Prom 69: Boston Symphony Orchestra Bernstein and Shostakovich – 3.09.18

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

19:30
Royal Albert Hall

Leonard Bernstein: Serenade after Plato's 'Symposium'
Dmitri Shostakovich: Symphony No 4 in C minor

Baiba Skride violin
Boston Symphony Orchestra
Andris Nelsons conductor

This second concert by Andris Nelsons and the Boston Symphony Orchestra sets Bernstein’s intensely lyrical Serenade (after Plato’s ‘Symposium’) for solo violin and orchestra – a work composed for Isaac Stern and performed here by the prize-winning Latvian violinist Baiba Skride – alongside Shostakovich’s uncompromising Fourth Symphony. This dazzling musical manifesto of the composer’s modernist beliefs was withdrawn under duress before its scheduled 1936 premiere and wasn’t heard publicly until 25 years later.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

I had a book on musical appreciation, given to me in the 1960s. It says that Shostakovich 4 was destroyed by the composer. Maybe there's still hope for Sib. 8.

[jayne lee wilson]

Excellent Gramophone 08/18 Collection survey by David Gutman on the lovable Bernstein Serenade.... top choice was Hilary Hahn (her very first orchestral release aged 18, with Baltimore SO/Zinman c/w the Beethoven Violin Concerto, and pretty miraculous it all is)...

Otherwise we had Stern/Symphony of the Air/LB, Kremer/LSO/LB (DVD), and the truly gorgeous live 2017 one from Liza Ferschtman/Het Gelders Orkest/Vasquez. (The "Where we are now" choice!)..
I can't choose between Hahn and Ferschtman, but the Gelders Orkest win me over with their chamber-orchestral sensitivity... and I still have a very soft spot for the NYPO stereo one with Francescatti/LB...

Baiba Skride's own recording (with Gothenburg SO/Rouvali), much praised by Gutman, is....just out.

[Pianoman]

I agree with him 100 percent - I have Bernstein / Kremer, Guzman, Mutter/ Previn, but the Hahn is in a different league to my ears, intonation, phrasing, panache where required, all in all, the ideal !

[verismissimo]

My annual prom! Loved Nelsons with the CBSO …

Serenade new to me. Shost 4 first time in the flesh. Altogether intriguing.

[Pulcinella]

My annual prom! Loved Nelsons with the CBSO …

Serenade new to me. Shost 4 first time in the flesh. Altogether intriguing.

Very much looking forward to this.
I've mentioned elsewhere that I got to know the Serenade as it was coupled on LP with Copland's Organ Symphony, which I heard Power Biggs play in Liverpool in 1968. I was immediately hooked; that LP became a firm favourite and was nearly worn out. It had a very distinctive cover:

https://www.discogs.com/Leonard-Bernstein-Copland-E-Power-Biggs-Zino-Francescatti-New-York-Philharmonic-Organ-Symphony-Seren/master/965020

Any thoughts on a 'best' (in the BaL sense) recording of DSCH 4?
I have Barshai, Haitink, Jansons, and Rattle, as well as the BBC MM Sinaisky.

[jayne lee wilson]

Very much looking forward to this.
I've mentioned elsewhere that I got to know the Serenade as it was coupled on LP with Copland's Organ Symphony, which I heard Power Biggs play in Liverpool in 1968. I was immediately hooked; that LP became a firm favourite and was nearly worn out. It had a very distinctive cover:

https://www.discogs.com/Leonard-Bernstein-Copland-E-Power-Biggs-Zino-Francescatti-New-York-Philharmonic-Organ-Symphony-Seren/master/965020

Any thoughts on a 'best' (in the BaL sense) recording of DSCH 4?
I have Barshai, Haitink, Jansons, and Rattle, as well as the BBC MM Sinaisky.

"The impossible takes a little longer"...

I'd hate to do a BaL on DSCH 4. What music to face up to, day in day out....?!
I've heard a fair few, live and recorded, but always go back to....KK, Kondrashin, who else? I got to know the work with the 1962 mono LP, but once remastered into the stereo version** (Moscow Phil, Aulos, Melodiya) it was in the beginning was the word, and the word was made sound....

