Classical bitchery

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I found this quite fun - who knew how catty all these great composers could be about each other?

• "He has lovely moments but awful quarters of an hour." - Rossini on Wagner
• "After Rossini dies, who will there be to promote his music?” - Wagner on Rossini
• “A composer for one right hand.” - Wagner on Chopin
• "He composes by splashing his pen over the manuscript and leaving the issue to chance." - Chopin on Berlioz
• “A regular freak, without a vestige of talent.” - Mendelssohn on Berlioz
• “A tub of pork and beer.” - Berlioz on Handel
• “He’d be better off shovelling snow than scribbling on manuscript paper.” - Richard Strauss on Schoenberg
• "He is no longer of any interest to me, and whatever I may have learned from him, I am thankful to say I misunderstood." - Schoenberg on Strauss
• "Such an astounding lack of talent has never before been united to such pretentiousness." - Tchaikovsky on Strauss
• "He can’t compose a single note without someone’s help.” - Tchaikovsky on Borodin
• ""What a giftless bastard! It annoys me that this self-inflated mediocrity is hailed as a genius." - Tchaikovsky on Brahms
• “Hygienic, but unexciting.” - Liszt on Brahms
• “Why is it that whenever I hear a piece of music I don't like, it's always by Villa-Lobos?” - Stravinsky on Villa-Lobos
• "Bach on the wrong notes." - Prokofiev on Stravinsky
• “He wrote marvellous operas but dreadful music.” - Shostakovich on Puccini
• "A man of great talent who lacks the essential quality that makes great masters." - Bizet on Verdi
• "A very tolerable imitation of a composer.” - Vaughan Williams on Mahler
• “If he'd been making shell-cases during the war it might have been better for music.” - Ravel on Saint-Saëns

Miaow!

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Composers in the collage:

First row - Antonio Vivaldi, Johann Sebastian Bach, Georg Friedrich Händel, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Ludwig van Beethoven;
Second row - Gioachino Rossini, Felix Mendelssohn, Frédéric Chopin, Richard Wagner, Giuseppe Verdi;
Third row - Johann Strauss II, Johannes Brahms, Georges Bizet, Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, Antonín Dvořák;
Fourth row - Edvard Grieg, Edward Elgar, Sergei Rachmaninoff, George Gershwin, Aram Khachaturian

Ecstatic orchestral orgasms

Hils, History Boy and I did a bit of Kulture (with a capital "K") last night, as we trotted off to the magnificent surroundings of St John's Smith Square in Whitehall for a concert by the Fulham Symphony Orchestra, an amateur ensemble in which one of Hils' colleagues plays viola. "Amateur" they may be labelled, but "amateurish", they certainly were not!

The theme, if any were needed, of the evening's selection (according to the programme notes) was "ecstasy" - the passion of love. Oo-er.

With conductor Marc Dooley, they opened the evening with something a little familiar, but splendid - the Overture from Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky's masterpiece Romeo and Juliet. It's a complicated number - most befitting of the "ecstatic" theme, with all the foreboding, clashing battles and doomed passion that Tchaikovsky could possibly throw into it - and the orchestra really did it proud. We were bowled over!

No video footage of the Fulham-ites yet exists on the interweb unfortunately, but here's (a snippet of) the overture as played by the London Symphony Orchestra conducted by Valery Gergiev at the Proms in 2007, so you can see what I mean...

Tchaikovsky Romeo & Juliet Overture, London Symphony Orchestra, Valery Gergiev Proms 2007

Suitably woken up by that glorious opening, it was time for some more gentle emotions to be evoked, as the soprano Anna Dennis was applauded onto the stage to perform (beautifully I might add) the six pieces by Hector Berlioz that make up his cycle Les Nuits d'Été (Summer Nights) Op.7.



Miss Dennis's voice is sublime, and the audience was enraptured by her recital of these lovely pieces, which together evoke a journey through the hopes, dreams and losses of love. Sigh. Memories of summers past, indeed.

Again, such a shame that there is no video recording of her version, but here are two of the pieces by other sopranos. [An unfair comparison, perhaps, but the beauty of Miss Dennis's voice can be heard on the La Nuova Musica production of Handel's Il Pastor Fido here (at about 5:30)]. First, we have Villanelle by Anne Sofie Von Otter, followed by Anna Caterina and Le Spectre de la Rose:

Villanelle - Les nuits d'été (Berlioz) - Anne Sofie von Otter

Antonacci - Le spectre de la rose (Berlioz - Parma 2007)

After the break, it was time for a brace of less familiar composers.

In what might possibly be its first performance in the UK, the orchestra opened the second half with Charles Koechlin's "tone poem" Vers une Plage Lointaine - a more experimental piece than even Berlioz, and last night used as a prelude to the "climax" of the evening. As preludes go, it was beautiful, if brief, and almost (but not quite) lost in its seamless segué into the closing number. Here is on its own:

Charles Koechlin: Vers la Plage lointaine

Having had the courtship, the foreboding, the summer loving, the loss and the contemplation, it was time for the orgasm - for that is indeed what Alexander Scriabin intended his Le Poeme de l'Extase to evoke. His own instruction was for the orchestra to play with an "ever increasing sense of intoxication - almost in a delirium".

And that is exactly what the orchestra last night achieved! The "poem" builds, and builds, and builds to its explosive concusion, and leaves one completely breathless. It was, quite simply, astonishing.

Here's Evgeny Svetlanov conducting the Russian State Symphony Orchestra in their version:

Poem of Ecstasy (Le Poème de l'extase)" by A. Scriabin

We all need a twenty-minute orgasm now and again!

A stupendous night, and a concert I'll remember for a long time...

Fulham Symphony Orchestra