Heard here twice over we have the opening minute and three-quarters of Mahler 4, up to the entry of the 1st movement's 2nd theme.
by Ken
The first clip is literally (allowing for intermediate digitizing, mp3-ifying, and blog transmission and reception) how I made my first aural contact with Mahler 4, in the Columbia Masterworks recording by the New York Philharmonic under Leonard Bernstein made in February 1960; the second clip is how Lenny B heard the music 27 years later, as executed by Amsterdam's Concertgebouw Orchestra in a live recording made by DG for his final Mahler symphony cycle -- kind of similar, I guess, but in important ways quite different. In 1987 don't you get the distinct sense that the music is figuring out as it moves where and how it's going? That under the surface, so pungently and confidently presented in 1960, there are things going on that could lead to who-knows-what? Note how in 1987, as our clip unfolds in much more varied forward movement, just as the music has really gathered momentum, seemingly toward something, it suddenly stops dead -- to give way (as we'll hear later) to the movement's about-to-sound second theme.
SINCE PROMISING "ALL OF MAHLER 4" ON SUNDAY, I'VE
ATTEMPTED SEVERAL VERSIONS OF A FOLLOW-UP POST
And the thing is, "all of Mahler 4" has been ready to go since, well, Sunday. The "several versions of a follow-up post" haven't necessarily displeased me; they just haven't gotten me where we needed to get, in Sunday Classics's blogiferous "re-creation but with added musical context" of the Mahler program that formed Episode 2 of the four-episode virtual Easter Festival that the Berlin Philharmonic's Digital Concert Hall offered to inject some live-streamed music into the time space that was to have occupied the orchestra for its real-world annual Baden-Baden Easter Festival, an early casualty of the worldwide cancellation of live performances.
[See the April 12 Sunday Classics post "Hokey-smoke, it's like we're actually in Berlin (well, sort of) for Easter week" and its successors:In a moment we're going to hear a darned close approximation to how My Very First Mahler would have sounded, with one notable exception: that the recording was made in the Boston Symphony's acoustically legendary Symphony Hall while I heard it in the old, unimproved, but acoustically very friendly spaces of the Brooklyn Academy of Music, which I don't recall anyone ever calling "BAM" back before Harvey Lichtenstein took directorship and began working his famous miracles of restoration and repurposing, taking head-on the challenge that proper New Yorkers famously wouldn't schlepp over or under the East River to the unknown wilds of Brooklyn.
• the two-paragraph "Reminder: Episode 4 of the Berlin Philharmonic's Easter@Philharmonie Festival live-streams at 2pm EDT" (April 13);
• "Do we need a reason to remember Jan DeGaetani? No, but today we do need her to sing a special song" (April 20, not even posted on Sunday but in the wee hours of Monday);
• "We hear the kinship between the Adagietto of Mahler 5 and 'Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen,' right? How about the differences?" (April 26, early);
• "Spun off from today's main post: All of Mahler 5!" (April 26, later);
• and this past Sunday's "Part 1: As we backtrack from Mahler 5 to the Wunderhorn era, the Berlin Phil reemerges playing Mahler 4 as chamber music" (May 3).]
MAHLER: Symphony No. 1: i. Langsam. Schleppend (Slow. Dragging)
So this would be just about how My Very First Mahler sounded, in the RCA Red Seal recording made by Erich Leinsdorf and the Boston Symphony on October 20-21, 1962.
BUT THIS IS A STORY FOR ANOTHER DAY; WE NEED TO GET
TO WHERE MAHLER 4 FITS INTO OUR PRESENT BLOGPATH
In this picture from the second half of the Berlin Philharmonic's pandemically reconfigured European Concert in the Philharmonie on Friday evening, chief conductor Petrenko (with his back to us) conducts an ensemble of starry Berlin principals in the chamber-music arrangement of Mahler 4 by Erwin Stein, best known to us as a key assistant to Arnold Schoenberg. It was presumably for use in Schoenberg's proselytizing series of concerts of new music that Stein made the pared-to-the-minimum arrangement.So, our story picks up with the widely noted return of some concert activity to the Philharmonie on Friday, in the form of a much-rejiggered version of the Berlin Phil's annual "European Concert," performed every May 1st (the date on which the orchestra was founded in 1882) since 1991, in celebration and furtherance of European community, chockful of aspirational ideals, given each year at a site chosen for historical, social, and/or cultural significance. This year's concert was to have taken place in Tel Aviv and commemorated the 75th anniversary of the fall of the Third Reich. For the orchestra would also have kicked off an extensive European tour.
