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
Which is the second difficulty for me in recalling G.R. musically. Now you're probably thnking, "For cripes' sake, guy, get a grip! It's not that hard. C'mon, the man just died -- if we can count three weeks as 'just.' Wouldn't you think, if there's any time you rise above over your petty whining but-I-don't-wannas, this would be the time?" Well, maybe, maybe not.
In fact, though, the Nutcracker audio clip we just heard was made from LP, for co-tenancy of one of the prime slots in the famous Sunday Classics "It's The Nutcracker -- the whole deal" (whose last iteration, in 2014, you can see here). Of course, that clip was made a long, long time ago. In my present state of life-complication, I'm not looking to add complications.
As a matter of fact, though, the first music that came to my mind when I heard the news of G.R.'s death, what I most wanted to hear, and to share, was something not at all Russian, and something I had only on LP. Patience!
THE THING ABOUT G.R. FOR ME; PLUS, WHY
WE STARTED OUT WITH VAUGHAN WILLIAMS
So, the thing is that G.R.: (1) never seemed to give routine or uninvolved performances and (b) sounded at home in any kind of music he played. It wasn't by chance that I began this post with that gorgeous performance of the first movement of the Vaughan Williams Fifth Symphony, from the time when G.R. was chief conductor of the BBC Symphony (1978-81). I'm only now learning that Melodiya has released a set of live performances of the complete VW symphonies with G.R. conducting his orchestra of the 1980s, the USSR Ministry of Culture State Symphony, and while a number of online commenters have snarky things to say about the orchestra's playing, or at least comprehension of the music, I have to say I'm curious.
Meanwhile, let's hear G.R. as concerto collaborator with some notable compatriots.
SIBELIUS: Violin Concerto in D minor, Op. 47
encore: BEETHOVEN: Romance No. 1 in G, Op. 40
i. Allegro moderato; ii. Adagio di molto [at 4:21]; iii. Allegro ma non tanto [at 22:51]; encore at 31:06 David Oistrakh, violin; Moscow Radio Symphony Orchestra, Gennady Rozhdestvensky, cond. Recorded February 1966
SCHUMANN: Cello Concerto in A minor, Op. 129:
i. Nicht zu schnell (Not too fast)
Mstislav Rostropovich, cello; Leningrad (Saint Petersburg) Philharmonic Orchestra, Gennady Rozhdestvensky, cond. DG, recorded in London, September 1960
Okay, so this is M.R. in full throb, with G.R. joining in happily for the ride, highlighting Schumann's Russian side. You didn't know Schumann had a Russian side? Me either, but I don't think I've ever heard the Cello Concerto sound more approachable.
Rozhdestvensky made a number of recordings with his pianist wife, Viktoria Postnikova --
and on YouTube we can see and hear the couple -- in considerably better picture and sound than the Sibelius Concerto with Oistrakh -- delivering, 35 years apart, appealing performances of Rachmaninoff's less-played first and last piano concertos: No. 1 in London, from a Proms concert with the BBC Symphony on Aug. 31, 1979; No. 4 in Reykjavik with the Iceland Symphony on Apr. 30, 2015.
THOUGHT: IF WE STICK TO SHOSTAKOVICH, I THINK
WE CAN GET A USEFUL SAMPLING OF G.R.'S RANGE
He had the ear and sensibility for the wry-mordent-ironic-sardonic -- and could we throw "pungent" into that mix? I've never quite figured how to describe this strain of Shostakovich's musical imagination.
SHOSTAKOVICH: Suite No. 1 for Jazz Band, Op. 38:
i. Waltz
ii. Polka [at 2:43]
iii. Foxtrot [at 4:37]
Instumental ensemble, Gennady Rozhdestvensky, cond. Melodiya, recorded 1984
I wouldn't begin to try to hurl adjectives at these upcoming exquisitely odd wind-ensemble tidbits. (At some point we really have to dig out the Scarlatti originals and listen again to what Shostakovich has done with them.)
SHOSTAKOVICH: Two Pieces from Scarlatti for wind band, Op. 17:
i. Pastorale: Allegro, in 5/8 [from the Sonata, L. 413 (K. 9)]
ii. Capriccio: Presto, in 2/4 [from the Sonata, L. 375 (K. 20)] [at 3:38]
Winds of the USSR State Symphony Orchestra, Gennady Rozhdestvensky, cond. Praga, broadcast performance from Czech Radio, July 7, 1981
Still, G.R. had the ear, scope, and heart for the epically desolate and tragic:
SHOSTAKOVICH: Symphony No. 7 in C, Op. 60 (Leningrad):
iii. Adagio
USSR Ministry of Culture State Symphony Orchestra, Gennady Rozhdestvensky, cond. Melodiya, recorded 1984
And he could switch gears effortlessly:
SHOSTAKOVICH: Symphony No. 9 in E-flat, Op. 70:
i. Allegro
ii. Moderato; Adagio [at 5:17]
iii. Presto; iv. Largo; v. Allegretto [at 12:56]
USSR Ministry of Culture State Symphony Orchestra, Gennady Rozhdestvensky, cond. Melodiya, recorded 1983
UPDATE: About the Shostakovich Ninth Symphony: I was sure we'd already heard and talked about the piece, down to recalling the impudent delights of Leonard Bernstein's NY Phil recording. I was so sure that I didn't bother saying anything about this amazingly perky piece, with which the composer confounded Comrade Stalin, as brazenly as he could without simply setting his head directly on the chopping block, by producing this instead of another symphonic epic to complete what the big boss expected to be a wartime trilogy alongside the Seventh and Eighth Symphonies. Alas, when I decided I really should try to dig up a link for that earlier post, I couldn't find any trace of it -- not even the needed audio files, which heightens my suspicion that once again I'm hallucinating based on a post i merely intended to write. Oh well, throw it on the pile as yet another piece of past-due business. Meanwhile, I hope perhaps this note gives some idea of the resiliently jaunty qualities of the Shostakovich Ninth. -- Ed.
