Proms Mini-Reviews 10

Proms Chamber Music 3
Brahms, Berg and Hugo Wolf Lieder

The alien walks up to the German composer and says 'Take me to your lieder!'...As usual I think I'm hilarious even if nobody else does. Brahms would understand me, he always does. Whatever one thinks of Brahms, it can't be denied that his music a cornerstone in the repertoire of every musical genre save opera. You can make arguments that the 'real Brahms' is to be found in the symphonies, or the concertos, or the chamber music, or the solo piano pieces, or the songs, or the choral works. But the truth is that the 'real Brahms' is found in everything he wrote. There is no composer in history who wrote music that was so consistently of high quality. The four songs offered here were set to texts by Heine, who is now generally considered the 19th century German poet least likely to put readers to sleep (Goethe lovers address hatemail c/o Voices of Washington plz). Like nearly all Brahms's songs that I've ever heard (and I freely admit I probably haven't heard half of the 193 in my life) they are profoundly moving - less songs than mini-dramas in which Brahms tells a story. If Brahms was never write an opera, it wasn't from lack of dramatic ability (and he was, he even considered collaborating on an opera with Turgenev - depending on Turgenev's German, that would have been an all-time great collaboration.). I remember a comment from Pierre Boulez stating that Brahms was a fantastic developer of ideas but the ideas themselves were paltry. Clearly, Boulez doesn't listen to many lieder... The lieder were performed by Dutch baritone Hank Neven, who possesses a gorgeous lyric high baritone that reminds me of Christian Gerhaher with a bit more DFD-ish weight. This was followed by the Berg's seven early songs, sung ravishingly well by Swedish lyric soprano Malin Christensson. I always wonder if people who summarily dismiss Berg realize that his music is in fact...well...tonal. Schoenberg is close enough to Debussy to make the reputation far more intimidating than the music. But Berg's music is the lovechild of Mahler and Debussy, much closer to cabaret than "Modern Music." His music, particualrly the songs, are some of the most beautiful music ever written...that is until you start listening to Hugo Wolf. Hugo Wolf is one of those musicians whom you forget is around until his music starts playing and suddenly you wonder how you could have spent so much of your life without this music. The Italian Songbook contains some of the most beautiful songs ever written, and they were well-performed by the two aforementioned singers (though not on the level of the Brahms and the Berg). But I wonder whether all this Hugo Wolf is too much of a good thing. Lieder recitals are stupendously difficult to program. Most songbooks are not meant to be heard in quick succession, and after a while I was exhausted by hearing so many of these songs in a row. There was precious little musical contrast, and eventually you start wondering if they couldn't put in a bit of Paolo Tosti or Abba.
B+ (I'm wondering if I've finally gotten to that point everybody warned me about that chamber music becomes more fun than orchestral music...)


Prom 29: National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain
Semyon Bychkov conducting
Dukas, Julian Anderson, Berlioz

I was looking forward to this prom, the best and brightest of Britain's young musicians are always worth hearing, and on youtube you may find a Proms performance done by this orchestra with Simon Rattle on the podium that is the single greatest performance of Mahler's Symphony of a Thousand that I've ever heard. There are certain orchestras for which the Symphonie Fantastique is particularly designed, and a youth orchestra with 165 musicians is one of them. Combine this orchestra with Semyon Bychkov on the podium and this could have been a night worth remembering. Sadly, it was far from all one could have hoped. Dukas's The Sorcerer's Apprentice (think Mickey Mouse and a broom) just might be the most perfect tone poem ever written - with all due respect to Richard Strauss. It's a shame that Dukas destroyed so much of his music, because a few more pieces on the same level would have made the Debussy-Ravel axis into a triptych. This performance, unfortunately like most, was simply too slow and heavy to do full justice to the delicacy of this piece. This piece requires a Pierre Boulez at the podium who can give the X-ray precision this piece requires. It needs an orchestra of prodigious control, and it's simply a bad idea to put such a delicate work into the hands of a 165-piece teenage orchestra, no matter how talented. It wasn't terrible, but it wasn't Dukas either. Next came a Julian Anderson piece, a composer whom I've liked in the past. But this was simply brassy Dada chords that had very little organization or coherence. I have no doubt that the orchestra worked very hard on the music but I wish all that hard work would have better payoff. Then came the Symphonie Fantastique, a wonderful but undeniably flawed piece of music. When one hears the Symphonie Fantastique in a great performance, with all its manic drug-addled passions brought to the fore, it sounds like a perfect piece. Great conductors of this work like Bernstein, Munch and Muti know that following the score in this work is a deadly mistake, and the gaping mistake is in the dead center of the work: a 16-minute evocation of nature at its calmest, featuring music so still that barely anything happens as you wait breathlessly for the dark drug trip in the last two movements. But great performances will make you forget the work's flaws and let you focus on the orgy of invention by putting all sorts of unwritten accelerandos: sometimes to heighten the excitement, sometimes to fast-forward through the dull parts. Bychkov, unfortunately, took Berlioz's score at its word. The result was a mightily impressive roar in Berlioz's louder sections, lots of expressive playing, and lots of incontrovertibly dull moments. I kept wishing for Bychkov to turn into Valery Gergiev and whip the orchestra into the kind of frenzy for which a youth orchestra was born for this piece. But alas, my alchemical wishes continue to fall upon the deaf ears of rationality.
C-

