HAPPY 100th, DIETRICH F.-D.! (1925-2012)
Of course we're going to hear it, right after some administrative stuff.
[Screen cap from video of their Schöne Müllerin in Feldkirch (Austria)]
by Ken
Post No. 1 is the long-awaited follow-up to the April 21 post, "Schubert understood that life sometimes works out and other times . . . well, it doesn't." The beginning has been sitting ready for a while now, waiting for the rest of it to come together. Much progress has been made, but we're not there yet, and when, amid the huffing and puffing to get there, I was reminded that the Fischer-Dieskau centenary is imminent --
I got the idea for "Post No. 2," which could be made by simply ripping a completed chunk out of the draft of Post No. 1, with minimal alteration, as an introduction to a selection of Fischer-Dieskau gems from the SC Archive. Not so simple, alas, as I realized when I got as far as some Bach and Gluck. No problem: We'll reserve the full archival dip to a future date and tack the Bach and Gluck excerpts onto the chunk extracted from "Post No. 1."
OH, ONE MORE THING: We'll be hearing the two post-beginnings in reverse order. After all, it's Dieter F.-D.'s b'day!
Post No. 2
IT'S D.F.-D.'S 100th BIRTHDAY WEDNESDAY!
Just 'cause here's no longer with us is no reason not to mark the occasion.
SCHUBERT: Die schöne Müllerin (The Beautiful Milleress), D. 795:
[1] Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, as we heard in our last post, from his 1971 DG recording of Die schöne Müllerin with Gerald Moore at the piano
[2] AS PICTURED ABOVE: Fischer-Dieskau at 65 (!), with András Schiff, at the Schubertiade in Feldkirch (Austria), June 1991 [Watch here, at 47:18]
[3] Baritone Sanford Sylvan, with David Breitman accompanying on fortepiano, from their 1991 Schöne Müllerin for Elektra Nonesuch
NOTES: In [1] we rehear Fischer-Dieskau (1925-2012) at the height of his powers, at age 45 -- actually, already a bit late for his absolute vocal prime -- in one of the most completely satisfying performances, vocally and interpretively, I've heard from him. In [2] we get to wonder at the "Trockne Blumen" he conjured at age 65! No, he couldn't make the whole 1991 Schöne Müllerin work at this level, but c'mon, the guy was 65! As to [3], isn't it just lovely? We'll be coming back to it.
AT SC WE DON'T NEED ANY DANGED CENTENARY
TO TAKE NOTE OF DIETRICH FISCHER-DIESKAU
I had to start somewhere, and Bach seemed as good a place as any. Fischer-Dieskau sang (and recorded) vast quantities of Bach, and for me the starting point was obvious: the aria "Schlummert ein" from Cantata No. 82, Ich habe genug. In the LP era, the great solo-bass cantatas Nos. 56 (Ich will den Kreuzstab gerne tragen) and 82 were frequent disc-mates, and Fischer-Dieskau recorded the pairing first in 1951 with Karl Ristenpart and then in 1968 with Karl Richter. He eventually made another recording of No. 82, with Helmut Rilling.
I've often (probably too often) told the story of my most memorable encounter with the Richter version. Scroll back in memory to the dawn of the audio cassette, and the record companies' deployment of it as a commercial music medium, made easier with the advent of Dolby-B to tame the hiss level. Mostly I bought what was available cheapest, mostly tapes issued by or licensed from second- and third-tier European labels -- many of which I still have (and even ocasionally play!). Somewhere along the line I bought a proper audio cassette deck and some higher-level cassettes, including the DG Archive issue of that Bach 56/82.
DG wasn't even using Dolby then, so when I inserted the cassette in my Advent deck, the hiss level must have been noticeable, but I was in another world, especially with Ich habe genug (the cantata and the opening aria), and by the time it came to the second aria, "Schlummert ein," I wasn't listening to cassettes anymore, I was listening to music.
BACH: Cantata No. 82, Ich habe genug:
iii. Aria, "Schlummert ein, ihr matten Augen"
("Rest in sleep, you weary eyes")
Karl Ristenpart Chamber Orchestra, Karl Ristenpart, cond. DG Archiv Produktion, recorded in the Jesus-Christus-Kirche, Berlin, June 20-22, 1951
Munich Bach Orchestra, Karl Richter, cond. DG Archiv Produktion, recorded in the Herkulessaal of the Residenz, July 1968
Bach-Collegium Stuttgart, Helmuth Rilling cond. Hänssler Classics, recorded in the Gedächtniskirche, July 1983
In the 2015 post for which these clips were made, I had no hesitation in declaring the Fischer-Dieskau–Richter performance the best "Schlummert ein" I'd heard. Now, make no mistake, I still love it, but on rehearing, I love all three of these performances, with three markedly different conductors. It's easy to forget how good a conductor Karl Ristenpart was, here so rhythmically determined yet fluid. Karl Richter so relishes the deep beauty of the aria that we may not notice how expansive his performance is. And Helmut Rilling brings us a special level of hushed intimacy, a framework that's ideally suited to the resources of the Fischer-Dieskau of 1983. (It's getting late for him.)
