Rassling with the symphonic adagios of Bruckner and Mahler, Part 2

We left off Part 1 of this post:

BEFORE WE PROCEED TO THE LAST THREE BRUCKNER SYMPHONIES, LET'S CONNECT WITH A MAHLER ADAGIO --
Which is where we'll pick up in Part 2.

FIRST LET'S CONSIDER A COUPLE OF NEAR-ADAGIOS

First, let's consider a couple of near-adagios. Mahler 1 and 2 have slow movements we wouldn't even think to call adagios. Mahler 3, about as strange a pile of symphonic construction as I'm aware of, actually concludes with an extended slow movement that might qualify, and the precedent of concluding a large symphony with a large slow movement is certainly going to catch fire with Mahler, but in M3 I think he's playing at something else here, especially when we consider the long opening section the begins all-strings and then for a good piece allows only small-bore wind intrusions. Let's listen -- I think you'll hear what I mean.

MAHLER: Symphony No. 3 in D: vi. Langsam. Ruhevoll. Empfunden. (Slow. Peaceful. Felt.)


Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Sir Georg Solti, cond. Decca, recorded in Orchestra Hall, November 1982

Boston Symphony Orchestra, Erich Leinsdorf, cond. RCA, recorded in Symphony Hall, Oct. 10-11, 1966

London Symphony Orchestra, Jascha Horenstein, cond. Unicorn-Kanchana, recorded in Fairfield Hall, Croydon, London, July 27-29, 1970

New York Philharmonic, Leonard Bernstein, cond. DG, recorded live in Avery Fisher Hall, Nov. 25-28, 1987

Rassling with the symphonic adagios of Bruckner and Mahler, Part 1

NOTE TO READERS: It was hard enough getting this post strung out from start to finish. When that was done, I knew that one thing I'd most feared had happened: There are too many files, and these files are big ones, to have much hope of the post loading properly or easily. It already wasn't going to be finished at the finish line, but now it would have to be split in two. Part 2 will post pretty much any time now. -- Ken

[No. 7] Adagio - Sehr feierlich und sehr langsam
(Adagio - Very solemn and very slow)

[No. 8] Adagio - Feierlich langsam, doch nicht schleppend
(Adagio - Solemnly slow, yet not dragging)

The first statement of the main theme of the Adagios of Anton Bruckner's Seventh and Eighth Symphonies, played by, respectively: [7] the Berlin Phil under Seiji Ozawa and [8] the Vienna Phil under Herbert von Karajan


WHILE ALL ADAGIOS ARE SLOW MOVEMENTS,
ONLY SOME SLOW MOVEMENTS ARE ADAGIOS

And here we hear prime specimens of "NOT AN ADAGIO" slow movements from the undisputed masters of symphonic adagio-making:

BRUCKNER: Symphony No. 4 in E-flat:
ii. Andante quasi allegretto

Munich Philharmonic, Rudolf Kempe, cond. Acanta, recorded in the Bürgerbräukeller, Dec. 14-15, 1975 & Jan. 20-21, 1976

MAHLER: Symphony No. 6 in A minor:
iii. [or ii.] Andante moderato
[Mahler himself, you'll recall, was of two minds about the order of the symphony's middle movements, the Andante moderato and the Scherzo]

Cleveland Orchestra, George Szell, cond. Columbia-CBS-Sony, recorded live in Severance Hall, October 1967

by Ken

In last week's post, we "chart[ed] our course from Beethoven's visionary symphonic adagio to the great symphonic adagios of Bruckner and Mahler," which is the course that lies ahead of us. It hasn't worked out quite the way -- that is, any of the ways -- it was meant to, but here we are, somewhere between Plan C and Plan D, forging ahead, starting with this idea I had (it seemed like a good idea at the time) that it might be helpful, in getting a handle on these symphonic adagios, to separate out slow movements that aren't adagios.

