Decoration Day greetings -- with "old New England"-style memories provided for us by Charles Ives

According to Ives, Decoration Day "was started as a brass band
overture, but never got very far that way" -- yet it could have!

Decoration Day was completed in 1912. Ives arranged the piece for full orchestra, and it lasts about nine to ten minutes. The piece is scored for 2 flutes with optional piccolo, 2 oboes and solo English horn, 2 clarinets and optional E-flat clarinet, 2 bassoons, 4 horns, 2 or 3 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, snare drum, bass drum with attached cymbals, high bells or celesta, low bells, and strings. Numerous instruments are called on to play offstage, including the English horn, two solo violins and a solo viola, the high and low bells, and a trumpet imitating a military bugle.

Ives was inspired to write Decoration Day after listening to his father's marching band play on Decoration Day. The marching band would march from the Soldiers' Monument at the center of Danbury to Wooster Cemetery, and there Ives would play "Taps." The band would leave often playing Reeves's Second Regiment Connecticut National Guard March.

"Decoration Day begins with an extended meditative section, mostly for strings," symbolizing morning and "the awakening of memory." Ives has the aforementioned players separated from the orchestra play as if they are alone, in what he calls "shadow lines." The music slowly unfolds, yielding an eerie mix of major and minor keys. Ives begins to incorporate his memories of Decoration Day into his piece by transforming "Marching Through Georgia" into the mournful "Tenting on the Old Camp Ground." At this point, we are back in the cemetery where his father's marching band stops, and just as Ives played "Taps" as a boy, he writes "Taps" into Decoration Day. "Taps" is coupled with "Nearer, My God, to Thee" played by the strings. Ives uses "Taps" to pave a way from the despairing section to the elated section. "On the last note of 'Taps' the music begins to surge into a drumbeat that crescendos until with a sudden cut we are in the middle of the march back to town, and the pealing melody of 'Second Regiment.'" Ives follows this jubilation with the music from the beginning of the piece.

The score of Decoration Day was published for the first time in 1989. -- from Wikipedia (footnotes available onsite)

Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Michael Tilson Thomas, cond. CBS-Sony, recorded in Medinah Temple, 1986
Arranged for concert band by Jonathan Elkus

"The President's Own" U.S. Marine Band, Col. Timothy W. Foley, cond. USMB, recorded in the Rachel M. Schlesinger Concert Hall, Northern Virginia Community College, Alexandria, VA, c2003

by Ken

Yes, for over a half-century now it's been federally enshrined as Memorial Day, and for a number of reasons a good swap-out, but even when Ives wrote his Decoration Day he understood it -- like the other three holidays he musicalized from his New England memory bank -- as a memory event. (For those to whom the very idea of a "Decoration Day" comes out of nowhere, the "decoration" involved didn't involve sprucing up the den or the patio, but decorating the graves of Civil War veterans

We've already "done" Thanksgiving and Forefathers' Day, the first-composed but eventually finally-positioned movement of Ives's Holidays Symphony, four pieces he always thought suitable for individual or collective performance. And I could swear we've done Fourth of July (though the only post I've found is one that was never published), which as the "summer" installment would take its place before the concluding "fall" one. And we still haven't touched the opening "winter" entry, Washington's Birthday. But now we've got the "spring" holiday, Decoration Day front and center.

We've got some more ground to cover -- more of Ives and Decoration Day itself, and some associated Ivesiana == including, I'm thinking, the thematically related Central Park in the Dark and The Unanswered Question.

Of course we've also got to finish up our Radu Lupu remembrance with the final installment devoted to Schumann's Humoreske, which is coming along but not quite ready yet. And another project has arisen, in the form of interstitial loose ends from last week's "We're still targeting Radu Lupu's Schumann Humoreske, but first we're going to detour through some miniatures: kiddie keyboard goodies and a whirlwind of a song." If you were here, you may recall that that "Schumann piano" post wandered through the likes of Schumann's song "Widmung," the Gilbert and Sullivan duet "I have a song to sing, O!" from The Yeomen of the Guard, and the Hugo Wolf Italian Songbook comical song "Wie lange schon," with the piano postlude depicting the violin-playing of the song narrator's heaven-sent boyfriend. We've got addenda to all three, of various sorts. Coming soon.

