Oh What a Lovely War: Prom 16, Gabriel Prokoviev Violin Concerto '1914'

It was supposed to be 'the war to end all wars'. As we know all too well, that was a forlorn hope. Indeed, when historians come to write the history of the last decade of the nineteenth century, the twentieth and very probably much of this one, some time perhaps in 2114, it will not be in chapters headed 'The Great War', or 'The Second World War' or the 'Great Patriotic War, or 'The Iraq war' or 'Operation Enduring Freedom' or Operation Cast Lead'. 

It will be 'The Hundred and Fifty Years' War. Or, if one is a pacifist of growingly pessimistic bent, perhaps 'The Two Hundred Years' War.' After all, war has hardly ever ceased, and it is all around us.

Most of us, I dare say, think of war as mass killing. In imagining the 'softening up' bombardments of the First War, the 'Thousand Bomber' raids of the Second, the 'WMD's' more recently, especially in the West, war has become almost impersonal.  But the artillery shell, the drone-fired missile, the bullet that kills you is a very individual, in that last split second, or, if you are unlucky, longer, a very personal thing.

In Gabriel Prokofiev's  Violin Concerto it is the violin that is that precise, fragile aspect of individuality of war; sometimes strained, sometimes weary, mostly fearing. It is the orchestra that is the instrumentality of war: the twang of bullets hitting barbed wire or ricocheting; the percussion of shells and bombardment, the rattle of machine guns or an AK47. The sounds, as you perceive them as an individual, somehow distant from you, not yet murderously personal.

It was the tension of the wider, general, destructive threat as played in the orchestral parts, counterpoised against the slightly lost, sometimes anguished, almost always not-quite-comprehending that made Gabriel Prokofiev's Concerto so striking.

Yes, it was programmatic in a sense that perhaps we want to eschew now; but it was a programme that was also musical narrative, part soundtrack to memories of scratchy film and more recent blurred cockpit video. It was a landscape of trenches and ruins; of memories of August relaxation and dances; of better times gone, sometimes fleetingly present, and the constant awareness of probably worse to come.

War has not changed much, for all the drones and distant hands on joysticks and Playstation falsity of the video stories. It hasn't changed at all for the people who die. Singly, individually, for who war ends still as a personal surprise and affront. 

It was a tremendously evocative and cleverly, hauntingly, constructed piece; the violin played with great insight by Daniel Hope, and accompanied superbly by the Istanbul orchestra. All of whom, after the seconds of silence at its end as the audience let it all sink in, were justly rewarded with a long spell of applause.

It was, perhaps, appropriate that a Turkish orchestra should perform this world premier. Some three million people in the Ottoman Empire died as a consequence of that war, too.

Above left: a silk 'in Memoriam' bookmark with the photograph of a WW1 soldier.

My grandfather (or more accurately, my grandmother's first husband, joined the Royal Army Medical Corps at the beginning of the war; he was killed just ten days before the Armistice, in some small battle in Flanders hardly anyone has heard of. Private Ainsworth was a relative.

Photo: the ruins of Ypres; the market square, 1917. (Unattributed.)

Photo: the ruins of Gaza, 2014. (Unattributed)

Radio 3 live relay; repeated Wednesday 30th July, R3 1400; iPlayer

Passion's Flowers: Prom 12 Bach St John Passion, Norrington

Photo: Eric Hossinger

What would a Prom season be without a little controversy? Classical concert-goers have become tame since the good old days when they'd trash a hall over the Rite of Spring.  Norrington, said the presenter of this Prom, "practically caused a riot here at the Proms six years ago conducting Elgar with no vibrato. . ."

I was around that week, but I don't recall any remnants of torn-up seats thrown from the Circle littering the Arena, or the burnt shells of overturned BBC outside broadcast vans round the side of the Albert Hall, or that lingering sting of tear-gas wafting across Kensington Gardens.

As far as classical music goes, all passion's spent. I mean, audiences these days hardly say 'boo' even to that ridiculous misbegotten charade of a Russalka at Covent Garden, and if anything ever deserved, if not the Floral Hall scattered in shards of glass and the Piazza burning, at least a few handfuls of rotten tomatoes thrown at the director, that did.

It was a shame, I thought at the time, that the vegetable market ever took its ammunition so inaccessibly far across the river to collect during the interval. Otherwise I could have done my imitation of the Portobello stall holder who, when trade was a bit slack, used to yell "Come alive, pawt-o-bellah!" "Come alive, Covent Garden! Get yer rotten tomaters 'ere!"

Photo: Norrington et. al. in rehearsal (Ben Palmer)

Apparently, it's fifteen years since Norrington last visited the St John, which is quite a while to digest an approach. But it exhibited what one might call a trademark, the knack of separating instrumental and vocal textures, examining the essence of them, and re-constituting the whole so that you can follow the process, and the rationale for it, as it were at the back of your mind without it distracting from the whole performance.

And so it was here; pared-down Bach, almost sparse Bach, but with the apple of the music peeled so carefully you could rewind the whole and hardly know the apple had been pared down to the core at all.

I like 'spare Bach', and both Zurich orchestra and chorus were perfect for that purpose and style, suiting what I take to be Norrington's intent perfectly. It is an approach that also—and I think rightly, this being the music of the early 18th century, to which might have had its own angst and uncertainties, but was metaphysical about them, not romantic; half a century before Rousseau made confession public —cool and considered without being in the least cold or unsympathetic. Instrumentally, in particular, this was a very metaphysical reading.