Okay, the performances I've slotted in above are skewed just a little, in the direction of "non-adagio-tizing" these specimen movements -- with performances that underscore these movements' non-adagio-ness, in particular Szell's almost breezy take on the Mahler 6's "Andante moderato" tempo marking. Still just drawing on the SC archive (meaning that these are performances we've heard before, unless a clip was made for a post that never got posted), which is overflowing with performances of this movement, which I love a lot, I could have inserted these broader and emotionally weightier statements --

MAHLER: Symphony No. 6 in A minor:
iii. [or ii.] Andante moderato

New Philharmonia Orchestra, Sir John Barbirolli, cond. EMI, recorded in Abbey Road Studio No. 1, London, Sept. 26-27, 1969

London Philharmonic Orchestra, Klaus Tennstedt, cond. EMI, recorded live in the Royal Festival Hall, November 1991

I love pretty much everything about the Barbirolli M6, not least the bold and soul-stirring Andante moderato, and I also love the darker, more insinuating quality of the Tennstedt live M6 Andante moderato. (I very much like the 1983 studio recording Tennstedt made as part of his LPO Mahler cycle, but I'm happy EMI also issued the later live performances of M6 and M7.)

Similarly with the Bruckner 4 Andante quasi allegretto --

In which we chart our course from Beethoven's visionary symphonic adagio to the great symphonic adagios of Bruckner and Mahler

(And we run smack into the dread Ninth Symphony snafu)

Maestro Furtwängler will get us from Beethoven's sublime symphonic adagio to Bruckner; then Carlo Maria Giulini will carry us on to Mahler.

BEETHOVEN: Symphony No. 9 in D minor, Op. 125:
iii. Adagio molto e cantabile


Bayreuth Festival Orchestra, Wilhelm Furtwängler, cond. EMI, recorded live in the Festspielhaus, July 29, 1951

Berlin Philharmonic, Carlo Maria Giulini, cond. DG, recorded in the Philharmonie, Feb. 1989 & Feb. 1990

by Ken

Last week, you may recall, "Our ongoing Seiji Ozawa remembrance sidetracked me into some aural pondering of the symphonic adagio." I'm afraid we're not going to get much farther today than scouting the route, but that still leaves us in for some remarkable music.

You'll note that in last week's post I've upgraded the audio clip of the 1951 Furtwängler Beethoven Ninth, and this week we've heard it again, paired with Carlo Maria Giulini's performance, and that duo will escort us to -- in fact, all the way through -- Anton Bruckner's symphonic adagio-ing, to his final Adagio, the last movement he composed, the Adagio of his Ninth Symphony, whose intended finale he ran out of either time or inspiration to "complete."

The sound of Furtwängler's 1944 Bruckner 9 is less happy even than that of his 1951 Beethoven 9 [AFTERTHOUGHT: however, the upgraded Beethoven 9 audio clip sure sounds better (how 'bout those timpani?), and for that matter the Bruckner 9 clip sounds a lot better than I expected -- Ed.], but it's good enough, and will have to do, since it's the only Bruckner 9 he left us. And if there's one thing classical-music lovers generally agree on (there aren't many!), it's that the Furtwängler Bruckner 9 is one of the greatest and least dispensable recordings we have. That said, Carlo Maria Giulini's Bruckner 9 seems to me of comparable stature. In the fullness of his long career, Maestro G. had the opportunity to show us how deep and darkly perceiving an artist he was -- I've described this performance as "dripping blood."

Finally for this week, Maestro Furtwängler not being a Mahler guy, Maestro Giulini will lead us the final step to Mahler, represented by a movement I don't think is often thought of as a "symphonic adagio" -- only it is, isn't it?


LISTENING TO FURTWÄNGLER'S AND GIULINI'S
PERFORMANCES OF THE ADAGIO OF BRUCKNER 9 . . .

