Speaking of Schubert's "An die Musik," Strauss's "Zueignung," and the "Ariadne" Prologue, a few (eventually) final questions, Part 1

"There is a realm where all is pure"

Funny business on the island of Naxos: Ernst Stern's design for the original (prologue-less) 1912 Ariadne auf Naxos

R. STRAUSS: From the Prologue to Ariadne auf Naxos:
The Composer, "Musik ist eine heilige Kunst"

THE COMPOSER: Music is a sacred art, which brings together all men of courage, like cherubim around a shining throne, and for this reason it is the most holy of the arts. Holy music!


From a performance at Buenos Aires's Teatro Colón conducted by Lovro von Matačić, October 1964

by Ken

From last week's post ("We have more 'An die Musik,' 'Zueignung,' and 'Musik ist eine heilige Kunst' -- but remember, this only sounds like a "good news" post"):

Just to touch quickly again on what I shorthanded as the "Reverse-Strauss" that's driving this series of posts: What's so wonderful about this excerpt, and indeed the entire comically, over-the-toply-serious character of the Composer, is that our real composer, Richard Strauss, mostly meant all of the things that come out of our over-the-top young Composer's mouth, but he would almost surely never have dared utter them "straight." Instead, as he and librettist Hugo von Hofmannsthal conceived the character, he can make these things not only resonantly beautiful but borderline hilarious.

I mean only to suggest here: What if it's the exact opposite? What if the sentiments truly are preposterous, and we only kid ourselves that they have some real-world applicability? Wouldn't that be a kick in the head?

By hook or by crook we're going to finish up with "An die Musik," "Zueignung," "Musik ist eine heilige Kunst," and the perspective I've been calling a Reverse-Strauss -- in last week's post and the previous week's ("Today's sacred word is 'heilig' ('holy' or 'sacred'), chez Schubert and R. Strauss -- make of it what you will"). I'm afraid, though, that the finishing up isn't going to happen today; I'm reckoning it'll take us another two posts.

And along this twisty way, we're going to be fielding some questions, starting with this one:

Q1: Who says that Strauss "mostly meant all of the things that come out of our over-the-top young Composer's mouth"?

We have more "An die Musik," "Zueignung," and "Musik ist eine heilige Kunst" -- but remember, this only SOUNDS like a "good news" post

We have our missing recording of "An die Musik"!
So let's hear it along with its intended companion --




Pavel Lisitsian, baritone; Naum Valter, piano. Melodiya, recorded 1961

Fritz Wunderlich, tenor; Hubert Giesen, piano. DG, recorded November 1965

by Ken

Last week, for possibly predictably perverse purposes of your proprietor, we focused on three bits of music that almost inevitably suggest some connection to the proposition that life is good, life is worth living ("Today's sacred word is 'heilig' ('holy' or 'sacred'), chez Schubert and R. Strauss -- make of it what you will"). Our cases in point were the Schubert song "An die Musik," Richard Strauss's song "Zueignung," and the moment in the final minutes of the Prologue to Strauss's Ariadne auf Naxos when the super-serious Composer of the super-serious opera seria Ariadne auf Naxos, in the countdown to its first performance (under troubled circumstances, to put it mildly, in the home of "the richest man in Vienna"), declares, "Music is a sacred art."

However, we only heard two of the three song performances we should have, performances I've lived with so long and so closely that they're inextricably woven into my consciousness. The problem was that one of the two intended "An die Musik"s I had only on an old MK LP I've cherished for more than 40 years (since I plucked it out of a 99-cent bin in the old Sam Goody bargain store across 49th Street from the old West Side store), and at the moment I'm unable to make audio files from LP. Anyway, as I hope you've heard above, the Armenian-born Soviet baritone Pavel Lisitsian's "An die Musik" is now united, as intended, with the much-lamented tenor Fritz Wunderlich's, originally recorded as part of a glorious group of Schubert songs to fill Side 4 of his wonderful 1965 DG Schöne Müllerin (the way the Schubert song cycle, which now fits comfortably on a single CD, usually came to us in those days, on three LP sides).

Over this past week I've scouted for a companion to Jussi Bjoerling's March 1958 Carnegie Hall encore performance of "Zueignung," again with the limitation that it would have to come from my CD holdings, or possibly via digital download. We heard some pretty good ones last week, and I heard lots more this week, but just now we're not looking for pretty good, we're looking for magic. As often happens, though, the joke was on me. I found magic, but not with "Zueignung." Oh, I'd just heard a very very good one, but again, we're not looking for very very good. I couldn't be bothered to stop the disc after the very very good "Zueignung," and wound up hearing something like this:

R. STRAUSS: "Zueignung," Op. 10, No. 1,
plus a special bonus performance (at 2:09)

Christa Ludwig, mezzo-soprano; Geoffrey Parsons, piano. BBC Legends, recorded live at Summer Festival, Wigmore Hall, July 15, 1978


OHMYGOODNESS! ARE THERE ANY WORDS? WELL,
FIRST OFF, I HAVE TO EAT SOME UNKIND ONES

While I toil away at today's post, here's a preview

We have our missing recording of "An die Musik"!




Pavel Lisitsian, baritone; Naum Valter, piano. Melodiya, recorded 1961

"So what?" you say? Tune in later, and maybe I'll have been able to explain, maybe I won't. -- Ken

Today's sacred word is "heilig" ("holy" or "sacred"), chez Schubert and R. Strauss -- make of it what you will

UPDATE: A second Fischer-Dieskau/Moore "Zueignung" added!

