Ceci n'est pas une pipe
Jul. 25th, 2018 08:42 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
qatsiFor the first time this year I had a space on the rail; a lot of people come in the first week in order to get the ticket stubs for a Last Night ticket, but yesterday's Prom 14 also had a slightly off-beat programme. It was the BBC Philharmonic again, this time conducted by John Storgårds. A conventional beginning, with Wagner's overture to Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg: a fair performance, but perhaps I was a bit too close to the cellos (the principal cellist greeted us all in the front row with a cheery "Good evening!" as the orchestra came on to the platform) to get a balanced hearing.
Moving on, next we had the first oddity of the evening: some Schubert songs, orchestrated by Liszt. Soprano Elizabeth Watts sang Die junge Nonne, Gretchen am Spinnrade, Lied der Mignon and finally Erlkönig - probably the most famous of the four, and the only one I recognised. I'm not sure what to make of them - the singing was fine, but the orchestral sound did seem a mismatch, somehow a caricature of the original piano Lieder. Storgårds is one of those dancing composers, and one of the microphones got a whack from his waving arms at one point - quickly steadied, but I'm sure the sound engineers for Radio 3 had fun with that.
I hadn't heard of composer Bernd Alois Zimmerman, never mind his Symphony in One Movement, which completed the first half. Dating from the early 1950s, I found its outbursts of noise a little like blotches on a Jackson Pollock painting. It seemed to me that there were many musical ideas that were presented but not followed through (unlike last week's Messiaen, in which a long work was constructed out of relatively little thematic material). By no means the worst piece of music I've ever heard, I have to admit it didn't make me want to listen to it again, or to explore other works by the composer.
The piano was brought on stage during the interval and the second half began with Schubert's Wanderer Fantasy, again in an orchestration by Liszt, with Louis Lortie as the soloist. Again I found myself with very mixed feelings on this: Schubert wasn't a virtuoso and didn't write any music for piano and orchestra; was Liszt trying to turn this into a concerto? Through the ages, arrangement and transcription have been commonplace; in more recent times, the ready availability of recorded performances has led to a stricter convention on authenticity.
The concert concluded with a more conventional favourite, Sibelius' Symphony No. 7. I saw this last year under the baton of Thomas Søndergård, and previously under Osmo Vänskä. Storgårds took liberties with the tempo, slowing down considerably to draw some dramatic tension in places; but like Vänskä, he chose to end quite peremptorily. That two conductors have done that gives me reason to believe it's justified by the score, which I haven't consulted; but I have to say I prefer a more drawn out final note. Overall I conclude the concert contained some worthwhile experiments, but I'm not sure they were successful.
The concert finished a little behind schedule and I exited peremptorily myself, in order to catch the 22:15 from Paddington. I made it on time, but unfortunately the GWR driver didn't, and we left 15 minutes late. It took 55 minutes from the advertised departure time to get to Reading, probably in part because we ended up following a stopping service.
Moving on, next we had the first oddity of the evening: some Schubert songs, orchestrated by Liszt. Soprano Elizabeth Watts sang Die junge Nonne, Gretchen am Spinnrade, Lied der Mignon and finally Erlkönig - probably the most famous of the four, and the only one I recognised. I'm not sure what to make of them - the singing was fine, but the orchestral sound did seem a mismatch, somehow a caricature of the original piano Lieder. Storgårds is one of those dancing composers, and one of the microphones got a whack from his waving arms at one point - quickly steadied, but I'm sure the sound engineers for Radio 3 had fun with that.
I hadn't heard of composer Bernd Alois Zimmerman, never mind his Symphony in One Movement, which completed the first half. Dating from the early 1950s, I found its outbursts of noise a little like blotches on a Jackson Pollock painting. It seemed to me that there were many musical ideas that were presented but not followed through (unlike last week's Messiaen, in which a long work was constructed out of relatively little thematic material). By no means the worst piece of music I've ever heard, I have to admit it didn't make me want to listen to it again, or to explore other works by the composer.
The piano was brought on stage during the interval and the second half began with Schubert's Wanderer Fantasy, again in an orchestration by Liszt, with Louis Lortie as the soloist. Again I found myself with very mixed feelings on this: Schubert wasn't a virtuoso and didn't write any music for piano and orchestra; was Liszt trying to turn this into a concerto? Through the ages, arrangement and transcription have been commonplace; in more recent times, the ready availability of recorded performances has led to a stricter convention on authenticity.
The concert concluded with a more conventional favourite, Sibelius' Symphony No. 7. I saw this last year under the baton of Thomas Søndergård, and previously under Osmo Vänskä. Storgårds took liberties with the tempo, slowing down considerably to draw some dramatic tension in places; but like Vänskä, he chose to end quite peremptorily. That two conductors have done that gives me reason to believe it's justified by the score, which I haven't consulted; but I have to say I prefer a more drawn out final note. Overall I conclude the concert contained some worthwhile experiments, but I'm not sure they were successful.
The concert finished a little behind schedule and I exited peremptorily myself, in order to catch the 22:15 from Paddington. I made it on time, but unfortunately the GWR driver didn't, and we left 15 minutes late. It took 55 minutes from the advertised departure time to get to Reading, probably in part because we ended up following a stopping service.