Prom 16 - 26.07.17: Mussorgsky – Pictures at an Exhibition

[cloughie]

Many knockers, but Ravel did rather a good job of orchestrating Mussourgsky, as indeed did Rimsky-Korsakov, and indeed Shostakovich!

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Many knockers

That would be much more of a "gimmick" than playing it from memory.

but Ravel did rather a good job of orchestrating Mussourgsky, as indeed did Rimsky-Korsakov, and indeed Shostakovich!

Musorgsky's is so much better. (And Ravel's is undergraduate standard, anyway.)

[cloughie]

And Ravel's is undergraduate standard, anyway.

...and you could do much better!

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

...and you could do much better!

Most postgraduates could do as "well" - more to the point, Ravel could have done much better. The only excuse for this slapdash affair that he came up with is that he knew that any orchestration of Musorgsky's original was such a daft idea that he deliberately sabotaged the commission with a naff arrangement (about as ham-fisted as Hartmann's originals) in the expectation that it would never get performed.

[Bryn]

Well during tomorrow's Essential Classics we have the opportunity to hear Steven Osborne's recording of the real thing, the composer's orchestration for piano solo.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Well during tomorrow's Essential Classics we have the opportunity to hear Steven Osborne's recording of the real thing, the composer's orchestration for piano solo.

Like Lagavulin without the added Cola.

[cloughie]

U

Most postgraduates could do as "well" - more to the point, Ravel could have done much better. The only excuse for this slapdash affair that he came up with is that he knew that any orchestration of Musorgsky's original was such a daft idea that he deliberately sabotaged the commission with a naff arrangement (about as ham-fisted as Hartmann's originals) in the expectation that it would never get performed.

Whatever, I'm just a pleb who enjoys the listen!

[cloughie]

Like Lagavulin without the added Cola.

Or maybe t'other way about!

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Whatever, I'm just a pleb who enjoys the listen!

Now then! Nowt plebby or snobby about what we do/n't enjoy - life's too short and with enough dung to add such considerations to the mix.

Or maybe t'other way about!

Beast!

[teamsaint]

Well this has all got me well and truly in the mood for the concert........ who needs Clemmie or Suzy Klein on gush overload when you have the FOR3 forum ?

[Tony Halstead]

There was a critic who wrote for the Scotsman newspaper who always insisted on spelling the great composer's name Chaikovsky. Mind you, the same critic described his music as 'mindless pap' when it featured in the SNO's summer Proms season! (This appeared to be a generic term since the description also applied to music by Mozart, Beethoven and Sibelius!)

I've forgotten the critic's name...

Conrad Wilson?
Or
Malcolm Rayment (of blessed memory!)

How about this for a 'factoid'..?
During the period 1967 to 1970, when I lived and worked in Glasgow, I was Malcolm's 'assistant music critic' at the Glasgow Herald!

[Serial_Apologist]

I must be one of the few regulars here who really loves the Ravel orchestration. There again, I have the 1928 Koussevitsky version, recorded with Ravel in the studio. Maybe he had some say in how it was to be performed: the slow section on that recording, in particular, (just before the final "wind up" to the grand recap of the Gate is announced pensively in the minor), with the brass chords in alternating major and minor before fading ghostlily, is one of the most magic moments in all music, for me.

[jayne lee wilson]

(It would be nice, and very unusual, if those who describe Ravel's orchestration as "naff" or "slapdash" offered some picture-and-verse as to how they would modify it...)

When I still hadn't heard it so often that I could no longer listen to it, Mussorgsky orch. Ravel was one of my earliest, most persistent and intense experiences of sheer classical orchestral joy.
But nothing can touch it now. It has become a mythical orchestral beast, an indestructible archetype of instrumental power, colour and beauty.
Moussorgsky orch Ravel... Mussorgsky orch Ravel... Musorgsky orch Ravel.....
It orbits about the repertoire like an 8th (musical) or 10th (circumstellar) Planet.

(Jayne stops writing to capture an impressively sized Stag Beetle scuttling across the lounge carpet and return it to the kitchen yard/rockery. Typical MidSummerNight scenario. Lucky the Cat didn't see it. No, the Cat isn't called Lucky.)

Naive youthful enthusiasm? Perhaps..... still, I remain receptive to instruction as to the demerits of this realisation.
...And grateful lt to its critics for having inspired my enthusiasm to re-attend, at Prom 16. It helps me decide upon whether to bother, beyond the interval. (***)

(***) No disrespect to the fascinating Liszt Poems which I had ignored until the advent of the splendid Chandos/Noseda series... but (especially in a week full of Intriguing Part Ones and...Pop-Classic-Warhorse Part Twos) it can seem disorientingly anti-climactic to switch off some time after 2100 hrs, before the supposed culmination of the program. Always seems too late for one thing and too early for the other.

[P. G. Tipps]

I've often been intrigued at the reactionary opinions of some music scholars/critics. It is as if every piece with a decent tune or exciting passage is somehow considered unworthy.

Just about every work that first caught my curious ear as a youth I've seen well and truly 'dissed' by critics. Rimsky's Scheherazade Suite, Tchaikovsky's Fourth, Ravel's Bolero, Dukas's Sorcerer's Apprentice, you name it I loved it but was then told the music is not worth listening to.

I still love them all and I think Ravel's Mussorgsky is also a super 'listen'. I think those experts/critics must simply try a bit harder!

[cloughie]

I must be one of the few regulars here who really loves the Ravel orchestration. There again, I have the 1928 Koussevitsky version, recorded with Ravel in the studio. Maybe he had some say in how it was to be performed: the slow section on that recording, in particular, (just before the final "wind up" to the grand recap of the Gate is announced pensively in the minor), with the brass chords in alternating major and minor before fading ghostlily, is one of the most magic moments in all music, for me.

I was beginning to think that I was the only one over the age of ten who couldn't produce an orchestration better than Ravel's!