GLUCK: Orfeo ed Euridice: Act III, "Che farò senza Euridice?" ("What will I do without Euridice?")
ORPHEUS: What will I do without Eurydice?
Where will I go with mybeloved?
What will I do? Where will I go?
What wlll I do without my beloved?
Where will I go with my beloved?
Oh god! respond! respond!
I am still your faithful one!
What will I do &c?
Eurydice! Eurydice!
There isn't available to me
any more help, any more hope,
neither in the world nor in heaven!
What will I do &c?
[in German, as "Ach, ich habe sie verloren" ("Ah, I have lost her")] Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra, Ferenc Fricsay, cond. DG, recorded in the Jesus-Christus-Kirche, Sept. 8-12, 1956
[in the original Italian] Munich Bach Orchestra, Karl Richter, cond. DG, recorded in the Herkulessaal of the Residenz, August 1967
I was tempted to go back to the opening scene of Orfeo, to hear (in both recordings) those heartbreaking cries of Eurydice's name, a man in torment trying to express inexpressible grief at the loss of his spouse. We'll have to make do with his response at losing her a second time. The 1956 "Che farò" is terrific: the voice flowing with such freedom and color, and the singer seeming to communicate more directly in his native language. But the 1967 performance (which I have to confess wasn't in the archive; I added it because I thought we should be able to hear the two together) is pretty wonderful too: more settledly elegiac in tone, still remarkably rich in expression.
STILL TO COME: The promised excursion through the archive for a musical portrait of sorts of D.F.-D.
Post No. 1
CAN A FLUTE DO "SOMBER"? LET'S ASK A PANEL OF EXPERTS: EMMANUEL P., JEAN-PIERRE R., AND ALEXANDER K.
[Photo from Festival-Salon, via Wikimedia Commons, cropped]
INTRODUCTION: A three-minute fix of just plain gorgeousness
(Or not-so-plain? This mystical morsel has come to haunt me)
Emmanuel Pahud, flute; Eric Le Sage, piano. Valois, recorded in the Salle de Châtonneyre (Switzerland), February 1994
Jean-Pierre Rampal, flute; Robert Veyron-Lacroix, piano. EMI, ℗1959
Alexander Korneyev, flute; Emil Gilels, piano. Melodiya, recorded in Moscow, 1958
Three very different performances, no? Note, for example:I've been living with this "morsel" for several months now, and it has been increasingly invading my consciousness. Yes, "morsels" are by definition "little." Yet somehow the littleness of this musical tidbit seems all the more remarkable measured against its impact. Some of you will no doubt know what it is, but maybe it's better if you don't -- does it maybe ring a distant bell?
• Emmanuel Pahud and Eric Le Sage's intense eloquence (contrast Alexander Korneyev's chastely near-vibrato-less playing) -- are you surprised to find that Pahud-Le Sage is our quickest performance?
• the way Jean-Pierre Rampal and Robert Veyron-Lacroix, in their seemingly effortless yet near-to-mesmerizing delivery, conceal their fastidious sculpting of this grabbing "morsel";
• how in bars 1-2, before the flute enters, Emil Gilels makes a duet, with utterly different tonal qualities, between the two-hand chords and the left hand's unstressed-beat pealing eighth-note E's -- an accompaniment format that underpins the flute's melodic flights;
• in bars 9-10, the three flutists' individual takes on the almost screeching (wailing?) upreach to the high E and G.
If we let our panelists go on a bit, it'd better sound familiar!
[Theme at 2:46] Emmanuel Pahud, flute; Eric Le Sage, piano
[Theme at 3:01] Jean-Pierre Rampal, flute; Robert Veyron-Lacroix, piano
[Theme at 3:15] Alexander Korneyev, flute; Emil Gilels, piano
"Aha!" you say? "Aha!" indeed!
NOW, GETTING BACK TO SANFORD S.'S SCHÖNE MÜLLERIN
"A lovely performance," as I said, by "a special singer, with that baritone of such ease and lyric beauty and a performing mode so irresistibly sympathetic."
