Prom 7: Schumann, Schoenberg & Mozart - 23.07.19

[Edgy 2]

I enjoyed the Schumann 4,certainly didn’t sound like a routine run through to me.
Sarah Walker even said it was a very exciting performance and she said the liberties Mr Wellber took with the score really worked (I too don’t really know what he meant by that in his talk).
Yes there was a least one horrible moment for the oboe player in the slow movement,which was a shame.

[edashtav]

The revision is also for "very large orchestra" - only six instruments fewer (one each Oboe, Clarinet, Bassoon, & Trumpet, and 2 Horns). There should, presumably, be a corresponding reduction in strings (losing, say, two players from the two sets of violins, and one each from the lower strings) but orchestras tend to use whatever strings are available to them. The only real giveaway is whether or not you can hear the contrabass clarinet.

Thanks for that clarification, ferney.

[Darkbloom]

Would these 'liberties' in the Schumann involve retouching the score? You don't hear it so much these days, but it used to be widely accepted that Schumann's orchestration was too thick. Mahler had no qualms about adding 'improvements' and I think even Szell used to do it.

[Mal]

These week's TLS is reviewing books on the Piano Movers:

https://www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/private/piano-movers/

Judith Chernaik SCHUMANN sounded the most appealing to me - not too academic, concentrating on the music, not concentrating on the craziness!

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Thanks for that clarification, ferney.

If anyone has a copy of Perspectives on Schoenberg & Stravinsky, they might confirm a nagging memory I have of Robert Craft's pointing out that, at one point in his revision, Arnie overlooked one passage using 6 horns, and it stays the same in the 4 Horn "reduction"!

[Constantbee]

Thought the running order was just about the right shape, fine performances and Sarah Walker did a good job of pronouncing Yeol's name Given the trouble some of the R3 presenters have with (not that difficult) names of European artists I've always been wondered how they'd cope in this situation Credit where's it's due

[gradus]

I was looking forward to hearing the Schumann when one of the Quad speakers started to fizz. Possibly last night's very high humidity was responsible, at least I hope so. By the time I'd faffed about checking things it was the end of the final movt so I missed it, but iplayer to the rescue today.

[jayne lee wilson]

Would these 'liberties' in the Schumann involve retouching the score? You don't hear it so much these days, but it used to be widely accepted that Schumann's orchestration was too thick. Mahler had no qualms about adding 'improvements' and I think even Szell used to do it.

Part of the 1851 revision was indeed thicker orchestration including wind doublings, hence Brahms, Mahler (and Szell's) concerns....
Not that it can't sound fine in a sensitive performance.. but I think it goes best on a chamber orchestra, HIPPs etc...)

Mahler's revisions to orchestration/dynamics (often more "reductive" than "additive") go much further than Szell of course, though do remain (mostly) subtle and "faithful to the spirit" I think...(it only sounds a little Mahlerian occasionally!, in a Klagende Lied or Die Drei Pintos manner).
Two good sets to try, Chailly on Decca and Ceccato on BIS (very different takes, the Chailly fast, dramatic and very punchy dynamics (!!), Ceccato sunnier and more lyrical...).
Truly compelling listening if you know & love the works well, I return to both sets often.

The Chailly has an excellent detailed note by the Great English Symphonist David Matthews....Mahler made: "830 revisions to the 1st Symphony, 355 to the 2nd, 465 to the 3rd and 466 to the 4th".
You see? Not interventionist at all, no, perish the thought......

Do get a listen to 1841 (my personal preference if I had to choose, which god forbid...), best in Harnoncourt, Goodman, or JEG as aforementioned. (The JEG is stunning, played it this morning)
....the most obvious musical differences are the intros to the outer movements (smoothed out & I feel, less interesting in the 1851, rather like the Bruckner 1 Vienna revision), and the lack of repeat in 1841 (i) (for which relief, you may offer thanks..)

I didn't pick up any material alterations in Wellber's performance, just a very obvious and not always convincing rubato here and there...(nothing against it in principle, far from it...)

[edashtav]

If anyone has a copy of Perspectives on Schoenberg & Stravinsky, they might confirm a nagging memory I have of Robert Craft's pointing out that, at one point in his revision, Arnie overlooked one passage using 6 horns, and it stays the same in the 4 Horn "reduction"!

I don't have Robert Craft's book I have been reading about the five pieces on-line. In one set of student notes, I came across this bullet point concerning Peripeteia
* There is no real sense of a beat which means this piece is syncopated.

To my simple musically self-educated mind that statement is nonsense since without a beat to interrupt syncopation cannot occur.
I need fellow boarders' help: Am I right or wrong?

[edashtav]

Part of the 1851 revision was indeed thicker orchestration including wind doublings, hence Brahms, Mahler (and Szell's) concerns....
Not that it can't sound fine in a sensitive performance.. but I think it goes best on a chamber orchestra, HIPPs etc...)

Mahler's revisions to orchestration/dynamics go much further than Szell of course, though do remain (mostly) subtle and "faithful to the spirit" I think...(it only sounds a little Mahlerian occasionally!, in a Klagende Lied or Die Drei Pintos manner).
Two good sets to try, Chailly on Decca and Ceccato on BIS (very different takes, the Chailly fast, dramatic and very punchy dynamics (!!), Ceccato sunnier and more lyrical...).
Truly compelling listening if you know & love the works well, I return to both sets often.

