Then again, are we sure we're absolutely sure?
FRIDAY MORNING UPDATE: PART 2 OF THE POST
IS NOW UP, SO THE LINKS TO IT SHOULD BE LIVE!
(1888-1975), from his grand 1967 "Appreciation of Mahler's Third"
[NOTE: AT ANY TIME YOU CAN JUMP TO PART 2 OF THE POST]
DO YOU EVER LIKE TO CHEAT AND PEEK AHEAD TO THE END OF A WORK YOU'RE ENGAGED WITH?by Ken
We can do that! And it so happens that our composer has provided us with a perfect "pick-up" point, marked Tempo I -- a return to the very starting tempo. Just watch your volume setting, though: This section begins very quietly. I'll also point out, by way of a tease, that at the end, the composer marked the final 2½ bars, for the whole orchestra, "Mit höchster Kraft" -- "With highest strength."
New York Philharmonic, Leonard Bernstein, cond. DG,
recorded live in Avery Fisher Hall, Nov. 25-28, 1987
Was it clear up above, when I referred to "the end of a work," that the reference was not to the end of the Mahler Third Symphony but to the end of the first movement? As a matter of fact, in Part 2 of this post we are going to sneak-peek the end of the symphony. For now, though, I've been thinking through all these "silent" blogweeks that we have to deal more fully with the wonderful craziness, the marching madness, of this colossal movement than I did in the July 23 post, where "we [wound] up trapped in the gigantic first movement of the Mahler Third Symphony."
FIRST, A FEW WORDS ABOUT THIS "DOUBLE POST"[REMEMBER, AT ANY TIME YOU CAN JUMP RIGHT TO PART 2]
Back in that July 23 post where we first "[wound] up trapped in the gigantic first movement of the Mahler Third Symphony," I wrote:
My first thought was to reach back to the booklet presentation by the great English critic (and Mahler enthusiast) Neville Cardus for RCA's 1966 Leinsdorf-BSO Mahler 3 recording. But with all the musical examples to reproduce as well as all that text to be type, that seemed an impossibly arduous labor.This post is, then, a ridiculously delayed continuation of the July 23 one, growing out of a felt need to bring some more substantial tools to bear on the tempestuous journey that is the first movement of Mahler 3. As this post began taking shape, splitting into a pair of posts, and I started sorting out what would go in which part, I worried increasingly whether the form the thing was taking wouldn't defeat the whole undertaking, since the one significant new "tool" I was bringing to the part was -- after all! -- a re-creation of the portion of Neville C.'s Mahler 3 "appreciation" which deals with the first movement, considering that N.C.'s guide looked to be bumped into Part 2.
All this while I thought about rejiggering post elements, maybe just flipping Parts 1 and 2? I wound up leaving stuff mostly where it was, on one condition, assuming the two parts could be posted at the same time: a repeated advisory that the two parts of the post can be taken in in either order, including shuttling back and forth between them. -- Ed.
OKAY, TIME TO ROLL UP OUR SLEEVES AND CONTEMPLATE
THREE STAGES OF A MEMORABLE MUSICAL METAMORPHOSIS
STAGE 1 -- Could this grand old theme be any more classic? But
notice how differently the great tune can be presented to us!
Vienna Philharmonic, Rafael Kubelik, cond. Decca, recorded September 1957
Boston Symphony Orchestra, Seiji Ozawa, cond. Philips, recorded April 1977
Staatskapelle Dresden, Kurt Sanderling, cond. Eurodisc, recorded Nov. 1971
Speaking of metamorphosis, already in this initial statement the theme is undergoing it. And note how our conductors handle it: Kubelik starting simply, then building beautifully and also decisively; Ozawa phrasing so grandly yet intimately; Sanderling tone-painting the vibrant harmonies so, er, harmoniously! -- Ed.STAGE 2 -- Talk about a transformation! Here it comes to us at slightly but noticeably different paces (from quickest to broadest):
Berlin Radio Symphony, Heinz Rögner, cond. Berlin Classics, recorded 1983
Bavarian Radio Symphony, Rafael Kubelik, cond. DG, recorded May 1967
Boston Symphony Orchestra, Seiji Ozawa, cond. Philips, recorded April 1993
STAGE 3 -- Are we ready for this one? It's a doozy, which'll plunge
us into our work -- and make a real splash in Part 2 of the post!
