Prom 14: Sibelius, Schubert & Zimmermann – 24.07.18

[jayne lee wilson]

Yes, sorry for that confusion..#14now corrected...(and earlier post edited in case I mislead anyone else...!). still if you did switch on early you wouldn't have missed anything...!

[Petrushka]

The different start times to Proms are irritating and confusing. I've only got it wrong once when in the hall and only just made the 7pm start as the conductor came on to the platform. Forgotten when listening on R3 more often. The consistency of a 7.30 start is much to be preferred.

[jayne lee wilson]

ZIMMERMANN ON HIS SYMPHONY IN ONE MOVEMENT (1947-52/rev. 1953) :

"Unlike the traditional form of the symphony, here the so-called thematic material is not exposed from the very start, but the themes only develop in the interplay between the most differing energies from the amorphous state of the musical germ cell, from the apparently chaotic conglomerate of this primordial cell to the organic structure of the whole, in broad arches, oscillating between apoca-lyptic menace and mystical meditation, while passing through all the stages of the musical development process subject to violent dynamic evolutions, until at the end of the work the ‘thematic conclusion’ is drawn, which breaks through in constantly new signs in the course of the symphony, first appearing towards the middle of the work after a crescendo with a long run-up’.

No problem following this one then...

[BBMmk2]

Not bad thus far. Great Wagner. I’ve just completed it for concert band. Sent it off to publishers!

[jayne lee wilson]

Storgards Meistersinger Overture was too leisurely, lush and grand for me; not enough bite or attack (Canellakis has spoiled us)…
All a bit pipe & smoking jackets.

Gorgeous, semantically sensitive Schubert from Elizabeth Watts…
Subtle and sensitive accompaniments from Storgards; then suddenly dramatic, abruptly bleak in the Erlkönig…
Far more enjoyable than I expected!

As expected, I’d need more than one, very first audition of the (revised version) Zimmermann to make much sense of it - somewhat dazzled and confused, but I noted various figures and shapes recurring in different textures and tempi, through which a longer-breathed melody starts to soar toward the shatteringly percussive end.
Most unusual - hard to identify it as “organic” in its unfolding - something else again - and certainly no sign of any classical four-movements-in-one hidden away…(a "true" Symphony in One Movement,then? As opposed to all those four-in-one pretenders...).
Well worth a revisit. Hi-res would help...anyone here know it well?

(HDs balance, or simply Storgards' orchestra, less spectacular than last night, but OK).

[edashtav]

Storgards Meistersinger Overture was too leisurely, lush and grand for me; not enough bite or attack (Canellakis has spoiled us)…
All a bit pipe & smoking jackets.

Gorgeous, semantically sensitive Schubert from Elizabeth Watts…
Subtle and sensitive accompaniments from Storgards; then suddenly dramatic, abruptly bleak in the Erlkönig…
Far more enjoyable than I expected!

As expected, I’d need more than one, very first audition of the (revised version) Zimmermann to make much sense of it - somewhat dazzled and confused, but I noted various figures and shapes recurring in different textures and tempi, through which a longer-breathed melody starts to soar toward the shatteringly percussive end.
Most unusual - hard to identify it as “organic” in its unfolding - something else again - and certainly no sign of any classical four-movements-in-one hidden away…(a "true" Symphony in One Movement,then? As opposed to all those four-in-one pretenders...).
Well worth a revisit. Hi-res would help...anyone here know it well?

(HDs balance, or simply Storgards' orchestra, less spectacular than last night, but OK).

I have little connectivity this evening as I'm relying on a on a tiny 4G phone with a screen that gets my weak eye sight so I shall lean on a good guide, so thank you, Jayne. I loved the overture far more than Jayne,for the same reasons that she quoted as reservations. Were I go see Wagner's manuscripts catch fire, I would fight to rescue this overture.

I am 100% with Jayne on the Schubert songs. great characterisation from Elizabeth Watts and magnificent self
-restraint from Liszt! I loved it.
I was, fired up by the Zimmermann and want to hear it again. Thank you.

I returned from Dinner fortified by a Chilean Red in time for Sibelius's final symphony. I have heard it sadly diminished by the RAH's ample acoustics, but not not tonight : a terrific show from orchestra, its trombone, and conductor. How Sibelius conjures hope from the black loneliness evident a minute before the work ends is miraculous and life-affirmating.

[Richard Barrett]

As expected, I’d need more than one, very first audition of the (revised version) Zimmermann to make much sense of it - somewhat dazzled and confused, but I noted various figures and shapes recurring in different textures and tempi, through which a longer-breathed melody starts to soar toward the shatteringly percussive end. Most unusual - hard to identify it as “organic” in its unfolding - something else again - and certainly no sign of any classical four-movements-in-one hidden away…(a "true" Symphony in One Movement,then? As opposed to all those four-in-one pretenders...).
Well worth a revisit. Hi-res would help...anyone here know it well?

It was my first hearing of the piece too, and after the broadcast I went straight to Qobuz to see what was there, and they have a recording on Capriccio with Karl-Heinz Steffens conducting the Staatsphilharmonie Rheinland-Pfalz in a performance that's so explosively colourful it put the Proms performance in the shade. I felt drawn along by its oblique connections and twists and turns much more than in the broadcast. The Capriccio recording also contains two of BAZ's most important orchestral works, Photoptosis and Stille und Umkehr. It's a shame the Symphony is the only work of his being performed in his centenary year at the Proms. I think it's a beautiful piece of work though.