A little less purely so, perhaps, with the soloists, though it would be wrong to attribute too much gratuitous emotion to what was, with all of the soloists, but especially James Gilchrist, splendid articulation and phrasing. Though the countertenor, Clint van der Linde perghaps, early on, betrayed a certain lack of confidence and surety. Then again, the Albert Hall is not a sympathetic venue for counter-tenors.

As to the faster tempi that the audience might have found 'controverisal'? Not as far as I could tell; Norrington seemed to me to be taking it a a perfect pace, exactly suited to the forces playing it in the Albert Hall.

As I wrote briefly, I am not a great fan of the Bach Passions; nor, to be honest, of religious choral works generally. (I can't get on at all with Parsifal, either.)  But, should I ever feel an urgent need to hear a St John Passion, my recording of this is probably one I would come back.

What is with this season though? Both tenor and baritone were replacements; at this rate by mid-September, the Proms will have fielded more substitutes than all the penalty shoot-outs in the World Cup.

I listened to the Radio 3 relay at home on R3, and congratulations to the sound engineers for an excellent sound balance. Listening to small ensembles (not to mention a counter-tenor) in the Albert Hall can be tricky depending on where you sit, or stand. For this Prom, it might be that the broadcast listeners had the best of it.

Although, with my windows wide open on Saturday night, I heard the usual complement of sirens dopplering away into the night (perhaps one or two more than usual, but no doubt heading for the Israeli embassy or its environs up the road from the Albert Hall, which has been attracting greater numbers than most Prom concerts recently)  as far as I know, there was no riot at the Albert Hall. So I've washed the vinegar out of the hanky I had ready to put over my nose and mouth just in case.

Repeated BBC4 31st July; iPlayer (Part 1); iPlayer (Part 2).

Visualising the Proms

It suddenly struck me that my Prom habits are a little paradoxical. I've tended to think of a TV broadcast of a Prom as distracting and at home prefer to listen to the audio on Radio 3 with no visuals except any my imagination might conjure up in my head. As the cliche has it, radio has better pictures.

Yet when I can I prefer , it occurs to me, to see as well as hear a Prom in the Albert Hall rather than listen to it at home; and yet I don't think of that as distracting. I seldom sit there with my eyes closed. So tonight I feel I ought to try to resolve the paradox. I didn't really concentrate  on the China Phil's Prom, but it's broadcast on BBC 4 tonight. Hopefully including the encore, which everyone seems to think was a lot of fun and which I missed altogether.

Television analogue audio is generally awful, but since I have a more hi-fi-amenable set up now, I might as well use it. So I shall watch in HD, and, hopefully listen the same way, with the digital output of my Humax tuner through a digital-to-analogue converter and my serious hi-fi system.

I will, probably, be a little distracted, as I sometimes am when the BBC cameras are in the Albert Hall. As I sometimes am in the theatre or the opera. I blame it on my mis-spent youth, some of which was spent as an Assistant Stage Manager for a theatre.

Which means in Covent Garden, I can't help but check out the lighting rigs and thinking about the technicalities of the scene changes while I'm watching the activity and the singers on the stage. So it is sometimes in the Albert Hall, for all the BBC's cameramen are dressed to impinge as little as possible on the audience's attention, from head-to-toe in black. I always wonder exactly what is on those notepads attached to the sides of the cameras that the cameramen (and women) flip the pages of every few minutes.

Instructions from the director as to when to move, when to zoom, when to pull back, I presume. I can't imagine that the camera operators are all following marked-up miniature scores, though it wouldn't surprise me in the least to find out some of them are more knowledgeable about music than the tennis that presumably some, or all, of them were filming at Wimbledon shortly before.

I know, though, I shall be distracted by one thing. I can't help it, but I'm always fascinated by most directors' ability to focus on the instruments of the orchestra as their parts appear in the score. So I shall be looking out for when Camera 3 is still on the violins when Camera 4 should be on the horns . . .

Now, should it be gunpowder green, jasmine, or Assam for the interval?

Right up Stalin-Allee: Prom 7 Shostakovich 10

In a Proms season of anniversaries, this particular Prom is, perhaps, a year adrift for a memorial in round decades. But 61 years on, and with what's happening in eastern Ukraine, and with the growing blatancy of Russia Today's propaganda, it could be a timely reminder. Especially as for quite a few years now, in some sections of Russian society, and among some minds, Stalin's been becoming  a pussycat, Gulag claws neatly filed away.

I don't know whether Jiří Bělohlávek had anything like that in mind, though he was a young man of 22 in that first of many springs that turn to frosty winter in Prague of 1968. Musicians are not notoriously political.

True, the first movement was taken more quietly, more gently, perhaps, than one might expect; and seemingly on the slow side, though the emphasis there should be on the adverb. But only compilers of comparison lists listen to one movement of a symphony at a time, instead of following it through as a whole, and by the time Bělohlávek came to the Andante forty minutes or so later, it should have dawned that was the softness of the soft shoe shuffle of the secret police. As threatening as anything more pointed.

If the Allegretto (the supposed 'portrait of Stalin' if you believe Volkov, and I've never been too eager to) was less brutal and fierce than other examples, it made the point that you can be a villain, but a smiling one. In oppressive states, under tyrannies, it is usually safer to pay attention to the second and pretend not to note the first.

