I KNOW I'LL REGRET IT, BUT I WANT TO TRY TALKING
ABOUT WHAT I THINK OF AS MUSICAL "AUTHENTICITY"
(Which has nothing to do with the kind usually talked about)
EXCERPT I
[2:47] New Philharmonia Orchestra, Leopold Stokowski, cond. Decca 'Phase 4', recorded in Kingsway Hall, London, September 1965
EXCERPT II
[4:49] Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, Leopold Stokowski, cond. Decca 'Phase 4', recorded in the Grand Théâtre, Geneva, Sept. 15-16, 1968
Many (most?) people, when they think of it, think of the great love theme --
[2:48] Berlin Philharmonic, Herbert von Karajan, cond. DG, recorded in the Jesus-Christus-Kirche, Oct. 12-13, 1966
But that's not where we're heading. This theme is kind of foolproof, can't-miss. It's hard to imagine any conductor misfiring with it. -- Ed.
by Ken
Sometimes it's intriguing to try to retrace a train of thought, back to its point of origin, to maybe see how it was hatched, and then how it morphed through its wanderings. As it happens, in this case -- the case of the specific part of the "odd path" I referenced above, from Excerpt I to Excerpt II -- the pathway, if not the actual thought collision, is easy to identify: On a Stoky "compilation" CD that Decca put out, they're the first and last of the 17 tracks.
HOW EXACTLY DID THOSE TRACKS AT OPPOSITE
ENDS OF A 17-TRACK CD CRASH INTO EACH OTHER?
Good question. This still needs explaining, but that will require tracing the part of the "odd path" that led me to Excerpt I in the first place.
Curiously, it came by way of -- wait for it! -- Jean Sibelius. (I told you it was an odd path.) Not from any real-life connection between the composers. The connection occurred in my head, in a manner I can still only guess at. It happened while I was mentally staking out audio clips I might be able to cull from the SC archive to pass on to a young friend. (Short version: He was about to visit Finland, for reasons about as far from music as you can get. In fact, though, he wound up visiting the house museum into which the Sibelius family home was turned. Hey, I'm never going to get there!)
The Sibelius mental stakeout was yielding, oh, 8 or 9 or 10 pieces or excerpts of pieces for consideration -- what we might call "My Favorite Sibelius." As a clue to where my head was at the time, the candidates certainly included --
SIBELIUS: Four Legends from the Kalevala, Op. 22:
No. 3, The Swan of Tuonela
[7:51] Gerhard Stempnik, English horn; Berlin Philharmonic, Herbert von Karajan, cond. DG, recorded in the Philharmonie, Feb. 24, 1984
[8:32] Marcel Tabuteau, English horn; Philadelphia Orchestra, Leopold Stokowski, cond. Victor, recorded in the Academy of Music, May 2-3, 1929
[9:51] Louis Rosenblatt, English horn; Philadelphia Orchestra, Eugene Ormandy, cond. Columbia-CBS-Sony, recorded in the Broadwood Hotel, Jan. 31, 1960
It doesn't surprise me that my mind in its Sibelius wanderings quickly landed on The Swan, this haunting representation of the chilly Northern mental landscape so characteristic of him, packed as it is (if only figuratively "in ice") with intense experience and suffused with a melodic and harmonic beauty that is very much the composer's own.
I've posted these three performances I plucked out of the archive in order of duration, fastest to slowest. I was kind of surprised to find that our first-place finisher is Herbert von Karajan, from whom I might have anticipated -- especially in his late years -- a pensive, brooding approach. No, our surprising "gradualist" is Eugene Ormandy, a notably passionate Sibelian. I love both performances, though. From Karajan, the customary coolness of tone, or perhaps of color palette, he typically drew from "his" Berlin Philharmonic fits nicely here. Predictably Ormandy, whose strong connection to Sibelius's music seems to have won the composer's admiration as well as appreciation, has his remarkable orchestra playing at full tonal intensity.
Yet the greatest (and happiest) surprise may be how well our antique Philadelphia recording holds up. From the Stoky we encountered atop the post we've jumped back nearly four decades, to his potent 1929 self -- shrewdly allowing The Swan to unfold seemingly of its own inner will, even as he retains control of its powerful flow. The orchestra shows that long before it became Ormandy's Philadelphians, it knew a thing or two about playing Sibelius.
TOO TRIVIAL TO FUSS OVER? FINLANDIA + A COUPLE OF NOTES
I know many sophisticated music lovers regard Finlandia as too simple (read perhaps "simple-minded") to be worthy of serious attention. I can't tell you how much I disagree. It was created with the noblest patriotic intentions, which inspired the composer to produce a musical landmark for (dare I say?) the ages. Let's listen first.
