Prom 12 (9.08.21) - Elgar's Cello Concerto

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

19:30 Monday 9 August 2021
Royal Albert Hall

Mason Bates: Auditorium UK première
Edward Elgar: Cello Concerto in E minor
Leos Janáček: Taras Bulba

Johannes Moser cello
Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra
Kirill Karabits conductor

The Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra returns under Chief Conductor Kirill Karabits to recall memories of music past. In Mason Bates’s evocative Auditorium, the orchestra is ‘possessed’ by a ghostly Baroque ancestor. Janáček’s rhapsodic suite Taras Bulba looks back to Czech folk music in three battle-charged episodes from Gogol’s novella. The bittersweet, poignant beauty of Elgar’s Cello Concerto draws on another conflict: the cataclysmic loss and suffering of the First World War.

[jayne lee wilson]

Mason Bates' note here.....(with the SFSO recording)....

https://www.masonbates.com/auditorium/

with an electronic component, it does look intriguing....

Really looking forward to the Janacek piece, one of my musical inner-icons.....often "somewhere in the back of my mind..."...
My favourite of his along with the Glagolitic Mass and the Quartets....

[edashtav]

Mason Bates' note here.....(with the SFSO recording)....

https://www.masonbates.com/auditorium/

with an electronic component, it does look intriguing....

Really looking forward to the Janacek piece, one of my musical inner-icons.....often "somewhere in the back of my mind..."...
My favourite of his along with the Glagolitic Mass and the Quartets....

That’s helpful.

With just three works, none of them over 35 minutes, this concert seems a tad short c.73 mins. I worry that such meagre fare, ‘missing’ tube services and the general brouhaha over masking and Covid certificates makes such programmes unattractive for those of us who live over 50 miles from London.

Fortunately, they are all broadcast on Radio 3, but I do want live events with audiences to revive quickly.

[Alison]

Blimey, this concert opener is terrible. What happened to cutting edge new music at the Proms?!

[Ein Heldenleben]

Blimey, this concert opener is terrible. What happened to cutting edge new music at the Proms?!

Good point but I enjoyed the opening cello chord of the Elgar ….
That modern piece was way better than the NYO new commission last night …

[jayne lee wilson]

Blimey, this concert opener is terrible. What happened to cutting edge new music at the Proms?!

As you know I always try to give new music every chance, second hearings etc., and if I get nowhere I just, well, draw a veil.... but I must say it did seem very weak....the exciting promise of an electronics/orchestra combo wasn't used in a terribly compelling way - rather obvious in its aims/effects. But I also felt the the BSO weren't really crisply on top of all those "dance rhythms"....so the performance felt a bit vague and confused in itself....I wonder how the composer felt at the execution.....so, hard (and probably unfair) to judge...

The only premiere I really enjoyed so far was the Ogonek, Cloudline...

[Alison]

As you know I always try to give new music every chance, second hearings etc., and if I get nowhere I just, well, draw a veil.... but I must say it did seem very weak....the exciting promise of an electronics/orchestra combo wasn't used in a terribly compelling way - rather obvious in its aims/effects. But I also felt the the BSO weren't really crisply on top of all those "dance rhythms"....so the performance felt a bit vague and confused in itself....I wonder how the composer felt at the execution.....so, hard (and probably unfair) to judge...

The only premiere I really enjoyed so far was the Ogonek, Cloudline...

[jayne lee wilson]

The closer, drier balance of previous web-streamed so-miscalled “HDs” concerts (often checked against the dynamically-compressed FM) seemed less suited to the BSO tonight.

This produced a very vivid presence in more sectional music, but sounded a little harsh in the upper strings, and slightly cramped and oppressive in busier passages. In such a work as Taras, a more spacious sound might have been more apt sonically. (This relay reminded me of some early analogue stereo/mono recordings on Supraphon, Mercury or RCA...).
But its never easy to balance each orchestra, (whose sound develops in relation to their own hall) as the season progresses, and so much more of a challenge in these instrumentally-distanced times.

Yet finally - I was very impressed by this strong, sharply defined Taras Bulba, and in tears as the final splendid blaze made its overwhelming impact….!

[Ein Heldenleben]

The closer, drier balance of previous web-streamed so-miscalled “HDs” concerts (often checked against the dynamically-compressed FM) seemed less suited to the BSO tonight.

