I haven't spotted mention that the TV broadcast will be Sunday next on BBC4 - I'm looking forward to it!
-
-
Great photo! Hope you don't mind if I save it? I was sitting in H Stalls directly below you I would think. Shame about the naff floor design, wish they'd return to a plain stage floor and get rid of those lights at the back which annoy. Also, some of the lighting was distractedly glinting on the microphones. My only complaints about a superb evening!Originally posted by Keraulophone View PostAgree with all this, especially the brass - I didn't hear one cracked note (well, maybe there was just the one) in eighty minutes. As for that stupendous percussion crescendo to fortissimo possibile; it could have been the loudest noise I've ever heard in the RAH.
Being around 3000th in the Prom booking queue, although we didn't get the seats requested, the clarity of soft passages, the spatial effects of the brass groups in the gallery and the goose-pimple impact at the end reached the Circle seats with no problem at all. And the view was excellent:
"The sound is the handwriting of the conductor" - Bernard HaitinkComment
-
Oh dear - this comment is going to get me in trouble! Rattle has no Geist.Originally posted by Ein Heldenleben View PostComment
-
It had five star reviews in just about every paper. Even though I admired the virtuosity of the performers it left me curiously unmoved . Is it all just a bit too calculated? I just don’t know - maybe just I wasn’t in the mood. Yet I loved Mehta’s Brahms 2 the night before which I wasn’t expecting to.Originally posted by Prommer View PostComment
-
Comment
-
Perhaps you're just out of synch with him...Originally posted by Prommer View Post
Another example of the strange places Google takes me sometimes.
This discussion makes me think that perhaps this weekend it would be an idea to tackle again a CD I have of this work. It is live recording with Haitink and the Rotterdam Phil commemorating the 50th anniversary of the date on which the city was obliterated during WW2. It was not without controversy at the time and the family member involved in the performance didn't want the CD. My mother who usually had all such " family freebie" CDs was neither a Mahler fan nor convinced by the arguments for the choice of the work for the occasion, so it ended up with me. I listened a couple of times when I first had it but not since; it isn't the Mahler I would choose for listening and I found it was too overlaid by the circumstances, and associated memories from my Dutch in-laws and tangenitally my own family history. Perhaps after the lengthy gap it will work better.
Non-musical associations can be a positive for a given piece of music but they can also work against it.Comment
-
Maybe, as Robert Layton would say: ‘One is too aware of an interpreter at work.’Originally posted by Ein Heldenleben View PostComment
-
Maybe because it’s because I made the mistake of following with the the score for the last two and a half movements. You then start noticing all sorts of details - like the choir getting their opening Dflat from the flutes preceding C sharp and then sounding a tiny bit flat. But I only started looking at the score ‘cos I was getting a bit bored with the scherzo (as I noticed a reviewer did as well) . On the other hand it leaves you amazed at Mahler’s industry - it’s so detailed , so many prose instructions. It must take ages for a conductor to work through and learn. Mahler’s ability to create effect and emotion from thematically simple material is pretty much unrivalled.Originally posted by Alison View PostComment
-
Well put. I don't want to nit pick over what was basically a fine performance. I'll give it another listen/view on sunday. ANY performance is a special occasion for me bur Rattle's performances have always left me impressed but, sadly, unmoved.Originally posted by Alison View PostComment
-
It's worth remembering, in the context of the occasion for that performance, Haitink's own experience of the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands. His father was arrested by the Gestapo and disappeared into a concentration camp for four months before being released. The Haitink family, like many, suffered during the 'Hunger Winter' of 1944/1945, reduced to eating tulip bulbs.Originally posted by oddoneout View PostPerhaps you're just out of synch with him...
Another example of the strange places Google takes me sometimes.
This discussion makes me think that perhaps this weekend it would be an idea to tackle again a CD I have of this work. It is live recording with Haitink and the Rotterdam Phil commemorating the 50th anniversary of the date on which the city was obliterated during WW2. It was not without controversy at the time and the family member involved in the performance didn't want the CD. My mother who usually had all such " family freebie" CDs was neither a Mahler fan nor convinced by the arguments for the choice of the work for the occasion, so it ended up with me. I listened a couple of times when I first had it but not since; it isn't the Mahler I would choose for listening and I found it was too overlaid by the circumstances, and associated memories from my Dutch in-laws and tangenitally my own family history. Perhaps after the lengthy gap it will work better.
Non-musical associations can be a positive for a given piece of music but they can also work against it.
However, I'd be happy to take the CD off your hands if you decide that you don't want to keep it."The sound is the handwriting of the conductor" - Bernard HaitinkComment
-
And I thought it was! Yes!Originally posted by Prommer View PostMajor Denis Bloodnok, Indian Army (RTD) Coward and Bar, currently residing in Barnet, Hertfordshire!Comment
-
Zum Raum wird hier die Zeit...Originally posted by Pulcinella View PostMaybe its Zeit will come (or perhaps it's been and gone).
Comment
-
Just picked out a BBC MM CD to listen to: an organ recital of JSB works played by David Goode.Originally posted by RichardB View Post
It starts with the Toccata, Adagio & Fugue in C, BVW564.
Didn't sound like C to me, so I checked the liner notes, which are in this instance well detailed, giving the organ's specification (1714 Gottfried Silbermann organ in Freiburg Cathedral) and pitch (a'=476.3Hz), with modified mean-tone tuning.
I guess they won't use the organ much in conjunction with any orchestra there!Comment
-
Probably rules out Freiburg Baroque Orchestra... Although I see that there is another Silbermann organ in the cathedral and two others in churches elsewhere in the city.Originally posted by Pulcinella View Post
However that is all off topic.Comment
-
Comment