Prom 68: Wagner Night - 9.09.19

[Simon B]

Incandescent brass in the Wagner! The trumpets reminded me of the Pittsburgh players, all so gorgeously phrased and blended. Horns and trombones likewise. I’d be hard pressed to remember better brass playing this season.

I'm not much of a betting man. If I were, I'd not have put much money on "I'll spend the whole season mainly thinking 'pfffffff...' until the doughty old RPO finally turn up" as an outcome*. Such is the business of picking good concerts other than retrospectively. It's a bit like putting money on horses or trying to stack water. Expensive, time-consuming, frustrating, prone to constant failure...

*An exception is made for the Haitink/VPO but in many ways that seemed to stand apart from the rest of the season - like a reminder of how Proms used to be 10-15 years ago on a fairly regular basis.

Other than that, it was on the 15th and final attempt for 2019 that something finally hit the spot square-on for this attendee. Heartening to hear the RPO on such good form, particularly the resplendent brass section. It must require a lot of versatility to segue from "Your 101 Favourite Slushy Movie Themes" to "Your 101 Favourite Slashy Movie Themes" to "Your 101 Favourite Orchestral Bits, All Safely Shorter Than 3 Minutes" to this, but they had it in them.

There was a moment where things went askew for a few bars in one of the bits where two sections of Gotterdammerung normally separated by 90 minutes had been mashed together. Maybe the inherently jarring nature of this is why nobody much seemed to notice. Except, that is, for Albrecht giving the "NNNNNOOOOOOO!!!!!!!" gesture to the obviously adrift heavy brass and frantically cueing somewhere in the middle of the orchestra to no effect other than tense silence. It didn't matter much other than briefly unsettling things just prior to the soloist's first phrase in the immolation scene.

Sticking microphones two inches from this kind of singing rarely goes well IMO, and the near-outdoor acoustic of the RAH was less flattering to Christine Goerke's voice at the moments of greatest pressure than that of the Usher Hall had been a few weeks ago for the complete opera but heard in the flesh it all made quite an impact.

If only the stage could have gone up in a wall of flames as per last year's production at the ROH... The RPO might have not been happy to have to dress in firefighters' suits but on reflection it can't be as bad as some of the gigs they have to do for £££...

Definitely a case of: Finally, some oomph.

[jayne lee wilson]

"Pfff" to the season, Si?
But what about - the Dresden Staatskapelle/Chung Brahms 2, the KPO Bremen/ Beethoven 7, the BBCSO/Oramo Sibelius 5....? These were all topnotch for me (audibly finer orchestras than the RPO to my ears, enjoyable though they were), on a musical par with that uniquely poignant, leb'wohl Haitink Bruckner 7....(and very positively received here... see threads...)...

All in the last week alone, and highest hopes for the Czech Phil/Bychkov DSCH 8 tonight!

That intriguing Bach interspersed-suite sequence tomorrow looks unusually interesting too....
(All comments as a home listener here, as per usual...)

[Simon B]

"Pfff" to the season, Si?)

Well, to an extent I was being facetious for amusement - maybe only my own! My aside above excepting the Haitink/VPO probably got lost in the welter of verbiage - it was a privilege to be there.

Some of it is a question of personal taste - and to my regret I find that mine is narrowing with time. It struck me that one reason I found last night so involving was the relative lack of high/ultra-romanticism hitherto this year. Haitink aside, up to this point the two Korngold items in the John Wilson Prom, particularly the remarkable "Constant Nymph" excerpt had been among the pick of the purple passages.

Other than that it was all odds and ends personally. The BBC Phil Shostakovich 11 would have been a highlight but for its trashing by the infuriating conduct of other audience members in my vicinity - an abiding theme. I also found their Swan Lake quite involving but the first half was a limp rendering of a promising programme. The all-too-brief Rosenkavalier "suite" from the BRSO was beautifully played but an insubstantial trifle, ending a programme that started with very unidiomatic Sibelius IMO. So it goes on - all adding up to too much Dim Sum, bits and bobs here and there.

The Oramo/BBCSO Sibelius 5 was ok so far as it went, but wasn't the kind of revelatory experience hoped for based on the Kullervo from the same forces a few seasons back. Similarly the recent Tchaik 2 programme from the BBCSSO, Rachmaninov's The Bells from the BBCNOW, even the LSO Belshazzar's Feast (wobbly sopranos and all), etc etc. All quite satisfactory but also a bit low voltage.

Roger Wright copped inordinate amounts of flack on these MBs for his stewardship but I'm not convinced it's just rose tinting that makes most of the programming during his tenure look more interesting overall.

So in the overall combination of programming and performances, yes, all a bit... "Pfff".

[jayne lee wilson]

Well come on, cop a listen right now to this glorious Czech Phil....!
God I love this band!

[jayne lee wilson]

It's all blokes..or at least it was when I last saw them at the RAM last Autumn...

What, should I boycott them...?

Not tonight....!

[Maclintick]

What, should I boycott them...?

Not tonight....!

I've deleted my post as Martin Handley has just credited their excellent principal oboist Jana Brožková ....not on the RAM gig AFAIR..