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The Radio 3 Boards > Admin Boards > Viewable archives > Proms 2007 > Prom 18: BBC Symphony Orchestra - Sir Andrew Davis
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Author Topic: Prom 18: BBC Symphony Orchestra - Sir Andrew Davis  (Read 1361 times)
George Garnett
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« Reply #15 on: 20:37:22, 26-07-2007 »
Quote from: Stanley Stewart on 19:21:05, 26-07-2007
# 10            Back to back, George?

You may be familiar with The Best of Mike Nichols & Elaine May. 

Oh indeed, Stanley, Cheesy and thank you for the reminder. Does the LP contain the sublime:

"George"

"Marcia"

"George"

"Marcia?"

"George"

"Marcia! Marcia!"

"George?

[etc....]

Er, you obviously have to hear how they do it Smiley. But it's one of the most sublimely concise piece of skewering of human foibles that I know, just done by inflection of voices.

For those who don't know Nichols and May....
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oBBS1q3RJ4E&mode=related&search=

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MZNMYNuuVyA.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=17FXuYGfBaQ

Incidentally, I have now found the bit in The Symposium that I was thinking of. It's the bit where Aristophanes is providing an explanation of the origin of love. The human race originally contained three sexes: male, female and hermaphrodite, but...

Quote
....each human being formed a complete whole, spherical, with back and ribs forming a circle. They had four hands, four legs, and two faces, on a circular neck, four ears, two set of gentials and everything else you would expect from the description so far...


Zeus later decides to divide each of them into two by slicing them down the middle and moving their faces and genitals round to the 'front'. These creatures from then on spend their lives trying to find their 'other half' to recreate their former wholeness, and test this out by embracing likely candidates that they feel attracted to.

Er, just a precis. It's much, much funnier when Aristophanes tells it, but then it would be.

Quote
The idea was that, if in embracing, a man-half chanced upon a woman-half, they could produce children and the race would increase. If a man chanced upon a man, they could get full satisfaction from another's company, then separate, get on with their work, and resume the business of life.

That is why we have our innate love of one another... We're all out looking for our 'other half'

Aristophanes then goes on to elaborate all combinations of what goes on and why between the various types: men who were originally half a full male, men who were originally half a hermaphrodite, women who were originally half a full woman and so on. It is very, very funny.

However....in the translation I've got, he never actually says "the beast with two backs" but I'm sure that's what Shakespeare must be alluding to.
« Last Edit: 09:51:34, 27-07-2007 by George Garnett » Logged
Tony Watson
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« Reply #16 on: 22:59:50, 26-07-2007 »
According to my Arden edition of Othello, Rabelias uses the phrase "la beste a deux dos".

See also http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/58450.html
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Ron Dough
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« Reply #17 on: 23:05:38, 26-07-2007 »
Quote from: Tony Watson on 22:59:50, 26-07-2007
Rabelias

Tony, are you trying to monitor our proof-reading abilities today?
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oliver sudden
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« Reply #18 on: 23:19:43, 26-07-2007 »
Quote from: George Garnett on 20:37:22, 26-07-2007
two set of gentials

Speaking of which, that's a rather nice word, gentials. Makes me think of "Quomodo sedet sola civitas plena populo facta est quasi vidua domina gentium," and that can't be a bad thing.

By the way back to back is one thing but if you'd swapped them round they'd be back to front and that would be even less suitable for mentioning in polite company.
« Last Edit: 23:27:47, 26-07-2007 by oliver sudden » Logged
George Garnett
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« Reply #19 on: 23:39:09, 26-07-2007 »
                 

                                 Rabelias admiring some gentials.
« Last Edit: 23:43:06, 26-07-2007 by George Garnett » Logged
oliver sudden
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« Reply #20 on: 23:51:01, 26-07-2007 »
I sang in church choirs for some time in Melbourne - two Tippfehler that have stayed with me ever since are Vivalid and Gribbons. I will often find myself referring to those composers and have people looking at me as though I were an utter nana because I've reverted to my favourite misprints.

So do be careful there, George. The wind might change...
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time_is_now
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« Reply #21 on: 09:36:44, 27-07-2007 »
Quote from: George Garnett on 23:39:09, 26-07-2007
Rabelias admiring some gentials.
Surely those are genitans, George?