FINALLY, LET'S HEAR THE PERFORMANCE I PROMISED
EARLIER -- OF (YES!) THE SYMPHONIE FANTASTIQUE
Naturally we've had previous contact with the Symphonie fantastique, most prolongedly when we "disposed of" it in -- of all things -- a preview post (!), Preview: En route to Berlioz' Harold in Italy, we have to pass through his Symphonie fantastique. (The good news: I've just resuscitated that post in its original DownWithTyranny habitat and also imported it into the stand-alone Sunday Classics blog. The bad news: Alas for the links to the companion preview post and that Sunday's main post, I haven't gotten to them yet!)
The Rozhdestvensky Symphonie fantastique was my first recording of the piece, back in the days when I expected to collect only a single performance. (Those were the days! I just attempted a quick count and of the Fantastique came up with 33 on LP, 1 on open-reel tape, and 16 on CD, counting three recordings of the "complete" two-part Lélio, but not counting recordings that may be buried in collections filed by artist.) So the search for "my" version could be agonizing -- unless the quest was short-circuite by a special offer I couldn't refuse, as happened when it was included in the first batch of Melodiya-Angel LPs released, the first fruit of Capitol Records' agreement with Melodiya giving it first U.S. rights for Melodiya material. My copy doesn't have the $2.98 sticker pictured above, and indeed I was surprised to see that price, since at normal careful shopper's discounts that's what i would have expected to pay for a "normal" LP back then. It occurs to me, though, that the "special offer" must itself have been discounted -- I'm guessing down to maybe $1, and at that price I could definitely be bought.
Once I made the fateful purchase, I played the heck out of that record, and I came to really love the performance. Jump ahead a bunch of decades and I probably hadn't heard it in ages, what with all those other versions piling up. There was a period of several years when I wasn't able to play LPs, including a truly distressing period when I didn't have a properly functioning audio system. Once those conditions were rectified, one of my first LP cravings came to me in the form of an image: that of the jacket of the Melodiya-Angel Rozhdestvensky Fantastique. Oh, I didn't remember what was actually pictured on it. I probably couldn't tell you. (I just peeked at the image itself, and I still don't know.) But the overall design, the shapes and colors and typefaces -- that was all engraved in memory.
Sure enough, I played the thing, and you know what? I loved it. I really loved it. Like so much of Berlioz's music, the Fantastique sort of straddles the fault line that separates the Classical from the Romantic, and it turns out that Rozhdestvensky was just the conductor to allow the wildness a full hearing whlie keeping the thing disciplined enough to advance in good order and yet with the harmonies gleaming and full-throated singing freedom. I don't know how well this will all come through in mp3 transmission, but this performance really makes me happy.
BERLIOZ: Symphonie fantastique: Episode
from the life of an artist, Op. 14:
i. Reveries. Passions
ii. A ball [at 14:20]
iii. Scene in the fields [at 20:46]
iv. March to the scaffold [at 36:07]
v. Dream of a night of witches' sabbath [at 41:42]
Moscow Radio Symphony Orchestra, Gennady Rozhdestvensky, cond. Melodiya-Angel, recorded mid-1960s
And just to help, I thought I'd paste in the composer's "program":
1st PART
Reveries. Passions
He remembers first that malaise of the soul, that vague des passions [wave of passions], those melancholies, those joys without origin which he experienced before having seen her whom he loves; then the volcanic love that she instantaneously inspired in him, his delirious agonies, his jealous furies, his returns of tenderness, his religious consolations.
2nd PART
A ball
He reencounters his beloved at a ball in the setting of the tumult of a great festivity.
3rd PART
Scene in the fields
A summer evening in the country; he hears two shepherds who dialogue a "ranz des vaches"; this pastoral duo, the setting of the scene, the light rustling of the trees gently stirred by the wind, some trains of hope that he has recently developed, everything comes together to bring to his heart an unaccustomed calm, to give his ideas a more jocular color; but she appears again -- his heart is torn, dolorous presentiments disturb him: if she were deceiving him. . . . One of the shepherds repeats his naive melody; the other no longer answers. The sun retires . . . distant noise of thunder . . . solitude . . . silence . . .
4th PART
March to the scaffold
He dreams that he killed the one he loved, that he is condemned to death, led to the scaffold. The procession advances, to the sounds of a march at once somber and fierce, at once brilliant and solemn, in which a noise of heavy steps gives way without transition to the most clamorous outbursts. At the end the idée fixe reappears for an instant, like a last thought of love interrupted by the fatal blow.
5th PART
Dream of a night of witches' sabbath
He sees himself at the witches' sabbath, in the midst of a frightful troupe of ghosts, sorcerers, monsters of every sort gathered for his funeral. Strange noises, groans, bursts of laughter, distant cries to which other cries seem to respond. The beloved melody reappears again; but it has lost its character of nobility and shyness; it's no longer anything but a base, trivial, and grotesque dance; it's she who's come to the witches' sabbath. . . . Blast of joy at her arrival. . . . She mingles with the diabolical orgy. . . Funeral-bell tolling, burlesque parody of the Dies irae. Witches' sabbath round-dance. The witches' sabbath round-dance and the Dies irae together.
#
No comments:
Post a Comment