And in that mood, nor was the Allegro so abandoned. Stalin may have been in the grave, or under a Kremlin wall, or wherever he is, for more than half a century, but it would be over-confident to be too sure the 'ism' though it might have been lying low, is lying forever dead. And that I think, was what this thoughtful, carefully paced and un-flamboyant performance was about. Threats like that, as the last movement of this performance should have insinuated into the audience's minds by then, are not so easily dissipated with a roaring climax.

However much I'd like to believe that too. And will stick for the future with a recording, shall we say, with a brasher certainty about it?

Heard via  iPlayer.

Spirits of the Forest: Prom 9 Janacek, Glagolitic Mass

Photo credit: National Museum of Denmark, detail, the 'Gundestrup Cauldron'; created some time in the first or second century BC in what is now south-west Romania or north-west Bulgaria.


At the age of fifteen, it seems, Janacek joined  a pilgrimage of 40, 000 people to sing in the open air in honour of St Cyril.  That's about seven times the number you get in the Albert Hall for the last night lustily singing 'Jerusalem'; one imagines those 40,000 sang very lustily indeed.

It must have been as impressive and memorable to a young Janacek as a couple of days at Glastonbury would be to a teenager now, though possibly without any naked mud baths (but you never know how the Spirit takes some people) and bearing in mind the Glastonbury crowd, as far as I know, doesn't go much for mass community singing.

How I got the impression they were singing hymns in a forest, I can't really say, but if there was an imaginary locus in which to place Gergiev and the LSO orchestra and chorus for Janacek's Glagolitic Mass that is what it had to be. The musical spirits of this forest were far more pagan than Christian; more hamadryad than holy, to be fended off with loud and enthusiastic singing. As much, perhaps, out of the strength the fear of dark places, uncertainly tamed or exorcised, gives you as religious commitment.

Certainly, that is how the splendidly vehement and vigorous LSO Chorus sounded. And, whether it was spirits or beasts of the forest that were to be kept at bay by sheer volume of sound and energy, Gergiev's Maryinsky soloists (not to mention the Albert Hall organ) weren't lacking either.

As we all know, time has its own gearbox. (If you live in London as I do, it seldom seems to get out of third or fourth. In a small village in France I visit often, it hardly ever seems to get out of first.) I had the distinct impression that Gergiev was rather forcing the pace. Checking the timings, though, he can't have been. He just had a highly-tuned machine, obviously.

The initial intrada did sound almost frenetic, not to say fierce. but, whether it was the reconstructed score, or Gergiev, there was a majestic and commanding orchestral tonal colour from the start, modulated by an almost surprisingly pastoral folk-iness at the appropriate moments.

I noticed that a Guardian reader was put out by the score for this performance being referred to as a 'reconstruction', whereas it might properly be called a 'reversion' to the original. (The 2011 Prom—BBC SO/ and Chorus//Jiří Bělohlávek—to which the reader refers, and insists was preferable by far, however, was also a 'reconstruction') This is a useful short guide to Paul Wingfield's edition:

The main differences between the two versions are as follows: the original reinstates the Intrada movement at the beginning of the mass as well as in its usual place at the end. This gives the Mass a perfect arch form with Věruju (Credo) as its centerpiece. There are meter changes in both the Úvod (Introduction) and especially in the Gospodi, pomiluj (Kyrie) where 5/4 meter was originally conceived and then switched to easier 4/4. The Věruju movement contains the largest changes, with the orchestral middle section, the "Raspet" (an orchestral commentary on the Crucifixion), longer and more complex in the original version and containing a wild section with three sets of timpani omitted in the revised version, as well as off-stage clarinets. Finally, the Svet (Sanctus) movement is extended thrillingly near the end, reaching ever higher and higher.

[John L Webb, MusicWeb International]

I shall probably add to this a little later, but I was feeling a bit bad about the delay.

The Critics. . .Divided

Not for the first time (and I'm sure it wont be the last) I have to wonder whether some critics attended (or listened to) the same performance I did:

"In Prom 9 Barry Douglas had his work cut out as soloist in Brahms’s Piano Concerto No 1, because Valery Gergiev conducted the London Symphony Orchestra as if on tranquillisers, but Douglas finally succeeded in injecting some authentic Brahmsian passion. Janacek’s Glagolitic Mass benefited from a volcanic performance by the London Symphony Chorus."

[Michael Church, the Independent]

(See below, and later, above.)

Stormy Weather of the Soul: Prom 9; Brahms Piano Concerto No1

It is difficult to avoid creating a narrative writing about music. Even more difficult to avoid creating an autobiographical one, especially when the performer (in this case Barry Douglas) is specific, as he was talking to the R3 presenter, about the connection between this concerto, Robert Schumann's lapse into insanity and Brahms' relationship with Clara.

Not to accept that, though, is to risk writing only for the musically informed, about metronome markings and intricacies in the score. Which is music as frozen architecture.

Better, then, to treat, as I think Douglas and Gergiev actually did in the ninth Prom, music-as-story as metaphor, the concerto as the stormy weather of the soul; and a journey through psychological seasons with weather forecasts that in retrospect (recalling Brahms worked on this concerto for five years) were variable and often suspect and the long-range forecasts particularly unreliable. Just like those on the BBC. . .

