In one ear and . . .

Isn't it odd how two people can hear, apparently, exactly the same things, and be diametrically opposed in their conception of what they mean? This is The Times on the Schoenberg Variations:

". . .[it] is a test of any ensemble's technique and concentration. The orchestra not only swept through it with compelling passion, but managed to characterise the fleeting mood changes—some no more than a flicker—without compromising the overall flow."

I can't say I heard "compelling passion"—rather 'determination'—but I heard all the rest—and they were the things I thought were so wrong with it. All sweeping flow and a few fleeting flickers . . .

Oh, well. Perhaps I'm in a bad mood . . .or is it politically dodgy to be a bit mean to Barenboim and his band in print? I wonder. . .

(And thinking of people having only half an ear, I've read in the Guardian that the 'L'histoire d'un Soldat' was "chiefly unsuccessful because it was narrated in French." (As of course, so many have been this season, seeing as how they were sung in French, German, Italian, even Latin.) This in the Guardian, not the bloody xenophobic Daily Mail? Jesus, the sort of language I'd like to use about that I don't think I dare to, even in a blog. Quel con! Quelle rhodomontade! Zenophobe! Cochonnerie! Je vous emmerde!)

As of now, you'd better pronounce my first name French-style, that's with an acute accent on the E. [i-rique. Got it? I'm going to insist on it.] Don't bother trying with the last one, the French can't do that at all . . .In one part of the north of England, though not the one I come from, it's actually pronounced 'Brouwat" which they could, only it's too complicated to explain . . .

Prom 39: Tinker, tailor, soldier . . .

Nous vous proposons à cette soirée, un petit opéra, un petit drame, pour sept instruments et une voix, qui est très passionnante et un beau plaisir minuscule….It’s OK, don’t panic, the rest is in English. Sort of.

Though there was a momentary panic early on in the Stravinsky L'histoire d'un soldat. Even I can hear cracked notes from the brass and tell when a note on a string instrument should be flat, not off altogether. But they recovered.

I think they recovered, for I found the music rather flat too, only occasionally dramatic, certainly never melodramatic, and monochromatic. I can’t see why this should be. There were so many missed opportunities, so many points at which the narrator was so much more dramatic than the musicians, and without him one would have felt just as forlorn as that soldier finding the violin had no sound.

That’s not to say the musicians were not highly skilled; they were. There were some lovely sweet bars from the violin when they were needed, some splendid passages from the two brass players, but, all the same it was cold. And surely the parodic Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott was, for all its harmonium impersonation—and why wasn't that sustained?—neither out-and-out-parody, nor ironic, not even post-modernist. Somebody didn’t really get the joke.

And, at the end, what was the percussionist doing, playing like a street musician collecting pennies? So, I’m sorry to tell you, I was a bit disappointed again. The playing was, que dirai-je? Sequential. It lacked sufficient narrative cohesion. And any sense of a fairy tale, let alone a post-war fairy-tale and one that belongs as much to the Thirty Years War as the First. Yet at least some of the members of this band must have been brought up on Khalil-wa-dumnah? (I don't think I've got the transliteration right, there, but it's too late at night to ring a friend and ask.) And in the devilish dispossession of war that is the point?

But what saved it was Patrice Chéreau’s wonderfully dramatic narration, which had all the colours and expression and narrative flexibility the playing mostly lacked. Perhaps that was the intention? But if it was, why? It was an utterly entrancing bit of story-telling: I really felt like a child again, wanting to see how it all turned out, seeing the characters so vividly in my head, and yet hoping it wouldn’t end too soon. Even though I know the story . . .

And I’m sure at one point I heard him make that very French rude gesture: when you slap the elbow of your right forearm up with its clenched fist with the palm of your left hand . . .Something certainly sounded like that . . .

I’m so glad I could follow the French. Not that it’s so difficult, actually, and made even easier thanks to the narrator’s superb diction. (Did the audience not, or not have a translation? I thought they’d giggle a little in places, and when they didn’t, I felt a bit foolish.) Unforgiveable, BBC: why didn’t Patrice Chéreau get a credit in print, or on the web, nowhere that I could see? He was indispensable.