Incidentally, re 'other halves': in Spanish the phrase is 'media naranje', which literally means the other half of the orange. I don't know the origin of that one!
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The city is a process which always veers away from the form envisaged and desired, ... whose revenge upon its architects and planners undoes every dream of mastery. It is [also] one of the sites where Dasein is assigned the impossible task of putting right what can never be put right. - Rob Lapsley
martle
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« Reply #22 on: 09:59:39, 27-07-2007 »
Quote from: George Garnett on 20:37:22, 26-07-2007
two set of gentials

Is that anything like a twin-set?
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Green. Always green.
smittims
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« Reply #23 on: 10:35:28, 27-07-2007 »
Thanks for the correction,Ron. I was confusing Sir Andrew Davis with David Atherton.My apologies to both artists.

I think Sir Andrew conducted the British Premiere of 'The Mask of Time'.The premiere itself was conducted in Boston by Sir Colin Davis. I'm sorry that he has not recorded it. I also preferred his interpretaton of the Fourth Symphony on the rare occasions I have heard him conduct that work.
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Ron Dough
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« Reply #24 on: 11:12:32, 27-07-2007 »
Yes Smittims, Colin Davis was in charge of the Boston premiere, and Andrew Davis the British: and either later the same year or early the next, Sir Charles Groves (very much more sprightly following a heart operation) led a second British performance before Andrew Davis did his second performance which became the basis for the EMI recording. I heard Sir Colin conducting the Fourth Symphony for the first time fairly recently, perhaps a coulpe of years ago: as ever with his Tippett performances, he seemed instinctively to find the heart of the work: there were sections that made sense for the first time, and the overall pacing was superb.
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time_is_now
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« Reply #25 on: 11:31:10, 27-07-2007 »
Anyway ... I was promming last night - my first of the season - and thought it was an excellent concert actually, especially the Vaughan Williams 5 which I didn't really know before and which I think is a very strong piece indeed (apart from one miscalculation in the Finale, where it suddenly goes into the tonic minor as if he's run out of organic impetus and thinks he'd better do something new 'for contrast', which is a bit strange since apart from that moment one of the great strengths of the piece and of the Finale in particular is its quality of seemingly endless growth and extension ...).
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The city is a process which always veers away from the form envisaged and desired, ... whose revenge upon its architects and planners undoes every dream of mastery. It is [also] one of the sites where Dasein is assigned the impossible task of putting right what can never be put right. - Rob Lapsley
martle
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« Reply #26 on: 11:57:19, 27-07-2007 »
...and the rest, tinners. RVW 4, 5 and 6 are surely some of the best music he wrote, but I'd plump for 5 if I was forced to choose. I had a crush on it at the time I was having a few lessons with P Max D, who poo-pooed it until I started gushing about the way it manages to balance tonal structures with sometimes contradictory modal inflections and thereby create some very unusual harmonic tensions that are played out...
But anyway, he listened to it again after that and rather revised his opinion. (This was a few years after writing his own Sibelian 1st symph, by the way, which I know you rate.)
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Green. Always green.
oliver sudden
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« Reply #27 on: 12:05:29, 27-07-2007 »
Now, now, chaps, no need to overdo the text size diminuendo trick...  Cool
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Ron Dough
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« Reply #28 on: 12:12:09, 27-07-2007 »
The RVW cycle of symphonies is filled with glories, martle, but much as I admire 4,5 and 6, the one I've always found to be the pinnacle of the set is the least-known of the series: no. 3. It's far from flashy (three of its four movements are basically slow) but it explores a depth of emotion which is quite different to the rest of the cycle; the first major work to be completed after he voluntered to drive ambulances in WW1 (a war in which he lost may friends) it has an elegiac aching beauty which is all but unbearable in the right hands (the lessons in orchestration with Ravel certainly paid off here). Most recordings only skim the surface, but the Previn/LSO reading is a marvel; a wonderful performance in what is still demonstration-class sound.
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oliver sudden
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« Reply #29 on: 12:15:34, 27-07-2007 »
Quote from: Ron Dough on 12:12:09, 27-07-2007
no. 3.
...not to mention some brass solos on natural harmonics which were doubtless to give that young Britten chap something to think about.
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