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We're still targeting Radu Lupu's Schumann Humoreske, but first we're going to detour through some miniatures: kiddie keyboard goodies and a whirlwind of a song

dba: "Radu Lupu (1945-2022) [4]"

Here are a couple of pretty nice performances
(and yes, one of them is Lupu's!):

Artur Schnabel, piano. EMI, recorded in Abbey Road Studio No. 3, London, June 3, 1947

Radu Lupu, piano. Decca, recorded in the Salle de Châtonneyre, Corseaux, Vaud (Switzerland), January 1993
[NOTE: We're going to be hearing more, and then still more, of the Schnabel and Lupu performances. -- Ed.]

And here are a clutch of performances by top-notch pianists -- from the SC archive -- which I find problematic (yes, even the Kempff!):

Wilhelm Kempff, piano. DG, recorded in the Beethovensaal, Hannover (Germany), February 1973

Claudio Arrau, piano. Philips, recorded in Amsterdam, March 1974

Nelson Freire, piano. Decca, recorded in Emil Berliner Studios, Berlin, Dec. 18-22, 2002

Martha Argerich, piano. DG, recorded in the Plenar-Saal of the Akademie für Wissenschaften, in the Residenz, Munich, April 1983
[NOTE: So what's the problem? Rhythmic chaos. We'll get to it in time. -- Ed.]

NOW FOR THE PROMISED "WHIRLWIND OF A SONG"

SCHUMANN: Myrthen, Op. 25: i. "Widmung" ("Dedication": "Du meine Seele, du mein Herz," "You my soul, you my heart")

You my soul, you my heart,
you my joy, o you my pain,
you my world in which I live,
my heaven you in which I soar,
o you my grave in which
I have buried my sorrows forever.

You are rest; you are peace;
you were destined for me by heaven.
That you love me makes me feel worthy;
your glance has transfigured me;
you lift me, loving, above myself --
my good spirit, my better "I"!

You my soul, you my heart,
you my joy, o you my pain,
you my world, in which I live,
my heaven you, in which I soar --
my good spirit, my better "I"!

-- German text by Friedrich Rückert

Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, baritone; Jörg Demus, piano. DG, recorded c1960

Jorma Hynninen, baritone; Ralf Gothóni, piano. Tactus Oy, recorded in Helsinki (I think!-- Ed.), c1978

Wolfgang Holzmair, baritone; Imogen Cooper, piano. Philips, recorded in the Jugendstiltheater, Vienna, Dec. 17-21, 1998

Elly Ameling, soprano; Dalton Baldwin, piano. Philips, recorded c1976
[NOTE: There are performance notes below. We'll get to them too. -- Ed.]

[AFTERTHOUGHT: I finally mustered enough mental leisure to do some clip-listening, and could I just say, this is some display of pianistic grace! Four quite different but really terrific pianists performing heroic feats in service to both Schumann's brilliant accompaniment and the needs of their gloriously diverse singing partners, none better than that one-of-a-kind piano partner Dalton Baldwin supporting the, er, least flamboyant of our singers, Elly Ameling. But JD, RG, and IC as well -- what a treat! This may be something we should talk about sometime. -- K.]

by Ken

I admit it, I'm being deferentially cautious about diving into the creative ocean that is Schumann's body of large-scale solo-piano writing. In earlier installments of this Radu Lupu remembrance series we had -- going into last week's post ("Radu Lupu (1945-2022) [3]: We are going to hear more Lupu, but I'm afraid we're sticking awhile longer with the 'opening sections' of Schumann's Humoreske") -- polished off four of the five suggested listenings offered by The Guardian's Andrew Clements ("Radu Lupu: Five key performances"), and last week we ventured partway into the remaining one, Schumann's Humoreske, Op. 20.

Now I admit as well that the Humoreske isn't representative of the largest-scale of Schumann's "large-scale solo-piano writing." It does, however, share some of the large issues, such as complexities of structure and manner of musical argumentation, multiplicities of identities and points of view, and technical challenge. And so I thought we might slip back into it via a detour through some pleasingly more manageable Schumann miniatures, starting with the beloved little piano suite Kinderszenen (Scenes of Childhood). A side benefit is that we get to hear a Lupu recording that, as suggested above, I can really get behind.

