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Attended this concert in London yesterday and I must say it was an afternoon well spent! Mr Wilson's rather flambouyant conducting took a bit of getting used to (it seemed like his lengthy baton was attached to his hand by a rubber band) but the audience was won over by his panache.
Mutiny on the Bounty and Airport were the highlights for me - marvelous to "see/hear" - and the orchestra was first-class. A dreary item from The Wizard of Oz seemed interminable however - although, this being an afternoon performance, I noticed a fair amount of children in the audience and perhaps 'Oz' was the main appeal for some of them.
It was good too to meet up with film music acqaintances; Alan, Jerry, Doug! The concert was recorded by the BBC for broadcast in June of this year on Radio 3.
- James.
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Posted: |
Jan 11, 2011 - 12:56 AM
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By: |
HM1313
(Member)
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Glad you attendees enjoyed it. Not sure why Wilson needs to be "flamboyant"? In the 2007 Proms (BAFTA), I noted him (in a posting on another forum about the Walton piece) as:
"...But this one from BBC Proms 2007 blew me away: Very tight, dynamic, and CONTROLLED performance. Conductor John Wilson (who, importantly and from the start, appears to be very much INTO this piece) directs with an almost mechanical precision, and his tightly-coupled orchestral "gears" (indiv. players/instrument sections) respond very effectively. The performance is fast-paced but never rushed. "Rushed" with what I might call "asymmetric tempo/meter" is how I'd describe Arnold's orig. 1969 performance (but he may have HAD to do this -- i.e., sacrifice pace and flow performance, by compressing or stretching tempo/meter -- to fit film edits/cues)."
Maybe his style has changed since 2007???
EDIT: On the question of "flamboyance", can someone name another "flamboyant" conductor (YouTube link showing this style would help).
Here's the Walton piece from 2007 Proms (is Wilson's style "flamboyant" here?):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=feJsR1Kgibc
Note that this is not the BBC SO but the BBC Concert Orch.
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How nice to see the concert reviewed in the London TIMES by one Geoff Brown - describing the Mutiny on the Bounty Overture as "barren" and Newman's Airport "twaddle". Gone With the Wind is "...a musical hot air balloon in need of a sharp prick". Where do they find guys like this? (And why do they send them to review concerts that they would appear to have no affinity for?)
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Posted: |
Jan 11, 2011 - 4:24 PM
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By: |
Doug Raynes
(Member)
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Yes the traditional disdain for Hollywood still lives on amongst high-minded music critics. I doubt whether things will ever change. Here's the full review:
Concert
BBCSO/ Wilson
Barbican
***
The programme’s title was Hollywood Rhapsody, and with a swirl of John Wilson’s baton — it looked like the longest baton in the world - we were off with the BBC Symphony Orchestra on a voyage through the most opulent and twinkling of screen soundtracks. If horns didn’t ring out, trumpets did. Strings wept buckets, harps cascaded, percussion shivered the timbers and the BBC Symphony chorus wafted wordlessly, conjuring somewhere over the rainbow or the Virgin Mary’s halo. Pleasing in bits, yes. But laid end to end over two hours, the selections offered all the thrills of a course of electric shock treatment.
It’s well enough at the concert’s start to be whammed and frazzled by Korngold’s Kings Row theme and a clamorous suite from Waxman’s score for Prince Valiant. But when the voltage keeps on jolting, without the pauses for dialogue that a complete movie would provide, excitement can quickly turn to fatigue.
Some of Wilson’s choices didn’t help, such as Bronislau Kaper’s barren overture to Mutiny on the Bounty and Alfred Newman’s Airport twaddle; while Steiner’s score to Gone with the Wind must be counted a mixed blessing - for some the pathway to a golden glow, for others a musical hot air balloon in need of a sharp prick.
Throughout, the BBC Symphony Orchestra played with that hard-edged brilliance that shouts panache but shrinks from warmth. Yet some of the programme’s few tender moments still hit home, even Newman’s The Song of Bernadette — music piously sentimental, but devised with considerable tact. And the great Bernard Herrmann eventually arrived to smash away plush 19th-century sounds with the chiselled sound blocks and madcap whirl of his score for Hitchcock’s North by Northwest.
More selections with that individuality would have been helpful. And from the BBC I’d have liked to have seen a little stick with the carrot, such as actual information about the composers whose works we were listening to — half of whom emigrated from Europe (Steiner learnt piano with Brahms) and helped to lock American film music into ways of thinking and sounding that still persist today. Oh well; another time.
Geoff Brown
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Posted: |
Jul 17, 2012 - 9:16 AM
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By: |
CH-CD
(Member)
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The wonderful John Wilson Orchestra will, once again be appearing at this year's Proms, at the Royal Albert Hall on Monday, 27th August, 2012.
This year's concert is "The Broadway Sound" and will be shown on BBC TV on Sat.1st, September.
Details here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/proms/whats-on/2012/august-27/14300
If it's half as good as John's previous concerts, I shall be very happy !
There was a semi-staged Prom performance of "My Fair Lady" last Saturday.
Whilst John did a great job with re-creating the movie's orchestrations, I thought the cast rather let him down, and came across as forced and under rehearsed. Disappointing, overall !
There are no plans for a TV showing yet. Maybe just as well !
It is still available for the rest of this week on iPlayer.
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