Prom 28 (7.08.20) Berlin Philharmonic/Rattle

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

Sir Simon Rattle and the Berlin Philharmonic perform an all-Russian programme inspired by dance. Opening the concert is Rachmaninov’s Symphonic Dances – the composer’s blazing ‘final spark’ and, for many, his finest orchestral work. Embracing jazz, plainchant and the waltz, it is a mercurial showcase of dramatic skill.

In the second half we enter the Russian fairy-tale world of Stravinsky’s The Firebird, the vivid, folk-infused ballet score for Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes that established the young composer as a rising star.

Rachmaninov: Symphonic Dances
Stravinsky: The Firebird

Berlin Philharmonic
Sir Simon Rattle
(From the BBC Proms, 5 September 2014)

[jonfan]

I’m struck by the huge sound in the Rachmaninov. The orchestra seems to revel in its virtuosity but perhaps missing a Russian feel with too much wallowing? I’ve been listening to the RLPO and Petrenko recently and prefer their performance.

[Alison]

I’m struck by the huge sound in the Rachmaninov. The orchestra seems to revel in its virtuosity but perhaps missing a Russian feel with too much wallowing? I’ve been listening to the RLPO and Petrenko recently and prefer their performance.

Agreed.

[Belgrove]

Serendipitously the Symphonic Dances is next week’s music for discussion amongst friends online (i.e. an excuse to have a drink and a chat). The version we’ll be listening to is Kirill Petrenko’s with the Bavarian Radio SO (on Youtube), which is preferable to Rattle’s account tonight. Maybe it helps to be conducted by a Russian (or American?)

[Petrushka]

I was present at this Prom and thoroughly enjoyed it but Karina Canellakis gave a wonderful account of the Rachmaninov in 2018 with the BBCSO that was even more exciting than Rattle's and, happily, it's available on youTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cjp-dx3cZ0k

[jonfan]

I was present at this Prom and thoroughly enjoyed it but Karina Canellakis gave a wonderful account of the Rachmaninov in 2018 with the BBCSO that was even more exciting than Rattle's and, happily, it's available on youTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cjp-dx3cZ0k

Agreed and I made a permanent cd copy of that performance. KC got some terrific playing from the BBCSO and I think on these boards there was discussion that she would make a great future MD.

[Alison]

Agreed and I made a permanent cd copy of that performance. KC got some terrific playing from the BBCSO and I think on these boards there was discussion that she would make a great future MD.

Now principal guest conductor of the LPO.

[Petrushka]

Now principal guest conductor of the LPO.

Will be worth watching out for her concerts once normal service is resumed.

Incidentally, it's disappointing to see that the Prom repeats have generated so little enthusiasm on these boards. True, the choice of repeats hasn't been as wide ranging as expected and some of the choices made have been, to put it mildly, hard to fathom so perhaps I shouldn't be too surprised. Even so, hope people are listening.

[LMcD]

Will be worth watching out for her concerts once normal service is resumed.

Incidentally, it's disappointing to see that the Prom repeats have generated so little enthusiasm on these boards. True, the choice of repeats hasn't been as wide ranging as expected and some of the choices made have been, to put it mildly, hard to fathom so perhaps I shouldn't be too surprised. Even so, hope people are listening.

I'm afraid my discovery - thanks to two other Forumistas - of the joys of Medici TV on Amazon Prime Video has meant that I've had less time for the Proms repeats, and, as you say, some of the choices are indeed hard to fathom. However, I shall be recording tomorrow night's CBSO Mahler 8th, and greatly enjoyed and reviewed James Ehnes's performance of the Samuel Barber. Anybody who's been listening to the Proms Time Capsule on 'Breakfast' will know that there's a great appetite for concerts from the late 1960s.

[jonfan]

Incidentally, it's disappointing to see that the Prom repeats have generated so little enthusiasm on these boards. True, the choice of repeats hasn't been as wide ranging as expected and some of the choices made have been, to put it mildly, hard to fathom so perhaps I shouldn't be too surprised. Even so, hope people are listening.

I think the quiet response is because they are not new. The Proms generates a passionate amount of discussion on these boards as a rule because of the excitement of live music making. On the Choir threads a recent live Choral Evensong enlivened everyone. Good news in the long term that live music making is vital for the musical health of the nation.

[Alison]

Yet in a way the repeats bring up possible new and different lines of discussion.

As a rare Proms visitor in recent years and having missed - or forgotten - many of these concerts first time round I’m enjoying the series very much.

[Bryn]

Many are available in significantly higher audio quality than was the case of the original broadcast. That is a major attraction for me.