Our ongoing Seiji Ozawa remembrance sidetracked me into some aural ponderingof the symphonic adagio

UPDATE: Now with a better clip of the Adagio of the Furtwängler Beethoven Ninth

Carlo Maria Giulini (1914-2005) conducting the Los Angeles
Philharmonic, c1980 [photo: Los Angeles Philharmonic Archives]

"Adagio A"

Vienna Symphony Orchestra, Carlo Maria Giulini, cond. EMI-Testament, recorded in the Grosser Saal of the Musikverein, Dec. 8-10, 1974

"Adagio B"

Berlin Philharmonic, Carlo Maria Giulini, cond. DG, recorded in the Philharmonie, Feb. 1989 & Feb. 1990

by Ken

I don't expect that everyone will recognize one of these two movements, while I expect that most everyone will recognize the other, which is one of the core chunks of Western music from the 19th century forward. I hope that most listeners will hear in both of the above clips performances of attention-grabbing splendor. This performance of the lesser-known piece, and indeed of the symphony it comes from, made me think about the piece itself.

Later we're going to hear Giulini's performance of this movement alongside two other, really wonderful performances -- so good that it almost pains me to point out that they yield to Giulini's achievement in applying, from the outset, such an irresistible grabbing quality, a personal connection that animates a sense of the vitality and urgency of the piece which makes me hear its direct lineage from our other demonstration Adagio.


FIRST OFF, WHAT IS AN ADAGIO?

It's not easy to pin down, but attempts to do so often offer by way of example --

Adagio in G minor for organ and strings (arr. Giazoto)


David Bell, organ; Léon Spierer, violin; Berlin Philharmonic, Her­bert von Karajan, cond. DG, recorded in the Kammer­musik­saal of the Philharmonie, Sept. 30, 1983

Interim post: The proper post is in its final stages -- I got caught up in what I'm calling "Tales of a 'tail' "

I GUESS THIS COULD BE THOUGHT OF AS "Part 2b-ii"
OF OUR ONGOING SEIJI OZAWA REMEMBERANCE

Laurence Thorstenberg, English horn; Boston Symphony, Seiji Ozawa, cond.

by Ken

What we hear (and see!) above is the haunting English-horn solo that sets us in the "Chambre de Marguerite" -- the bedchamber of the now-"fallen" Marguerite, accused of murdering her mother by gradual poisoning and abandoned by Faust, of Part IV of Berlioz's Damnation of Faust. As we will see, or rather hear, however, abandoned though she may be, she spends all her days waiting by the window or outside her house waiting for him to return.

BERLIOZ: The Damnation of Faust, Op. 24: Part IV,
romance, Marguerite, "D'amour l'ardente flamme"

Rita Gorr, mezzo-soprano; Robert Casier, English horn; Orchestra of the Théâtre National de l'Opéra (Paris), André Cluytens, cond. EMI, recorded in the Salle Wagram, Oct. 5-10, 1959

Maria Callas, soprano; Orchestre de la Société des Concerts du Conservatoire de Paris, Georges Prêtre, cond. EMI, recorded in the Salle Wagram, May 2-8, 1963


SPOILER ALERT

Seiji Ozawa (1935-2024)Part 2b: It takes a vibrant imagination to enter fully Berlioz's and Mahler's worlds

"Romeo, trembling with an anxious joy, reveals himself to Juliet."

From Part I, the Prologue to Berlioz's R&J "dramatic symphony"

SMALL CHORUS: The feast is concluded,
and when all noise dies down,
under the arches one hears
weary dancers grow more distant, singing.
Alas! -- and Romeo sighs,
for he has had to leave Juliet! --
Suddenly, in order to breathe again
that air that she breathes,
he vaults over the garden walls.
Already on her balcony the pale Juliet appears --
and believing herself alone until daybreak
confides to the night her love.
[1:28] Romeo, trembling with an anxious joy,
reveals himself to Juliet,
and from his heart fires burst forth in their turn.

New England Conservatory Chorus, Boston Symphony Orchestra, Seiji Ozawa, cond. DG, recorded in Symphony Hall, October 1975
[NOTE: For the immediately following alto-solo "strophes" (stanzas), "Premiers transports que nul n'oublie," scroll down a ways. -- Ed.]

