An Enigma Wrapped in a Concert

Much as I admire and am really grateful to the BBC for supporting composers when it is terribly difficult to get a new piece played here, let alone actually be paid for it, I didn’t really like Prom 33. Beecham joked once (yes, I know it's hackneyed, but there is still some truth in it) “the English don’t really like music, they just like the noise it makes.”

Maybe because I’m only half-English (despite the name, shan’t tell you what the other half is, you’ll have to guess) I didn’t like the noise Gaudete made, especially early on. But then I’m a poetry sort of person so as a rule I prefer to read Ted Hughes. I did enjoy the musical connections in the first half, though; very clever, I thought. Keeps the brain occupied, even when the emotions might not be. I can see it deserved the applause, though.

I had found Michael Berkeley’s ‘Slow Dawn’ rather enigmatic; and the Enigma Variations, though a very traditional conception (a relief, no doubt, to all those who, wrongly, I think, hated the Elgar 1) was very well played. Now, I really must get back to my neglected pieces . . .And get some proper food into me, which I've been missing this weekend trying to catch up. Music may be the food of love, but even loving the Proms is turning out not to be sufficiently nutritious . . .

R3 Relay

(You'll see I've added a Google Search box for this blog over in the sidebar, since the 'Labels' list is getting rather unwieldy already, and is probably going to become even more so before we're finished, if it doesn't end up totally out of control. Hope it helps to track things down that might not jump out at you immediately, or you've mislaid.)

Authentic Avant-garde Elgar

Or, Roger Norrington's Elgar 1 on Tuesday Night, about which I will wax wildly enthusiastic in a day or two when I've managed to catch up a bit.  For the first time, I grasped what Hans Richter meant, and I could believe Elgar really was in the avant-garde at the time.

The first movement was quite Mahlerian; which put off a French friend of mine who was listening with me and who I've been hopelessly, but determinedly, trying to convert to Mahler for 20 years. And there was a surprisingly robust pastoral element quite removed from the usual Malvern hills imagery you get. (I've been there, and to someone brought up in the Pennines like me, they're not hills, just pimples on the landscape, and molehills is somehow what so often come to mind in some Elgar 1's.) I'll gloss over my unreconstructed friend's snorted conviction that she could even  hear "gambolling ducks", but she's of the 'cowpat composer' persuasion and was being rather vehement about it, and I misheard it as "gambling". Norrington's Elgar was in some ways certainly a gamble, far more than a gambol, and I wish I'd gone to the RAH to hear it live.

A few years ago at lunch in Abbey Road between recording sessions, the principal horn of  the LSO told me he'd just bought a French Horn made in 1901, so he was 'all ready for the authentic Elgar revival'. Stupid of us to laugh (I thought he was being a bit sarky, but didn't dare say too much about my authentic instruments enthusiasm, because it was a comment of mine that had led to his crack in the first place, so I laughed, a bit hollowly, as well) after Tuesday night's Prom . . .Of course, what I should have pushed maybe was the idea of 'authentic performance' which Norrington excels at now.

Roger Norrington's interview can be heard from this page. Well worth it! (And he says some things I never dared write, however fervently I thought them. But then, I'm only a dilettante amateur.)

It is odd how a little flippant (but delightfully played) 'lollipop' like tonight's encore can feel like a bit of a letdown at home when you feel like quietly savouring the recollection of the performances (and the Haydn Cello concerto was superb, too) whereas in the hall, live, it's often a welcome release from the tension of concentrating so hard for the previous 50 minutes or more which Prommers are noted for. I wonder why that is?

(R3 relay) Prom 7: Elgar Symphony No 1