Prom 47: Elgar, Prokofiev & Venables – 17.08.18

[jayne lee wilson]

Unexpectedly rough day, missed Part One, just about got through the Prokofiev 5th, and though out of sorts mentally and physically I was all-too-aware of the very high level of interpretation and orchestral execution...
I hope to return to it when conditions are more favourable...

(Incidentally, there's a very good discussion of the Karajan Prokofiev 5th in this month's Gramophone, a "Classics Reconsidered" feature with David Gutman and Andrew Mellor...)

[Beef Oven!]

Unexpectedly rough day, missed Part One, just about got through the Prokofiev 5th, and though out of sorts mentally and physically I was all-too-aware of the very high level of interpretation and orchestral execution...
I hope to return to it when conditions are more favourable...

(Incidentally, there's a very good discussion of the Karajan Prokofiev 5th in this month's Gramophone, a "Classics Reconsidered" feature with David Gutman and Andrew Mellor...)

I was always put off of K's P5 by the 'lobby' against it. Ive hade the recording for about 30 years. Im listening to it now. Sounds fabulous. I shall dig up the Gramophone review

[Beef Oven!]

(Incidentally, there's a very good discussion of the Karajan Prokofiev 5th in this month's Gramophone, a "Classics Reconsidered" feature with David Gutman and Andrew Mellor...)

"...... But do you have to be 60 plus to respond favourably to that archetypal Karajan sound"?

[BBMmk2]

What a brilliant Prom last night. From the first note of that wonderful Elgar, to the last of the Prokofiev. I think this season has to be one of the best in years! Very good hearing the new work, by Philip Venables. So different. Has to be the best one, thus far. Although I enjoyed the nw works at the JSB Prom. Certainly the Venables work highlighted what those poor people had to endure during the Uprising. The year of my birth.

[edashtav]

What a brilliant Prom last night. From the first note of that wonderful Elgar, to the last of the Prokofiev. I think this season has to be one of the best in years! Very good hearing the new work, by Philip Venables. So different. Has to be the best one, thus far. Although I enjoyed the nw works at the JSB Prom. Certainly the Venables work highlighted what those poor people had to endure during the Uprising. The year of my birth.

Yes, it was a brilliant Prom, BBM , from a revelatory performance of the Elgar( more anon?) through the strangely effective amalgam of Philip Venables ‘Selfie’ horrorcerto to a punchy and revision reading of Prokofiev’s 5th ( anything but the quote used to marketing the piece: it rejoices in ‘the strength and beauty of the human spirit’.)

[edashtav]

Elgar and Neo-Classicism

I came to tonight’s Prom and the Elgar in the middle of a review of the piece w.r.t. both the composer’s output and the renaissance of English music. I may have to finish this in the morning as there’s today’s washing up to do but I’ll make a Firstly, the performsnce ... yes, a sensible pace, bsp, and accompanied by some gloriously alert and charged playing from the lower strings. Bsp noted that Sakari was a violinist, and so was Elgar. others have observed a flaw in his scoring of the Introduction and Allegro: that Elgar anticipates that the lower strings will be as nimble, as athletic, and as quick on the draw as “his” violins. such virtuosity is displayed by few orchestras, but, ‘Hats off, Guys’, tonight’s performance was the first in my experience where the cello and basses equalled the upper strings for accuracy, punch and velocity. ( I sometimes think that Elgar heard so many works of Bach played by Cathedral Organists with twinkle feet, that he expected bass strings to be as agile.) The introduction to tonight’s performance made much of what Elgar had learned both from Bach’s organ works and JSB’s distillation of the baroque Concerto Grosso but it failed to mention the others two sources that were fused into a satisfying amalgam by Elgar's originality: Welsh and the Borders, nor did it mention that the Introduction & Allegro’s debt to his own In the South Overture. In an all Elgar programme that the composer conducted to celebrate the formation of the LSO and which starred two premieres: the I & A and the 3rd P & C March, I think it was significant that the composer also scheduled his Alassio Overture.

Later today, I want to examine what Elgar published about the genesis of his string piece at the time of those premieres in 1905:

‘Some three years ago, in Cardiganshire, I thought of writing a brilliant piece for string orchestra. On the cliff, between the blue sea and the blue sky thinking out my theme, there came me sound of singing. The songs, too far away to hear distinctly, but one point common to all was impressed upon me, and led me to think, perhaps wrongly, that it was a real Welsh idiom—I mean the fall of a third. Fitting the need of the moment, I made the tune which appears in the introduction (as a link) and in the coda of this work; and so my gaudere became touched with romance. The tune may therefore called, as is the melody in the Overture “In the South”, a canto popolare, but the suggesting country in this case was Wales, and not Italy.

The sketch was forgotten until a short time ago when it was brought to my mind on hearing, far down our valley of the Wye, a song similar to that pleasantly heard on Ynys Lochtyn. The singer of the Wye unknowingly reminded me of my sketch. This I have completed and,- although there may (and hope there is) a Welsh feeling in one theme—to quote Shakespeare, again. "All the water in the Wye cannot wash the Welsh blood out of its body." The work is really a tribute that sweet borderland where I have made my home.’