From Part III: "Où sont-ils maintenant?" ("Where are they now?")

CHORUS OF CAPULETS AND MONTAGUES:
Ah! what a frightful mystery!
[0:30] Récit., Father Laurence, "Je vais dévoiler le mystère"
I am going to unveil the mystery.
This corpse, this was the husband of Juliet.
Do you see that body laid out on the ground?
That was the wife, alas!, of Romeo.
It's I who had married them.
BOTH CHORUSES: Married?
FATHER LAURENCE: Yes, I must confess it.
I saw in it a salutary marker
of a future friendship between your two houses.
BOTH CHORUSES: Friends of the Montagues/Capulets, us!
We curse them!
FATHER LAURENCE: But you've restarted the war between families!
To flee another marriage, the unhappy girl came to find me.
"You alone," she cried, "would be able to save me!
There's nothing more for me but to die!"
In this extreme peril
I had her take, in order to ward off fate,
a potion, which that same evening
lent her the pallor and cold of death.
BOTH CHORUSES: A potion!
FATHER LAURENCE: And I came without fear
here to rescue her.
But Romeo, deceived,
to the pregnant funeral
had arrived ahead of me -- to die
on the body of of his beloved;
and promptly on her awakening
Juliet, informed
of this death that he bears in his devastated breast,
with Romeo's sword had armed herself against herself
and passed into eternity
when I appeared -- there is the whole truth.
BOTH CHORUSES: Married!
[3:27] Air, Father Laurence, "Pauvres enfants, que je pleure"
Poor children, for whom I weep,
fallen together before your time,
on your somber resting place will come to weep.
Great through you in history,
Verona one day, without thinking about it,
will have its sorrow and its glory
solely in the memory of you.

[6:19] Where are they now, those fierce enemies?
Capulets, Montagues! Come, come, touch,
hatred in your hearts, insults in your mouth,
these pale lovers, barbarians, approach!
God punishes you in your tendernesses.
His chastisements, his avenging thunderbolts
hold the secret of our terrors.
Listen to his voice which thunders:
so that on high My vengeance will pardon you,
forget, forget your own furies!

José van Dam (bs-b), Father Laurence; New England Conservatory Chorus, Boston Symphony Orchestra, Seiji Ozawa, cond. DG, recorded in Symphony Hall, October 1975

by Ken

You could say we're getting ahead of ourselves, jumping from Part I, the Prologue, all the way to the Finale of Berlioz's "dramatic symphony" Roméo et Juliette, or you could say we're just catching up with the second of the four "musical talking points" I outlined for our remembrance of Seiji Ozawa, which we heard -- most recently in last week's Part 2a of our remembrance of Seiji Ozawa ("Thinking big musically doesn't preclude making every moment fully alive") -- so eloquently sung by the great Belgian bass-baritone José van Dam. It's "The Oath" that Father Laurence (promoted by Berlioz from "friar" to "father," we notice) pretty much shoves down the vituperating throats of the once-again-warring houses of Capulet and Montague, in the shock of the deaths of their precious children, Juliet and Romeo. We'll be rehearing "The Oath," "Jurez donc par l'auguste symbole" ("Swear then, by the august symbol"), shortly, when we work our way through the Finale of Berlioz's R&J.


AS WE LEARNED FROM THE CONVERSATIONS WITH SEIJI
IN THE BERLIN PHILHARMONIC'S DIGITAL CONCERT HALL --

Seiji Ozawa (1935-2024)Part 2a: Thinking big musically doesn't preclude making every moment fully alive

MAHLER: Kindertotenlieder (Songs on the Death of Children):
No. 4, "Oft denk' ich, sie sind nur ausgeganen!"
("Often I think they've only gone out!")

