Prom 62 - 3.09.14: Stuttgart RSO, Norrington

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

No?

No.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Just the recipe? Some recipes (for sponge cakes, for example) have to be followed absolutely; deviate from it & you get an inedible mess. Others do allow for deviation - increase some ingredients, decrease others, add something not in the original recipe, but then you get a dish that isn't quite what the original creator intended.

Which is another way of saying "an inedible mess" in my cookery book.

[Blotto]

No.

Oh.

[Flosshilde]

Not neccessarily, but it would depend on the skills of the cook or 'interpreter'. But it would taste & possibly look different, & would no longer be Escoffier's dish, but a dish based on Escoffier's.

(But I think that this analogy has probably been stretched far enough; it could end up with the thread being moved to 'The Refreshment room' )

[Bryn]

Weren't they Carter's Little Liver Pills. Tangential or what!

In my childhood, Beecham's Pills were also referred to as "little liver pills" due to the advertising claim that the would "stir up the liver". Their main ingredients were soap, ginger and aloe. They were 'snake oil' of the first order, but helped finance Tommy junior's musical development.

[teamsaint]

Not neccessarily, but it would depend on the skills of the cook or 'interpreter'. But it would taste & possibly look different, & would no longer be Escoffier's dish, but a dish based on Escoffier's.

(But I think that this analogy has probably been stretched far enough; it could end up with the thread being moved to 'The Refreshment room' )

Recipes, in my experience, almost never work really well frst time from the book. They definitely need adapting to ingredients available, type of cooker,to allow for the cooks creativity etc.

One might equate to players, acoustic, etc?

[gradus]

They certainly helped as A Mingled Chime confirms. 'One for an adult, two for a child, peace on earth and mercy mild.'

[jayne lee wilson]

"Cheap", maybe (I prefer "terrific value for money") but it reached the target.


Give in to the temptation, and then explain what you mean.

My comment was just a conceit, really: trying to suggest that classical performance is the healthier for more creative licence or even licentiousness rather than "fidelity" to a set of instructions - or to a performance style that becomes habituated, a taking for granted that leads away from close listening...

It's what Norrington does in his glorious (and hilarious) set of Haydn's London Symphonies with the SWR, playing adagios at something closer to allegretto or andante (very) con moto. The Largo Cantabile of No. 93 (4'27) goes like a swift, serene, graceful dance. With Hermann Scherchen (9'43) it becomes a meditation upon the sublime. But what matters is the intense individuality of each, a freshly responsive communication which seeks a fresh response in the listener, who probably isn't worrying about the score too much. (But if she says, oh, Norrington's too fast! Scherchen's too slow! Where does that leave us? Close to dull habituation again...)

One of Frans Bruggen's very last performances illustrates this startlingly well, when at the end of a remarkable reading of Mozart's Symphony No.39, the last phrase (tossed about with such dynamic & expressive freedom during the finale itself) is played as a rapid diminuendo...! I couldn't help thinking of Tom-Hulce-as-Mozart hearing it and... giggling.

And if you want to get into really deep creative water try Harnoncourt's latest release, which sees the Mozart Nos. 39-41 as an "Instrumental Oratorium"; a single work in 12 movements... The creativity starts before you even listen!

The most important part of the music is not in the notes... it's mysterious, elusive, somewhere in the imagining, the playing and the listening... and it has to go on changing or it will die.

[bluestateprommer]

No-one has mentioned the Berlioz yet. For me this was the best part of the evening and it's a great pity that the orchestral movements from Romeo and Juliet are not performed more often. Anyway, 'Romeo Alone' was played with both tenderness and tremendous gusto as required.

The Beethoven 8 seemed too fast and my attention wandered too often in the Dvorak, a sure sign of boredom.

I agree with Petrushka that the Berlioz was by far the best part of the SRSO/Norrington Prom, in terms of interpretation and panache. RN certainly did trim the vibrato here, as throughout, but it worked just fine. Plus, the single movement form left no room for the inter-movement milking the audience for applause that was a nettlesome distraction in both the LvB and the Dvorak. While I understand that RN wanted to adhere to the metronome marks, and got pretty whip-smart ensemble, the price paid here was too high. It's one thing to observe the metronome marks with a smaller ensemble, where all the instruments are period or period reproductions. But in a space like the RAH, even on the radio, with that side of an ensemble, it came off as much too hectic and relentless.

However, I diverge from Pet's assessment of the Dvorak, which I found to be quite enjoyable in its rather extrovert way (again, the applause between movements aside). RN certainly played with nudging some phrasing here and there, which was nice in the moment. The minimized vibrato, however, didn't really pay dividends here. The Faure encore from Pelleas et Melisande was quite well done as well.