"My long hair descends all the way to the door of the tower"
Orchestra of the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, Pierre Boulez, cond. CBS-Sony, recorded 1970
Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, Ernest Ansermet, cond. Decca, recorded in Geneva's Grand Théâtre, August 1964
by Ken
I can't think of one. And my goodness, doesn't this mere minute's worth of music make you crazy to know what comes next? We're going to find out in today's main post, after we take care of business.
"Ah! I breathe at last!"
George Shirley, tenor; Orchestra of the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, Pierre Boulez, cond. CBS-Sony, recorded 1970
Or, if we allow it some of its proper build-up --
"Ah! I breathe at last!"
Camille Maurane, baritone; Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, Ernest Ansermet, cond. Decca, recorded in Geneva's Grand Théâtre, August 1964
ON FURTHER CONSIDERATION, I GUESS WE COULD
SLIP JUST A TAD FARTHER INTO OUR MYSTERY SCENE
Gurre-Lieder in piano-vocal score -- the piano version prepared, note, by Alban Berg! (As I'll explain, this isn't the image I'd have liked to use.)
TO REMIND US WHERE WE'RE COMING FROM, HERE ARE
4 "NEW" CLIPS OF OUR CLIMACTIC MAGIC FLUTE MOMENT
SARASTRO: The rays of the sun drive away the night,
destroy the dissemblers' ill-gotten might.
[Performance A]
[Performance B]
[Performance C]
[Performance D]
by Ken
If you've been here before, you've no doubt figured out there's a reason why the performers of Performances A–D have been withheld, and you know all will be revealed. We are, in fact, going to hear this microbit of the final episode of The Magic Flute still unidentified in fuller form -- somewhat fuller, in fact, than we've heard before. (See the immediately preceding installment in this series, "While I toil away at this week's Inaugural-themed post, let's hear the end of The Magic Flute in our five performances -- plus a couple of 'new' ones.")
BEFORE WE GET TO GURRE-LIEDER, LET'S HEAR THE
(NEW) FULLER VERSION OF PERFORMANCES A–D!
There doesn't look to be much sense of danger from this, er, highly decorative band of conspirators: John Easterlin as Monostatos, Kathryn Lewek as the Queen of the Night, and Deborah Nansteel, Sarah Mesko, and Jacqueline Echols as the Second, Third, and First Ladies, as designed by Jun Kaneko in a joint production by five American opera companies, seen here at Washington National Opera in 2014. (Photo by Scott Suchman)
A rocky landscape. Night.The dark-spirited MONOSTATOS has entered stealthily with the QUEEN OF THE NIGHT, accompanied by her THREE LADIES carrying torches. There is thunder, and the sound of water.
MONOSTATOS: But hush, I hear a terrible rushing
like rolling thunder and a waterfall. THE QUEEN and THE LADIES: Yes, fearful is this rushing,
like the distant echo of thunder! MONOSTATOS: Now they are in the hall of the temple. ALL [variously]: There we will fall upon them,
exterminate the pious ones from the earth
with glowing fire and mighty sword. THE THREE LADIES and MONOSTATOS:
To you, great Queen of the Night,
let our revenge be brought as a sacrifice.
[There is loud thunder and lightning, followed by streaming holiness.] THE QUEEN, THE THREE LADIES, and MONOSTATOS:
Shattered, destroyed is our might!
We are all plunged into eternal night!
[They sink into the ground.]
Change of scene (without curtain): The Temple of the Sun. SARASTRO stands elevated on an altar, TAMINO and PAMINA in front of him, both in priestly clothing. Beside them the priests of Egypt on both sides. THE THREE BOYS hold flowers.
SARASTRO: The rays of the sun drive away the night,
destroy the dissemblers' ill-gotten might. CHORUS: Hail to you initiates!
You penetrate the night.
Thanks, thanks, thanks be to you, Osiris!
Thanks brought to you, Osiris! [Allegro]
Strength conquers and crowns as reward
Beauty and Wisdom with an eternal crown!
