Prom 22: A London Symphony – 31.07.18

[teamsaint]

Sorry, missed the Prom, But Ed, the coughing that I hear when I am in the arena seems to come mostly from the seated areas, and I'd assume that most bucket list visitors from abroad are in the Arena . The coughing sounds pretty British (oh all right then , English) to me.......

[Lat-Literal]

How lucky I was to have been at such a great performance of my favourite symphony. It was my first time in London alone in more than eight years. I might have missed the Haydn altogether, having taken a wrong turning and ending up on a massively crowded Brompton Road. That would have been disappointing but not disastrous. As things were, it was a mad dash with various assessments along the way on who might know where the Royal Albert Hall was, mostly accurate with half decent instructions. I had been there before but that was so long ago it could have been in another lifetime. Not an owner of a watch or a mobile phone, I was very surprised to find that I qualified by the skin of my teeth as a very late arrival.

The first part of the concert commenced 15 seconds after I sat down to dry. 104 is pleasant enough. The musicians were vigorous and spritely and I agree that there was a big band feel which I believe extended to the second part of the concert. But more than that, the sound in RVW2 was full bodied. From the opening bars, there was weight in its impact. And it soon became clear to me that this orchestra was determined to show that it isn't really a programmatic piece but rather, as Vaughan Williams intended, one to be heard as "absolute music".

I loved the harp. I loved the brass. I loved the strings. I loved the drums. Although I have heard the symphony so many times, I was especially interested to discover how I would find the third and fourth movements in this setting because I have always believed that the second and the first are the strongest in that order. Well, this was revealed. The sheer number of tunes - all snippets - is considerable. There is also the most wonderful meandering which ebbs and flows to create dramatic tension and paint pictures, often abstract. Oddly, I was reminded not for the first time of Cooke's "Letters from America" in which the start was always fairly clear cut but the onward route and the ending were often less than predictable.

So too the references back which appeared but not in ways or places where you would expect them. I did expect to burst into tears during the second movement as I have often done in the privacy of my home but I just about managed to hold that in. Its immense beauty was sublimely conveyed but it was nuanced in colour and texture and taut rather than over-emotional or overwrought. And in the louder movements, we had grandeur without pomposity as one might hope and not so much majesty as a hint of a militaristic hue among what some would call pastoralism. The long notes were held to wonderful effect. The ending with a silence kept very long before the conductor turned around was "a real moment".

Yes, the audience in a hall which to my mind seems much smaller than it does on television was well behaved. There was, though, a fair amount of coughing which made me smile because it made me think of forum members and their comments. There were a couple of very weird moments from my position in H/Row 3/27 and both were actually towards the end of the second movement. One person - someone standing towards the back - made a lot of strange spluttering/enunciating noises which turned many people's heads. I don't know if that person was ill or overcome. And almost exactly at the same time, there was a momentary technical sound hitch from the stage area. None of this though ruined the enjoyment.

[pilamenon]

Lovely to read such a personalised review, Lat-Literal.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Lovely to read such a personalised review, Lat-Literal.

[gradus]

I thought the Haydn was terrific, splendidly directed and played with real joy but so often a dutiful filler for larger-scale works. I missed the VW and from the ear-witness accounts above, one to catch up on.

[BBMmk2]

I thought the Haydn was terrific, splendidly directed and played with real joy but so often a dutiful filler for larger-scale works. I missed the VW and from the ear-witness accounts above, one to catch up on.

Indeed I will have to catch up on this. MrsBBM likes Manze very much indeed, as do I and we were looking forward to this very much. Then a friend popped round!

[jonfan]

The long silence at the end of the VW was as much a part of the performance as the notes, but this time contributed by the audience in response to a very great performance, something that can never be replicated in a studio. Another similar experience I will never forget was after Mahler 9 with Abbado and the BPO at a prom, this time, like Caliban, I was behind the orchestra. The silence seemed as long as the last movement again.

[antongould]

Lovely to read such a personalised review, Lat-Literal.

Indeed - does anyone know if EdgeleyRob was in the Hall ..... ????

[Nick Armstrong]

this time, like Caliban, I was behind the orchestra. The silence seemed as long as the last movement again.

Magical, wasn't it?

(Not moved enough to have a shout that time, eh jonfan? )

Indeed - does anyone know if EdgeleyRob was in the Hall ..... ????

Well he was planning to be and we were going to meet up, but have had no news for a few days.... Hope Rob's ok.

[jonfan]

[COLOR="#0000FF"]Magical, wasn't it?

(Not moved enough to have a shout that time, eh jonfan? )

No not this time The only time I have shouted out in public was from the choir stalls again. It was after Boulez had conducted Gruppen and The Rite of Spring. I hope you agree Cal there's a good excuse on that occasion.

[Maclintick]

Lovely to read such a personalised review, Lat-Literal.

Yes,many thanks, Lat-Lit -- a performance in which every strand of this multitudinous musical canvas was woven with loving conviction by Andrew Manze and the BBCSSO -- a symphony encompassing the world, in the Mahlerian and Ivesian sense.

Lots of small details emerged last night, which perhaps don't immediately hit one in a recording. The cornets ! Surely an influence from across the channel, I thought, shades of "La Mer", though used to entirely different effect in RVW's mournfully mellow solo in the lento, & never deployed in an orchestral context (AFAIK) by his French "maître de l'orchestration" Maurice Ravel.One remembers that Ravel paid RVW the ultimate compliment of saying that he was the only one of his pupils not to write Ravel-like music. RVW has perhaps less in common with Elgar than Ravel, but maybe the inclusion of cornets also nods in the direction of another evocation of our capital city "Cockaigne" -- a modest tribute to another great West Countryman ?

