On the way to our archival array of performances by conductor Josef Krips, we stall at a piece that cries out for more considered attention

Stanley Drucker, clarinet; New York Philharmonic, Zubin Mehta, cond. Sony, recorded in Avery Fisher Hall, May 23-28, 1991

by Ken

In fairness, we should probably hear a bit more than this, and even though we're not going to get to a proper version of the post with which I had hoped to follow up last week's "Josef Krips's Requiem," we are going to hear a proper rendering -- two, in fact -- of the source of this haunting theme. For now, though, I was delighted, in working on that still-in=progress post, to find an occasion for another Stanley Drucker "moment" -- after all, we do still have important unfinished business to finish in our remembrance of Stanley D.

And this theme, originally sounded first by the solo clarinet and then taken up by the soprano as the start of the meltingly beautiful solo we're about to hear, takes me back to the summer of 1974, with the late Michael Steinberg -- in his pre-San Francisco days, when he was still the much-admired music critic of the Boston Globe, when Michael played it on the piano, in a small meeting space on the grounds of the Tanglewood Festival, for attendees of that year's annual meeting of the Music Critics Association. It was my first MCA meeting, and my first-ever (and so far still only) visit to Tanglewood, and there was Michael at the piano, so overcome wrought that you wondered if would be able to get through it.


SO LET'S HEAR OUR THEME AS IT WAS WRITTEN

Nun sag' ich dir zum ersten Mal, 'König Volmer, ich liebe dich.'
Nun küss ich dich zum ersten Mal, und schlinge den Arm um dich.
   (Now I say to you for the first time, 'King Volmer, I love you.'
   Now I kiss you for the first time, and fling my arms around you.)

Gundula Janowitz, soprano; Vienna Symphony Orchestra, Josef Krips, cond. Live performance from the Vienna Festival, Vienna Konzerthaus, June 10, 1969

Jessye Norman, soprano; Harold Wright, clarinet; Boston Symphony Orchestra, Seiji Ozawa, cond. Philips, recorded live in Symphony Hall, April 1979
[NOTE: Of course we're hearing another legend of American clarinettery here: the BSO's Harold "Buddy" Wright]

Whenever I hear or even think about this, I still see and hear Michael playing it on the piano that day at Tanglewood. Of course I understand why he was so overcome. If we were to undertake a mission as silly as trying to list the Most Beautiful Pieces of Music Ever Written, the excerpt would have to hold a place all the way to the end. I re-encountered it in the process of extracting, as promised last week, performances by the wonderful conductor Josef Krips from the SC Archive, which is teeming with them, including a number of excerpts from the work our clip comes from.


OF COURSE WE SHOULD HEAR THE WHOLE SOLO

Josef Krips's Requiem

INTERIM UPDATE (Monday afternoon): I've begun raiding the SC Archive for the promised Krips music files, which should have been just a copy-and-paste job, in itself way more laborious and persnickety than it sounds (I can't help rethinking things), and totally stalled when I came to Schoenberg's Gurre-Lieder. I've wound up not just remaking the three existing clips from Part I -- to ensure contextually fuller lead-ins and lead-outs (in some cases overlapping them), and while I was at it resampling them at a higher rate -- but in addition making a new and larger clip: the climax of Part I, with Christa Ludwig singing the transfixing "Song of the Wood-Dove."

That's still a work in progress, but I have added some music: (a) the start of the Meistersinger performance from which we were already hearing the start of Act III, and also the scene change in Act III, and (b) our first Mozart: as full-throated and open-hearted a performance as I've heard of the Marriage of Figaro Overture. -- Ken

Maestro Krips (1902-1974)

MOZART: Requiem, K. 626:
i. Introitus: Requiem aeternam


Lucia Popp, soprano; Margaret Lilowa, mezzo-soprano; Anton Dermota, tenor; Walter Berry, bass-baritone; Vienna Singverein, Vienna Philharmonic, Josef Krips, cond. Live perforamnce from the Musikverein, Dec. 13, 1973
[Note: FWIW, this isn't the CRQ edition.]

by Ken

Sorry about the long silence. But even as I was reconciling myself to yet another week's failure to bring to completion my latest brainstorm for a publishable post, I clicked through a link to a "New release from CRQ Editions," which describes itself as "a specialist label devoted to the re-release of unusual out-of-copyright recordings which are of interest to collectors world-wide," available via "Streaming + Download," which "includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more." The "unusual out-of-copyright recordings," include both out-of-copyright commercial recordings and live peformances, often never-previously-released ones.

From CRQ I've bought a download of long-OP Sibelius by Alexander Gibson, as a result of which I'm on their e-mail list, and since then I've been motivated a number of times by notices of new releases to learn my way a bit around their website -- enough to know that the page for each release includes, along with lots of other information, a complete list of tracks with "play" icons, and I've been under the impression that clicking "play" for Track 1 enabled me to hear for free not just Track 1, as I would have expected, but the whole blessed release.