In the extremely wide-spaced upper tier are three of the day's more celebrated wind players: Emmanuel Pahud, one of the orchestra's two Principal Flutes; Wenzel Fuchs, one of two Principal Clarinets; and our old friend Albrecht Mayer, one of two Principal Oboes. (For our history with Albrecht, see the two-part 2018 post, from June 24 and July 1, "'In modo di canzone': If it's singing we aim to talk about, how come we're listening to Le Tombeau de Couperin?")
I think I've got the distinguished inner-ring one-player-to-a-part string players nearly right: Daishin Kashimoto (one of the three 1st Concertmasters; though born in London, he "grew up in Japan, Germany and the USA"); Thomas Timm (one of two 1st Principals of the 2nd Violin); Israeli-born Amihai Grosz (1st Principal Viola; a founding member of the Jerusalem String Quartet); Ludwig Quandt (one of the two 1st Principal Cellos); and Australian-born Matthew McDonald (1st Principal Bass).
(I notice in the website of Berliner Philharmoniker Recordings, "the label of the Berliner Philharmoniker" for books, audio and video recordings, and assorted other gift-type items, there's a 25-DVD set of 25 years of the European Concert issued after the 25th in 2015. Don't think I'm not tempted! In the past I've already succumbed to the temptation of an attractively priced 20-DVD set of New Year’s Eve Concerts, 1977–2015.)
But back to Friday night. I don't know if the live broadcast was available to me on TV or radio. I knew about it from hanging out in the Digital Concert Hall, as readers are probably aware I've been doing for the last month, and I was primed for the DCH live stream scheduled for Saturday, in the time slot now occupied by the new Berlin Phil Series, which follows the EasterFest format of live chamber-scale performances built around a particular theme by Philharmonic musicians live-streamed from the audienceless Philharmonie, supplemented by or framing orchestral performances from the archive. Like most of the EasterFest
For the reconfigured European Concert (offered free of charge, like the quartet of EasterFest programs), in the first part chief conductor Petrenko led a small complement of socially distanced string players in three works: Arvo Párt's lovely Frater (Brothers, clearly addressing the theme of the concert), augmented by percussion; György Ligeti's Ramifications, a familiar-sounding collage of the composer's signature string wailing and squealing; and Samuel Barber's always-haunting Adagio for Strings. In a conversation with Berlin Phil cellist Olaf Maninger which DCH viewers saw during the intermission, in English-subtitled German (Maestro Petrenkp's German sounds to my ears really excellent; we know from other interviews that his English is also extremely good), Petrenko described the Barber Adagio, a long-time favorite of his, as "ein Evergreen."
During the intermission conversation, talking about the Mahler performance, as I wrote Sunday,
Maestro Petrenko said he would never forget a second of either these rehearsals or the performance, that it was his hope that the kind of intensive preparation made possible my the tiny-ensemble format might also to dig more intimately and more deeply into the piece than can happen in the usual several orchestral rehearsals. And this, especially given the caliber of musicians we're talking about, is very much what seemed to me to happen. I'm looking forward to watching this performance again, more carefully -- and likely more than once.
HOW HAVING MAHLER 4 ON THE TABLE FIGURES
INTO WHAT WE'RE DOING IN THIS BLOGTHREAD
In case you've lost track or are just coming in now, is a retracing but with elaborated musical context of the Mahler program that formed Episode 2 of the Berlin Philharmonic's Digital Concert Hall EasterFest, all of which is now available in the DCH. We've done pretty much what we're going to do with the opening work on the program, the Rondo-Finale of Mahler 5 (as conducted by frequent Berlin Phil guest Gustavo Dudamel), a catchy enough concert opener that left me kind of disoriented until we got it back in context as the second half of Part III of the symphony and the climax of the whole symphony.
Next we've needed to back-transition to the preceding symphonies, which can be conveniently characterized as having roots in Mahler's immersion in the large and widely varied folk poems gathered in the multi-volume anthology Des Knaben Wunderhorn (The Youth's Magic Horn), especially in contrast to the poetry that was occupying the composer during the period in which he was creating the Fifth Symphony: that of Friedrich Rückert, which yielded the set of five Kindertotenlieder (Songs on the Death of Children) and five somewhat more diverse songs, still quite distinct from the fabulous and legendary quality of the Wunderhorn material.
