Late music warning . . .

No, I won't. Give up writing about 'contemporary' music. So I did listen to Prom 48 (but not the Mahler) for the Stockhausen, which I will be reviewing, though I suppose it will frighten readers away again like it did last time.

I'm very awkward  and difficult to please about two things: one is Mahler, who I kind of brought myself to some sort of musical maturity with at the ages of 16 and 17, when I listened to hardly anything else, so even now I don't want to risk a disappointment, and the other is Leonore No3, which I should probably be banned from ever reviewing for a different reason.

That's because a very old recording, found in my grandmother's forgotten box of records, was what must have introduced me to classical music at the age of about eight or nine. I can still hear how I want it to be in my head, even after all these years.

Though the Gurzenich orchestra had some nice bits in it (offstage trumpets? rousing timpani) I thought their Leonore had a rather heavy undertow to it that stopped it swimming up to the sparkling surface. And I don't think the Parsifal encore was ever going to make it into the sunlit uplands.

Still, if you think I'm wrong and I should listen to the Mahler 5, you'd better tell me within the next week. I'm not going to tell you when the Stockhausen Punkte will appear; it'll be a nice surprise, won't it?

Prom 20: [Stock]HAUS[en]MUZIK

When the Proms programmers think they can trust us with two of the longest programmes in one evening (getting on for four hours, altogether) of nothing but Stockhausen, no less, for the life of me I don’t understand why in other programmes of each season they have to pad out unfamiliar, but often easier, repertoire with traditional ‘sweeties’. Or has Stockhausen somehow become traditional and mainstream while I wasn’t looking?

I doubt that somehow, so I’ll credit the BBC with brave—and by all accounts, it turned out—very successful programming. The music making (and yes, that is what I do call it, for those of you out there who shudder at the thought of hearing even ten minutes of this genre, never mind four hours, and I’ll try to explain why) was breathtaking from all the players and conductors involved.

The only difficulty with ‘Gruppen’ was, hearing it at home, the overall physical ‘layout’ of the music was simplified, and probably needed less concentration, than might have been the case had I been in the Arena; I missed one of the essential aspects of the composition by not being in amongst the orchestras. I suggest you read the two expert bloggers on this music: Classical Iconoclast and Boulezian on that. Conversely, it probably made the intellectual layout easier to follow.
But the conductors, David Robertson, Pascal Rophe and Martyn Brabinns, along with he BBCSO, invited the intense concentration needed from a listener with astonishing facility, so that the 24 minutes of Gruppen, played with their crystal clarity, and total grasp, seemed to be over annoyingly quickly. I understand, now, why it has apparently become ‘traditional’ to repeat it.

Gruppen is full of groupings (as its name suggests) of tone colours, meticulously arranged instrumental connections, motives and themes, constantly interacting in kaleidoscopic fashion like a musical three-dimensional chess game played four-handed by two Grand Masters. Even if you are a novice at this game, because these leitmotivs and structures are, though mathematically organised, as easy to follow (even easier, maybe) than in a Wagner opera, that is why I say it is music.

I was upset, after such a superb performance, that the audience applause was at first very coy and tentative, but it did warm up, so perhaps they were taken by surprise by the ending, or found it difficult to relax their concentration for some seconds. You do need a little while to savour it after the end, I think. To allow your memory of the textures (speaking of which, the BBCSO percussionists were particularly, primus inter pares, brilliant) to settle.

Years and years ago there was a middle-of-the-road-music trumpeter who was always described as the ‘man with the golden trumpet’. In ‘Harmonien for solo trumpet’ (‘Klang: 5th hour’)’ Marco Blaauw’s was made of quicksilver, lightning, clouds, raindrops and rainbows by turns. I don’t know whether I should have done, but I heard late, haunting, Miles Davies, too. A spectacular showpiece, eloquent, elegiac in places, absolutely entrancing and absorbing for every one of its 15 minutes, and virtuoso playing from a trumpeter who apparently breathed through his skin. Perfect pure golden sound from the R3 engineers, too.

I decided not to review ‘Cosmic Pulses’, because I’m still unsure what relationship what we heard at home bore to the actual concert: whether it was a ‘stereo version’ of it, or a totally separate recording and therefore should be reviewed as one.

Anyway, congratulations to the R3 engineers and sound producers of this Prom: they mostly get ignored, tucked away out of sight in their cramped OB van round the side of the Albert Hall, hunched over their decks, paper cups of lukewarm canteen coffee in hand and ears pinned to their little LS3/5a’s (actually, not any more: they use Dynaudio Acoustics AIR monitors in the OB van now, and have done for the last three or four years or so, but they are just as tiny)  but their work this evening was extraordinarily skilful and talented. Unlike those who work for Philips, Decca, DGG or EMI, their names never get mentioned. So, a round of applause, from me, at least. If you were listening on the ’net, or at home, you should join in. Louder, please. Make an effort so they can hear you!

R3 Relay

Prom 20: Stockhausen: Gruppen, Klang (Harmonien for Trumpet Solo)


(I’m sorry these reviews are too late for me, hopefully, to have persuaded you to listen via the iPlayer, if you didn’t hear the concert the first time around. “Kontakte’ and ‘Stimmung’ will follow, sooner or later, though on a somewhat imprecise timetable, just like the next London bus after the one you just missed. . .)