Recalling this, I decided that -- even as I had other important matters to tend to, like sealing the lid on yet another failed-to-post Sunday -- I just had to click through to find out more about:

CRQ 591 JOSEF KRIPS: THE FINAL PERFORMANCE: MOZART REQUIEM: VIENNA 13 12 1973

As long-time readers may recall, I have a special affection for Krips (see, for example, the March 2013 post "Our 'J' and 'K' conductors shine in Mozart's Don Giovanni and Così fan tutte" (the other "J" and "K" conductors, fyi, were Eugen Jochum and Rudolf Kempe), who despite (or maybe because of?) a life marked with serious hardships, had an innate kindness, geniality, and generosity that often lifted his performances to a special realm, and if there's any composer whose music thrives on such qualities, it's Mozart. Krips's now-ancient Decca recording of Don Giovanni is still the performance that more than any other I've encountered (in a substantial lifetime of Don Giovanni encounters) embodied the full dimension of this centerpiece of our musical heritage, including its celebration of the power of human interconnectedness.


SO THERE I WAS, ON THE CRQ 591 WEB PAGE --

Maybe we can ease into the Copland Clarinet Concerto by focusing on the man without whom it wouldn't exist

Benny Goodman (1909-1986) in 1946, about the time he added Copland to the list of composers he commissioned to create new works for the clarinet.

by Ken

This week we're supposed to be -- no, we're going to be -- thinking about and listening to the Copland Clarinet Concerto, a fairly popular but seemingly unassumng little gem that I'm going to warn you to handle with care, as it could just burrow its way into your soul. The post is mostly written, I think, but stubbornly refuses to allow for the resolution of several issues without which publication isn't possible.

So I got the idea that maybe we might just listen to the piece, and then I got the additional idea that we could pull out of the simmering post several performances featuring as soloist the man without whom there wouldn't have been a Copland Clarinet Concerto, the great clarinetist Benny Goodman.

Like all clarinetists, it was a subject of great regret for Benny G. that the repertory of composed music for his instrument wasn't exactly vast. Unlike nearly all of those clarinetists, however, he did something about it. Wearing all his musical hats, he devoted himself to expanding that repertory, and in the realm of "serious" music he put his money where his mouth was, commissioning a number of composers to make nice with the clarinet.


COPLAND: Concerto for Clarinet and String Orchestra with Harp and Piano:
i. Slowly and expressively
Cadenza
ii. Rather fast


[cadenza at 6:30; lead-in to ii. at 9:05] Benny Goodman, clarinet; NBC Symphony Orchestra, Fritz Reiner, cond. Broadcast premiere performance, Nov. 6, 1950

[cadenza at 6:36; lead-in to ii. at 8:57] Benny Goodman, clarinet; Laura Newell, harp; Abba Bogin, piano; Columbia Symphony Strings, Aaron Copland, cond. Columbia-CBS-Sony, recorded in New York City, Feb. 20, 1963

And by way of a tease, here's just the opening of one more:

This performance is from a 1976 Copland Conducts Copland concert with the Los Angeles Philharmonic -- a Unitel recording, if I've got this right, which has been issued by Naxos on both DVD and Blu-ray.


Benny Goodman, clarinet; Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra, Aaron Copland, cond. Live performance from the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, filmed 1976

Just four works to go in our journey through clarinetist Allan Rosenfeld's "Top 10 [really 11] Orchestral Clarinet Solos"

THIS TIME: Coming up we have Rimsky-Korsakov, Sibelius, Rachmaninoff, and Kodály

It seems to me I've heard that song before.
It's from an old familiar score.
I know it well, that melody . . . .

[Yes, "that song" is the opening Andante ma non troppo of the Sibelius First Symphony, more or less as it passed that Sunday afternoon in March 1950 from the stage of Carnegie Hall across the country. We indeed heard the New York Philharmonic, but not "under the direction of Victor de Sabata," interesting as that might be to hear. (Recordings of that broadcast do exist!)]

by Ken

I think by now we all know who the conductor and clarinetist on our clip are. Once again we hear once Leonard Bernstein conducting the NY Phil, with the clarinetting provided by Stanley Drucker, the orchestra's principal clarinet, 1960-2009 -- from the orchestra's March 1967 recording of the symphony.I think by now we all know that that clip of the opening of the Sibelius First Symphony is from the March 1967 New York Philharnonic recording conducted by Leonard Bernstein, with the clarinetting provided by Stanley Drucker (1929-2022), the orchestra's principal clarinet, 1960-2009.

What caught my eye on that concert program, though, as I perused the Philharmonic's nifty Digital Archive, was the date of that concert. Stanley D., we recall, joined the orchestra as assistant principal in 1948 (at age 19). If, as seems likely, he was playing the 2nd clarinet part, this would have been his first NY Phil performance of Sibelius 1.

