Prom 71: 7.09.16 Staatskapelle Dresden, Christian Thielemann and Daniil Trifonov

[Tetrachord]

I was in the Musikverein in May, 2015, when Thielemann conducted the DS with Bruckner #3. I must say I find both Bruckner and Mahler exhausting because of my general preference for the 'tautness' of Brahms. However, the first movement of the Bruckner 3 is growing on me - but the rest of it is still 'challenging'. Magnificently played, though. This is really a superb 'band'!!!

Thielemann got his usual rousing return to the platform in Vienna; many, many times and long after the orchestra had left.

[Prommer]

I was in the Musikverein in May, 2015, when Thielemann conducted the DS with Bruckner #3. I must say I find both Bruckner and Mahler exhausting because of my general preference for the 'tautness' of Brahms. However, the first movement of the Bruckner 3 is growing on me - but the rest of it is still 'challenging'. Magnificently played, though. This is really a superb 'band'!!!

Thielemann got his usual rousing return to the platform in Vienna; many, many times and long after the orchestra had left.

The Viennese love him. Can't see he has the chops for the New Year's Day Concert: that would be hilarious to watch!

No score for him tonight. No idea if Barenboim did for his brace of Bruckner? (Not a competition but would be interested to know.)

But it is pretty risky with all those gear changes and variegated repeats... Nowhere to hide.

[slarty]

Well said Prommer, I have been listening and watching Thielemann for 20 years.
The trick is to stop worrying what he looks like on the podium, just listen to what he manages to extract from his orchestras.
Furtwängler was exactly the same with his odd and jerky movements, and also the same in the quality of music he induced from his orchestras.
I don't understand the attitude towards him here in Britain. His repertoire may be smaller than some, but what he produces is profound and deeply moving. There are not many around these days who can do that.
He is not into the sound byte culture so prevalent today, refreshingly does not have a website and he is concentrated on his duties in Dresden and Bayreuth. Apart from his two concerts a year with the BPO and his similar guest work with the VPO, that is it. He does not jet around the world gigging everywhere possible.
he really is the epitomy of the Kapellmeister( in the truest sense of the word).
I have already heard tomorrow night's programme, it was part of a his subscription series this June.
Be prepared for another journey into the more profound aspects of the Beethoven Violin Concerto. Probably not since Furtwängler and Menuhin has such a performance been heard.

[P. G. Tipps]

The 1877 version does have something going for it and that is the Scherzo having that extra little bit at the end to round it off. It adds to the movement, I think.

Not so sure about the elongated conclusion to the symphony tonight. Sounded needlessly bombastic to my ears, rather more Wagner than Bruckner.

All in all though a great three nights for Brucknerians and, of course, Mozartians!

[slarty]

[QUOTE=Prommer;578209]The Viennese love him. Can't see he has the chops for the New Year's Day Concert: that would be hilarious to watch!


As long as he is in Dresden, he can't conduct the NYD concert in Vienna. He has his own very popular New Year's Eve concert in Dresden from the Semperoper televised live every year. Every year something different and out of his comfort zone. Last year it was the Gershwin Rhapsody in Blue and songs from Gershwin shows. The Rhapsody was played by Lang Lang.
If they are ever lucky enough to prise him away from Dresden for a New Year's concert in Vienna( having already heard his Johann Strauss in Dresden) , I can assure you ,it will be well worth hearing.

[Beef Oven!]

Well said Prommer, I have been listening and watching Thielemann for 20 years.
The trick is to stop worrying what he looks like on the podium, just listen to what he manages to extract from his orchestras.
Furtwängler was exactly the same with his odd and jerky movements, and also the same in the quality of music he induced from his orchestras.
I don't understand the attitude towards him here in Britain. His repertoire may be smaller than some, but what he produces is profound and deeply moving. There are not many around these days who can do that.
He is not into the sound byte culture so prevalent today, refreshingly does not have a website and he is concentrated on his duties in Dresden and Bayreuth. Apart from his two concerts a year with the BPO and his similar guest work with the VPO, that is it. He does not jet around the world gigging everywhere possible.
he really is the epitomy of the Kapellmeister( in the truest sense of the word).
I have already heard tomorrow night's programme, it was part of a his subscription series this June.
Be prepared for another journey into the more profound aspects of the Beethoven Violin Concerto. Probably not since Furtwängler and Menuhin has such a performance been heard.

