Preview: Put these two little orchestral excerpts together, and you'll know the subject of this week's main post

Adapted from 2012 Sunday Classics posts,
May 11 (preview) and May 13 (main post)


Sneak peek: These are the first two pages of the work that's the source of Excerpt 2 below, which 2020 readers of this resurrected-from-2012 Sunday Classics post have had a chance to hear in full quite recently. Excerpt 2 itself begins at bar 8 (with the crescendo in the strings).




by Ken

Imagine my surprise -- a happy surprise, for once -- when I was actually able to retrieve the post I was looking for, which covered some ground we really need to re-cover as we try to coax out what for me is the real lesson of Beethoven's one and only opera, Fidelio, over which he labored so heroically.

You'll recall that we're poised between last week's Part 1 and next week's Part 2 of "The Minister is coming! The Minister is coming! Don Fernando and the lesson of Fidelio," and I worried that we're missing some vital information to proceed, namely who these people are we're dealing with. Because there's an awful lot we're given about our protagonists which seems to me usually ignored or trivialized. They're about as tough a pair as I've encountered in the world of artistic representation.

As in 2012, the post comes in two parts: a preview and a main post (to follow), though back in the day they ran on Friday night and Sunday, whereas barring unforeseen obstacles we should have the revamped main post up today. To be honest, I haven't had the courage to look too closely at it yet; I'm hoping it can be presented as much as possible "as was," introducing the necessary adjustments and amplifications when we get to Part 2 of "The Minister is coming! The Minister is coming! Don Fernando and the lesson of Fidelio." Which is what I've done with the preview.

Coming up we have two orchestral excerpts. The first, about four minutes, is clearly an introduction to something. (In the click-through we're going to hear it again and take it just a bit further.) The second, a scant minute, is a tiny morsel snatched out of the early going of a staple of the orchestral literature, which we've heard before and will hear again in its entirety in the click-through.


OKAY, OKAY, SO LET'S HEAR OUR EXCERPTS ALREADY

Excerpt 1


Excerpt 2


[NOTE: These audio clips have been trouble all the way back to 2012. When I have a chance I'll see if I can somehow make this better. Meanwhile, if the clips don't seem to want to load, try refreshing the page, maybe more than once. They're there!]

The works from which these excerpts are drawn are related, but not the same. The performers in both, I will tell you, are the same: the Bavarian State Orchestra conducted by Hans Knappertsbusch. As I suggested in the post head, if you put the two excerpts together, you can hardly fail to know what the subject of this week's Sunday Classics post is going to be.


NOT FOR THE FIRST TIME, WE'RE GOING TO BE
WORKING BACKWARDS, STARTING WITH EXCERPT 2

It's an exceedingly brief moment of lyrical repose from, of course, the Beethoven overture we know as Leonore No. 3. As I mentioned, we've heard the piece before, and since I like the performances we've already heard, I thought we'd bring them back for an encore hearing. Our excerpt begins at about 0:32 of the Walter performance, 0:37 of the Leinsdorf.

BEETHOVEN: Leonore Overture No. 3, Op. 72a


Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, Bruno Walter, cond. Live performance, Feb. 22, 1941

Philharmonia Orchestra, Erich Leinsdorf, cond. Capitol/EMI, recorded c1958


NOW HERE'S EXCERPT 1 AGAIN, ONLY (AS PROMISED)
TAKEN A BIT FARTHER -- AND WITH A BRIEF BONUS

Excerpt 1, extended version (with bonus second track)

[track 1]
God! What darkness here!
O dreadful silence!
[track 2]
In the springtime of life
good fortune fled from me.
Truth I dared to speak unafraid,
and these chains are my reward!

Reiner Goldberg, tenor; Staatskapelle Dresden, Bernard Haitink, cond. Philips, recorded November 1989


COMING UP IN THE MAIN POST --

In case you haven't worked it out, we're going to be focusing on the full version of Excerpt 1.

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