[bluestateprommer]

I'm going to dissent from the somewhat negative tone of earlier reactions to this 2014 Berlin Phil Prom re-broadcast, in that I quite enjoyed it. Admittedly, the Rachmaninoff Symphonic Dances is my very favorite Rachmaninoff work of all, so I have an obvious soft spot for it, and I'm always happy to hear a live in-concert reading, even 6 years after the fact. Maybe SSR over-rushed the end a bit, but he's far from the only one to have done so in the work's performing history. The Firebird did have some borderline near-flubs, but again, it is a relatively rare treat to hear the whole work rather than just the suite. The Puccini encore fit very well, following SSR buttering up the audience, who actually merited it, for their enthusiasm and for what they did not do between the movements of the Symphonic Dances. As presenter, Petroc's enthusiasm meter was rather high, but it is worth mentioning that while he enthused about the audience reaction and the length of the queue that day, he never editorialized, SM-P or KM style, about the performances themselves, but simply allowed listeners to reach their own judgments.

It was also nice to hear the orchestra's Sarah Willis in conversation with Georgia Mann, looking back on this concert. This actually touches on one other possible reason, an actuarial reason, why the chosen relays aren't of 1960s and 1970s era Proms, as much as I also would love to hear them, as those were before my time. One recurring facet of the choices for archival Proms this summer is discussion with artists who performed at those Proms. If you want to go back to the 1960s and 1970s, it's going to be statistically a lot more difficult to find artists who performed then and who are still with us now, and are in a position to reminisce. Going way into left field, I noticed in the Proms Performance Archive a 1970 Verdi Requiem with Sir Colin Davis, and Josephine Veasey among the soloists. Veasey just turned 90. I suspect such instances of featured musicians from 1960s and 1970s Proms are extremely few and far between. Life isn't perfect, so you take what you can get here.

Anyway, back to this particular Prom: I also wonder if my recent viewing of Dutch National Opera's video stream of The Legend of the Invisible City of Kitezh subliminally affected how I would hear this Russian music Prom, with the sound world of Rimsky-Korsakov in the back of my mind. And it's OK by me that the big sound of the Berlin Philharmonic is very present, since Rachmaninoff wrote this work for an American orchestra, after all, The Philadelphia Orchestra, hardly a shrinking violet of a band.

[Simon B]

And it's OK by me that the big sound of the Berlin Philharmonic is very present, since Rachmaninoff wrote this work for an American orchestra, after all, The Philadelphia Orchestra, hardly a shrinking violet of a band.

"Big" is a too-vague term. It encompasses a wide gamut of, well, bigs. The US "big 5" have in common notoriously big sounds but the BPO signature is a very different beast. The LSO, with the RLPO not that far behind, has the largest sound among UK orchestras but it has far more in common with what comes out of Chicago and New York than anything from Berlin.

The BPO's sound seems to be a self-consciously cultivated weighty, dark, rotundly glutinous affair. True attack and fizz is never available (IMO). Always "whhhoooOOOFFFfff", never "Wf!!!" . This is great in some repertoire, less so in other. My recollection of this Prom is of it re-demonstrating that this can be got away with in the Firebird (by playing it as luscious French impressionism with extra percussion) but less so in Rachmaninov. Personally I'd much rather hear a top British orchestra in the absence of the genuine Russian article. Time for my pills perhaps.

That said, right now I'd prefer going to a concert in which the Upton Dupton Philharmonic semi-competently play an orchestral medley of Slovenian sheepherding music to the possible permanent silence that lies ahead.

[Simon B]

Will be worth watching out for her concerts once normal service is resumed.

Incidentally, it's disappointing to see that the Prom repeats have generated so little enthusiasm on these boards. True, the choice of repeats hasn't been as wide ranging as expected and some of the choices made have been, to put it mildly, hard to fathom so perhaps I shouldn't be too surprised. Even so, hope people are listening.

There may be others like me: On the whole I can't work up any enthusiasm for most of these repeats, even of some memorable concerts I was at (e.g. Abbado/Lucerne Mahler 3, Gliere's Ilya Muromets). It all seems a bit besides the point. Indeed, I've had very little interest in recorded music of any kind over the last 5 months. Silence is preferable. It doesn't seem unduly melodramatic to describe it as like suffering yet another bereavement.

That said, some of the live Proms coming up have appeal. Rattle would be a long way down a list of conductors I'd choose to conduct RVW 5 but it seems a highly appropriate choice of almost the first work for (nearly) full orchestra played in the UK since March. Hopefully he will leave the LSO to get on with it rather than indulging in unnecessary micromanagement.