JW's traversal of The Planets just finished. In another thread, someone applied the phrase "often dullish" to Sir Andrew Davis. I would actually apply that phrase more to John Wilson here (and elsewhere I've heard him with symphonic works, away from his more historical popular music fare with his own orchestra). Here, we got the notes and the suite fairly straight up, but honestly with very little in the way of personality - except at the very, very end, with the longest repeating fade-out of "Neptune, the Mystic' that I've ever heard with the work, live or Memorex. Kate Molleson said that the young ladies in the choir were hidden behind the organ loft, and I wonder if they were instructed to walk away from the hall and keep singing for as long as they could. Granted, The Planets is a sure-fire crowd-pleaser, and it would take a really bad conductor to screw it up. JW didn't screw it up, but neither did he illuminate anything new, at least for me (except, again, at the very close). Susanna Malkki at the her 2015 Proms Planets performance had much more personality and fire (perhaps a bit too much of the latter, speed-wise, in 'Mars'), and Edward Gardner guided the NYOGB with more gusto last year. For whatever reason, the orchestral sound of the BBC SSO here struck me as rather dry, certainly compared to the BBC SO and Sir Andrew last night, but in comparison with just about everything else so far on iPlayer this season (not least the Staatskapelle Berlin).
(Granted, part of my animus may have to do with a past cheap jibe by JW about William Glock, as JW seems to have fallen for the false image of Glock as "force feeding awful, dissonant, ultra-modern music on unwilling audiences" as Proms Controller, without actually looking at the Proms Archive during the Glock years to read what Glock actually programmed during his controllership. For example, during each year of Glock's term, The Planets was featured. Actually, as the years went by, the first halves of the "Planets Proms" got more imaginative. fhg might appreciate that in the 1965 "Planets Prom" featured the Proms premiere of Michael Tippett's Piano Concerto. There are also works by Hugh Wood, Elisabeth Lutyens, and Iain Hamilton, among others.)
BTW, the interval feature with Kate Kennedy and Tony Palmer, and Martin Handley as emcee, is excellent, IMHO, well worth a listen / re-listen.
(Granted, part of my animus may have to do with a past cheap jibe by JW about William Glock, as JW seems to have fallen for the false image of Glock as "force feeding awful, dissonant, ultra-modern music on unwilling audiences" as Proms Controller, without actually looking at the Proms Archive during the Glock years to read what Glock actually programmed during his controllership. For example, during each year of Glock's term, The Planets was featured. Actually, as the years went by, the first halves of the "Planets Proms" got more imaginative. fhg might appreciate that in the 1965 "Planets Prom" featured the Proms premiere of Michael Tippett's Piano Concerto. There are also works by Hugh Wood, Elisabeth Lutyens, and Iain Hamilton, among others.)
BTW, the interval feature with Kate Kennedy and Tony Palmer, and Martin Handley as emcee, is excellent, IMHO, well worth a listen / re-listen.
. In acoustic terms, a lot of reverberation or resonance (i.e low sound absorption). Think of some of those close-up Cleveland/Szell recordings, where dynamic range and hall echo is restricted, but the orchestral sound is attractively warm and vibrant. 
Comment