To the Albert Hall last night to hear a Prom by the Hamburg Symphony Orchestra. Running late, we phoned ahead to see what the running order was, and were informed that Henze’s 10th Symphony was on first, with pieces by Strauss (R.) and Mozart after the interval. Since the Henze piece was advertised as ‘rhapsodic’ and ‘rich’ we decided there would be nothing lost by missing it, and had dinner instead. One of my companions expressed the view that it would probably be ‘atonal boxxoxx’.
Arriving just before the interval, we heard the unmistakeable and incomparably beautiful strains of a Mozart finale through the door of the auditorium. The horrific truth dawned: we had missed Mozart’s 20th Piano Concerto, or most of it at any rate. We would have to settle for hearing the Henze. I was uneasy about this, as Henze is still alive, so listening to anything of his breaks one of my fundamental rules of classical music. However I comforted myself with the thought that it might not be as bad as we feared.
It was worse.
Since the clueless dolt on the phone misinformed us, I feel no need to show any restraint in the interests of good manners. This symphony is the most turgid piece of irrelevant drivel that I have ever suffered. I resent having spent half an hour (all we could endure) being insulted by this fatuous piece of self-important nonsense. It had no discernable theme, no melody and no identifiable time signature. A piano has no place on the stage in a symphony, not at any rate if its only role is to produce occasional streams of miserable plunking nullity. I particularly savoured the contributions of the Man Hitting a Large Sheet of Bacofoil which intruded insistently into the second movement. Doubtless meant to be symbolic of something or other. Cunningly, the composer had made the movements segue into each other without a proper break which made it harder for appalled concertgoers to make their escape. In the end we slunk out before the finale got properly going.
This piece of music (and if there were ever a case for sneer quotes it would be here that one might apply them) had no redeeming features. Its total lack of musical value exceeded even that of the average rap artist or heavy metal band. There was not a single moment of pleasure or uplift or joy or interest in it, merely a weak sense of curiosity that wore off after five minutes to be replaced by a growing sense of desperation to be anywhere else. The random noises of a troupe of monkeys let loose amongst the instruments would have been preferable.
Ideally one would hope that all copies of the sheet music could be pulped. I hated this symphony. By extension, I have also come to hate the composer, the conductor, the orchestra and the entire population of the city of Hamburg. There is nothing left for it but to hunt them down one by one and subject them all to a hundred years of high-volume white noise. I would do this myself but am afraid that if I went anywhere near the place I would start getting flashbacks. With any luck an intensive course of Mozart will restore my mental equilibrium, but it’ll be touch and go.
P.S. It is no surprise that Henze is a composer of the usual posturing-bourgeois-Marxist type, who has checked all the usual spoilt-idiot-Marxist boxes: collaboration with Luchino Visconti (check), oratorio dedicated to Che Guevara (check), solidarity visits to Cuba (check). One doesn’t have to be a pseudo-revolutionary-preening-halfwit-self-satisfied-Marxist to produce tosh, but it helps. Clive James: 'among artists without talent Marxism will always be popular, since it allows them to blame society for the fact that no-one wants to listen to them.'