Still not ready for the imagined "regular post," so here's some more-substantive post-teasing

"My collaboration with Wolfgang Holzmair goes back over 20 years. We got together through a joint manager at the time and had an instant musical rapport despite our different backgrounds. I was taken not only by the sheer beauty of his voice, then a rather silvery high baritone, but also by his passionate attention to text and its meaning, which ultimately dictated all his decisions. We have never needed to rehearse for long hours and have never argued. He is also not the sort of singer who needs support and advice over vocal matters, which is good because I do not know so much, still, about the process of singing -- and he always encourages his partner to really be that, a partner, not an accompanist (a word I dislike)."

-- from the "Lieder and chamber music" section of Imogen
Cooper's website (2010 photo by Benjamin Ealovega)

by Ken

Like it says in the title, I'm still not where I need/want to be for the post I was projecting ("Post tease: A special artist finds her way into our Brahms piano party"). I thought I knew what I needed to do, and I sort of did. I may, however, have underestimated (by several thousand percent?) what I would have to do to get there. So I thought I'd tease you all a bit more with some of the audio files that have been waiting patiently for public airing.

And an obvious way to start, since as I mentioned I first encountered Imogen Cooper as a song accompanist, so good that I was riveted -- meaning not that she was stealing attention from her partner, specifically the fine baritone Wolfgang Holzmair, but that she was supporting him so ably while digging out everything she could about what the piano part could do to further the experience of the song. We also learn above that she doesn't much like the word "accompanist," much preferring "partner" -- and while I've got a whole bunch of Holzmair-Cooper song clips ready to go, I thought we might start this round of post-teasing with two songs that are especially challenging and exposed for the pianist.


FROM SCHUBERT'S GREAT NARRATIVE SONG CYCLES,
LET'S HEAR THE END OF NO. 1 AND THE START OF NO. 2

Post tease: A special artist finds her way into our Brahms piano party

Imogen Cooper (as of June "Dame Imogen")  [photo by Benjamin Ealovega]

SCHUMANN: Humoreske, Op. 20: opening movements --
i. Einfach (Simple) -- Sehr rasch und leicht (Very quick and light)
ii. Hastig (Hurried) [at 4:28]


Imogen Cooper, piano. BBC Music Magazine, recorded live in Wigmore Hall, London, May 28, 1994

by Ken

It's funny how things come together. As I'm going to explain in the main post, when I started thinking about Imogen Cooper, it had nothing to do, at least nothing directly to do, with our present exploration of Brahms's path to and through the intermezzo genre (most recent installment: Wednesday's "'It's a gift' (cont.): A bit more about operatic intermezzos, and a lot more about 19th-century-style instrumental ones"). And then, somehow, it did. With a minimum of intention on my part, it practically crashed into our Brahms piano party.

When we get to something more like a proper post, you're going to be presented with something I happen to have written a few days ago recalling the experience of picking up almost much at random a CD I've had for goodness-knows-how-long, "of several sets of short piano pieces by Schumann and Brahms played by Imogen Cooper -- a British pianist I've always enjoyed, having first encountered her on records as a song accompanist, and such a good one that she grabbed my attention." After which --

I fired the disc up, starting with Schumann's Humoreske, a suite of humoresques, and from the first note there it was: the direct outreach of a human spirit reaching out to whoever might be at the other end of the electronic pathway. It was the very thing, I realized, that had attracted me in everything I'd heard her play."

And those opening numbers of Schumann's Op. 20 we've just heard are the very thing I heard.


SO HOW DID THIS COME TO CONCERN US TODAY?

"It's a gift" (cont.): A bit more about operatic intermezzos, and a lot more about 19th-century-style instrumental ones

[Some of you had a chance to wander through the construction site for this post, and you'll notice that many things have changed -- while many haven't! At this point I'm calling it "done." -- Ken]

At Scottish Opera in 2011, soprano Anita Bader and baritone Roland Wood portray Christine and Hofkapellmeister Robert Storch in Richard Strauss's Intermezzo (1924). Funnily, Intermezzo the opera contains a generous helping of distinctive "Zwischenspiele" -- er, intermezzos.

Intermezzo. (1) Term used in the 18th century (generally in the plural, 'intermezzi') for comic interludes performed between the acts or scenes of an opera seria. . . .

