Pre-post: Can we do a better job assembling the three movements of this symphony than, you know, the guy who composed them?

LET'S PUT TOGETHER OUR OWN SYMPHONY!
(By juggling the movements of this 1943 broadcast performance)

(1)
Here's the thing in "traditional" fast-slow-fast configuration:
i. Allegro  || ii.  Largo [at 6:38]  ||  iii. Presto [at 28:06]


(2)
Here, the short quick movements lead up to the big slow one:
i. Allegro  ||  ii. Presto [at 6:38]  ||  iii. Largo [at 14:02]


(3)
Or, start with the giant movement, then tack on the 'quickies':
i. Largo  ||  ii. Allegro [at 21:32]  ||  iii. Presto [at 28:10]


by Ken

Haven't we all had the itch at some time to rejigger some or all of the movements of some symphony or other? Thinking, you know, that we can do a better assembly job than the person whose only authority was having composed the damned things?

This is basically what I've played at doing above, with a symphony that has the strangest structure of any I can think of from the pen of what I'm going to call a "serious symphonist," as anyone who approaches the piece for the first time is bound to notice quickly: three movements, with a slow movement that is considerably longer than the two fast movements put together. Many readers will recognize this symphony. For those who don't, I should disclose at the outset that in this "pre-post" I'm not going to disclose the identity of either the composer or the work -- a little experiment I'm hoping will be more interesting, even fun, for those who don't recognize the symphony. (For anyone who feels cheated, I would suggest that by pre-post's end, enough information will have been disclosed to enable online searchers to track the piece down in a minute or two.


BY CLICKING THROUGH TO THE PRE-POST
JUMP, THE READER WILL BE ABLE TO:

• to hear the 1943 broadcast performance in the composer's intended sequence (which may or may not be one of our "samples," which don't, after all, cover all the possibile combinations), with full performer credits;

• to hear another, in fact, another performance of the symphony by the same conductor -- a commerical recording made a year and a half later, with the orchestra of which he was music director in those years;

• to hear a couple of other complete performances, both earlier and later, with roots going back to the work's premiere several years before the 1943 broadcast;

• to reflect a bit on the shape of the career of one of the 20th century's best-remembered conductors;

• to hear some other partial performances of the symphony, in which we begin to focus on it most conspicuously remarkable component, prompting thoughts on the nature and effect of its peculiarities;

• to get an idea of where we're going next. (One place I can tell you we'll be going is to a sort of re-creation of at least the program of that 1943 NY Phil concert broadcast.


OUR MYSTERY CONDUCTOR IS --

Fritz Reiner (1888-1963), c1945, when he would have been seven years
into his tenure as music director of the Pittsburgh Symphony (1938-48)

"In 1938, when he became conductor of the Pittsburgh Symphony, Fritz Reiner at age 50 was not a well-known conductor. A search indicates he was not referred to at all in well-known publications, either magazines or newspapers. . . .

"Reiner had been principal conductor of the Cincinnati Symphony for eleven seasons, from 1922-1933. He had taught conducting at the renowned Curtis Institute for 5 years in the mid-1930s with many famous students, including Leonard Bernstein. While at Curtis, Reiner was also conducting the Philadelphia opera season, and guest conducting in New York, Philadelphia and elsewhere. . . . Press reviews and record reviews hardly mentioned Fritz Reiner before about 1945 or 1946. This changed rapidly [with] the series of Reiner's great recordings with the Pittsburgh Symphony and even more dramatically with his famous Chicago Symphony recordings of the 1950s."

-- from "The Importance of Recordings to the Career of Fritz Reiner," the introduction to the invaluable Reiner annex of Larry Huffman's invaluable Leopold Stokowski Legacy website

LET'S HEAR THE TWO REINER PERFORMANCES,
IN THE SEQUENCE THE COMPOSER INTENDED

Which is, of course, our hypothetical version (3): starting with the enormous slow movement, with the two quick movements tacked on.

i. Largo
ii. Allegro
iii. Presto


[ii. at 21:32; iii. at 28:10] New York Philharmonic, Fritz Reiner, cond. Live performance from Carnegie Hall, Aug. 15, 1943


[ii. at 18:27; iii. at 24:47] Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, Fritz Reiner, cond. Columbia, recorded in the Syria Mosque, Pittsburgh, Mar. 26, 1945

Here's a later account by the team that had premiered the
symphony on Nov. 21, 1939, several years before the NY broadcast:


[on separate tracks: i. 16:10; ii. 5:34; iii. 6:49] Leningrad Philharmonic Orchestra, Yevgeny Mravinsky, cond. Praga, recorded live in the Rudolfinum, Prague, May 21, 1955

But the work's first recording had taken place in the U.S.!,
Also several years before the NY performance -- in Philadelphia:


[ii. at 18:53; iii. at 25:29] Philadelphia Orchestra, Leopold Stokowski, cond. Victor, recorded in the Academy of Music, Dec. 8, 1940 (digital transfer by Bob Varney)