It was a fabulous Prom.

[Nick Armstrong]

That was some performance of the Third: what a wonderful band. And my dear, the brass were toppest notch.

A very auspicious Proms debut for Thielemann in my view. He is a curious old thing: rather sweet and charming in many ways, jerky of gesture and posture, and occasionally rather demanding of the strings tonight. He appears to struggle to get them to play more quietly and is very prepared to shake his head exaggeratedly when he is not getting what he wants! He doesn't conduct everything, still less is he pleasing to look at, but he cues, shapes, nudges. The work is clearly done in rehearsal in terms of realising an interpretation.

Haven't got time to write much, but for now: sorry Prommer, slarty and Beefy - I found it a disappointing evening. I was in exactly the same seat in M stalls tonight as last night, allowing direct comparison; and I have to say that on tonight's showing I don't think that the Dresden orchestra is currently in the same league as their Berlin counterpart, ditto Thielemann in relation to Barenboim.

I found the strings and brass shrill and fatiguing tonight. By the end (of the first movement ), I just wanted the brass to shut up... As a brass player, that's never happened to me before. No sense of layering among the strings.

It's as if the sound of the band is built from the top downwards - lots of hard, cold sound at the top, but the double basses almost inaudible. A direct contrast to last night - DB builds the sound from the rich bass layer upwards.

And little sense of structure overall - they made No 3 sound a much worse piece than No 6 (maybe it is...). I couldn't wait for it to be over. Last night, I wanted No 6 to go on and on.

(The Mozart was brighter than last night but... ... And yes, DT lost control on the bend at the start of the tutti lap before the cadenza, and spent the next few corners sideways on the grass and gravel before getting it back on the track...)

Kicking myself I didn't go on Monday night instead of (or as well as) tonight. Wonder how it came across on the radio....

[Beef Oven!]

Haven't got time to write much, but for now: sorry Prommer, slarty and Beefy - I found it a disappointing evening. I was in exactly the same seat in M stalls tonight as last night, allowing direct comparison; and I have to say that on tonight's showing I don't think that the Dresden orchestra is currently in the same league as their Berlin counterpart, ditto Thielemann in relation to Barenboim.

I found the strings and brass shrill and fatiguing tonight. By the end (of the first movement ), I just wanted the brass to shut up... As a brass player, that's never happened to me before. No sense of layering among the strings.

It's as if the sound of the band is built from the top downwards - lots of hard, cold sound at the top, but the double basses almost inaudible. A direct contrast to last night - DB builds the sound from the rich bass layer upwards.

And little sense of structure overall - they made No 3 sound a much worse piece than No 6 (maybe it is...). I couldn't wait for it to be over. Last night, I wanted No 6 to go on and on.

(The Mozart was brighter than last night but... And yes, DT lost control on the bend at the start of the tutti lap before the cadenza, and spent the next few corners sideways on the grass and gravel before getting it back on the track...)

Kicking myself I didn't go on Monday night instead of (or as well as) tonight. Wonder how it came across on the radio....

Almost feels like Thielemann is a Bovril conductor.

[Petrushka]

I know it's not a competition but if it was a Barenboim v Thieleman contest then DB would have won hands down as far as I am concerned. That said, the 3rd is a difficult one to bring off but having attended all three Mozart/Bruckner Proms I sensed that Barenboim had the greater grip on the structure and architecture and his account of the 4th Symphony was one of the great performances of this Proms season.

Incidentally, Barenboim didn't have any score in front of him at all for either the Mozart or Bruckner performances.