The ochestral introduction was almost brutally thunderous; yet Douglas throughout was punchy and fierce, gentle and lyrical, precisely as the emotional temperature demanded, almost, but never in fact, to the point of exaggeration. Much as I feared beforehand he might actually be rather heavy-handed: Douglas is not a pianist who in the past I've always credited with the lightness of touch, or the lyricism of the 'portrait of Clara' in the slow movement, he displayed tonight.

Orchestra and piano were finely balanced: in the Maestoso equally brooding and threatening with hints of rays sunlight; in the Adagio, full of spring rays, distant black clouds, a smell of freshness and probably one of the most delicate, perfect examples of 'pricking stars from heaven's vault' anyone might wish to hear.

And finally, a culmination and resolution; storms, tempests, gales partially in the past, life-affirming sunlight, but nonetheless, in the final cadenza an unmistakeable reminder of the threats such emotional weather as Brahms; relationship with the Schumanns brings with it to the soul. Especially if you are in your twenties.

This was, from both Gergiev and Douglas, a cleverly thought-out performance and supremely executed. It was played unashamedly symphonically in scale, and with the piano played within an inch of its life. Didn't Brahms describe it as 'a symphony with a piano obbligato'? That does imply a certain element of musical schizophrenia, and there was a distinct element of that, deliberately imposed, as though for a moment piano and orchestra were struggling against being antagonistic, in the last movement, the Rondo, before the final climactic resolution. As in fact it had been briefly and perhaps more pointedly in the first movement.

This performance clearly did depend on accepting a narrative; even a narrative as musical metaphor of mental processes, rather than as a deterministic programme, but  neatly avoiding the pitfalls of attempting a musical biography.

It would not have suited its first audience, nor its first critic: "this rootimg and rummaging, this dragging and drawing, this tearing and patching of phrases and flourishes!" Gergiev and Douglas went for all that with terrific gusto and absolutely no smoothing over let alone tentativeness; but with a stylishness, power and utter confidence that arrowed every bar deep into the listeners' hearts.

Douglas said on radio 3, that Brahms' Piano Concerto in D minor is 'an intensely emotional experience that changes people'. Certainly, for this listener, he, Gergiev and the LOS fulfilled the first; whether it was one that would have quite such a transformational effect, I'm not sure. (Though it evidently failed in both endeavours for at least one critic and one lay—I presume—listener.) But you cannot fault them trying to achieve it, or how they tried.

A live performance of this concerto. thoroughly thought out and rigorously executed in its evident aims, really doesn't get much better than this. Not for me, anyway.

R3 (FM) live relay

iPlayer

Sonic Hedgehogs

I'm beginning to wonder, though it is early days, if the Radio 3 Proms broadcasts are not as good as they used to be. Of course, it may be that with age my 'sonic memory' is fading, but I don't think so.

I mentioned briefly, writing about the interlopers among the flying saucers, that the BBC's microphone setup seems to have been noticeably expanding over the last few seasons. The main rig over the Arena below the dome seems to have grown markedly even compared to last year.

I  have never been fond of 'multi-miking'. The most extreme example of which—to demonstrate—I saw a recording company which I won't name using in St John's some years back. Every instrument had a microphone; and not only that, but every bass and cello had what is called a 'boundary mic' at its foot.

There were as many microphones in, among, above and over the orchestra as a hedgehog has prickles, or so it seemed. I didn't care for the result. A plethora of mics such as that required an awful lot of jiggery-pokery before it became listenable to people with only one pair of ears.

 It's been some time since I recognised anything similar to the simplest form of miking an orchestra at a Prom: what is known as a 'Decca Tree'. Anyone who collects classical music recordings will know that in the late fifties and through the sixties Decca produced some of the finest and most realistic orchestral recordings ever made.

Now, there are all sorts of reasons why a simple arrangement like that is not practicable in the Albert Hall. But I'm wondering if it's going too far the other way. An important element of recorded music is the ambience of the venue; listening to the last couple of Proms on Radio 3, I don't seem to hear that any more. Last night particularly, it sounded almost as though the orchestra was playing in a dead space, not one filled with a lot of breathing human beings.

And something, I think, is happening to what, technically, we call the 'sound stage.' Anyone who has been to a Prom at the RAH knows the orchestra is spread over quite a distance not only from side to side, but fore and aft. Yet, what I seem to be hearing is, as it were, two or three layers rather than any impression of the real distance between, say, the first violins at the front and the brass well behind.

There isn't the depth that I'm pretty sure used once to be there. Nor, I feel, is there quite the range of the upper strings that you hear in the hall, or the distinctness of the string sections you actually do hear there.

Perhaps, and I'm being tentative about this, the sound balance is being engineered for its suitability for digital broadcast; these are all common artefacts of digital compression and limiting, however good it is. Or, perhaps, a consequence of the sound being mixed primarily for surround and only secondarily for common-or-garden 'true' high fidelity strereo.

If that is the case, it's a sad retrograde step. But one, I fear, no-one will be able to do much about, since it became a commonplace quite early on in the development of digital audio that, as has come about, the majority of radio listeners would soon have forgotten, and some would never know, what 'high fidelity' actually sounded like.

As someone—I won't say where from—told me then, when I wanted to know why no-one was proposing to broadcast digital audio at anywhere near the equivalent standard of what the recording industry was already using, when there was no technical reason whatever for not doing it, "Give it five years and nobody will be able to tell anyway."

Apologies for the diversion; now, I really must concentrate on writing about Brahms.

