Prom 36: Mahler, Wagner and Webern – 9.08.18

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

19:30
Royal Albert Hall

Anton Webern: Five Pieces for Orchestra, Op. 10
Gustav Mahler: Symphony No 10 – Adagio
Richard Wagner: Die Walküre – Act 1

Anja Kampe Sieglinde
Robert Dean Smith Siegmund
Franz-Josef Selig Hunding
Philharmonia Orchestra
Esa‐Pekka Salonen conductor


The Philharmonia Orchestra and its Principal Conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen take a musical journey from aphorism to epic. Barely six minutes long, Webern's Five Pieces for Orchestra distils expression down to its most concentrated form, every musical gesture carrying infinite weight and colour. By contrast, Wagner's Die Walküre, the second instalment of his monumental Ring cycle, explores musical expansion and amplitude, offering an all-consuming vision of illicit love. At the midpoint is the Adagio from Mahler's 10th Symphony - music that grasps towards eternity and immortality but that was to remain tragically unfinished at the composer's death.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

Something of a bleeding chunks concert, but at least we have the whole of the Webern.
(And the Mahler is at least 100% authentic.)

[Beef Oven!]

That's not my understanding of the term 'bleeding chunks'. Mahler's Adagio was always, and still is, a stand-alone piece. To programme the whole of act one of Die Walkure does not fit the analogy.

And try to check out Tennstedt's LPO CD of Act One of Die Walkure on the LPO label - it's stupendous!

[Bryn]

Something of a bleeding chunks concert, but at least we have the whole of the Webern.
(And the Mahler is at least 100% authentic.)

That's not my understanding of the term 'bleeding chunks'. Mahler's Adagio was always, and still is, a stand-alone piece. To programme the whole of act one of Die Walkure does not fit the analogy.

And try to check out Tennstedt's LPO CD of Act One of Die Walkure on the LPO label - it's stupendous!

Mahler did not finish any of the movements of his 10th, though he did make an orchestrated draft of the first movement. Various composers and musicologists have made performing versions of that first movement, but each is somewhat different due to the very nature of what the Mahler left. There is no 100% authentic version, apart from the manuscript, which is not what gets performed. As to the Webern, that's another can of worms. The published five pieces of Op. 10 hardly scratch the surface of what he wrote in preparation. Radio 3 broadcast many of them back in the early '80s when it offered its rather more than complete Weberm* (the series included arrangements by Webern of other composers' work).

* Five of the additional pieces for orchestra are also included on Disc 2 of the DG Complete Webern (Boulez at the helm).

[jayne lee wilson]

I'd like to hear why Salonen chose to play the Mahler 10th first movement alone, as was once inescapably the case....

Given what we know of Mahler, his life and his music, and the overwhelming power-to-move of the Cooke Performing Version of the Sketch, it seems strange, even retrogressive, to programme it this way again. The 5-movement 10th changes the way one views Mahler's oeuvre, as Cooke says: "There was still plenty of life left in Mahler when death claimed him. The Tenth Symphony reveals that the Ninth had been a phase, like the Sixth, which he had faced and overcome."

I guess you could try to see the first adagio as almost a symphony-in-itself....or maybe EPS just wanted to draw some parallel with the Webern...

[Darkbloom]

Although it must be the one act of the Ring that loses least by being performed on its own, it rarely seems to work, I'm not sure why. The singers tend to go through the motions and it can all feel a bit inhibited. Having heard Salonen's Gurrelieder though I am hoping for the best.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Although it must be the one act of the Ring that loses least by being performed on its own, it rarely seems to work, I'm not sure why. The singers tend to go through the motions and it can all feel a bit inhibited. Having heard Salonen's Gurrelieder though I am hoping for the best.

"Rarely", perhaps, Db (and certainly the Telarc recording with Maazel at al certainly supports what you say) - but Lehmann/Melchior/List/VPO/Walter and the LPO/Tennstedt recording BeefO mentions shows that on those rare occasions it's a fantastic experience.

[BBMmk2]

Something of a bleeding chunks concert, but at least we have the whole of the Webern.
(And the Mahler is at least 100% authentic.)

I don’t know why they just didn’t have the whole of Die Walküre?

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

I don’t know why they just didn’t have the whole of Die Walküre?

Solo fees for Wotan, Brunnhilde, eight of her sisters, and my friend Fricka probably has something to do with it.

[Beef Oven!]

I don’t know why they just didn’t have the whole of Die Walküre?

That's a very big undertaking. I suspect the overriding principle is to have as much affordable excellent repertoire as possible, with the least amount of artistic trade off.

[Serial_Apologist]

That's a very big undertaking. I suspect the overriding principle is to have as much affordable excellent repertoire as possible, with the least amount of artistic trade off.

Though Wagnerites will say that's literally selling Wagner short.

[Beef Oven!]

Though Wagnerites will say that's literally selling Wagner short.

And they would be correct. But it’s beside the point.

[BBMmk2]

That's a very big undertaking. I suspect the overriding principle is to have as much affordable excellent repertoire as possible, with the least amount of artistic trade off.

Very true. Thankfully we have some of it.

[Serial_Apologist]

And they would be correct. But it’s beside the point.

It's on the point about bleeding chunks, raised earlier.

[Darkbloom]

Solo fees for Wotan, Brunnhilde, eight of her sisters, and my friend Fricka probably has something to do with it.

I'm sure the extra rehearsal time is a factor too. Although - given his rapport with the BBCSO - I'd love to see Bychkov tackle it. He demands a lot of rehearsal but he certainly gets results (Elektra, Tristan, Khovanschina).