FIRST POSTING -- NOT PLANNED, THEY JUST KINDA HAPPENED
We note the obvious trend going from performance A to F, right? (With just an interesting variant in the B-C sequence)
[UPDATE NOTE: If you just want to get your toes wet to start, focus just on the Andante con moto section, which ranges -- rather amazingly! -- from roughly 1:25 to 2:40 in our specimens. (This was my original plan anyway for first presentation of these clips, rather than going to the huge hassle, not to mention blog-loading drain, of adding shorter new clips.) Btw, since that first score page took us so close to the end of the Andante non troppo, I've added another chunk to get us there and into the Allegro non troppo.]
[A]
[Allegro moderato at 1:25] Full symphony orchestra, March 1957
[B]
[Allegro moderato at 1:56] Reduced-size orchestra, December 1986
[C]
[Allegro moderato at 1:53] Chamber orchestra, February 1986
[D]
[Allegro moderato at 2:09] Full symphony orchestra, 1988-89
[E]
[Allegro moderato at 2:26] Reduced-size orchestra, June 1958
[F]
[Allegro moderato at 2:42] Full symphony orchestra, October 1970
by Ken
Okay, so maybe a minor derailment here. I was aiming for a post that would in some way tie up our loose ends and dangling threads regarding musical larks, serenades, and the tragic case of Schubert, and also a separate post (or maybe two) to wrap up our Ives explorations (it's looking likelier that we're going to culminate with Ives's most ambitious creations: the Concord Sonata and the Fourth Symphony, which -- even just whizzing through -- are both sizable work units). And this is still the hope. It's just that each of these topics, which we'd all dearly love to be done with, kept throwing up obstacles that sent me in as much of a sideways as a forward direction.
Meanwhile, I've got a good start on another project, which without any such specific intention will actually continue one of the above-enumerated threads, and while the bulk of that project is still in the drawing-board stage, there's enough ready -- or at least there was enough ready once I added some music -- to allow what might have been a mere teaser to stand pretty well on its own.
YOU LIKELY RECOGNIZED THE MUSIC WE JUST HEARD
It's from a pretty familiar piece, which we're going to be looking at in some ways I haven't looked at it before. Oh, everything and everyone will be identified in the jump, but for now I'd like to get us focusing on the music, as represented in this fascinating assortment of performances, drawn just from what I happened to have at hand in digital form. There are considerable differences in size of performing forces, in temperament, in modes of articulation, in amounts and kinds of energy, and of course -- most obviously -- in pacing. Basically, the performances are presented from fastest to slowest, and in general this holds true for both the slower introduction (marked, you'll note, Andante non troppo -- which is to say not too slow) and the main body of the movement (marked Allegro moderato -- meaning not too fast).
The original plan for this "blind" introduction was to have us focused on the introductory Andante non troppo, with a note that rather than go to the hassle and confusion of making a separate set of shorter clips, I would point out that for present purposes listeners didn't need to go much beyond the transition into the Allegro moderato. But now I don't think it's too soon to be noticing the widely different choices our performances make in both sections as well as the way the two sections relate to each other.
TIME FOR ENCORE PERFORMANCES (WITH FULL CREDITS)
Now that everyone is identified, are there surprises? If you're at least resampling some or all of the performances, is there any change in the way any of them are registering for you? Are there you performances you like better -- or less well?
TCHAIKOVSKY: Serenade for Strings in C, Op. 48:
i. Pezzo in forma di sonatina: [Piece in the form of a sonatina]:
Andante non troppo; Allegro moderato
[A]
[Allegro moderato at 1:25] Boston Symphony Orchestra, Charles Munch, cond. RCA, recorded in Symphony Hall, Mar. 13, 1957
[B]
[Allegro moderato at 1:56] Orpheus Chamber Orchestra. DG, recorded in the Performing Arts Center of the State University of New York at Purchase, December 1986
[C]
[Allegro moderato at 1:53] New York City Ballet Orchestra, Robert Irving, cond. Nonesuch, recorded in the Performing Arts Center of the State University of New York at Purchase, February 1986
[D]
[Allegro moderato at 2:09] Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra, Andrew Litton, cond. Virgin Classics, recorded in Wessex Hall, Poole Arts Centre, Dorset, England, released 1989
[E]
[Allegro moderato at 2:26] Philharmonia Hungarica, Antal Dorati, cond. Mercury, recorded in the Grosse Saal of the Vienna Konzerthaus, June 5, 1958
[F]
[Allegro moderato at 2:42] New York Philharmonic, Leonard Bernstein, cond. Columbia-CBS-Sony, recorded in Philharmonic Hall, Oct. 22, 1970
Of course so far we're hearing just the first of the Serenade's four movements, but it's the longest of the four, and it incorporates a wide enough assortment of ways of moving forward musically to give us a surprisingly reasonable idea of what the various performers' choices will be like in the later movements as well. It turns out, for example, that Charles Munch's apparent concern that we all get home at a reasonable hour carries through his Serenade.
