Prom 25 (22.08.21) - Sir Simon Rattle Conducts the London Symphony Orchestra

[Serial_Apologist]

Off-beat Guardian interview with Myrie a few days ago.....

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2021/aug/16/clive-myrie-on-politics-personality-mastermind

"Classical Music is something that's very dear to my heart, from Bach and Handel through to Messiaen and Stockhausen".
Gramophone 9/21.

He's one of the best news presenters, too!

[Barbirollians]

Myrie got very much the best out of Jonathan Cross too.

[jayne lee wilson]

He's one of the best news presenters, too!

See my #14...... been a big fan for years, love the way he handles the Press Previews, one of my favourite latenight shows & a great alternative to Newsnight......

[Barbirollians]

The more of Mr Myrie presenting Proms the better I say.

[pastoralguy]

The more of Mr Myrie presenting Proms the better I say.

[Barbirollians]

As for the programme I have to admit finding those three pieces quite hard work . I could have done with the violin concerto replacing one of them:

[Quarky]

Thanks to the enthusiasm of this thread, I made a determined effort to get to closer grips with Symphony in C and Symphony in Three Movements.

Certainly Symphony in C goes into my Stravinsky Favourites list, and I will be listening again.

[Serial_Apologist]

Thanks to the enthusiasm of this thread, I made a determined effort to get to closer grips with Symphony in C and Symphony in Three Movements.

Certainly Symphony in C goes into my Stravinsky Favourites list, and I will be listening again.

Richard Barrett's fairly recent recommendations for the Symph in C on this forum certainly led me to positively re-appraise the work, though it was the Symph in 3 Movements that first got to me as a schoolboy, with its thrilling return to the brazen spirit of "The Rite".

[Quarky]

Richard Barrett's fairly recent recommendations for the Symph in C on this forum certainly led me to positively re-appraise the work, though it was the Symph in 3 Movements that first got to me as a schoolboy, with its thrilling return to the brazen spirit of "The Rite".

I'll have to look up RB's recommendations. Symphony in C is music in the abstract, and this appeals to me . I think I've been watching too many WWII movies on TV, and this turns me away from 3 Movements, with its war allusions.

I note "The work (in C) was choreographed by Martha Graham in the late 1980s. She named the result "Persephone" in ironic reference to another major work by Stravinsky" - can't find any recording of that.

[Boilk]

Symphony in C is music in the abstract, and this appeals to me . I think I've been watching too many WWII movies on TV, and this turns me away from 3 Movements, with its war allusions

I got to know 3 Movements intimately before ever reading anything about it. 3 Movements is every bit as abstract as in C - it's purely instrumental music.

Stravinsky himself said "I consider that music is, by its very nature, essentially powerless to express anything at all, whether a feeling, an attitude of mind, or psychological mood, a phenomenon of nature, etc. Expression has never been an inherent property of music....". And, of course, he's spot on...connotations of war are not inherent in the music, but acquired by 20th/21st century listeners of a certain persuasion.

[jayne lee wilson]

I got to know 3 Movements intimately before ever reading anything about it. 3 Movements is every bit as abstract as in C - it's purely instrumental music.

Stravinsky himself said "I consider that music is, by its very nature, essentially powerless to express anything at all, whether a feeling, an attitude of mind, or psychological mood, a phenomenon of nature, etc. Expression has never been an inherent property of music....". And, of course, he's spot on...connotations of war are not inherent in the music, but acquired by 20th/21st century listeners of a certain persuasion.

"Stravinsky, who rarely acknowledged extramusical inspirations for his music, claimed the symphony as a direct response to events of the Second World War in both Europe and Asia. The first movement was inspired by a documentary on Japanese scorched earth tactics in China. The third movement deals with footage of German soldiers goosestepping and the Allied forces' mounting success."
from Wiki, see footnotes for refs.

Many texts on IS mention this.
Intriguingly, Stravinsky heard the broadcast premiere of the DSCH Leningrad Symphony just a few months after commencing work on his symphony, which he didn't finish for another three years. This was unusually protracted for Stravinsky, and yet.... most agree that its one of his greatest works.

As for the wider debate about Musical Expression.... My God, big subject, do we really want to go there?

*****
Fascinating that the Berlin Phil has featured on three of the greatest Stravinsky Symphony recordings: classic trilogies with Boulez, Rattle and - yes, Karajan himself....one of his finest records.

