We need music! Now, I was thinking about Mahler's "Die zwei blauen Augen," the last of the four Wayfarer Songs --

Plus: We have a special musical bonus at the end!

Want a hint? I'll go you one better: Here's an audio tease --



Now could we have a post (of some sort?)


Irmgard Seefried sings Richard Strauss's "Morgen!," Op. 27, No. 4, in the composer's own orchestration, with Piero Bellugi conducting the Orchestre National de l'ORTF in Paris's Salle Pleyel, Jan. 20, 1965. Note -- as the camera does! -- the soloist playing the violin solos around which Strauss built his orchestration of the song. Isn't it interesting that in January 1965 the Orchestre National, at least for this concert, had a female concertmaster?

by Ken

This is a time, it seems to me, when we need more music. So that's pretty much what we're going to do today.

WHERE WE ARE NOW, BLOG-WISE?

Yes, I know we've got a growing tangle of loose threads, and I hope gradually to work our way through them. I'm even adding a couple of more. Last week's two-item "Rita Gorr sings Gluck" mini-compendium led me to want to listen to her performances of those two arias (Orfeo's "Che farò senza Euridice?" and Alceste's "Divinités du Styx") in context with other singers', to get a better sense of why Gorr's mean so much to me. As I've played with this, the project has become more and more intriguing, as to what makes these arias work and not work, so I still want to pursue this.

What's more, the SC vault has a good helping of Gorr as Saint-Saëns's Dalila, and a couple of snatches of her Walküre Fricka, which I want to bring out. And considering that I made particular reference to these roles along with Verdi's Amneris, I'd like to add some samples of that to what shapes up as yet another post.

AS FOR TODAY, WE NEED MUSIC NOW, DON'T WE?

Like it says up top, during the week I found myself thinking about, and hearing in my head, "Die zwei blauen Augen, the last of Mahler's four Songs of a Wayfarer, a song to which we once devoted a good deal of attention, icluding most of a post of its own (see below). I vaguely recalled that I had the Wayfarer Songs on a DVD of some sort, and finally tracked it down to an extremely miscellaneous one that EMI issued in its "Classic Archive" series, which they couldn't find a better way of titling than:

Schwarzkopf    Seefried
Fischer-Dieskau

Which is (let the record show) absolutely accurate. We get soprano Elisabeth Schwarzkopf in an October 1961 staged-for-TV excerpt from her most famous role, the Marschallin in Der Rosenkavalier, giving us the final chunk of Act I, starting in the middle of the Marschallin's great monologue, at "Kann ich auch an ein Mädel erinnern"her sudden, haunting recollection of her innocent younger self, "fresh from the convent," with mezzo Hertha Töpper (who died just a week ago Saturday, a few weeks short of her 96th birthday); then soprano Irmgard Seefried is seen in two orchestral song groups via French TV: five by Richard Strauss from January 1965, including the "Morgen!" performance atop this post, and three by Mahler; and Dietrich Fischer Dieskau singing -- yes! -- Mahler's Wayfarer Songs from Japan's NHK, October 1960, with an outstanding Mahlerian, Paul Kletzki conducting. (There's also a Fischer-Dieskau "bonus": four core-repertory Schubert songs from 1959, with the great Gerald Moore at the piano.)


I WOUND UP WATCHING EVERYTHING ON THE DVD

The video is merely tolerable, the audio adequate -- but adequate is, you know, adequate, and certainly good enough for these morsels of history here preserved. Seefried was a really interesting singer. The voice had all kinds of limitations, and also that distinctively, er, odd timbre, but the timbre and her own personality lent most of her performances a special quality, often of impudence or at least singularity. The three Mahler songs, all big ones (two Des Knaben Wunderhorn settings, "Wo die schönen Trompeten blasen" and "Rheinlegendchen" bracketing the ineffable Rückert setting "Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen"), are especially interesting, as this isn't repertory I associate with her, and that slightly off-kilter manner of hers is a fine fit for tis material.

I didn't see any of the Paris Mahler songs on YouTube. What I can offer today is another Mahler Wunderhorn setting, the one he nestled into the finale of his Fourth Symphony. I took for granted that there's been a Sunday Classics Mahler Fourth post, but I can't find any trace of it. Maybe we did just the finale? Hmm, this should be on our to-do list. Meanwhile, we've got two Seefried performances, a dozen years apart (both new to Sunday Classics), with important Mahler conductors of different generations. (I think everyone has noticed that Solti's NY Phil seems to come from a kinder-and-gentler Solti than the usual one -- it's a sweet and lovely performance.

MAHLER: from the finale of Symphony No. 4:
"Das himmlischen Leben" ("Heavenly Life")

"Wir geniessen die himmlische Freuden"
("We enjoy heavenly pleasures")
[German text from Des Knaben Wunderhorn]

We enjoy heavenly pleasures
and therefore avoid earthly ones.
No worldly tumult
is to be heard in heaven.
All live in greatest peace.
We lead angelic lives,
yet have a merry time of it besides.
We dance and we spring,
We skip and we sing.
Saint Peter in heaven looks on.