I bring it up because we're going to run into Sibelius 1 as we make our final push -- clear down to No. 1 and beyond -- through Charlotte (NC) Symphony clarinetist Allan Rosenfeld's "Top 10 [really 11] Orchestral Clarinet Solos," posted on the orchestra's Sound of Charlotte Blog in November 2020, played mostly by Stanley D. (So far, down through No. 4, we've heard him play all seven -- today is where the "mostly" kicks in.)

THE LIST SO FAR

Continuing our countdown of clarinetist Allan Rosenfeld's "Top 10 [actually 11] Orchestral Clarinet Solos," at No. 6 we come to --

From the Manhattan soundtrack:

Stanley Drucker, clarinet; Gary Graffman, piano; New York Philharmonic, Zubin Mehta, cond. CBS-Sony, released 1979


THIS TIME: Gershwin, Bartók, Beethoven

❻

GERSHWIN: Rhapsody in Blue: beginning

ALLAN ROSENFELD: "Anyone who has ever seen Woody Allen's film Manhattan knows there's no way I could leave this showstopper off the list."

NOW, WE DID THE RHAPSODY OPENING PRETTY WELL -- in January 13's "There's more than one way you can launch a piece with a solo clarinet." But that doesn't mean we can't do it again!


Stanley Drucker, clarinet; New York Philharmonic, Leonard Bernstein, piano and cond. Live performance from the Royal Albert Hall, London, June 3-4, 1976 [Watch here]

Stanley Drucker, clarinet; New York Philharmonic, Leonard Bernstein, piano and cond. Live performance from the Jahrhunderthalle (Centennial Hall), Frankfurt, June 8-9, 1976 [Again, watch here]

Stanley Drucker, clarinet; Fazil Say, piano; New York Philharmonic, Kurt Masur, cond. Teldec, recorded in Avery Fisher Hall, December 1998

by Ken

As it says up top, we're resuming our countdown of Charlotte (NC) Symphony clarinetist Allan Rosenfeld's November 2020 "Top 10 [really 11, with the inclusion of an "Honorable Mention"] Orchestral Clarinet Solos," in our ongoing remembrance of the late Stanley Drucker, and we pick up at No. 6, the consciousness-blowing opening of Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue, which the New York Philharmonic's beyond-legendary Stanley D. can be readily heard playing with no fewer than three NY Phil music directors -- that I know of!

(I had to word that carefully, because as often as Stanley D. and Lenny B. must have performed the Rhapsody together, and as easy as it is to find performances they did together, as far as I know they never actually recorded it together. When Lenny B. did his inevitable DG remake, it was with the LA not NY Phil.)

THE LIST SO FAR

10) Respighi: Pines of Rome, end of "Pines of the Janiculum"
9) Tchaikovsky: Francesca da Rimini
8) Brahms: Symphony No. 3, opening of 2nd movement

-- in "An orchestra principal's most visible job is playing orchestral solos written for his/her instrument. He-e-re's Stanley D.!" [June 25]

7) Puccini: Tosca, Act III, "E lucevan le stelle"

-- in "We move on to No. 7 as we count our way through those 'Top 10 [or 11] Orchestral Clarinet Solos' with (mostly) Stanley Drucker" [July 2]

ABOUT ALL THERE REMAINS FOR US TO DO WITH
THE RHAPSODY IS TO HEAR THE WHOLE THING!

We move on to No. 7 as we count our way through those "Top 10 [or 11] Orchestral Clarinet Solos" with (mostly) Stanley Drucker

STANLEY D. GOES TO THE OPERA --
AND HEREUPON HANGS OUR TALE
(with apologies for the crappy sound and crappier end-edit)


OR, TO HEAR IT IN CONTEXT --
(still in crappy sound, but at least without my unavoidably crappy edit)

Great Performers at Lincoln Center, Avery Fisher Hall, live, April 1983
[Note the audience's response when they hear Stanley D. launch "The Solo."]

And the stars were shining
and the earth was perfumed,
the garden gate creaked,
and footsteps grazed the path.
She entered, all fragrance,
she fell into my arms.
O sweet kisses, o languid caresses,
while I, trembling,
unloosed the veils, revealing her beauty!
Gone forever that dream of love --
the hour has fled,
and I die despairing, and I die despairing!
Yet never before have I loved life, loved life so much!

Luciano Pavarotti, tenor; with Stanley Drucker, clarinet; New York Philharmonic, Zubin Mehta, cond. Encore performance from a Pavarotti-Mehta "Gala Concert," telecast live from Avery Fisher Hall, Apr. 4, 1983 (with post-performance announcements by Martin Bookspan)
[Note: Farther along we're going to hear Luciano P. in good studio sound.]

by Ken

We're continuing our countdown through Charlotte (NC) Symphony Orchestra clarinetist Allan Rosenfeld's list of his "Top 10 Orchestral Clarinet Solos," in the company (mostly) of the New York Philharmonic's 61-season clarinetist, Stanley Drucker (1929-2022) -- first, from age 19, as assistant principal, then for an amazing 49 seasons as principal clarinet.

