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.
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]6) Gershwin: Rhapsody in Blue, beginning
5) Bartók: The Miraculous Mandarin, 3 Seduction Games
4) Beethoven: Symphony No. 6 (Pastoral), 2nd movement-- in "Continuing our countdown of clarinetist Allan Rosenfeld's 'Top 10 [actually 11] Orchestral Clarinet Solos,' at No. 6 we come to --" (we heard the complete 5th and 6th Symphonies!) [July 9]
WITHOUT FURTHER ADO, LET'S PROCEED TO NO. 3
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RIMSKY-KORSAKOV: Capriccio espagnolIt's taken awhile to get back to them but back on January 15, in "Intermission -- with clarinet," a sort-of-post eccentric even by Sunday Classics standards, we heard two performances of the Capriccio espagnol's two similar alboradas, the first and third of its five movements, which I assume are what A.R. has in mind. (His YouTube cue is the whole Capriccio in a snazzy performance by the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra under Mariss Jansons.)
A.R.: "A dazzling display of clarinet bravura and technique."
The only additional information offered in January was that "each pair of performances is from the same source, and the orchestra throughout is the New York Philharmonic." The trick, if you want to call it that, is that "Pair A" was from the Capriccio espagnol recording conducted by Leonard Bernstein the season before Stanley D. was elevated to principal clarinet. The recording microphones had to wait for him till Kurt Masur recorded the Capriccio in 1997, the source of "Pair B." Here are our performances again, properly identified. Is it a surprise that, relatively speaking, Lenny B. is the slowpoke and Kurt M. the speed demon?
"Pair A"
i. Alborada: Vivo e strepitoso
iii. Alborada: Vivo e strepitoso
[NOT Stanley Drucker], clarinet; New York Philharmonic, Leonard Bernstein, cond. Columbia-CBS-Sony, recorded in Carnegie Hall, May 2, 1959
"Pair B"
i. Alborada: Vivo e strepitoso
iii. Alborada: Vivo e strepitoso
Stanley Drucker, clarinet; New York Philharmonic, Kurt Masur, cond. Teldec, recorded in Avery Fisher Hall, December 1997
AS FOR THE COMPLETE CAPRICCIO ESPAGNOL --
It appears we've actually heard it before. I'm drawing a blank on this, but I found these performances slumbering in the SC Archive. In their different ways, Markevitch and Ormandy were true masters of what I'm groping to call "orchestral display" repertory, such as Rimsky-Korsakov's dashing and seductive Capriccio on Spanish Themes. as I think we can hear here -- hearing both the "flash" and, behind it, real affection and respect.
It's also fun to extend Rimsky's foray into musical ethnography (are only French composers be permitted to indulge in musical fantasies of Spain? Rimsky offers us his own little tour d'Espagne) to the wide span of musical geography encapsuled in the performance by the Malaysian Philharmonic under its founding music director, the Dutchman Kees Bakels.
RIMSKY-KORSAKOV: Capriccio espagnol, Op. 34:
i. Alborada: Vivo e strepitoso
ii. Variations: Andante con moto
iii. Alborada: Vivo e strepitoso
iv. Scene and Gypsy Song: Allegretto
v. Fandango asturiana: Vivace assai
London Symphony Orchestra, Igor Markevitch, cond. Philips, recorded in Wembley Town Hall, London, Oct. 22, 1962
Philadelphia Orchestra, Eugene Ormandy, cond. Columbia-CBS-Sony, recorded in Town Hall, Philadelphia, Feb. 17, 1965
Malaysian Philharmonic Orchestra, Kees Bakels, cond. BIS, recorded in Dewan Filharmonik Petronas Hall, Kuala Lumpur (Malaysia), November 2003
❷
SIBELIUS: Symphony No. 1: beginning of first movement
A.R.: "Another great lyrical solo for clarinet, especially showing off the instrument's ability to taper sound into nothingness."
