People Are Talking: UMS presents Ryoji Ikeda’s...
Posted: 10/31/14
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PERFORMANCES & EVENTS
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All comments by Jose Tapia
People Are Talking: UMS presents San Francisco Symphony at Hill Auditorium:
I had previously heard Mahler’s 9th in interpretations by Bernstein, Solti and Zinman. Tonight at the Hill I had the feeling the first movements was being played too slowly. I usually find a strong fight for life in this Andante comodo, today I missed that.
Now I have been checking times for this movement in CDs available online. Rounding to minutes, what I found is this:
Barbiroli 26
Haitink 27
Kubelik 27
Justin Brown 27
Jonathan Nott 30
Sanderling 26/27 (different recordings)
Maderena 29
Macal 28
Vaclav Neuman 25
Gergiev 27
Gustav Kuhn 28
Masur 24
Salonen 26
Halasz 29
Rattle 29
Gilbert 27
Herbig 26/27
Tilson-Thomas with SFS 30
Norringlton 26
Walter 25
Saraste 26
Horenstein 29/30
Klemperer 28
Sinopoli 33
Tabakov 33
In tonight’s interpretation the first movement lasted around 32 minutes. Clearly MTT is an outlier in his view of this movement. I like it with more tension. The 3rd and the fourth movements were very good in my view, in the second there was something that did not completely convinced me.
People Are Talking: UMS presents Darius Milhaud’s Oresteia of Aeschelys at Hill Auditorium:
I enjoyed parts of the concert but this trilogy (as in the comment of a famous composer on a famous opera) had “good moments and bad quarters of hour”. For me the first part of the trilogy (Agamenon) was kind of anodyne. “The Libation Bearers” was boring to death for 20 minutes, then suddenly became an amazing piece: that was the best part of the concert. The final part of the trilogy started very well with an interesting prelude, then the music went into repetition and tasteless commentary of the text, except for some bright moments. It seems to me the performance of that part was not too good, but I don’t know the work so I am not sure if I am saying something silly.
Probably it would have been a good idea to have only “The Libation Bearers” and then perhaps a choral work such as Shostakovich’s Stenka Razin, Allan Petterson’s Twelve Sympnony or Brahms’s German Requiem.
Regretfully with Milhaud you never know what you will get. I know several symphonies of this author, I find very little in them. “La creation du monde” is howevver ” a wonderful work.
If the UMS wants to use choruses at a massive scale again, please play Brian’s Gothic Symphony. It would be the U.S. premiere of that symphony, a great one in all senses (I commit myself to buy three tickets).
People Are Talking: UMS presents The Hamburg Symphony Orchestra: From the Canyons to the Stars:
I have liked the Quatuor pour la fin du temps and other chamber works by Messiaen since many years ago, but every time I have met Messiaen’s orchestral work, I have been very disappointed. Last year was in London, when I had the opportunity to hear Et exspecto resurrectionem mortuorum, which I found quite contrived and boring. It was however much less than an hour, so I was not so bored as yesterday. I neither liked the famous Turangalila Symphony which many said is probably the most famous orchestral work by Messiaen. In Des canyons aux étoiles I enjoyed about five minutes of the whole work, which I found repetitive and unstructured. The video was just adding an extra layer of pain. What a silly thing! I am not a religious person, but Messiaen was, and adding this video to his mystical music is quite a lack of artistic empathy, I believe.
People Are Talking: UMS presents The London Philharmonic Orchestra at Hill Auditorium:
“This work was played too slowly” may rely in usual standards (that can be wrong) or metronome marks, both are objective. The issue is quite different however in statements such as “Mahler’s music is banal” or “Among Brahms’s symphonies No. 1 is the best”, that rely almost 100% in subjective preference. It seems Stravinsky despised Puccini’s music, Wagner despised Verdi, Brahms thought there were no French composers, and so on and so forth.
In “Tchaikovsky” by John Warrack (p. 190) it is cited the opinion of the composer himself who thought “Manfred” could be his best work: a subjective judgement, but a quite qualified one.
Thanks for your reply. We agree more than we disagree about last evening. And I, too, appreciate the three composers you mention and many, many others. As to Manfred, I said neither that the symphony was boring — only that there are many boring pages — nor that I found them so because they lacked melody. (The melody statement was part of my speculation about the psychological state in which the work was composed. Depressed people generally do not produce the wealth of imaginative impressions and ideas typical of them when they are in a more settled, even mood. I wrote that this symphony exhibits less melodic invention than we are used to hearing from this composer.)
After I sent the comment, I thought that perhaps I had not explained the pedestal-without-statue characterization sufficiently. What I had in mind is that there are numerous moments in this work at which a characteristic Tchaikovskian build-up occurs – crescendi, accumulating runs in doubling tempi, etc. (T. was a master at this.) Just as often these build-ups fizzle out; we are led to expect something, and it does not materialize.
A word about subjectivity. If a critic says “this work was played too slowly” or “without grace,” s/he is relying on a background of experience with the work in question; s/he is comparing it with other performances or with conventions of interpretation. Even so, critics do not always agree with each other. Neither do they always hedge what they write with “in my opinion”; that’s taken for granted, and we read them because we value their views. On this UMS Lobby website, we expect to read others’ opinions, and, as you see, we don’t hesitate to disagree with them.
"by Music Lover
People Are Talking: UMS presents The London Philharmonic Orchestra at Hill Auditorium:
The concert was OK but not A+. Though I usually like composers such as Edgar Varesse, Witold Lutoslawsky, or Alfred Schnittke I did not like the “towards Osiris”. About the Manfred Symphony, I believe it requires a little bit more passion and a little more precision. The LPO is quite good, but it is neither the LSO nor the Berliner Philarmoniker, and Mr. Jurowsky is not Simon Rattle. My knowledge of this work is from an old version by Vladimir Ashkenazy that I really prefer to what we got yesterday.
It is interesting to read opinions like that of the Music Lover who thinks this is a boring symphony. When talking about art many people think their value judgements are statements about facts. This symphony is boring because… it lacks melody. Wow! Then my taste must be very bad because I love it (for me among the best orchestral Tchaikovsky), as well as I love Ravel’s Bolero and Frank’s Symphony in D minor.
Does anybody know what was the annoying pitch that was heard during the 2nd movement of Mozart’s Concerto?