Bavarian Radio Symphony, Rafael Kubelik, cond. DG, recorded May 1967
Vienna Philharmonic, Leonard Bernstein, cond. DG, recorded live, April 1972
BBC Symphony Orchestra, Pierre Boulez, cond. Live performance, Nov. 1974
I'D LOVE IT IF THERE ARE READERS FOR WHOM OUR "GRAND
OLD THEME" (aka STAGE 1) IS NOT "HO-HUM" FAMILIAR
Meaning readers who may be coming fresh to this symphonic landmark, whose creation caused its creator nearly a quarter-century of anguish, in which -- notwithstanding the volume of extraordinary music he composed -- he couldn't produce the symphony he felt he needed in order to establish the standing he wanted as a composer. In which connection, I think our theme sounds kind of disembodied, almost bare, stripped of its musical context, which is where the real compositional genius came into play.
So let's back up a bit and hear how the theme is set up, in a brief but haunting bridge section marked "Più andante" ("a little slower"):
[theme at 2:13] Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra, Heinz Rögner, cond. Weitblick, recorded live, June 1980
Definitely better, but still not good enough. For proper context I think we need to back up to the start of this great symphonic finale, consisting of an Adagio introduction that opens out into "Allegro non troppo ma con brio," which is to say "not too quick" and also with, you know, brio.
[Più andante at 2:40; theme at 4:57] Boston Symphony Orchestra, Seiji Ozawa, cond. DG, recorded in Symphony Hall, Apr. 2, 1977
[Più andante at 2:43; theme at 4:58] Vienna Philharmonic, Rafael Kubelik, cond. Decca, recorded in the Sofiensaal, Sept. 23-24, 1957
WE HAVE A LOT OF WORK TO DO, BUT EVEN SO,
I THINK BEFORE MOVING ON, WE NEED TO HEAR . . .
. . . all of this movement, and maybe of this symphony. But before we dial up the finale of Brahms 1 -- the source, of course, for our Stage 1 "grand old theme" -- it's worth recalling that in this symphony, whose creation caused the composer a near-quarter-century of toil, he incorporated not one but two slow introductiona to otherwise quick (or quickish) movements.
Now, slow introductions to quick movements are hardly a Brahms invention. Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, and Schubert all did it, to eternally spendid effect. But Brahms . . . well, he took it further. When he finally rolled out a symphony, something he had so long felt such pressure to do to establish his credentials as a truly ranking composer, it would launch with a super-dramatic introduction. He marked it "Un poco sostenuto" -- "A little sustained" (or maybe "prolonged"):
New York Philharmonic, Kurt Masur, cond. Teldec, recorded live in Avery Fisher Hall, May 1994
We have to hear it run into the movement's main Allegro:
Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra, Heinz Rögner, cond. Weitblick, recorded live in Saal 1 of (then) East Berlin's Funkhaus Nalepastrasse, June 9-18, 1980
For this so-long-delayed symphony, it seems clear that Brahms wanted drama, out of an apparent conviction that that's what you had to do to really command the music world's attention. We're going to come back to this point. For now we want to observe Brahms ratcheting his imagination up to blockbuster heat level. Like for example having two allegro movements with slow introductions. Here, then, is the finale.
BRAHMS: Symphony No. 1 in C minor, Op. 68:
iv. Adagio -- Allegro non troppo ma con brio
[Allegro at 4:58] Vienna Philharmonic, Rafael Kubelik, cond. Decca, recorded in the Sofiensaal, Sept. 23-24, 1957
[Allegro at 5:13] Staatskapelle Dresden, Kurt Sanderling, cond. Eurodisc-RCA, recorded in the Lukaskirche, Nov. 3-6, 1971
[Allegro at 4:57] Boston Symphony Orchestra, Seiji Ozawa, cond. DG, recorded in Symphony Hall, Apr. 2, 1977
I DO THINK WE SHOULD HEAR BRAHMS 1 WHOLE
And we have an interesting assortment of performances sitting patiently in the archive. Why not dust them off? I think it's worth our time, to poke at the frequent misimpression that classical "forms" are like molds composers poured music into. Brahms in particular is often misjudged as a musical "conservative" because he clung to established musical forms, forgetting that each time out he reinvented whatever form he was using. We've already taken a peek at the process by which he created the massive (for their time) outer movements of the First Symphony.
