A tease for this week's actual post, in which we hear more from Yvonne Minton (plus maybe, uh, some other stuff)

Yvonne Minton as the Rheingold Fricka in a production by . . . no, no, I can't try to pretend that this is one of those don't-mean-no-goddamn-thing modern-style misstagings. Actually, I did find a shot of YM as the Walküre Fricka -- a kind of funny-looking one, at that -- but I thought I'd best save that for the "real" post. No apologies for depicting her as the title character of Der Rosenkavalier, though -- as we heard in last week's post spotlighting "Four variously special singers," she was a radiant Octavian.

Now, speaking of the two Frickas --

"It's very difficult to do very much with Rheingold. One just looks dignified, and you just really do what the text dictates because [Fricka] never has more than two lines at a time. There are one or two really beautiful phrases, but they are very short."

-- Yvonne Minton, in a 1981 interview with Bruce Duffie, asked how
different the roles of Fricka in Das Rheingold and Die Walküre are

And I'd guess these are among those "really beautiful phrases" --

Dearest sister, sweetest delight,
are you restored to me?

See how our pure one stands humiliated and ashamed:
her anguished look mutely pleads for release.
Wicked man, to ask this of a loved one!

Yvonne Minton (ms), Fricka; Staatskapelle Dresden, Marek Janowski, cond. Eurodisc-BMG, recorded Dec. 8-11, 1980

by Ken

Yes, I know, you don't want to hear this week's litany of woes -- you know, all the difficulties and obstructions and whatnot. I think I know how a post of some sort will come together, and the two Frickas will be at the heart of it. So enjoy this hint, and this other maybe-sort-of-hint.

JULE STYNE with BETTY COMDEN and ADOLPH GREEN:
Do Re Mi: "Take a job"


Nancy Walker (Kay) and Phil Silvers (Hubie), vocals; Original Broadway Cast recording, Lehman Engel, cond. RCA, recorded 1961


NOT SERIOUS ENOUGH FOR YOU? OKIE-DOKE --

It doesn't get a lot more serious than this, does it? I did say list some possibilities last week of things we might still want to hear Minton in: "More Mahler maybe? Maybe a snatch or two of her sensational Rheingold Fricka -- and why not some of her Walküre Fricka as well? And, oh yes, what about Gluck's Orfeo?" Well, we're not going to get to Orfeo just now, but we definitely are going to hear some of both Frickas, and this definitely qualifies as "more Mahler."

MAHLER: Das Lied von der Erde:
vi. Der Abschied

The sun is going down behind the mountains.
In every valley evening is descending,
bringing its shadows, which are full of coolness.
O look! where like a silver bark afloat,
the moon through the blue lake of heaven soars upwards.
I sense the shivering of a delicate breeze
behind the dark fir trees.

The flowers grow pale in the twilight.
The earth is breathing, full of rest and sleep;
all desire now turns to dreaming.
Weary mortals wend homewards,
so that, in sleep, forgotten joy
and youth they may learn anew.
The birds huddle silent on the branches.
The world is falling asleep!

It blows cool in the shadow of my fir trees.
I stand here and wait for my friend.
I wait for him, to take the last farewell.
I long, O my friend, to be by your side,
to enjoy the beauty of this evening.
Where are you lingering? You leave me long alone!
I wander to and fro with my lute
on pathways that billow with soft grass.
O beauty! O eternal life- and love-intoxicated world!

Orchestral interlude

He alighted from his horse and handed him the drink
of farewell.
He asked him whither he was going,
and also why, why it had to be.
He spoke; his voice was veiled:
"You, my friend --
In this world fortune was not kind to me!
Whither I go? I go, I wander in the mountains,
I seek rest for my lonely heart!
I journey to the homeland, to my resting place;
I shall never again go seeking the far distance.
My heart is still and awaits its hour!

The dear earth everywhere
blossoms in spring and grows green again!
Everywhere and eternally the distance shines bright and blue!
Eternally . . . eternally . . .

Yvonne Minton, mezzo-soprano; Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Georg Solti, cond. Decca, recorded May 8-9, 1972

We herewith add Yvonne Minton, with this exceptionally beautifully sung performance, to the roster of estimable singers of "Der Abschied" we've heard (for example, in this March 2014 post), a list headed by Christa Ludwig (all three remarkable commercial versions, but especially the most remarkable, with Otto Klemperer), Maureen Forrester (with Fritz Reiner), Mildred Miller (with Bruno Walter -- don't sneer, this is in my super-elite "Abschied" group), and Jessye Norman (with Colin Davis).