SIBELIUS: Finlandia (tone poem), Op. 26
[9:22] Berlin Philharmonic, Herbert von Karajan, cond. DG, recorded in the Philharmonie, Feb. 24, 1984
[8:20] Philadelphia Orchestra, Eugene Ormandy, cond. Columbia-CBS-Sony, recorded in Town Hall, Feb. 24, 1968
Or with voices raised in song!
[8:19] Mormon Tabernacle Choir, Philadelphia Orchestra, Eugene Ormandy, cond. Columbia-CBS-Sony, recorded in the Broadwood Hotel, Nov. 1, 1959
Now, a couple of Finlandia-themed notes --
(1) I grew up with Ormandy's first stereo version, fitted out with the Mormon Tabernacle Choir (known since October 2018 as the Tabernacle Choir at Temple Square). I like the next Ormandy stereo Finlandia too, without chorus. And I'm happy to pair it with the Karajan recording, where HvK does something he had a gift for: taking a piece the world might think of as overplayed, even to the point of exhaustion, and imagining it fresh.
There's a Karajan-Berlin video William Tell Overture that blew me away, not because our Herbert was such an intuitive Rossinian (all these years later I still don't know what to make of the two LPs' worth of Rossini overtures he recorded for DG, with the Berlin Phil sounding like as Rossini-unfriendly an orchestra as one can imagine), but because it's clear that for this performance he had gone back to basics -- with a piece the orchestra could probably have played fine without rehearsal, insisting on imagining every episode, every moment in each episode, as if we'd none of us heard the piece before, seeming to get the Philharmoniker to think of it that way too, as if this was the most important piece of music they'd ever played.
From the outset of this Finlandia, savor the depth of the orchestral snarl Karajan draws from those same Philharmoniker -- and at the same time the tonal luster with which the Berlin brasses breathe out that snarl. HvK was a complicated person, and within that complicatedness there are so many issues to deal with, both musical and nonmusical, that it can be easy to forget how great a musician there was lurking in there.
(2) To return to the Ormandy-Philadelphia collaboration with the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, a pre-"crossover" combo the Columbia Records folks relished, we should remember that it wasn't a brand-new idea to bring in a chorus for the moment when the music resolves into that noble hymn-like tune. This had started almost as soon as the piece was composed. The composer was well aware, and seems not to have cottoned to it at all. He may have had misgivings that listeners might think he had built the piece around a storied Finnish hymn. Which isn't the story at all.
Yes, the tune became a beloved Finnish hymn, incorporating many different sets of words in many different languages. But that all happened after Sibelius composed it. I couldn't count the number of times I've listened to the Ormandy-Philadelphia-Mormon Tabernacle Finlandia -- on LP for decades, then in CD reissue. And every time I'm stirred, even though, as noted above, I have no idea what words are being sung. This feels like a moment that cries out for song -- not just song, but song of the big-choral kind.
HOW I CAME TO ADORE THE SIBELIUS VIOLIN CONCERTO
As you've probably guessed, my first versions of The Swan, Finlandia, and (I can add) the Violin Concerto were the then-recent Ormandy-Philadelphia ones. To my annoyance, although the mono Ormandy-Philadelpha Swan and Finlandia had come on the same LP, for the stereo remakes they were torn asunder. On the two LPs I was forced to acquire, it took my 12-year-old self awhile to fight through my funk to take proper note of "the other stuff" that came with the stuff I'd coveted.
In the case of The Swan, the other stuff was the Violin Concerto. Columbia Records was only one of the Western labels lying in wait in those years when great Soviet musicians were ever so tentatively allowed to slip through the Iron Curtain to play for hordes of admirers of their home-country records eager to shell out hard Western currencies, most of which found its way not to the artists but to the regime. (The artists, legally barred from bringing home any of that vile Western money they were paid, famously shopped till they dropped, in effect carrying their earnings, such as they were, home with them.)
The great violinist David Oistrakh was an obvious target for the record companies, and the Sibelius Concerto with Ormandy was a splendid idea -- a conductor who was both a dedicated Sibelian and an elite-quality concerto accompanist. Is this David O.'s greatest recording of the piece? Maybe, maybe not, but it's plenty great, and it certainly sounds great.