Let's not forget that in between lies an Andante that is as radiantly beautiful as any movement he or anyone else ever composed, and with three such imposing movements on the docket, he created a form to fill what might be thought of as the "scherzo slot": a short creation that makes considerable impact even as it fills a barely conspicuous structural window. None of the movements of Brahms 1 comes "off the rack," because there had never been anything like any of them on the rack. (We're going to be coming back to the Andante of Brahms 1 in Part 2, by the way, because circumstances make it possible to get a startling glimpse at his creative process.
All that said, I think we're ready to hear the symphony (with some performance notes following):
BRAHMS: Symphony No. 1 in C minor, Op. 68:
i. Un poco sostenuto -- Allegro; ii. Andante sostenuto;
iii. Un poco allegretto e gracioso; iv. Adagio -- Allegro non troppo ma con brio
[ii. at 13:59; iii. at 23:21; iv. at 28:03] Vienna Philharmonic, Rafael Kubelik, cond. Decca, recorded in the Sofiensaal, Sept. 23-24, 1957
[ii. at 13:15; iii. at 22:00; iv. at 26:57] Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra, Heinz Rögner, cond. Weitblick, recorded live in Saal 1 of the Funkhaus Nalepastrasse, East Berlin, June 9-18, 1980
[ii. at 13:21; iii. at 22:49; iv. at 28:31] Italian Radio-Television Symphony Orchestra, Milan, Sergiu Celibidache, cond. Live performance, Mar. 20, 1959
[ii. at 14:29; iii. at 24:51; iv. at 29:59] Vienna Philharmonic, Wilhelm Furtwängler, cond. EMI, recorded live in the Musikvereinssaal, Jan. 27, 1952
The Kubelik-Vienna Brahms cycle (which by the way can be downloaded on Amazon in excellent mp3 sound for a mind-bnumbing $2.76!) would have been one of Decca Records' early "big" projects in the Sofiensaal, the concert and dance hall (built in the 1820s as a steam bath!) freshly converted, with the advent of stereo recording, into the company's new Vienna "home" studio. There over the next three decades Decca's whiz-bang technical team would commit to tape such an abundance of sonically legendary and often musically noteworthy recordings -- most noteworthy, no doubt, the 1959-65 Solti-conducted Ring cycle.
Rögner (1929-2001) is the case of a genuinely top-quality conductor who led a busy career mostly in the media-sheltered shadow of East Germany (it's hard not to think of Klaus Tennstedt, in fact a few years older, 1926-1998, who emerged from a similar GDR bubble to such an acclaimed international career), and is known now mostly thanks to a wealth of live broadcast recordings. (There's a nice 2022 biographical sketch and appreciation by Gregor Tassie on Music Web International.) There's nothing shy or unexpressed in this smartly shaped, dynamic Brahms 1.
For the full grandeur of Brahms 1, you couldn't do much better than the live performances of Celibidache and Furtwängler. The Milan radio-TV orchestra plays its collective heart out for C, and the Vienna Phil is in prime shape for F, in one of his great performances, which suggests not so much "unhurried" as "taking the music as quickly as it will allow."
AGAIN, BRAHMS COULD PRODUCE ALL KINDS OF DRAMA
I'm concerned that my use of the term "blockbuster" for those supercharged musical episodes Brahms regularly challenged himself to create isn't meant to suggest any lowered quality of either musical materials or construction. Way back when we started observing at least the early stages of the path Brahms followed to get himself to readiness for writing that symphony he wanted so badly to write, I for one was surprised to find that from the beginning he could spin an exquisite slow movement -- "surprised" because I don't think of him as that kind of composer. But he was!