All the same, the seemingly unrelated song "Widmung" may be more directly on our path back to the "Humoreske" than its keyboard cousin, the Kinderszenen.


HOW ABOUT ANOTHER SONG TO HELP EXPLAIN THIS ONE?
(Like Jack Point & Elsie Maynard's "I have a song to sing, O!"?)

Radu Lupu (1945-2022) [3]: We are going to hear more Lupu, but I'm afraid we're sticking awhile longer with the "opening sections" of Schumann's Humoreske

SCHUMANN: Humoreske, Op. 20: opening sections --

i. Einfach (Simple)
ii. Sehr rasch und leicht (Very quick and light)
-- Noch rascher (Still quicker)
-- Erstes Tempo (First tempo)
-- Wie im Anfang (As at the beginning)
iii. Hastig (Hurried)
-- Nach und nach immer lebhafter and stärker (Bit by bit ever livelier and stronger)
-- Wie vorher (As before)

[i. 0:01; ii. 1:59, 2:53, 4:19, 5:07; iii. 5:57, 7:51, 9:09]
Radu Lupu, piano. Live performance in Amsterdam, May 29, 1983

[i. 0:01; ii. 1:59, 2:53, 3:55, 5:11; iii. 5:55, 7:38, 8:44]
Vladimir Horowitz, piano. Live performance in Constitution Hall, Washington, D.C., Apr. 22, 1979

[i. 0:01; ii. 1:31, 2:25, 3:55, 4:43; iii. 5:18, 7:24, 8:50]
Alicia de Larrocha, piano. RCA, recorded at the American Academy of Arts and Letters, New York City, Nov. 8-9 & 11, 1994

[i. 0:01; ii. 1:15, 2:03, 3:15, 4:00; iii. 4:28, 6:09, 7:30]
Imogen Cooper, piano. BBC Music, recorded live in Wigmore Hall, London, May 28, 1994

A TIP: If you continue reading, a feeling may gradually overtake you that we're never going to come back to these musical examples. Surprisingly, this is not true! At the end, there's a section suggesting kinds of things to consider in listening just to the 38-bar "Einfach" section reproduced in its entirety up top.

by Ken

Some of you may have noticed that the rendering by the fine English pianist Imogen Cooper of what I'm calling "opening sections" of Schumann's Humoreske which we heard earlier today in "post under construction" form ("Before we hear Schumann's Humoreske, might we wonder: What the heck is a 'Humoreske'?") was a Sunday Classics "encore presentation," dating back to last summer, when the news of Imogen C (born August 1949) becoming Dame Imogen occasioned a series of posts -- specifically, in the July 25 "post tease" "A special artist finds her way into our Brahms piano party."


UM, WHY (AGAIN) ARE WE LISTENING TO THE HUMORESKE?

[post under construction]Before we hear Schumann's Humoreske, might we wonder: What the heck is a "Humoreske"?

The "Einfach" ("Simple") opening of Schumann's Humoreske

SCHUMANN: Humoreske, Op. 20: opening sections

i. Einfach (Simple) [at 0:01]
ii. Sehr rasch und leicht (Very quick and light) [at 1:15]
iii. Hastig (Hurried) [at 4:28]

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

Humoreske [humoresque]. Term used by Schumann as the title for an extended piece (op. 20) and by later composers for pieces of a relaxed and genial kind.

-- Norton/Grove Concise Encyclopedia of Music, 1st ed.

humoresque  n.   Music.   A whimsical or light-spirited composition.   [German Humoreske, from Humor, Humor, from English HUMOR]

-- American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, 3rd ed.

by Ken

Readers who've been around for a while may recall that I don't turn to The Norton/Grove Concise Encyclopedia for elucidation of musical forms with great hope, and once again I think my trusty old American Heritage Dictionary (3rd ed.) does better.