In the draft version of Post No. 1, I go into this more, with a couple of other songs from S.S.'s Schöne Müllerin and some other digressions. For now I want to skip to the extensive booklet notes by Michael Steinberg (1928-2009), which I don't think I'd looked at before. I have a lot of respect for Michael, lead classical-music critic of the Boston Globe from 1964 to 1976, then program annotator for the Boston Symphony, before heading West for a post created for him by the San Francisco Symphony, as director of publications and music adviser. Naturally I was curious what he had to say about "Trockne Blumen."
That's right, the "Introduction" I described as "a three-minute fix of just plain gorgeousness," a "mystical morsel" that "has come to haunt me") is the Introduction that Schubert created for what Michael calls the "brilliant and frivolous set of variations for flute and piano on 'Trockne Blumen' " which Schubert composed two months after he completed Die schöne Müllerin. The "Theme" is the flute-and-piano rendering of the themes from "Trockne Blumen" we used in the April 21 post to ease our way into the song itself.
And the Introduction, Theme and Variations on "Trockne Blumen" is the "loose end" left hanging at the end of that post (you may recall me saying, "We can take this up in a short separate post"), about which I wrote:
I hope you'll agree, though, that the Introduction of D. 802 is about as far removed from frivolousness as you can get. When Schubert decided to do variations on "Trockne Blumen," isn't it interesting that he not only thought to fit them up with an introduction, far from standard practice with theme-and-variations sets, and of course an introduction like this one, whose mood can fairly be described as somber? Which prompted the question that formed the title of Post No. 1: "Can a flute do 'somber'?" I think, by the way, that the unanimous verdict of our expert panel is that yes indeed, it can! I think one of the appeals of D. 802 to flutists is the chance to show off this aspect of their technique and artistic personality. It has a pretty interesting piano part too.
And while a set of variations for flute and piano isn't a likely candidate for sustained deep meditativeness, I'm not sure it's fair to write these off as merely "brilliant and frivolous." What Michael really accomplished for me was to make me curious about the piece, which I'd certainly heard, but never paid much attention to. I came to this from a lesson I'd learned by watching Georg Solti and Dudley Moore play (and I do mean "play") two of the Brahms Variations on a Theme (We All Thought Was) by Haydn in the nearly-quarter-century-old TV series Orchestra!. We watch Sir Georg and Dudley play the original two-piano version, and Sir Georg conduct those same variations with the young orchestra of the Schleswig-Holstein Festival.
I think I'd like to try to talk about that, and also take a closer listein to Schubert's admittedly more modest "Trockne Blumen" Variations, on the principle that at least I as a listener tend to listen to sets of theme-and-variations as blurs, a musical colllage. For now, though, I'm not going to say anything more about the seven variations as we prepare to listen to them.
SCHUBERT: Introduction, Theme and Variations on "Trockne Blumen" in E minor for flute and piano, D. 802
[Theme at 3:14; Var. I at 4:51; Var. II at 6:18; Var. III at 8:38; Var. IV at 10:50; Var. V at 13:06; Var. VI at 15.15; Var. VII at 17:25]
Alexander Korneyev, flute; Emil Gilels, piano. Melodiya, recorded in Moscow, 1958
[Theme at 3:01; Var. I at 4:37; Var. II at 6:15; Var. III at 7:43; Var. IV at 10:05; Var. V at 11:42; Var. VI at 13.48; Var. VII at 16:12]
Jean-Pierre Rampal, flute; Robert Veyron-Lacroix, piano. EMI, ℗1959
[Theme at 2:45; Var. I at 4:41; Var. II at 6:19; Var. III at 8:01; Var. IV at 10:20; Var. V at 12:00; Var. VI at 14:00; Var. VII at 17:02]
Emmanuel Pahud, flute; Eric Le Sage, piano. Valois, recorded in the Salle de Châtonneyre (Switzerland), February 1994
[Theme at 3:01] Jean-Pierre Rampal, flute; Robert Veyron-Lacroix, piano
[Theme at 3:15] Alexander Korneyev, flute; Emil Gilels, piano
"Aha!" you say? "Aha!" indeed!
NOW, GETTING BACK TO SANFORD S.'S SCHÖNE MÜLLERIN
"A lovely performance," as I said, by "a special singer, with that baritone of such ease and lyric beauty and a performing mode so irresistibly sympathetic."
The flowers she [i.e., the Miller's beautiful daughter] gave him [i.e., the young apprentice Miller] are dried up and no tears will restore them to life, but when next spring she walks by his grave and realizes how constant he was, then all the flowers on the hillside will burst into bloom. Here is a mawkish poem redeemed and transfigured by great music.Fair enough. But Michael has something he has to get off his chest.