I shall also take as my text that later, rather enigmatic and cheeky remark of Elgar’s : “I am Folksong.”

The premiere of Introduction and Allegro fell flat, with some critics suggesting that Elgar who conducted the performance was not at his best. Elgar was upset and complained: 'Nothing better for strings has ever been done, and they don't like it!' ( It would have been a handful for the strings of the new LSO, and running it alongside another premiere : the 3rd Pomp and Circumstance may have done the more academic work a disservice.)

I feel that Elgar’s assertion may be a little over the top but it’s not hyperbolic. Furthermore, whilst the work is now well-known and widely loved, I wonder whether its stature and importance in terms of form, scoring, invention, ingenuity, and subtlety are fully recognised?

Informing but not controlling its form are the preludes and fugues of JSB. Had Elgar used rather than reinterpreted a baroque form, the piece’s stature as a progenitor of Neo-classicism. The piece was commissioned for the LSO which gave its premiere in early 1905 but one wonders whether its clear, classical structure was not intended to flatter its dedicatee: Professor Samuel Sanford of Yale University. Elgar visited Yale in June 1905 to receive an honorary doctorate. Incidentally, Elgar conducted his Pomp and Circumstance March no. 1 at Yale. It went down so well that Yale and other American Universities used its big tune Trio at subsequent Graduation Ceremonies. At such occasions it’s called The Graduation March!

Here’s a challenge for you: name the last composer before Elgar to score a work for String Quartet and String Orchestra. [I suspect the answer is Spohr’s Concerto composed 60 years earlier.] Of course, baroque composers used such instrumentation in concerti grossi until about 1750. Beethoven composed a Trio Concerto, and it has been suggested that Spohr was trying to go one better in his Quartet Concerto. Elgar’s scoring was unique for a time but it has been copied, re-invented, many times since. Incidentally, like many concerti grossi, the parts of Elgar’s String Quartet are not always different from their partners in the String band.

To sum up form and scoring: Elgar re-imagined models derived from Bach and the Baroque. He deserves a footnote as a fore-runner of the Neo-Classical movement that started, perhaps, 15 years later. Given its technical difficulties, and to imitate Brahms, Elgar’s work could be subtitled “Academic Festival Concerto Grosso”.

Elgar’s invention. Like Beethoven Elgar used notebooks to jot down ideas that he heard or imagined. He never, as far as I know, went folk song hunting, and he abhorred music that showed its folk song roots on its sleeve. Had he met Arnold Schönberg, Elgar would have cheered when Arnold rejected using folk music material because he felt that its primitive ideas did not respond well to the imposition of techniques that suited a more complicated style of musical thinking. There was a hierarchy of music, and the composer’s task was to distill, refine and sublimate the raw products of ordinary folk. This thought, I believe, informs Elgar when he declared, “I am folk music”. He probably believed his hype in a further way, that his music, e.g. Land of Hope and Glory” had displaced folk music in the hearts of some of his English contemporaries. Now, both Introduction and Allegro and Elgar’s previous work “In the South” are based on folk songs, or similar material. Note how Elgar’s doesn’t admit his sins in his introductory note to I. and A. but covers them with a gloss: “canto popolare”. [‘Back at the farm’, Dr. Ralph Vaughan Williams was busy quoting bleeding chunks of local folk songs in his new Norfolk Rhapsody.].
It’s fascinating to see how sophisticated is and subtle Elgar’s use of his tiny Welsh crib. As he noted, he hoped that all the waters of the Wye cannot wither its Welshness. I doubt whether much Celtic spirit has survived, but it’s difficult to tell, once one has read Elgar’s assertion that it represents a tribute to his “sweet borderland” home. At a time when critics and public were looking for a specific National or English music, Elgar was creating part of it in his head whilst RVW was adding another dimension as he transcribed and used country tunes.

Invention, and the act of creation mattered to Elgar. His music was fusion music, in this case, a fusion of an overheaRd folk-song, baroque forms, contrapuntal techniques and textures with his own means and methods. The product is his product: from his “blue sky thinking’ another piece of instantly identifiable Elgariana emerged.
EPILOGUE
The performance that inspired my thoughts was mightily impressive and full of agile virtuosity across the string band. It threw into sharp relief aspects of this work that had gone unnoticed before. I believe that Introduction and Allegro is masterful and, with its companion, Alassio, show how Elgar might have developed had the piece been better played at its premiere. But, it flopped with the critics, Elgar soon fell out of love with scholarship after an unhappy time as Peyton Professor of Music at Birmingham and the world waited for Stravinsky to unveil radical chic Neo-classicism in 1920.

[Simon B]

...strangely effective amalgam...

A neat encapsulation of the Bartok/Venables work. On paper it sounded like it shouldn't have worked and indeed could well have been rather annoying. However, at least in-the-moment it seemed to command the attention of a large proportion of those of us present. Parts were really rather affecting despite the difficulty of discerning the spoken words at times (whose presence in an orchestral work is usually not a good portent).

The BBCSO were once again on rather good form - they clearly really like Sakari Oramo or are very good at concealing the deep visceral loathing which is generally held to be the default position on conductors from players!

[MrGongGong]

I’ve a feeling there’s been more new works this year than ever before.

About time if you ask me (which you didn't )