Prom 57: Mozart, Rachmaninov & Qigang Chen - 1.09.19

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

11:00 Sunday 1 September 2019
Royal Albert Hall

Qigang Chen: Wu Xing (The Five Elements)
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: Piano Concerto No. 23 in A major
Sergey Rachmaninov: Symphonic Dances

Eric Lu piano
Shanghai Symphony Orchestra
Long Yu conductor

China’s Shanghai Symphony Orchestra makes its Proms debut with an East-meets-West concert including music by Qigang Chen and Rachmaninov’s exhilarating Symphonic Dances. Leeds Piano Competition winner Eric Lu joins them for Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 23.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

Set the alarm for this one!

[Serial_Apologist]

Does anyone know Quigang Chen's music, because I don't.

[Bryn]

Does anyone know Quigang Chen's music, because I don't.

Funnily enough, I dug out this 2001 BBC Music Magazine cover disc last night

[gedsmk]

Set the alarm for this one!

Rather enjoyable, I thought. Loads of rubato in the Rachmaninov, some amazing changes of tempi with still razor sharp ensemble. Impressive!

[gradus]

I liked the Mozart and the Chen piece but I thought the Rachmaninov curiously unexciting especially the overfast last movement- what happened to those magnificent cumulative final chords, it was all gabbled for this listener- I was especially thinking of the Jurowski/LPO recording which is swift but still has a convincing musical shape. I wasn't too keen on the first trumpet's sound either, curiously thin and piercing but that's just my taste.

[Pulcinella]

Funnily enough, I dug out this 2001 BBC Music Magazine cover disc last night

I missed yesterday's concert; thanks for the reminder of this BBC issue.
Listening now!

[pastoralguy]

I'm not going to beat about the bush here. We heard the Shanghai Orchestra at the Edinburgh Festival and their 'accompaniment' of Alicia Weilerstein in Dvorak's 'cello concerto was some of the most insensitive music making I've ever heard. They were, first and foremost, simply too loud. Yes, there's some gorgeous wind writing but it's not a flute/clarinet/oboe or bassoon Concerto! You could almost see the solo wind players going red in the face every time a juicy bit came around. Frankly, the wonderful Miss Weilerstein needn't have bothered.

And the conducting was unbelievably poor. A metronome would have sufficed. No shading, rubato or even responding to the soloist. Just a straightforward one, two, three, four. Totally unmusical.

DSCH 5 after the interval was a bit better but not terribly idiomatic.

[Pulcinella]

Checking to see who won the 2001 Masterprize, I see that Andrew Clements thought that Qigang Chen's piece (Wu Xing) should have been the winner:

https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2001/oct/12/artsfeatures9

[richardfinegold]

I'm not going to beat about the bush here. We heard the Shanghai Orchestra at the Edinburgh Festival and their 'accompaniment' of Alicia Weilerstein in Dvorak's 'cello concerto was some of the most insensitive music making I've ever heard. They were, first and foremost, simply too loud. Yes, there's some gorgeous wind writing but it's not a flute/clarinet/oboe or bassoon Concerto! You could almost see the solo wind players going red in the face every time a juicy bit came around. Frankly, the wonderful Miss Weilerstein needn't have bothered.

And the conducting was unbelievably poor. A metronome would have sufficed. No shading, rubato or even responding to the soloist. Just a straightforward one, two, three, four. Totally unmusical.

DSCH 5 after the interval was a bit better but not terribly idiomatic.

Who was conducting?

[bluestateprommer]

Who was conducting?

It was Long Yu, their music director, same conductor as at this Prom (which I've yet to hear, so any comments come later). Getting back to pastoralguy's assessment of Long Yu, pg might appreciate this equally scathing assessment of Long Yu from David Nice some years back (recycled from the Proms 2014 thread):

http://davidnice.blogspot.com/2014/07/stritch-in-time.html

"On a less heinous scale, Long Yu, the conductor of last night's China Philharmonic Prom which I didn't hear, is a party apparatchik who even if he were a decent conductor already holds more prominent posts than is healthy for a man in his position. That he's atrociously poor I can attest from the worst conducted performance I've ever heard, a spectacularly testudinal Elgar Cockaigne Overture with the BBC Symphony Orchestra. I have it from the horse's mouth that the players themselves stopped the whole thing falling apart as early as the tenuto in the second full bar. The orchestra petitioned their general manager to make sure they never worked with him again, but he said he couldn't guarantee it where big bucks from China were concerned."

[Alison]

Oddly mechanical K488, not for me :-/

[cloughie]

The Rachmaninov, strangely schmaltzy and no Russian edge that the work needs - Kondrashin always my reference on this work.
And we all love ‘Hey Jude’ wowee!

[LMcD]

Oddly mechanical K488, not for me :-/

I found the Mozart underpowered and underwhelming, with a rather thin string sound. It's almost as though they were afraid of being accused of disrespecting the score. On the other hand, I thought the Rachmaninov came off very well, and I just loved the trumpeter's contribution to 'Hey Jude'.

[cloughie]

I found the Mozart underpowered and underwhelming, with a rather thin string sound. It's almost as though they were afraid of being accused of disrespecting the score. On the other hand, I thought the Rachmaninov came off very well, and I just loved the trumpeter's contribution to 'Hey Jude'.

Yes but I think Wilson Pickett’s cover of Hey Jude is still probably the best!