The Chailly has an excellent detailed note by the Great English Symphonist David Matthews....Mahler made: "830 revisions to the 1st Symphony, 355 to the 2nd, 465 to the 3rd and 466 to the 4th".
You see? Not interventionist at all, no, perish the thought......

Do get a listen to 1841 (my personal preference if I had to choose, which god forbid...), best in Harnoncourt, Goodman, or JEG as aforementioned. (The JEG is stunning, played it this morning)
....the most obvious musical differences are the intros to the outer movements (smoothed out & I feel, less interesting in the 1851, rather like the Bruckner 1 Vienna revision), and the lack of repeat in 1841 (i) (for which relief, you may offer thanks..)

I didn't pick up any material alterations in Wellber's performance, just a very obvious and not always convincing rubato here and there...(nothing against it in principle, far from it...)

Your knowledge and enthusiasm are splendid, Jayne, but your description of David Matthews as "the Great English Symphonist" cannot go unchallenged.

I listen to DM's music with pleasure and don't want to eviscerate it. However, I wonder if his publisher's claim that DM has "an international reputation as one of the leading symphonists of our time" is less parochial and, perhaps, slightly more guarded? What do you think?

I note with dismay that no Great English, or British, symphonies feature in this Proms' Season.

[Joseph K]

I don't have Robert Craft's book I have been reading about the five pieces on-line. In one set of student notes, I came across this bullet point concerning Peripeteia
* There is no real sense of a beat which means this piece is syncopated.

To my simple musically self-educated mind that statement is nonsense since without a beat to interrupt syncopation cannot occur.
I need fellow boarders' help: Am I right or wrong?

You are right.

[Serial_Apologist]

I don't have Robert Craft's book I have been reading about the five pieces on-line. In one set of student notes, I came across this bullet point concerning Peripeteia
* There is no real sense of a beat which means this piece is syncopated.

To my simple musically self-educated mind that statement is nonsense since without a beat to interrupt syncopation cannot occur.
I need fellow boarders' help: Am I right or wrong?

I would say you are right - syncopation is rhythmic re-ordering within subdivided measures - the measures having to be there in the first instance. It gets a bit more complicated if the underpinning metric structure is in itself constantly changing: would superimposing regular beats over such metrical irregularity itself constitute syncopation?

[Master Jacques]

I didn't pick up any material alterations in Wellber's performance, just a very obvious and not always convincing rubato here and there...(nothing against it in principle, far from it...)

A colleague of mine in the hall tells me that the conductor's last movement rubati had audience members staring at one another in amused disbelief. He complained that he missed his train home because they elongated matters so horribly! Otherwise he had a good time.

[jayne lee wilson]

Your knowledge and enthusiasm are splendid, Jayne, but your description of David Matthews as "the Great English Symphonist" cannot go unchallenged.

I listen to DM's music with pleasure and don't want to eviscerate it. However, I wonder if his publisher's claim that DM has "an international reputation as one of the leading symphonists of our time" is less parochial and, perhaps, slightly more guarded? What do you think?

I note with dismay that no Great English, or British, symphonies feature in this Proms' Season.

I guess I should offer the (non-)disclaimer - DM had the premiere Bridgewater recording of his 8th Symphony (still unrecorded commercially) sent to me on CD via Faber, and my review of the work (written after the webcast, before I heard the CD) appears on his website.

So I can't claim to be completely objective, no, but his 9 symphonies constitute an astonishingly varied and inventive take on the English and European Symphonic traditions, in ways that would surprise any intelligent listener, if she had not encountered them before. They have a wide-ranging structural and emotional character, from the intensely integrated, out-on-its-own, epic single movement 2nd, the 3 or more movements in one (Nos. 1 and 3), the spicily neoclassical 4th and 5th, to the differently epic 6th.
Then another self renewal after the (continuous in a different way) 7th....

Schumann's "Symphony in One Movement" has a lot to answer for doesn't it?

So yes, I do call him a great composer, one who has given us some wonderful concertos and string quartets too. The best kind of outward-looking cultural Englishness, which on this of all terrible days, seems more vital to celebrate and acclaim than ever.

[Edgy 2]

I guess I should offer the (non-)disclaimer - DM had the premiere Bridgewater recording of his 8th Symphony (still unrecorded commercially) sent to me on CD via Faber, and my review of the work (written after the webcast, before I heard the CD) appears on his website.

So I can't claim to be completely objective, no, but his 9 symphonies constitute an astonishingly varied and inventive take on the English and European Symphonic traditions, in ways that would surprise any intelligent listener, if she had not encountered them before. They have a wide-ranging structural and emotional character, from the intensely integrated, out-on-its-own, epic single movement 2nd, the 3 or more movements in one (Nos. 1 and 3), the spicily neoclassical 4th and 5th, to the differently epic 6th.
Then another self renewal after the (continuous in a different way) 7th....

Schumann's "Symphony in One Movement" has a lot to answer for doesn't it?

So yes, I do call him a great composer, one who has given us some wonderful concertos and string quartets too. The best kind of outward-looking cultural Englishness, which on this of all terrible days, seems more vital to celebrate and acclaim than ever.