Other fleeting sensations -- the street-vernacular, Petrushka-like, of the nocturnal scherzo, the anguished dissonances of the finale -- the storm before the calm, or resignation & extinction of that ebbing-away. VW's "London" suddenly seemed quite modern for 1912..

This performance in all likelihood surpassed my first live encounter (LPO/Boult/RFH/ March '72). On a practical level, Manze's orchestral strings were laid out from the left violln 1, violin 2, celli, violas, with the basses behind the celli, whereas in Sir Adrian's the 8 LPO double-basses ranged along the back wall of the RFH stage in front of the choir seats, with violins split antiphonally. Whether this makes a jot of difference I leave to others to comment.

RVW is in safe hands with advocates such as Andrew Manze & Martyn Brabbins -- Oh, and the Haydn "London" was a delight as well...

[Lat-Literal]

Thank you for all the kind comments. I would not have been there had it not been for Caliban's kind steer and some discussion in the days that followed.

A couple of parts of Maclintick's post especially stand out. First, "modern". While the key dates - 1913, 1919-20, 1933, 1936 - all firmly place the symphony in a historical context of war, rumoured and actual , I am always struck by its modernity in a musical sense which is contrary to standard preconceptions. Whatever the classicism and the impressionism, for want of better descriptions, there is also in places what could easily be a very early nod towards minimalism and an inventive ambition in the structures. Secondly the "world in the Mahlerian or Ivesian sense". The definition here might well be "life". Throughout - and most astonishingly in the second movement - any question about the meaning of life is almost redundant as the listener is presented with a "this is what life is". Also to flag up there is a thread about the symphony in which PAB explains the versions along with wider discussion.

I do hope that Rob managed to get to the RAH last night but if you didn't, Rob, I join others in wishing you well and trust that we will hear from you soon.

[Pabmusic]

Some interesting thoughts here, but Maclintick's post got me thinking about the opportunities RVW would have had to hear live music. Obviously, more than most - but that was very much less than anyone has today, or anyone had since the early 1920s. His use of both cornets and trumpets in the London is much more likely to have been inspired by Cockaigne than La Mer - if only because Cockaigne had been more often played in the previous decade and had a similar subject - which fact cannot have ben absent from RVW's mind.

The expectation of anyone before WW1 was surely that they'd hear a particular 'new' work perhaps twice in their lifetimes - three times if they were very fortunate. Music lovers relied on scores and piano arrangements much mire than we do now.

In RVW's case, the London wasn't a commission, and thus didn't even have a guaranteed performance - it was written entirely at the badgering of friends (George Butterworth in particular) who shepherded the composer through the composition. (I think RVW got a little fed up with it too - there's a certain weariness about the way he later wrote about it; imagine GSKB as a sort of enthusiastic puppy.)

On the evening of the first performance, Hubert Parry wrote in his diary that Bob Schuster had sat next to him and told him that parts of the symphony had been written by other young composers. (Schuster was a friend of Butterworth's from Eton.) And there might be something to it, for Arnold Bax seems to have contributed something to the slow mvt; and Butterworth, Bevis Ellis &. Francis Toye 'revised' the entire score before its first performance. But it only got that performance because Ellis funded the concert at which it was played - and Ellis was yet another old-Etonian friend of Butterworth (who had probably suggested including it anyway). After the performance, Butterworth wrote a review for the RCM Magazine in which he spent some time berating the authorities for the fact that there were no plans for a second performance.

I've gone on a bit here, partly because it's not well known but also because it illustrates just how tenuous could be the fate of a new work. I'm really glad the London 'made it', though.

[Bryn]

Some interesting thoughts here, but Maclintick's post got me thinking about the opportunities RVW would have had to hear live music. Obviously, more than most - but that was very much less than anyone has today, or anyone had since the early 1920s. His use of both cornets and trumpets in the London is much more likely to have been inspired by Cockaigne than La Mer - if only because Cockaigne had been more often played in the previous decade and had a similar subject - which fact cannot have ben absent from RVW's mind.

The expectation of anyone before WW1 was surely that they'd hear a particular 'new' work perhaps twice in their lifetimes - three times if they were very fortunate. Music lovers relied on scores and piano arrangements much mire than we do now.

In RVW's case, the London wasn't a commission, and thus didn't even have a guaranteed performance - it was written entirely at the badgering of friends (George Butterworth in particular) who shepherded the composer through the composition. (I think RVW got a little fed up with it too - there's a certain weariness about the way he later wrote about it; imagine GSKB as a sort of enthusiastic puppy.)

On the evening of the first performance, Hubert Parry wrote in his diary that Bob Schuster had sat next to him and told him that parts of the symphony had been written by other young composers. (Schuster was a friend of Butterworth's from Eton.) And there might be something to it, for Arnold Bax seems to have contributed something to the slow mvt; and Butterworth, Bevis Ellis &. Francis Toye 'revised' the entire score before its first performance. But it only got that performance because Ellis funded the concert at which it was played - and Ellis was yet another old-Etonian friend of Butterworth (who had probably suggested including it anyway). After the performance, Butterworth wrote a review for the RCM Magazine in which he spent some time berating the authorities for the fact that there were no plans for a second performance.

I've gone on a bit here, partly because it's not well known but also because it illustrates just how tenuous could be the fate of a new work. I'm really glad the London 'made it', though.

Woth every keystroke. One wonders how much of any contributions from Bax, Butterworth, Beylis Ellis and Francis Toye survived the later revisions?

[Serial_Apologist]

Woth every keystroke. One wonders how much of any contributions from Bax, Butterworth, Beylis Ellis and Francis Toye survived the later revisions?

Yes it would have been nice if RVW had left some pencil indications - like the "Ah! ah! ah!"s Mahler scrawled on the score to his Tenth!