Proms 2022

[Bryn]

Speaking of Xenakis, does anyone remember the famous performance of the Pleiades in 2008? The piece was sandwiched between Holst Planets and RVW 7. I guess that much of the audience came along for the bread rather than the actual filling!

The Guardian so reported the evening....

"The BBC Proms message board was nearly unanimous in its verdict on Xenakis's Pleiades, the percussion sextet who caused such a ruckus on Wednesday night. One audience member wrote that "the cacophony in the middle [of a programme otherwise consisting of Holst's The Planets and Vaughan Williams's Sinfonia Antartica] would appeal to the pretentious pseuds such as the music critic I was reading in the paper this morning, but not anyone else. My word, it was rubbish." Another writes, "I can only hope that it is never attempted again. I would like to request that the BBC Proms organisers restrict such modern outlandish noisy unmusical works to no more than 15 minutes, if it is necessary to include this type of work."

So, not to everyone's taste then. Particularly, I suspect, not to the taste of the gentleman who booed loudly in the middle of the first movement (I actually recall this very outburst - Ferryman), nor to the scores of punters who, like the two quoted above, only lasted 10 minutes before evacuating the hall. Sure, the piece was loud, and the Metaux first movement did sound a bit like the insistent hammering of pots and pans. But I must be a pretentious pseud, as must the several thousand who did stay the distance and cheered and wolf-whistled at the end, because this was a truly epic performance of a truly epic work. Xenakis was possibly the most single-minded, uncompromising and original composer of the 20th century, and it was a pleasure to hear his music performed in front of a (mostly appreciative) capacity crowd. Kudos to the "BBC Proms organisers" for having a sense of adventure, and boo to those audience members who did not."

That Prom was dedicated to the memory of Tod Handley who had died, earlier that day. I feel sure he would have been appalled by the behaviour of the detractors?

I well recall the excitement of first hearing the work via the analogue LP recording by its dedicatees. It came in one of those silvery quasi-holographic sleeves. Later, I 'upgraded' to the boxed set of CDs of PdS recordings. So vivid in the Hall, though. Of Xenakis's considerable output, only Phlegra have been performed more than once at the Proms. O-Mega gets its second Proms performance this summer. There might just be sufficient different recordings of the work to just about feature it on BaL. The Red Fish Blue Fish recording in the Mode Records Complete Xenakis Percussion music set suffered editing problems in its initial release. If anyone has that early stamping, Mode will replace the faulty disc upon request.

[cloughie]

Yes, but surname/family name still more logical, surely.

I was reminded of an experience in a CD shop (remember them?) in Italy, in which the opera sets were ordered alphabetically purely by title (as it would be in Italian).
While there's logic in that (for a native Italian speaker), it made searching for The rake's progress or Götterdämmerung quite challenging.

Or searching for Shostakovich in a FNAC store!

[Petrushka]

Or searching for Shostakovich in a FNAC store!

Try searching for Shostakovich or Tchaikovsky in the RCO Concert Archive!

http://archief.concertgebouworkest.nl/en/archive/search/

[ferryman]

Prom 6 for me:

Ralph Vaughan Williams
Symphony No. 4 in F minor (30 mins)

Michael Tippett
Symphony No. 4 (33 mins)

BBC Philharmonic
Omer Meir Wellber conductor

But at only just over an hour's worth of music (never mind the quality.....) I certainly wouldn't make the trip.

I was earlier reflecting about the 2008 Holst/Xenakis/RVW concert, regarding the audience reaction to the Xenakis piece.

However, it is very interesting to note the duration of the pieces that evening:

Holst Planets: ~ 60 mins
Xenakis Pleiades: ~ 50 mins
RVW no. 7: ~ 40 mins

So even if one did not enjoy that certain excursion to the Pleiades, the value for money in terms of duration was very high!

[Dave2002]

Try searching for Shostakovich or Tchaikovsky in the RCO Concert Archive!

http://archief.concertgebouworkest.n...rchive/search/

I'm guessing they might be there if only we knew how to spell their names as transliterated from the original language. I tried - but failed!

[Bryn]

I'm guessing they might be there if only we knew how to spell their names as transliterated from the original language. I tried - but failed!

"Ch".

[Petrushka]

"Ch".

Not that easy! Dutch transliterations can be fun or frustrating depending on your point of view.

Dmitri Sjostakovitsj
Pjotr Iljitsj Tsjaikovski

Here's a terrific one to work out: Aram Chatsjatoerjan

[Pulcinella]

Not that easy! Dutch transliterations can be fun or frustrating depending on your point of view.

Dmitri Sjostakovitsj
Pjotr Iljitsj Tsjaikovski

Here's a terrific one to work out: Aram Chatsjatoerjan

Presumably the composer of the music used as the theme tune for The Onedijn Lijne?

[Serial_Apologist]

Presumably the composer of the music used as the theme tune for The Onedijn Lijne?

Or (save it for a rainy day) Khachaturian, and put it in your pocket!

