# Royal Liverpool Phil concerts, 2015-6 season



## manyene

Starting off a new thread to cover the RLPO 2015-16 concert season, launched last night in style by Vasily Petreno in his usual good humour. A very popular programme, featuring the Rachmaninov Second Piano concerto but was given an immaculate performance by Ji Liu, who I think quite wisely did not give an encore: hopefully this will now catch on. This was preceded by an overture written for the Phil's 175th birthday by Nigel Hess, very tuneful and with several debts to William Walton.

The second part of the programme kept up the popular spirit, with the Triumphal March from Aida and the 1812 overture, the Phi' Brass augmented by some 30 members of the Besses i' th' Barn brass band in their full uniform, who brought the house down. In between these items we had the Ruslan and Ludmilla, taken at a cracking pace and the Vaughan Williams English Folk Song Suite, which gave an opportunity for the orchestra's woodwind soloists to shine.

A great concert: if you pick up this post today (Friday), you will be able to hear this concert tonight on Classic F M.


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## Delicious Manager

Wow! A programme as unimaginative as that would definitely have kept me away. One of the reasons I hardly go to live concerts nowadays.


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## manyene

But not a bad way to start a season, if aimed (obviously) at Classic FM listeners. No harm in that at all
, and if CM in the concert hall is to survive, it needs to get bums on seats.


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## TurnaboutVox

But it is legitimate to question whether this is the best strategy in the long term. I was at sell-out performances of contemporary orchestral and chamber works at the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival last November - and the RNCM in Manchester this year. The venues were full of young people as well as some of the usual (older) suspects.


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## manyene

Possibly: but I have been to Phil concerts with less familiar music and quite a few empty seats. However, it is becoming less frequent of late, to which I think we can attribute the Petrenko factor.


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## Guest

Delicious Manager said:


> Wow! A programme as unimaginative as that would definitely have kept me away. One of the reasons I hardly go to live concerts nowadays.


On the other hand, some might now consider going to a concert because of the quality of the orchestra, conductor and the programme. I may be too late to get a decent seat, but it would be my first visit to Liverpool, and my first Mahler concert.


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## ComposerOfAvantGarde

What's with the obsession with Rachmaninov's second piano concerto in the UK?


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## Richannes Wrahms

Or with the Emperor Concerto, or Strauss' Four Last Songs, or...


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## Guest

ComposerOfAvantGarde said:


> What's with the obsession with Rachmaninov's second piano concerto in the UK?


Is there an obsession with it in the UK - as distinct from an obsession with it elsewhere (given its more general popularity?)

Perhaps it's because of its use in David Lean's _Brief Encounter_?


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## ComposerOfAvantGarde

I just get the general idea that in the UK it's always like _OMG IT'S THE RACH 2!!!!!!! *FANGIRL*_ but everywhere else people just think of it as a pretty popular piano concerto. Also, whenever I've tuned in to UK's Classic FM (oh dear) they seem to program it about four times a day.


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## Delicious Manager

ComposerOfAvantGarde said:


> What's with the obsession with Rachmaninov's second piano concerto in the UK?


I really don't know (and I live there). It's 'lazy listeners' (as I call them) to blame, plus unimaginative programmers. Drives me to despair.


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## Delicious Manager

manyene said:


> But not a bad way to start a season, if aimed (obviously) at Classic FM listeners. No harm in that at all
> , and if CM in the concert hall is to survive, it needs to get bums on seats.


Not many Classic fM listeners go to concerts - they like their repetitive bite-sized chunks of music as served up by Classic fM, which I always maintain has done a huge DISservice to classical music in the UK.

This is simply lazy, populist programming and you'd not get me to that concert in a thousand years.


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## Guest

Delicious Manager said:


> I really don't know (and I live there). It's 'lazy listeners' (as I call them) to blame, plus unimaginative programmers. Drives me to despair.


And I live here too. Take care who you're calling a lazy listener.


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## ComposerOfAvantGarde

MacLeod said:


> And I live here too. Take care who you're calling a lazy listener.


I think Delicious Manager lives there too.


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## Delicious Manager

MacLeod said:


> And I live here too. Take care who you're calling a lazy listener.


Why? Are you one of those who choose to listen to a small number of 'safe' pieces over and over again without ever exploring anything new or challenging?


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## ComposerOfAvantGarde

Delicious Manager said:


> Why? Are you one of those who choose to listen to a small number of 'safe' pieces over and over again without ever exploring anything new or challenging?


Ah, well seeing that _I'm_ one of those people I am glad I don't live in the UK.


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## Guest

Delicious Manager said:


> Why? Are you one of those who choose to listen to a small number of 'safe' pieces over and over again without ever exploring anything new or challenging?