Last week (in "An orchestra principal's most visible job is playing orchestral solos written for his/her instrument. He-e-re's Stanley D.!") we made it all the way down from No. 10 (the end of "Pines of the Janiculum" from Respighi's Pines of Rome) to No. 8 (the opening of the Andante of the Brahms Third Symphony) -- oh, right, passing through No. 9 (from the "Andante cantabile non troppo" section of Tchaikovsky's Francesca da Rimini).

So here I was thinking that with two good pushes we could get through the whole list, even allowing ample excursion time to look in a larger way at the music represented, which, as I tried to explain, is one effect pondering Stanley D.'s enormous career has had on me. I mean, to have been that immersed in music -- mostly not of his own choosing -- all those decades while maintaining an insistence on bringing to each performance first-performance freshness: How awesome is that?


WOULDN'T YOU KNOW? RIGHT AWAY AT NO. 7 I GOT STUCK

An orchestra principal's most visible job is playing orchestral solos written for his/her instrument. He-e-re's Stanley D.!

STANLEY DRUCKER (1929-2022)
Continuing our remembrance: Part 1 of [I think] 3

Final pages of "Pines of the Gianicolo" -- with Stanley Drucker & nightingales

A CLARINET VET'S TOP 10 [or 11] CLARINET SOLOS

"As a 34-year veteran of the CSO, I am often asked what music I particularly like. With that in mind, I've devised a list of my top ten favorite orchestral clarinet solos." -- Charlotte Symphony clarinetist Allan Rosenfeld, on the CSO's Sound of Charlotte Blog, Nov. 2020

In his blogpost, A.R. presented his "Top 10 Orchestral Clarinet Solos" -- really 11, with the inclusion of an "honorable mention" that rates pretty high in the "wow!" department -- illustrated with YouTube clips generally cued to the moment of clarinetic takeoff. In this series of posts we'll have A.R. introduce the 11 solos, which we'll hear played mostly by our guy Stanley D.

by Ken

During the long Sunday Classics blog silence -- which we're not going to talk about (right?) except to note that it was caused, as you probably realized, by those gosh-darn supply-chain issues -- one of the first things I actually did was a version of the journey we're now, finally, undertaking, through Allan Rosenfeld's Top 10 (or 11) Orchestral Clarinet Solos. One curious evolution I witnessed (more or less as a spectator!) was a shift of emphasis from Stanley Drucker himself to, well, the music. Lots of music. Until, as we now experience on the journey, there's lots of music that has very little directly to do with Stanley D., unless we count the zillions of performances he participated in.

Which, come to think of it, isn't that different from the turns some other of my musical remembrances took, as with soprano Margaret Price and bass John Macurdy. And this, I kept telling myself as I watched this evolution and expansion, was kind of Drucker-esque, in that his in-all-ways-remarkable career seemed so squarely focused on the music.

At the time of his retirement, in 2009, and then again after his death, in December, we were inundated with mind-boggling number. If I'm remembering correctly, the NY Phil's statsfolks reported not just that in his 61 years with the orchestra (49 of them as principal clarinet), he played in 10,700 concerts, but that this number represented, as of the time of his retirement, some 70 percent of all the concerts the orchestra had ever given.


I KEEP WONDERING WHAT A CATALOG OF ALL THE
WORKS STANLEY D. PLAYED IN WOULD LOOK LIKE

Let's open this book of spells and see if we find a Stanley Drucker "moment" or two lurking inside

Okay, Des Knaben Wunderhorn (The Youth's Magic Horn) isn't really a "book of spells," but the three volumes of wildly diverse German folk poetry were a creative wellspring for Mahler. (Wikipedia can get you up to speed.)

LET'S START OFF WITH WHAT CYNTHIA PHELPS*
MIGHT CALL A STANLEY DRUCKER MAHLER "MOMENT"

*You recall from last week NY Phil principal violist Cynthia P.'s quote at the time Stanley D. retired (2009), at which point they'd been fellow principals since she joined the orchestra in 1992:

"I think the thing I'll miss most about Stanley is his unbelievable creativity, his ability to make a moment anytime he has the opportunity."

OH, ONE MORE THING: As we listen to a pair of performances of one itty-bitty Wunderhorn song setting, just for now I'm not going to identify the performers. For this moment, we can call them, oh, "Team X" and "Team Y."


MAHLER: Songs from "Des Knaben Wunderhorn":
"Lob des hohen Verstandes" ("In Praise of High Intellect")

Once in a deep valley,
a cuckoo and nightingale
struck a wager:
Whoever would sing a masterpiece,
whether he won by art or luck,
he would win the bet.

The cuckoo spoke: "If you consent,
I have chosen a judge."
And he instantly appointed the ass.
"For since he has two large ears,
he can hear all the better,
and know what is right."

Soon they flew before the judge.
When he was told about the matter,
he decreed that they should sing.
The nightingale sang out sweetly!
The ass spoke: "You confuse me!
Hee-haw! Hee-haw!
I can't get it into my head."

