Prom 51: Strauss, Wagner & Per Nørgård – 20.08.18

[edashtav]

I'm sure a composer as skilled as him intended it to sound exactly as it does, it's not that I have anything against music that's joyful or humorous or lacking in "taste", just that here it strikes me as a catastrophic letdown after everything that precedes it. One's mileage may vary of course. I do think PN is one of the most imaginative composers alive today.

45 years on from its composition, Norgard’s famed Third Symphony has been played at the Proms. I’ve read the mathematical propositions that underpin it and understand the experimental work that went on to judge the maximum multiplicity of counterpoint that aural acuity can absorb, beyond which “all is noise”.

Does it work as music? I do feel that its use of serial scaffolding, and I’m defining that in a non-dodecacaphonic manner, provides a clear sense of direction- when Norgard is not having one of his many hissy episodes during which babies and bath water are equally at risk. Climaxes do build in a satisfying way. However, I did find, under the superb, superficial glitter, that climaxes tended to be followed by ‘back to basics’ motifs and the thought of yet another slow build filled me with dread of boredom.

The work may be listened to at several levels: the lowest is as pretty aural wallpaper, above that as a founding example of the new Norwegian Naïvety, alternatively as the Puritan’s Turangalila Symphony, and finally as a intellectual feast for avant-garde aesthetes.

In the end, I felt it was all smoke, mirrors and jokes : enjoyable but incompletely satisfying. I remain glad that BBC scheduled it and that I’ve caught up with it. I now see Norgard as a fluent, ear-tickler, perhaps , a modern Darius Milhaud. Full marks to the performers! The Proms exists to promote and promulgate such pieces!

[Demetrius]

I wonder how this came over in the hall ? It might be quite well suited, but some reports would be good.

I quite liked it from where I was standing, and most people seemed enthusiastic as well. Dausgard held up the score to intensified applause. Norgard himself was in the hall and received his share as well.

The orchestra seemed oddly disengaged after the performance, quite a difference to the EUYO the day before or the Bergen Phil today. Some of the Cellists especially seemed like they wanted to be anywhere but on that stage.

Didn't show in the performance, though.

I will revisit Norgard, there were a lot of interesting ideas floating around in that symphony. Quite the opposite to the Violin concerto today, which seemed to have only one purpose: showing of the skills of the soloist. Which it did, but I pity the orchestra for suffering through that one. They were reduced to uninspired background noises.

[BBMmk2]

I quite enjoyed this Prom. The Norgard left me somewhat perplexed.

[jayne lee wilson]

It's perhaps worth mentioning that, by the time I heard this live Nørgård 3rd, I'd heard the work 3 or 4 times (complete & excerpted) in recordings during the previous week. The Prom moved me more, much more - but I feel this was because of familiarity, a familiarity that goes beyond mere recognition of tunes and notes and musical events. Its a perception of the whole, how it moves, ebbs and flows, emotionally and musically, very hard to describe but surely familiar to most listeners here. You reach a point where an unfamiliar work just clicks with you, you feel with it and for it more intensely, instinctively.

I first heard the 3rd when I bought the 24/96 Da Capo download c/w No.7 following IRR and Gramophone reviews.
I disliked it so much, I actually deleted the purchased files! Well now I have both disc and download, both works have become a vital part of my listening universe...(if you'd told me, a few years ago, that I would be in tears at the end of No.3 one day, I'd have said laughter (and not Nørgård's Laughter of the Gods) was more likely..
With the Prom performance, the great sweep of the work took hold of me; I arrived at Schubert's Du bist die ruh** with a profound sense of catharsis, I could see where the laughter and the comical dancing fitted into the grander scheme of Singing and Existing, exactly as the Rilke text expresses.
**You are the calm, the gentle peace,
You are the longing, and what stills it...

The symphonies after No.3 are all very distinctive, but often much darker and disruptively violent, delving into dreamlike, fantastical and nightmarish territory...
7 is a sort of surrealist Dance Fantasy; No.8, as its last notes curve ever higher, fading into silence - feels very alien: breathing the air from other planets...
Some of the most original creations of our time (and I think far from the genial symphonies, songs and dances of M. Milhaud, Ed...)

[silvestrione]

, exactly as the Rilke text expresses.
**You are the calm, the gentle peace,
You are the longing, and what stills it...

Ruckert, perhaps?

[Pianorak]

Ruckert, perhaps?

No "perhaps". Friedrich Rückert(1788–1866)

[vinteuil]

.

... but Jayne was referring to the Rilke poem which is in the Symphony, as well as Du bist die Ruh, which she quotes in translation.

The Rilke, I think is from the Orpheus Sonnets -

https://kalliope.org/en/text/rilke2001102346

From the da capo website -


. "The choir meets the orchestra in a musical interpretation of a medieval Marian hymn - until the human voices take over the whole initiative with Rilke's poem Singe die Gärten from the Sonnets to Orpheus (1922). Towards the end it quotes Schubert's Du bist die Ruh, not as a collage, but in a way that makes it seem to emerge from the music's own structure.."


.

[jayne lee wilson]

Thankyou, Vinteuil..yes, and the Rilke sonnet is included bilingually with the recordings....
otherwise.... follow the asterisks, my friends.......

The Rilke is the choral Sing! Exist! in Part Two... Singe, sein, etc.....very emphatic in this live Prom, and the da capo & Chandos recordings...

[Pianorak]

I knew I'd have kept quiet. Thanks Jayne and vinteuil

[edashtav]

Jayne has objected to my classification :

“Some of the most original creations of our time (and I think far from the genial symphonies, songs and dances of M. Milhaud, Ed...)”