You appeared to be generalising that anyone who would go to one of the RLP's concerts from the new programme - which I've clearly indicated would include me - is a lazy listener. My _actual _listening habits are irrelevant in the face of your generalisation.


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## Delicious Manager

MacLeod said:


> You appeared to be generalising that anyone who would go to one of the RLP's concerts from the new programme - which I've clearly indicated would include me - is a lazy listener. My _actual _listening habits are irrelevant in the face of your generalisation.


Not necessarily, and these programmes have their place, of course, but to open a new season like this doesn't put down any markers for what's to come in the forthcoming season. It's possible to like the pot-boilers AND less familiar repertoire and I wasn't making any generalisations. I merely expressed my view (and this as a programmer myself for more then 30 years) that this was a strangely inappropriate programme (to me, at least) with which to open a new concert season of one of the UK's major orchestras.


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## manyene

I think we have to be realistic. What proportion of the population here in the UK go to a classical concert, indeed, have ever been to one? And how do we entice such people to come? If the Rach 2nd _Brief Encounter_ associations bring in just a few new people, then that's a good thing. And they will have been exposed to other items, like the VW English Folk Tune Suite and the new Nigel Hess Overture, also in the programme - the latter shows that, despite popular stereotypes, CM composers of today still write tunes.

Incidentally, there is tougher fare this Sunday, the Strauss 'Alpine Symphony'.


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## papsrus

I looked over the RLP season, just out of curiosity. Lots of good stuff. Just plain "lots" of music.

Nice variety, too, to appeal to the "serious" listener as well as a broader audience. Nothing at all wrong with any of that. You're fortunate to have such a wide swath of music presented by the orchestra.


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## manyene

Now that we have got the debate about the Rachmaninov second piano concerto out of the way, some comments on the Alpine Symphony. I went the second performance, coupled this time with four orchestrated movements of Tchaikovsky's 'Seasons', deftly put together and deftly played by the Phil. Well worth the effort of putting into an orchestral format; 'October' came across very well, capturing the nostalgia of the original. Part one ended with seven of the Songs of Auvergne, featuring the mezzo-soprano Jennifer Johnston, a new performer to me although it turns out that she has an extensive discography. A nice deep voice, but she was a bit overwhelmed in some of the songs, and by some of the composer's rather over- fussy orchestration.

The orchestra's management had obviously put their hands deeply into their pockets as they had increased the offstage brass orchestra well above Strauss's minimum, with altogether 12 horns as well as the pairs of trumpets and trombones. A massive wall of sound at the climax of the work although we couldn't hear the wind machine in the upper circle. Petrenko handled these massive forces with great skill, right down to the chamber music scale orchestration for the quieter passages. In the season launch he has emphasised this particular concert and I can now understand why. There were quite a few empty seats, however.


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## Vaneyes

"There were quite a few empty seats, however."

Could be the 20/21 crowd is staying away in droves. I noticed one Ligeti piece in October, and Part later, if he counts.

Mahler 6 w. Petrenko, Bruckner 9 w. Davis. But it's conductor Long Yu and violinist Julian Rachlin in November that would entice me. Cheers.


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## manyene

Opening of the new Music Room yesterday. A spacious room with a good acoustic but a little too 'boxy' for my taste, and disappointing after seeing the artist's impression previously put out on line.


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## manyene

Re post 22 above: We did have Berio last Thursday.


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## manyene

- And indeed a new work by Robin Holloway at last night's concert, a retelling of the Greek myth of Jupiter and Europa, with some lusty frolics for the featured solo instrument, the tuba. The beginning was rather nondescript, but later there were some very fine writing and interesting orchestration for the bass members of the orchestra who played the role of the trombones omitted by the composer.

The other works were the Vaughan Williams Eighth Symphony with all the' phones and bells prescribed by the composer, but the real value of this work lies in its Cavatina, which ended with delectable violin and cello solos, both affectingly played. Maybe the Phil will now feature the first three symphonies to complete the cycle that has spread over the last four years. After the interval we had the Holst Planets, and inevitably I compare this with the truly incandescent Proms performance this last summer. Andrew Manze's strength was shown perhaps at its greatest in those final pages of Saturn, where he brought out all that very fine detail that was often lost in many of the early LP recordings of the work. My only criticism was of the door closing on the singers perhaps a little too quickly, abruptly cutting through the atmosphere that had been so well built up throughout Neptune.

The Phil is celebrating the fifth anniversary of its In Harmony project in schools, a scheme that is beginning to show results. We had quite a few young people who had obviously come across the Planets in the BBC Ten Pieces feature, a good augury for the future. To build on these foundations I think it would be a good idea if the Hall management extend the various concession schemes they have to enable more young people to attend concerts.

A really splendid evening that ended only at 9.50 p.m.

Open Day at the Philharmonic Hall today.


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