Thereupon the cuckoo immediately began
his song with thirds, fourths, and fifths.
It pleased the ass, who said only: "Wait!
I will pronounce your judgment.

"You have sung well, nightingale!
But cuckoo, you sing a true anthem!
And held the beat precisely!
I say that from my great wisdom!
And even if it costs a whole country,
I thus pronounce you the winner."
Cuckoo, cuckoo! Hee-haw!

-- translation by Cecilia H. Porter

Team X

Team Y


by Ken

The song, of course, is one of the dozen free-standing settings Mahler made in his first fully mature years -- roughly the decade 1892-1901 -- from the strange and wonderful, almost indescribably diverse three-volume collection of German folk verse Des Knaben Wunderhorn (The Youth's Magic Horn). (Again, keep the Wikipedia link handy.) "Lob des hohen Verstandes" falls in a category we might call "Wacky-Satirical Plays on Nature," the most familiar of which would be the riverside sermon preached to the wild assortment of fishes by the good St. Anthony of Padua: "Des Antonius von Padua Fischpredigt." We're going to be hearing that too.

Speaking of diversity, our two performances sure embody it, don't they? One thing they have in common is some pretty spiffy clarinet-playing (we'll talk about that later), but even that is different. Obviously one performance is sung by a man and the other by a woman, and just as obviously, one performance is a good deal perkier, if nothing else just plain quicker, than the other, which gives the song a markedly different character, I think. Maybe less obviously, or at least more subjectively, I would venture that one is warmer, more endearing, more user-friendly, though the other is equally, and cherishably, precise in its realization of the wealth of detail Mahler has crafted into both the vocal line and the orchestral setting.


WHICH REMINDS ME: WE CAN ACTUALLY SEPARATE
THE SONG FROM ITS ORCHESTRAL SWADDLING

After all, like Mahler's other Wunderhorn settings, "Lob des hohen Verstandes" was composed first for voice and piano. If we get the orchestras cleared away, making room to wheel in the piano so Team Z can take their places, it'll sound like this:

Team Z


AS I'M SURE YOU'VE FIGURED OUT, TEAM Z . . .

Just to give you a taste of what I'm working on for this week's post, here's, er, a taste of what I'm working on for this week's post

HINT: We want to be thinking about those Stanley Drucker "moments" of outsize creativity we heard NY Phil principal violist Cynthia Phelps citing in last week's post ("Still remembering Stanley Drucker (who's got me hearing voices -- including a lot from one source"), and also those "voices" I started talking about. I still haven't quite figured out how I'm going to work those in. I guess we'll find out. -- Ken

MAHLER: Songs from "Des Knaben Wunderhorn":
"Lob des hohen Verstandes" ("In Praise of High Intellect")

Once in a deep valley,
a cuckoo and nightingale
struck a wager:
Whoever would sing a masterpiece,
whether he won by art or luck,
he would win the best.

The cuckoo spoke: "If you consent,
I have chosen a judge."
And he instantly appointed the ass.
"For since he has two large ears,
he can hear all the better,
and know what is right."

Soon they flew before the judge.
When he was told about the matter,
he decreed that they should sing.
The nightingale sang out sweetly!
The ass spoke: "You confuse me!
Hee-haw! Hee-haw!
I can't get it into my head."

Thereupon the cuckoo immediately began
his song with thirds, fourths, and fifths.
It pleased the ass, who said only: "Wait!
I will pronounce your judgment.

"You have sung well, nightingale!
But cuckoo, you sing a true anthem!
And held the beat precisely!
I say that from my great wisdom!
And even if it costs a whole country,
I thus pronounce you the winner."
Cuckoo, cuckoo! Hee-haw!

-- translation by Cecilia H. Porter

Team X

Team Y

Team Z

Still remembering Stanley Drucker (who's got me hearing voices -- including a lot from one source)

ALONG THE WAY WE'LL HAVE A COUPLE OF STORIES. BUT
FIRST A FEW WORDS FROM A CERTIFIABLY EXPERT WITNESS

"I think the thing I'll miss most about Stanley is his unbelievable creativity, his ability to make a moment anytime he has the opportunity."

-- Cynthia Phelps, NY Phil principal violist since 1992, quoted at the time of Stanley Drucker's retirement, in 2009, when they'd been fellow principals for 17 years (requoted in a Dec. 2022 posting by the orchestra)

SAY AGAIN, PLEASE, CYNTHIA?

"His unbelievable creativity, his ability to make a moment anytime he has the opportunity"

Let's rehear our clip of the first-movement intro, Andante, ma non troppo, leading into the Allegro energico, of the Sibelius First Symphony --

In Philharmonic Hall, c1967 [photo by Harry Bial, NY Phil Archives]

Stanley Drucker, clarinet; New York Philharmonic, Leonard Bernstein, cond. Columbia-CBS-Sony, recorded in Philharmonic Hall, Mar. 14, 1967


NOW, WITH OUR EARS ALREADY TUNED TO SIBELIUS --

Let's hear three fine but distinctly different performances of Sibelius's compulsively riveting tone poem En Saga, Op. 9. One is the performance that (in a story I'll tell in a moment) I happened to listen to one day which grabbed hold of my ears and wouldn't let go -- can you guess which? (If you're of a mind to cheat, you can scroll down a bit for the answer.)