What I'm calling his "blockbuster" mode is what I think he felt a real need to cultivate, because of the impact it could have for the way he was perceived as a composer. Way back when, we looked at the episode that goes all the way back to his first published works, the pair of piano sonatas that would become his Opp. 1 and 2. When it came down to it, he reversed the order of composition to lead with the more dramatic C major Sonata as Op. 1 and the more lyrically oriented F-sharp minor Sonata as Op. 2.
BRAHMS: Piano Sonata No. 1 in C, Op. 1:
i. Allegro; ii. Andante; iii. Scherzo: Allegro molto e con fuoco;
iv. Finale: Allegro con fuoco
[ii. at 12:03; iii. at 17:54; iv. at 24:38] Sviatoslav Richter, piano. Praga, recorded live in Prague, July 20, 1988
BRAHMS: Piano Sonata No. 2 in F-sharp minor, Op. 2:
i. Allegro non troppo ma energico; ii. Andante con espressione; iii. Scherzo: Allegro; iv. Finale: Introduzione: Sostenuto . . . Allegro non troppo e rubato
[ii. at 6:22; iii. at 11:43; iv. at 15:33] Claudio Arrau, piano. Philips, recorded in Germany, June 1973
Or think of the piano quartets, of which the first two were completed and ready for publication around the same time, in 1861. There doesn't seem to have been any doubt in Brahms's mind which would be the First Piano Quartet and which the Second. Let's rehear just the first movements:
BRAHMS: Piano Quartet No. 1 in G minor, Op. 25:
i. Allegro
Borodin Trio (Luba Edlina, piano; Rostislav Dubinsky, violin; Yuli Turovsky, cello); with Rivka Golani, viola. Chandos, recorded in Layer Marney Church, Essex, England, July 14-16, 1988
Murray Perahia, piano; Amadeus Quartet members (Norbert Brainin, violin; Peter Schidlof, viola; Martin Lovett, cello). Sony, recorded in Henry Wood Hall, June 29-July 1, 1986
[complete quartet] Tamás Vásáry, piano; Thomas Brandis, violin; Wolfram Christ, viola; Ottomar Borwitzky, cello. DG, recorded in the Jesus-Christus-Kirche, January 1982
BRAHMS: Piano Quartet No. 2 in A, Op. 26:
i. Allegro non troppo
István Lantos, piano; Bartók Quartet members (Péter Komlós, violin; Géza Németh, viola; Károly Botvay, cello). Hungaroton, recorded published 1976
Borodin Trio (Luba Edlina, piano; Rostislav Dubinsky, violin; Yuli Turovsky, cello); Rivka Golani, viola. Chandos, recorded in Layer Marney Church, Essex, England, July 14-16, 1988
Sviatoslav Richter, piano; Borodin Quartet members (Mikhail Kopelman, violin; Dmitri Shebalin, viola; Valentin Berlinsky, cello). Philips, recorded live in the Grange de Meslay, Tours (France), July 8, 1983
You'd think this luscious Allegro non troppo opening movement -- kind of a prefiguration of the luscious Allegro non troppo with which Brahms would some 15 years later open the Second Symphony -- would be an interpretive no-brainer, the principal question being whether you can bring it to life. But what an assortment we have here, involving some pretty high-class musicians. Our Hungarian contingent here (and trust me, I love the Bartók Quartet to death), but they seem to have read the tempo marking as "llegro troppo" (Too fast) and are off to the races, finishing well ahead of the gasping composer.
Our Russians -- and I have to note that this recording comes from my least favorite configuration of the Borodin Quartet -- set a plausible pace but seem obsessed by a distinction, in the purling open theme, but the upward sailing chords on the upbeat, which Brahms indeed marks with a slur, and the earlier-in-the-bar triplet chords, which indeed aren't marked with slurs and are executed in a détaché that borders on staccato, and indeed throughout the movement there's more affectless keyboard clunking than one would ever imagine hearing from the fingers of Sviatoslav Richter.
The Borodin Trio performance, where we get to hear Mikhail Kopelman's great predecessor, Rostislav Dubinsky, as Borodin Quartet first violinist (the "old" Borodin Quartet connection is reinforced with the ethereal pianism of Lubina Edlina, Dubinsky's wife, who had played frequently with the quartet) goes in the opposite direction, pacing the movement so broadly that it might be a disaster of this team didn't have the goods to make it work.