[We hereby ellipsize a lengthy emburblement of facts about
18th-century intermezzi, picking up (at long last) here --]

. . . In the 19th century the term 'intermezzo' was used for lyrical pieces or moments, often for piano solo. Mendelssohn called the third movement of his Piano Quartet no. 2 'Intermezzo' and Schumann made frequent use of this title in his early piano music. Brahms composed numerous independent intermezzos for piano, and the term has been used for operatic entr'actes, as in Mascagni's Cavalleria rusticana.
(2) Opera in two acts by Richard Strauss to his own libretto (1924, Dresden).

-- from The Norton/Grove Concise Encyclopedia
of Music (1st edition, 1988)

ABOUT STRAUSS'S LOVELY ZWISCHENSPIELE

In due course we're going to hear the Vier Zwischenspiele aus 'Intermezzo' (Four Interludes from 'Intermezzo'), but for now I thought we might rehear the most beautiful of Strauss's innumerable operatic Zwischenspiele, the "Moonlight Interlude" that sets the stage for the famous Final Scene of his final opera, Capriccio. Because we've heard it a number of times, we've got a whole bunch of performances in the SC Archive, and I'd be happy to rehear them all, probably more than once.

For you, though, I'm limiting it to three: first, the Previn and Karajan performances, because they have the radiant measure of this music, not to mention the participation of the ultimate Strauss orchestras, the Vienna and Berlin Philharmonics, and then the soulful Clemens Krauss performance -- Krauss of course was not only an important conductor but a co-creator of Capriccio, having written the libretto with the composer, then naturally enough conducted the premiere, at the Bavarian State Opera in October 1942. In 1953, after the composer's death (at 85, in September 1949), he conducted the Bavarian Radio performance from which this clip is taken. Not long after, in May 1954, Krauss's own life would be cut short by a heart attack, age 61.

R. STRAUSS: Capriccio: "Mondscheinmusik" ("Moonlight Music")


Vienna Philharmonic, André Previn, cond. DG, recorded in the Grosser Saal of the Musikverein, October 1992

Berlin Philharmonic, Herbert von Karajan, cond. DG, recorded in the Philharmonie, November 1985

Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, Clemens Krauss, cond. From a broadcast performance of the opera, 1953

by Ken

As you'll recall from the last post, "It's a gift: Intermezzo," when we began zeroing in on the tiny but endlessly fascinating "extra" movement, called Intermezzo, seemingly squeezed into Brahms's early breakthrough masterpiece, the Piano Sonata No. 3 in F minor, Op. 5, we're trying to pin down just what in heck an intermezzo is anyway. And so, above, we've consulted a Proper Authority.

You'll note that Our Authority points out that "the term has been used for operatic entr'actes, as in Mascagni's Cavalleria rusticana," which we've already seized the opportunity to pay a call on in the previous post, and as promised, before we're done we're going to revisit it and also drop in on the Intermezzo of Cav's usual companion piece, Leoncavallo's I Pagliacci, where we won't allow some quibbling about terminology distract us overmuch from savoring the beauty of the music.

Although the sense of "intermezzo" that we're looking for is clearly the one we're going to have to try to extract from Our Authority's sense (1), I've already allowed myself to be diverted by OA's sense (2): "Opera in two acts by Richard Strauss to his own libretto (1924, Dresden)." It seems odd that OA makes no mention of the intermezzos to be found in Strauss's Intermezzo, but as you've seen, we've got his/her back on this. Before we allow ourselves this exceedingly pleasant digression, however, we should probably made some honest effort on our Intermezzo Hunt.


OBVIOUS STARTING POINT: THE LEADS OFFERED BY OA!

"It's a gift" (cont.): Intermezzo

We finally listen again to those four Brahms slow movements and are led in surprising directions

As surprising as the Intermezzo from Cavalleria rusticana, familiar in shortened form from Martin Scorsese's Raging Bull (1980)

Here's the edited Intermezzo over a pastiche of the film


And here are some musical thoughts from Mr. Scorsese

I want to say a word about the Mascagni music in the film. We would hear it all the time on the radio when I was growing up, and I'm not sure that we ever even identified it with any particular composer -- it was simply there, a part of our lives. Somehow, I felt that the pieces we used in Raging Bull -- from Cavalleria rusticana, Silvano and Guglielmo Ratcliff -- help to express the poignance of some of Jake [La Motta]'s existence, the desire for redemption buried beneath so many layers of violence and suffering.

