Proms at ... Alexandra Palace – 1.09.18

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

15:00
Alexandra Palace

Sullivan: Prelude to Act IV of ‘The Tempest’
Coleridge-Taylor: ‘Onaway, Awake Beloved’ (Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast)
Cellier: All alone to my eerie … the Love that is Dead (The Mountebanks)
Ethel Smyth: Overture : The Boatswain’s Mate
Sullivan: When I went to the Bar (Iolanthe)
Stanford So it’s kisses you’re craving (Shamus O’Brien)
Parry: The Birds - Introduction, Intermezzo, Bridal March
Sullivan: Trial by Jury

Neal Davies bass (The Learned Judge)
Mary Bevan soprano (The Plaintiff)
Sam Furness tenor (The Defendant)
Ross Ramgobin baritone (Counsel for the Plaintiff)
Keel Watson baritone (Usher)
Edward Price baritone (Foreman)
BBC Singers,
BBC Concert Orchestra,
conductor Jane Glover

The magnificent theatre at Alexandra Palace originally opened in 1875 – the same year that Gilbert and Sullivan’s one-act operetta Trial by Jury was premiered. In this special ‘Proms at …’ event, Jane Glover conducts a concert performance of this Victorian comic masterpiece in the Palace’s theatre as its ambitious new refurbishment reaches completion. A first half of music by Sullivan’s contemporaries explores that favourite G&S theme of love and marriage.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

BBCS

[Pabmusic]

This may be becoming a habit. The music from The Birds is edited by me - it's three movements from the complete suite I produced in 2002, which the BBC CO broadcast with Vernon Handley; Neemi Jarvi and the BBC NOW also recorded it for Chandos.

Here's the Handley recording:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LOVdJqrctac&t=42s

[MrGongGong]

This may be becoming a habit. The music from The Birds is edited by me - it's three movements from the complete suite I produced in 2002, which the BBC CO broadcast with Vernon Handley; Neemi Jarvi and the BBC NOW also recorded it for Chandos.

Here's the Handley recording:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LOVdJqrctac&t=42s

PRS

[mrbouffant]

This may be becoming a habit. The music from The Birds is edited by me - it's three movements from the complete suite I produced in 2002

This is fascinating. Would you be happy to shed some light on what the editing process entailed?

[Pabmusic]

This is fascinating. Would you be happy to shed some light on what the editing process entailed?

Pleasure. In 1991 I wanted to conduct the Bridal March and contacted the Librarian at the RCM. Through that I was able to have access to Parry's original manuscripts. The existing parts of the March had been made for Boult's recording in 1969, but were filled with inconsistencies (small things usually - like notes at the end of a phrase being crotchets in some parts, quavers in others) but also some major things - the precise layout of the closing bars, for instance. There was no sign of the suite of movements that Stanford conducted at the Crystal Palace in 1884. So I decided to produce my own.

It really had to be a suite, because the complete music is not very suitable for performance without the dialogue. There are 22 numbers, five of which are orchestral entr'actes and might stand alone. The Bridal March has a chorus and a long section of melodrama - dialogue and pauses - in the middle. Then there's one song (The Song of the Hoopoe), which is a tour-de-force for counter-tenor, plus a parabasis Parry wrote for the 1903 revival. Everything else is very short dramatic interventions by the Chorus (sometimes no more than 3-4 bars). So I decided to use the orchestral stuff and end with the March, whose central section would have to be cut out (as Boult had done in 1969). The choral parts in the March are decorative rather than substantive, and might easily be omitted.

What I wanted was a suite that might be programmed easily by a large chamber orchestra. I finished it and the RCM told the BBC, who recorded it in 2002. It was published in 2005 (I've since added the Song of the Hoopoe). It's been programmed occasionally - one performance in Hamburg in 2008, for instance.

As to what I did beyond this, it was:

1. Correct obvious errors. Parry's handwriting is not so neat (he wrote very quickly), though it's quite distinctive, and there were many questionable notes, passages written on the wrong stave, etc.

2. Make things like the crotchet/quaver endings consistent.

3. Make structural changes - most obviously to deal with the melodrama in the March, but also to insert two small repeats in short movements, to make a better balance (there was some pencil indication of a similar thing having been done for the 1924 revival - presumaby for scene-changes).

4. Add parts for 2nd flute and 2nd oboe (optional of course, but Handley and Jarvi both included them). And expand the percussion in the March with reference to a 'large-orchestra' version Parry made in the 1880s, the parts to which exist.

I suppose I had in mind the way the standard suites from Carmen and l'Arlesienne had been made.

[mrbouffant]

Thanks Pab - really interesting stuff. Must be a thrill to handle Parry's original manuscripts, knowing the great man had spent much time and effort with them.

[Pabmusic]

Thanks Pab - really interesting stuff. Must be a thrill to handle Parry's original manuscripts, knowing the great man had spent much time and effort with them.

I think he always took on too much. There's a story that he'd return to his office to write a bar or two between lectures!

[Serial_Apologist]

I think he always took on too much. There's a story that he'd return to his office to write a bar or two between lectures!

Not to visit a bar or two between lectures, then!

[Prommer]

Yay! Today's the day... Bump.

[Cockney Sparrow]

Publicity piece in the Today programme on R4 this morning (during last half hour) - Jane Glover on the theatre, etc.

[oddoneout]

BBCS

I must confess my first reaction was 'Really?' We shall see. Sorry to have missed the first half of the concert, which was the bit I was interested in, thanks to a cold deciding that sleep was more important.

[Prommer]

The Usher appears to be American?

[Prommer]

It was very well done - left one wanting more. Perfect tempi from Ms Glover.

[bluestateprommer]

It was very well done - left one wanting more. Perfect tempi from Ms Glover.

Another chance to hear the "Ally Pally" Proms at... concert, on 3 January:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0001vqb