Prom 64: 2.09.16 - Berlin Philharmonic and Sir Simon Rattle – Boulez and Mahler

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

19:00 Friday 2 Sep 2016 ON TV
Royal Albert Hall

Pierre Boulez: Éclat
Gustav Mahler: Symphony No 7 in E minor

Berlin Philharmonic
Sir Simon Rattle conductor

Sir Simon Rattle brings his Berlin Philharmonic to the Proms for two concerts, the first falling on the day the festival commemorates the towering genius that was the late Pierre Boulez.
Here Boulez's kaleidoscopic Éclat forms a prelude to perhaps Gustav Mahler's most radical symphony, a work in which his musical imagination stormed new territories in its fierce harmonies and wild scoring.
In the symphony's celebrated 'Night Music' serenades - eerie yet strangely calming nocturnes for orchestra, one hinging on a gently strumming guitar and mandolin - Mahler appears to look to a realm far beyond his own.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b07qc3f2

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

Surely one of the most anticipated Proms of the season (and the Mahler Symphony I find the most challenging).

[Petrushka]

It will be exactly 27 years minus a day since Rattle conducted the Mahler 7 with the CBSO at the Proms a performance at which I was present. And I shall be there again for this one, certainly my most eagerly awaited Prom of the season. I wish I still had my video tape of that 1989 Prom as it was absolutely thrilling and hoping this Prom to lives up to the sense of huge anticipation I have.

[marvin]

Saw this live from the Philharmonie last Friday night. The concert started about 6pm London time and was relayed via the Digital Concert Hall right to my Television.
The Eclat, well I won't waste words on this, save that it allowed one to prepare oneself for the proper music that was to follow.
The Mahler 7 was excellent as was the whole televisual experience of 'being there' at the magnificent concert hall in Berlin. Sarah Willis was playing her horn along with a new Konzertmeister or one that has been elevated to that post.

[Serial_Apologist]

The Eclat, well I won't waste words on this, save that it allowed one to prepare oneself for the proper music that was to follow.

I can't imagine anyone looking in on here will be put off listening to this work on account of your easy dismissal. Well, I would hope not, anyway, because it was hearing Boulez conduct "Eclat" at the Victoria Hall in Geneva in May or June of 1967 that convinced me for all time that Boulez was not the "obscure" or "dfficult" composer I'd previously taken him to be - and that has kept, indeed, extended my interest in his music to this day.

From memory, the concert also included Beethoven's 4th Symphony and Bartok's "Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta". Prior to launching into "Eclat" Bioulez announced that he was dedicating this particular performance to the students occupying The Sorbonne at the time. This was greeted with massive applause, such as I have never witnessed at a classical concert since, and mass standing ovation from the mostly young audience, and I remember an elderly couple in front of me remaining rigidly fixed on their seats, the man muttering "Etudiants"!

This was during the closing days of the French "student uprising"; I was on a weekend break from a job I was doing in Zurich, pleased to get away from "German"-speaking Switzerland; France was still in general strike, and the Swiss city was full of young French people who had hitched their ways down through eastern France to gather there. Afterwards one "went with the flow" and ended up in one of those corner "brasseries" that make Geneva so much resemble a small-scale Paris, to imbibe any number of beers in convivial new company. On calling "time" the students piled up tables and chairs, blocking the entrances to the place, symbolising the barricades in the Champs Elysees, and sang vigorous protest songs. The proprietors appeared unfazed by all this, and when it was all over the students helped them put the furniture back again. A young English student flogged me some of her poems in French, and I spent the following hour wandering through the by this time quiet back streets of Geneva somewhat the worse for drink, trying to locate my hotel, and eventually finding it!

I was 21 at the time. One never forgets experiences such as that one.

[Richard Barrett]

One never forgets experiences such as that one.

Indeed not! I'm not much of a Boulez fan as you know, but Eclat (in its longer Eclat-Multiples form - the original is maybe a bit too brief to make the most of its extravagant instrumentation) is one of those pieces of his that I often listen to. I can't really grasp the kind of mindset that would regard it as not "proper music". It's obviously the work of a precise, sensitive and imaginative musical mind. I'm not sure whether SR is the ideal conductor for it however, looking forward to listening.

[Prommer]

I can't imagine anyone looking in on here will be put off listening to this work on account of your easy dismissal. Well, I would hope not, anyway, because it was hearing Boulez conduct "Eclat" at the Victoria Hall in Geneva in May or June of 1967 that convinced me for all time that Boulez was not the "obscure" or "dfficult" composer I'd previously taken him to be - and that has kept, indeed, extended my interest in his music to this day.