Proms 30 & 31, PCM 3

This is, inevitably, the time of the festival that I develop 'Proms Fatigue.' Alas, due to work-related...well....work, I had to skip Prom 30 and part of 31. Prom 31 was just getting interesting when I had to turn it off (one does occasionally need sleep...). The BBC Singers did not sound at their best for Poulenc's Figure Humaine. One of the great choral masterworks of the 20th century sounded rough, underrehearsed, unblended, and badly in need of a conductor who will disabuse Soprano I's of the notion that they should take the final high-E even if their voices are not up to it. It was followed by a brass piece by Takemitsu, a composer I admire, that was so far from his best that I wondered why I didn't fast-forward. Finally, there was a world premiere by Stephen Montague of a piece called Willful Chants for chorus and brass. I was beginning to wonder if I'd finally become an old fogey who officially lost his taste for contemporary music, but this piece, an intimidatingly diverse melange of styles from atonality to gospel, was really quite catching. When we have the money I wouldn't mind....ah well. PCM 3 was similarly uncongenial, the focus allegedly being the Bach family. But well, maybe I just don't have much sympathy with early classicism, but the Bach sons are hardly a major focus in my own listening. Der Bachvater was represented by an tedious-sounding trio sonata (in this case violin, flute, harpsichord/cello) , and trio sonata from A Musical Offering that was, obviously, much more interesting. I love an enormous amount of Baroque music, but I have enormous trouble listening to Early Music concerts. Occasionally, they contain fabulous discoveries, but so often pieces are revived simply for the sake of having something to revive. With the exception of A Musical Offering and an encore by Telemann, the music consisted of period pieces that had no particular reason to interest people today (or me anyway). In 300 years, I doubt people will listen to Jakob Dylan or Sean Lennon, but I'm sure there will be some 'early music' buffs interested in reviving their music simply so they can say they did.

Prom 32: European Union Youth Orchestra
Matthias Bamert Conducting
Tchaikovsky, Janacek, Berlioz

Q: What's the World's Longest Viola Joke?
A: Harold in Italy

I wasn't looking forward to it. This was supposed to be Colin Davis's prom. It would have been something to hear the 83-year-old dean of English conductors in a program so directly up his alley. But Davis cancelled before, with rumors of a death-in-the-family. In steps the Swiss Matthias Bamert (whom along with the similarly initialed Martyn Brabbins is invariably the conductor who takes over these concerts), and I stopped expecting anything truly memorable. But after a shaky start came some Tchaikovsky of rare power. Perhaps it takes a youth orchestra to play Tchaikovsky's Romeo and Juliet with the requisite passion (there are lots of dull performances), but for whatever reason, this orchestra was clearly inflamed. Tchaikovsky demands enormous commitment from the players, and I have rarely heard Tchaikovsky played with this level of visceralness. Some of the credit must go to Bamert, who imposed some dramatic tempo shifts which obviously paid off. Next came Janacek's Taras Bulba. Janacek is a composer I love beyond reason, but I never get my ears around Taras Bulba, a twenty-five minute tone poem that doesn't quite gel. There are all of hsi trademark strange effects in the music, but it never reaches the orgy of unrestrained passion we get in so much other Janacek. This performance was, well...better than most. Big-name conductors rarely tackle Janacek because his music is so difficult to ignite, but in a piece that is nearly-impossible, Bamert nearly succeeded in putting together a Taras Bulba of enormous (if intermittent) vitality. After the break came a similarly iffy piece by a particular favorite of mine. Harold in Italy just might be my least favorite Berlioz piece. The Symphonie Fantastique is the work of a young genius inflamed with the discovery of his own powers, but with Harold in Italy Berlioz took his first steps into maturity. The result is pleasant, but it feels like a rough draft containing all sorts of passages which he would later rework into greater music. This was the only piece during which I felt as though Colin Davis was acutely missed. This piece requires a level of precision that the Symphonie Fantastique does not, and what would no doubt have sounded like rhythmic vitality in Davis's hands sounded shaky and awkward under the baton of Matthias Bamert. It was, however, a performance that improved as the piece went on, and the "Orgy of the Brigands" generated a good head of steam. For all its flaws, this was a good concert and I'm quite glad I didn't miss it.
B