Prom 9: A holy trinity, Brahms, Janacek, Gergiev.

The real review will come along a little later, after I've rendered my notes into some kind of intelligibility.

I had wondered a little if we absolutely needed another Brahms Piano Concerto or another Glagolitic Mass at the Proms, but over the years, Gergiev at the Proms with the LSO has never disappointed, and he didn't tonight.

(I say 'never', though just a—very—few times I've thought he might not have challenged, or provoked, might sometimes be a better word, the audience as much as he might, or often has.)

But neither the Brahms nor, especially and outstandingly, the Janacek, could have been construed as being unchallenging in the sense of thought-provoking. I don't think I have ever heard, and wonder if I may again, such a raw no-holds-barred Glagolitic Mass of such pure energy as I did in this Prom.

If you heard the interval talk, you would have learnt that Janacek, at what is now the X-box*/pizza-devouring age of 15, had joined a pilgrimage of 40,000 people. Who sang in the open air. Whether that did surface in some musical form fifty years later, we cannot tell. But hearing Gergiev, the Maryinsky soloists, the LSO and the LSO choir, it's hard to believe that a memory of it could not have been resonating round his skull like a great cathedral bell.

One brief technical note: the broadcast balance probably overdid the power of the soloists, maybe made them sound more vehement than strong; it put them forward of the orchestra, when, apparently, they were actually behind it, underneath Henry Wood's bust.

Even allowing for what I suspect is a little added mic enhancement of the audience in the Albert Hall this season, by the sound of it, the audience was just as enthusiastic as I am.

*Other games consoles are also available. Or so I am led to understand.

I'm sorry I couldn't go to hear it live; if you didn't hear it at all, you really must. It'll be repeated on Radio 3 tomorrow (Friday 25th at 1300).

iPlayer 

Flourishing Artistry: Chamber Prom 1, Rameau, Les Arts Florissants

It can be difficult really to love Rameau. And it did look a bit presumptuous of the BBC Proms Guide contributor to describe him as 'the French Bach'. Would even the most musically patriotic Frenchman (or woman) really go that far?

(Don't answer that. I know it's probably a 'Yes'.)

But if ever there was a musical manifesto that a French patriot could point to to go some way, at least, to giving that assertion some body, it was Les Arts Florrisants at the Cadogan Hall.

The band has always ben something of a favourite of mine, though I've not been, in the past, always without reservations about William Christie's direction.

That lunchtime, they were under the direction from the harpsichord of Paolo Zanzu, who I don't really know, though I presume I must have heard him playing continuo with the band; but both his playing and direction were utterly delightful. Usually, I find it difficult not to associate Ramaeau from the absurdly intricate formalities and rules of the Court at Versailles. As though, somehow, all those rules about who sat on a three-legged stool, who on a chair, who had how much of their name or rank on which door, who could wear what height of platform heels, and strut them along which corridor, were all also getting into the musical notation.

Not in this concert, though. This was Rameau with his high-heel shoes kicked into a corner. (We'll pretend that, Versailles notoriously not having any loos, we don't know what they might have landed in apart from just a corner.) And, especially in (I think, I haven't got the programme) the Premier Tambourin et Deuxième Tambourin en Rondeau) amazingly light, fast and frisky. With not a foot (or a finger) wrong.

On Monday, Les Arts Florissants played like bon viveurs to a man (and woman). Enthusiasm, complexity and joie de vivre splendidly moderated by delicacy and, yes, even where required in the last piece of the concert, that somewhat more sober kind of 'mathematical', 'celestial sewing machine' precision and intricacy that might just, at least, for its duration, have you believing quite devoutly Rameau could, after all, be the 'French Bach'.
Beautifully judged performances throughout. The tone of the instruments absolutely beautiful too and very nicely balanced. It may be on the iPlayer for longer than usual. If you missed it first time around, Go listen to it. I insist.

And watch out for Paolo Zanzu.

"Sewing machine"? Peter Porter once called Bach 'the celestial sewing machine'.




R3 FM (recorded)


Repeated Sunday 27th July 1300 R3 

iPlayer

UFO's Among the Flying Saucers

When the Albert Hall was remodelled, so were the 'flying saucers'. For a while, anyone who went up into the gallery could see what these things looked like from close up.

The acoustic effect was, I thought, reasonably successful, though not without some disadvantages. On the plus side, I believe it improved the sound, particularly, of second violins: they appeared to acquire more 'body' Bass strings, too, became a little fuller, as well as, I think, becoming a little drier with less 'bloom',  enhanced by some conductors' experiments since with placing lower strings at stage right, instead of stage left.

It also seemed to me that the new arrangement improved the brass too, in both clarity, separation and dynamics: most observable, perhaps, if you listen in the hall to any piece where a bass trombone has any prominence. It certainly serves early instruments much better  than it did years ago; and has improved the clarity of small ensembles, too.

But there were some disadvantages. In some seats in the Circle, you could hear an echo that I didn't recall being there before; and there were places in the gallery (particularly at the organ ends where stewards once tended to usher people with disabilities to seats) where again, one heard the echo, or the orchestral sound became noticeably unbalanced. I've been avoiding that part of the Albert Hall now for years, ushers' solicitude notwithstanding.

This season, the flying saucers have been joined by other UFO's. Among them, the circular lighting rig we've seen before, though I haven't really noticed that causing any particularly notable deleterious effects, though acoustically it's hard to credit there can't be any.

