Photo, Andy Paradise
Thursday, August 31, 2023
Royal Albert Hall, London
Before this Prom for me there had been: https://www.colinscolumn.com/george-enescu-festival-2023-london-symphony-orchestra-simon-rattle-conducts-enescus-voix-de-la-nature-and-messiaens-turangalila-symphonie-peter-donohoe-cynthia-millar-live/ and https://www.colinscolumn.com/george-enescu-festival-2023-czech-philharmonic-manfred-honeck-conducts-beethoven-dvorak-and-enescu-live-stream-on-the-enescu-festival-website-also-live-on-radio-romania-cultural/, and the current Enescu Festival has such orchestras lined up as Leipzig Gewandhaus, Concertgebouw, Vienna Philharmonic, Orchestre National de France, Israel Philharmonic, Gothenburg Symphony, Santa Cecilia, and others of international standing. In the Festival’s first week, such as WDR Cologne and Maggio Musicale have already been and gone, https://www.colinscolumn.com/george-enescu-festival-2023-orchestra-choir-of-maggio-musicale-fiorentino-zubin-mehta-conducts-the-prelude-to-enescus-oedipe-mahlers-resurrection-symphony-live-stream-on-the-en/ and https://www.colinscolumn.com/george-enescu-festival-2023-orchestra-choir-of-maggio-musicale-fiorentino-zubin-mehta-conducts-verdis-otello-with-fabio-sartori-anastasia-bartoli-and-luca-salsi-live-stream-on-the-enescu-fes/.
As for Prom 60, the Berlin Radio SO (founded 1923) and Vladimir Jurowski opened with Kleine Dreigroschenmusik, Kurt Weill plundering The Threepenny Opera for its hits, including ‘Mack the Knife’, given a well-behaved outing by the Berliners (winds, and including banjo and guitar), maybe not edgy or satirical enough, and with a couple of numbers on the too quick side.
Thomas Adès’s compact, three-movement Piano Concerto, written for Kirill Gerstein, is a success story in terms of numbers of performances, including London, and already recorded, https://www.colinscolumn.com/thomas-ades-boston-symphony-orchestra-ades-world-premiere-recordings-deutsche-grammophon/. Suffice to say that it’s a compelling work of incidents and allusions (if not as gripping or as impactful as Adès’s Totentanz, also on the above recording) and was given a seasoned rendition by Gerstein (who also took part in the Weill) and his thoroughly rehearsed confreres.
As an encore Gerstein offered his well-made transcription of a Rachmaninov song, very nice, which became a bridge to his Third Symphony, my Desert Island Rachmaninov, Jurowski favouring its austere side (it can do Hollywood as well), and he omitted the first-movement exposition repeat (yes, so too the composer on his 1938 Philadelphia recording, but he also marks the repetition in the score and writes lead-back bars) as part of a reading that held the attention through fine playing, although Jurowski’s flexible tempos could be a little perplexing in the outer movements; best was the middle one, nostalgic balm to the ear, with the scherzo-like section especially bejewelled, the percussion crescendo powerful and precise.
Rachmaninov also provided a second extra, the C-sharp minor Prelude extravagantly orchestrated by Henry Wood (no doubt pseudonym-ing as Paul Klenovsky back then), powerful stuff. Is the RAH roof still on?
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001pv05
The full story of the appalling treatment meted out to Rachmaninoff by Charles O’Connell, the Director of Classical Music at RCA-Victor in the 1930s and 40s has never been fully told. O’Connell was (as Rob Cowan succinctly put it) ‘a sometime conductor’ and noted drunk. He disliked both Rachmaninoff and his music, and although Rachmaninoff was under exclusive contract to what became RCA-Victor from about 1922 until he died in 1943, O’Connell, who had wormed his way into the top classical job at RCA by 1930, refused point blank to make any of the recordings Rachmaninoff suggested during almost the whole of the 1930s, from the Chopin Second Sonata and Schumann Carnaval of 1929-30 until the 1938-39 recordings – with the exception of just one work, the Paganini Rhapsody, recorded on Christmas Eve, 1934 – on the same day, in same studio, with the same orchestra (Philadelphia) and conductor (Stokowski) that had, that very morning and afternoon, recorded Sibelius’s Violin Concerto with Heifetz (a recording that Heifetz forbade to be released – it was finally issued in listenable form by Guild several years ago).
Among the recording proposals Rachmaninoff put to O’Connell, which O’Connell turned down, were the second Suite for two pianos with Horowitz, the Beethoven first Concerto with Toscanini, the Schumann Concerto and Liszt Totentanz with Ormandy and the Philadelphia Orchestra – for O’Connell to have dismissed these suggestions by Rachmaninoff demonstrates the nature and vituperative qualities of O’Connell’s character, but the immense success of the 1939 Rachmaninoff Festival in Philadelphia (marking the 30th anniversary of the composer’s American debut) forced O’Connell’s hand and he agreed to several recordings with Rachmaninoff, including the Third Symphony with the composer conducting.
This was, of course, in the days of 78rpm discs, and the recording of the first movement exposition ended at the end of a side. When Rachmaninoff went on to make the repeat, O’Connell insisted that it was not necessary, and listeners could merely replay the music they had just heard. Despite the composer’s (and Ormandy’s – he was also present) objections, O’Connell insisted and Rachmaninoff, never one to argue, agreed. As we know, from the score and other contemporary reports, that Rachmaninoff always made repeats in his own music up until around 1915 (although when in America after 1918, he was so dispirited at the new situations in which he found himself after fleeing Russia that he rather grudgingly did accept cuts in his work), and Stokowski, in his recording of the Third Symphony insisted on the first movement repeat (Stokowski had conducted the world premier of the work). It should be clear to any conductor seeking to programme Rachmaninoff’s Third Symphony that that first movement repeat is essential – as it is also in the Second Symphony: by omitting the repeat, in either symphony, the entire balance of the work is thrown out. To omit it is not an interpretative option to the sympathetic and committed conductor.