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.

Arvid Engegard, violin; with the remaining members of the Orlando Quartet: Heinz Oberdorfer, violin; Ferdinand Erblich, viola; Stefan Metz, cello. Emergo Classics, released 1995

Kenneth Sillito, violin; with the remaining members of the Gabrieli Quartet: Brendan O'Reilly, violin; Ian Jewel, viola; Keith Harvey, cello. Chandos, recorded in The Maltings, Snape (Surrey), England, Feb. 13-15, 1986

In the fuller version of this post, scheduled for tomorrow, we're going to do some more proper listening to Haydn's Lark Quartet. But for now I thought it might be nice just to be able to hear the whole thing. And I thought it might be nice to honor a kind-of-forgotten performance, from a kind-of-forgotten period of the kind-of-forgotten Orlando Quartet.

HAYDN: String Quartet in D, Op. 64, No. 5 (The Lark)
i. Allegro moderato
ii. Adagio (Cantabile)
iii. Menuet: Allegretto
iv. Finale: Vivace

[ii. at 5:38; iii. at 12:08; iv. at 15:25] Orlando Quartet (Arvid Engegard and Heinz Oberdorfer, violins; Ferdinand Erblich, viola; Stefan Metz, cello). Emergo Classics, released 1995


AND A QUICK HIT FROM VAUGHAN WILLIAMS'S LARK

He rises and begins to round,
he drops the silver chain of sound
of many links without a break,
in chirrup, whistle, slur and shake,
all intervolved and spreading wide,
like water-dimples down a tide
where ripple ripple overcurls
and eddy into eddy whirls;
a press of hurried notes that run
so fleet they scarce are more than one . . .
-- the first 10 (of 122) lines of Meredith's "The Lark Ascending"
(if it's important to you, you can read the whole poem here)

Iona Brown, violin; BBC Symphony Orchestra, Elgar Howarth, cond. BBC Music Magazine, recorded live at the Proms, Royal Albert Hall, Aug. 18, 1983

Obviously this is just a taste of The Lark Ascending -- which we've already heard in full (in the two lovely recordings conducted by Sir Adrian Boult -- in "Just so you know what we're up to: Three familiar larks, a bonus lark, and (oh yes!) Death and a maiden," October 18). But we haven't talked much about it, and we've got an interesting bunch of performances that have been sitting ready to go for ages. I don't know that anyone has ever thought of The Lark as New Year's material. I think it fits kind of well.

Oh yes: Happy New Year, everyone! -- Ken


COMING TOMORROW -- The rest of our Fledermaus-ian
and Lark-ish greeting for 2023

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