Prom 21 - 30.07.17: Beethoven – Symphony No. 9, ‘Choral’

[edashtav]

Hmm. What we have here is, to my ears at least, no more that an Scrote-inspired mash-up of titbits of works by real composers. I think Peter Schickele does this sort of thing rather better.

Keep it up, Bryn, you deserve a knighthood, or do we call it a JImmyhood, these days?

[edashtav]

I have to admit that I have chosen and performed pieces by Sir Gymnast with my choir but even they were recycled to produce tonight's piece. Such fluency, such a wide knowledge of what has been written since organum was trending, but adding up to bangers and mash.

[HighlandDougie]

I have to admit that I have chosen and performed pieces by Sir Gymnast with my choir but even they were recycled to produce tonight's piece. Such fluency, such a wide knowledge of what has been written since organum was trending, but adding up to bangers and mash.

Eh? I freely admit to being thick as mince but I am completely bemused by this post. No doubt clever, I find it to be incomprehensible. As in, WTF?

[Bryn]

He shouldn't be allowed anywhere near an orchestra, he has no idea what to do with it.

But should we judge him more harshly because we know of the Scrote influence?

Well never mind the declared Scrote influence. If the the philosophical influence identified were that of Quentin Robert de Nameland, the resulting, to put it charitably, eclectic mix, would still be worth as little.

[edashtav]

Are other Boarders finding the interpretation of the first movement of the Choral a touch bland, emphasising legato at the expense of dynamism?

[Bryn]

I was rather hoping for great things from Xian Zhang but I am truly sorry to say she just has not delivered for me, so far. All very pretty, but not the Beethoven of the early 1820s, I feel, too 'polite', for one thing.

[Bryn]

Somewhat OT, tonight I have finally bitten the bullet and ordered the Del Mar edition of the Beethoven Symphonies. The Kingston (Upon Thames, not Hull) Oxfam had a "New" set up for grabs at £70 + £2.80 p&p. I do hope the set matches their description.

[kernelbogey]

Re Beethoven 9: I was on a holiday one year in the Italian Alps with my Dad when I was about 15 - 16 (1961) and had recently become interested in classical music. The only source of music - other than the local village band on a Saturday night - was an AM only radio. I was station-surfing on MW when I fell across the first movement of this symphony, about halfway through: I did not know it well, but well enough to recognise it. Echoing what Jane has said of its revolutionary nature, it seems to me now that I instantly heard that this was not like earlier (and more often broadcast) Beethoven: in the contxt this seemed like music from another sphere of existence, another planet maybe. The reception was full of the pops and whistles you'd expect listening to an AM broadcast in the Alps. At the end, I heard that is was conducted by Casals, and I fancy was a RAI relay from South America. The power of this memory lies in the sense in the first movement particulary of crossing boundaries into the New.

Others have described above the impact on them of particularly fine performances. But our appreciation (or otherwise) is contextual, and this experience was the more powerful because I didn't know the work well, was isolated from my normal sources of music, and found a performance as though coming across a visitor from another world.

On IV - I share some of others' discomfort. The entry of the soloists - 'Oh Freunde nicht diese Toene! - invariably slightly jars (as the composer intended) but I am happy with the choral element. I've always liked the Turkish march.

I wish this had not been chosen as a European anthem: to me that degrades the music in some way, like the ubiquity of Vivaldi's Four Seasons as telephone 'hold' music.

EDIT: Listening to IV tonight, I think the quartet before the coda has never worked for me. But then, I'm not the biggest fan of Fidelio, either.

[edashtav]

I was rather hoping for great things from Xian Zhang but I am truly sorry to say she just has not delivered for me, so far. All very pretty, but not the Beethoven of the early 1820s, I feel, too 'polite', for one thing.

Oh dear, you're so right: "pretty" and "polite". I liked the bass soloist but some of the Choral work sounded stretched to its raw limits.

This is developing into a forgettable Choral.

[Ein Heldenleben]

Trying to remember my first live ninth. I think it was this with Giulini conducting

2 October 1977
Royal Festival Hall, London Philharmonia Orchestra
John McCaw, clarinet
Michael Thompson, horn
Sheila Armstrong, Alfreda Hodgson, Robert Tear, John Shirley-Quirk
Mozart: Sinfonia concertante for winds, K. 297b Beethoven: Symphony No. 9, Choral

What a musician he was ....and what a line up of singers ...

[Bryn]

Well at least she kept the tempo up to the end, and some sterling work by the orchestra members, but ...

[Bryn]

Not specific to this Prom, but why do they keep trying to get us to listen to the Concert Sound option via headphones? I could understand it re. the binaural offerings but I would much prefer to listen to the Concert Sound via decent speakers.

[Bert Coules]

Well at least she kept the tempo up to the end...

Wasn't there a fairly hefty increase in speed for the very final orchestral bars? Or is it written that way?

[EdgeleyRob]

Just finished on TV.
The presenter (Kirsty Wark ? I don't know who she is) loved Jimmy MacMillan's Requiem,it did nothing for me.
I thought the Beethoven 9 quite exciting,I listened to it all Jayne and Pet,seemed to be over in the blink of an eye,was it a quick one?

[Bert Coules]

I do miss the days when announcers refrained from giving us their opinions on what we'd just heard.