Basically, what Norton/Grove has to offer is this: So Schumann wrote this Op. 20 Humoreske, by which he meant, well, whatever the heck he meant, and some later composers composed Humoresken and they seemed to think the term referred to a piece "of a relaxed and genial kind." Note that N/G doesn't exactly commit Schumann to this understanding of the term, which is just as well, because even in Imogen Cooper's performance, which is unusual in honestly honoring Schumann's "Simple" and "Very quick and light" markings for the previous sections (you get the sense that she knows quite well that in the course of the piece's 25-30-minute duration it will encompass all sorts of music that isn't remotely "simple" or "light"), by the time we reach the "Hurried" marking at 4:28 we're in musical terrain that surely isn't fairly described as "relaxed," and almost surely not as "genial" either.

AHD too wants us thinking in "light-spirited" directions, but kudos to the AHD definer for giving us "whimsical," almost always a good descriptor for the musical imaginings of Schumann, who tapped so freely and abundantly into one of music history's most fantastic and diverse imaginations, so often allowing his inspirations not only to contrast but to transform and overlap in the most, well, imaginative ways.


NOW POSTED: "Radu Lupu (1945-2022) [3]: We are going to hear more Lupu, but I'm afraid we're sticking awhile longer with the 'opening sections' of Schumann's Humoreske"

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Radu Lupu (1945-2022) [2]

Part 2: The Schubert picks from Andrew C's list
[We're not even going to finish with Schubert in this post, let alone get to Schumann, so I'm afraid we're looking at a Part 3]

SCHUBERT: Fantasy in F minor for Piano Four Hands, D. 940

Radu Lupu and Murray Perahia, four-hand piano. Sony, recorded in The Maltings, Snape (Suffolk), England, June 21 & 25-26, 1984

by Ken

As I hope I made clear in last week's Part 1, I had (and have) a heap of professional respect for the Romanian-born pianist Radu Lupu, even though he was never a favorite pianist of mine. Which makes for a tricky issue of remembrance, but I was helped as well as intrigued by a list proposed by The Guardian's Andrew Clements, "Radu Lupu: Five key performances." Andrew C made some really interesting choices, and it turned out to be an interesting path to relistening to, and maybe rethinking about, the performer.

Last time we covered two of Andrew C's choices -- the two concertos: Mozart's No. 19 in F, K. 459, and Brahms's No. 1 in D minor, Op. 15. The Mozart is a simply glorious performance, thanks in good part to the inspired contribution of David Zinman and the ardent young players of the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen. That was a great call, Andrew! The Brahms D minor he selected, a 1994 live performance from Tokyo with Wolfgang Sawallisch and the NHK Symphony, is nice enough, though I think anyone who knows this concerto, a work of deep brooding as well as considerable exaltation, may suspect that "nice" is not an epithet ideally applied to it.

A little foraging turned up an even nicer live performance, from 1996, with the Finnish Radio Symphony under Jukka-Pekka Saraste, but also a gripping, gorgeous, death-defying live performance from 1983, in which again the driving force appears to be the conductor, Klaus Tennstedt (with an orchestra he worked with so much, the London Philharmonic). In fairness, Lupu in key places rises -- in a way many other pianists wouldn't have been able to -- to the considerable challenges created by Tennstedt's relentlessly brave probing.

YOU KNOW, WE COULD HEAR THOSE PERFORMANCES AGAIN

Since in "Radu Lupu (1945-2022), part 2" we'll be hearing both sets of Schubert impromptus, maybe this'll help get us in the mood

A meditative (rather than apocalyptic) Vladimir Horowitz plays
the haunting Schubert G-flat major Impromptu, D. 899, No. 3 (in
the Grosser Saal of the Vienna Musikverein, May 1987 ) (Watch on YouTube)

by Ken

A YouTube commenter, while regretting that English isn't his first language, nevertheless conjures quite an image: "He doesn’t seem like playing the piano, seems like he’s just petting it and the piano speaks by itself as if a cat purrs when it is petted." (Except that this cat's rapturous purr can mount to the most gloriously thundering roar.)

Did I mention that Horowitz was 83 at the time of the Vienna concert video?