The EasterFest Mahler program contained a movement apiece from Mahler 2 and 3 with strong Wunderhorn associations, but this left us with no clear mandate to investigate Mahler 4, which now arrives for us seemingly heaven-sent -- and as we recently heard Bizet's Carmen put it, "Long live music that falls to us from heaven" (or "from the sky," depending on how we understand "du ciel").
Normally Mahler 4 is grouped with its predecessors under the Wunderhorn umbrella, but in the way it plays out it seems to me to have as much, or maybe more, in common with its successors. So this seems a good opportunity to ponder.
Which is an especially interesting undertaking for me, because after my sensible introduction to Mahler via the First Symphony, I faced a tricky path forward. Because, as I put it in a slug that appeared in more than one of the false starts I made on a follow-up to Sunday's Part 1 of the current post(as I wrote about earlier):
OTHER MAHLER SYMPHONIES -- WELL, ALL
OF 'EM -- CAME EASIER FOR ME THAN NO. 4
Why this was so has been one of the chief things that has delayed Part 2, despite the fact that I was all set with a traversal of the Mahler Fourth to be guided by an independent authority. The scheme I finally hit on was to proceed with that traversal using a program note by the late Donald Mitchell (1925-2017), an erudite British writer on music who was particularly noted for his writing on Mahler and Benjamin Britten. Now that I think of it, I've also had my problems with his writings on Britten, and the way he hears Mahler 4 isn't the way I do. Still, I thought he would be a good choice to shine his flashlight on Mahler 4, for a variety of reasons, such as:
(1) DM was a knowledgeable and careful listener, and directs the reader to all sorts of things that can actually be heard in the symphony.
(2) He has what seems to be a good and helpful perspective on Mahler 4 as a transitional work between the symphonies that preceded and those that followed it.
(3) Maybe it's a good thing that he's not going to infect you with the odd things that used to trouble me about Mahler 4, which wound up being in large part the things that fascinate me about it. I still have unlimited opportunity to share those troubles, and some of the ways in which they've been resolved. So let's save those for another day and proceed and let Mr. Mitchell lead us on a procession to heavenly sublimeness as prefigured in the very opening bars of the symphony.
ON TO OUR "(NEARLY) ALL-BERLIN PHIL MAHLER 4"
I should say some prefatory words about the recordings we're hearing, including explaining what exactly I mean by "a (nearly) all-Berlin Phil Mahler 4," as I put it Sunday.
Sunday in a brief note on the Berlin Phil's history -- or rather long non-history -- with Mahler, I noted that Sir John Barbirolli's guest appearance conducting the Ninth Symphony, including an EMI recording, was a landmark for the orchestra, as far as I know its first recording of a Mahler symphony. (And the only previous Mahler recording I'm aware of was the Kindertotenlieder Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau did with Rudolf Kempe conducting.) Sir John returned to Berlin bearing more Mahler -- live performances have circulated of Nos. 2 (1965), 6 (1966), and 3 (1969).
I was pleased Sunday to include the sublime opening Andante comodo of Malher 9 from Sir John's beautiful recording, along with recordings by Kirill Petrenko's three predecessors as chief conducor, Herbert von Karajan, Claudio Abbado, and Simon Rattle -- plus one by possibly the most important of possible guest conductors where Mahler was concerned, Leonard Bernstein -- a live recording made during what I believe was his only appearance with the orchestra.
Ub the Berlin EasterFest Mahler program, Sarah Willis mentioned how central Mahler's music has been to the last three Berlin Phil chief conductors, meaning Abbado, Rattle, and the new incumbent, Petrenko. She can be forgiven for not bringing up the 30-plus year period represented by the chiefdom of Karajan, who such a complicated relationship with Mahler. For several decades of his career he had no detectable relationship with Mahler. Yet wen he finally did conduct Mahler, recording the Symphonies Nos. 4-6 and 9, Das Lied von der Erde, and both the Kindertotenlieder and the five free-standing Rückert songs with Christa Ludwig as soloist, and they're all -- in their particular way -- extraordinary. In our current inquiries we've heard the Ludwig-Karajan performances of the individual Rückert songs "Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen" and "Ich habe einen linden Duft" and the distinctively heartbreaking Kindertotenlieder song "Oft denk' ich sie sind nur ausgegangen," and they're amazing. Not emotional in a heart-on-sleeve way, but executed with such well-considered shape and such ravishing clarity and fullness and richness of sound that the effect is stunning.