Note to presenters: if you must try to pronounce names in French, it sounds very silly when it’s done so “exsplausifelie”. Forget “Allo, Allo”, OK? That’s not actually French they’re speaking . . . . And practice saying “Intercontemporain” please. No, no, try again. You can manage ‘ensemble’ on your own, can’t you, though I know it’s a bit tricky putting them together? I’ve already screamed at my speakers over Alice Coote’s “ondgenoo” for ‘ingenue’. This guy Pierre Chéreau might give lessons . . . The story lasted less than an hour, nowhere near long enough for ‘Patrice’ to turn into ‘Pierre’. Yes, I know I make mistakes too, and I had a very long day as well after not much sleep, perhaps that’s why I’m in a bit of a temper, but this does smack of carelessness.

Apparently the orchestra flew into London from Naples late last night, were rehearsed from 10am until 2, and were on at 7. Tomorrow they’re flying off again. The presenter said Barenboim ‘pushes them hard’ almost approvingly. Too hard, I think, and I also think it was showing tonight. Why? A ‘maestro-onic’ ego trip?

R3 relay

West-Eastern Divan Orchestra/Barenboim; Stravinsky: L’histoire d’un Soldat, narr. Patrice Chéreau.

Prom 38: Falling off the divan

I said I wasn’t going to review the Schoenberg from the ‘Divan’ and Barenboim tonight; so I won’t, though I did listen to it. I’ll just comment on it.

It is clear, as the presenter told us, that the orchestra does know the music very well.
Also clear, as Barenboim apparently said, that it is “A difficult piece to make work.” Whether he himself had any real, developed, considered, conception of what to do with it, I am not so sure. Conceptually, it seemed incoherent to me, just the style of performance overall that I would give to a friend so she could confirm to herself why she hates the Schoenberg of this period.

Apparently, some of the Arab members of the band were heard ‘jamming’ one of the themes in Arabic style earlier. I would have liked to have heard that; I suspect they may have shown a better sense of the structure of the Variations for Orchestra than their conductor, if they could do that. And I have heard just enough Arabic music to guess what it might have sounded like. Now that would have been very interesting if they had been allowed some of that freedom in the 'real thing' tonight. I’m sure they could recognise the musical meaning of the plural . . .

OK, I did say I was tired. Perhaps I’m jaded. Maybe I’ll have another go at it next week, but this really is a favourite of mine, and despite the skill of the orchestra, I was disappointed. Apparently he told them, being “tough on them”, that the piece sounded sometimes like “rush hour in Hong Kong” in rehearsal. I wonder if he put them off. It sounded more like SUV’s rolling along a 12-lane American freeway at 3 in the afternoon to me.

Prom 38: East-Western Divan Orchestra: Schoenberg, Variations for Orchestra.

East, West . . .

. . . home’s best. That is, if you have somewhere you can be sure of calling ‘home’ with any sense of permanency, and some members, even the youngest, of the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra, of course, will probably be uncertain of that for their entire lifetimes. Yes, politics rears its head again. So?

For all I now have a new respect, politically, for Daniel Barenboim after his Reith Lectures, I have seldom been happy with his conducting at the Proms in recent years. In fact, I walked out of one—and I can easily count the number of times I’ve done that on one hand—in utter dismay and real anger at what I thought was stolid, uncomprehending, and unimaginative conducting and a thoroughly banal interpretation. All the same I was quite taken at the time by last year's 'Wagnerian' Bruckner.

So, therefore, I would normally skip Proms 38 and 39 this week; the trouble is, I do like both the Schoenberg and the Stravinsky. . .and, obviously, I have some sympathy with the aims behind the foundation of the band.

However, be prepared for the reviews to appear rather late. To be honest with you, I’ve now listened to (sometimes twice) and concentrated hard on (you’ll have to take my word for that!) nearly 30 Prom concerts so far (even if I haven’t written about all of them) and I am beginning to suffer a touch of the Proms mid-season equivalent of the marathon runner’s ‘wall’.

I shall probably record the R3 repeats to listen to later, just to give me time to both catch up and get my second wind for what I hope are going to be some major, or at least extremely interesting, concerts coming up in the second half of the season. (Handel’s Belshazzar—Prom 41—looks pretty likely to me, and of course there’s Rattle’s Turangalila and Shostakovich 10 in Proms 64 and 65 not to mention several in between . . .)

(Photographer unknown.)