This produced a very vivid presence in more sectional music, but sounded a little harsh in the upper strings, and slightly cramped and oppressive in busier passages. In such a work as Taras, a more spacious sound might have been more apt sonically. (This relay reminded me of some early analogue stereo/mono recordings on Supraphon, Mercury or RCA...).
But its never easy to balance each orchestra, (whose sound develops in relation to their own hall) as the season progresses, and so much more of a challenge in these instrumentally-distanced times.

Yet finally - I was very impressed by this strong, sharply defined Taras Bulba, and in tears as the final splendid blaze made its overwhelming impact….!

Yes the Close miking of the strings ( which is what it sounded like ) did not flatter the fiddles at all. Never sounds right to me if you can hear the first impact of the bow as it starts the string vibrating . Kind of inevitable in a solo violin but in a section?

[edashtav]

Good point but I enjoyed the opening cello chord of the Elgar ….
That modern piece was way better than the NYO new commission last night …

I felt Johannes Moser’ interpretation of the Elgar was compelling: he took a fresh look at the score, brushing away 100 years of accumulated dust of tradition. I was thrilled by a growling piece of repartee between him and the BSO in the third movement that brought out Elgar’s bitterness. There was no lack of romanticism but where the composer brought rhythm to the fore, there was an incisive bite to the performance. The triumphal largamente broadening so beloved by the younger Elgar was present at the start of the opening movement but it was quickly banished by Johannes as he realised that Elgar’s former certainties had been blown to smithereens by the brutality of WWI. Orchestra, cellist and conductor seemed united in their desire to project a view of the work that was stripped of lushness but full of ‘looking back in anger’.

I was glad I listened to a recording the American f.p. of Mason Bates’ new piece as it didn’t sound so cogent or as interesting in the Prom performance. As for Taras Bulba , well I gave it a miss a I feel it’s grandiloquent and ‘over the top’.

[kernelbogey]

Blimey, this concert opener is terrible. What happened to cutting edge new music at the Proms?!

I didn't listen to the Mason Bates piece but I did hear Martin Handley say that the sound was coming from many different parts of the hall: not something radio can deal with very well!

[Alison]

I didn't listen to the Mason Bates piece but I did hear Martin Handley say that the sound was coming from many different parts of the hall: not something radio can deal with very well!

Fair enough. The musical material seemed painfully thin though I’ll seek out the first performance cited by ‘Tavers.

Thoroughly enjoyed the other pieces including the cello encore.

[kernelbogey]

Fair enough. The musical material seemed painfully thin though I’ll seek out the first performance cited by ‘Tavers.

Thoroughly enjoyed the other pieces including the cello encore.

I was not listening, as I said, but cooking, with a DAB radio competing with sizzling oil, at the beginning: I couldn't tell when the orchestra had stopped tuning and the piece had begun.... I will listen (again) properly at least to the Elgar, which sounded grand. I have a high regard for Karabits, living as i do within the regional orbit of his orchestra - which, coincidentally, is (was) the first orchestra that I - unforgettably - heard live....

[jayne lee wilson]

Fair enough. The musical material seemed painfully thin though I’ll seek out the first performance cited by ‘Tavers.

Thoroughly enjoyed the other pieces including the cello encore.

Alison, I offered the link in #2..... c'etait moi..... and it is much sharper.....comme ça....

https://www.masonbates.com/auditorium/

The audience certainly liked it!

kernelbogey..... the aforementioned tuning is a deliberate part of the piece, then the electronics enter.... so please don't laugh at it....see the note on my link...

With the SFSO and Heras-Casado it sounds a completely different work.....makes much more sense, musically....
Playing now...much better!.... just as I feared, the Proms performance was, in all its tricky circumstances, unfair to take as a representation of the work...
Still unsure as to the electronic component's value, but I shouldn't have described it as "very weak"; it is at the very least, a highly entertaining concert opener....

Try the SFSO one, see what you think....

[kernelbogey]

kernelbogey..... the aforementioned tuning is a deliberate part of the piece, then the electronics enter.... so please don't laugh at it....see the note on my link...

Apologies Jayne - the laugh emoji was entirely about my inablity to hear properly what was going on (while making pasta con aglio e olio. I'll give it another listen, thanks to your comment.