-- from the terrific booklet essay he wrote for the two-CD Raging
Bull soundtrack album finally issued 25 years after the film

From Raging Bull: The Original Motion Picture Soundtrack, released by Capitol Records in 2005:

MASCAGNI: Cavalleria rusticana (1890): Intermezzo

MASCAGNI: Guglielmo Ratcliff (1894): Intermezzo

MASCAGNI: Silvano (1895): Barcarolle

Orchestra of the Teatro Comunale, Bologna (aka "Orchestra of Bologna Municop Thetra"), Arturo Basile, cond. Licensed from RCA Italiana

[Album producer Robbie Robertson became a fixture in the Scorsese brain trust during their collaboration on The Last Waltz (1976), the film that documented the final concert of The Band, for which Robbie tells us Scorsese was "my first and only choice" as director after he watched Scorsese's Mean Streets (1973) and saw the way he'd used music there. Scorsese in turn turned to Robbie to produce the music for Raging Bull, which should have included a soundtrack recording when the film was released in 1980, but the necessary rights clearances hadn't been obtained. Robbie was still on the job producing the soundtrack recording when it finally happened, in 2005. In his terrific CD booklet essay he tells us that the tape with the Basile Mascagni performances which was finally supplied by RCA Italiana required major technical massaging.]

by Ken

You're probably wondering why we're suddenly intermezzo-happy, and we'll get to that, and we'll even consult some sources to help us pin down what exactly an intermezzo is. But before we proceed, we should probably go back to the Intermezzo from Cavalleria rusticana, which we've so far heard only in shortened form, lopping off the opening minute based on the sublime "Regina coeli" chorus, thereby getting us closer to the slashing entry of the big tune, a moment that, by the way, is distinguishe in the scored only by the somewhat enigmatic marking "raseggiando."

I don't think we want to think of the piece as some filler stuff that leads us at long last to the big tune. So probably we should fix this, which we can do easily enough.


HERE'S THE FULL CAVALLERIA INTERMEZZO

What happens when you've got a clarinetist, a bassoonist, a horn player, two violinists, a violist, a cellist, and a bass player?

[MONDAY MORNING NOTE: I can now report that this post is about as complete as it's going to get! UPDATE: Except for some subsequent odd bits of fixing and updating here and there.]

Or even if you've got only 5 or 6 of the above, here's the first
not quite 19 bars of what can happen if you fill in those gaps

[. . . and so on]  

Chamber Players of Canada. CBC Records, recorded in Fallowfield, Ont., June 2002 [we'll have full credits when we hear the full movement]

by Ken

Sorry about the protracted silence. It's been rough, and you don't want to know. We were about to enter an "intermezzo" phase in our lookback at four Brahms slow movements, as we maneuvered our way toward the first landmark of Brahms's creative career, the Piano Sonata No. 3 in F minor, Op. 5, one of whose curious features is an "extra" slow movement -- labeled, of all things, Intermezzo -- nestled between its third and fifth movements.

The question has been how to proceed, how to proceed. It's been a project of considerable turmoil, involving all manner of addition, bits of subtraction, a fair amount of multiplication, and a confounding agglomeration of diversion and digression. The mass as it stands, clearly way beyond the bounds of a single post, will probably wind up as at least three post, including at least one that will be virtually Brahms-free. But figuring out just how to accomplish the division and distribution, and to fill in the resulting gaps . . . well, it hasn't been easy, especially with the dispiriting questions "Who cares?" and "What does it matter?" sounding in the background.


SO INSTEAD, LET'S FOCUS ON A MUSICAL MOMENT,
OR MOVEMENT, THAT GAVE ME A MOMENTARY OF LIFT

It starts with the musical introduction we heard above, a not-quite-two-minute expanse that comprises, as noted, not quite 19 bars, bar 19 being -- as we'll hear -- at one and the same time the conclusion of the work's Adagio introduction and the opening of the Allegro first movement proper.