When is an Encore not an Encore?

I've just read (in the one and only review of it on the R3 'Review' pages) that the "clapping and stamping of the audience" at the NYPO's Prom 58 "encouraged three encores".

It didn't. I hated that concert—as you've read below—and left as soon as the Tchaikovsky was finished, to be told by two stewards outside the hall itself, just as the first encore started, that I couldn't use a lift (which I need, because I'm crippled) until after the third encore. They knew what they were going to be, and the approximate timings. I'd actually overheard two during the interval talking about a kind of "extra time" but I didn't grasp the significance.

I'm not naive enough to think conductors don't often have "one they prepared earlier" but it seems on this occasion at least, the "encores" were really part of the concert and were irrelevant to the audience's reaction. And irrelevant as to whether they were going to be continually enthusiastic having heard one encore or two . . .

It seems to me, if not disingenuous, to border on the dishonest, particularly for the audience outside the hall itself, listening to radio or iPlayer, who might on some occasions not be able to get a true impression of the audience's reaction. Might even be misled, thinking "Well, it got three encores, so it must have been better than I thought."

It's far from unknown for the hall to be only half-full, especially for a late night Prom, and yet for the audience to be far more enthusastic than the volume of applause might appear if you aren't there. Conversely, it's also not unknown for claques to make a great noise, and give the impression they are the majority of the audience when they are not. Listeners might well be misled as to why the performers gave an encore in the first, and none in the second.

I wonder now how many other "encores" this season were going to be played anyway, regardless of the degree of enthusiasm or appreciation from the audience? What happened to the notion of spontaneity? Or even the idea that encores are not always necessary, or wanted? Or sometimes inappropriate?

I have known conductors adamantly refuse a Proms audience that was obviously eager for one, and though we've sometimes felt a little disappointed—because it's a way of saying "we liked that so much we really don't want to see you go"— it's something one must accept. It is not, Mr Maazel and members of the New York Philharmonic, an inalienable right under the American Constitution. And since we—not having a written constitution—would have to rely on the Human Rights Act, for your informatioon it's not in that, either.

I suppose the NYPO is going to do exactly the same as it continues its tour, and mislead even more. This isn't a reaction to an audience's appreciation: it's just building an image of popularity—advertising, to be blunt—for an audience and perhaps critics who don't know it was all pre-arranged.

I'm tempted now to ask quietly how many encores there will be, what they are, and how long they will last when I go in to my next Prom.

(That will be Rattle, the Berlin and the Turangalila tonight, by the way; we'll try to get the review up on Wednesday, but I'm afraid—because I had to struggle down the damn stairs last Friday—I'm a bit fragile and more than usually crippled and in pain this week . . .)

The Mother of all shows . . .

There are times when I wonder what on earth comes over Prommers, why they will applaud and stamp over a performance I think was barely worth a polite tapping of fingers against palms.

Tonight's Prom 58 (New York Philharmonic/Maazel) was one of those. My colleague on this blog suggested I ought to warn you in advance that I could not share their enthusiasm for Mother Goose, The Miraculous Mandarin or Tchaikovsky's 4th.

I left before the encores (all three pre-arranged: the Albert Hall stewards knew there were going to be three, and the timings, by the way) and, if I could have done so inconspicuously, would have before the start of the second movement of the Tchaikovsky.

All three performances were pieces of showmanship, and in my view (obviously not shared by a rather large proportion of the audience) were travesties of the music they are supposed to be. The Mother Goose, was simply flat-footed, splayed out in a soft glow of self-congratulatory playing that simply washed over the Albert Hall like Pears coal-tar soap; the Miraculous Mandarin a jagged unkempt mess that sounded as though it was some mash-up of three different SUV's  being run off a Detroit car production line without any quality controllers, and the best  that I would want to say of the Tchaikovsky was that it was often VERY LOUD. It ended like a high-speed train wreck.

When I see three-quarters of the orchestra on stage more than twenty minutes before the performance is due to start, and I realise that they are not tuning, but apparently rehearsing whole stretches of the programme to come (and as separate sections, at that) cynical journo that I am, I wonder why? It's not something I recall ever having witnessed before, and a horrible noise it was too.

I think I found the answer in the performances, because, assuming all three were Maazel's conception, then the members had to play in a manner that could hardly be called natural. Unless, of course, they had had too little rehearsal time in the morning.

It's incumbent on me, I suppose, to explain more precisely why I thought the Ravel was pitiful, the Bartok grotesque and the Tchaikovsky, well, 'gross'. In other words, the very tricks, shallow showmanship and idiosyncracies that so amused me the night before in the Gershwin, applied to tonight's programme, particularly in the  Bartok, I loathed. 

I'll fill you in, I suppose. Just give me a little  time to cool down. And hire a bodyguard . . .

RAH Live

Prom 58: Ravel (Mother Goose); Bartok (The Miraculous Mandarin); Tchaikovsky (Symphony No 4); Lorin Maazel, New York Philharmonic.

Prom 57: Finger lickin’ good, Jerry

There are piano concertos and piano concertos, and Gershwin's in F Major is neither, really; at least he himself called it a “New York concerto” which is rather better.

It is pretty well impossible, to be honest, to take it at all seriously otherwise. It’s a conglomeration of bits of other Gershwin with a piano obbligato, and that’s it. You pick out the bits from Porgy and Bess, American in Paris, Strike up the Band . . .

That’s not to say it can’t be great fun to listen to: and Jean-Yves Thibaudet and the New York Philharmonic under Lorin Maazel played it like a soundtrack to a Tom and Jerry epic: rousing and glorious, slyly sentimental, and a little unashamed closing-title weepiness before it crashed out in a glorious big-band wah-wah free for all.

In the first movement, it’s a grand bash for piano and orchestra, and Thibaudet certainly gave the piano a hammering. It was played as a bit of a joke, over-the-top, all Barnum and Bailey, just as it needs to be. The percussion certainly fizzed and thumped, with some great knock-out punches, although the strings did seem to me to sound rather thick in texture.

This isn’t really Gershwin 'classicising' jazz (or ‘jazzifying classical’) the way I’ve heard it played (both ways round) in the past; it’s Gershwin having heard it, been aware of it (I’d hesitate to say was ‘involved’ in it) and no more. But for it to work, the performers have to feel some involvement in the atmosphere of it, and both soloist and orchestra obviously did.

The second movement piano was nicely cool, almost post-modernist to begin with; this was Porgy, a little sad, a little reflective. A man who coulda been a contender. A piano that had been, and a heavyweight at that.

And thus complemented by pure, unashamed orchestral teary-eyed sentimentality. A perfect contrast with the roaring rhythms that followed: inescapably reminding you of those huge American steam engines with, seemingly, a dozen drive wheels either side, great long tenders and an enormous spotlight on the front driving a beam through the night before great trailing clouds of steam.

Maazel had, apparently, asked for slower tempos in rehearsal, but then decided the faster ones of his (very talented, particularly the expressive force of the trumpeter) soloists were better. It was a good call. It made him another conductor of 78 going on 18 for the night . .

So Prokofiev said it was “a succession of 32-bar choruses”; more, tonight, really, a succession of chorus girls, perhaps; and Diaghilev said it was “good jazz but bad Liszt.” Thibaudet certainly played it like Liszt (but not as though it was written by him) in a maddish mood. I don’t care if it’s not great music. I loved it. ‘Finger lickin’ good.’ Hey, man?

R3 Relay

Gershwin: Piano Concerto in F Major; Jean-Yves Thibaudet, New York Philharmonic, Lorin Maazel.