Still, I was kind of surprised returning to Karajan's Mahler 4 to appreciate how good it is -- there was no question in my mind that we would need to hear his account of the symphony's most powerful movement, the third-movement adagio. I wanted to include his opening movement as well, and that kind of led to my decision to double-up on our four Berlin conductors.
The fourth conductor is Bernard Haitink, who after a long career of conducting and recording Mahler, including multiple previous versions of the Fourth, redid it once again in a late series of recordings in Berlin. The catch, though, is that while a live Mahler 4 conducted by Rattle has circulated, he has never recorded the symphony with the Berlin Philharmonic. His only recording of it was made during his previous life as music director of the City of Birmingham Symphony, so I decided we would have to include that as a "Berlin-by-association" recording. And while I never had much interest in most of those CBSO recordings, Rattle could rise to a challenge, and on rehearing I thought he'd made a serious enough stab at the adagio to include that behind Karajan's.
My original thought for the recordings to be heard in this full-symphony survey was that, beyond our Berlin representations we might throw in assorted other versions of the various movements from the SC archive, as I did with the finale on Sunday. The trick I mentioned in connection with the recordings of the Mahler Wunderhorn song "Das himmlische Leben" ("Heavenly Life"), which Mahler had composed many years earlier and after a couple of other ideas finally nestled into the finale of the Fourth Symphony, was that all the recordings we heard of the song were in fact performances of the finale of the Fourth Symphony.
NOW LET'S GET TO WORK! TAKE IT AWAY, MR. MITCHELL!
MAHLER: Symphony No. 4:
i. Bedächtich. Nicht eilen (Measured. Don't hurry)
The audience gathered in Munich for the premiere of Mahler's Fourth Symphony on 25 November 1901, played by the Kaim Orchestra under the composer's direction, must have been surprised by what they heard in the opening bars: jingling sleighbells. Another surprise to those anticipating that a sympony in G might reasonably start in G would have been the B minor of the sleighbells' first appearance. But once this tiny, arresting and deliberately mystifying prelude is over, the music drops guilelessly into G major and a long Schubertian opening melody. What ensues is a "classical" exposition, with easily discernable first and second subjects, and even a brief gesture towards the "classical" exposition repeat.
Then in the development Mahler begins to explore textures, tonalities, diverse orchestration and, above all, counterpoint. The high profile of this counterpoint is undoubtedly part of his deliberate neo-classicizing -- indeed we hear, for the first time in his oeuvre, an unmistakable anticipation of the complex motivic polyphony characterizing the textures of the next three, wholly instrumental symphonies. Mahler's Fourth stands as a unique manifestation of the symphonist in transition.
At that critical juncture where the development has to find its way back to the first subject and the tonic key, Mahler does something subtle, characteristic and, from a technical, compositional point of view, utterly virtuosic. He combines the winding down of the development with the beginning of the recapitulation. This amazing transition follows the C major climax in which, amidst a maze of bright motivic counterpoint, the trumpets triumphantly articulate an energetic anticipation of "Das himmlische Leben," the song that will comprise the finale. And then, just after the trumpets have begun a little military fanfare, the sleighbells return and bring with them, not only the figuration of the movement's strange little prelude, but also the beginning of the principal theme itself. By the time we reach the double bar, a pause and the tonic G major, we are already midway through that long, germinal Schubertian tune. The first limb of the first subject has been recapitulated before the recapitulation proper has even begun. -- Donald Mitchell
Berlin Philharmonic, Claudio Abbado, cond. DG, recorded live in the Philharmonie, May 2005
Berlin Philharmonic, Herbert von Karajan, cond. DG, recorded in the Philharmonie, February 1979
ii. In gemächlicher Bewegung (In deliberate movement)
The Scherzo (C minor) is a sequence of dances: three statements of the main section into which are interpolated two trios. Particularly wonderful here is the extraordinary wealth of orchestral colors, shadowy, sharp and piercing, warm and burgeoning. The solo violin is given an elaborate role: Mahler asks for it to be tuned up a whole tone, to be played loud and clear, always unmuted, and to sound like a rustic fiddle. "Freund Hein" was the folklore figure he had in mind here, whose rasping fiddling beckoned those following him to dance out of life into death. This is a movement suffused with intimations of mortality. But the trios are more relaxed, and behind the solo clarinet tune which we hear at the beginning of the first, there lurks an outline of the "himmlische Leben" melody which awaits us in the finale, a camouflaged signpost of innocent joys to come. -- D.M.