Stanley Drucker, clarinet; New York Philharmonic, Leonard Bernstein, cond. Columbia-CBS-Sony, recorded in Philharmonic Hall, Mar. 14, 1967
If anything we've heard even more of this haunting solo than the other one, the opening of the Rhapsody in Blue, we first profiled in the Jan. 13 post "There's more than one way you can launch a piece with a solo clarinet," after which we strayed into some other Sibelian investigations (poking, for example, into the Second and Fifth Symphonies), which we've by no means finished. At some point I'm going to have to figure out where exactly we left off, in order to press further. But for now I think it's enough to note that --
WE'VE HEARD THE WHOLE OF SIBELIUS 1
And I think it might be a good idea to hear that same performance again (if you like, you can also read more about the Sibelius First on Wikipedia), with the interesting coincidence that our conductor's name is about to come up again!
SIBELIUS: Symphony No. 1 in E minor, Op. 39:
i. Andante, ma non troppo; Allegro energico
ii. Andante (ma non troppo lento) [at 11:44]
iii. Scherzo: Allegro [at 21:24]
iv. Finale: Quasi una fantasia [at 26:56]
Berlin Symphony Orchestra, Kurt Sanderling, cond. Berlin Classics (Deutsche Schallplatten), recorded in Studio Christuskirche, January 1976
❶
RACHMANINOFF: Symphony No. 2 (opening of the Adagio)
A.R.: "This solo is one of the most romantic lyrical melodies ever written for the clarinet."
[clarinet solo at 0:25] Anthony Gigliotti, clarinet; Philadelphia Orchestra, Eugene Ormandy, cond. Columbia-CBS-Sony, recorded Feb. 11, 1951 (mono)
[clarinet solo at 0:26] Anthony Gigliotti, clarinet; Philadelphia Orchestra, Eugene Ormandy, cond. Columbia-CBS-Sony, recorded Apr. 9, 1959
[clarinet solo at 0:25] Anthony Gigliotti, clarinet; Philadelphia Orchestra, Eugene Ormandy, cond. RCA, recorded Dec. 18-19, 1973
[clarinet solo at 0:29] Leningrad Philharmonic Orchestra, Kurt Sanderling, cond. DG, recorded in the Jesus-Christus-Kirche, Berlin, May 1956
[clarinet solo at 0:29] St. Petersburg Philharmonic Orchestra, Mariss Jansons, cond. EMI, recorded in Philharmonic Hall, September 1993
[clarinet solo at 0:29] Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Andrew Litton, cond. Virgin Classics, recorded in Abbey Road Studio No. 1, London, May 1989
As we move on to Allan R.'s No. 1 clarinet solo (with that "Honorable Mention" coming up), I'm sorry to have to report that our Stanley D. lucky streak has ended. Though he must have played it a heap of times in his NY Phil tenure -- just reading off the NY Phil Performance History I count Henry Lewis (2/1980), Semyon Bychkov (3/1984), Leonard Slatkin (12/1987), Kurt Sanderling (11/1992), Yuri Temirkanov (2/1997), André Previn (10/2001), Iván Fischer (11-12/2005), and Bychkov again (11/2007) -- there was, as far as I know, no recording, and I don't have air checks of any of the above. Believe me, I'd love to hear, not just how Stanley D. played this solo, but how he played it on different occasions.
First, by turning to a clarinet legend of near-Druckeresque proportions: the Philadelphia Orchestra's Anthony Gigliotti (1922-2001; seen at left in what appears to be the picture of him -- I couldn't find any other). In 1949, the year after 19-year-old Stanley D. joined the NY Phil as assistant principal, 27-year-old Anthony G. joined the Philadelphia Orchestra as principal clarinet, adn the next year he would become a founding member of the much-heralded Philadelphia Woodwind Quintet. He would remain in his principal's chair until his retirement in 1996 -- making for a 47-year run as principal clarinet of one of the world's most prestigious orchestras. (The picture clearly dates from nearer the end than the beginning of his tenure.)
During Anthony G.'s tenure, music director Eugene Ormandy made his second, third, and fourth recordings of Rach 2. (He recorded his first Rach 2 in 1934 while still with the Minneapolis Symphony.) So it's those recordings, from 1951, 1959, and 1973, that we've sampled. They sure sound like Anthony G.
