Rassling with the symphonic adagios of Bruckner and Mahler, Part 2

We left off Part 1 of this post:

BEFORE WE PROCEED TO THE LAST THREE BRUCKNER SYMPHONIES, LET'S CONNECT WITH A MAHLER ADAGIO --
Which is where we'll pick up in Part 2.

FIRST LET'S CONSIDER A COUPLE OF NEAR-ADAGIOS

First, let's consider a couple of near-adagios. Mahler 1 and 2 have slow movements we wouldn't even think to call adagios. Mahler 3, about as strange a pile of symphonic construction as I'm aware of, actually concludes with an extended slow movement that might qualify, and the precedent of concluding a large symphony with a large slow movement is certainly going to catch fire with Mahler, but in M3 I think he's playing at something else here, especially when we consider the long opening section that begins all-strings and then for a good piece allows only small-bore wind intrusions. Let's listen -- I think you'll hear what I mean.

MAHLER: Symphony No. 3 in D: vi. Langsam. Ruhevoll. Empfunden. (Slow. Peaceful. Felt.)


Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Sir Georg Solti, cond. Decca, recorded in Orchestra Hall, November 1982

Boston Symphony Orchestra, Erich Leinsdorf, cond. RCA, recorded in Symphony Hall, Oct. 10-11, 1966

London Symphony Orchestra, Jascha Horenstein, cond. Unicorn-Kanchana, recorded in Fairfield Hall, Croydon, London, July 27-29, 1970

New York Philharmonic, Leonard Bernstein, cond. DG, recorded live in Avery Fisher Hall, Nov. 25-28, 1987

Rassling with the symphonic adagios of Bruckner and Mahler, Part 1

NOTE TO READERS: It was hard enough getting this post strung out from start to finish. When that was done, I knew that one thing I'd most feared had happened: There are too many files, and these files are big ones, to have much hope of the post loading properly or easily. It already wasn't going to be finished at the finish line, but now it would have to be split in two. Part 2 will post pretty much any time now. -- Ken

[No. 7] Adagio - Sehr feierlich und sehr langsam
(Adagio - Very solemn and very slow)

[No. 8] Adagio - Feierlich langsam, doch nicht schleppend
(Adagio - Solemnly slow, yet not dragging)

The first statement of the main theme of the Adagios of Anton Bruckner's Seventh and Eighth Symphonies, played by, respectively: [7] the Berlin Phil under Seiji Ozawa and [8] the Vienna Phil under Herbert von Karajan


WHILE ALL ADAGIOS ARE SLOW MOVEMENTS,
ONLY SOME SLOW MOVEMENTS ARE ADAGIOS

And here we hear prime specimens of "NOT AN ADAGIO" slow movements from the undisputed masters of symphonic adagio-making:

BRUCKNER: Symphony No. 4 in E-flat:
ii. Andante quasi allegretto

Munich Philharmonic, Rudolf Kempe, cond. Acanta, recorded in the Bürgerbräukeller, Dec. 14-15, 1975 & Jan. 20-21, 1976

MAHLER: Symphony No. 6 in A minor:
iii. [or ii.] Andante moderato
[Mahler himself, you'll recall, was of two minds about the order of the symphony's middle movements, the Andante moderato and the Scherzo]

Cleveland Orchestra, George Szell, cond. Columbia-CBS-Sony, recorded live in Severance Hall, October 1967

by Ken

In last week's post, we "chart[ed] our course from Beethoven's visionary symphonic adagio to the great symphonic adagios of Bruckner and Mahler," which is the course that lies ahead of us. It hasn't worked out quite the way -- that is, any of the ways -- it was meant to, but here we are, somewhere between Plan C and Plan D, forging ahead, starting with this idea I had (it seemed like a good idea at the time) that it might be helpful, in getting a handle on these symphonic adagios, to separate out slow movements that aren't adagios.