Martti Talvela (bs), Sarastro; with Gerhard Stolze (t), Monostatos; Cristina Deutekom (s), Queen of the Night; Hanneke van Bork (s), Yvonne Minton (ms), and Hetty Plümacher (c), Three Ladies of the Queen of the Night; Vienna State Opera Chorus, Vienna Philharmonic, Georg Solti, cond. Decca, recorded 1969
Samuel Ramey (bs), Sarastro; with Aldo Baldin (t), Monostatos; Cheryl Studer (s), Queen of the Night; Yvonne Kenny (s), Iris Vermillion (ms), and Anne Collins (c), Three Ladies of the Queen of the Night; Ambrosian Opera Chorus, Academy of St. Martin in the Fields, Neville Marriner, cond. Philips, recorded July 1989
Kurt Moll (bs), Sarastro; with Robert Tear (t), Monostatos; Luciana Serra (s), Queen of the Night; Marie McLaughlin (s), Ann Murray (ms), and Hanna Schwarz (ms), Three Ladies of the Queen of the Night; Leipzig Radio Chorus, Staatskapelle Dresden, Colin Davis, cond. Philips, recorded January 1984
Franz Crass (bs), Sarastro; with Friedrich Lenz (t), Monostatos; Roberta Peters (s), Queen of the Night; Hildegard Hillebrecht (s), Cvetka Ahlin (ms), and Sieglinde Wagner (ms), Three Ladies of the Queen of the Night; RIAS Chamber Chorus, Berlin Philharmonic, Karl Böhm, cond. DG, recorded June 1964
Matti Salminen (bs), Sarastro; with Peter Keller (t), Monostatos; Edita Gruberová (s), Queen of the Night; Pamela Coburn (s), Delores Ziegler (ms), and Marjana Lipovšek (c), Three Ladies of the Queen of the Night; Chorus and Orchestra of the Zürich Opera House, Nikolaus Harnoncourt, cond. Teldec, recorded November 1987
by Ken
When last we met ("Post tease: Sarastro sings a mouthful when he sings, 'The sun's rays drive away the night'"), I was presenting the first of my three musical expressions of feelings I felt on Inauguration Day, namely the tiny block of two lines we had heard five notable Sarastros sing this tiny bit of the dénouement of The Magic Flute now heard buried in the above clips from the same five recordings, which we're hearing now in their proper context: the final minutes of Mozart's Magic Flute.
Our starting point last time comes a little after the one-minute mark.)
SARASTRO: The rays of the sun drive away the night,
destroy the dissemblers' ill-gotten might.
Martti Talvela (bs), Sarastro; Vienna Philharmonic, Georg Solti, cond. Decca, recorded 1969
Samuel Ramey (bs), Sarastro; Academy of St. Martin in the Fields, Neville Marriner, cond. Philips, recorded July 1989
Franz Crass (bs), Sarastro; Berlin Philharmonic, Karl Böhm,
cond. DG, recorded June 1964
Matti Salminen (bs), Sarastro; Zürich Opera House Orchestra, Nikolaus Harnoncourt, cond. Teldec, recorded November 1987
WAIT, ISN'T THERE ONE MISSING?
SHOULDN'T THERE BE FIVE CLIPS?
UPDATED WITH AN ALARMING QUANTITY OF POST-POSTING
THOUGHTS ABOUT THE PERFORMANCES WE HEAR HERE
SARASTRO: The rays of the sun drive away the night,
destroy the dissemblers' ill-gotten might.
Martti Talvela (bs), Sarastro; Vienna Philharmonic, Georg Solti, cond. Decca, recorded 1969
Samuel Ramey (bs), Sarastro; Academy of St. Martin in the Fields, Neville Marriner, cond. Philips, recorded July 1989
Kurt Moll (bs), Sarastro; Staatskapelle Dresden, Colin Davis, cond. Philips, recorded January 1984 Franz Crass (bs), Sarastro; Berlin Philharmonic, Karl Böhm, cond. DG, recorded June 1964
Matti Salminen (bs), Sarastro; Zürich Opera House Orchestra, Nikolaus Harnoncourt, cond. Teldec, recorded November 1987
by Ken
As I mentioned in Wednesday's Sunday Classics "Inaugural Edition," I had very powerfully in mind some musical thoughts beyond the two noble marches we listened to, and I mentioned in particular moments from The Magic Flute and Pelléas et Mélisande. Add to that list Schoenberg's Gurre-Lieder, and you've got today's post laid out.