Jessye Norman, soprano; Boston Symphony Orchestra, Seiji Ozawa, cond. Philips, recorded live in the Alte Oper, Frankfurt, December 1988

MAHLER: Symphony No. 8 in E-flat:
Part I, Allegro impetuoso, "Veni, Creator Spiritus"

Faye Robinson, Judith Blegen (and Deborah Sasson?), sopranos; Florence Quivar, mezzo-sorano; Lorna Myers, contralto; Kenneth Riegel, tenor; Benjamin Luxon, baritone; Gwynne Howell, bass; Tanglewood Festival Chorus, Boston Symphony Orchestra, Seiji Ozawa, cond. Philips, recorded live in Symphony Hall, Oct.-Nov. 1980
[SOPRANO NOTE: A third soprano is called for in Part II but not Part I. However, I can't swear that there's been no redistribution of parts in Part I.]

by Ken

If you've visited the previous installment of this series, "Seiji Ozawa (1935-2024), Part 1: Being the preface to a probably-inappropriately-impressionistic (at least at the start) musical remembrance" (Feb. 11), you know that this isn't where we expected to be beginning Part 2. We had, by gosh, a formal agenda! And we'll be coming back to it, though I'm afraid not completing it in this installment.

That plan changed, or at least got rejiggered, as I pondered the possibilities suggested by the presence, among the large volume of Ozawa holdings in the SC Archive, of the complete Part I of his BSO recording of Mahler's grandest symphony, the Eighth, his setting of the old Latin hymn "Veni, Creator Spiritus" -- one of his most extraordinary, and extraordinarily dense, musical concoctions, unlike anything else I know in the musical literature, definitely including Part II of the Eighth, his cherry-picked rendering of Part II of Goethe's Faust, which is as discursive and, er, spaced out (in more ways than one) as Part I is concentrated and compact.

Then, since the content list for this musical talking point already included Nos. 3 and 4 of the Mahler Kindertotenlieder (settings of, altogether, five of Friedrich Rückert's poems on the death of children) in the powerful live recording Seiji and the BSO made with Jessye Norman on tour in Frankfurt, I slipping one of them in here, partly to hear Jessye and Seiji -- whom we've heard collaborating so splendidly in Gurre-Lieder Part I -- together again, but more to illustrate both Mahler's and Seiji's complete comfort with the formally simple and wildly complex musical structures.


WE'll RETURN TO THE "PART 2 TALKING POINTS," BUT FOR READERS GRIPPED BY "VENI, CREATOR SPIRITUS" MANIA --

FLASH: Want to see 'n' hear Seiji Ozawa conduct Mendelssohn's Elijah for free? Act now!

We're also going to hear (right here!) Seiji conduct Beethoven's irresistible Choral Fantasy with its great champion Rudolf Serkin

The Berlin Philharmonic's Digital Concert Hall is honoring Seiji Ozawa with free access to the performance of Mendelssohn's Elijah -- built around a commanding assumption of the crucial title role by baritone Matthias Goerne -- recorded on May 17, 2009. But I don't know how long it'll be free!

AN APOLOGY: This is really inexcusable. There's no good reason why I couldn't have gotten this "FLASH" up Monday, but here it is Sunday (well, actually, Monday again by the time this is posted), and .*nbsp. . . In one source I saw something like "On demand through February 29, but I didn't know if that was a legit cutoff date for free access. I dithered. The good news is that the 2009 and 2016 interviews shouldn't be going away anytime soon. Sorry!

by Ken

For once, I heard that clock ticking and punched up the 2009 Seiji-Berlin Elijah right away, and watched the whole thing. It took me a long time to come to grips with the piece, but I did, and it occupies a special place in my affections. I was especially happy to discover how strong Matthias Goerne's performance of the title role is, because without a strong Elijah the piece kind of doesn't make a lot of sense. But there's still a serious burden on the conductor, because a fair amount of the piece really does need a major effort of motivation-defining, and this is the sort of thing Seiji was so good at: helping his co-performers feel the importance of what they're performing in the moment and how it relates to a piece's grand design.