Caliban was seated just three seats in front of me and in discussing Trifonov's Mozart in the interval he had picked up on the memory lapse in the first movement while I was aware that something had gone wrong I wasn't sure what. Perhaps soloists should have the score in front of them?

[jayne lee wilson]

PROM 71. R3 HDs @320 kbps. BRUCKNER SYMPHONY NO.3 (1877 ed. Nowak). DRESDEN STAATSKAPELLE/CHRISTIAN THIELEMANN.

I’ve never really enjoyed either of the main revisions (1877/8 and 1889) of Bruckner’s 3rd Symphony (the finale always sounded odd, or simply wrong, even before I knew much about the various editions) and this performance - rather dated in its monumentality, 4-square rhythms and muscular approach to climaxes, was never likely to change my mind.

The first movement exposition lacked a true pianissimo, smooth, natural flow or much perceivable rubato; pauses were abrupt or ill-timed; the development sounded as disjointed as ever both before and after the climax (completely different in 1873, far greater continuity, flow and motivic integration; including integration, via a beautiful descent from 2nd group material, of the first Wagner quotations, as part of the lead-back). Thielemann’s phrasing in the approach to the 1877 climax was stiff and awkward. Both here and in the finale the gesangsperiode episodes were inflexibly voiced, and never very quiet: this lack of subtlety or delicacy in both dynamics and tonal character, and an awful lot of loud (or very loud) playing made the adagio, too, rather hard for me to bear. My attention really began to drift during it, which certainly wouldn’t happen with a more sensitive interpretation, especially of the 1873 score (where the adagio climax is perhaps a shade too long, but far better built and sustained, and with fascinating motivic weaving-in of the Wagner quotes lost to 1877 or 1889). Thielemann needs to discover his anima, perhaps (which quality Yannick Nézet-Séguin has in delightful abundance in his recording of 1873 with the Métropolitain, and as a conductor generally).

So with the scherzo: superficially exciting, yes, but rather metrically driven. Thielemann doesn’t seem to have the knack of maintaining momentum across a pause, and once you know the terrific syncopations from 1873 you really do miss them. Rhythms are too regularised in this version - and emphatically so tonight. Still, we got to hear the scherzo coda, which some conductors leave out even when performing 1877/78 (which would only be correct if playing the Oeser score).
The autograph says “not to be printed” about this coda, but Nowak (of all the people) reinstated it and its authenticity seems to have remained uncertain, at least in the subjective impressions of certain scholars. So it seems to have become an option. Still, it at least has the merit of surprise value. Brucknerian aleatorics perhaps.

I can see that the Dresdeners' power and sheer volume of sound (at least as produced by Thielemann’s direction) will be thrilling to many, filling the vast RAH or vibrating through your listening chair, but at this point in my listening life I don’t feel that it serves the music especially well. This 1877 finale ( however authenticated, still one of the worst results of misguided, or ill-advised, cuts and truncations) seemed often dominated by scramble and blare tonight, pacy metricality, abrupt gearshifts and those unsung gesangs. The ascent to the final peroration was terribly laboured. Doesn’t matter where you play, trying to make as much noise as possible, however gleamingly, does Bruckner no favours.
Rather tellingly, there was little to distinguish this partnership’s Bruckner from its Mozart: broadly the same tonal, even interpretative, canvas.

Barenboim’s Bruckner, played on the Berlin Staatskapelle, was - all about that bass; Thielemann’s with the Dresdeners’, all about that brass; and given their tendency to harden and force the tone into tuttis and climaxes - not in a good way.

[Tetrachord]

The Viennese love him. Can't see he has the chops for the New Year's Day Concert: that would be hilarious to watch!

No score for him tonight. No idea if Barenboim did for his brace of Bruckner? (Not a competition but would be interested to know.)

But it is pretty risky with all those gear changes and variegated repeats... Nowhere to hide.

Thanks for the comments: honestly, I just don't know the work well enough at all to say anything further myself.