This year, though, there are other interlopers. I've no idea what they are: they look like huge flat screens, though up there obstructed by all the microphone and lighting cables, one presumes only people in the gallery would have anything like a decent view of them. Now I can't really believe that anything that big isn't going to muck about with what the 'flying saucers' are supposed to do. Though I shall have to listen to a few more live concerts this season before I can decide one way or another.

I've noticed, too, that the microphone arrangement is getting distinctly more complex. Long gone are the days when you could just about discern a fundamental stereo pair. Some of this year's arrangement, I suspect, is for the benefit of broadcast listeners, the better to pick up the more enthusiastic—and often, not really very discriminating, stamping and whooping from the higher seats and the gallery? Or would that be unduly cynical? Listeners at home. I know, can often be a little misled over the enthusiasm of a Prom audience, which can often sound rather more generous than it actually was. And more than some presenters would have you believe . . .

I shall try to have a closer look. Even—though I don't hold out much hope, technical information on Prom broadcasts has never been easy to come by and very much harder the last decade or so—try to get some inside info from the OB vans . . .

I'm old-fashioned. All my hi-fi is connected up with proper wires. Worse, the listening set up in my living room is all wired up back and forth to my audio editing system in my bedroom. All of which somehow get into a tangle—as any collection of more than two cables inevitably will, it's a law of physics—which constantly needs the kind of attention the Gordian knot did until Alexander got impatient. An approach, however tempting sometimes, especially this week as I'm trying to fathom why one of my cabling systems between one system and the other seems to have decided to become partially defunct, isn't really advisable if I want to carry on actually listening . .

Pity the outside broadcast engineers. Who, a few seasons back, I noted with some amusement, had abandoned their own attempts at understanding what had gone wrong with one of their cable runs, and just tied a label to it in obvious despair that said "Fu'd".

This is just one part of this year's cable spaghetti leading out of the Albert Hall. All, as far as I could see, 'unfu'd'. So far.

(Had to censor that; the whole word apparently got search engines' puritanism filters engaged. Oh, ffs, grow up!)

In Days of Old When Knights were Bold. . . .Prom 6: Der Rosenkavalier

. . .And the teenagers were randy;
They went first for girls that were a bit old
Then dumped them for eye-candy.

At least last night, it being a 'semi-staged' performance, we were spared the bilious and clashing colours of the actual stage set. Seeing those on the BBC4 Glyndebourne documentary a little while ago, reminded me of student 'decorating parties' in the Seventies.

That was when the party-goers, enthusiastically fuelled with alcohol and moderately hallucinogenic (or merely self-deluding) drugs, all even more enthusiastically grabbed a random pot of paint and started painting equally randomly as to walls and colours.

Once sober and partially sane again, the denizens of those rooms usually realized very quickly they couldn't sleep with those colours around them without worse nightmares than a tab or two set going; and certaiinly not eat without feeling even queasier at every meal than they had the morning after the party, and rushed out to buy quantities of white paint to expunge the horror of it all.

I think this was the most disappointing Glyndebourne performance I've ever seen (and heard: though to hear much from the stage intelligibly last night, even with the libretto in front of you would have needed the average hearing aid to be turned up to eleven.)

As it happens, I finally saved up enough to actually go to Glyndebourne this summer; and I am really, really glad that I didn't choose this Rosenkavalier . . .Much of the stage business—and I'm allowing for the narrower confines of the platform at the Albert Hall, not that that has ever seemed to confine the company before—was puzzling, pointless, mystifying, or just plain silly

It didn't look quite so bad close-up in a TV documentary with someone offering some kind of explanation of why they were doing it—which I've forgotten—but from a greater distance, when Sophie and Octavian start their audition for the Synchronised Swaying Doubles Team, from the Circle at the Albert Hall, it looked like two lemmings meeting each other face to face each stubbornly convinced the other was heading the wrong way to the cliff they were overdue to throw themselves over.

It could be that those who stayed at home and listened to the sixth Prom (and for free! Prommer mutters darkly) had the best of it. I'll have a quick listen to my recording later. . .

But in the hall it was all rather flat. (As flat as the flats in the set. A technical theatrical pun, there, in case you didn't notice. I knows about these fings, innit?) The singing emotionally flat—no-one seemed in fact to have any emotions; which is very odd considering what this opera is about.

And worse, musically flat. Professional, competent, all the notes in the right order, sort of thing, but changes of dynamics or swoops into mezzoforte are not really emotionally satisfying substitutes for a psychological score that needs more insight than Robin Ticciati appeeared to be able to provide.

"There will be tears, there will be laughter," said Ticciati, very softly, on Radio 3.  There were very few of the former and very little of the latter.

Enough for the moment, since it's late, and I need a decent night's sleep so as to prepare for the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Opera Companies kicking the door in and confiscating my Kobbe's Opera Guide or making me write 5000 words on "Mid Twentieth Century Butch Feminism in Tippett's The Midsummer Marriage".

Sorry about the limerick. But it's not as vulgar as some that begin that way. But it's not boorish, is it? Baron Ochs, you see, is a boor. A smug, arrogant, stupidly self-confident and assured one for most of the opera. It's questionable, doubtful really, that he even notices, let alone is affected by, what gives us in the audience—or should—just a short twinge of satisfying schadenfreude after the police have finished with him. But in this production he's only vulgar, and we don't get even a little twitch of that most satisfying of emotions: to the Viennese, reputedly, anyway. Almost, but not quite, as vulgar as Octavian/Mariamdel's horrendous squawking combo Strine-Estuary Essex accent in the same  inn scene of the Third Act.