AFTER BRAHMS 1, IN SHORT ORDER CAME BRAHMS 2
Brahms, having accomplished just about exactly what he hoped to with his First Symphony, was ready amazingly quickly with a Second -- for many of us the Brahms symphony we love best. Keep an aural image in your head of the first movement of Brahms 1 as we hear the first movement of Brahms 2.
BRAHMS: Symphony No. 2 in D, Op. 73:
i. Allegro non troppo
Saito Kinen Orchestra, Seiji Ozawa, cond. Live performance from the Saito Kinen Festival Matsumoto (Nagano pref.), Sept. 4-7, 2009
Staatskapelle Dresden, Kurt Sanderling, cond. Eurodisc-RCA, recorded in the Lukaskirche, 1971-72
Again, we're going to hear the whole symphony. This time we're going to dig back in history, to the performance from the legendary Brahms symphony cycle Arturo Toscanini conducted in London in 1952, which stunned the audience there, and has continued to stun most everyone familiar with the tauter, almost relentless kind of Brahms Maestro T. had been conducting in New York. I know the Philharmonia Brahms cycle exists in better sound; in the early Fifties EMI was said to be for some time on the brink of issuing the broadcast tapes commercially. But it didn't happen.
For decades the performances circulated widely, though, until finally in 2000 Testament issued them for real. Only I realized I don't have the Testament set! But even in sub-optimal sound, while I don't think we could describe the maestro here as "relaxed," exactly, or rhythmically supple, the music sings and breathes in a way that, combined with the conductor's still-rock-solid framework, makes for quite a listen.
BRAHMS: Symphony No. 2 in D, Op. 73:
i. Allegro non troppo; ii. Adagio non troppo;
iii. Allegro grazioso (quasi andantino); iv. Allegro con spirito
[ii. at 14:26; iii. at 22:40; iv. at 27:48] Philharmonia Orchestra, Arturo Toscanini, cond. Live performance from the Royal Festival Hall, Sept. 29, 1952
SORRY, THE BRAHMS CONNECTION TOOK ON A LIFE
OF ITS OWN. WE DO WANT TO GET BACK TO MAHLER 3
Which brings us, finally!, to Stages 2 and 3 of our top-of-the-post "musical metamorphosis." Stage 2, of course, is the form into which Mahler transmuted Brahms's gorgeous, setting up what you'll recall Neville Cardus summed up as "plung[ing] us into realms of vast and primeval creation."
In Part 2, you'll recall, we're going to have Neville C. lead us through the process of creation and metamorphosis by which Mahler spins out the typical 32-33 minutes of the first movement of the Third Symphony.
[Remember, at any time you can plunge directly into Part 2 of this post.]
"Stages 2 and 3" are, as I assume by now everyone is aware, from the first movement of Mahler 3, starting at the very top, which is Stage 2. We're now going to hear it set the movement in motion three times, in performances of the complete movement from three intriguingly different commercial recordings by the same conductor, the one who still seems to me to have gotten closer than any other to the beating heart of Mahler's music.
Don't forget that Professor Cardus's Mahler 3 clinic -- with audio clips added by your editor -- is available at any time with a simple click to Part 2 of the post.
I've plucked out this note on the first movement of Mahler 3:
Such a movement defies conventional analysis. Mahler's way of thinking in music did not easily conform to the rules of the symphonic scholars. He could not contain himself in the A B A divisions of symphonic form. In this unique first movement he adapted large-scale sonata form to his own power of improvisation. He believed that music should continually grow, phrase by phrase, one section balancing another, by laws not only of musical form as usually obeyed but also by psychological and organic growth and the logic of contrast. This gargantuan first movement of the Third Symphony is truly well shaped, with natural and inevitable sequences: Chaos at the beginning is changed to cosmos.