I should note that Rach 2 isn't a piece I've particularly "collected," so I've been working from what I have at hand -- minus a number of items that, having been off the shelves so long while this project dragged on, and on, and having since found good hiding places -- I've plucked out what strikes me as an interesting take on this solo, having it slip into our consciouness almost like an apparition. It's the idea of the pre-Dallas Andrew Litton, who -- only 30 at the time -- was probably better known in Britain than in his native America. (I should know, or be able to find out who the Royal Philharmonic principal clarinet in 1989 was, but I don't and so far I can't.)
NOW OUR M.O. CALLS FOR HEARING THE COMPLETE ADAGIO
RACHMANINOFF: Symphony No. 2 in E minor, Op. 27:
iii. Adagio
Anthony Gigliotti, clarinet; Philadelphia Orchestra, Eugene Ormandy, cond. Columbia-CBS-Sony, recorded Feb. 11, 1951 (mono)
Anthony Gigliotti, clarinet; Philadelphia Orchestra, Eugene Ormandy, cond. Columbia-CBS-Sony, recorded Apr. 19, 1959
Anthony Gigliotti, clarinet; Philadelphia Orchestra, Eugene Ormandy, cond. RCA, recorded Dec. 18-19, 1973
St. Petersburg Philharmonic Orchestra, Mariss Jansons, cond. EMI, recorded in Philharmonic Hall, September 1993
Leningrad Philharmonic Orchestra, Kurt Sanderling, cond. DG, recorded in the Jesus-Christus-Kirche, Berlin, May 1956
[clarinet solo at 0:29] Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Andrew Litton, cond. Virgin Classics, recorded in Abbey Road Studio No. 1, May 1989
ALONG ABOUT HERE I GUESS WE HAVE TO TALK
ABOUT CUTS ONCE USUALLY TAKEN IN RACH 2
You may have noticed that the 1951 and 1959 Ormandy and 1956 Sanderling performances don't include quite as many notes as the others. This is a legacy of the once-nearly-invariable practice of performing Rach 2 with trims in all four movements. The composer himself, no doubt still shaky from the trauma he had endured with the unrolling of his First Symphony, was amenable to the idea of trims to the Second, a long work that can feel kind of repetitious and structurally chancy if the performers can't give the audience confidence that the piece really does know where it has come from and where it's going.
Significantly, Eugene Ormandy, who had developed a close relationship with the composer in the years before his death, in 1943, continued performing edited versions of Rach 2 up to his last recording, the 1973 RCA. It seems clear that the matter was discussed with the composer, who had some level of acceptance of the trimming.
I'm not sure we've gained as much as we think by subjecting Rach 2 to the modern day ethos of must-perform-every-damned-not, at least not without insisting that performers bring to the performance a satisfactory level of understanding of what make the thing tick. So I got the idea of juxtaposing the cut and uncut Ormandy performances, for two reasons: first, to give a hearing to the symphony's largest and presumptively most content-sensitive movement, and second, to hear for at least two of the movements (the symphony's larger ones) the cut vs. uncut text.
RACHMANINOFF: Symphony No. 2 in E minor, Op. 27:
i. Largo -- Allegro moderato
Philadelphia Orchestra, Eugene Ormandy, cond. Columbia-CBS-Sony, recorded Feb. 11, 1951 (mono)
Philadelphia Orchestra, Eugene Ormandy, cond. Columbia-CBS-Sony, recorded Apr. 19, 1959
[uncut] Philadelphia Orchestra, Eugene Ormandy, cond. RCA, recorded Dec. 18-19, 1973
THE UNCUT FORM IS DIFFERENT, ISN'T IT?
For one thing, Rach 2 is by intention a really big piece. I think it's not an accident that we have tempo markings like the first-movement introduction's Largo and the third movement's Adagio. It's also a piece of considerable darkness, though it also contains dimensions of light. These are all elements a conductor has to explore and balance. But if you want to hear what I mean by the music knowing where it's coming from and where it's going, I offer this performance by a conductor well known to us. Yes, he makes cuts, but at almost every moment he's making rich dramatic sense of music I've spent much of my listening life allowing mostly to pass me by.