SIBELIUS: Violin Concerto in D minor, Op. 47:
iii. Allegro ma non troppo
[7:22] David Oistrakh, violin; Philadelphia Orchestra, Eugene Ormandy, cond. Columbia-CBS-Sony, recorded in the Broadhurst Hotel, Dec. 21 & 24, 1959
Let me tell you, it doesn't take a lot of listenings before that amazing creation becomes wholly absorbed into your soul. Probably it took another while before I did the unthinkable: flipped the record over to Side 1. And there I began encountering what is still one of the most powerful as well as beautiful pieces of music I know. This is, really, the piece I meant to spotlight here, for the underlying presence of that cool Nordic soundview. I'm not going to venture anything more about the concerto, except for two obvious notes:
• For their one-and-only violin concertos Beethoven, Brahms, and Tchaikovsky settled happily on D major, a great key for the violin, taking rich advantage of the resonances produced by all its open strings. Sibelius chose D minor, which sets us up for a very different kind of musical experience, while still taking considerable advantage of those open-string resonances.
• Sibelius doesn't fool around with business that doesn't involve the soloist, who (as we can see below) gets no more prep than 3½ bars of muted murmurings from the orchestral violins. It must feel great for the violinist -- assuming a successful "launch" -- to be so immediately plunged, dolce ed espressivo (sweet and expressive), into such songful, soulful delivery.
I'm not going to say anything about the performances I've chosen either. Let's let them speak for themselves.
SIBELIUS: Violin Concerto in D minor, Op. 47:
i. Allegro moderato
[14:48] David Oistrakh, violin; Eugene Ormandy, cond. [credits as above]
[15:46] Ginette Neveu, violin; Philharmonia Orchestra, Walter Susskind, cond. EMI, recorded in Abbey Road Studio No. 1, Nov. 21, 1945
[16:15] Maxim Vengerov, violin; Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Daniel Barenboim, cond. Teldec, recorded in Orchestra Hall, January 1996
I REALIZE I STILL HAVEN'T MADE THE CONNECTION TO
EXAMPLES I AND II, BUT I THINK IT'S TIME TO PAUSE
Much of the writing is done, and so are most of the clips-to-come. (My computer, in a state of advanced distress, has made clip-making highly precarious, though I should be able to switch that function to my one properly functioning computer, now that not one but two theoretical "backup" computers have crapped out. The one is my trusty old Early 2008 iMac, which is still working fine but is limited functionally to what Apple decreed many years ago should be the limit for a "fit only for the scrapheap" Early 2008 iMac.
Anyway, I think at this point we could also use a rest, even if it means postponing the promised rehearing of Example II, when in addition to having by the promised much more extensive copying of the score, we'll continue a bit farther into the piece. Really and truly, I'd like to get back to a regular publishing schedule, trusting that however inconsequential the blather is, the music will repay your attention.
Maybe I can even get the rest of the post up before next Sunday, even in the next day or two. I guess we'll see.
ABOUT WHAT I THINK OF AS MUSICAL "AUTHENTICITY"
(Which has nothing to do with the kind usually talked about)
What is this distinguished-looking fellow up to? (FWIW,
note that whatever it is, he's doing it without a baton.)
note that whatever it is, he's doing it without a baton.)
EXCERPT I
[2:47] New Philharmonia Orchestra, Leopold Stokowski, cond. Decca 'Phase 4', recorded in Kingsway Hall, London, September 1965
EXCERPT II
[Don't overboost the volume! Note that Excerpt II starts 'p' (soft); even the crescendo is only to 'poco più f ' (a little louder).]
[4:49] Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, Leopold Stokowski, cond. Decca 'Phase 4', recorded in the Grand Théâtre, Geneva, Sept. 15-16, 1968
NOTE: Excerpt II is so startling in both conception and scoring, I've copied more of the score for when we hear it again. -- Ed.A NOTE ON THE WORK THAT 'EXCERPT II' COMES FROM
Many (most?) people, when they think of it, think of the great love theme --
[2:48] Berlin Philharmonic, Herbert von Karajan, cond. DG, recorded in the Jesus-Christus-Kirche, Oct. 12-13, 1966
But that's not where we're heading. This theme is kind of foolproof, can't-miss. It's hard to imagine any conductor misfiring with it. -- Ed.
by Ken
Sometimes it's intriguing to try to retrace a train of thought, back to its point of origin, to maybe see how it was hatched, and then how it morphed through its wanderings. As it happens, in this case -- the case of the specific part of the "odd path" I referenced above, from Excerpt I to Excerpt II -- the pathway, if not the actual thought collision, is easy to identify: On a Stoky "compilation" CD that Decca put out, they're the first and last of the 17 tracks.
HOW EXACTLY DID THOSE TRACKS AT OPPOSITE
ENDS OF A 17-TRACK CD CRASH INTO EACH OTHER?