There's also some important history embedded in the Elijah performance, as I came to understand from watching the 2009 and 2016 interviews in the Digital Concert Hall archive. Onsite they're described as "conversations," and they truly are -- with a member of the orchestra, sometimes even in English, and always with subtitles even if they aren't. It turns out that the Elijah, owing to what I recall him describing in the 2016 "conversation," with his countryman Daishin Kashimoto, as "my mysterious illness" (all week I've been thinking I should really rewatch the 2016 conversation to pin down his exact words; this'll have to be close enough), would be his last Berlin appearance until he was finally able to return in 2016 to conduct an all-Beethoven second half of a concert that began with a conductorless performance by elite winds of the Berlin Phil of Mozart's stupendous Gran Partita Serenade, K. 361.


MORAL: DON'T OVERLOOK THE INTERVIEWS!

Seiji Ozawa (1935-2024)Part 1: Being the preface to a probably-inappropriately-impressionistic (at least at the start) musical remembrance

[As if impressionisticity were utterly unknown in this department]

In Part 1 we preview four musical talking points we'll be starting from in Part 2: (1) Andante sostenuto, (2) "Pandaemonium,"
(3) "Le Serment" ("The Oath"), and (4) A snatch of Nietzsche

-- from the Feb. 6 "Tribute to Seiji Ozawa" on the BSO website

#1 of 4 [see above & below]: Andante sostenuto

Boston Symphony Orchestra, Seiji Ozawa, cond. DG, recorded in Symphony Hall, Apr. 2, 1977

by Ken

Seiji died Tuesday, at 88, after a number of years of diminished health, but also after a remarkably full (and I hope satisfying; he did an awful lot to feel satisfied about) run. If you need reminding of how productive a life it was, I do commend to you that "Tribute" posted on the website of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, whose music director he was for a, well, remarkable 29 seasons (1973-2002). I've been fascinated in particular by the well-filled-out "Timeline of Seiji Ozawa with the BSO," which although specifically BSO-focused can't help but touch on non-BSO doings.

I know we have all sorts of desperately important business pending -- and as you can see, this "musical remembrance" is now itself mostly pending, though I'm hoping its pendency will be brief; Parts 2 and 3 are taking shape. A quick peek in the Sunday Classics Musical Archive confirmed my sense that Seiji has been a frequent guest here, and Part 3 will consist mostly (I hope!) of just pulling a buncha stuff out of the archive for our listening pleasure.

Part 2, however, as you may have noted, is going to spring from four "musical talking points" that have leapt out of my wanderings through memory. The first we've heard above, in its intact, self-contained form -- self-contained except for the story attached, which has to do with my happening to hear Seiji and the BSO play the piece from which this Andante sostenuto is drawn, a symphony I imagine I thought I knew reasonably well at the time (the summer of 1974) but in the case of this movement seemed to be hearing for the first time, to overwheming effect. For the record (pun possibly slightly intended), the recording was made several years later, in April 1977, when Seiji was rounding out his fourth season as BSO music director -- and I wonder how many people imagined that 25 more seasons were to follow.


THE OTHER THREE "MUSICAL TALKING POINTS"

Gundula Janowitz had a way offooling us with music it didn't seem she ought to be singing

SUNDAY BONUS UPDATE: I thought we might add one more of Tove's Gurre songs -- see below. -- Ken

THIS, CLEARLY, IS SOMETHING G.J. WAS BORN TO SING --

"Ich weiss, dass mein Erlöser lebet, und dass er erscheint am letzten Tage dieser Erd'. Wenn Verwesung mir gleich drohet, wird dies mein Auge Gott doch sehn." -- Hib 19:25-26
"Ich weiss, dass mein Erlöser lebet: Denn Christ ist erstanden von dem Tod, der Erstling derer, die schlafen." -- I Korinther 15:20

"I know that my redeemer liveth, and that He shall stand at the latter day upon the earth. And tho' worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God." -- Job 19:25-26
"I know that my Redeemer liveth: For now is Christ risen from the dead, the first fruits of them that sleep." -- I Corinthians 15:20

Gundula Janowitz, soprano; Munich Bach Orchestra, Karl Richter, cond. DG, recorded in the Herkulessaal of the Residenz, June 12-28, 1964

by Ken

Further to last week's post ("Before we take our closer look at Gurre-Lieder, I want to think about two performers who make one performance a special case"): Yes, I suppose the above is essentially the first aural image that comes to mind when I think of Gundula Janowitz: purity of expression in a lyric soprano of narrow tonal range but almost unearthly beauty.