Okay, the performances I've slotted in above are skewed just a little, in the direction of "non-adagio-tizing" these specimen movements -- with performances that underscore these movements' non-adagio-ness, in particular Szell's almost breezy take on the Mahler 6's "Andante moderato" tempo marking. Still just drawing on the SC archive (meaning that these are performances we've heard before, unless a clip was made for a post that never got posted), which is overflowing with performances of this movement, which I love a lot, I could have inserted these broader and emotionally weightier statements --

MAHLER: Symphony No. 6 in A minor:
iii. [or ii.] Andante moderato

New Philharmonia Orchestra, Sir John Barbirolli, cond. EMI, recorded in Abbey Road Studio No. 1, London, Sept. 26-27, 1969

London Philharmonic Orchestra, Klaus Tennstedt, cond. EMI, recorded live in the Royal Festival Hall, November 1991

I love pretty much everything about the Barbirolli M6, not least the bold and soul-stirring Andante moderato, and I also love the darker, more insinuating quality of the Tennstedt live M6 Andante moderato. (I very much like the 1983 studio recording Tennstedt made as part of his LPO Mahler cycle, but I'm happy EMI also issued the later live performances of M6 and M7.)

Similarly with the Bruckner 4 Andante quasi allegretto --

In which we chart our course from Beethoven's visionary symphonic adagio to the great symphonic adagios of Bruckner and Mahler

(And we run smack into the dread Ninth Symphony snafu)

Maestro Furtwängler will get us from Beethoven's sublime symphonic adagio to Bruckner; then Carlo Maria Giulini will carry us on to Mahler.

BEETHOVEN: Symphony No. 9 in D minor, Op. 125:
iii. Adagio molto e cantabile


Bayreuth Festival Orchestra, Wilhelm Furtwängler, cond. EMI, recorded live in the Festspielhaus, July 29, 1951

Berlin Philharmonic, Carlo Maria Giulini, cond. DG, recorded in the Philharmonie, Feb. 1989 & Feb. 1990

by Ken

Last week, you may recall, "Our ongoing Seiji Ozawa remembrance sidetracked me into some aural pondering of the symphonic adagio." I'm afraid we're not going to get much farther today than scouting the route, but that still leaves us in for some remarkable music.

You'll note that in last week's post I've upgraded the audio clip of the 1951 Furtwängler Beethoven Ninth, and this week we've heard it again, paired with Carlo Maria Giulini's performance, and that duo will escort us to -- in fact, all the way through -- Anton Bruckner's symphonic adagio-ing, to his final Adagio, the last movement he composed, the Adagio of his Ninth Symphony, whose intended finale he ran out of either time or inspiration to "complete."

The sound of Furtwängler's 1944 Bruckner 9 is less happy even than that of his 1951 Beethoven 9 [AFTERTHOUGHT: however, the upgraded Beethoven 9 audio clip sure sounds better (how 'bout those timpani?), and for that matter the Bruckner 9 clip sounds a lot better than I expected -- Ed.], but it's good enough, and will have to do, since it's the only Bruckner 9 he left us. And if there's one thing classical-music lovers generally agree on (there aren't many!), it's that the Furtwängler Bruckner 9 is one of the greatest and least dispensable recordings we have. That said, Carlo Maria Giulini's Bruckner 9 seems to me of comparable stature. In the fullness of his long career, Maestro G. had the opportunity to show us how deep and darkly perceiving an artist he was -- I've described this performance as "dripping blood."

Finally for this week, Maestro Furtwängler not being a Mahler guy, Maestro Giulini will lead us the final step to Mahler, represented by a movement I don't think is often thought of as a "symphonic adagio" -- only it is, isn't it?


LISTENING TO FURTWÄNGLER'S AND GIULINI'S
PERFORMANCES OF THE ADAGIO OF BRUCKNER 9 . . .