I really can't say whether Thielemann will get the Neujahrskonzert oder nicht. Kleiber did two of them years ago and was ready to "evacuate the hall" if people started clapping during the "Radetzky"!! He had to be assuaged with assurances; "but, Carlos, it's tradition"!! Actually, the only time I can bring myself to watch the Neujahrskonzert is those re-runs of Carlos Kleiber. He had a real feeling for this music - as somebody said, 'he understood its gaiety and the sadness underneath' (a perfect metaphor for the great conductor himself).

[jayne lee wilson]

Just played the 3rd Symphony adagio from Nézet-Séguin's recording of 1873/Nowak (24-bit Bruckner is one of the truest benefits of 21st century life).
So, so lovely. Faith in Brucknerian and musical nature restored. Shaking my head yet again, amazed at the obviousness of its musical superiority to the revisions. Its sheer beauty too, the calmly continuous melodic flow, the episodes of tender question and answer - and this time the climax didn't seem overlong; simply, in proportion to the scale surrounding it.

[richardfinegold]

Haven't got time to write much, but for now: sorry Prommer, slarty and Beefy - I found it a disappointing evening. I was in exactly the same seat in M stalls tonight as last night, allowing direct comparison; and I have to say that on tonight's showing I don't think that the Dresden orchestra is currently in the same league as their Berlin counterpart, ditto Thielemann in relation to Barenboim.

I found the strings and brass shrill and fatiguing tonight. By the end (of the first movement ), I just wanted the brass to shut up... As a brass player, that's never happened to me before. No sense of layering among the strings.

It's as if the sound of the band is built from the top downwards - lots of hard, cold sound at the top, but the double basses almost inaudible. A direct contrast to last night - DB builds the sound from the rich bass layer upwards.

And little sense of structure overall - they made No 3 sound a much worse piece than No 6 (maybe it is...). I couldn't wait for it to be over. Last night, I wanted No 6 to go on and on.

(The Mozart was brighter than last night but... ... And yes, DT lost control on the bend at the start of the tutti lap before the cadenza, and spent the next few corners sideways on the grass and gravel before getting it back on the track...)

Kicking myself I didn't go on Monday night instead of (or as well as) tonight. Wonder how it came across on the radio....

Furtwangler built his interpretations from the ground up. His orchestral color was grounded in the low strings and blossomed from there. DB of course has spent his life as a Conductor emulating Furtwangler . For many years he made a muddle of it. I was listening to a local broadcast of DB conducting the CSO in Bruckner from the 70s and besides rubato that induced seasickness the balances are occasionally askew with the basses and low brass reminding me of a lawn mower.
Otoh I have a Blu Ray of DB leading the Berlin Staatkapelle in Bruckner 4 where everything just sounds so "right". So perhaps it has taken DB a few decades to find his inner Furtwangler .

[Petrushka]

Just played the 3rd Symphony adagio from Nézet-Séguin's recording of 1873/Nowak (24-bit Bruckner is one of the truest benefits of 21st century life).
So, so lovely. Faith in Brucknerian and musical nature restored. Shaking my head yet again, amazed at the obviousness of its musical superiority to the revisions. Its sheer beauty too, the calmly continuous melodic flow, the episodes of tender question and answer - chorus and refrain - and this time the climax didn't seem overlong; simply, in proportion to the scale surrounding it.

JLW: You might be interested to see that a new Nezet-Seguin recording is being released shortly with the Staatskapelle Dresden:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Dclassical&field-keywords=bruckner+3+nezet+seguin

[P. G. Tipps]

There is a huge and very lengthy rhythmic climactic passage shortly after the start of the first version of the symphony which was brutally curtailed in the later versions. It is pure Bruckner, you think the climax is never going to arrive but when it does ... wow! It also sets the stage for the whole symphony to gradually unfold, imv.

After last night I'm still not a huge fan of Thielemann's Bruckner. As others have said Barenboim was rather more convincing, especially in the 4th. You don't need to emphasise or 'force' Bruckner and over-loud brass in this composer of all composers is quite unnecessary and sometimes even off-putting.

Barenboim seems to understand this rather better than Thielemann.