En Saga as visualized by painter Akseli Gallen-Kallela (1865-1931), born in the same year as Sibelius -- they shared what curator and art historian William L. Coleman has described as "a complex creative friendship."

En Saga is without program or literary source. Nevertheless, the adventurous, evocative character of the music has encouraged many listeners to offer their own interpretations, among them a fantasy landscape (such as that by the Finnish painter Akseli Gallen-Kallela [above]), a hunting expedition, a bard's storytelling, and the essence of Finnish people. Sibelius routinely declined to state a program . . . . [In] the 1940s [he] describ[ed] the work as "the expression of a certain state of mind" -- one with an unspecified, "painful" autobiographical component -- for which "all literary interpretations [were therefore] totally alien."

-- from Wikipedia [footnotes onsite]

Scottish National Orchestra, Alexander Gibson, cond. Classics for Pleasure-EMI, recorded April 1974

Philadelphia Orchestra, Eugene Ormandy, cond. Columbia-CBS-Sony, recorded in the Philadelphia Athletic Club, Jan. 20, 1963

Danish Radio Symphony Orchestra, Leif Segerstam, cond. Chandos, recorded in the Danish Radio Concert Hall, Copenhagen, Feb. 25-27, 1991

by Ken

The long blog silence has been far from inactive, and a lot of the musical activity -- and pondering -- sprang from our remembrance-in-progress of the barely comprehensible career of clarinetist Stanley Drucker (1929-2022), who joined the New York Philharmonic as assistant principal in 1948 at the age of 19 and was elevated to principal clarinet in 1961, after which he held that post with unflagging distinction, under five music directors, until his retirement in 2009.


BACK TO EN SAGA -- AND THE STORY OF HOW ONE
OF OUR PERFORMANCES SEIZED CONTROL OF ME

Intermission -- with clarinet

-- from Merriam-Webster.com

PAIR A

RIMSKY-KORSAKOV: Capriccio espagnol:
i. Alborada: Vivo e strepitoso

iii. Alborada: Vivo e strepitoso


PAIR B

RIMSKY-KORSAKOV: Capriccio espagnol:
i. Alborada: Vivo e strepitoso

iii. Alborada: Vivo e strepitoso


by Ken

Okay, it's not going to happen this moment. I'm called away on a pressing mission, sitting here with armloads of blogchunks waiting to be assembled and properly stitched together.

In the meantime, I thought I'd offer this tease, as a hint of what's to come: these two pairs of performances of the two Alborada movements from Rimsky-Korsakov's Capriccio espagnol.

I can tell you this much: Each pair of performances is from the same source, and the orchestra throughout is the New York Philharmonic.

Rapid hits: Part 4 of 3 -- There's more than one way you can launch a piece with a solo clarinet

Our man in Frankfurt

Once again we hear Stanley Drucker tootling the opening of Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue, this time in Frankfurt's Jahrhunderthalle, June 8-9, 1976, mere days after the London performance we heard Wednesday (and will hear more of below), in the New York Philharmonic's Bicentennial Tour of Europe with then-laureate conductor Leonard Bernstein.

SIBELIUS: Symphony No. 1 in E minor, Op. 39:
i. Andante, ma non troppo; Allegro energico - opening


Stanley Drucker, clarinet; New York Philharmonic, Leonard Bernstein, cond. Columbia-CBS-Sony, recorded in Philharmonic Hall, Mar. 14, 1967

OH YES, WHAT AM I DOING ABOUT THE TECH
WALL I SMASHED INTO ON WEDNESDAY?

Not much. I chickened out of trying to bludgeon my way through it, after posting -- as "Rapid hits: Part 3 of 3 -- Some quick(ish) thoughts on Stanley Drucker (1928-2022)" -- the postable portion of the planned post and promising rapid action on a rehab-and-expansion of the rest. Looking at the positive, this has indeed enabled me to round up a better sampling of Stanley D. performing the most obvious assignment of an orchestra principal: playing solos in orchestral works. It's a grimly grinding project, but I've made progress since Wednesday and I'm still working on it. And I think we can get somewhere by listening to a pair of day-and-night-different clarinet-solo openings.

So in what I guess becomes "Part 4 of 3," we're setting our already-heard opening of Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue alongside the singular opening Sibelius crafted for his First Symphony. (In the case of the Sibelius, it has occurred to me that maybe all we needed to do was hear Stanley D.'s chill-inducing performance.)

by Ken

This could just be me, but I hear either of these mind-enflaming orchestral openings and what I want to hear -- next-most to what comes next in each piece, of course -- is a repeat of the opening, again and again. In the case of the Gershwin Rhapsody, we're going to have the fixings for doing that -- over and over and, well, over and over. In the case of Stanley Drucker's riveting performance of the 28-bar opener of the Sibelius First Symphony, marked Andante, I have just this one performance, but that doesn't stop me from clicking to hear it over and over.