City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, Simon Rattle, cond. EMI, recorded May 1997
Berlin Philharmonic, Bernard Haitink, cond. Philips, recorded in the Philharmonie, June 1992
iii. Ruhevoll (Peaceful)(Poco adagio)
The great Adagio (G major) opens with a passage of such sublime string-based calm that one might be forgiven for thinking that heaven and eternity had already been attained. But it is not to be. There follows in immediate juxtaposition the strongest possible contrast, a much slower E minor lament in which the woodwind (solo oboe, especially) are now predominant. It is typical of Mahler that he should present the work's fundamental conflct in such unequivocally contrasted musical terms: distinct themes, distinct tonalities, distinct orchestrations, differentiated tempi.
Similarly, he manipulates these contrasted ideas in two distinct ways: two sets of variations on the opening theme, alternating with free developments of the E minor lament; and as so often, he keeps us guessing as to which idea will gain the upper hand. The dispatch of sorrow, torment and doubt is not easily achieved. But the fastest of the variations, with a move to E major, gives us an indication of what is to come. Sure enough, after a return to the calm of the beginning of the movement -- which leads us to think that the conclusion is in sight -- there is an almighty eruption of E major with horns and trumpets blazoning forth the melody which crowned the development section of the first movement, half surfaced in the trios of the Scherzo, and is soon to be heard in full in its vocal form, the pre-ordained goal towards which the symphony is progressing. -- D.M.
Berlin Philharmonic, Herbert von Karajan, cond. DG, recorded in the Philharmonie, February 1979
City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, Simon Rattle, cond. EMI, recorded May 1997
iv. Sehr behaglich (Very comfortable)
That goal [i.e., "towards which the symphony is progressing" -- Ed.] is the finale, Mahler's setting of the Wunderhorn poem "Das himmlische Leben." It is a dazzlingly graphic setting, and following the text as you listen is strongly advisable. Mahler's detailed response to the images of the poem then becomes fully apparent, for example the unmistakable lowing of the cattle -- bass clarinet, horn and solo double bass, a typically Mahlerian ensemble -- as they await slaughter. Death, it seems, is obligatory if life is to be sustained, even in heaven, an irony that no doubt stirred the composer's imagination.
From time to time a solemn chorale-like phrase reminds us, amid all the colorful exuberance, that we are in heaven. And it is with the onset of heavenly music ("There's no music on earth that can be compared to ours") that the long-awaited magic shift to E major recurs and we encounter many of the motives and rhythms that we first heard in the opening movement, now transformed into the final version of the song's sublime melody and representing Mahler's ultimate vision of paradise. "This symphony," the critic Max Graf declared after that first performance, "has to be read from back to front like a Hebrew Bible." It was exactly thus that Mahler organized the brilliant reverse logic of his Fourth Symphony.
As we hear the sublime E major that brings the work to its close, we recall the surprising B minor of the sleighbells. But it is a surprise no longer: in fact the dominant minor of E has led us at last to the tonality that has been the symphony's destination all along. We now understand that the unique journey we have experienced has had its origins in the first three bars of the first movement! As T. S. Eliiot once famously wrote: "In my end is my beginning." That is the narrative of Mahler's Fourth. -- D.M.
Sylvia McNair, soprano; Berlin Philharmonic, Bernard Haitink, cond. Philips, recorded in the Philharmonie, June 1992
Renée Fleming, soprano; Berlin Philharmonic, Claudio Abbado, cond. DG, recorded live, May 2005
NEXT UP --
We still need to do more exploring and connecting-up of the songs that characterize what we're thinking of (pretty loosely) as Mahler's Wunderhorn and Rückert periods. And of course there's my contrarian view of the path Mahler 4 leads us on. If you want a hint, you can go back to my description at atop this post-section of the first minute and three-quarters of the symphony as it's heard in the 1960 and 1987 Bernstein recordings.
(SAY, SERIOUSLY, WHERE WOULD WE BE NOW WITHOUT
GILBERT AND SULLIVAN TO EXPLAIN THE WORLD TO US?)
