Just to let you know that I'm safely back at Castle Dough, after a not too unpleasant sojourn on a proper seat at Gatwick, listening to my little emergency mp3 player, which fed me William Schuman's
Third Symphony Tippett's
Piano Concerto and
Midsummer Marriage and most of Britten's
MNDto see me through the night. The flight back was hairy, to say the least. Even sitting in the parked plane at the stand made someone sick, it was being buffeted about so much: we flew the whole way with cabin lights off and permanent mandatory seat-belt lights: no hot drinks either, for safety's sake. Massive turbulence soon after take-off, considerably more
en route.
I'd just like to add my thanks for the company and the general ambience, not to mention the bizarre experience of meeting several board members, with whom I've had a lot of exchanges, in the flesh: very like seeing characters from your favourite novel on stage or screen for the first time: they behave as you'd expect, and the indefinable essence of their being is what you gain from the printed page, but (dammit) they look different. Very impressed with everyone, nonetheless
I'd agree with r that the RVW Tuba Concerto for all its incidental felicities is not a top-drawer work, but I was glad to encounter it in the flesh.
The Planets gains massively from live performance: I hold it in very high regard anyway, and (as martle says) being able to watch the two harpists and timpanists is the only way to understand just how masterly Holst's handling of orchestral forces can be: seeing it really underlines how economical - and practical (martle's word) his scoring is. I don't think it's a secret that I was a huge martle fan long before I ever came to these boards, and some may know that I nattered on blithely about his music for some time before another composer saw fit to inform me that martle actually was....martle. My feeling is that his music is moving into a new phase, and that in
Fairground both the surface and the structure show signs of new departures. The performance was considerably tighter than the broadcast one, or even the morning's rehearsal (thanks so much for arranging that, martle), and the tiny revision of having the harmonica players playing an octave higher brings huge benefits. There are some extremely inventive orchestral sounds, and typical little martle hooks which lodge themselves in the memory and refuse to budge. It still seems to me to stand apart from the recent orchestral work I've heard from some of his British contemporaries (and I'm specifically
not referring to any other composers present on this board) by being more kaleidoscopic and less monolithic - in some ways more a product of the American rather than British traditions, and I guess since that's American via Boulanger, a French sensitivity as well: I remarked to martle yesterday that I thought I discerned filtered infuences from Varèse and Koechlin.
I've still not quite got my head round the overall structure, and find myself agreeing that another performance by different forces (at a Prom, why not?) is what's needed now. BBCSO/Brabbins or BBCNoW/Jac van Steen would be about right, I think....
And now, since I've not really slept since yesterday morning, I might allow mysel' a wee kip.... I'll post any worthwhile pictures later.