Curiously, it came by way of -- wait for it! -- Jean Sibelius. (I told you it was an odd path.) Not from any real-life connection between the composers. The connection occurred in my head, in a manner I can still only guess at. It happened while I was mentally staking out audio clips I might be able to cull from the SC archive to pass on to a young friend. (Short version: He was about to visit Finland, for reasons about as far from music as you can get. In fact, though, he wound up visiting the house museum into which the Sibelius family home was turned. Hey, I'm never going to get there!)
The Sibelius mental stakeout was yielding, oh, 8 or 9 or 10 pieces or excerpts of pieces for consideration -- what we might call "My Favorite Sibelius." As a clue to where my head was at the time, the candidates certainly included --
SIBELIUS: Four Legends from the Kalevala, Op. 22:
No. 3, The Swan of Tuonela
[7:51] Gerhard Stempnik, English horn; Berlin Philharmonic, Herbert von Karajan, cond. DG, recorded in the Philharmonie, Feb. 24, 1984
[8:32] Marcel Tabuteau, English horn; Philadelphia Orchestra, Leopold Stokowski, cond. Victor, recorded in the Academy of Music, May 2-3, 1929
[9:51] Louis Rosenblatt, English horn; Philadelphia Orchestra, Eugene Ormandy, cond. Columbia-CBS-Sony, recorded in the Broadwood Hotel, Jan. 31, 1960
It doesn't surprise me that my mind in its Sibelius wanderings quickly landed on The Swan, this haunting representation of the chilly Northern mental landscape so characteristic of him, packed as it is (if only figuratively "in ice") with intense experience and suffused with a melodic and harmonic beauty that is very much the composer's own.
Yet the greatest (and happiest) surprise may be how well our antique Philadelphia recording holds up. From the Stoky we encountered atop the post we've jumped back nearly four decades, to his potent 1929 self -- shrewdly allowing The Swan to unfold seemingly of its own inner will, even as he retains control of its powerful flow. The orchestra shows that long before it became Ormandy's Philadelphians, it knew a thing or two about playing Sibelius.
TOO TRIVIAL TO FUSS OVER? FINLANDIA + A COUPLE OF NOTES
I know many sophisticated music lovers regard Finlandia as too simple (read perhaps "simple-minded") to be worthy of serious attention. I can't tell you how much I disagree. It was created with the noblest patriotic intentions, which inspired the composer to produce a musical landmark for (dare I say?) the ages. Let's listen first.
SIBELIUS: Finlandia (tone poem), Op. 26
[9:22] Berlin Philharmonic, Herbert von Karajan, cond. DG, recorded in the Philharmonie, Feb. 24, 1984
[8:20] Philadelphia Orchestra, Eugene Ormandy, cond. Columbia-CBS-Sony, recorded in Town Hall, Feb. 24, 1968
Or with voices raised in song!
I'd have loved to plug in the sung text, but I've never made out more than the occasional word or two, and have never seen it printed. Nor could I track it down online. Doesn't it sounds lovely, though? (See no. 2 of the "couple of notes" below.)
[8:19] Mormon Tabernacle Choir, Philadelphia Orchestra, Eugene Ormandy, cond. Columbia-CBS-Sony, recorded in the Broadwood Hotel, Nov. 1, 1959
Now, a couple of Finlandia-themed notes --
There's a Karajan-Berlin video William Tell Overture that blew me away, not because our Herbert was such an intuitive Rossinian (all these years later I still don't know what to make of the two LPs' worth of Rossini overtures he recorded for DG, with the Berlin Phil sounding like as Rossini-unfriendly an orchestra as one can imagine), but because it's clear that for this performance he had gone back to basics -- with a piece the orchestra could probably have played fine without rehearsal, insisting on imagining every episode, every moment in each episode, as if we'd none of us heard the piece before, seeming to get the Philharmoniker to think of it that way too, as if this was the most important piece of music they'd ever played.
From the outset of this Finlandia, savor the depth of the orchestral snarl Karajan draws from those same Philharmoniker -- and at the same time the tonal luster with which the Berlin brasses breathe out that snarl. HvK was a complicated person, and within that complicatedness there are so many issues to deal with, both musical and nonmusical, that it can be easy to forget how great a musician there was lurking in there.
(2) To return to the Ormandy-Philadelphia collaboration with the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, a pre-"crossover" combo the Columbia Records folks relished, we should remember that it wasn't a brand-new idea to bring in a chorus for the moment when the music resolves into that noble hymn-like tune. This had started almost as soon as the piece was composed. The composer was well aware, and seems not to have cottoned to it at all. He may have had misgivings that listeners might think he had built the piece around a storied Finnish hymn. Which isn't the story at all.