Probably Rozh otherwise, haven't heard it for far longer though...or that 1971 RCAO KK in the big live box on the shelf here... anyone any comparative thoughts on that one...?

(** "respect" to the mono '63 Staatskapelle, just prefer - need - a Russia orchestra, as always...)

[bluestateprommer]

Very fine reading of LB's Serenade c/o the "Latvian invasion", with an American musical army from New England in support. Interesting to see that this is only the 2nd-ever Proms performance, as the previous performance was 17 years ago.

[jayne lee wilson]

Impeccably lovely, lively Bernstein Serenade with Skride's Strad matched by the Bostonians' wonderful strings for beauty of tone and agility of expression. Deft duos between Skride and the Boston cello and swingin' bass principals.

Pretty hard to fault even after all the wonderful recordings I've listened to recently (Ferschtman, Hahn, Francescatti...)... there's probably another to add to the top list now! For Later...

Beautiful HDs balance tonight, as good as anything this season.

[BBMmk2]

Indeed, JLW! Amazing standard of playing this orchestra has. I’m dumbfounded by their sheer musicality!

[edashtav]

Indeed, JLW! Amazing standard of playing this orchestra has. I’m dumbfounded by their sheer musicality!

I’ve been trying,and failing, to appreciate Bernstein’s Serenade for fifty years. Tonight’s performance was splendid with soloist, orchestra,conductor and BBC engineers on top of their game. But... once again, the Serenade’s uncertain, mongrel qualities dominated my thoughts: poor structure, too heavy to be a Serenade, insufficient concerto moments to make it a satisfactory vehicle for its soloist, and its obvious debt to forebears such as Paul and Bela vitiate the work’s integrity.

[bluestateprommer]

Amazing standard of playing this orchestra has. I’m dumbfounded by their sheer musicality!

Well said, and the Boston SO certainly showed it just now with their DSCH 4. One of the musicians said to Andrew McGregor that this was new repertoire for him. I wonder how much this is the case with the other musicians in the orchestra.

If any of you folks there feel inspired to cross the Channel to try to catch the last of their tour:
(a) Saturday 15 September, Philharmonie de Paris: Mahler 3
(b) Sunday 16 September, Philharmonie de Paris: LB Serenade & DSCH 4
(c) Monday 17 September, Concertgebouw: LB Serenade & DSCH 4

[Maclintick]

Indeed, JLW! Amazing standard of playing this orchestra has. I’m dumbfounded by their sheer musicality!

Agreed -- beautiful standard of playing -- but why is this DSCH4 boring me ? Little sense of irony or rusticity in
the parodic sections -- a lack of, for want of a less polite term, dirtiness, or a sense of hopelessness... everything wondrously-tuned & harmonious, even the devastating brass outbursts in the coda..Probably just me..

[edashtav]

Well said, and the Boston SO certainly showed it just now with their DSCH 4. One of the musicians said to Andrew McGregor that this was new repertoire for him. I wonder how much this is the case with the other musicians in the orchestra.
[…]

Wonderfully played and interpreted with panache, yet care for structure, by Nelsons, but despite all their efforts, I still felt dissatisfied by the the work as a whole whilst still admiring its striking features and pages. Shostakovich’s symphonies divide themselves into two groups in my mind:

A. #1,5,6,8,9,10,11,13,14 and 15... well loved and respected;
B. #2,3,4,7 and 12 ... leave me unsatisfied and critical.

However, no 4 played by a crack ensemble on song is just the stuff the Proms should schedule.

[jayne lee wilson]

You've a stronger soul than mine, if you can find an coherent comment on an experience like that...

But I found the DSCH 4 almost too disturbingly malevolent tonight - despite those bittersweet episodes of pathos lying deep within its Constructivist sound-sculptures, which seem to continuously fragment and reform within a bleak, dark kaleidoscope....

What a terrible weight of personal and political history this symphony bears witness to. That it lay unknown in a bottom drawer for nearly thirty years seems an essential part of its identity, its meaning, and its message. If only it seemed less relevant to the political and cultural moment we find ourselves in now...