Our ongoing Seiji Ozawa remembrance sidetracked me into some aural ponderingof the symphonic adagio

UPDATE: Now with a better clip of the Adagio of the Furtwängler Beethoven Ninth

Carlo Maria Giulini (1914-2005) conducting the Los Angeles
Philharmonic, c1980 [photo: Los Angeles Philharmonic Archives]

"Adagio A"

Vienna Symphony Orchestra, Carlo Maria Giulini, cond. EMI-Testament, recorded in the Grosser Saal of the Musikverein, Dec. 8-10, 1974

"Adagio B"

Berlin Philharmonic, Carlo Maria Giulini, cond. DG, recorded in the Philharmonie, Feb. 1989 & Feb. 1990

by Ken

I don't expect that everyone will recognize one of these two movements, while I expect that most everyone will recognize the other, which is one of the core chunks of Western music from the 19th century forward. I hope that most listeners will hear in both of the above clips performances of attention-grabbing splendor. This performance of the lesser-known piece, and indeed of the symphony it comes from, made me think about the piece itself.

Later we're going to hear Giulini's performance of this movement alongside two other, really wonderful performances -- so good that it almost pains me to point out that they yield to Giulini's achievement in applying, from the outset, such an irresistible grabbing quality, a personal connection that animates a sense of the vitality and urgency of the piece which makes me hear its direct lineage from our other demonstration Adagio.


FIRST OFF, WHAT IS AN ADAGIO?

It's not easy to pin down, but attempts to do so often offer by way of example --

Adagio in G minor for organ and strings (arr. Giazoto)


David Bell, organ; Léon Spierer, violin; Berlin Philharmonic, Her­bert von Karajan, cond. DG, recorded in the Kammer­musik­saal of the Philharmonie, Sept. 30, 1983

First, as promised, we're going to hear Bernard Haitink and Eugen Jochum conduct the Finale of Beethoven 9. Then we have to hear the first three movements, right?

aka "Bernard Haitink (1929-2021), part 3"
[Now updated to include the first three movements of the Beethoven Ninth Symphony, plus a complete performance (from Tokyo!), with some additional additions still to come]

Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, baritone; St. Hedwig's Cathedral Choir, Berlin Philharmonic, Ferenc Fricsay, cond. DG, recorded in the Jesus-Christus-Kirche, Dec. 1957-Apr. 1958

Franz Crass, bass; Vienna Singverein, Philharmonia Orchestra, Otto Klemperer, cond. Live performance from the Vienna Musikvereinsaal, in the Wiener Festwochen (Vienna Festival), June 6, 1960

René Pape, bass; New York Choral Artists, New York Philharmonic, Kurt Masur, cond. Live performance from Avery Fisher Hall, Dec. 31, 1999

Martti Talvela, bass; Vienna State Opera Chorus, Vienna Philharmonic, Hans Schmidt-Isserstedt, cond. Decca, recorded in the Grosser Saal of the Vienna Singverein, Dec. 8-12, 1965

by Ken

Some you have seen the not-yet-a-post version of this maybe-still-not-really-much-of-a-post, containing just the five audio files of the Finale of the Beethoven Ninth Symphony as conducted by Bernard Haitink and Eugen Jochum, as promised in Part 2 of this series.

The series: Bernard Haitink (1929-2021)

Part 1 -- Haitink conducts Handel, assorted Brahms, assorted Shostakovich, very assorted Mahler, Wagner (from Act II of Siegfried), and Beethoven (Finale of Symphony No. 9)

Part 2 -- Haitink and Jochum conduct Bruckner: Symphony No. 7: ii. Adagio; and Haitink, Jochum, and van Beinum conduct Mahler: Das Lied von der Erde: i. "Das Trinklied von Jammer der Erde" and vi. "Der Abschied" (both with "related" perforrmances involving other participants)

Part 3 -- multiple Haitink and Jochum performances of the Finale of Beethoven: Symphony No. 9

LET'S GET RIGHT TO THOSE FIVE PERFORMANCES --
THEN WE'VE GOT SOME NEW BUSINESS TO TEND TO

You've had the tease for the Finale, at the top of the post (I hope you enjoyed those four fairly different but all luscious performances!). Now it's time to hear that great bass solo in context.

BEETHOVEN: Symphony No. 9 in D minor, Op. 125:
iv. Finale: Presto -- Allegro assai -- etc.