POST-POSTING THOUGHTS ABOUT THE PERFORMANCES
[NOTE (for those who saw my earlier note): The audio clips have now been resequenced to match (I think!) the order of discussion below.]
Here, as I recall, is pretty much what we heard: (1)
Concert Arts Symphonic Band, Felix Slatkin, cond. Capitol, recorded 1958 (2)
Morton Gould and His Symphonic Band. RCA, recorded October 1956
[Okay, I backed No. 2 up a bit to hear the lead-in, then let it run to the end.]
by Ken
What a difference two weeks makes! To give credit where it's due, while it's not an eventuality that any sane, decent person would have wished, did you notice how the national conversation changed on January 6 in the aftermath of the SwampMonster's failed coup?
I confess I had no little trepidation approaching the inauguration with its horrifying setting of security-first armed fortification. In the event, however, I could scarcely believe how well-manged it was, given the circumstances. Which was the whole point: The planners and executors took full and accurate account of those circumstances.
FOR NOW, I THOUGHT IT MIGHT BE WORTH SHARING
THE WHOLE OF THESE TWO WONDERFUL MARCHES . . .
MIDNIGHT UPDATE: In addition to fleshing out the performance roster for a number of our polkas (like the Bartered Bride one, and all of Johann Strauss Jr.'s trio, and performing incidental touch-ups along the way, we've felt obliged to add yet one last polka, something kind of different, at the end. Still to come, very likely: a polka-taste of Daddy Johann Sr., like perhaps his Beliebte Annen Polka?
TUESDAY FURTHER CONSIDERATION: On second and third thought, I think maybe the way to go is a little appendix-post in the next day or two [or maybe a tad longer -- Ed.] with, yes, some bits of Papa Johann, and also some stray polkas I've been thinking about from beyond the Strauss family orbit. Like I've been listenting to some orchestral Stravinsky and was reminded of his Circus Polka, and there's Rachmaninoff's Polka de W.R., and maybe another miscellaneous polka or two. Stay tuned.
Is there a rousinger polka than this?
It's the finale of Act I of Smetana's The Bartered Bride
VILLAGERS: Come on, girls, let's be merry,
while the band is playing polkas!
Hand in hand and eye to eye,
while the whole world swirls and dances!
The brasses are booming, cimbaloms clanking,
music's blaring all around us!
Everyone is on the move --
we can't stand still and watch!
-- translation by Peter C. Sutro
In this 1981 film directed by František Filip, Prague National Theater forces. including soprano Gabriela Beňačková (Mařenka), tenor Peter Dvorský (Jeník), and bass Richard Novák (Kecal), with the Czech Philharmonic conducted by Zdeněk Košler, dance and sing their way to the end of Act I.
Here it is again, first in a classic recording under a storied Czech composer-conductor, then -- as we've heard it before -- in higher-quality audio with a fine Czech conductor but in German (in which language the opera has an extensive performing history):
Prague National Opera Chorus and Orchestra, Otakar Ostrčil, cond. HMV, recorded in Vienna, June 6-23, 1933
[in German] Bavarian Radio Chorus, Munich Radio Orchestra, Jaroslav Krombholc, cond. Eurodisc, recorded April 1975
by Ken
Here's just the Bartered Bride Polka itself. The performance conducted by the late Jiří Bělohlávek (1946-2017) seems to me a special treat -- he just has the music in his bloodstream.
SMETANA: Polka from The Bartered Bride
New York Philharmonic, Leonard Bernstein, cond. Columbia-CBS-Sony, recorded 1965
Vienna Philharmonic, James Levine, cond. DG, recorded June 1986
Prague Symphony Orchestra, Jiří Bělohlávek, cond. Supraphon, recorded c1980s
There's a fair amount more to say, and of course more to hear, with regard to the dances in Smetana's great comic opera The Bartered Bride, and we'll get to that. First, though, I should explain what we're doing today.
My friend Jocelyn, who's not a classical-music devotee but has heard way more than her share of my whining about the agonies of producing these silly little blogposts, called some days ago to say she'd checked out last week's post ("For the first time ever, this year I went into the Vienna New Year's Concert armed with a listing of the program contents!") and enjoyed it, thanks principally to its abundance of polkas, which she'd never thought of as concert offerings. Whereas when I think of polka, and I do, a lot, it's almost always in the array of uses composers have put it to.