I SAID WE'D HEAR ALL OF RACH 2 -- NOW IT'S TIME
Again, it's not uncut, but I think this is the performance we want -- or maybe need -- to hear. Even the recorded sound -- accomplished by a DG team while the Leningraders were on tour in Berlin -- seems to me exceptional.
RACHMANINOFF: Symphony No. 2 in E minor, Op. 27:
i. Largo [at 0:01] -- Adagio moderato [at 3:50]
ii. Allegro molto [at 17:47]
iii. Adagio [at27:36]
iv. Allegro vivace [at 42:03]
Leningrad Philharmonic Orchestra, Kurt Sanderling, cond. DG, recorded in the Jesus-Christus-Kirche, Berlin, May 1956
FINALLY WE COME TO A.R.'S "HONORABLE MENTION"
HONORABLE MENTION
KODÁLY: Dances of Galánta
A.R.: "This solo and cadenza seem perfectly suited to the clarinet, full of gypsy character and technical pyrotechnics."
[clarinet entrance after 0:17] Philharmonia Hungarica, Antal Dorati, cond. Mercury, recorded in the Grosse Saal of the Vienna Konzaerthaus, June 2, 1958
[clarinet entrance after 0:14] Sigurd Bockman, clarinet; Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, Fritz Reiner, cond. Columbia, recorded in the Syria Mosque, Mar. 27, 1945
"Honorable mention" indeed -- if you were an orchestral clarinetist, I shudder to think of what you might do to get your people to put the Dances of Galánta on the bill.
Unfortunately, we're in the same fix as with the Rachmaninoff Second Symphony: I have no S.D. performance for you. Again, he must have played the piece -- it turned up a number of times during his principalship, conducted by Andre Kostelanzetz (concerts in 6/1977, 5/1972, and 10/1979), Sergiu Comissiona (a 6/1977 Rug Concert), Andrew Davis (3/1978), Zubin Mehta (2/1990), David Gilbert (a 3/1990 Young People's Concert), Michael Morgan (10/1992), Semyon Bychkov (10/1996), Andrew Davis again (1/2002), and Lorin Maazel (in New York in 2-3/2006 and later that year at a sprinkling of tour concerts).
So I've turned to a couple of Hungarian expats: Fritz Reiner, ensconced in Pittsburgh in his pre-Chicago days; and Antal Dorati, recording in Vienna with the expat orchestra he did so much to bring into being.
AND THE WHOLE THING:
KODÁLY: Dances of Galánta
Philharmonia Hungarica, Antal Dorati, cond. Mercury, recorded in the Grosse Saal of the Vienna Konzerthaus, June 2, 1958
Sigurd Bockman, clarinet; Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, Fritz Reiner, cond. Columbia, recorded in the Syria Mosque, Mar. 27, 1945
PROGRAMMING NOTE:
Tosca follow-up still to come
You may recall that two weeks ago ("We move on to No. 7 as we count our way through those "Top 10 [or 11] Orchestral Clarinet Solos" with (mostly) Stanley Drucker") our countdown of Allan Rosenfeld's list stalled at No. 7, Cavaradossi's aria "E lucevan le stelle" from Act III of Tosca. I couldn't resist the occasion to take a look at some of the extraordinary craftsmanship -- at the service of outsize genius -- is on view in those opening 14 minutes or so of Act III of Tosca. To which end I got as far as: (a) breaking the scene down into its component parts, and (b) assembling 11 audio clips taking us from Puccini's musical portrait of the awakening city of Rome to Cavaradossi's arrival at his imminent place of execution on through Tosca's entrance bringing -- she thinks -- documented word of his rescue.
What I didn't get to was adding any comment on what all that aimed at pulling all this material together -- trying to show what those 11 performances have to tell us about Puccini's crafting of this extraordinary opera. I still want to give that a shot. In fact, I hoped to have it ready today. I didn't. Soon, though!
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