Fantasy Concerts

Just was thinking (and work avoiding) and was wondering about fantasy concerts. If you could go to a concert and hear any combination of works what would they be. Think we ought to say combination then Tones doesn't just put the MV Vespers down.

Then how about others suggesting interpretations we might listen to. Hopefully it will stimulate a little debate, this rooms been very quiet recently.

I'll start off with mine:


Wagner Siegfried Idyll

Bartok 2 Two Portraits for violin and orchestra

Schubert Ar. Mahler Death and the Maiden

Wagner Gotterdamerung Final scene from Siegfrieds Funeral March to the end


What's more I can't see why you can't have more than one...

 

Blimey, don't know where to start. Most pieces I like would fill a concert quite happily on their own, but an ideal programme would go something like this:

Walton: Spitfire Prelude and Fugue (always gets me going!)
Korngold Violin Concerto OR Barber Violin Concerto
Interval
Bartok Concerto for Orchestra OR Mahler 5

I'm sure further thought (and other's replies) would come up with an entirely different programme....

 

Hey, steady on, m'Lud, do you think I'm some sort of one-eyed fanatic? Oh...you do....

Well, I'd need a horse's douvers, perhaps two, a main course, a dessert and an encore or three. Much of the following is based on having heard the pieces in concert, sitting out under the stars in summer at Melbourne's Myer Music Bowl, at the series of free concerts given by the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra.

So:

horses douvers (i) - need an overture, so Luddie's Leonora No.3, my favourite.

horses douvers (ii) - some of Gabrieli's Symphonae Sacre, with their wonderfully sonorous brass passages

main course - a symphony - but which? One of Beethoven No.3 or 5, Dvorak "New World", Tchaikovsky No.5 or Sibelius 6 or 7

- or perhaps a concerto - piano (any Beethoven, preferably 4 or 5, or Brahms), violin (Bach, Beethoven, Brahms, Tchaikovsky, Sibelius), trumpet (Haydn, Hummel)

dessert - Grieg: Hollberg Suite (especially if the ASMF plays it - but then, this is a fantasy concert, isn't it?)

encores - Bach: Brandenburg No 2, final movement or No.3 first movement

 

Been thinking about this for a while, but not really come up with the goods. One thing though, the best concerts are not always made up from the best music. So...how about

Beethoven 6
Interval
Berlioz Te Deum
conducted by Colin Davis, about 500 choir, in the Albert Hall, with about 300 more people crammed in than the hall can accommodate...ah yes, I was there (Sept 4th 1977)...or again but with a Berlioz 1st half too on 2nd Sept 2000 - followed the following day by Parsifal...now that was a fantasy weekend.

Or maybe a few premieres conducted by a wildly charismatic contemporary composer:
Beethoven Choral Fantasy (well it is a fantasy concert!)
Beethoven Piano Concerto No 4
Beethoven Symphony No 5
Beethoven Symphony No 6
Beethoven Mass in C (Excerpts)
... Dec 22 1808 (no I wasn't there, but maybe Tones was :lol: )
Reports do say though that the composer's wildness did turn it into a bit of a farce though.

Or fantasizing a bit more:
Wagner: Prelude and Liebestod from Tristan: O Klemperer (cond) (I actually prefer it without soloist)
Strauss: 4 last songs: H von K (cond), Jessye Norman (sop)
Interval
Mahler: Symphony No 2: Georg Solti (cond), Norman (sop), Helen Watts (alto)
Ok, rather a long evening....but who's the orchestra? The Wagner and Strauss really has to be 1970s Berlin Phil, but I rather fancy the current LSO for the Mahler. I'd be interested to see how HvK and Jessye got on - he does the fastest 4 snogs I've got, and she does by far the slowest! I actually thought about having Flagstad for Isolde, and taking the Mahler sop role, then Jessye could do the alto, but Helen Watts is just so magical in Urlicht she has to be in there.

Or maybe a chamber concert:
Schubert String Quintet
Interval
Beethoven Op 130 (with Grosse Fugue as finale)
Takacs Qt with Rostropovich as 2nd cello in the Schubert.

 

Argh, my answer got swallowed in the aether...

Anyway, what I was trying to say was: what about a kind of violinist bakeoff?

Ravel: Tzigane (Fritz Kreisler, violin)
Paganini: Violin Concerto no. 1 (Niccolo Paganini, violin)
---Interval---
Sarasate: Zigeunerweisen (Pablo de Sarasate, violin)
Brahms: Violin Concerto (Joseph Joachim, violin)

With Eugene Ysaye on hand to play his third solo sonata as an encore.

You'd need the same orchestra throughout to make it fair - perhaps the Chicago SO under Reiner (they should be hardened after the Heifetz sessions).