It's just 28 bars in all: the first 16 with the solo A clarinet singing its mournful song over a hushed but relentless single-note timpani roll, marked by a couple of swells and fadebacks; the remaining 12 bars entrusted solely to the clarinet, dying away (yes, it's marked "morendo") from pp to ppp, until the startling intrusion of the second violins with a tremolo-like repeated note (well, pair of notes) of their own, kick-starting the movement's main Allegro energico -- marked, interestingly, mf, only moderately loud. Sibelius means to build us a climax, and a whopper of a climax it's going to be.


A FEW WORDS ABOUT LENNY B. AND SIBELIUS

Rapid hits: Part 3 of 3 --

(1) MEDIC NEEDED FOR VAUGHAN WILLIAMS'S LARK? [Oct. 9]
(2) ONE SOLOIST, MULTIPLE VIEWS OF VW'S LARK [Oct. 10]
(3) A WHOOSH OF MEMORY OF AN EPIC CLARINET GUY [Oct. 11]

[SORRY, I'M BATTLNG A TECHNICAL GLITCH I'VE NEVER ENCOUNTERED. HERE'S THE START OF THE POST -- Ken]

(3) SOME QUICK(ISH) THOUGHTS ON STANLEY DRUCKER (1929-2022)

NY Phil caption: "Stanley Drucker was appointed Assistant
Principal and E-Flat Clarinet by Bruno Walter in 1948."

"The New York Philharmonic deeply mourns the passing of the legendary orchestral clarinetist Stanley Drucker, who joined the Philharmonic in 1948, at age 19, and was appointed Principal Clarinet by Leonard Bernstein in 1960. Over the course of his 60-year tenure he appeared in more than 10,200 concerts in 60 countries, with solo turns including 64 performances of Copland’s Clarinet Concerto, and worked during the tenures of nine NY Phil Music Directors. Accolades on his retirement in 2009 included the Guinness World Record for “longest career as a clarinetist” and being named an Honorary Member of the New York Philharmonic. At the time, then Music Director Lorin Maazel said: “He stands alone in the world of clarinetists. His contribution to the orchestra and its fame is immeasurable.” The Philharmonic extends condolences to his wife, Naomi, and to his children and grandchildren." -- from the New York Philharmonic website

As often happens these days, I was late catching up with the news, in this case of the passing, on December 19, of Stanley D., closing in on his 94th birthday, following a career that seems that beggars description -- I find myself reaching for words like "epic." For a while I thought I'd shove aside (temporarily, of course) all the work we're, you know, working on and do a musical remembrance, and we may yet do that. I even devised not one but two openers for such a post. One you've already seen, above. Here's the other:

Stanley D. plays the opening solo of Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue -- with Leonard Bernstein of course playing the piano solo as well as conducting the New York Philharmonic -- in the Royal Albert Hall, London, June 3-4, 1976. (Not to worry, we are going to hear the whole performance. Have patience.)

The Gershwin Rhapsody is a piece S.D. was closely associated with, and he played it like nobody else. Commentators have noted the ring of klezmer in parts of the piece, and not many clarinetists have been better positioned to bring that to life. One of the enduring fascinations of the career he built is that, growing up in Brooklyn, son of Russian Jewish immigrants, he seems to have had no serious music in his family history or in his surroundings. How then did he happen upon the clarinet? He mentioned in interviews that one thing that inclined him toward it was the sound of klezmer.

UP ABOVE I PROMISED THE WHOLE RHAPSODY.
MAYBE WE SHOULD JUST GO AHEAD AND HEAR IT

Rapid hits: Part 2 of 3 --

(1) MEDIC NEEDED FOR VAUGHAN WILLIAMS'S LARK? [Oct. 9]
(2) ONE SOLOIST, MULTIPLE VIEWS OF VW'S LARK [Oct. 10]
(3) A WHOOSH OF MEMORY OF AN EPIC CLARINET GUY [Oct. 11]


(2) VW'S LARK: ONE SOLOIST, THREE VARIED VISIONS

Neville Marriner & Iona Brown: Collaborators from the time I.B. joined the violins of the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields (1964) -- in time becoming concertmaster, frequent soloist and conductor, eventually director.

by Ken

It was yet another seemingly inescapable (try though a person might!) attention-diverter, but in this case a happy one. While playing with Vaughan Williams's musical lark, I kept being drawn back to one performance, liking it more and more: Iona Brown's 1983 Proms performance with conductor Elgar Howarth. I was responding to I.B.'s strikingly personal, boldly confident, even daredevilish playing, so different (my memory was telling me) from her decade-plus-earlier recording with Neville Marriner. Indeed, on rehearing, the 1971 performance seemed coolly, carefully poised -- the word "nocturnal" occurred to me. Listening to it more, I found it more and more fascinating in its own right, all the more intriguing for the contrast with the 1983 Royal Albert Hall performance.

