Prom 11 (8.08.21) - Dvořák’s ‘New World’ Symphony

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

19:30 Sunday 8 August 2021
Royal Albert Hall

Augusta Read Thomas: Dance Foldings BBC commission: world première
Charles Ives: Three places in New England (Orchestral Set No. 1)
Antonin Dvořák: Symphony No. 9 in E minor, 'From the New World'

BBC National Orchestra of Wales
Ryan Bancroft conductor

There’s an American accent to this concert by the BBC National Orchestra of Wales and its US-born Principal Conductor Ryan Bancroft. Started just months after the composer first docked in America, Dvořak’s much-loved ‘New World’ Symphony was composed ‘in the spirit’ of the nation’s own songs and spirituals. Only around 20 years after that, in 1914, came Charles Ives’s Three Places in New England, his vivid musical recollections of the sights and sounds of his native Connecticut. A topical new work from American composer Augusta Read Thomas opens both the concert and our series of Proms commissions celebrating the Royal Albert Hall’s 150th anniversary and its role in promoting the arts and sciences. Dance Foldings takes inspiration from the biological ‘ballet’ of proteins that a vaccine activates within the human body.

[jayne lee wilson]

What a wonderful performance of the Ives tonight. Such poetic strings, such blaringly idiomatic brasses, and remarkable precision down to the softest levels in all those cross-rhythms and delicate instrumental touches. Excellent sound again, spacious yet immediate.

Couldn't make much of the premiere despite the composer's very elaborate note...http://www.augustareadthomas.com/com...efoldings.html.

...will try again later.....

If only this terrific partnership were playing something less familiar in Part Two... the 9th is well beyond the pale of familiarity for me. But this orchestra is playing so well with Bancroft, I'll at least try the first movement....

[Ein Heldenleben]

What a wonderful performance of the Ives tonight. Such poetic strings, such blaringly idiomatic brasses, and remarkable precision down to the softest levels in all those cross-rhythms and delicate instrumental touches. Excellent sound again, spacious yet immediate.

Couldn't make much of the premiere despite the composer's very elaborate note....will try again later.....
P
If only this terrific partnership were playing something less familiar in Part Two... the 9th is well beyond the pale of familiarity for me. But this orchestra is playing so well with Bancroft, I'll at least try the first movement....

Yes the Ives somehow seems eternally modern (if that’s possible) and was beautifully performed . In my experience the length of the program note is often in inverse proportion to the quality of the work…

[DracoM]

Is it my imagination or have the BBC engineers over-highlighted the woodwind and brass sections tonight? Seem VERY prominent.

[Nick Armstrong]

Is it my imagination or have the BBC engineers over-highlighted the woodwind and brass sections tonight? Seem VERY prominent.

Yes, all the trombone bits (so familiar from when I played in it earlier this summer) sound like solos!

or (depending on your point of view!)

[Ein Heldenleben]

Is it my imagination or have the BBC engineers over-highlighted the woodwind and brass sections tonight? Seem VERY prominent.

Exactly what I was thinking. If the recent Radio 3 trails highlighting the work of studio managers is accurate they are , as a result of covid , spot miking much more than in previous years. I’ve never heard such woodwind detail e,g, the flute in the first movement where I spent a lot of time marvelling at Dvorak’s woodwind writing - much of which I’d never heard before. You could practically hear the flautist inhale.
Good performance I thought.

[edashtav]

Is it my imagination or have the BBC engineers over-highlighted the woodwind and brass sections tonight? Seem VERY prominent.

