A ride without Valkyries
NewsThe night the trombones refused to come in.
Comments
MOST READ TODAY:
-
Daily Comfort Zone
Things you really shouldn’t do to a violin
The New York composer Julia Wolfe won a…
-
Daily Comfort Zone
Yuja plays Soviet jazz
The Soviet composer Nikolai Kapustin played most of…
-
Orchestras
What really went on when Beethoven premiered the 9th
From the new issue of The Critic: Early…
-
News
Yunchan Lim’s teacher plays Carnegie Hall
South Korea’s young Cliburn winner has been an…
They suddenly realized they should have practiced instead of visiting the pub the other night.
Wagner was the first minimalist.
It’s a FAKE. Can’t you see it???
At 00:40 you can see the trombones playing.
Journalism at his best here.
WOW
Of course it’s fake. It’s a joke, and a pretty funny one (at least I chuckled audibly).
A very clever and witty edit – but imagine if it had really happened, given how impatient and unforgiving Danny Boy is.
Something similar actually happened in the last movement of Bruckner 9 in a 2017 concert with his Staatskapelle at Carnegie Hall, when the horns first didn’t come in and then on a wrong cue from him. 30 seconds of cacophony. He tried to save it, but you saw how helpless he actually is and doesn’t really know the piece. I wonder if Medici TV has that passage still in or if they cleaned that mess up.
What is not fake is the same Berliners playing Mahler’s 9 under Bernstein and the horns not coming in in the final movement.
One story goes that an audience member sitting behind the orchestra fell in, distracted the horns, but Bernstein didn’t see it.
To be a bit more precise, it was the trombones, going into the climactic passage of the final movement. After a long note they play the four-note grupetto figure that’s ubiquitous throughout the movement. If you listen to that it on headphones, you can make that SOMETHING did happen. I’m sure that’s why the Berlin Mahler 9 was never sanctioned for release by Bernstein, while he was still with us. It would be really nice if the Bernstein/Boston Symphony M9 from Tanglewood – also in 1979 – was sanctioned for an official release. I feel it’s superior in nearly every respect (I have a ‘pirate’ cd of it).
I thought it was the trombones. I’ll dig out that set and listen again.
The whole concert is a disaster ! One of the worst Mahler’s 9 ever. However The 1985 Concertgebouw rendition is miraculous.
It’s a very good edit but in fact the trombones were playing:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HUeSwnmDgYg
Clever… And we get to see Barenboim in his late ’80s mullet phase.
With so few women in the orchestra, the Valkyries couldn’t take flight–at least in the edit. Not certain, but I think this is the Berlin Phil in the in the 80s or early 90s when there were barely any women in the orchestra. The first woman entered in 1983.
At least the Berlin Phil had a better track record viz female musicians that the Vienna Phil
Osborne: take a day off.
One wouldn’t be enough…
Womp womp, William. There are several women seen in the orchestra…No women in the trombone section though. Guess the sky is falling. You and your wife are insufferable. It must be miserable for you two to be…well, so miserable. I’m hereby cueing up an opportunity for your tribe of sycophants to come to your defense.
Ha ha! It’s as if some rascal wrote “vamp until ready” into the string parts.
nice fake….minimalists will love it….
Or the Staatskapelle. Don’t know these orchestras by sight.
Look at the ornate wall in the picture. It could not have been the Philharmonie, hence it was not the Berlin Phil.
Normally true, but I thought it might be a guest performance somewhere. In any case, I’m inclined to think it’s the Staatskapelle.
It is the Berlin Phil. Some of the players are still there nowadays.
Sometimes Berlin Phil performs in other venues, you know. Several players in the video are definitely Berliners, such as for example the first cellist.
…and the principal flutist, principal oboist, piccolo player, concertmaster…
It’s not Philharmonie, but it definitely is Berlin Phil
This is clearly the Berlin Philharmonic, but the recording was made at the Berlin State Opera.
This is most definitely the Berlin Phil: Messrs Yasunaga and Sonne at the front of the first violins, Ludwig Quandt at the front of the cellos. Andreas Blau on first flute etc.
PSQ, visit an optician ! Even Donald would have recognized the Berlin Philharmonic (playing at the Staatsoper unter den Linden)…
A real musician would know it’s the BASS TRUMPET that plays the theme the first time, not the Trombones. So naturally, they wouldn’t come in at that point anyways.
Nice try, tho. I can loop video clips, too.
Senior Ravelli (Chico) has the same problem!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qboLlGQY6NQ
It reminds me of this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lMshbiE-Uxo
here is one of them….
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZM1LCTb7SwQ
I prefer this Wagner, refined and not so vulgar.
I have seen better conducting from a traffic warden – no wonder, it’s Barenboil, so dull…. zzzzz