Mostly unrelated to the pandemic, Jocelyn had a rough week last week, in a rough month, in a rough year, and I was delighted to hear that that blogpost had provided some relief. So my next thought was, I'll bet we've got a pile of polkas sitting idle in the Sunday Classics archive. Maybe I could drag them out for Jocelyn. Maybe even get an easy post out of it.
Well, in my world there doesn't appear to be such a thing as an easy post. Nevertheless, that's basically what we're going to do. More polkas, mostly drawn from the archive.
And, um, stuff.
WHAT SETS -- AND KEEPS -- A BODY IN MOTION MORE SURELY AND IRRESISTIBLY THAN A GOOD POLKA?
NOTE: Just so you know, last week's "post tease" has been significantly filled out and filled in. (I sure didn't know going in that along the way we'd wind up having a mini-tribute to Josef Strauss!)
If you watched this year's Vienna New Year's Concert
on PBS, you saw the musical program start like so:
FRANZ VON SUPPÉ: Overture to Poet and Peasant On Jan. 1, in the hallowed but for obvious reasons audienceless Great Hall of Vienna's Musikverein (seen here via screen cap from the telecast), Riccardo Muti conducts the Vienna Philharmonic in Suppé's ever-inspiriting Poet and Peasant Overture. It sounded more or less like this --
Vienna Philharmonic, Zubin Mehta, cond. Sony, recorded 1989
by Ken
I say it sounded "more or less" like that, because as noted above, while what we're hearing is indeed the Vienna Philharmonic playing Poet and Peasant in the Musikverein, it isn't from New Year's Day 2021 and it isn't conducted by Maestro Muti. As noted, it's from a 1989 Sony recording of Suppé overtures -- and a lovely CD it is! -- conducted by Zubin Mehta (seen here conducting the Israel Philharmonic in 2002). Under the subject heading of "Musical Vienna," Maestro Mehta's story is by no means unrelated to Maestro Muti's. Eventually we'll want to talk about this a little.
What link is there between this celebrated Strauss
polka and the 2021 Vienna New Year's Concert?
In which the famous Strauss polka went like this:
Vienna Philharmonic, Willi Boskovsky, cond. Decca, recorded in the 1960s-70s
[At the same time, we heard performances conducted by Stanley Black, Sir John Pritchard, and Peter Guth, which again you can easily enough check out. As a matter of fact, in a moment we're going to hear yet another.]
BUT FIRST, APOLOGIES (FOR A CHANGE) FOR THE DELAY
IN BEGINNING TO CONSUMMATE LAST WEEK'S POST TEASE
Even if you watched the concert on PBS Friday, you're
not apt to have any clue how our polka is connected to it
Don't expect him to smile -- polka-writing is serious business!
Hey, everyone, it's polka time! (But then, isn't it always?)
Vienna Philharmonic, Willi Boskovsky, cond. Decca, recorded in the 1960s-70s
London Symphony Orchestra, Stanley Black, cond. Decca Phase-4, recorded in the 1960s
BBC Symphony Orchestra, John Pritchard, cond. BBC Classics, recorded live at "Viennese Night at the Proms," Royal Albert Hall, Aug. 12, 1972
Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Peter Guth, cond. RPO-Intersound, recorded May 1994
by Ken
Mind you, I'm not saying there's a simple, direct connection between our polka and this year's Vienna New Year's Concert. Some of you no doubt recognized it immediately, and some of you may be wringing your hands, saying, "I know that damn polka, which damn one is it?" And some of you may be hearing it for the first time -- I hope you enjoyed it.
If you click through to the continuation of this post tease, it will:
(a) not only clear up the tiny bit of confusion surrounding the identity of our famous polka, but --
(b) provide a more direct link to the 2021 Vienna New Year's Concert -- though as it says above, even if you watched the PBS telecast this is most unlikely to help you at all in establishing the link.
UPDATE: (c) not that it was planned, but we've wound up with a virtual tribute to our polka master, whom we'll regreet in a moment.
DO YOU BELIEVE IN THE OLD SAYING "ONE GOOD POLKA
DESERVES ANOTHER"? SAY HELLO TO OUR POLKA MASTER!
