Prom 30 - 7.08.17: Walton – Belshazzar’s Feast

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

19:30 Monday 7 August 2017
Royal Albert Hall

Ludwig van Beethoven: Symphony No 1 in C major
Richard Strauss: Die Frau ohne Schatten – Symphonic Fantasy
Sergei Prokofiev: Seven, They Are Seven
William Walton:Belshazzar's Feast

David Butt Philip tenor
James Rutherford baritone
National Youth Choir of Great Britain
Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra
Kirill Karabits conductor


Gods, demons and mortals do battle in a concert full of musical legends and fairy tales. Prokofiev's revolution-inspired cantata Seven, They Are Seven is played for the first time at the Proms, alongside Walton's choral spectacular Belshazzar's Feast.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

Despite the concert's title, I shall be very interested in the music of the first half.

[BBMmk2]

Despite the concert's title, I shall be very interested in the music of the first half.

All this Prom looks good to me!

[bluestateprommer]

All this Prom looks good to me!

Indeed; it will be interesting to hear Kirill K.'s take on Walton, as something of an 'outsider', so to speak.

[pastoralguy]

Indeed; it will be interesting to hear Kirill K.'s take on Walton, as something of an 'outsider', so to speak.

I discovered that members of the first violin section are not allowed to join in the 'SLAIN!' Moment...

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

I discovered that members of the first violin section are not allowed to join in the 'SLAIN!' Moment...

My favourite version:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ei2jJMarxQY

[bluestateprommer]

LvB 1 just finished; a solid, crisp, no-nonsense interpretation from Kirill K. and the Bournemouth SO, where Martin Handley may just have mentioned the use of valveless trumpets, if my ears didn't deceive me.

Interesting to hear KK now just say that he is treating the Die Frau ohne Schatten work more as a stand-alone tone poem, rather than trying to tie the sequences to the opera.

2nd edit: nice to hear two kids, Lucy and James, from the NYCGB chatting with MH, where one learns that:
(a) James was at the Monteverdi Vespers last week.
(b) They only started rehearsing the Prokofiev last Friday. (No time pressure there.)

[edashtav]

Kirill Karabits is respected on the South Coast for his insights, informed by scholarship as well as his conducting experience, into Beethoven's symphonies. Karabits is a classicist and it was good to see him choosing Beethoven's 1st Symphony in which Beethoven "owns" the tradition handed to him by Haydn and Mozart. I admired the cleanness of articulation in the work's opening movement. It was punchy but not rammed home as a a forebear of musical revolution. Beethoven at 30 was learning the basics from his masters. The second movement was poised and graceful: pre-echoes of the 8th Symphony, perhaps. I liked the respect shown throughout by KK and his trusty BSO band: the work was taken on its own considerable terms and not diminished by being viewed as an apprentice piece or "work in progress". By golly, the third movement was so" in yer face" and the finale had a great sense of uplift and good-humoured joy. A most successful interpretation.

How illuminating it might havebeen to follow it with Prokofiev's own Classical Symphony, the work that prefaced the stormy Revolutionary Cantata to be heard in the second half. I'm afraid that Richard Strauss's Symphony fantasy on Die Frau Ohne Schatten was for me a turn off - time to take Mum's dog for a walk a little more on the wild side. I'll be back for the second half.

[Petrushka]

Could have sworn that Rozhdestvensky performed the Prokofiev Seven, They Are Seven at the Proms with the BBCSO but it's not in the Proms archive and Martin Handley said the present performance is a Proms premiere. Perhaps the Rozh airing was at the RFH? I certainly remember listening to it but haven't heard it since!

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

LvB 1 just finished; a solid, crisp, no-nonsense interpretation from Kirill K. and the Bournemouth SO, where Martin Handley may just have mentioned the use of valveless trumpets, if my ears didn't deceive me.

It sounded harsh, rushed and insincere to me.

[teamsaint]

It sounded harsh, rushed and insincere to me.

Try saying that out loud in the foyer at The Lighthouse ( actually it's probably just " Lighthouse") and see what you'll get for your trouble......

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

Try saying that out loud in the foyer at The Lighthouse ( actually it's probably just " Lighthouse") and see what you'll get for your trouble......

Lighthouse? Which lighthouse do you mean? Most of them are unmanned nowadays.

Anyway - must stop now. It's Belshazzar's Feast!

[Zucchini]

Lighthouse? Which lighthouse do you mean? Most of them are unmanned nowadays.

Didn't Ferrier sing in one to help keep shipping safe when it was foggy?

[Bryn]

Take to the Max!

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Beethoven at 30 was learning the basics from his masters.

The first performance of the work was on 2nd April, 1800, when Beethoven still had another eight-and-a-bit months before he blew out the thirty candles.

"The basics"? Well - which previous Symphony has a "Transition"/"Bridge" section in the Exposition that doesn't modulate to the Dominant (as "the basics" make it obvious it should) and yet has a "retransition" in the Recapitulation that does modulate? Or an Introduction in which the Tonic is made apparent by association - a series of secondary dominants that avoids the Tonic itself, but instead emphasizes the most closely related triads (the Primary Triads and the Relative Minor) so that C major can be the only credible "target"? Or uses the woodwinds so prominently that his contemporaries nicknamed it (not admiringly) the "Harmonien" Symphony? And that's just for starters; right from the "start" (and there are twenty previous published works in addition to several "WOO" works in which the composer demonstrated that he'd learnt all of the basics he needed long before this work) Beethoven regarded the Symphony as a medium of huge public Musical statements. That he was to go much further shouldn't lead to an underestimation of the First Symphony: it is an astonishing, revolutionary work in its own times - putting himself firmly with his masters; far, far, far more than merely "learning the basics" from them.