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

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.
And if you say I have already told you, or ever given you my kiss,
to that I say, 'The King is a fool who thinks of transient trifles.'
And if you say, ' I am indeed a fool,' I'll say, 'The King is right.'
But if you say, 'That I am not,' I'll say, 'The King is bad.'
For I have kissed my roses all to death the while I thought of you.

-- translation by Donna Hewitt, for Universal Edition, Vienna

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

Jessye Norman, soprano; Boston Symphony Orchestra, Seiji Ozawa, cond. Philips, recorded live in Symphony Hall, April 1979

Much as I love Jessye Norman's performance -- with that big, lush soprano with those big, rich depths at the bottom end, this was the perfect voice for this music -- all the same Gundula Janowitz's significantly lighter-weight and lighter-toned soprano, had a specially communicative quality that could be almost ethereal, as for me clearly happens in this strikingly humane collaboration with Krips.

I decided that all three existing clips from this performance should be dragged out of the archive, and then I decided that they should be remade, edited to provide fuller context for their place in the overall work -- and while I was at it, to sample them at a higher bit rate. I decided too that a new fourth clip should be added. And somewhere along the way I decided that some of the other SC archived excerpts should also be brought out into the light, with the focus shifting to the piece itself -- because that, after all, is what Krips performances tended to do: to lead us, heart first, into the heart of the music he was performing.

Which we'll do next time.

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