Yet even after the recent Stimmung at Aldeburgh, people stayed in their seats....and they ain't comfy ones....

I'd love to be at the Stockhausen day, particularly because I'd like the opportunity to hear a second and different live performance of Stimmung so close to that, but I'm going to be sat on a coach on an Autobahn.  With no standing ovation.

I was really hoping to get along to both of Saturday's Proms, but am sadly so snowed under with a variety of things at the moment that I'll miss it.

Hope to tune in, though, and hope the FM reception is up to it.

Well, that performance of Kontakte was personally the best experience of Stockhausen I have had I think. I'd love to know what it sounded like in that great big hall. In the first piece, Cosmic Pulses, I rather simplistically picked up on the title to listen to the piece as if I was hearing the constant electrical hubbub of the universe being made audible. I was then really interested in the interval programme to hear Stockhausen say that as a composer he felt he was like a radar picking up the sounds of the universe and transcribing them (this a badly remembered precis). And by the time Kontakte came along after the interval, the same idea - one almost of hanging in space and having what was already present in that space (but that I could not hear) being translated into sound, like a microphone in being dipped into water to pick up the communications of whales - made for a really great connection with the piece for me.

Going on recent experience in the music message board world this will probably mean that for those who know the music much better than I do, it will have been one of the worst performances they have ever heard, , but I must say tonight I was really able to tune in and drop out with it. Hurrah!
 
Also enjoyed Gruppen, I imagine that live it can be quite shattering.

He most certainly did so make it, though the poor old chap was seated, in the stalls, rather than standing up for himself in the Arena. I started of as an upstanding member of the audience, but for the second Gruppen, and for Stimmung, I took it lying down. Kontakte was the clear high point of the night's music-making, though Harmonies was not far behind, for me.

Just a few words as I'm about to embark on a headless-chicken day...

Bryn: I was consigned to the stalls by thinking that my poorly vertebrae wouldn't be able to take standing all that time without the kind of discomfort that would prevent me from listening properly, which would be a shame given the infrequency with which concerts like this come along.

Of course as always there are cavils here and there, but it would seem inappropriate to air them immediately in view of the fact that the two Stockhausen concerts taken together formed the most impressive musical event I have attended for a long time.

Gruppen - beautifully balanced, coordinated and played, and fascinating to have two performances. I found myself noticing many things for the first time, and my attention being drawn closely to details I had previously only been peripherally aware of. It's a great shame that the nature of the piece revents it from being performed more often.

Cosmic Pulses - I made some comments here about the CD, but the experience of it in its full multichannel sound in such a huge space was totally convincing. A radical and challenging musical statement.

Harmonien - I wasn't expecting to be so taken with this but I was pleasantly surprised at its melodic twisting and turning and looping. I wasn't surprised that Marco Blaauw played it so well though. Looking forward to hearing it again.

Kontakte - simply wonderful, as always.

Stimmung - the more I think about it in retrospect (having had a few things to say here about the recent CD by the same performers I think) the more I think that this performance captures the essence of the piece in a slightly unexpected but beautiful way.

That was indeed an evening to remember, and by which to remember a great composer. I'm being a bit wide-eyed and fulsome here but for me it was an example of what music can do, what I hope it can do, why I think I ought to try to do it.

They did not put on the fish-torturing exhibition we take it. . . .

ynterstyng-Worby apparently met hym yn the 90s when he was selectyvely generous wyth hys tyme and explanaytons. are there archyve  recordyngs y wonder-y ymagyne that qualyty would have been more dyffycult to realyse yn the 50s wyth less regular repertoyre  precedents for that degree of antyphony.