From memory, the concert also included Beethoven's 4th Symphony and Bartok's "Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta". Prior to launching into "Eclat" Bioulez announced that he was dedicating this particular performance to the students occupying The Sorbonne at the time. This was greeted with massive applause, such as I have never witnessed at a classical concert since, and mass standing ovation from the mostly young audience, and I remember an elderly couple in front of me remaining rigidly fixed on their seats, the man muttering "Etudiants"!

This was during the closing days of the French "student uprising"; I was on a weekend break from a job I was doing in Zurich, pleased to get away from "German"-speaking Switzerland; France was still in general strike, and the Swiss city was full of young French people who had hitched their ways down through eastern France to gather there. Afterwards one "went with the flow" and ended up in one of those corner "brasseries" that make Geneva so much resemble a small-scale Paris, to imbibe any number of beers in convivial new company. On calling "time" the students piled up tables and chairs, blocking the entrances to the place, symbolising the barricades in the Champs Elysees, and sang vigorous protest songs. The proprietors appeared unfazed by all this, and when it was all over the students helped them put the furniture back again. A young English student flogged me some of her poems in French, and I spent the following hour wandering through the by this time quiet back streets of Geneva somewhat the worse for drink, trying to locate my hotel, and eventually finding it!

I was 21 at the time. One never forgets experiences such as that one.

One cannot fault your memory of it, for one was not there, but I think a lot of your fond recollections may be due to the craic not the eclat....!

[Serial_Apologist]

One cannot fault your memory of it, for one was not there, but I think a lot of your fond recollections may be due to the craic not the eclat....!

Was anyone else there???

[Lat-Literal]

I can't imagine anyone looking in on here will be put off listening to this work on account of your easy dismissal. Well, I would hope not, anyway, because it was hearing Boulez conduct "Eclat" at the Victoria Hall in Geneva in May or June of 1967 that convinced me for all time that Boulez was not the "obscure" or "dfficult" composer I'd previously taken him to be - and that has kept, indeed, extended my interest in his music to this day.

From memory, the concert also included Beethoven's 4th Symphony and Bartok's "Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta". Prior to launching into "Eclat" Bioulez announced that he was dedicating this particular performance to the students occupying The Sorbonne at the time. This was greeted with massive applause, such as I have never witnessed at a classical concert since, and mass standing ovation from the mostly young audience, and I remember an elderly couple in front of me remaining rigidly fixed on their seats, the man muttering "Etudiants"!

This was during the closing days of the French "student uprising"; I was on a weekend break from a job I was doing in Zurich, pleased to get away from "German"-speaking Switzerland; France was still in general strike, and the Swiss city was full of young French people who had hitched their ways down through eastern France to gather there. Afterwards one "went with the flow" and ended up in one of those corner "brasseries" that make Geneva so much resemble a small-scale Paris, to imbibe any number of beers in convivial new company. On calling "time" the students piled up tables and chairs, blocking the entrances to the place, symbolising the barricades in the Champs Elysees, and sang vigorous protest songs. The proprietors appeared unfazed by all this, and when it was all over the students helped them put the furniture back again. A young English student flogged me some of her poems in French, and I spent the following hour wandering through the by this time quiet back streets of Geneva somewhat the worse for drink, trying to locate my hotel, and eventually finding it!

I was 21 at the time. One never forgets experiences such as that one.

A very interesting and evocative account.

From my experience of Geneva in the 1990s - pleasant enough albeit with an accent on employment - I had no idea it ever had such life!

[Prommer]

So: Mahler 7. The one I know least well. Possibly because I have found it most unapproachable/difficult, or at least difficult to like...

Anyone able to help me hear it afresh? (Well, the BPO and Rattle, but any prep to be had?)

[Nick Armstrong]

the craic not the eclat

My nomination for R3 Forum "phrase of the week"

[arthroceph]

his BPO? You can't call an orchestra yours until you've scandalously fast-tracked a favoured young member of one's preferred sex to the top!

[arthroceph]

sorry I'm trolling. I'll log out now ... Friday evening, tsk.

[edashtav]

Boulez – Eclat for fifteen instruments (1965)

A Swan breaks free from an icy lake.

An aleatoric study concerning dualism: attack and resonance, about those instruments where the player is out of control once the attack has occurred and those where the player controls and manipulates the envelope of the sound throughout its production.

The work demands a conductor with a sensitive ear allied to a quicksilver brain to make decisions over the route to take in real time. Simon Rattle has those qualities and I thought the piece came across well on the radio with the BPO playing with verve and conviction.

I cannot comment on the Mahler for I have tasks to do this evening but the power and cogency of tonight's performance drew me in and I lost myself, neglecting my jobs, so engrossed was I by the manner in which the first movement grew and was shaped. Hardly time to switch off before the next movement commenced! I fear that I truncated a Prom "event".

[DracoM]

Well, THAT's how you play Mahler. THAT's what the Proms is about.