The CD with the 1983 Lark (unfortunately not in general circulation)

THEN I REALIZED I HAVE A THIRD I.B. LARK

It's with Marriner again, and I'd kind of assumed it was a recoupling of assorted older Marriner recordings (the only other Vaughan Williams on the disc is the Thomas Tallis Fantasia) and safely shelved it away as a Marriner collection. But no, it's a 1982 recording -- a year before the Prom performance! It's not the 1983 performance, but it's not the 1971 either.

Let's listen to just the opening in all three I.B. Larks, featuring the grand, finger-twisting solo-violin cadenza.

Rapid hits: Part 1 of 3 --

(1) MEDIC NEEDED FOR VAUGHAN WILLIAMS'S LARK? [Oct. 9]
(2) ONE SOLOIST, MULTIPLE VIEWS OF VW'S LARK [Oct. 10]
(3) A WHOOSH OF MEMORY OF AN EPIC CLARINET GUY [Oct. 11]


(1) WHO LOVES A WHEEZING, WHINY, OR ASTHMATIC LARK?

While harking unto our musical larks, as I played with Haydn's I tripped over a snag that had somehow never caught me. -- Ken

Group I -- performances I own which share a particular oddness


Paul Robertson, violin; with the rest of the Medici Quartet (David Matthews, violin; Paul Silverthorne, viola; Anthony Lewis, cello). EMI, recorded in Abbey Road Studio No. 1, London, Jan. 16, 1976

István Kertész, violin; with the rest of the Festetics Quartet (Erika Petöfi, violin; Péter Ligeti, viola; Rezsö Pertorini, cello). Harmonia Mundi France, recorded in the Unitarian Church of Budapest, June-Dec. 1991

Simon Standage, violin; with the rest of the Salomon Quartet (Micaela Comberti, violin; Trevor Jones, viola; Jennifer Ward Clarke, cello). Hyperion, recorded Oct. 11-13, 1995

Hubert Buchberger, violin; with the rest of the Buchberger Quartet (Julia Greve, violin; Joachim Etzel, viola; Helmut Sohler, cello). Brilliant Classics, recorded in the Evangelische Burgkirche Nieder-Rosbach, Germany, May 17-19, 2007

Group II, or shall we say: (a) "Subgroup II-A"

Among others, some singing larks of the nonverbal kind are here to wish everyone: Happy New Year! (quick version)

HAPPY NEW YEAR FROM VIENNA -- FIRST BY WAY
OF NEW YORK -- AND, OH YES, FROM MUNICH TOO


[in English, lyrics by Howard Dietz] Lily Pons (s), Adele; Ljuba Welitsch (s), Rosalinde; Charles Kullman (t), Eisenstein; Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, Eugene Ormandy, cond. Columbia-CBS-Sony, recorded Dec. 24 & 29, 1950 & Jan. 7, 1951

[in English, lyrics by Howard Dietz] Patrice Munsel (s), Adele; Marguerite Piazza (s), Rosalinde; Charles Kullman (t), Eisenstein; Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, Eugene Ormandy, cond. Live performance, Jan. 20, 1951

Edita Gruberová (s), Adele; Kiri Te Kanawa (s), Rosalinde; Wolfgang Brendel (b), Eisenstein; Vienna Philharmonic, André Previn, cond. Philips, recorded in the Musikverein, November 1990

Erika Köth (s), Adele; Hilde Gueden (s), Rosalinde; Waldemar Kmentt (t), Eisenstein; Vienna Philharmonic, Herbert von Karajan, cond. Decca, recorded in the Sofiensaal, June 1960
And here's an actual New Year's Eve performance:

Carol Malone (s), Adele; Gundula Janowitz (s), Rosalinde; Eberhard Wächter (b), Eisenstein; Bavarian State Orchestra, Carlos Kleiber, cond. Live performance from the Bavarian State Opera (Munich), Dec. 31, 1974
[NOTE: More than a third of this clip is applause. I was all set to snip it out, but even 48 years after the fact I just couldn't strip away the performers' earned plaudits. -- Ed.]

[We'll be hearing the full version of this trio in the follow-up expanded-coverage version of this post scheduled for tomorrow. -- Ed.]

NOW, HAPPY NEW YEAR FROM HAYDN'S LARK

Fledermaus of course is meat-and-potatoes (or maybe we should say champagne-and-caviar?) New Year's material, and we've got more of it in tomorrow's expanded post, but it occurred to me that in a New Year's frame of mind we might finish up our business with at least the nonvocal contingent of the musical larks we've been pursuing, starting with Haydn's -- in two really lovely and interestingly different performances (one of which we're going to hear in its entirety in a moment). -- Ed.