"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!

Let's see, first there was that Second Piano Quartet (from late 1823) of Felix Mendelssohn (1809-1847), which would be published as the teenage composer's Op. 2 -- from which we might take the wildest of guesses: that his Op. 1 was his First Piano Quartet (c1822). And by gosh, it was! (Care to hazard a guess as to what his Op. 3 was? Yes, a Third Piano Quartet, c1825!) Okay, let's listen.

MENDELSSOHN: Piano Quartet No. 2 in F minor, Op. 2:
iii. Intermezzo: Allegro moderato


Quartetto Klimt (Matteo Fossi, piano; Duccio Ceccanti, violin; Edoardo Rosadini, viola; Alice Gabbiani, cello). Brilliant Classics, recorded in the Torri dell'Acqua, Budrio (Bologna), November 2018

Hey, that's really pretty, isn't it? I'm not sure it gives me much of an idea of what an intermezzo is, though, and I have a feeling it wouldn't be much clearer if we heard this movement surrounded by the two movements it comes "in between." So --

We move on to our next "intermezzo" clue: that Robert Schumann (1810-1856) "made frequent use of this title in his early piano music." You bet he did! And here's a set of six of them written in the spring of 1832, when the composer was 22. (He turned 22 on June 8, to be exact.)

SCHUMANN: Six Intermezzi, Op. 4:
No. 1 in A: Allegro quasi maestoso
No. 2 in E minor: Presto a capriccio (at 3:20)
No. 3 in A minor: Allegro marcato (at 6:52)
No. 4 in C: Allegretto semplice (at 9:57)
No. 5 in D minor: Allegro moderato (at 11:20)
No. 6 in B minor: Allegro (at 15:25)


Aldo Ciccolini, piano. EMI, recorded in the Salle Wagram, Paris, 1973

That's just lovely, Aldo. Thanks so much!

A small confession here: I used that "early piano music" of Schumann clue to steer us to this recording as an opportunity to slip in a sampling of the habitually soul-satisfying sounds produced at the keyboard by a favorite pianist of mine, Aldo Ciccolini (1925-2015), whom I'm reluctant to describe as "an Italian pianist," much preferring the description offered in an online NPR remembrance: "an Italian pianist with a French soul."

What more does OA has to tell us about musical intermezzos? Before the detour to operatic intermezzos, there's one more piece of information about 19th-century-style often-for-piano-solo intermezzos: "Brahms composed numerous independent intermezzos for piano."

If we can forget for a moment that tricky word "independent," it's undeniably factual that Brahms composed a heap of the things, happily gathered on a Chandos CD, Brahms: The Complete Intermezzos, played by the treasurable pianist Luba Edlina (1929-2018), whom we've heard either in collaboration with the original Borodin Quartet, one of the supremely great string quartets, of which her husband, Rostislav Dubinsky (1923-1997) was a founder and the first violinist for three decades, until the couple emigrated from the Soviet Union in 1976; or, as of 1977, as one-third of the great Borodin Trio, with Dubinsky and their friend and fellow émigré, cellist Yuli Turovsky (1939-2013), his place taken in 1992 by another fine cellist, Laszlo Varga (1924-2014). Just this past May we heard the Borodin Trio playing movements from their splendid Chandos set of the three Brahms piano quartets.)


Okay, so here we've got 18 intermezzos, obviously not including the one nestled in the Op. 5 Piano Sonata -- none dating from earlier than the 1870s, when Brahms after a long interval resumed the composition of small piano pieces, producing the Eight Pieces, Op. 76, and the Two Rhapsodies, Op. 79, paving the way for the great sets of his final years, Opp. 116-19 (among which Op. 117 consists in its entirety of those three intermezzos and Op. 119 adds only a single rhapsody to its three intermezzos).

You'll feel relief, or possibly deprivation, to know that we're not going there -- the rarified late piano pieces are much too deep a pool for us to be dipping a toe into. I can't resist, though quoting a fuller version than I did in the May post "Let's take a moment to meet and greet Brahms the musical poet" of Arthur Rubinstein's liner comments for his 1970 LP The Brahms I Love:

It is with the last piano works, Op. 116 through Op. 119, that we reach Brahms' most personal music for his chosen instrument. Honored and respected as almost no other composer had been during his own lifetime, Brahms in his final years produced serene and nostalgic music that was ever more inward in mood. You feel in these works at first a plaintiveness, then a moment of hope and ultimately a return to a final resignation.