Annals of serendipity, Beethoven edition: Wouldja just listen to these horns go?

And that's some spiffy clarinet-playing too!
[With assorted UPDATEs]

No, not these particular horns, I mean the ones on the recording --

I wish I knew who our horn players -- and clarinetist -- were so I could credit them. (The regular recording credits are coming up momentarily.)

by Ken

What we just heard -- and I'll sort-of-explain in a moment how we got here -- is the Trio section of the minuet, or I should probably say the Tempo di Menuetto (not quite the same thing; what we have is a tempo marking, not necessarily a simple declaration that what follows is a minuet), of the Beethoven Eighth Symphony. It's nestled inside this performance:

BEETHOVEN: Symphony No. 8 in F, Op. 93:
iii. Tempo di Menuetto

London Symphony Orchestra, Carlo Maria Giulini, cond. EMI, recorded November 1972

What's happened is that, in the course of our pursuit of the "lesson" of Fidelio, following our pursuit of the "lesson" of Don Giovanni, we are finding outselves knocking around Beethoven's workshop. As readers of recent installments may recall, our path to Fidelio is also leading us beyond, to Beethoven's seeming repository of all musical and perhaps human knowledge, his Ninth Symphony. Which has naturally had me scouting assorted musicscapes for the musical signposts we'll want to pass by.

One of which is a recording of the Beethoven Ninth that Carlo Maria Giulini made for DG, with the Berlin Philharmonic, in 1989, which is lodged in my memory as an especially powerful and personal statement. (For some reason I feel a compulsion to mention that I reviewed it in the New York Times, even though this really isn't here or there, except as it underlines the powerful effect the performance had on me.) It occurred to me that I have an earlier Giulini Beethoven Ninth, done with the London Symphony for EMI, and I was pretty sure I even had it on CD, and mightn't it be interesting to rehear both performances?


IT TURNED OUT THAT IT WAS INTERESTING,
AND NOT IN QUITE THE WAYS I EXPECTED

Homing in on that moment in Don Giovanni when "Everything returns to normal" -- or should we say "the new normal"?

CAUTIONARY NOTE (MONDAY): Maybe it was just supercharged enjoyment of the bounties of Internet Archive on a Pandemic Summer Sunday, but yesterday I had a dickens of a time both uploading audio clips and getting them to load in posts. If they aren't loading for you, try refreshing once or twice (or ----). Sometimes it helps.

JUST-POSSIBLY-FINAL UPDATE (MONDAY): We now have our answer to the question: What happens after Don Giovanni is dragged down into the flaming underworld? We didn't get to the related destination I intended, as explained in my "STILL TO COME" note, but for now, back to Don Giovanni.

FINAL UPDATE (WEDNESDAY): The music was all ready to go, with the Fidelio part of the project seemingly well in hand. Until, alas, it began expanding, the way these things usually do, and I've decided to let it do so, because this is, you know, a piece so close to my heart. So what do you say we just reconvene on Sunday, then start with some Don Giovanni review and proceed to Fidelio? I'll just give you a tease at the end.


Is there anything more miraculous than the way
this monumental opera ends? A mere 12 seconds:



New Philharmonia Orchestra, Otto Klemperer, cond.

Or, to back up just a bit . . .

This is the end that befalls evildoers,
and in this life scoundrels
always receive their just desserts.

Claire Watson and Mirella Freni, sopranos; Christa Ludwig, mezzo-soprano; Nicolai Gedda, tenor; Walter Berry, bass-baritone; Paolo Montarsolo, bass; New Philharmonia Orchestra, Otto Klemperer, cond.

by Ken

We've already heard (first in our John Macurdy remembrance, then again last week) -- which isn't going to stop us from hearing it again! -- that amazing scene in which the statue of the Commendatore shows up at Don Giovanni's place for that Last Supper he was invited to, the whole shebang ending with the Don being dragged down into the flames of Hell.