John lets the lambkin out,
and Herod the Butcher lies in wait for it.
We lead a patient,
an innocent, patient,
dear little lamb to its death.
Saint Luke slaughters the ox
without any thought or concern.
Wine doesn't cost a penny
in the heavenly cellars;
The angels bake the bread.

Good greens of every sort
grow in the heavenly vegetable patch,
good asparagus, string beans,
and whatever we want.
Whole dishfuls are set for us!
Good apples, good pears and good grapes,
and gardeners who allow everything!
If you want roebuck or hare,
on the public streets
they come running right up.

Should a fast day come along,
all the fishes at once come swimming with joy.
There goes Saint Peter running
with his net and his bait
to the heavenly pond.
Saint Martha must be the cook.

There is just no music on earth
that can compare to ours.
Even the eleven thousand virgins
venture to dance,
and Saint Ursula herself has to laugh.
There is just no music on earth
that can compare to ours.
Cecilia and all her relations
make excellent court musicians.
The angelic voices
gladden our senses,
so that all awaken for joy.

Irmgard Seefried, soprano; Vienna Philharmonic, Bruno Walter, cond. Live performance from the Salzburg Festival, Aug. 24, 1950

Irmgard Seefried, soprano; New York Philharmonic, Georg Solti, cond. Live performance, Jan. 13, 1962

I peeked at the Seefried holdings in the Sunday Classics vault and realized there's a lot more than I remembered, mostly focused on three operatic roles: her two great Strauss ones, Octavian in Rosenkavalier and the Composer in Ariadne auf Naxos, and a seemingly improbable one, Fiordiligi in Mozart's Così fan tutte, which you'd have thought demands an agility and tonal solidity at the top and bottom that were never features of her vocal arsenal, which she nevertheless brought off quite interestingly. (Longtime readers will recall my esteem for the 1962 Jochum-DG Così, where a not-all-that-probable-looking cast emerges, at least to my ears, as a simply wonderful Così ensemble.)

Since at the moment I still can't do LP dubs, I have to say I'm sorry I don't have that much Seefried on CD. I'll have to give this some thought. However, just from our archival material we've got plenty of material for a Seefried post. And one thing I know I have on CD which might be fun to dip into is a complete Wolf Italian Songbook with Fischer-Dieskau from the 1954 Salzburg Festival.

Stay tuned.


SPEAKING OF FISCHER-DIESKAU, WHY DON'T WE
GO BACK TO MAHLER'S "DIE ZWEI BLAUEN AUGEN"?

As I mentioned above, we've paid a lot of attention to "Die zwei blauen Augen" ("The two blue eyes") in particular among Mahler's Wayfarer Songs, principally in April 2012, when I became aware, at this surprisingly late date, that I hadn't loved this song nearly as much as it demanded. (Yes, I really do believe now that this song demands to be loved!)

TWO SUNDAY CLASSICS POSTS
FEATURING "DIE ZWEI BLAUEN AUGEN"

"Preview: 'By the street stands a linden tree' -- Mahler's Wayfarer Songs, part 2" [4/14/2012]
"Getting through, but not quite finishing with, Mahler's Songs of a Wayfarer -- studies in emotional contrasts" [4/15/2012]

I think the Paris Wayfarer Songs with Paul Kletzki were once on YouTube but have been disappeared (I had used one for one of the 2012 posts, but it's gone). But the SC archive is overflowing with Fischer-Dieskau performances -- the Wayfarer Songs were a key feature of his repertory through his whole career. I think we'll take a pass on the 1989 recording, though.

MAHLER: Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen
(loosely rendered as Songs of a Wayfarer):
iv. "Die zwei blauen Augen von meinem Schatz"
("The two blue eyes of my darling")



with the Philharmonia Orchestra, Wilhelm Furtwängler, cond. EMI, recorded June 24-25, 1952

with the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, Rafael Kubelik, cond. DG, recorded December 1968

with Leonard Bernstein, piano. CBS-Sony, recorded in New York, 1968

I'm not sure we've got really prime Fischer-Dieskau here from the vocal standpoint, but I think these are all durable performances. This is the kind of material that plays to his way of "living his way through" a song. At times this could sound overdone, stagey. "Die zwei blauen Augen" really expects it.

Other singers have had lots to say with it --

I have no difficulty naming my favorite Mahler singers: Christa Ludwig from the mezzo side, Maureen Forrester from the contralto side -- and both are in representative form here. I'd put Yvonne Minton in very close to the same class. Janet Baker, not so much. For me the voice doesn't really fill out the music, but I thought we should have Baker fans covered.