Slightly under-the-radar, some of you may have the BBCMM disc withe the BBCSSO/Volkov - really excellent: Nightingale, Symphony in C, with a stunning Three Movements....
(rec. 2003-4, vol. 13/3 on spine, no magazine here...)

[Boilk]

"Stravinsky, who rarely acknowledged extramusical inspirations for his music, claimed the symphony as a direct response to events of the Second World War in both Europe and Asia. The first movement was inspired by a documentary on Japanese scorched earth tactics in China. The third movement deals with footage of German soldiers goosestepping and the Allied forces' mounting success."
[I]from Wiki, see footnotes for refs.

Many texts on IS mention this.

Yes they do, but his extra-musical inspiration for this masterpiece doesn't contradict his statement that music inherently does not express anything specific. I'm surely not the only person who never thought of military conflict when getting to know this piece. In fact with its plethora of wonderful rhythmic invention and different orchestral sections cutting in and out of each other, it was always for me Stravinsky's dance symphony, rather as Beethoven's 7th was “the apotheosis of the dance” for Wagner.

[jayne lee wilson]

Yes they do, but his extra-musical inspiration for this masterpiece doesn't contradict his statement that music inherently does not express anything specific. I'm surely not the only person who never thought of military conflict when getting to know this piece. In fact with its plethora of wonderful rhythmic invention and different orchestral sections cutting in and out of each other, it was always for me Stravinsky's dance symphony, rather as Beethoven's 7th was “the apotheosis of the dance” for Wagner.

Stravinsky came back to this in 1962:

"The over-publicized bit about expression (or non-expression) was simply a way of saying that music is supra-personal and super-real and as such beyond verbal meanings and verbal descriptions. It was aimed against the notion that a piece of music is in reality a transcendental idea "expressed in terms of" music, with the reductio ad absurdum implication that exact sets of correlatives must exist between a composer's feelings and his notation. It was offhand and annoyingly incomplete, but even the stupider critics could have seen that it did not deny musical expressivity, but only the validity of a type of verbal statement about musical expressivity. I stand by the remark, incidentally, though today I would put it the other way around: music expresses itself".

...In which one may detect a degree of annoyance with his own earlier comment; for which, with classic psychoanalytical projection, he blames "stupider critics"....

Surely though, the Symphony in C could just as easily be called a "dance symphony", whereas the Three Movements is very clearly more aggressive, frantic and even violent, the emotional extremes greater in the contrast with the slow movement. You don't need to imagine anything warlike to get that far.

Surely, Music speaks to most of us on multilayered emotional and intellectual levels, always has. Why bother otherwise?
But I don't need specific emotional or narrative correlations, what IS calls "exact sets of correlatives [that] exist between a composer's feelings and his notation" to feel those emotional impulses; I don't imagine that I am receiving some specific - or any - message from its creator.

But once you know the biographical background to such as the Eroica, the Leningrad, the Symphony in Three Movements, of course you may hear them in a fresh context, another light....how could you not?

[HighlandDougie]

[I]

Slightly under-the-radar, some of you may have the BBCMM disc withe the BBCSSO/Volkov - really excellent: Nightingale, Symphony in C, with a stunning Three Movements....
(rec. 2003-4, vol. 13/3 on spine, no magazine here...)

Strongly endorse the vote from Jayne for the Ilan Volkov disc - well worth snapping up if seen by one of our resident Charity Shop habitués. While looking for it - and then remembering that it's in Scotland (along with other Volkov/BBC SSO Hyperion releases) - I came across the Michael Tilson Thomas/LSO Stravinsky Symphonies disc (Psalms/in C/Three Movements) from the early 1990s. Interesting to compare the LSO of 30 years ago with Sunday's excellent concert (kindly supplied by a fellow Forumista as a FLAC download). The MTT is also really very good - and well recorded (Abbey Road). I'm probably driving TOH mad with all this Stravinsky ...

[antongould]

I watched some of this on television, while having to do other things. Although I was unable to fully concentrate on the music, it did sound great, so I will listen on Sounds.

I liked what I saw of Clive Myrie's presentation*: so good to watch a professional, used to the camera and unafraid of it, and resisting any blandishments from the producer to grin all the way through.

* But who was his guest 'Jonathan'? I thought he was good, but there was no identifcation in the credits.

Can Clive fit Essential Classics into his busy schedule ….. ?????