OH, ABOUT STAGE 3 OF OUR MUSICAL METAMORPHOSIS --
As noted earlier, this moment is going to be "Ex. 6" in my rendering of Neville C.'s commentary, where he points out: "It is none other than our 'Brahms' theme changed to a brazen common strain, so that it shocked concert audiences shamelessly half a century and more ago [this is in 1967, remember! -- Ed.] -- and still does." In the listings below for each performance, I've indicated approximately where you'll hear it.
MAHLER: Symphony No. 3 in D:
i. Kräftig. Entschieden. (Strong. Decisive.)
["Stage 3" at 11:22] New York Philharmonic, Leonard Bernstein (age 42½), cond. Columbia-CBS-Sony, recorded in Manhattan Center, Apr. 4, 1961
["Stage 3" at 10:51] Vienna Philharmonic, Leonard Bernstein (age 53½), cond. DG-Unitel, video-recorded live in the Grosser Saal of the Musikverein, Apr. 23-24, 1972
["Stage 3" at 11:21] New York Philharmonic, Leonard Bernstein (age 69), cond. DG, recorded live in Avery Fisher Hall, Nov. 25-28, 1987
What we have here is the first movement from all three of Leonard Bernstein's commercial recordings of the Mahler Third. The first of them, from 1961, was only the second Mahler symphony he recorded (preceded by the Fourth the year before. It wasn't the first recording; the English conductor F. Charles Adler had managed to record the piece in Vienna in 1952. But it's easy to forget, now that so many pre-1961 live performances have achieved circulation, that Lenny's Mahler 3 was in fact the second recording, not to mention the first in stereo. It certainly helped that the New York Philharmonic had in fact played the piece just five years earlier, under then-music director Dimitri Mitropoulos, an astute Mahlerian. (The 1956 NYP broadcast performance is worth hearing despite serious cuts. Better perhaps to look for Mitropoulos's 1960 Cologne radio performance.)
Still, the recording of such a vast and yet infinitely detailed work was a huge undertaking for all concerned. But I'm reminded -- and it's the reason I've included Lenny's respective ages in the listings -- that he was 42½ What intrigues me whenever I go back to is how well it holds up. Lenny wasn't especially happy with his first recorded crack at Mahler 2, the Resurrection Symphony, in 1963, and was happy to "replace" it in 1973 with a recording (video as well as audio) based on his 1973 Edinburgh Festival performances with the London Symphony. But no apologies are required for the 1961 New York Mahler 3. The piece's weirdnesses of materials, construction, textures, and psychological tones were pretty much second-nature for him.
It's easy to wonder whether the vast and multifariously demanding Third Symphony might have been shuffled further along in the Bernstein Mahler project. Not that there was at that time, except perhaps in the conductor's mind, any such thing as a "Bernstein Mahler project."
In that July of 1896 -- when, you'll recall from Jack Diether's chronicling of the event, which was included in the July 23 Mahler 3 post, Mahler summoned his young Hamburg Opera assistant Bruno Walter to his summer mountain retreat to hear the complete Third Symphony -- Mahler turned 36.
The video recording Bernstein made with the Vienna Philharmonic in 1972 is the Mahler 3 of his I know least well. I have it on Laserdisk but somehow didn't play it much when I had a working LD player. (Four usually-non-working machines don't count for much. There are many shelves' worth of LDs I wish I could play.) It intrigues me. Apart from the obvious differences in sound and execution between the NY and Vienna Phils, I'm taken by the even more confident impudences and contrasts of tone -- Lenny can have the Vienna Phil playing, well, like the Vienna Phil and also reveling in Mahler's songfulness, impudence, and spirituality.
For the 1987 New York recording Lenny seems to me to have pulled back on some of these pushed-further characterfulnesses, in favor perhaps of a more immediate sense throughout of the wonder of it all. (We should remember, by the way, that it was, as far as I know, Lenny's own choice to do his DG rerecordings of the three "monster" Mahler symphonies -- Nos. 2, 3, and 8 -- in New York, which might once have been vetoed because of the cost of recording them in the U.S. (The monster disappointment is that he didn't live to do the scheduled NYP performances and recording of Mahler 8.)
IF YOU HAVEN'T YET VENTURED THERE --
Now would be a good time to click through to Part 2.
No comments:
Post a Comment