I'm assuming that that isn't what Maestro Munch had in mind. And that he didn't just not have much use for the piece. What he did have in mind I can't guess. I do know that he could have expected the special sound of the Boston Symphony, so resonant yet intimate, to make its effect, as recorded in the special acoustics, so rich and alive without being swimmy, of Symphony Hall. All that said, the general character of the performance isn't what I expected. Consider that when I peeked in the SC Archive and (unsurprisingly) found lots of Munch, I noticed that we've in fact heard Tchaikovsky from -- specifically, in a movement that might seem highly pertinent to the Serenade:
I had a surprise of sort of the opposite sort with Antal Dorati's "Pezzo in forma di sonatina." Dorati is a conductor I've certainly always respected, but, to the best of my recollection not having heard his Serenade before (it was added as a generous bonus for the CD issue of his glorious LSO Nutcracker), I was surprised by his huge, brave choices, and I have to say I love this performance. Dorati is hearing all kinds of things in a score for which its composer had special affection.
I was surprised too by the breadth of Leonard Bernstein's Serenade, until I took note of the recording date: By 1970 he really was no longer the impetuous dramatizer of his career-making younger years with the New York Philharmonic, from which he had already stepped down as music director the previous year, with his career focusing increasingly on Europe -- he played his part in the celebrations of the Beethoven bicentenary in Vienna, where he was developing something like intimacy with the Philharmonic - and that year's Fidelio would be his third production at the Staatsoper. Despite the similarities in pacing, it's a very different performance from Dorati's, not so much exuberant as accomplished and wise.
(WATCH OUT, THERE'S A WHOLE NEW UPDATED
SECTION BARGING IN IN THIS NEXT GRAF!)
Again despite outward similarities Orpheus's is a very different performance but does have a lot in common with the performance by longtime New York City Ballet music director Robert Irving and the NYCB Orchestra, from the two-LP Balanchine Album Nonesuch recorded them in performing core NYCB scores, which reminds us that in musical matters Irving answered to a higher authority, the aforementioned George Balanchine, to whom there may never have been a more significant score than the Tchaikovsky Serenade for Strings, having served as the founding inspiration for the ballet he called Serenade, which he spent decades creating and re-creating from the time he came to the U.S., in 1934. And returning to the NYCB Orchestra recording, and hearing it alongside all our others, the NYCB seems to be inhabiting a different sound world, one of burnished sonic solidity and fluidity rather than tonal brilliance.
Perhaps this is the place to mention that in my current Serenade for Strings listening I've come from the extraordinary book, or more accurately four or five books in one, Serenade: A Balanchine Story, by impassioned (to put it mildly) former NYCB -- and Serenade in particular -- dancer-turned-writer Toni Bentley. She's keenly aware of the centrality of the music to most of the stories she's telling (of her own life as a dancer, and in particular a dancer in Serenade, of Balanchine and the creation and constant re-creation of the ballet Serenade, of the history of ballet, of aspiring and then working dancers' relation to the world of ballet (and specifically of Balanchine's ballet), and probably a few other stories I'm forgetting at the moment.
All of the people who've ever been involved in performing Serenade have had a much more intensive, encompassing relationship to Tchaikovsky's score than I've had as a mere enjoyer of it, and the way they look at, listen to, and think about the score is so different from mine that I couldn't listen to a note of the music while I was reading the book. I'm still trying to process it, now at least with the actual music piping into my head. It's, um, strange. The dance world is so totally not my world, or almost-totally, since we do have a body of music in common (Toni B is really good on Mr. B's reverence for Tchaikovsky), but I wonder if we relate to it in at all the same way. The book is so extraordinarily well done that it's given me vast quantities of vastly different perspectives to, you know, process. It's, you know, interesting.