WE HAVE TWO HUGE ISSUES TO DEAL WITH:
(1) The enormous scale and emotional range of the immense Largo
(2) Its seemingly total disconnect from the other movements

In case it isn't obvious, I was joking about any possible uncertainty on the composer's part about the order of the symphony's movement. Whatever the process by which he arrived at this particular oddball design for the piece, the design he came up with is the design he meant it to have. We're going to need to spend more time with these three movements, especially (of course) the Largo. And for better or worse, it's going to force us into the questions I've been ducking as they apply to Schubert's enormous Gastein Piano Sonata, namely what is it we're listening for when we approach pieces like these? Or rather when they approach us. (See, most recently, "Do we dare let Schubert's Gastein Sonata nudge us into the question of what we're looking for in music?" [October 18].) And the first thing to say is that I'm not sure either the Reiner or -- somewhat surprisingly, to me -- Mravinsky performances really deal with these issues.

The last thing I would do is prescribe either to the performers or to SC readers what or how this or any other music is supposed to make us feel. But in a piece of such great size and complexity, of such massive tension, sometimes held -- barely -- in check and sometimes just plain erupting, sometimes seeming so bleak that it's physically painful and at other times offering measurs of seeming relief, the conductor certainly has to make sure that whatever struggle is playing out is doing so at a level of full expression and commitment. Among the performances we've heard so far, isn't it Leopold Stokowski, not a conductor we think of as a great musical thinker, the one whose performance seems most fully engaged?

"Complexity>" you may argue. "Why, some of this movement sounds simple to the point of simple-mindedness." Like the opening, you mean? That oddly inscrutable not terriblly theme-y main theme sounded in unison by the fairly bizarre combination, playing in unison, of English horn, pairs of clarinets and bassoons, and the violas and cellos? A combination pretty well guaranteed to sound almost grotesque, challenging the conductor to really think about how each of these parts is meant to sound, how these instruments should be speaking to us, carrying those intimations of bleakness, or maybe otherworldliness. And the thing has to move. I don't mean move fast -- a movement marked "largo," after all, seems surely meant to move gradually -- and yet move inexorably, movement that comes from within the piece, driven by whatever the heck it is that's driving it. And if I told you, in addition, that the score parts are littered with forms of the instruction "espressivo," "expressive"? "Expressive"? Huh? Expressive of what?

I'm not sure that Stoky is really plumbing the depths here. But one thing you'll often notice in Stokowski performances is a felt need to do something, an apprehension about allowing the music to just lie there, making its way without some kind of direction. Sometimes the musical day can be carried, or at least carried forward, just by doing something rather than slipping into not doing much of anything.

Awhile back we spent some time pondering the Mahler Fourth Symphony ("Part 2a: As we backtrack from Mahler 5 to the Wunderhorn era, the Berlin Phil reemerges playing Mahler 4 as chamber music" [May 5, 2020]). I noted that where for most people Mahler 4 seems, along with Mahler 1, an "easy" Mahler symphony, for me it never has been. For all its easygoingness, it seems to be hiding as much as if not more than it's revealing. And hiding there in plain sight, in a symphony that typically runs maybe 55 minutes, give or take, is a full-blown adagio running, say, 20-25 minutes. Oh, it's not marked "adagio," exactly; the movement marking is "Ruhevoll [Peaceful] (Poco adagio)." But for all that it is indeed, in its way, "peaceful," it's also, like I said, a full-blown adagio, which for me raises all kinds of questions about the way the symphony's four movements relate to each other, not to mention to a movement I can't help feeling is missing.

Well, Shostakovich made no attempt to hide his Largo here. He runs us right into the blessed thing, and it sure doesn't read to me as any kind of "peaceful." And in a performance that really comes to grips with it . . . .

Wait! Before I finish that thought, I've got a performance of the Largo that I think is worth interjecting here.

i. Largo


WDR (West German Radio) Symphony Orchestra (Cologne), Rudolf Barshai, cond. Brilliant Classics, recorded in the Philharmonie, Cologne, Oct. 14, 17-20, 1995

Now that's a performance I think is coming to grips with the Largo.  (We'll be coming back to it.) So, as I was saying, after a performance like that, how much weirder is it to send us smack dab into a perky Allegro -- and then, after that has run its seemingly carefree course, into the positively giddy, maybe outright goofy Presto? Which, you may recall (we have heard it), brings us to this conclusion:

iii. end of the Presto


WDR (West German Radio) Symphony Orchestra (Cologne), Rudolf Barshai, cond. Brilliant Classics, recorded in the Philharmonie, Cologne, Oct. 14, 17-20, 1995


COMING SOON -- THE 1943 NY PHIL CONCERT RECONSTITUED

This is really pretty much done -- it just seemed like a bit too much, not to mention too much of a digression -- to tack on to today's post. So tomorrow, maybe, or maybe even later today.


AND THEN --

We still have the work described above on our Largo-Allegro-Presto symphony, and may even get it back to our issues with the Schubert Gastein Sonata.

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