enjoyable reports and photos Beef, thanks..... do stick with Shadows of Time, I'd go for the Seattle SO/Morlot (or Salonen's own G-Award winner of course). Give it a few shadows of your own time, you'll be well rewarded. You know the Dutilleux 2nd Symphony? Try that alongside the Shadows of Time... then consider that it was composed nearly 40 years earlier...
Correspondances, indeed...


"Truly, though our element is time,
We're not suited to the long perspectives
Open at each instant of our lives.
They link us to our losses: worse,
They show us what we have as it once was,
Blindingly undiminished, just as though
By acting differently we could have kept it so."

(Philip Larkin, "Reference Back")

[Alison]

Direct delivery without the neurosis.

yes good description Beef

[antongould]

Wonderful report and pictures beefo ....

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Wonderful report and pictures beefo ....

[Nick Armstrong]

the amount of coughing and spluttering was bloody ridiculous. I’m a very tolerant concert-goer and I can deal with more distractions than most people, but it really got to me tonight. It’s not even winter, for chrissakes!

the teenaged French relative I took along for his first ever classical concert... was astonished, though, at the stupidity of people's uncovered coughing which made large sections of the first few moments of Boléro virtually inaudible, even sitting quite close to the orchestra...

I now expect shuffling and coughing and whispering at the Proms (I've never understood why it's supposed to be the best audience in music - I've always found it the most distracting) ... plus this year's new feature, Chinese tourists filming the whole first piece on their phones, being told to stop by officials or other audience members, and then being palpably bored (shifting, whispering, talking, regularly opening fizzy drinks with a 'pshhhh') for the rest of the concert.

Given that's my expectation at the Proms, last night was relatively ok since the mercifully massive orchestra drowned out most 'noises off'...

It is unbelievable isn't it? The 'not even winter' thing always occurs to me too. Is it people walking in the park before the concert and getting hayfever? Who knows?

One advantage of being close to a big orchestra is that the coughers behind you get sonically obliterated - most of the time. When you're upstairs, that effect sadly doesn't operate...

Anyhow glad you enjoyed it nonetheless, Beef, and yes your description of the Mahler accords with how it came across on t'radio - and cracking aerial shot of Salonen!!

[edashtav]

Henri Dutilleux - The Shadows of Time

This piece is the composer’s search for a time and place of lost content. Perhaps, Henri set out to express the “the unity of time and place” but his intent was corrupted as he experienced reality failing to deliver such harmonious and balanced outcomes. The inexorable march of Time Forward leads to parallels with the sadness and maybe anger of Holst’s Saturn, the Bringer of (Discontented) Old Age. There’s more than a hint of bitterness and even despair in Dutilleux’s work particularly in its first section. The piece is not a lazy audience’s comfort blanket. It is an old man telling it as he has increasingly found it. One senses all the time that Dutilleux’s music is constantly anxious as it remains on the look-out for resolution and harmony yet never finds it. The music’s sub-text is a reflection, 50 years on, on WWII, and thus prefacing it with Schoenberg’s even more raw and emotional “A Survivor from Warsaw” was an excellent piece of programming. So how did the Philharmonia and Esa-Pekka Salonen fare in this complex and demanding piece of late Dutilleux? Pretty well, I thought. Textures were complex but clear, and instrumental solos were played with conviction. The Anne Frank panel uses children voices and the BBC engineers ensured that their voices were protected from being submerged by orchestral polyphony in which woodwind took on a tinge of Messaien. To be fair, Henri, treats the children with great consideration but that does leave many of their phrases with little support. The three lads from Trinity Boys’ Choir sang with great confidence. I thought I got to know Dutilleux in the 1960s when I bought an LP of his early ballet “Le Loup”. The conductor, Georges Pretre, made it sound like a highly coloured fairy tale. Its sound world was conservative with many echoes of Maurice Ravel. My word, how far Dutilleux travelled in the 40 years, or so, that passed from that the impressionable innocence of that ballet to his sombre, serially-based and philosophically complex “The Shadows of Time”. I believe the perfectionist Dutilleux later rejected “Le Loup”. I can understand why.

[EdgeleyRob]

Wonderful report and pictures beefo ....

[zola]

Nice review, Beefy.

The previously day I was hearing Steeley Span seriously rocking out

Folk rock or a Donald Fagen tribute band ?

[teamsaint]

Folk rock or a Donald Fagen tribute band ?

Since a typo seems to be the only point of interest, i have deleted my post.

I had a long day at work today,got in at 8.00, after getting home at half twelve last night from the Prom.
I thought i would add a couple of comments to add to Beefys review, and you know.....oh whats the point.

[zola]

Since a typo seems to be the only point of interest, i have deleted my post.

So should I have added a cute little smiley to what was meant as a good natured aside ?

[teamsaint]

So should I have added a cute little smiley to what was meant as a good natured aside ?

Not having a go at you in particular Zola, just the wrong comment ( for me) at the wrong time.
I expect I have made less sensitive comments, with or without smileys.
Apologies if my reply was too terse.

[Beef Oven!]

Not having a go at you in particular Zola, just the wrong comment ( for me) at the wrong time.
I expect I have made less sensitive comments, with or without smileys.
Apologies if my reply was too terse.

Don’t apologise.

Before you deleted it, I read your post - I’d forgotten about the missing strings!! The rest of the balance was fine up there, but those one or two string drop-outs!! Weird

[Beef Oven!]

It is unbelievable isn't it? The 'not even winter' thing always occurs to me too. Is it people walking in the park before the concert and getting hayfever? Who knows?

One advantage of being close to a big orchestra is that the coughers behind you get sonically obliterated - most of the time. When you're upstairs, that effect sadly doesn't operate...

Anyhow glad you enjoyed it nonetheless, Beef, and yes your description of the Mahler accords with how it came across on t'radio - and cracking aerial shot of Salonen!!

Can’t be pollen - these were chesty winter coughs!!

[Beef Oven!]

Enjoyable reports and photos Beef, thanks..... do stick with Shadows of Time, I'd go for the Seattle SO/Morlot (or Salonen's own G-Award winner of course). Give it a few shadows of your own time, you'll be well rewarded. You know the Dutilleux 2nd Symphony? Try that alongside the Shadows of Time... then consider that it was composed nearly 40 years earlier...
Correspondances, indeed...


"Truly, though our element is time,
We're not suited to the long perspectives
Open at each instant of our lives.
They link us to our losses: worse,
They show us what we have as it once was,
Blindingly undiminished, just as though
By acting differently we could have kept it so."

(Philip Larkin, "Reference Back")

Thanks Jayne, I’m not giving up - played it through four times on Apple Music today (2X Salonen & 2x Morlot). Still not convinced

I sooo wanted to buy the Morlot Hi-Res download that you suggest, but when I heard the song cycle that kicks off the Salonen DG disc, I just had to buy that! Glorious set of miniatures, wonderful cycle - no surprise given Debussy wrote most of it

I also listened to Timbres, Espace, Mouvement after Shadows of Time and it blew Shadows out of the water!!

No accounting for taste

[teamsaint]

Thanks Jayne, I’m not giving up - played it through four times on Apple Music today (2X Salonen & 2x Morlot). Still not convinced

I sooo wanted to buy the Morlot Hi-Res download that you suggest, but when I heard the song cycle that kicks off the Salonen DG disc, I just had to buy that! Glorious set of miniatures, wonderful cycle - no surprise given Debussy wrote most of it

I also listened to Timbres, Espace, Mouvement after Shadows of Time and it blew Shadows out of the water!!

No accounting for taste

There is a box set of the Morlot recordings out in September.