Prom 43 (8.09.21) - Shostakovich & Mahler

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

19:30 Wednesday 8 September 2021
Royal Albert Hall


Shostakovich: Festive Overture, Op 96
Mahler: Symphony No 5 in C sharp minor

Proms Festival Orchestra
Mark Wigglesworth, conductor

After a year in which venues fell quiet and orchestras downsized, tonight’s Prom is a celebration of all an orchestra can do. A specially assembled Proms Festival Orchestra – made up of leading freelance musicians and conducted by Mark Wigglesworth – performs two colourful showpieces of the repertoire. Shostakovich’s Festive Overture bubbles over with a fresh exuberance that reflects the fact that its composer wrote it in two days flat.

Mahler’s Fifth Symphony spans an expressive chasm from the Funeral March of the first movement to a precariously unhinged Scherzo via the work’s lingering, lyrical soul: the heartrendingly beautiful Adagietto, written as a musical love letter to his wife Alma.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

Bumping this one in anticipation.

(Rather a short concert, even though it does include a Mahler symphony.)

[jayne lee wilson]

The specially-assembled Proms Festival Orchestra inevitably brings to mind Abbado's Lucerne élite. Many listeners will know their remarkable Bruckner and Mahler performances.....so hopes may run high.

Personally I'll be glad to tackle the Mahler 5 still fresh-eared after a sparkling sonic aperitif....

[kernelbogey]

Photos of some of the members of the orchestra, and some words, here:

https://www.theguardian.com/music/gallery/2021/sep/08/there-wont-be-a-dry-eye-anywhere-the-proms-festival-orchestra-wigglesworth-mahler-in-pictures

[Alison]

There doesn’t appear to be the gender bias noted in the City of London Sinfonia.

[ucanseetheend]

7:35 pm and playing piano music. Where's the concert relay?

[oddoneout]

7:35 pm and playing piano music. Where's the concert relay?

That threw me as well. Using my little portable told me what the music was and now we are in concert mode, although it's chat at the moment. Must have been some sort of problem causing a delay.

[Ein Heldenleben]

This is one prom I will not be making other than very very positive noises about . Fellow freelances I salute you !

[bluestateprommer]

Solid start to this Prom with DSCH's Festive Overture. I recognized the name of one of the freelancers heard at the start, Miranda Fulleylove.

PS: Per EA's point about running time, forgot to put down this prognostication. Be prepared for an encore .

PPS: Wrong about the encore (that wasn't). Oh well.

[ardcarp]

A handpicked bunch of top freelances could I suppose be called a scratch orchestra. It's a great idea anyway to give those whose work has been minimal in the preceding year a chance to work. And Mark Wigglesworth is probably the ideal conductor... technically superb without too much flapping...to make things clear. One or two bloops in the Shostakovitch, but so far the Mahler is going just fine. Maybe a 'Festival Orchestra' could become a regular feature of future Proms?

[jonfan]

Mahler settling all the time with fantastic horn playing in the third movement. The occasional split note in the brass indicates not being as battle hardened with regular gigs?

[Nick Armstrong]

This is one prom I will not be making other than very very positive noises about . Fellow freelances I salute you !

Here they all are:

[jonfan]

Thanks for the orchestra list Nick. Great to put names to the sounds.

[jayne lee wilson]

Unsure what to say really, noble effort in a noble cause but......in pure Mahler 5 performance terms, it wasn't really there tonight was it?

Finally everything comes down to the conductor, and this lacked a sure sense of shape or direction, there were too many approximations and imprecisions, smudged rhythms, a lack of dynamic articulation, for me to enjoy it on its own musical terms. (The adagietto was better though).
I wonder how much preparation time they had, as it often sounded more like a rehearsal than a finished presentation.

Was Mahler 5 just too ambitious for this recently-assembled group, or the occasion?
Apologies to the musicians.... I hope they found it heartening tonight before the cheering crowd, I hope they survive as artists and can still do what they love..... but I better leave it there.

[bluestateprommer]

Like the DSCH, a good, solid Mahler 5 just now from the first (and depending on how the pandemic goes, maybe not the last) Proms Festival Orchestra. (For orchestra names, if Budapest and Lucerne can have Festival Orchestras, then indeed why not The Proms?) MW observed the quiet pizzicato chord at the end of the 1st movement, and the attacca dive into the second. This is contrary to the other, 'more traditional' Mahler 5 that I've heard during the pandemic, the recent Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra performance with Fabio Luisi to an empty Grote Zaal.

This reading just now was pretty straight up, no fuss, no muss, and IMHO, not particularly a world-beater, and also with a very few minor slips & blips. But as Heldenleben alluded to earlier, that's not the real point here. The point is clearly not to try to create the single greatest interpretation of Mahler 5 ever, but to give freelancers work and to acknowledge their contribution to UK musical life.

BTW, from Nick A.'s images (so for NA, as the risk of asking the obvious, you were there then at the RAH? If so, great to know), and to address the "Vienna Philharmonic / Sinfonia of London" question: a total of 93 musicians on the list, with 38 women and 55 men, if I've got the count and genders correct.