Perhaps that was supposed to be comic, but  it just came across as amateur end-of-the-pier music hall, and like many missed opportunities in this production garnered merely a handful of slightly embarrassed titters . . .a handful in an audience of a handful of thousands? I ask you. . .I haven't often seen an audience so disengaged. And that wasn't because half of them were concentrating on trying to follow the libretto.

While we're on about vulgarity, listeners at least missed the Marschallin's adolescent 'black boy' hunting around the stage at the end for her underwear and having a good sniff at it. Oh, no: it was supposed to be a hanky, wasn't it? Maybe it was a scarf. Difficult to tell from the Circle. Some people laughed.

I see I shall have to come back to this, given other reviews, varying from the near-adulatory to the lukewarm. It won't have been the first time—or will be the last, probably—that I'll be wondering if I was at the same performance as some critics.

I can't say I care for Ticciati as a conductor. While his Rosenkavalier was competent, it would be hard to honestly say much more than that. (The waltzes were popular with the audience, but surely there should have been more Richard and less Johann about them?) I saw Eugen Onegin at Covent Garden; and felt then he was almost out of his depth. He made the Covent Garden orchestra sound almost third-rate; which is not how I've heard them for a very long time.
Note: Baron Ochs was sung by Franz Hawlata, not Lars Woldt as advertised; and Sophie by Louise Adler, not Teodora Gheprghiu. No explanation that I saw. Hope thieir arms  are OK?

Live: RAH 

iPlayer Acts 1 and 2; don't know where Act 1's gone . . .

Act 1 has surfaced

Techsting

I think the girl sitting next to me last night at Rosenkavalier didn't come back after the first act because she didn't like it: or maybe because she couldn't follow it, not having stumped up the fiver for the programme and libretto. 

But I suppose it might have been because a dozen bars into the overture, she was still reading her day's texts on her iPhone and I tapped her on the shoulder and made "switch that fucking thing off like you're told!" gestures. Maybe she took me for a potentially throat-cutting Phantom of the (Albert Hall) Opera?

I've become increasingly exasperated at the reluctance of too many people to separate themselves from their emails, texts, sexts, pix of uncute babies or even less cute kittens. There is only a tiny, minuscule, chance in real life that anything that is going to destroy your world is going to happen in the sixty seconds between the conductor appearing at the back door of the stage and lifting his baton at the front of it.

"But it's off!" she said to me, angrily; which kind of compounded the offence.  That's not the point. Switched to silent or not, what effectively is a bright torchlight glaring in the corner of your eye—let alone stray babies or kittens—does not help to concentrate the mind on the music. Perhaps the beginning of the overture was a bit clumsy; I can't tell you; it might have been me not being able to listen to it properly for quite a few bars.

The announcement at the beginning of every Prom concert used to be amusingly emphatic in a 'Mind the Gap' kind of way: "Please switch off your mobile phones." It's now almost apologetic, and too early. And probably not loud enough to get through the earbuds. People are still getting to their seats, still busy reading their emails, texts, worrying about the last missed call.

There is very little in life that means you really cannot be without your iPhone, even for as much as an hour and a quarter until the interval (and most Prom Concerts get to an interval well before that). And if there is—the imminent demise of a rich legacy-bearing relative, say—perhaps you should have stayed away? Or be at the bedside, showing you really care?
   
Your mind won't be on the concert if you're thinking about all the texts emails and cute kittens instead of all that really conspires to make real life so much more beautiful and full and generally worth living that's music. 

I'm not sorry for you.

I bloody well despise you for your pitifully incomplete life.

So if you sit next to me at a Prom, or at the Coliseum or Covent Garden—be warned. I shall be—not boorish or vulgar, or even rude but— pointed about you switching the damn thing off. Completely. Silent. Inoperative. Blank. Black-screened. Dead. Norwegian Blue. Pining for the fjords. Not just quiescent.

Breaking (Bad) News

So I won't be going to one Prom I'd been really looking forward to: Chailly conducting the Leipzig Gewandhaus in Beethoven's Ninth. (Prom 75.)

Apparently he's broken his arm. Like, I suspect, many others, I'm not much enthused by the prospect of the NY Phil's Alan Gilbert conducting. I realise the near-impossibility of replacing a conductor like Chailly at just a few weeks' notice, but . . .

Of course, Gilbert may surprise us . . .

One does wonder, though, if the 'tradition' of playing Beethoven's Ninth late every season is really worth keeping up? I've not heard many that outstanding since Tennstedt's extraordinarily moving Proms Ninth, and that was . . .could it really have been 1990?

(It's a bit late, now, but, Maestro Chailly, take it from one who knows: if you're going to fall, try to break the fall with your left arm. Or start practising 'pratfalls'—any drama student will demonstrate—to break your fall without breaking anything else.)

Oh, What a Tangled Web. . .

This is utterly ridiculous. If you try to get information on the recent past, or future, or even today's, Prom broadcasts, the BBC website's Prom section simply says "No events available".

It was bad enough when last year the BBC stopped putting programme notes on line; because, they said, not enough people (however many, or few that may be) accessed them; and they couldn't format them for smartphones.