We always read that in the early history of da Ponte and Mozart's Don Giovanni -- let's call it the first century -- this was where the curtain was rung down, and a mighty impressive final picture and sound it must have made. It's not hard to see the logic of it. After all, there's only about seven minutes' worth of music still to come, and none of it can begin to compete for sheer drama with what we've just witnessed. At the same time, though, how bone-headedly wrong!

My original plan was to really do up the opera's final scene right, going back first to the portion we skipped over when we first heard Don Giovanni's dramatic (to put it mildly confrontation with his invited and yet still hardly expected supper guest, and then work our way through to the end. My second thought was, yes, to rehear that great climactic scene, but from there just to pursue those final seven minutes, where we take leave of the six other characters we've seen interacting with the Don in the final plot arc of his life.


WE CAN CONSIDER THE "FORM" OF THESE FINAL MINUTES
LATER. FOR NOW LET'S JUST HEAR THEM -- IN THREE PARTS

"On the breath of a fragrant breeze": More from Mirella Freni

After singing Nannetta at Covent Garden in 1961 (with Carlo Maria Giulini conducting), Freni made her La Scala debut in the role in January 1962 -- alongside Luigi Alva as Fenton. [photo by Erio Piccagliani © Teatro alla Scala]

FENTON [singing as he goes out]:
Kissed lips don't lose their good fortune.
NANNETTA [continuing FENTON's song as she joins the other women]: Instead they renew themselves as does the moon, as does the moon.

Luigi Alva (t), Fenton; Mirella Freni (s), Nannetta; Concertgebouw Orchestra (Amsterdam), Carlo Maria Giulini, cond. Live performance from the Hague, June 20, 1963

by Ken

If you were here for last week's first installment of a Mirella Freni remembrance, you know our immediate destination. Following the tease of one of the amazing stolen moments between Nannetta and her adored Fenton thrread through the first Garden Scene of Verdi's Falstaff, we have on promise "Nannetta's shimmering aria in her disguise as the Queen of the Fairies in the magical masquerade final scene."

So let's listen just to the aria, which just happens to have been included in that 1959 Eurodisc operatic recital we heard from last week. As part of the tormenting of Falstaff planned by our Merry Wives of Windsor, Sir John has been lured to the scary depths of Windsor Park at midnight for what he expects to be a tryst with Mistress Alice Ford. For this scheme, Mistress Ford has cast her radiant daughter Nannetta as the Queen of the Fairies.

VERDI: Falstaff: Act III, Scene 2,
Nannetta, "Sul fil d'un soffio etesio"

NANNETTA: On the breath of a fragrant breeze
fly, nimble spirits;
through the branches appears
the blue gleam of the rising moon.
Dance! and let your soft steps
fit the soft music,
joining magic
dancing to the song.

Let us wander beneath the moon,
choosing among the flowers;
every blossom carries
in its heart its own fortune.
With lilies and violets
let us write secret names;
from our enchanted hands
let there spring words,
words illuminated
with pure silver and gold,
poems and charms. The spirits
have flowers as their cyphers.

[translation by Lionel Salter]

Munich Radio Orchestra, Ino Savini, cond. Eurodisc-Vanguard Cardinal, recorded 1959


WE'RE NOT GOING TO GET FARTHER TODAY, BUT WE CAN
AT LEAST HEAR THE SCENE AS IT OCCURS IN THE OPERA

Queen Elisabeth stands up to King Philip, Caballé-style

MONDAY EVENING UPDATE: In addition to making the small addition to the opening audio clips described in the revised post text, I did substantially revise that text. -- Ken

The French LP issue of the always-problematic 1971 EMI Don Carlos

ELISABETH: I dare it! Yes!
You know it well: Once my hand
was promised to your son.
Now I belong to you, submissive to God,
but I am immaculate as the lily.
And now there is suspicion
of the honor of Elisabeth . . .
there is doubt about me . . .
and the person who commits the outrage is the king.

