Royal Albert Hall
It's Saturday night and I'm already weighed down with the packed Proms schedule from today. I'm behind the live schedule, so it's knocking on for midnight when I start playing this last Prom of the day. I'm getting into bed and I play it through my headphone cans. For me, it's not the best time for the BBC to pull out these bad boys, i.e. Berio and Mahler. Don't want night terrors tonight, thank you very much.
It's a stark opening to Rendering by Berio, which I'm led to believe has Schubert's unfinished symphony at it's core. So it's difficult to know who to give the credit to. Almost thought we were on for another Beethoven's Ninth there for a minute: the instrumentation is deep and works on multiple levels. It's big in scale, and in this way it puts me in mind of Wagner's Die Walkurie. It sounds good; glad I put it on! Yes, I can really get on board with this. Excellent!
By the time the first half finishes I am at the end of my rope, and ready for bed. Mahler will have to wait until Sunday.
I listen to Mahler's Fifth wholly in the car, but in various chunks throughout the morning/early afternoon as I flit from my parents' place in Irby, Ness Gardens, our late-grandparent's bungalow in Neston [soon to be sold], and back to my own house in Runcorn [nicer than it sounds - could have called it a canal-side cottage in Cheshire]. It concludes at exactly the moment I park up in the drive - nice one!
The opening to this Mahler, I note, sounds a bit like Mendelssohn [I get a flashback to the Theme to Midsummer Night's Dream Prom I attended in 2016, for some reason.] It's not bad, you know. But, again, it's music on a big, industrial scale. Apparently the fourth movement of this was sent to Alma Schindler as some sort of declaration of love. She later married him. In my experience, such a gesture would get me blocked and ignored for life. It's all right for some.
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