Or, to put it another way, as Mrs. Cripps (dba Litle Buttercup the "Portsmouth bumboat woman") puts it to Captain Corcoran in Gilbert and Sullivan's H.M.S. Pinafore --
Act II, Duet, Little Buttercup and Captain Corcoran,
"Things are seldom what they seem"
LITTLE BUTTERCUP: Things are seldom what they seem,
skim milk masquerades as cream;
highlows pass as patent leathers;
jackdaws strut in peacock's feathers.
CAPTAIN CORCORAN [puzzled]: Very true,
so they do.
BUTTERCUP: Black sheep dwell in every fold;
all that glitters is not gold;
storks turn out to be but logs;
bulls are but inflated frogs.
CAPTAIN [puzzled]: So they be,
frequently.
BUTTERCUP: Drops the wind and stops the mill;
turbot is ambitious brill;
gild the farthing if you will,
yet it is a farthing still.
CAPTAIN [puzzled]: Yes, I know,
that is so.
Though to catch your drift I'm striving,
it is shady -- it is shady;
I don't see at what you're driving,
mystic lady -- mystic lady.
BOTH [aside]: Stern conviction's o'er me/him stealing,
that the mystic lady's dealing
in oracular revealing.
CAPTAIN: Yes, I know --
BUTTERCUP: That is so!
CAPTAIN: Though I'm anything but clever,
I could talk like that for ever:
Once a cat was killed by care,
only brave deserve the fair.
BUTTERCUP: Very true,
so they do.
CAPTAIN: Wink is often good as nod;
spoils the child who spares the rod;
thirsty lambs run foxy dangers;
dogs are found in many mangers.
BUTTERCUP: Frequently,
I agree.
CAPTAIN: Paw of cat the chestnut snatches;
worn-out garments show new patches;
only count the chick that hatches;
men are grown-up catchy-catchies.
BUTTERCUP: Yes, I know,
That is so.
[aside] Though to catch my drift he's striving,
I'll dissemble -- I'll dissemble;
when he sees at what I'm driving,
let him tremble -- let him tremble!
BOTH: Tho' a mystic tone I/you borrow,
he will/I shall learn the truth with sorrow;
here today and gone tomorrow.
CAPTAIN: Yes, I know.
BUTTERCUP: That is so!
Monica Sinclair (c), Little Buttercup; John Cameron (b), Captain Corcoran; Pro Arte Orchestra, Sir Malcolm Sargent, cond. EMI, recorded Apr. 15–18, 1958
Gillian Knight (ms), Little Buttercup; Jeffrey Skitch (b), Captain Corcoran; New Symphony Orchestra of London, Isidore Godfrey, cond. Decca, recorded Aug. 7-12, 1959
Felicity Palmer (ms), Little Buttercup; Thomas Allen (b), Captain Corcoran; Welsh National Opera Orchestra, Charles Mackerras, cond. Telarc, recorded June 5-8, 1994
THURSDAY UPDATE: I think I know where we're going next
It's not quite what I expected, and also sort of very much what I expected, something along the line of:
A PARTICULAR PATH TO AND THROUGH MAHLER 4
Into which I think the Wunderhorn songs we should be hearing will fit cozily enough. I'm not sure about the timing. It could be sooner, or it could be Sunday.
Oh yes, while we're updating --
ADDITIONAL THURSDAY UPDATE: Digital Concert Hall countdown
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| The Berlin Phil's excellent Wenzel Fuchs -- teaching at the Boston Clarinet Academy |
As if I needed a reminder, at the week-to-go mark the DCH folks e-sent me one, and clever folks that they are, offered a 10-percent discount on the not-at-all-unreasonable subscription price. So I did what any sensible person, I saved the e-mail ("mark as unread") and went on with my life for a few more days, continuing to weigh the pros and cons, which happened to be the exact same pros and cons I'd been weighing since my 30 days began.
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| Three clarinet-wielding Ottensamers: Daniel, papa Ernst, and Andreas |
Thanks to the DCH e-mail I was confident that the initial streaming of "An Evening in Vienna" would fall within my free period. It turned out to be moot, though. After posting the un-updated first version of this post, I reopened the DCH e-mail and once again clicked on to the screen of decision, and this time clicked my way through. I guess I'm figuring that when the time comes to load a few possessions into plastic bags and head for the poorhouse, that $146.54 (after conversion from the posted price in euros) isn't going to be make-or-break.
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