Or, more truthfully, I suspect, it was all just too much trouble. And now, for information about composers, we get paragraphs copied and pasted from Wikipedia. . . Which is not always anything like an adequately informative source in this respect.

While the BBC is archiving the R3 broadcasts, its own website is not easy to navigate. ("No episodes available"one link told me.) Elsewhere, a Proms page suggests that concerts will only be repeated only on Sundays. They aren't: the Radio 3 schedules (as would the Radio Times if you buy it) show most are being repeated in the 1400hrs slot on weekday afternoons. A warning, here, however: some (like the Glyndebourne Rosenkavalier) won't be, presumably because of copyright or repeat fee reasons, and they tend to come to a shuddering halt when the Edinburgh Festival gets going, so many of the later August and September concerts won't be repeated.

Look, BBC, this is a shambles. How the hell can you even pretend any more this is a 'world' season, if, because of time differences, half the damn world can't easily find out how to listen to any of the concerts any more?

Is there any point in asking if, BBC, you can get your website builders' collective elbows disentangled from their collective arses? Just for the sake of, you know, the sort of people you're supposed to be broadcasting for. They used to call them listeners, remember?

Not 'page viewers'.

NB: after getting there by some devious route, without the help of the BBC website, the archived Proms broadcasts can be found here. Available to listen for seven days after the performance. Lets hope this link works for the duration.

(The audio quality of the iPlayer is pretty good. Sadly, I don't have access to the Beeb's tecchies any more, so I don't know what kind or degree of compression they're using, but while it can't handle the dynamic range of a big orchestra or the Albert Hall organ, in hi-fi terms it's not bad. Best heard through good headphones or an external amplifier and speakers; not most laptop's internal speakers.)

China Tease: Prom 2

I can't really say I'm that enthusiastic about the second Prom with the China Philharmonic, though I'm likely to find Alison Balsom's trumpet tempting.

That could be because I heard some rather odd sounds when the BBC World Service was trumpeting (sorry, I shall try to avoid such childish puns in future) its appearance most of this week. They sounded rather like Confucian wind-chimes at a China Tea Party. I hope that wasn't a sneak 'pre-hear' of the Elgar, Tchaikovslky, Liszt or Mussorgsky. It rather put me off. And experiencing Lang Lang at various times has made me just a little nervous of young Chinese percussionists. Sorry, that should be pianists.

I can't help, though, rather wanting to know if the China Philharmonic can come up with some kind of 'People's Pomp Over the Circumstance of The Long March' in G Major. I think they should, really. We shall see.

We did. Respectful. Cautious. A bit dull, actually, as a tributary gift to people you're meeting for the fist time tends to be. Especially, perhaps, if you may be just a little uncertain about the degree of actual patriotic fervour involved, not in playing it, but listening to it. [Note to Chinese Cultural Attache for the future: not a lot, really! It's not an English The East is Red . . .] Something for a formal People's Army Parade, perhaps?

(The violins, in particular among the strings, sounded a bit oddly thin on the radio relay. Technical balance set up primarily for the Tchaikovsky, perhaps, listening to the first bars of the Romeo and Juliet? Much more like it: as the conductor Long Yu suggested prefatorily speaking of a strong cultural link between China and Russia, maybe an 'Elgar tribute' was bound to be somewhat more inhibited?)

More maybe later when or if I get around to listening to my recording. I quite liked the Mussorgsky; the presenter, I heard, used that word 'virtuosic' to describe the Liszt. I'd call it 'flashy', myself.

I tend to avoid the more obviously 'lollipop' Proms these days, hence being a little perfunctory about this one. (And I shall be totally ignoring several. And very determinedly among them, the ridiculous Sunday morning 'Sport Prom'. What on earth has 'O Fortuna' from Carmina Burana got to do with any sport? Someone, I suppose, will tell me it was used as a 'World Cup Anthem' once. )

But the China Phil is a very accomplished orchestra—way better than a few visiting orchestras I've suffered over the years—and I hope they come to London often. And relax a little?

R3 (FM/DAB)

Repeat: R3 Monday 21 July 1400

iPlayer (Part 1 of 2)

iPlayer (Part 2 of 2)

Kings of the Castle (Prom 1)

I had not originally intended to write about the first Prom, Elgar's Kingdom. Not through any republican sympathies, you understand, more, probably, to do with a certain amount of antipathy to this kind of rather grandiose 'Muscular Christian' sort of stuff. Nor am I particularly keen on Elgar, I have to admit.

And I've always been a touch uneasy about the frequent co-option of Elgar's music (or anyone else's for that matter) for the purposes of nationalism or patriotism. This being the year in which either or both could have to be re-defined (and could that be why we're getting so much Elgar outside the Last Night this year, one asks oneself?) that itching sense of unease can't really be scratched away.

But, listening to the performance last night, albeit a little casually, it has to be admitted it was certainly a grand opening to the Proms Season. Or 'grandiose'? Or 'grandilloquent'?

I shall have to listen to my recording again to make a more considered choice between the two. But there was no doubt that orchestra, chorus (especially!) and conductor Andrew Davies were on excellent form. I'll take issue with Eric Jong's comment in the Guardian (as I suspect I quite often will over the next couple of months) that this first Prom was 'subdued'. There didn't seem anything 'subdued' about it at all—either among those on the stage or in the auditorium—listening to the live relay on Radio 3.

Radio 3 repeat: Sunday 20th July 1400.

On iPlayer (video)