[Serial_Apologist]

It was my first hearing of the piece too, and after the broadcast I went straight to Qobuz to see what was there, and they have a recording on Capriccio with Karl-Heinz Steffens conducting the Staatsphilharmonie Rheinland-Pfalz in a performance that's so explosively colourful it put the Proms performance in the shade. I felt drawn along by its oblique connections and twists and turns much more than in the broadcast. The Capriccio recording also contains two of BAZ's most important orchestral works, Photoptosis and Stille und Umkehr. It's a shame the Symphony is the only work of his being performed in his centenary year at the Proms. I think it's a beautiful piece of work though.

For me Zimmermann represents a sort of halfway house between the post Mahler-Schoenberg-Berg-Hartmann Germanic lineage of Henze and the initial post-Webern one represented by Stockhausen, sharing more of the eclecticism, including an interest in Third Stream, of Henze, if less of the Romanticism, than the outright back-to-fundamentals pure abstraction of early Karlheinz. I put him high up among Germany's most important composers, but Germany's immediate past weighed even more heavily upon him than it did on Henze and Stockhausen, one may feel. One still living person to talk to about Zimmerman is the German free jazz pianist & pioneeer Alex Schlippenbach, a friend and associate of Evan Parker's. There was one other fellow countryman broadly working within in his stylistic area that I am aware of, though I have not heard any of his music, just read about him, and afaik he has never been broadcast on Radio 3, and that is Giselher Klebe (1925-2009).

[jayne lee wilson]

From the Capriccio booklet, this might help those listening to the Zimmermann on iplayer...

Sinfonie in einem Satz (1947-1952/rev. 1953) ........................................... 14:23
Allegro con brio – Andante sostenuto – Tempo giusto –
Sostenuto – Adagio – Andante – Più mosso – Sostenuto –
Misterioso – Allegro moderato – Più mosso, quasi Tempo di Marcia –
Sostenuto – Andante – Più mosso – Sostenuto –
Più mosso, misterioso molto – Larghetto –
Quasi improvvisando, rubato molto – Vivace – Sostenuto – Adagio – Andante – Allegro moderato – Sostenuto – Adagio – Sostenuto – Allegro con brio

[jayne lee wilson]

PROM 14 PART TWO...

...was even more enjoyable. As a showpiece full of instrumental and pianistic showing-off, The Schubert/Liszt Wanderer was brilliantly dispatched by soloist and orchestra, Lortie in effortless command of its grandeur and its pathos. Storgards tossed his orchestra around with a dashing nonchalance.

Switching styles impressively, his Sibelius 7 seemed at first to emphasise classical qualities: refinement of tone and clarity of balance, slightly soft-grained and dynamically reserved; but this was still extraordinarily beautiful, the tempo transitions seamlessly natural, an unforced inevitability to the flow of its thematic tributaries. But wait - Storgards had been saving the greatest power and intensity for the final crisis, the storm soaring and breaking over us to leave...
...the balm of the motto theme low on the brasses, with a deep and calm resolve.

So, finally, a wonderful, truly great Sibelius 7.

(FINE, UNOBTRUSIVE BALANCE ON HDs.)

[Richard Barrett]

For me Zimmermann represents a sort of halfway house between the post Mahler-Schoenberg-Berg-Hartmann Germanic lineage of Henze and the initial post-Webern one represented by Stockhausen

In fact what he did, I think, is at a certain point around 1960 take a decisive step from one to the other. Listening to the Capriccio CD is quite instructive in this regard - the first two pieces are quite clearly in the stylistic world of Henze and Hartmann, while the last two are recognisably products of the post-1945 avant-garde but don't really sound like anything else (being also influenced by electronic music, to which he himself made a small but significant contribution). For a long time BAZ was principally known for those later works which often involve extensive quotation from both classical and vernacular (in his case jazz) musics, although the earlier ones have come increasingly to the fore in recordings and performances in recent years.

Klebe was a much more conservative composer who remained more or less untouched by postwar musical developments, and his work certainly doesn't come anywhere near the sometimes almost unbearable expressive extremes (see his final work, the Ekklesiastische Aktion, completed five days before his suicide) which BAZ's music increasingly reached in his final ten years.

[silvestrione]

Storgards Meistersinger Overture was too leisurely, lush and grand for me; not enough bite or attack (Canellakis has spoiled us)…
All a bit pipe & smoking jackets.

.

Far, far too harsh a judgement, in my view! Though the opening bars were a bit stodgy, once underway I thought this magnificent...the overture is in fact, like Leonora 3, a symphonic poem. Towards the end I felt a huge yearning for it to break off from the C major assertion, and, as it does, go straight into Act 1 and that lovely chorale...

Anyway, I thought, from listening on radio, the whole concert a delight, and the BBC Phil are lucky to have Storgards...

[jayne lee wilson]

Far, far too harsh a judgement, in my view! Though the opening bars were a bit stodgy, once underway I thought this magnificent...the overture is in fact, like Leonora 3, a symphonic poem. Towards the end I felt a huge yearning for it to break off from the C major assertion, and, as it does, go straight into Act 1 and that lovely chorale...

Anyway, I thought, from listening on radio, the whole concert a delight, and the BBC Phil are lucky to have Storgards...

Glad you enjoyed the Wagner more than I did!
I felt it was a little out of place with the quicksilver, ever-changing moods of the rest of the programme (in prospect & retrospect). Would have been nice to start with Schumann's Manfred, say, or some Mendelssohn. Or Sibelius' Oceanides...
But I think I began the concert with that remarkably clear-cut, colourful and dynamic Canellakis Sound still ringing in my ears, so......all is relative.

Still a great concert though, absolutely...