Yes, the tune became a beloved Finnish hymn, incorporating many different sets of words in many different languages. But that all happened after Sibelius composed it. I couldn't count the number of times I've listened to the Ormandy-Philadelphia-Mormon Tabernacle Finlandia -- on LP for decades, then in CD reissue. And every time I'm stirred, even though, as noted above, I have no idea what words are being sung. This feels like a moment that cries out for song -- not just song, but song of the big-choral kind.
HOW I CAME TO ADORE THE SIBELIUS VIOLIN CONCERTO
As you've probably guessed, my first versions of The Swan, Finlandia, and (I can add) the Violin Concerto were the then-recent Ormandy-Philadelphia ones. To my annoyance, although the mono Ormandy-Philadelpha Swan and Finlandia had come on the same LP, for the stereo remakes they were torn asunder. On the two LPs I was forced to acquire, it took my 12-year-old self awhile to fight through my funk to take proper note of "the other stuff" that came with the stuff I'd coveted.
The great violinist David Oistrakh was an obvious target for the record companies, and the Sibelius Concerto with Ormandy was a splendid idea -- a conductor who was both a dedicated Sibelian and an elite-quality concerto accompanist. Is this David O.'s greatest recording of the piece? Maybe, maybe not, but it's plenty great, and it certainly sounds great.
UPDATE: We've heard a fair amount of David O. here at SC. Out of curiosity, I peeked in the archive and (including the two we're rehearing today) there are 32 audio clips there.However, imagine my youthful self, hungry for The Swan of Tuonela but each time having to execute a precarious stylus drop at the separating band on Side 2 of the LP. After a while I guess I must have started taking the easy route: the less nerve-wracking stylus drop at the start of the side. Which meant I began hearing this --
SIBELIUS: Violin Concerto in D minor, Op. 47:
iii. Allegro ma non troppo
[7:22] David Oistrakh, violin; Philadelphia Orchestra, Eugene Ormandy, cond. Columbia-CBS-Sony, recorded in the Broadhurst Hotel, Dec. 21 & 24, 1959
Let me tell you, it doesn't take a lot of listenings before that amazing creation becomes wholly absorbed into your soul. Probably it took another while before I did the unthinkable: flipped the record over to Side 1. And there I began encountering what is still one of the most powerful as well as beautiful pieces of music I know. This is, really, the piece I meant to spotlight here, for the underlying presence of that cool Nordic soundview. I'm not going to venture anything more about the concerto, except for two obvious notes:
• For their one-and-only violin concertos Beethoven, Brahms, and Tchaikovsky settled happily on D major, a great key for the violin, taking rich advantage of the resonances produced by all its open strings. Sibelius chose D minor, which sets us up for a very different kind of musical experience, while still taking considerable advantage of those open-string resonances.
• Sibelius doesn't fool around with business that doesn't involve the soloist, who (as we can see below) gets no more prep than 3½ bars of muted murmurings from the orchestral violins. It must feel great for the violinist -- assuming a successful "launch" -- to be so immediately plunged, dolce ed espressivo (sweet and expressive), into such songful, soulful delivery.
I'm not going to say anything about the performances I've chosen either. Let's let them speak for themselves.
SIBELIUS: Violin Concerto in D minor, Op. 47:
i. Allegro moderato
[14:48] David Oistrakh, violin; Eugene Ormandy, cond. [credits as above]
[15:46] Ginette Neveu, violin; Philharmonia Orchestra, Walter Susskind, cond. EMI, recorded in Abbey Road Studio No. 1, Nov. 21, 1945
[16:15] Maxim Vengerov, violin; Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Daniel Barenboim, cond. Teldec, recorded in Orchestra Hall, January 1996
I REALIZE I STILL HAVEN'T MADE THE CONNECTION TO
EXAMPLES I AND II, BUT I THINK IT'S TIME TO PAUSE
Much of the writing is done, and so are most of the clips-to-come. (My computer, in a state of advanced distress, has made clip-making highly precarious, though I should be able to switch that function to my one properly functioning computer, now that not one but two theoretical "backup" computers have crapped out. The one is my trusty old Early 2008 iMac, which is still working fine but is limited functionally to what Apple decreed many years ago should be the limit for a "fit only for the scrapheap" Early 2008 iMac.
Anyway, I think at this point we could also use a rest, even if it means postponing the promised rehearing of Example II, when in addition to having by the promised much more extensive copying of the score, we'll continue a bit farther into the piece. Really and truly, I'd like to get back to a regular publishing schedule, trusting that however inconsequential the blather is, the music will repay your attention.
Maybe I can even get the rest of the post up before next Sunday, even in the next day or two. I guess we'll see.
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