Christa Ludwig, mezzo-soprano; Philharmonia Orchestra, Sir Adrian Boult, cond. EMI, recorded Oct. 18, 1958

Maureen Forrester, contralto; Boston Symphony Orchestra, Charles Munch, cond. RCA/BMG, recorded Dec. 28, 1958

Yvonne Minton, mezzo-soprano; Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Sir Georg Solti, cond. Decca, recorded Mar.-Apr. 1970

Janet Baker, mezzo-soprano; Halle Orchestra, Sir John Barbirolli, cond. EMI, recorded May 4, 1967

On the male side, I'm enthusiastic about the beautifully sung, emotionally honest performances of Norman Foster and Thomas Quasthoff, and I really don't want to overlook Hermann Prey, who tended to rise to the occasion in Mahler and also has the benefit of Bernard Haitink's lovely accompaniment. That performance is new to Sunday Classics, and so is Thomas Hampson's. I'm not a huge fan, but I think the Mahler collaborations with Leonard Bernstein brought the best out of him, and again this is a fine orchestral rendering.


Norman Foster, bass-baritone; Bamberg Symphony Orchestra, Jascha Horenstein, cond. Vox, recorded c1954

Thomas Quasthoff, baritone; Vienna Philharmonic, Pierre Boulez, cond. DG, recorded June 2003

Hermann Prey, baritone; Concertgebouw Orchestra (Amsterdam), Bernard Haitink, cond. Philips, recorded May 1970

Thomas Hampson, baritone; Vienna Philharmonic, Leonard Bernstein, cond. DG, recorded February 1990


FINALLY --



First, why don't we reprise our musical tease?



Now here's the performance I chopped it out of:

BERNSTEIN: Overture to Candide


Original Broadway Cast recording, Samuel Krachmalnick, cond. CBS-Sony, recorded Dec. 9. 1956

I did the excerpt clip, and in fact the full version and one of the other clips below, for a nonmusical post I did this week, "Can You Imagine What This Crisis Would Be Like If We -- Or At Least Lots Of Us -- Didn't Have Access To Today's Onilne Resources?," for my friend of 58-plus years' standing Howie's mostly political blog Down With Tyranny, where Sunday Classics originated and hung its digital hat for a bunch of years. Starting from the premise that in these so deeply troubled times, one thing we sure could use is more music. And so, as I explained there, "Lately, as I've been writing a little, I've also had cherished pieces of music lodge in my head which I thought might be pleasant to pass along. And I thought maybe I'd tack one on every time I write a post."

To launch the experiment, what better choice could there be than the Overture to Leonard Bernstein's rollicking, deeply delightful, verging-on-opera 1956 Broadway musical Candide? This joyous piece has a long history here at Sunday Classics, where I've owned up that it's one of those pieces of music I can listen to over and over, and then over and over again, and on and on.

The rousingly boisterous OBC-recording version conducted by Samuel Krachmalnick is new to Sunday Classics, and so too is the composer's own first recording, the first of three we're going to hear. When it was made, the original Broadway run of Candide was still reasonably fresh in memory, and the Bernstein-NY Phil performance has much of the rambunctiousness of the Krachmalnick OBC one, while taking on a certain amount of concert-hall respectability.


New York Philharmonic, Leonard Bernstein, cond. Columbia-CBS-Sony, recorded 1960-63

Now we jump two decades. Then add on another seven years.


Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra, Leonard Bernstein, cond. DG, recorded July 1982

London Symphony Orchestra, Leonard Bernstein, cond. DG, recorded December 1989

While I don't want to suggest that Lenny B ever lost his feel for the spunk and effervescence of the piece, but by 1982 the piece has grown noticeably broader and grander, and it becomes even more so in the studio recording of a reasonably complete Candide, as reconsidered by the composer, that he made in London at the time of his famous Barbican Centre concert performance, long available on home video. He had a long relationship with the LSO -- recall that he made his first recording of the Mahler Eighth Symphony with them, and recorded the Verdi Requiem with them as well. As we can hear in both the studio recording and the video, the orchestra sure seems to be having a good time.


Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, David Zinman, cond. Decca, recorded Feb. 3-4, 1996

London Philharmonic Orchestra, Andrew Davis, cond. EMI, recorded live at the Centennial Gala for EMI in the theater at Glyndebourne, Apr. 27, 1997

You'll note that, though our recordings are arranged chronologically, they're also growing longer, and I think it's safe to say that a piece that once seemed to be maybe a four-minute-plus one has evolved into a full-fledged four-and-a-half-minute one. David Zinman's crackling performance comes from a really fine all-Bernstein CD. Andrew Davis's provided a rousing kickoff to the 1997 centennial gala for what was then still probably the world's most prestigious record company, EMI. Now, with an English orchestra and an English conductor, the Candide Overture has become truly international.

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