Prom 48: 21.08.16 - Matthias Pintscher and Mendelssohn

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

19:30 Sunday 21 Aug 2016
Royal Albert Hall

Matthias Pintscher: Reflections on Narcissus
Felix Mendelssohn: A Midsummer Night's Dream: Overture and Incidental Music


Katherine Broderick (soprano)
Clara Mouriz (mezzo-soprano)
Alisa Weilerstein (cello)
BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra
Finchley Children's Music Group
Matthias Pintscher (conductor)
Bijan Sheibani (stage director)

Narcissus, the Thespian hunter who fell in love with his own image, inspired Matthias Pintscher to compose his own reflection on 'the interaction of different groups and their mirror images', a work for cello and orchestra. Pintscher conducts Reflections on Narcissus here before a semi-staged performance of Mendelssohn's incidental music to A Midsummer Night's Dream.
Mendelssohn's delicate, mercurial and strident music is interspersed with excerpts from Shakespeare's text to form a centrepiece of this season's celebrations of Shakespeare's 400th anniversary.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b07pdz6f

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

Matthias Pintscher: Reflections on Narcissus:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rKRxaHMPrUc

[Ferretfancy]

Prom 48 Pintscher and Mendelssohn

There seems that there was no advance mention of the excellent Prom last Sunday. The two works were Pintscher's Reflections on Narcissus,.and Mendelssohn' Overture and complete incidental music to A midsummer Night's Dream.

In my experience the Pintscher was the first work for cello and orchestra in which the soloist was largely inaudible throughout,
except for a few solo passages. Even those of us listening in the Arena failed to hear much. This did not apply to the orchestral offering, which was deafening through all but the last few bars of this 35 minute score.

The Mendelssohn was quite a different matter, with the BBC Scottish giving us their very best.The text arranged
by Gerald McBurney featured six actors performing an edited Shakespeare text very effectively in a semi-staged performance

I would like to know how good this sounded at home, since there was a great deal of movement around the platform, especially the entries of Puck. Comments?

[Nick Armstrong]

Merged this with Alpie's pre-existing thread, Ff. Heard some of the Mendelssohn on the radio: orchestrally and chorally (the Finchley children) very good but the main soprano via the microphones at least was just the sort of sound I dislike, which spoilt it more than somewhat....

[alywin]

Me too :(

So, it was the Finchley children's group - thanks for that, because they aren't credited in the Proms mini-guide. I believe they are the ones who sing for the Royal Ballet's performances of Frederick Ashton's The Dream, so I guess they must be pretty familiar with it - or will be by next summer.

I'm interested to know how well the actors portraying Hermia and Lysander, among others, came over on the radio: I was struggling to hear them, which I suspect was a miking problem rather than anything else.