Prom 41 - 15.08.17: Philip Glass and Ravi Shankar

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

22:15 Tuesday 15 August 2017 ON TV
Royal Albert Hall

Philip Glass
Ravi Shankar: Passages (first complete live performance)

Anoushka Shankar sitar
Ravichandra Kulur bansuri
Gaurav Mazumdar sitar
Britten Sinfonia
Karen Kamensek conductor

In the mid-1960s a rising star of Western classical music met the 'Godfather' of the Indian classical tradition. The result was a collision of musical worlds and - some 25 years later - a studio album that combined Glass's American Minimalism with Shankar's sitar and the traditions of Hindustani classical music. A hypnotic flow of sound, blending cello, saxophone and other Western instruments with the glittering pulse of the sitar, Passages is presented here in its first complete live performance. The Britten Sinfonia and Karen Kamensek are joined by Shankar's daughter, sitar virtuoso Anoushka Shankar.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

Does anyone else have a problem with drones?

[Serial_Apologist]

Does anyone else have a problem with drones?

I just shoot them down with my pea-shooter.

[Old Grumpy]

Quite looking forward to this...

... I think

Sounds interesting, at least. I note it is also being recorded for television. Broadcast on 18th August, I believe.

OG

[MrGongGong]

Does anyone else have a problem with drones?

Can't get enough of them
The only problem I have is that the word has come to mean something else

I hear that this is a great album

https://silentrecords.bandcamp.com/album/drone-cinema-film-festival-selected-works-volume-1

Worth going to hear this one methinks
Britten Sinfonia are rather wonderful IMV

[Richard Barrett]

Does anyone else have a problem with drones?

In classical Indian music the drone is a kind of fertile ground from which the music sprouts and grows and to which it eventually returns, and it enables the finest nuances of intonation to be clearly heard. Listening carefully you hear that the construction of the tambura produces a subtly different "shimmer" each time the same string is played. But to hear either of these things means being prepared to concentrate on something other than the features one is generally expected to attend to in Western classical music; it's not difficult to do so but I can imagine that if one doesn't the sound might seem boring and monotonous. And of course there's plenty of Western music from the last half-century which also proposes exactly such a different kind of concentration. I do have a problem with some music that's based on drones, but that's not a problem with drones as such. Having a "problem with drones" is a bit like having a problem with E flat major!

[Pulcinella]

Quite looking forward to this...

... I think

Sounds interesting, at least. I note it is also being recorded for television. Broadcast on 18th May, I believe.

OG

18 August, I think you'll find!

[Old Grumpy]

18 August, I think you'll find!

Oops - can't think where that came from...

... must have been overwhelmed by news of the return of our dear PM

OG

[Richard Barrett]

No, really, this is awful. Ravi Shankar was a great and brilliant musician by any standards, and Philip Glass has produced quite a few interesting things in his time, and one might hope that their collaboration would throw light on possible connections between their respective ways of thinking and doing things, but to me this fails on all counts.

[Serial_Apologist]

No, really, this is awful. Ravi Shankar was a great and brilliant musician by any standards, and Philip Glass has produced quite a few interesting things in his time, and one might hope that their collaboration would throw light on possible connections between their respective ways of thinking and doing things, but to me this fails on all counts.

I'm afraid I've always thought that about the piece.

[Bryn]

I'm afraid I've always thought that about the piece.

I attended last night, having always avoided the project in its CD studio manifestation, i.e. I have never got round to acquiring or listening to it. It lived down to all my expectations. Glad I took in the earlier Prom of the evening, and that I was able to meet up again, after many years, with former member here who went under the pseudonym "Amelie", who attended with here partner, a double bass player.

Fortunately we have Prom 55 on the 25th of this month to look forward to. A pity it is to comprise just 3 45 minute 'sets'. Another all-nighter is very much overdue.

[Old Grumpy]

Doesn't bode well...

... I will be recording the TV transmission and will watch it (or at least some of it perhaps) in due course.

OG

[greenilex]

Enjoying watching the fingering of AS and her band.. but a lot of this is light, trite and forgettable.

[BBMmk2]

O didn't enjoy this Prom at all. Very underwhelmed.

[MrGongGong]

I would have to agree with Richard on this one
Much as I enjoyed seeing many players I have worked with on TV and Anoushka's phenomenal technique I thought the piece (and I only half remembered it from hearing the recording when it came out) didn't really work.

There are fundamental problems with this kind of "fusion", either the orchestra becomes a "backing track" for solo improvisation OR the music is so tightly composed that the Indian musicians are to constrained by the score. The other obvious thing is to do with the nature of the musics, North Indian Classical Music is largely a soloistic practice (even though much of the solo sitar here was doubled by a second player) whereas the ensemble music that it is placed with here is a collective endeavour bringing these together is very difficult indeed. I'm looking forward to asking some of the players what they really thought.

I DO think there are other ways of collaborating with these musics (and have had a few goes myself) but this sounded too much like obvious film music to my ears. There is also the thing about Glass's music after he became famous which for me I really struggle with. What was wonderful (and really connected with parts of the Indian tradition that he and others studied) about his earlier music was that the music was not based on the solo/accompaniment model but on an equality of all the parts. By doing the arpeggios and repeated figured then sticking a "tune" on the top he seems (IMV) to revert to the traditional model that his music was such a break from.