Review: Rattle's LSO Bruckner 4th Earns the Scarlet Scarf of Shame!
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- Опубліковано 7 вер 2024
- Here's yet another grotesque performance of yet another "critical edition" of Bruckner's 4th that sounds just the same as all of the other critical editions of the basic, familiar version of Bruckner's 4th, with the added non-bonus of the extra material that Bruckner eliminated in making the familiar version. Do we care? Hell no!
1:17
"He's a very nice guy....he's kinda crazy" 🤣🤣
To be honest, Rattle has his merits: Like very few conductors of his fame, he performed music outside the repertoire standards. He made a box with unknown Britten, which, at this time, no one did (f.e. the ravelian "Four French Songs" of the composer at 16), he went on tour with Tippett's 4th symphony and his Triple Concerto, and presented them together with Oliver Knussen's 3rd symphony, I heard him with Maw's "Odyssey" and with Maxwell Davies' 1st symphony, with Adès, George Benjamin, Turnage and Henze a.s.o. (I do not pretend that all of this works are masterpieces...)
The pity is that Rattle is great in exploring new fields, but he is bad in farming them. I mean, he is no good conductor because of his attitude to perform works other than usual. With the new music, there are just a few (if at all) possibilities of comparison. But when Rattle conducts the well known works (especially Mahler, Bruckner or Sibelius), one realizes his faults and strange ideas. Nevertheless, because of his interest in unknown repertoire, I like him far better than Thielemann, who explores nearly nothing apart the main repertoire, neither contemporary stuff nor romantic.
I agree--I think you make some very valid points.
He loves to rehearse. If you're a composer with a new work and Rattle is conducting it he will give it his full attention, unlike some other conductors who often do it out of a sense of duty rather than any real enthusiasm. When you hear him conduct familiar repertoire you often get the sense that he is pointing out particular aspects of the score rather than the work as a whole. It can be very interesting sometimes, but also quite tiring, and ultimately it gets irritating because you feel that you are just listening to highlights. I heard him conduct a performance of Parsifal once where it it just seemed to stop, there was no sense that it was being brought to a conclusion or that he had thought about the musical structure.
Sweet ! Another season of "DIY Bruckner", my favorite show !
My favorites are with the Chicago forces: Barenboim and Solti. Plenty of big and bold brass balls in the forefront! Wouldn't want to hear it any other way...
Solti was my introduction to this symphony.
In general, I find that Simon Rattle is the most overrated conductor of our times. His good recordings are almost non-existent nowadays.
I just find him boring. This dates back to his Birmingham days. I think people like him because of his hair. Seriously.
@@eddihaskell Maybe it really is the hair. Never been a goto guy for me. He's always seemed to me like kind of a bad imitation of Stokowski, though his hair may not last as long without augmentation.
I'll only say that I saw Simon conduct Bruckner's 4th at The Barbican, as well as a couple of movements Bruckner originally wrote for the symphony that didn't make it to the final version, and found it an amazing evening.
Sometimes amazing evenings make dreadful recordings. That's why I discount anyone's impressions of live performances as in any way dispositive.
Broccoloneans Unite.
Just found the scherzo to listen to on-line. You are right about that, the brass is either too muffled at times (trying to suggest distance, I assume, but too much?), but then at those other times it's like the brass just drops out or disappears or is swallowed up, by which of course the character of the piece is just lost.
I concur with you entirely about the timpanist, Nigel Thomas of the LSO with his overpowering timpani rolls.
"...the settlement of New England when the Puritans showed up..." - quite, indeed. How I wish it were Italians who showed up here in Boston as the first Europeans! We'd enjoy the guilt-free bliss of drinking prosecco any time of the day; our economy might be somewhat of a mess, but, oh, our lives would be so much more fun... (with ample opportunities to go to confession and be forgiven). Last not least: We'd have a great Opera House here, well before there would be a Symphony Hall. BTW: "musical frittata" - I'm glad not to have to eat it. Listening to it would be most inconducive to my health; I will avoid this, and Thielemann's, recording like death.
In which Dave compates Bruckner to Broccolli for 5 minutes...
The thing about Rattle is that he does his classical repertoire "differently" so that he cannot be compared with the greats. He'll say, "ah, but my Mahler is different to Klemperer's because I use portamenti in the clarinets" "my version of Fidelio has six seconds of music that Beethoven took out and put back in for use on Sundays only" and so on.
I'm astonished the BPO put up with him for so long. IMHO he's profoundly overrated.
You left out the Raisinets.
A few years have passed, but I didn't find his BPO performance of the Bruckner 4th to be bad. I didn't mind it at all. That could've been the orchestra resisting efforts to mess with the music, since they already knew it so well. But it was good. Why he thought that had to be remade is puzzling. (Other than the different edition.)
Now there's a recommendation: "I didn't mind it at all." I'll have to use that.
@@DavesClassicalGuide Well, given his track record…;-) I liked it.
I think conductors, as well as composers, as well as popular music artists, do such things to differentiate themselves. Cant better Beethoven and Mozart etc? start all the 12 tone stuff... can't better the Beatles? Start prog rock. Can't better floyd and genesis? do some silly punk. And so on. Like dave said somewhere, I think, or hinted at least - that way you can avoid full comparisons with the greats. It does end up with a positive point too, new genres and styles, but of course its also a sanctuary for many less talented artists.