With a callousness for which we would not easily forgive another composer, Schubert two months later composed a brilliant and frivolous set of variations for flute and piano on "Trockne Blumen."He's referring, of course, to the very piece whose opening we heard at the top of Post No. 1, which I'm calling -- it goes by about a thousand names -- Introduction, Theme and Variations on "Trockne Blumen" in E minor for flute and piano, D. 802.
That's right, the "Introduction" I described as "a three-minute fix of just plain gorgeousness," a "mystical morsel" that "has come to haunt me") is the Introduction that Schubert created for what Michael calls the "brilliant and frivolous set of variations for flute and piano on 'Trockne Blumen' " which Schubert composed two months after he completed Die schöne Müllerin. The "Theme" is the flute-and-piano rendering of the themes from "Trockne Blumen" we used in the April 21 post to ease our way into the song itself.
And the Introduction, Theme and Variations on "Trockne Blumen" is the "loose end" left hanging at the end of that post (you may recall me saying, "We can take this up in a short separate post"), about which I wrote:
As far as I know, no back story to D. 802's composition has ever been discerned. It doesn't seem to have been written for anyone or for any purpose except the composer's own edification, and I don't think there's evidence that it was performed in the composer's lifetime. It was found among the mess of papers left behind at his intolerably young death, in 1832, age 31, and wasn't published till 1850. (This source even questions whether the theme was in fact borrowed from the song!)I don't mean to give Michael S. a hard time here. I take his point about the "Trockne Blumen" Variations -- and admire him for sticking up for the composer of the song, even if it's against the composer of the variations. We've listened to the most famous self-variationizings Schubert performed. When he tapped the song "Death and the Maiden" to become the theme-and-variations Andante con moto of the great String Quartet No. 14, which we know by that name, he generally (but note, not exclusively) maintained the gravity of the original, whereas the jaunty "Trout" was transformed into the rollicking fourth movement of the Trout Quintet. (I should probably dig out links -- does anyone care?)
I hope you'll agree, though, that the Introduction of D. 802 is about as far removed from frivolousness as you can get. When Schubert decided to do variations on "Trockne Blumen," isn't it interesting that he not only thought to fit them up with an introduction, far from standard practice with theme-and-variations sets, and of course an introduction like this one, whose mood can fairly be described as somber? Which prompted the question that formed the title of Post No. 1: "Can a flute do 'somber'?" I think, by the way, that the unanimous verdict of our expert panel is that yes indeed, it can! I think one of the appeals of D. 802 to flutists is the chance to show off this aspect of their technique and artistic personality. It has a pretty interesting piano part too.
And while a set of variations for flute and piano isn't a likely candidate for sustained deep meditativeness, I'm not sure it's fair to write these off as merely "brilliant and frivolous." What Michael really accomplished for me was to make me curious about the piece, which I'd certainly heard, but never paid much attention to. I came to this from a lesson I'd learned by watching Georg Solti and Dudley Moore play (and I do mean "play") two of the Brahms Variations on a Theme (We All Thought Was) by Haydn in the nearly-quarter-century-old TV series Orchestra!. We watch Sir Georg and Dudley play the original two-piano version, and Sir Georg conduct those same variations with the young orchestra of the Schleswig-Holstein Festival.
I think I'd like to try to talk about that, and also take a closer listein to Schubert's admittedly more modest "Trockne Blumen" Variations, on the principle that at least I as a listener tend to listen to sets of theme-and-variations as blurs, a musical colllage. For now, though, I'm not going to say anything more about the seven variations as we prepare to listen to them.
SCHUBERT: Introduction, Theme and Variations on "Trockne Blumen" in E minor for flute and piano, D. 802
[Theme at 3:14; Var. I at 4:51; Var. II at 6:18; Var. III at 8:38; Var. IV at 10:50; Var. V at 13:06; Var. VI at 15.15; Var. VII at 17:25]
Alexander Korneyev, flute; Emil Gilels, piano. Melodiya, recorded in Moscow, 1958
[Theme at 3:01; Var. I at 4:37; Var. II at 6:15; Var. III at 7:43; Var. IV at 10:05; Var. V at 11:42; Var. VI at 13.48; Var. VII at 16:12]
Jean-Pierre Rampal, flute; Robert Veyron-Lacroix, piano. EMI, ℗1959
[Theme at 2:45; Var. I at 4:41; Var. II at 6:19; Var. III at 8:01; Var. IV at 10:20; Var. V at 12:00; Var. VI at 14:00; Var. VII at 17:02]
Emmanuel Pahud, flute; Eric Le Sage, piano. Valois, recorded in the Salle de Châtonneyre (Switzerland), February 1994
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