[frankbridge]

Prom 6 for me:

Ralph Vaughan Williams
Symphony No. 4 in F minor (30 mins)

Michael Tippett
Symphony No. 4 (33 mins)

BBC Philharmonic
Omer Meir Wellber conductor

But at only just over an hour's worth of music (never mind the quality.....) I certainly wouldn't make the trip.

Certainly, the RVW and Tippett 4s are the outstanding Proms of the season for me, and I shall be there, even if it is a little short measure at a little over a hour of music. Perhaps as we are currently mourning the great Birtwistle, we could persuade the BBC to add Harry to the list as an encore: 'The Triumph of Time' would do very well indeed (shome mishtake shurely)

[RichardB]

I well recall the excitement of first hearing the work via the analogue LP recording by its dedicatees. It came in one of those silvery quasi-holographic sleeves.

I think you will find it was Xenakis's earlier percussion sextet Persephassa that came out in that Philips series of silver-sleeved LPs. The PdS recording of Pléiades came out in 1987 on CD only.

[Pulcinella]

Certainly, the RVW and Tippett 4s are the outstanding Proms of the season for me, and I shall be there, even if it is a little short measure at a little over a hour of music. Perhaps as we are currently mourning the great Birtwistle, we could persuade the BBC to add Harry to the list as an encore: 'The Triumph of Time' would do very well indeed (shome mishtake shurely)

It will be interesting to compare this performance of RVW 4 with their one under John Wilson in Bridgewater Hall on 13 April 2019, the first item on this month's BBC MM cover CD, which both Bryn and I found a little undercharged; see our comments on the RVW 4 Building a Library thread.
I hope you enjoy the live experience.

[Bryn]

I think you will find it was Xenakis's earlier percussion sextet Persephassa that came out in that Philips series of silver-sleeved LPs. The PdS recording of Pléiades came out in 1987 on CD only.

Quite so. What threw me was that I knew I had purchased a single disc recording some years before getting the boxed set. What I had got earlier was, in fact, the HM CD in a plain jewel case (from a bargain bin in a now-defunct CD chain store in New Oxford Street). It was, indeed, Persephassa that I got on LP, back in the early 1970s. Do you know their more recent recording, released last year, with both Pléiades and Persephassa? I see that it's on QOBUZ but without a pdf of the accompanying book. I don't really want to spend £21.02 to also get the book.

[frankbridge]

Quite so. What threw me was that I knew I had purchased a single disc recording some years before getting the boxed set. What I had got earlier was, in fact, the HM CD in a plain jewel case (from a bargain bin in a now-defunct CD chain store in New Oxford Street). It was, indeed, Persephassa that I got on LP, back in the early 1970s. Do you know their more recent recording, released last year, with both Pléiades and Persephassa? I see that it's on QOBUZ but without a pdf of the accompanying book. I don't really want to spend £21.02 to also get the book.

Bryn, I would love to get my mits on the Xenakis ''Pleiades' and 'Persephassa' on HM but I suppose it is quite hard to come across, being expensive or just not around. In my defence, I do have 'Kraanerg' with the Alpha Centauri Ensemble conducted by that crazed genius Roger Woodward on Etcetera (KTC 1075)

[Andrew Slater]

I had a feeling that someone might point this out, which was the reason why I was trying to divert people towards the BBC site.

The problem is that, as you suspect, the names are completely free-form, i.e. no field structure. It wouldn't be onerous to add some code to put the last word first, but it wouldn't work in every case - a case in point being Ralph Vaughan Williams, who would come out under W rather than V. Having said that I think there's only one other case at the moment, "Public Service Broadcasting", which presumably should stay as it is, although "Broadcasting, Public Service" wouldn't be too bad. It wouldn't be difficult to correct these two cases by manual editing, but every run of the main code generates a new index, and there may be as many as four or five runs per year to bring in changes and updates, and therefore four or five editing sessions, which I'm not keen on doing. Another possibility is to generate a permanent look-up table which would expand as the number of composers increased over the years, so that manual editing of a particular name would only be necessary once, but it would still be messy as the first runs with each new name would always result in the need for editing.

I'm not ruling changes out of hand, but if for the moment you could use your browser search tools to look for a particular composer, as Bryn suggests, I would be grateful.

If you've ever looked at the playlist database you will have noticed the same problem exists there. For that, adjustments are completely out of the question as the database currently contains over 50,000 composers' names.

I've written some experimental code to modify the existing indexes to a more conventional format, using the lookup table method so that I should only need to 'unreverse' inappropriate 'reversals' once. I haven't incorporated them in the main listing yet, but the composer and performer indexes are on the server as independent files, links: COMPOSERS PERFORMERS. They might not display correctly on all browsers as they aren't strictly correct html files, being intended for incorporation in an existing html file. The blue links also won't work at this stage. If I've not 'unreversed' something I should have or have 'unreversed' something I shouldn't have, please let me know. If I don't receive any adverse comments, I'll incorporate them into the main listing later.