Prom 18 - 28.07.17: Sirens and Scheherazade

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

19:30 Friday 28 July 2017
Royal Albert Hall

Erich Wolfgang Korngold: The Sea Hawk – overture
Anders Hillborg: Sirens UK première
Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov: Scheherazade

Hannah Holgersson soprano
Ida Falk Winland soprano
BBC Symphony Chorus
BBC Symphony Orchestra
James Gaffigan conductor


James Gaffigan and the BBC Symphony Orchestra take you on a maritime journey from the exotic oceans of Rimsky-Korsakov's Scheherazade to the siren-filled waters of Homer's Odyssey as imagined by Swedish composer Anders Hillborg - with two Swedish sopranos and the BBC Symphony Chorus - and the stormy seas of Korngold's stirring film score for The Sea Hawk.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

I wished they'd programmed Korngold's King's Row overture, rather than The Sea Hawk to complement the Star Wars opening played last Thursday.

[EnemyoftheStoat]

It would be appropriate if the audience were offered a choice of having their ears blocked with beeswax or being tied to their chairs.

[jayne lee wilson]

Hillborg's Sirens is a wonderfully evocative, sensuous piece, which I hope inhabits the spacious hall with its own haunting atmospheres... Part of this stunning Hillborg album....
Detailed note...

http://www.eclassical.com/shop/17115/art53/4964753-e68294-BIS-2114_booklet.pdf

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Hillborg's Sirens is a wonderfully evocative, sensuous piece, which I hope inhabits the spacious hall with its own haunting atmospheres... Part of this stunning Hillborg album....
Detailed note...
http://www.eclassical.com/shop/17115...14_booklet.pdf

The Hillborg will probably be the most interesting piece on the programme - there was a mini-chat on his work back in May when it featured on H&N - I'll copy that to this Thread starting with what I said back then:

Anders Hillborg (b1954) has featured at the Proms a couple of times (Sakari Oramo presented Beast Sampler with the BBCSO in 2015, and Cold Heat was performed by Zinman and the Zurich Tonnhalle in 2011). I first heard his Liquid Marble at the Huddersfield CMF about twenty years ago - a sort of melding of Sibelius harmonic overlapping and Lutoslawskian textures (for some reason it kept reminding me of Riisager). The sort of thing that would appeal to large orchestras wanting to present quickly-assimilated and large-audience-friendly "contemporary Music" that doesn't take up too much time at the beginning of a concert.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

jlw then posted:

Anders Hillborg's Eleven Gates is a great piece! Wide-ranging in its humour, imagined worlds and haunting atmospheres. You can read the detailed booklet notes here....(hit "album booklet")...

http://www.eclassical.com/composers/...ven-gates.html

I think this album (I especially love King Tide - a kind of 13-minute minimalist crescendo with an overwhelming climax) and the beautiful Sirens, also on BIS (a 32-minute choral/orchestral poem with texts from Homer), are the best things he's done..

HIllborg likes to describe the orchestra as a "sound animal" and the ear is often drawn to the sounds of the natural world evoked within his music, the sea most of all. In fact the title Beast Sampler refers to the orchestra itself...

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

To which I replied:

Many thanks for that - and the work itself can be heard by anyone who doesn't know it via youTube:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LMvn_33i9AE

For myself, I don't dislike Hillborg's Music,; indeed, I quite enjoy it in a passive sort-of way; ie without ever feeling any need to invest in recordings or any great excitement to investigate it much further. Having said that, I don't know either King Tide or Sirens, so I need to set aside a youTube session for the former:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mod3GjYcRZ4

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Prompting this response from Serial Apologist:

Thanks, too!

It's funny, and probably just me, but when the romantic gestures are brought into the previously alien landscape, however blendingly, they seem somehow like an interloper, and I'm missing the singable melodies that would substitute for whatever interesting directions one feels Ligeti or Takemitsu might have taken the music.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

I've done that awkward copy/quoting thing as a simple "Copy to Thread" editing would make the posts appear before Alpie's OT. Anyway, here's Esa-Pekka Salonen on the new work:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l42wOaBrjr0

[greenilex]

There is a Family Workshop this evening before the Prom. Maybe aimed at a slightly older age-group than the one before Prom 3?

Anyway, should be worthwhile if the first was anything to go by. The teacher, whose name I still don't know, was excellent.

[oddoneout]

maritime journey from the exotic oceans of Rimsky-Korsakov's Scheherazade to the siren-filled waters of Homer's Odyssey as imagined by Swedish composer Anders Hillborg - with two Swedish sopranos and the BBC Symphony Chorus - and the stormy seas of Korngold's stirring film score for The Sea Hawk.

If played in the order listed then the journey doesn't start with the exotic oceans....Does anyone at the Beeb read what has been written before putting the blurbs on the web?

[jayne lee wilson]

Wow...! The SeaHawk was an unexpected treat wasn't it?
Gorgeous playing from Gaffigan's BBC SO Glossy Hollywood Band...!
(10/10 for CS sound on that one...)

[BBMmk2]

Another Prom catch up for me. I am watching last Monday's Prom on BBC4 this evening.

[jayne lee wilson]

Hillborg's Sirens was wonderfully well done, almost as lustrously beautiful, spacious and atmospheric as the hi-res BIS recording itself. Perhaps the sopranos were a little close (more aptly, ethereally balanced on the recording) but this wasn't a great problem in a finely-balanced, very spacious and dynamic CS webcast. I love the way the high chorus and upper strings dissolve into each other just before the end, like sky and sea blending indistinguishably at the horizon....

Marvellous boldly-projected performance of a seductively beautiful piece, whose spectralist-minimalist driftings, pulsations and atmospherics are very much to my taste. One that often seems to do so little, yet says so much. (To unstopped ears, at least...)

(More from me later, perhaps...but best half-Prom of the season so far)

(If I could choose.... Part Two tonight? The Sea by Skalkottas ...scarcely less catchy than the Rimsky and a lot saltier!)

[EnemyoftheStoat]

Hillborg's Sirens was wonderfully well done, almost as lustrously beautiful, spacious and atmospheric as the hi-res BIS recording itself. Perhaps the sopranos were a little close (more aptly, ethereally balanced on the recording) but this wasn't a great problem in a finely-balanced, very spacious and dynamic CS webcast. I love the way the high chorus and upper strings dissolve into each other just before the end, like sky and sea blending indistinguishably at the horizon....

Marvellous boldly-projected performance of a seductively beautiful piece, whose spectralist-minimalist driftings, pulsations and atmospherics are very much to my taste. One that often seems to do so little, yet says so much. (To unstopped ears, at least...)

(More from me later, perhaps...but best half-Prom of the season so far)

(If I could choose.... Part Two tonight? The Sea by Skalkottas ...scarcely less catchy than the Rimsky and a lot saltier!)

Now that would have persuaded me to stay for part 2. Or what about The Return of Ulysses? That must be due a performance. Though a bit chewy.