Two ways to celebrate summer -- but one's only free through Aug. 9

(1) WE CAN TAKE NOTE OF SUMMERTIME IN SONG

Summertime and the livin' is easy.
Fish are jumpin', and the cotton is high.
Oh, your daddy's rich, and your ma is good-lookin'.
So hush, little baby, don' you cry.

One of these mornin's you goin' to rise up singin'.
Then you'll spread yo' wings, an' you'll take the sky.
But till that mornin' there's a-nothin' can harm you,
with Daddy and Mammy standin' by.

[2:45] Leontyne Price, soprano; Vienna Philharmonic, Herbert von Karajan, cond. Decca, from the "Gala" sequence recorded for the 1960 Fledermaus recording conducted by Karajan (still for my money the best Fledermaus you can buy), recorded in the Sofiensaal, June 1960

Think the song can't be sung more movingly? Ms. P. again
(with a nice orchestral intro whittled down from the opening scene)

[4:42; "Summertime" at 1:11] Leontyne Price, soprano; RCA Victor Chorus and Orchestra, Skitch Henderson, cond. RCA, recorded in the St. George Hotel, Brooklyn, May 13-17, 1963
[This is from a really smartly conducted LP of Porgy excerpts, later reissued as a "High Performance" CD, with William Warfield and Leontyne Price reprising roles they first sang together in the early 1950s -- and Ms. P. gloriously poaching Clara's famous song (which includes the chorally punctuated reprise). My goodness, listen to what she makes of it! -- Ed.]

How the song fits into the actual scene (with a fine Clara)

[7:46; "Summertime" on track 2 (at 4:18)] Harolyn Blackwell (s), Clara; Glyndebourne Chorus, London Philharmonic Orchestra, Simon Rattle, cond. EMI, recorded in Abbey Road Studio No. 1, February 1988
[This complete Porgy, based on a Glyndebourne production, garnered gushing accolades -- for reasons I've never gotten. Were the accoladers just that unfamiliar with the piece? We do get a classy Clara, though. -- Ed.]

Here's the scene through the reprise of "Summertime"
(spotlighting a 26yo soprano headed for quite a career of her own)

[13:50; "Summertime" at 5:15] Barbara Hendricks (s), Clara; Joela Jones, piano (in the "Jasbro Brown Blues"); Cleveland Orchestra Chorus, Cleveland Orchestra, Lorin Maazel, cond. Decca, recorded in Cleveland's Masonic Auditorium, August 1975
[This performance is more like it, no? And note the pianist in the "Jasbo Brown Blues" -- we all know Joela Jones, right? A tip: In 2021, upon her retirement from a 54-year association with the Cleveland Orchestra, clevelandclassical.com published a gorgeous interview she did with Mike Telin. She recalled, for example, playing the accordion (an old love of hers) in Wozzeck, Final Alice, and even Rusalka -- the latter her suggestion to "Franz" (i.e., music director Franz Welser-Möst), happily accepted, when it proved hard to find a proper version of the harmonium Dvořák called for. -- Ed.]

(2) 7 COMPOSERS SHARE "WHAT I DID THIS SUMMER"

"In an age driven by productivity, the term 'workation' has arisen today which describes working whilst on holiday. Of course, the phenomenon itself is much older: composers such as Ludwig van Beethoven, Johannes Brahms, and Claude Debussy sought inspiration during the summer months in the countryside, at health resorts, or by the sea. Our playlist demonstrates how masterpieces of very different character were created as a result."

-- Introduction to the Berlin Philharmonic's Digital Concert Hall playlist "Musicians at leisure: Masterpieces from the summer retreat"
[STREAMING FREE from the DCH through August 9]

by Ken

Yes, I know. We have so much lost ground, lost time, unfinished work, so many posts-in-progress in varying states of incompletion. Meanwhile, I've shilly-shallied so unconscionably that the free music that inspired the post is in its final week of, er, freedom. However, If you miss the offer of this free playlist from the Berlin Philharmonic's Digital Concert Hall, I'll have some good, or at least good-ish, news at post's end.

WHAT ARE THE 7 MASTERPIECES "OF VERY DIFFERENT
CHARACTER" FROM COMPOSERS ON "SUMMER RETREAT"?

Out in the countryside cutting sticks with Wozzeck and Andres

Updated with musical harkbacks for Wozzeck and Marie


Joel Sorensen as Andres and Franz Hawlata as Wozzeck in Act I, Scene 2 of Wozzeck, in San Diego, 2007

Scene change from the opening scene, in which WOZZECK has been patronized and verbally browbeaten by the CAPTAIN while the poor schlepp gives him his daily shave.