As his own notations in the scores indicate, they are so intensely intimate that one cannot really convey their full substance to a large audience. They should be heard quietly, in a small room, for they are actually works of chamber music for the piano.

When I listen, in my home, to this music played on a fine gramophone I feel I receive the full impact the original listeners might have felt.

In that atmosphere -- quietly listening alone, or with a person close to you -- they take the heart.

Since what I'm trying to get at is what the "intermezzo" form meant to Brahms when he took it up. It's a whole other work unit to glean what the form came to mean to him, though one thing we can see clearly is that it came to be one of his most basic go-to forms. The Eight Pieces of Op. 76 are evenly split, four and four, between capriccios and intermezzos, and of the 20 pieces that make up the Op. 116-19 sets, 14 are interemezzos. (If you're keeping count, 4 + 14 gives us the 18 that make up Luba Edlina's Complete Intermezzos CD.)

I think if we look through the movement markings in the liner listing, we can see that -- allowing for a general inclination to the slower side of the tempo range (in contrast with the intermezzos we've just heard by Mendelssohn and Schumann, whose composers at least here seem to think of an intermezzo as a quickish piece -- we have what looks to be a remarkable, even bewildering range of atmospheres and moods, and if you care to take my word for it, we do indeed. If we spent time with those 18 intermezzos, and also with the works that surround them in their published groupings, we could have all kinds of fun speculating what in Brahms's mind constituted an intermezzo "playing field."


GOING BACK TO THE MUSIC WE'VE HEARD, HOW USEFUL
A GUIDE TO INTERMEZZO-DOM HAS OUR AUTHORITY BEEN?

Let's recall the, um, paramaters Our Authority set out for us:

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.

"Lyrical pieces or moments, often for piano solo." Okay, well, the Intermezzo from the Mendelssohn Second Piano Quartet isn't "for piano solo," but that's only an "often" condition, and I guess it's lyrical enough in its way, though not in any way that I would think would inspire many listeners to nod and say, "Now that's 'intermezzo'!" And I doubt that lyricality was much help to the Quartetto Klimt players in producing what seems to me quite a nice performance.

As for the Schumann Op. 4 Intermezzi, well, I don't see that OA has given us the tiniest bit of help. In fact, I think it misses almost everything that matters about this music, which isn't "un"-lyrical, exactly, but for most of the way, I doubt that "lyrical" would be among the top 10, or even top 50, qualities we would assign to the pieces.

Look just at the tempo markings for the first three intermezzi: Allegro quasi maestoso (note that it's not Allegro maestoso, a majestic allegro, but an allegro that's quasi, "like," a maestoso), the fairly wildly scampering Presto a capriccio, and Allegro marcato. For "marcato," the Norton/Grove Concise Encyclopedia offers us "marked, stressed, accented" -- yes! Except that it turns out to be a woozy-making herky-jerky, perhaps persistently hiccoughy effect.

Not that there aren't bursts of sunshiny lyricism. Notably, in -- of all places! -- the scampering Presto a capriccio there suddenly emerges at 4:30 (which is to say about 1:10 into the piece) one such burst, in the major -- oh, how lovely! But the theme is promptly repeated in loud, vociferous, hardly lyrical form (and has it slipped back into the minor? or hasn't it?), before going back to its native scampering mode.

There is, yes, one oasis of lyricism, the C major Allegretto semplice, the least quick tempo marking in the group. And I say it's a plant. For starters, the transition from the Allegro marcato is so seamless that I for one never realize we've crossed a boundary line until the new terrain marks itself. For that matter, the Allegretto semplice, the shortest of the six intermezzi, transitions almost as imperceptibly into the D minor Allegro moderato, the longest of the six.

Which brings up another point. While it's Brahms rather than Schumann who Norton/Grove tells us wrote all those "numerous independent intermezzos," but it still seems worth noting how un-independent Schumann's Op. 4 components are. You could, for example, perform the "simple" Allegretto semplice, No. 4, by itself, but without the movements it transitions from and to, haven't we lost a good deal of the point of what it is? Even with Brahms there have been pianists who were reluctant to assume that all those collections of "pieces" -- Opp. 76 and 116-19 -- are just randomly thrown together. At the very least it's a question worth asking; for Norton/Grove, the question is answered before it's even asked.

[Note: I should add that I'm working only from the original 1988 edition of The Norton/Grove Concise Encyclopedia. I see that there was a "revised and expanded" edition in 1994. Maybe it's better.]