A QUICK TOUR OF THE REST OF THE SERENADE
At this point I thought we might just listen our way through the remainder of the piece, and for this purpose I've dug up some genuinely Russian performances (absent from our A-to-F roster, owing to my relying simply on perfromances I had on hand).
ii. Valse: Moderato (Tempo di valse)
iii. Élégie: Larghetto elegiaco
iv. Finale: Tema russo: Andante; Allegro con spirito
[ii. at 0:01; iii. at 3:46; iv. at 12:26] Leningrad Philharmonic Orchestra, Yevgeny Mravinsky, cond. Melodiya, recorded Mar. 17, 1947
[UPDATE NOTE: If you just want to get your toes wet to start, focus just on the Andante con moto section, which ranges -- rather amazingly! -- from roughly 1:25 to 2:40 in our specimens. (This was my original plan anyway for first presentation of these clips, rather than going to the huge hassle, not to mention blog-loading drain, of adding shorter new clips.) Btw, since that first score page took us so close to the end of the Andante non troppo, I've added another chunk to get us there and into the Allegro non troppo.]
[Allegro moderato at 1:25] Full symphony orchestra, March 1957
[B]
[Allegro moderato at 1:56] Reduced-size orchestra, December 1986
[C]
[Allegro moderato at 1:53] Chamber orchestra, February 1986
[D]
[Allegro moderato at 2:09] Full symphony orchestra, 1988-89
[E]
[Allegro moderato at 2:26] Reduced-size orchestra, June 1958
[F]
[Allegro moderato at 2:42] Full symphony orchestra, October 1970
by Ken
Okay, so maybe a minor derailment here. I was aiming for a post that would in some way tie up our loose ends and dangling threads regarding musical larks, serenades, and the tragic case of Schubert, and also a separate post (or maybe two) to wrap up our Ives explorations (it's looking likelier that we're going to culminate with Ives's most ambitious creations: the Concord Sonata and the Fourth Symphony, which -- even just whizzing through -- are both sizable work units). And this is still the hope. It's just that each of these topics, which we'd all dearly love to be done with, kept throwing up obstacles that sent me in as much of a sideways as a forward direction.
Meanwhile, I've got a good start on another project, which without any such specific intention will actually continue one of the above-enumerated threads, and while the bulk of that project is still in the drawing-board stage, there's enough ready -- or at least there was enough ready once I added some music -- to allow what might have been a mere teaser to stand pretty well on its own.
YOU LIKELY RECOGNIZED THE MUSIC WE JUST HEARD
It's from a pretty familiar piece, which we're going to be looking at in some ways I haven't looked at it before. Oh, everything and everyone will be identified in the jump, but for now I'd like to get us focusing on the music, as represented in this fascinating assortment of performances, drawn just from what I happened to have at hand in digital form. There are considerable differences in size of performing forces, in temperament, in modes of articulation, in amounts and kinds of energy, and of course -- most obviously -- in pacing. Basically, the performances are presented from fastest to slowest, and in general this holds true for both the slower introduction (marked, you'll note, Andante non troppo -- which is to say not too slow) and the main body of the movement (marked Allegro moderato -- meaning not too fast).
The original plan for this "blind" introduction was to have us focused on the introductory Andante non troppo, with a note that rather than go to the hassle and confusion of making a separate set of shorter clips, I would point out that for present purposes listeners didn't need to go much beyond the transition into the Allegro moderato. But now I don't think it's too soon to be noticing the widely different choices our performances make in both sections as well as the way the two sections relate to each other.
TIME FOR ENCORE PERFORMANCES (WITH FULL CREDITS)
Now that everyone is identified, are there surprises? If you're at least resampling some or all of the performances, is there any change in the way any of them are registering for you? Are there you performances you like better -- or less well?