"An die Musik": Maybe we don't need words?
(But not to worry -- we'll have 'em eventually)


The man himself, seen here at home, is heard playing his own solo-piano rendering -- one stanza only -- of Schubert's one-of-a-kind song "An die Musik" ("To Music"), to conclude the Homage to Gerald Moore in London's Royal Festival Hall, Feb. 20, 1967 (as audio-recorded by EMI).

by Ken

I hadn't known when I started out that Gerald Moore, the one and only, was going to be leading the whole thing off, but when the above solo performance of "An die Musik" slipped provisionally into this lead-off position, it just seemed right. I hadn't expected either to be so affected rehearing this performance of an indulgent kind G.M. never would have given when he was partnering another performer, as he did so luminously with so many performers in his long and storied career. Nor, finally, was I prepared for the double take I did the third or fourth time I typed the date of the Homage to Gerald Moore concert. My goodness, that was more than 50 years ago! How did that happen?

For years now I've wanted to "do" G.M. in a post or posts, and have always shied away from it. Do I have to add that in all this time I still haven't heard another accompanist in his league? Oh, every now and then I hear a pianist who seems in that moment almost worthy of comparison. I settle almost-happily for that.


IF YOU DON'T KNOW "AN DIE MUSIK," BY ALL MEANS
SKIP AHEAD TO THE PERFORMANCES WITH WORDS

Gennady Rozhdestvensky (1931-2018)

VAUGHAN WILLIAMS: Symphony No. 5 in D:
i. Preludio

BBC Symphony Orchestra, Gennady Rozhdestvensky, cond. BBC Radio Classics, recorded live in the Royal Festival Hall at the BBC Symphony Orchestra 50th Anniversary Concert of Oct. 22, 1980

by Ken

Goodness, we have so much work to do -- old business, specifically look-back business (hint: look again at just the opening images of last week's YouTube clips of performances of Mason Jones's woodwind-quintet arrangement of Ravel's Tombeau de Couperin suite and note the immediately visible difference you can see), new business, future business, business-in-progress) that it would be hard to know where to start, if we didn't have some already overdue business, dating back to June 16 and the passing of Gennady Rozhdestvensky, at the age of 87.

[For a quick and affectionate once-over of G.R.'s life and career, check out Chris O'Reilly's on the Presto Classical website. -- Ed.]

My first difficulty in memorializing G.R. is that from the time my musical awareness expanded beyond the borders of the continental U.S., he was always there, and I don't recall ever hearing a performance of his that seemed less than fully engaged, and I don't mean just in Russian repertory, of which he was, not surprisingly, a heroic proponent. (We'll come back to this point in a moment, in a number of ways, actually.) But it wouldn't hurt us to hear a sampling of that Russian repertory. Here's the glorious culmination of Part I of The Nutcracker, sounding as properly and organically magisterial as I've ever heard it.

TCHAIKOVSKY: The Nutcracker, Op. 71:
No. 8, Scene in the Pine Forest
No. 9, Scene and Waltz of the Snowflakes [at 3:39]

Bolshoi Theater Children's Chorus (in No. 9), Bolshoi Theater Orchestra, Gennady Rozhdestvensky, cond. Melodiya, recorded 1960


GEE, MOST OF MY G.R. HOLDINGS ARE ON LP,
AND IT'S SUCH A HASSLE MAKING AUDIO FILES

'In modo di canzone': If it's singing we aim to talk about, how come we're listening to 'Le Tombeau de Couperin'? (Part 2)

With apologies for the sprawl of this post: I kept thinking I should really spin off a Part 3, but that seemed too easy a way out -- and likely would have needed to happen before we got to (ahem) "the point." Still, I probably should have. Sorry! -- Ed.

Ravel's Tombeau de Couperin, arr. Mason Jones

i. Prélude, at 0:00; ii. Fugue, at 3:35; iii. Menuet, at 6:30; iv. Rigaudon, at 10:34.  French Woodwind Quintet: Philippe Bernold, flute; Olivier Doise, oboe; Patrick Messina, clarinet; Julien Hardy, bassoon; Hervé Joulain, horn

Just the "Prélude," in the Jones arrangement

Quintette Les Cinq: Federico Dalprà, flute; Ian Barillas-McEntee, oboe; Letizia Elsa Maulà, clarinet; Georgie Powell, bassoon; Derrick Atkinson, horn (in the Jurriaanse Zaal, De Doelen, Rotterdam, Feb. 17, 2015)

by Ken

As I sort-of-explained last week in part 1 of this post, my path to Albrecht Mayer's 2013 oboe master class began with "a birthday-gift concert of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center," at which Ravel's Tombeau de Couperin (of 1914-18) was played in a version I'd never heard, bracketed -- in a program called Through the Great War -- between a pair of piano quintets I don't think I'd ever heard at all, Dohnányi's Second (1914) and Elgar's (1918).

To my considerable surprise it was not just a terrific concert but one of my great musical experiences, at a time when such an experience was as welcome as it was unexpected. I think I'd still like to write about it, because it struck at a whole bunch of issues that are of considerable importance to me, but it's not easy, since aspects of it are pretty personal, which amps up the difficulty of writing, as well as the personal unease about how much I want to share, especially at a time when I'm finding it hard to imagine that it would be of interest to anyone but me. My best hope is that it'll get a tiny bit easier once I have more confidence that there's nobody out there reading. (And if by chance there is somebody out there reading, can you explain yourself?)

So for now for the most part I'm going to table the concert itself, except perhaps to thank the Chamber Music Society, not just for the concert but for the birthday gift. You see, when I described this as "a birthday-gift concert of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center," what may not have been clear is that it was a gift from CMS -- owing, as best I can tell, to my having once bought a ticket directly from them (probably at a discount at that, if I know myself). I meant to drop the folks there a note of thanks, but somehow I didn't. So thanks, folks!


TOO MUCH TALK! LET'S HAVE MUSIC!