By now you're probably almost as tired of hearing it as I am of saying it, but it continues to drive me nuts that since the last overhaul of the Blogspot software ("Us at Google is prouda how we ain't got nobody hereabouts with the bittiest bitta brains") I don't have a way of hearing the audio clips for a post in their post-ular context until I actually post a post. So while I was fiddling with the continuation of "Radu Lupu (1945-2022)," after making this clip and imagining a possible way of incorporating, I needed to see-and-hear it, and so, as I sometimes do, I went ahead and threw it up, intending to take it right down as soon as I had seen-and-heard it.

Only -- and I put it to you -- is it possible, once this is posted, to take it down?

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Radu Lupu (1945-2022) [1]

Part 1: We've got a really terrific performance to hear [UPDATE:] two really terrific performances, actually!

GENERAL UPDATE (MONDAY EVENING): There's updating scattered through the post, now that I've been able to look at it and listen to some of the music in context. (Importantly, the clip of the Symphonic Dances from "West Side Story" is fixed, so that it now plays the whole thing, not just track 1!) -- Ed.

"Everyone tells a story differently, and that story should be told compellingly and spontaneously. If it is not compelling and convincing, it is without value."

-- Radu Lupu, quoted by the YouTube poster of a Lupu Brahms First
Piano Concerto with Jukka-Pekka Saraste (which we'll be hearing)

MOZART: Piano Concerto No. 19 in F, K. 459:
iii. Rondo: Allegro assai

Radu Lupu, piano; Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen, David Zinman, cond. Live performance in the Sophiensaal, Munich, July 12, 1990

[UPDATE: Not to worry, we're gonna hear the whole concerto -- which you can watch here. And by the way, note (especially if you look at the video) the average age of the poised German Chamber Philharmonic players playing their young hearts out! -- Ed.]

by Ken

Say, in our clip above (and the linked complete video), is this Radu Lupu being playful in the rondo finale of Mozart K. 459? Playful? Radu Lupu?

I guess we need to back up. We're supposed to be talking about Kurt Moll and Massenet's Werther -- unfinished business from last week's "We're going to be hearing Kurt Moll in his famously 'Unexpected French Role' -- so curtain up!," April 20, and " 'I don't know if I'm awake or if I'm still dreaming' (Do those poets know how to make an entrance?)," April 24. But, well, while progress is being made, that has bogged down a wee bit. And meanwhile I've found myself thinking about -- and listening to -- the Romanian-born pianist Radu Lupu, who died April 17 at 76.

I hadn't taken much notice of Lupu's passing. While I certainly have no lack of respect for a musician of his professional skills and career accomplishments, he wasn't exactly a favorite pianist of mine. I don't think he would crack my Top 50 list -- even a Top 50 list of pianists I've actually heard in performance. Actually, the live performances of his I recall attending were kind of, um (how to put this delicately?), stultifying. After the last of those, I kind of tended to pay less close attention to his career.

At some point, quite possibly a point when I meant to be plowing forward with matters relating to Werther and Kurt Moll, I happened upon a piece by The Guardian's Andrew Clements, "Radu Lupu: Five key performances," which begins:

We have the Leeds Piano Competition to thank for first showcasing the unique poetry of Radu Lupu’s playing: the young Romanian pianist won first prize there in 1969. That success launched his international career, but as the years went by he became a more and more reticent performer, both in the concert hall and on disc. Yet every rare opportunity to hear him was a reminder of just how special a pianist he was, in a repertory that extended from Mozart and Beethoven to Bartók and Janáček, and who was quite peerless in Schubert, Schumann and Brahms. Here are just a few examples of his art.

Ooh, there's that word: "poetry." Somehow a legend came into being that Lupu was a "poetic" performer. Maybe that made me curious to see which performances Andrew C was commending to Guardian readers. Which made me curiouser, because I was unfamiliar with most of the performances, and although I'm still in the midst of processing it all, I can say I'm enjoying taking a new look at, or listen to, Lupu. There's an abundance of interesting music-making here, and I may even be getting some sense of why performances that don't hold great interest for me may please other listeners.

The project unquestionably got off to a great start, because --

AT THE TOP OF ANDREW C'S LIST IS MOZART K. 459!