TCHAIKOVSKY: Serenade for Strings in C, Op. 48:
i. Pezzo in forma di sonatina: [Piece in the form of a sonatina]:
Andante non troppo; Allegro moderato
[A]
[Allegro moderato at 1:25] Boston Symphony Orchestra, Charles Munch, cond. RCA, recorded in Symphony Hall, Mar. 13, 1957
[B]
[Allegro moderato at 1:56] Orpheus Chamber Orchestra. DG, recorded in the Performing Arts Center of the State University of New York at Purchase, December 1986
[C]
[Allegro moderato at 1:53] New York City Ballet Orchestra, Robert Irving, cond. Nonesuch, recorded in the Performing Arts Center of the State University of New York at Purchase, February 1986
[D]
[Allegro moderato at 2:09] Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra, Andrew Litton, cond. Virgin Classics, recorded in Wessex Hall, Poole Arts Centre, Dorset, England, released 1989
[E]
[Allegro moderato at 2:26] Philharmonia Hungarica, Antal Dorati, cond. Mercury, recorded in the Grosse Saal of the Vienna Konzerthaus, June 5, 1958
[F]
[Allegro moderato at 2:42] New York Philharmonic, Leonard Bernstein, cond. Columbia-CBS-Sony, recorded in Philharmonic Hall, Oct. 22, 1970
Of course so far we're hearing just the first of the Serenade's four movements, but it's the longest of the four, and it incorporates a wide enough assortment of ways of moving forward musically to give us a surprisingly reasonable idea of what the various performers' choices will be like in the later movements as well. It turns out, for example, that Charles Munch's apparent concern that we all get home at a reasonable hour carries through his Serenade.
TCHAIKOVSKY: Symphony No. 4 in F minor, Op. 36:It was oboe-playing we were concerned with -- under the influence of the Carnegie Hall master classes offered by the Berlin Philharmonic's wizard of the instrument, Albrecht Mayer ("'In modo di canzone': If it's singing we aim to talk about, how come we're listening to 'Le Tombeau de Couperin'? (Part 1)," June 2018) -- when we first heard this performance of the slow movement of the Tchaikovsky Fourth Symphony, so charmingly specified to be performed "in the mode of song." And I think we can agree that the angelic oboe-playing of Ralph Gomberg, BSO principal from 1950 to 1987, is pretty spectacular. But then, the whole performance is pretty gorgeous, isn't it?
ii. Andantino in modo di canzone
Boston Symphony Orchestra, Charles Munch, cond. RCA, recorded in Symphony Hall, Nov. 7, 1955
I was surprised too by the breadth of Leonard Bernstein's Serenade, until I took note of the recording date: By 1970 he really was no longer the impetuous dramatizer of his career-making younger years with the New York Philharmonic, from which he had already stepped down as music director the previous year, with his career focusing increasingly on Europe -- he played his part in the celebrations of the Beethoven bicentenary in Vienna, where he was developing something like intimacy with the Philharmonic - and that year's Fidelio would be his third production at the Staatsoper. Despite the similarities in pacing, it's a very different performance from Dorati's, not so much exuberant as accomplished and wise.
ONE FURTHER NOTE ON DORATI vs. LENNY, because it's a significant issue with all performances, namely articulation, which I've mentioned but haven't really talked about. In the Andante non troppo, with all those wonderful sweeping-stroke chords one after another, Tchaikovsky is at pains to note in all the parts, twice, "marcatissimo," which is to say extremely, maximally "marcato," literally "marked," or accented. Every conductor has to make choices here -- and the conductorless Orpheus players had to make collective choices between the most highly "marked" articulation and, at the other end of articulation spectrum, smooth, linking legato.As to the matter of the appropriate size of the string orchestra for the Serenade, I don't think there's a "right" answer, and I for one am happy to hear so many different decisions in the matter. Tchaikovsky himself put himself on the record favoring a full complement of orchestral strings, but the cohesion and animation of the conductorless Orpheus's recording shows what an effect a chamber orchestra can make in this music.
Antal, we can hear, is at pains to achieve marcatissimo-ness; Lenny, we can hear, um, is not; we might almost call his choice "legatissimo." And especially at his, shall we say, regal pace, it's sure noticeable. It's quite beautiful, I think -- after all, the NY Phil strings weren't often asked to show off this kind of string-playing guts. And maybe the only answer we need is: "It works!" It could be that if the composer got to hear it, he'd say, "Hmm, I like!" But we'll never know. I just thought the point should be on the table for, er, contemplation.
(WATCH OUT, THERE'S A WHOLE NEW UPDATED
SECTION BARGING IN IN THIS NEXT GRAF!)
All of the people who've ever been involved in performing Serenade have had a much more intensive, encompassing relationship to Tchaikovsky's score than I've had as a mere enjoyer of it, and the way they look at, listen to, and think about the score is so different from mine that I couldn't listen to a note of the music while I was reading the book. I'm still trying to process it, now at least with the actual music piping into my head. It's, um, strange. The dance world is so totally not my world, or almost-totally, since we do have a body of music in common (Toni B is really good on Mr. B's reverence for Tchaikovsky), but I wonder if we relate to it in at all the same way. The book is so extraordinarily well done that it's given me vast quantities of vastly different perspectives to, you know, process. It's, you know, interesting.
