Once upon a time in our sky...

An amazing BBC Proms concert today (Aug 27) by the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra (its Proms debut). (you can listen for 30 days online) I've never been to Cincinnati or any of those Ohio cities. What a bigger wondrous world it must be outside New York;) !  Tchaikovsky's 5th Symphony is so familiar it now oft gets overlooked. What an orchestrator. And what soloists in that orchestra bringing new life to what is an enormous dance. To be both grounded and airborne is not so easy. The final movement is Spielberg and composer John Williams before their time. I had a vision of 100s of thousands of orphans rising into the air creating the most awesome typhoon ever. But they danced not destroyed. The concert topped and tailed by Bernstein (with a little Copland something in-between).
The encore: Candide of course. Any questions? !

Know what was interesting about that Tchaik 5 was that they fashioned it more in the style of Brahms and Berlioz than Shostakovich. The finale movement is always played that way by Bernstein, Karajan and most others. Louis Langrée's interpretation doesn't have that monumental movement effect. What it strives for I think is beauty. Tchaikovsky wasn't Shostakovich. But I am sure the latter heavily borrowed from the former. Most conductors morph Tchaik into Shostakovich. That's not such a crime. Just: Tchaikovsky wanted to dance. It is no coincidence that some of the world's greatest ballet scores are by Mr Tchaik. I have always thought of Tchaik's compositions as more French than Russian. There is a finesse, a fleet footardness. You may all disagree, that's Ok.
bit of a sketched argument but hey…it's my sketch….

[as a P.S. Aug 29: The Times (London) critic Geoff Brown wrote Blots on the blue horizon? Well, I’ve always found the Fifth’s finale “rather horrible” (it’s Tchaikovsky’s own phrase), and the orchestra’s finesse did not alter that. 

Well we agreed about the orchestra just not Tchaik:) What Geoff Brown doesn't know about music.....!

And you know, I listened to Gergiev again and Langrée is very much in Gergiev's style. They both get the Finale's  molto meno mosso and the maestoso. I stick to my guns that some of the greatest conductors are not stately nor solemn. Nor indeed meno. Langrée's maestoso arcs through to the very end of the finale. There is no expressive marking suggesting Tchaik wished for that. But methinks he did. It isn’t just a parade of life it’s also a parade of death’s scary beauty. Solemnity not triumphant. Resolute not defiant.

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Posted on August 26, 2017 by andrew lucre.