Say, you know, seeing as how we don't seem to have much else to do, and since we've got the texts all ready, and after all this is one thing that's not at all difficult to arrange, what do you say we hear those other versions?


Christa Ludwig, mezzo-soprano; Philharmonia/New Philharmonia Orchestra, Otto Klemperer, cond. EMI, recorded 1965-66

Maureen Forrester, contralto; Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Fritz Reiner, cond. RCA-BMG, recorded Nov. 7 and 9, 1959

Maureen Forrester, contralto; New York Philharmonic, Bruno Walter, cond. Music & Arts, recorded live Apr. 16, 1960 (mono)

Mildred Miller, mezzo-soprano; New York Philharmonic, Bruno Walter, cond. Columbia-CBS-Sony, recorded April 1960

Jessye Norman, soprano; London Symphony Orchestra, Sir Colin Davis, cond. Philips, recorded March 1981
And something a little different:

Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, baritone; Philharmonia Orchestra, Paul Kletzki, cond. EMI, recorded October 1959

Some more or less random performance notes:

Every now and then while the recording light is on and great music is at hand, everything goes right. It's hard to imagine everything going righter than it did when Christa Ludwig and Otto Klemperer recorded "Der Abschied." (In fact, this whole Das Lied, which interestingly spanned the re-creation of the Philharmonia Orchestra, after its abandonment by Walter Legge, who meant to kill it, into the New Philharmonia, is on this level, with the equally remarkable participation of Fritz Wunderlich.) Believe it or not, Ludwig said in interviews that at the time of this recording she didn't understand the music yet! She got to record Das Lied twice more, with Leonard Bernstein and Herbert von Karajan (both, curiously, with René Kollo),and they're indeed very different performances, but to my ears they don't reflect, in Ludwig's performance, any greater or lesser understanding, but rather a near-miraculous adaptability to those conductors' starkly different visions.

As longtime readers may recall, Ludwig and Maureen Forrester are something like my ideal Mahler singers, and so it's almost a given that a Forrester performance should find a place in my Das Lied pantheon, and the commercial recording with Fritz Reiner (and tenor Richard Lewis) seems good enough to lodge there. It's ironic that the RCA recording made it impossible for Columbia to use Forrester and Lewis when the company recorded Das Lied with Bruno Walter at the time he was conducting it with the New York Philharmonic with the very same soloists -- in partial compensation I've thrown in the broadcast performance from that series. Even more ironically, the "replacement" soloists brought "added value" to Walter's studio Das Lied. The elegant Swiss tenor Ernst Häfliger (who had recorded Das Lied once, with Eduard van Beinum and the Concertgebouw, and would do so again, with Eugen Jochum and the Concertgebouw) is a clear upgrade over the conscientiously workmanlike Lewis, and Mildred Miller delivers one of the great performances of the three alto songs -- especially with Walter in the more warmly humane, less straitjacketed frame of mind that for several decades seemed to characterize his music-making on this side of the Atlantic. This Das Lied, no less than Klemperer's ever-so-different one, is one of my all-time favorite recordings.

There's also much that I love about Colin Davis's Das Lied, which displays a wonderful relish for the tiny detailing ouf of which Mahler builds his large structures. And I love Jessye Norman in this music, giving us that huge, beautiful sound, combining the vocal weight and presence of a dramatic soprano and the depth of field of a contralto, while still experiencing the music so personally and modulating the sound to the smallest moments. (The one regrettable thing about the recording is that Davis, who despite all his years in the opera house, doesn't seem to have developed much feeling for working with singers, seemed to have no idea how to make the tenor songs work for Jon Vickers, who you'd think could, indeed should have been a superlative realizer of this music, reminding us that the first Das Lied tenor, Jacques Urlus, was himself a Heldentenor.

As for Fischer-Dieskau, well, Mahler always indicated that an octave-lower baritone option was available, and I think most of us think what an interesting idea that is -- until we've heard 10 or 15 baritones give it a go. Dropping the music an octave just doesn't place it in very happy places for the male voice, and I've never heard a performance that gave me much satisfaction. Still the best, though, is the first: Fischer-Dieskau's first recording of the piece, with that longtime stalwart Mahlerian Paul Kletzki.


NOW, WATCH THIS SPACE FOR THIS WEEK'S ACTUAL POST

Unless this turns out to be it. (Or no, pretend you didn't read that. The post will happen. The post will happen.)

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