MAYBE WE COULD HAVE CONSULTED A BETTER AUTHORITY?

This one, for example?

intermezzo  n.  1.  A brief entertainment between two acts of a play; an entr'acte.  2.  Music.  a.   A short movement separating the major sections of a lengthy composition or work.  b.  An independent instrumental composition having the character of such a movement.

-- from The American Heritage Dictionary of the English
Language, Third Edition (1992)

Well, yes, I think. While this still doesn't give us much of a prescription of any particular kind of music to expect when we hear a "19th-century-style" (i.e., non-operatic) intermezzo, I think the AHD3 definition gives us a way better feel free the thought process that might lead a composer -- like Brahms, to pick a random example -- to pull out the "intermezzo" label, and some of the ways in which such a composer might be said to be thinking "intermezzo-ishly."


MIGHT THIS BE A GOOD TIME TO LISTEN AGAIN
TO THE INTERMEZZO OF THE OP. 5 SONATA?

I say, why not? And this time we're going to start with two performances we haven't heard yet, though we've already heard one performance by the artist. First we hear Arthur Rubinstein a decade earlier than in the 1959 New York City studio performance we've been hearing, noting that he was already 62 at the time of the earlier recording. Then we hear A.R. in live performance at Carnegie Hall -- from the 10-concert marathon he undertook in the fall of 1961 -- nearly two years after the 1959 studio recording.

BRAHMS: Piano Sonata No. 3 in F minor, Op. 5:
iv. Intermezzo: Andante molto



Arthur Rubinstein, piano. RCA, recorded in RCA Studios, Hollywood, June 17, 1949

Arthur Rubinstein, piano. RCA, recorded live in Carnegie Hall, Nov. 1, 1961

Now we're going to rehear the performances we've heard before --


Arthur Rubinstein, piano. RCA, recorded at the American Academy of Arts and Letters, New York City, December 17, 1959

Clifford Curzon, piano. Decca, recorded in the Sofiensaal, Vienna, December 1962

Julius Katchen, piano. Decca, recorded in Decca Studio No. 3, West Hampstead, London, 1964

Anatol Ugorski, piano. DG, recorded in the Jesus-Christus-Kirche, Berlin, June 1995

Some things I'm listening for:

• Notice how Brahms seems to give the pianist's two hands such distinct profiles. In each of the journeys through the terrain of the piece, to what extent do we hear the two hands embarked on independent travels, which periodically bring them together, either conjoining or maybe merely overlapping?

• And speaking of that musical terrain the Intermezzo traverses, what kind(s) of sensory -- especially visual -- impressions do we get of it? Is it well-defined or in some degree shrouded? Is our traveler moving decisively or some care in attempting forward movement?

• How different a journey do the assorted performers seem to be pursuing? Even apart from the many other ways they may be differentiated, there's the simple dimension of time: How differently do we hear Clifford Curzon's and especially Anatol Ugorski's journeys?


STILL TO COME

I think we'll want to talk about some of these issues, and see how they affect our idea -- or rather Brahms's idea -- of an "intermezzo."

Meanwhile, we still need to get back to our operatic intermezzos -- revisiting Cavalleria rusticana's and taking on I Pagliacci's.


WAIT! I DID PROMISE THAT WE WOULD HEAR THOSE
INTERMEZZO INTERMEZZOS OF RICHARD STRAUSS'S

So why don't we finish up with that? We've had frequent occasion to talk about the genius that Richard Wagner brought time after time (after time after time) to the musicizing of operatic scene changes, and Strauss was a fair hand at it too. We've talked about and I think even heard some of the astounding, glorious musical scene changes he wrought in Salome, his first operatic masterpiece -- some of the most haunting as well as dramatically effective music in the opera. (Maybe we should take another listen to those?)

Intermezzo is an intriguing piece in a lot of ways, and I've thought a number of times about tackling it, but I always find that it's almost as hard to talk about as it is to perform effectively. For now, let's just enjoy these Zwischenspiele.

R. STRAUSS: Vier symphonische Zwischenspiele aus 'Intermezzo'
(Four Symphonic Interludes from 'Intermezzo'):

i. "Reisefieber und Walzerszene" ("Travel Fever and Waltz Scene")

ii. "Träumerei am Kamin" ("Dreaming by the Fireside")

iii. "Am Spieltisch" ("At the Game Table")

iv. "Fröhlicher Beschluss" ("Happy Conclusion")

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

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