A QUICK TOUR OF THE REST OF THE SERENADE
At this point I thought we might just listen our way through the remainder of the piece, and for this purpose I've dug up some genuinely Russian performances (absent from our A-to-F roster, owing to my relying simply on perfromances I had on hand).
FOR BACKGROUND ON TCHAIKOVKSY'S SERENADE --TCHAIKOVSKY: Serenade for Strings in C, Op. 48:
Maybe I can find something better, or write something, but for now you might try the modest Wikipedia article, or a functional program note by the late Michael Steinberg for the San Francisco Symphony, or a useful descriptive note by Anthony Suter for the Redlands Symphony.
ii. Valse: Moderato (Tempo di valse)
iii. Élégie: Larghetto elegiaco
iv. Finale: Tema russo: Andante; Allegro con spirito
The legendary Yevgeny Mravinsky (1903-1988)
Seen here much later than 1947, but hey, ya work with what ya got.
Seen here much later than 1947, but hey, ya work with what ya got.
[ii. at 0:01; iii. at 3:46; iv. at 12:26] Leningrad Philharmonic Orchestra, Yevgeny Mravinsky, cond. Melodiya, recorded Mar. 17, 1947
And the remarkable Kirill Kondrashin (1914-1981)
Forced to defect in 1978, he'd have a (too brief) busy career in the West.
Forced to defect in 1978, he'd have a (too brief) busy career in the West.
[ii. at 0:01; iii. at 3:54; iv. at 14:03] Moscow Philharmonic Orchestra, Kirill Kondrashin, cond. Melodiya, recorded 1959
NOW ONE MORE PERFORMANCE, WITH TWO CHANGES
(1) This time, let's hear the whole thing, all four movements.
And (2), we're going to add a version with the 3rd and 4th movements transposed.
Now I know of only one performance that actually makes this transposition, and for a variety of reasons that's not the one we're going to hear. Instead, we're going to wreak the transposition on a performance that didn't see us coming. So, to be clear, the transposition has nothing to do with the performers. I've done it with my own two hands.
It sounds kind of crazy, I know, but I want to do it for reasons I'll explain eventually. Some of you, in fact, having a particular familiarity with the Tchaikovsky Serenade for Strings, will already understand what's in my head; you'll also have some idea of where we're heading in our exploration of the piece. What I want to try to see, or rather hear, is what happens if you perform this crazy piece of musical surgery.
Since it's possible in this case, with a modest outlay of additional effort, to sort of have our cake and eat it, that's what we're going to do. We're going to hear two versions of this performance that didn't see us coming. After hearing a version that's perfectly "straight," we'll hear a second version of the performance with the dirty transposing deed done. This second time through I'm also omitting the spoken introduction by the conductor included in the first version, in which he seems to be trying to say something about using two orchestras in the performance. Especially since he doesn't seem to have much to say on the subject, I didn't think we needed to hear it again, or any other pre-performance tuning and applause and so on. For this second version I've also lopped off the applause at the end.
TCHAIKOVSKY: Serenade for Strings in C, Op. 48:
i. Pezzo in forma di sonatina: Andante non troppo; Allegro moderato
ii. Valse: Moderato (Tempo di valse)
iii. Élégie: Larghetto elegiaco
iv. Finale: Tema russo: Andante; Allegro con spirito
First let's hear it the composer's (and conductor's) way --
[spoken introduction at 0:01; i. at 3:25; ii. at 14:07; iii. at 18:55; iv. at 29:44]
Now let's go crazy, swapping the 3rd and 4th movements --
[i. at 0:01; ii. at 10:42; iv. at 15:13; iii. at 23:15]
Mariinsky Theater Orchestra and NHK Symphony Orchestra, Valery Gergiev, cond. Live performance from the Tokyo International Forum, Nov. 24, 2002
ADDED END NOTE: So maybe, I'm thinking, the transposition isn't so utterly crazy. It's not the piece Tchaikovsky imagined -- isn't it clear at the end of the actual Finale (which is what he called the "Tema russo") that he's doing everything he knows how to end the piece? -- and yet, I think yes, the piece could play this way. Isn't this roughly the form in which he eventually composed the Pathétique Symphony? (Although he clearly wasn't there yet. When he was there, the music would make sure we knew it.)
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