For those unfamiliar with Karl Richter's German-language Messiah recording, which DG emphatically did not put out on its "authentic" early-music "Archiv" label, I've always loved it. I know Richter is regarded almost as an enemy by latter-day Pure-Authentic Baroquians. For me, however, what he was was a great musician, whose greatness not surprisingly reached its peak, just as the Baroque era did, in the music of Bach and Handel. Richter made a later Messiah recording in English -- in London, in 1972 -- which DG didn't put out on Archiv either. I like that version too, but Richter's Messias with his Munich Bach cohorts remains special for me, not least for its solo quartet, which we might think of as simply a DG "house cast": in addition to Janowitz, Marga Höffgen, Ernst Häfliger, and Franz Crass. But in the grand scheme of things, goodness, what a lineup!

If the Janowitz of "Ich weiss, dass mein Erlöser lebet" might be thought of as her "essential" vocal self, we already heard it represented in last week's short version of the rapt moment she made -- in a live Vienna State Opera performance, remember -- of the minuscule but highly exposed (to put it mildly; it's unaccompanied!) role of the Young Shepherd in Act I of Wagner's Tannhäuser, at the moment of the scene change from the fleshly pleasures of the Venusberg to the late-spring radiance of the Wartburg valley.

It just so happens that I also made a clip of a fuller version of this prime Wagnerian scene-change coup de théâtre -- which will now encompass the entire role of the Shepherd.

Before we take our closer look at Gurre-Lieder, I want to think about two performers who make one performance a special case

The ruins of Gurre Castle (as of 2007), in the far northeast of Denmark (on the map Gurre looks like a stone's throw across the water from Sweden) where King Valdemar I is supposed to have tucked away his beautiful, dearly beloved mistress Tove -- until, well, thereupon hangs a tale.

Which we'll get to. Just maybe not right away.

So it begins --


Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, Rafael Kubelik, cond. DG, recorded live in the Kongress-Saal of the Deutsches Museum, Munich, March 9-12, 1965

Staatskapelle Dresden, Giuseppe Sinopoli, cond. Teldec, recorded live in the Semper Oper, August 1995

Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra, Andrew Litton, cond. Live performance from Grieg Hall, in the Bergen International Festival, June 4, 2008

Vienna Symphony Orchestra, Josef Krips, cond. Live performance from the Vienna Festival, in the Vienna Konzerthaus, June 10, 1969

In time, these Gurre-Lieder, or Songs of Gurre, come to Tove's declaration, "Nun sag' ich dir zum ersten Mal, 'König Volmer, ich liebe dich'" (replaying the performances we've already heard) --

Now I say to you for the first time, "King Volmer, I love you."
Now I kiss you for the first time, and fling my arms around you.
And if you were to say I had earlier said it
and ever given you my kiss,
then I say, "The king is a fool,
who recalls vague rubbish."
And if you say, "Indeed I am such a fool,"
then I'll say, "The king is right."
But if you say, "No, I'm not that,"
Then I'll say, "The king is bad."
For I have kissed all my roses to death,
all the while I was thinking of you.

Gundula Janowitz (s), Tove; Vienna Symphony Orchestra, Josef Krips, cond. Live performance from the Vienna Festival, in the Vienna Konzerthaus, June 10, 1969

Jessye Norman (s), Tove; Boston Symphony Orchestra, Seiji Ozawa, cond. Philips, recorded live in Symphony Hall, April 1979

by Ken

Believe it or not, we're making progress, even if it's of a kind of sidewise sort. I remember there was a plan to illustrate the special qualities I hear in the conducting of Josef Krips (1902-1974), which at the time seemed to require nothing more than plucking an abundance of for-instances out of the Sunday Classics Archive. I'm not so good at just-plucking-out, however, and as soon as I started, the project began to grow and shift, especially when I found myself taking a better listen than I have before to a performance I've owned for ages: Krips's 1969 Vienna Festival rendering of Arnold Schoenberg's monumental cantata-oratorio-or-whatever (I'm not aware of a term that begins to cover it), Gurre-Lieder.