I like Rattle's "completed" Mahler 10 and his first recording of Bruckner's "completed" 9. First - because he decided he had to record it again. I listened to the re-make. Well, I'm afraid Sir Simon made a really bad decision. Do avoid it.
He also did a re-make of Mahler 10 (original: Bournemouth, re-make: Berlin).
As a musician myself I find Rattle s conducting technique abysmal. His baton is all over the place! Very rare do you have an ex Percussionist transitioning to the conductor s podium
Quite intriguing that reference is made to the haphazard colonization of New England combined with Dave's awarding of the Scarlet Scarf of Shame. In context, is the latter an allusion to Nathanial Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter set in the 17th century Puritan Massachusetts Bay Colony or am I dim-witted in stating the obvious?
But if we listen to how he speaks, his tone of voice we realize he's a good representative of human beings without music thought. There's no need to listen to his recordings.
There was a time when Simon Rattle was considered the hottest property in conducting. I just don't think he has the temperament to play good Bruckner. He's more your flashy 20 century conductor. But still, thanks Dave, I shan't waste my money and time on this particular recording... Always enjoy your pithy and witty reviews..
Sadly true. I went to see his 'UK premiere of the 'new' Bruckner 6 a few years back. Probably my favourite Bruckner - but versions were irrelevant, I was just rather bored by yhe performance 😴
@@davidwyatt850 p
I'm no fan of Rattle and had low expectations of his recent concert with the LSO in Edinburgh but their performance of the Sibelius 7th was superb and very moving. You just never know.
It's only to be expected that after playing the work dozens of times one performance should go well.
He's trying to create "a new listening tradition"
Eh?
I have to confess, I was once part of the broccoli sect.
When Rattle was conducting the City of Birmingham SO, I wrote to him in the hope of interesting him and
his orchestra in performing the works of the shamefully ignored George Lloyd. His secretary replied to
tell me that the conductor was "out of sympathy" with Lloyd's music. Somehow, I've never been convinced
about his choices since then. . .
Sounds like what happened to Lloyd George.
It's a Gramophone Editor's Choice! I listened to a bit of it on UA-cam. It sounds odd. Are we British being conned? I dread to think what could happen to all the different versions of Handel's Messiah!
Yes, you are being conned.
We British are being conned in every way imaginable.
Was the recording made in the Barbican Hall? (London) It's not a good venue for recordings and they often sound dull, to say the least. It's the LSO's home place. It's ironic that Rattle returned there after his time in Berlin and especially after his many years at Birmingham's Symphony Hall, a superb acoutistically fine venue. Still, it wouldn't have done much for the performance it seems.
No, it was not recorded at the Barbican.
Why don't you award an annual nausea yellow colored scarf for the most putrid recording of the year?
Well, I do have various equivalents.
At one time I liked his work, but now I just find him mostly uninteresting. He seems to have modeled his image partly on Bernstein, but he's nowhere close to Lenny in musical brilliance or conducting technique. I do like his Porgy and Bess, despite the sloppiness of the playing, for its dramatic sweep. I also liked his Bernstein's Wonderful Town, Adès's Violin Concerto, and Szymanowski's Harnasie -- all of which are essentially accompanying jobs for the conductor.
I find Rattle tries to conduct every note, and the reason why over the broad span virtually all his recordings fail to compete with the best. If he waved his baton less, there is a good possibility the music would be served better.
Let's look at it this way.
Between 1984 and 2022 has anyone EVER heard or associated the music of Bruckner with Rattle?
This concludes today's discussion 🤣
He just rattles it off. Sorry, couldn't resist.
even the cover is ugly. Bruck/ner ?!
Well, Bruck is close to the German word for vomit (brech). I thought it was a play on words.
Just because you can doesn't mean you should.
How long was it since the last scarf?
I'm REALLY confused about this one. First you say the only difference between the "Bruckner we know" and this version is the 2 minute cut in the finale. But then you immediately say that he adds a whole bunch of stuff back in that Bruckner had cut out, including adding stuff into the slow movement that was cut out, and he does a weird scrambled version of the scherzo, then he adds the cut from the finale back in. And plays everything badly. ????? 😵🤔🤔🤔
Meaning to say the album contains the symphony and as extras all the other alternate versions of the movements before they were discarded for the ones in the "usual" version.
Sorry if that was confusing, but I did describe the set correctly. There are two discs--one straight performance of the normal version (minus two minutes) and another of all the other stuff. I think that is pretty clear.
@@DavesClassicalGuide Oh - I'm sorry - my mistake! Somehow I didn't get that there were 2 discs with 2 separate performances, and that you were describing the first performance then right afterwards the second. Thanks for the clarification!
We certainly don’t need more of this revisionism.
Much as I hate imperious & generally badly behaved, authoritarians, a great advantage of the old school record producers like Legge or Culshaw is that they stood up to conductors & others wanting to put down for posterity these doodlings & mere run throughs. They were guardians of standards. Perhaps the point is that nothing now is for posterity; this recording just another "consumable". In this particular case, may it soon disappear from the catalogue!
What is the point of the horse when you say the composers name? ;'-)
ua-cam.com/video/zdIID_TGwhM/v-deo.html
Thank you for asking this. I was wondering the same.
@@DavesClassicalGuide THIS explains it all. Thanks :-D
I'll never understand why Simon Rattle isn't a truck driver or a migrant farm worker or something outside of music.
Hey, I'm a truck driver! I am insulted!