Scene 2 ("Andres")
Open countryside, the town visible in the distance. Late afternoon. ANDRES and WOZZECK are cutting sticks in the bushes.
WOZZECK: Hey, this place is cursed!
ANDRES [continuing to work]: Oh, nonsense!
Song, 1st stanza
A hunter bold I'd like to be.
Behind a gun a fan is free!
And so will I a-hunting go,
a hunting-go!
WOZZECK: The place is cursed! Can you see the pale patch across the grass where the toadstools are growing? In the evenings a head rolls about there! Once someone picked it up, thinking it was a hedgehog. Three days and nights later he'd kicked the bucket!
ANDRES: It's getting dark here. That's why you're growing nervous. Come on!
[Stops working and strikes a pose.]
Song, 2nd stanza
A hare in flight runs there by me,
and asks if I a hunter be.
I tell him yes, I like it fine,
but shooting, no -- that's not my line!
WOZZECK: Hush, Andres! That must be freemasons.
ANDRES: Song, 3rd stanza (beginning)
Two hares there were, upon the grass,
and eating all that hares could . . .
WOZZECK [overlapping]: It is! The freemasons! Be quiet!
[ANDRES stops singing, a little uneasy himself. Both listen intently.]
ANDRES [trying to calm WOZZECK -- and himself]: Why not sing with me?
[Continuing the song] And eating all that hares could ask,
they ate . . . so fast . . .
WOZZECK [overlapping; stamps his foot on the ground]: Hollow! It's all hollow! A chasm! It's cracking! Can you hear? There's something following us down there! [Terrified.] Let's go, quickly! [Tries to drag ANDRES off with him.]
ANDRES [restraining WOZZECK]: Hey, have you gone mad?
WOZZECK [stops]: It's suddenly gone quiet. And how oppressive it is. You feel like holding your breath. [Gazes around.]
ANDRES: What?
[The sun is just setting. The last bright rays touch the horizon in the most garish sunlight, after which the sudden twilight seems intensely dark.]
WOZZECK: A fire! A fire rising from earth to heaven and a turmoiol descending like the last trump. What a din!
ANDRES [feigning unconcern]: The sun has gone down, and now they're drumming back there.
WOZZECK: Quiet, everything quiet, as if the world were dead.
ANDRES: Night! We must go home!
[Both go off slowly.]
[Scene change. Orchestral postlude, and military music beginning behind the scenes.]

Scene 3 ("Marie")
Marie's room. Evening.
March [Military music is heard approaching.]
MARIE [at the window with her child in her arms]: Zing boom! Zing boom, boom, boom, boom! Do you hear, baby? They're coming there!
[The military music, with the DRUM MAJOR in the lead, arrives in the street outside MARIE's window.]
MARGRET [in the street, talking to MARIE through the window]: What a man! Like a tree!
MARIE [speaks out the window]: He stands on his feet like a lion!
[The DRUM MAJOR salutes MARIE, who waves back in a friendly manner.]
MARGRET : Oh, what a friendly look, neighbor! You're not usually so familiar!

Walter Berry (bs-b), Wozzeck; Richard van Vrooman (t), Andres; Isabel Straus (s), Marie; Ingeborg Lasser (ms), Margret; Orchestra of the Théâtre National de l'Opéra de Paris, Pierre Boulez, cond. CBS-Sony, recorded 1966

by Ken

Okay, this was supposed to be a "Boulez post," following up on last week's quick musical remembrance of the late composer-conductor. And sure enough, up above we've got Pierre Boulez conducting a scene from Berg's Wozzeck which I especially love -- the second of the five "character studies" that make up Act I, nestled between the scenes in which we're introduced first to Wozzeck himself (in the scene of his presumably daily humiliation by the Captain) and to Marie, the mother of his infant son -- which were among the scenes we listened to way in June 2011 in the preview posts "Berg's Wozzeck -- (1) Introducing Marie" and "'Wretches like us' -- Berg's Wozzeck: (2) Introducing Wozzeck" and the main post, "'Wretches like us' -- class warfare and the tragic depths of Berg's Wozzeck."

Somehow, though, in the course of gathering materials to present this weird and wonderful scene, the post turned more Wozzeck-y.

Maybe you had to be around in 1966 to appreciate how remarkable it was that this recording was made as a result of the enormous international acclaim showered on the Paris production of Wozzeck that Boulez had been conducting. After all, it had been only a year since the first stereo recording -- and only second-ever recording of any kind -- of Wozzeck, the one conducted by Karl Böhm for DG with Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau and Evelyn Lear as Wozzeck and Marie. (Its predecessor was Columbia Masterworks' live recording of the concert performance by Dimitri Mitropoulos and the New York Philharmonic with Mack Harrell and Eileen Farrell -- a performance I still love.)


NOWADAYS THIS MIGHT NOT SEEM SO EXTRAORDINARY . . .