At that point it seemed necessary to pause the Krips quick-tour and spend a jot of time with Gurre-Lieder, one of the most arresting and astonishing musical creations I know. No sooner had I set out on that tack (well, maybe many, many hours of toil after I set out on that tack), I realized that before we got to that, it might be useful for me to explain why that particular performance exerted such a fascination for me. Which meant a closer look at conductor Krips and the singer who incarnated King Waldemar's inamorata Tove, which is to say the soprano Gundula Janowitz (born 1937).

Again, I first thought this could be accomplished easily and painlessly by a simple raid of the archives. And probably it could have. But again, my mind doesn't work that way. Soon enough I was back at work crafting whole new sets of audio clips and puzzling out a navigable path through them. And in just a moment we're going to partake of a teasing taste of G.J.


BUT FIRST, BACK TO THE BEGINNING -- OF GURRE-LIEDER

On the way to our archival array of performances by conductor Josef Krips, we stall at a piece that cries out for more considered attention

Stanley Drucker, clarinet; New York Philharmonic, Zubin Mehta, cond. Sony, recorded in Avery Fisher Hall, May 23-28, 1991

by Ken

In fairness, we should probably hear a bit more than this, and even though we're not going to get to a proper version of the post with which I had hoped to follow up last week's "Josef Krips's Requiem," we are going to hear a proper rendering -- two, in fact -- of the source of this haunting theme. For now, though, I was delighted, in working on that still-in=progress post, to find an occasion for another Stanley Drucker "moment" -- after all, we do still have important unfinished business to finish in our remembrance of Stanley D.

And this theme, originally sounded first by the solo clarinet and then taken up by the soprano as the start of the meltingly beautiful solo we're about to hear, takes me back to the summer of 1974, with the late Michael Steinberg -- in his pre-San Francisco days, when he was still the much-admired music critic of the Boston Globe, when Michael played it on the piano, in a small meeting space on the grounds of the Tanglewood Festival, for attendees of that year's annual meeting of the Music Critics Association. It was my first MCA meeting, and my first-ever (and so far still only) visit to Tanglewood, and there was Michael at the piano, so overcome wrought that you wondered if would be able to get through it.


SO LET'S HEAR OUR THEME AS IT WAS WRITTEN

Nun sag' ich dir zum ersten Mal, 'König Volmer, ich liebe dich.'
Nun küss ich dich zum ersten Mal, und schlinge den Arm um dich.
   (Now I say to you for the first time, 'King Volmer, I love you.'
   Now I kiss you for the first time, and fling my arms around you.)

Gundula Janowitz, soprano; Vienna Symphony Orchestra, Josef Krips, cond. Live performance from the Vienna Festival, Vienna Konzerthaus, June 10, 1969

Jessye Norman, soprano; Harold Wright, clarinet; Boston Symphony Orchestra, Seiji Ozawa, cond. Philips, recorded live in Symphony Hall, April 1979
[NOTE: Of course we're hearing another legend of American clarinettery here: the BSO's Harold "Buddy" Wright]

Whenever I hear or even think about this, I still see and hear Michael playing it on the piano that day at Tanglewood. Of course I understand why he was so overcome. If we were to undertake a mission as silly as trying to list the Most Beautiful Pieces of Music Ever Written, the excerpt would have to hold a place all the way to the end. I re-encountered it in the process of extracting, as promised last week, performances by the wonderful conductor Josef Krips from the SC Archive, which is teeming with them, including a number of excerpts from the work our clip comes from.


OF COURSE WE SHOULD HEAR THE WHOLE SOLO