I’m going to offer a partial defence.

Here are some qualities that I feel are common to Darius Milhaud and Per Norgard:

Immensely Fluent;
Prolific... to a fault?;
Almost any text is grist to the Mill;
Accessible;
Neither reactionary nor Avant-garde;
In 1939, Milhaud was recognised as France’s leading Composer, the same is true of Nørgård in Norway (2018);
Their music is tuneful;
Neither wears his scholarship on his musical sleeve;
Their music’s decorative quality outweighs its profundity;
(I predict that the status of each will decline over the next fifty years.)
P.S. Don’t misunderstand me, I enjoy listening to their music... it’s good but not great!

[Nick Armstrong]

I knew I'd have kept quiet. Thanks Jayne and vinteuil

[jayne lee wilson]

Jayne has objected to my classification :

“Some of the most original creations of our time (and I think far from the genial symphonies, songs and dances of M. Milhaud, Ed...)”

I’m going to offer a partial defence.

Here are some qualities that I feel are common to Darius Milhaud and Per Norgard:

Immensely Fluent;
Prolific... to a fault?;
Almost any text is grist to the Mill;
Accessible;
Neither reactionary nor Avant-garde;
In 1939, Milhaud was recognised as France’s leading Composer, the same is true of Nørgård in Norway (2018);
Their music is tuneful;
Neither wears his scholarship on his musical sleeve;
Their music’s decorative quality outweighs its profundity;
(I predict that the status of each will decline over the next fifty years.)
P.S. Don’t misunderstand me, I enjoy listening to their music... it’s good but not great!

Much to consider Ed, thank you... but Nørgård "accessible"?

Oh I'd love to think so, but quite a few seem to find the 3rd Symphony a challenge (to say the least), so what about 5 or 6, not mention those Violin Concertos Helle Nacht or Borderlines? And so on...I find them a challenge on every return...

"Avant-garde" is a difficult, slightly worn but unavoidably useful term... but I think many listeners would hear such works as exactly that (even if oddly playful sometimes, the term I would prefer to "decorative" for Per N....

(pleased to see this positive review, though I would expect no less from RW, one of the best around...
http://classicalsource.com/db_contro...w.php?id=15712)

[edashtav]

Much to consider Ed, thank you... but Nørgård "accessible"?

[…]
"Avant-garde" is a difficult, slightly worn but unavoidably useful term... but I think many listeners would hear such works as exactly that (even if oddly playful sometimes, the term I would prefer to "decorative" for Per N....

(pleased to see this positive review, though I would expect no less from RW, one of the best around...
http://classicalsource.com/db_contro...w.php?id=15712)

Whilst I accept that few people describe PN as “accessible” , Jayne, I don’t find folk this side of the Pond rating him as avant-garde. I used decorative as a bit of a dig (and I was thinking of one or two catalogues by DM). I love your ‘playful’, another shared quality which I must adopt for my list... Cheers!

I’ll read the crit. in the morning.

[BBMmk2]

It's perhaps worth mentioning that, by the time I heard this live Nørgård 3rd, I'd heard the work 3 or 4 times (complete & excerpted) in recordings during the previous week. The Prom moved me more, much more - but I feel this was because of familiarity, a familiarity that goes beyond mere recognition of tunes and notes and musical events. Its a perception of the whole, how it moves, ebbs and flows, emotionally and musically, very hard to describe but surely familiar to most listeners here. You reach a point where an unfamiliar work just clicks with you, you feel with it and for it more intensely, instinctively.

I first heard the 3rd when I bought the 24/96 Da Capo download c/w No.7 following IRR and Gramophone reviews.
I disliked it so much, I actually deleted the purchased files! Well now I have both disc and download, both works have become a vital part of my listening universe...(if you'd told me, a few years ago, that I would be in tears at the end of No.3 one day, I'd have said laughter (and not Nørgård's Laughter of the Gods) was more likely..
With the Prom performance, the great sweep of the work took hold of me; I arrived at Schubert's Du bist die ruh** with a profound sense of catharsis, I could see where the laughter and the comical dancing fitted into the grander scheme of Singing and Existing, exactly as the Rilke text expresses.
**You are the calm, the gentle peace,
You are the longing, and what stills it...

The symphonies after No.3 are all very distinctive, but often much darker and disruptively violent, delving into dreamlike, fantastical and nightmarish territory...
7 is a sort of surrealist Dance Fantasy; No.8, as its last notes curve ever higher, fading into silence - feels very alien: breathing the air from other planets...
Some of the most original creations of our time (and I think far from the genial symphonies, songs and dances of M. Milhaud, Ed...)

Thank you for that intuitive post, as usual, making a work witha clearer understanding from this listener, at any rate. MrsBBM liked this work, so I must be missing something rather?

[Richard Barrett]

Whilst I accept that few people describe PN as “accessible” , Jayne, I don’t find folk this side of the Pond rating him as avant-garde.

I think PN moves more gracefully than most composers between a more challenging aesthetic, as in his 5th symphony for example, the mixture of Sibelius and soft minimalism you get in (most of) his 2nd and 3rd, and the more straightforwardly "light" vein of, for example, his various pieces for solo guitar. If you take the opposite ends of this spectrum you're almost looking at two different composers, yet taking his work as a whole the entire spectrum is pretty much filled in. I would have thought his 3rd symphony isn't going to disturb the sensibilities of anyone whose "classical" listening might extend as far as say John Adams. Surely that's what most people would call "accessible" - although that's an adjective I try to stay well clear of, not wishing to give the impression that I think the "accessibility" of such a work is the problem I have with it, which isn't the case at all!