Yes, I, too, noticed the bias in the balance, although I only had time to listen to the first half of the programme. Both the conductor and Augusta Read Thomas are Americans who finished their academic studies in Britain. Augusta married a British composer and her partnership may have helped to turn Bernard Rands into an Anglo-American composer. Augusta’s Dance Foldings arose from modern biology but her confident, clean-cut, twinkly music didn’t sound particularly contemporary, although it showed an awareness of conservative modern composers such as Michael Torke, John Adams, and, maybe, hubby, too! It was stylish, nicely finished, but it had nothing new to say. Bancroft and his orchestra projected the score in vivid colours and engaging rhythms, and there was nothing of premiere fog that can make music grey and dull. But, that said, I’m not keen to hear it again and I fear I shall leave any recording on the shelves.

The Ives was completely different: one of his masterpieces, it sounded newly minted, and provocative in a winning performance, with none of the suffocating politeness that can kill music written by those who labour too long in the warm and supportive embrace of American academia. Augusta says she wants to compose fewer, commissioned pieces. I hope she follows that through and gets out more into the rough and tough musical jungle.

[jayne lee wilson]

Hearing the live relay of the Dvorak 9, and just now the Sounds recording at AAC320kbps as usual (the highest currently available resolution AFAIK - it is hard to find out the codecs for the TV recordings - but this may still be current https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-au...V-broadcasting - BBC4 may also be 256kbps MPEG2, for Proms), I can see why some perceived the brasses as unusually prominent.
The winds too were very clear, but apart from the slow movement where quieter passages were subject to some obvious level boosting, exaggerating the winds' prominence, this didn't seem an unnatural balance, given that the strings were not backwardly balanced or sonically disadvantaged. Lower strings still came across as full and warm and a strong contributor to the orchestral texture overall.

Not for the first time this instrumentally-distanced season though, the general balance seemed closer and drier than in previous non-Covid years, and I must say the effect here was one of immediacy and excitement, especially when those brasses came in; an enjoyable effect for me. A shame about the manipulation in the largo, as it was beautifully done, those muted strings especially.

But I did feel that the NOW played this New World with less flair and confidence, collectively or individually, than their earlier Ives, or the Brahms 4 and Saint-Saens Cello Concerto in their previous Prom.

[bluestateprommer]

Finally caught up with this BBC NOW / RB Prom. My perspective on the Augusta Read Thomas work is uniquely skewed, because she was at the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival for the world premiere of her new string quartet 2 weeks ago by the FLUX Quartet (the USA's answer to the Arditti Quartet, it seems). I heard both the premiere and the 2nd performance 2 days later, where I was sort of surprised that she didn't stay around. However, her appearance in London for this Prom would explain that situation, i.e. she probably left New Mexico the day after the quartet premiere, and had to prepare accordingly (not sure if she had to mini-quarantine upon arrival in the UK or something like that). Her new quartet put me in a prepartory frame of mind for her new work Dance Foldings, which sounded quite cut from the same cloth. Interestingly, of the two works, I enjoyed Dance Foldings rather more. Dance Foldings had a certain lightness of touch and pulse that worked quite well, certainly by comparison to the Elizabeth Ogonek work that the BBC NOW premiered the week before in their prior Prom. I'll give it some time, and then give it one more listen before the time period runs out (and after I've caught up with everything else that I missed).

RB's reading of Ives' Three Places in New England struck me as a bit careful, but that's understandable, given how difficult the work is, and the need to prepare a world premiere for the same concert. It makes sense that the first two works would get the lion's share of rehearsal time and attention. The Dvorak was OK, certainly not a world-beater of an interpretation. But the "happy clappers" were in attendance after each of the 1st two movements and presumably were pleased.

It was a special treat in the interval discussion to hear NHT's discussion with Michael Goldfarb, a long-time American radio journalist whom I remember hearing for years now on NPR and similar US radio organizations. MG has lived quite a while in London, to my understanding, and you can hear how his voice has picked up a British tinge. It was notable to hear his comments on the 1989 film Glory (which I've never seen, for the record), in light of the Ives and the story of Col. Robert Gould Shaw and the 54th Regiment, among other topics.

[richardfinegold]

Thomas was the CSO Composer in Residence in the 1990s. I endured several premieres of her works