Montserrat Caballé (s), Elisabeth; Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, Francesco Molinari-Pradelli, cond. Live performance, Apr. 29, 1972

Montserrat Caballé (s), Elisabeth; Orchestra of the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, Carlo Maria Giulini, cond. EMI, recorded Aug. 18-31, 1971

by Ken

We've actually heard one of the above performances (the one from the 1972 Met broadcast) of Queen Elisabeth's haunting reply to her husband in Act IV, Scene 1 of Verdi's Don Carlos, the scene in King Philip's study -- except that last week, in our ongoing remembrance of Montserrat Caballé, we heard it in its proper place in the scene, which follows the sleepless king's break-of-dawn monologue and his subsequent just-past-dawn beatdown by the Grand Inquisitor, when the queen storms into the study demanding justice for the disappearance of her jewel box, containing "all my treasure, my jewels . . . other objects still dearer to me," which the king proceeds to produce, extracting from it a portrait of his son Carlos and expressing indignation when she "dares to confess" this, and she responds with indignation of her own, and in the deepest sadness as well as anger asserts her integrity and innocence.

[UPDATE NOTE: After the original posting, I rejiggered the pair of opening clips, which originally picked up at the queen's second line, "Ben lo sapete," but now have been made to include her first line, "Io l'oso! Si!" My original thought had been that if we just skipped over that first line, we could get away with just listening to the clips, without the need for all that explanation of what exactly Elisabeth is "daring." My second thought, however, was that no, we really do need to hear the first line.]

We're going to hear the "contextual" version again (this time with the ensuing quartet edited in, and bracketed with the same span from the near-contemporaneous EMI recording conducted by Carlo Maria Giulini, with which I've had a difficult, deeply disappointed relationship all its life.

For example, given the already-known sonic homogenizing of U.S. Angel editions of EMI recordings, I invested in a German edition. They did sound better, but not enough (at least in this case) to upgrade my perception of the performance

Above we hear two performances by Montserrat Caballé, mere months apart, of Queen Elisabeth's haunting reply to King Philip in Act IV, Scene 1 of Verdi's Don Carlos after he indignantly charges her with "dar[ing] to confess" that yes, inside the casket that he has presumably had stolen from her, containing (as she has put it) "all my treasure, my jewels . . . other objects still dearer to me," there's a portrait of Prince Carlos (his son, her stepson). I should add, by way of update, that in the original posting I discreetly skipped over Elisabeth's first line, "Io l'oso! Si!," thinking we could just enjoy the clips without having to bother with this lengthy explanation of what exactly the queen is owning up to daring. On reconsideration, though, I decided that no, we in fact need to hear that line to properly register Elisabeth's answering indignation along with the pain with which she asserts her integrity.

We actually heard the first clip, the one rom the 1972 Met broadcast, last week in our ongoing remembrance of Caballé, except that last week we heard it in the context of this chunk of the great scene in Philip's study, which began before dawn as the king soliloquized in his sleepless agony, followed by the brutal beatdown he absorbed in the just-past-dawn visit of the Grand Inquisitor. And we're going to hear that chunk again, this time including the quartet that ensues when Philips accuses Elisabeth outright of adultery and she faints and he calls for help for the queen and in rush Princess Eboli, whom the queen thinks of as her confandant, and the Marquis of Posa, whom the king thinks of as his.

This time, you'll note, we're hearing the 1972 Met performance bracketed with the EMI studio recording conducted by Carlo Maria Giulini (which was probably just being released as the run of Met performances took place), in which not only Caballé but our Posa, Sherrill Milnes, had taken part. It's a recording with which I've had a difficult, disappointed relationship from the time the LPs turned up in U.S. shops, having bought an imported German edition well ahead of the domestic release. Which also means that none of the disappointment can be attributed to the sonic homogenizling Angel ritually performed for the, er, benefit of American music-lovers.

I had such hopes for this recording! Both previous recordings of five-act editions of the opera had serious problems, and EMI was offering us what looked like a plausible cast, under a conductor making his first operatic recording in ages, what with his much-heralded general withdrawal from the world of operatic performance based on his deep-seated disenchantment with that world. And he was conducting an opera with which he had a history, having famously conducted, in 1958, Covent Garden's first five-act Don Carlos.

Even now, feeling an urge coming on me to rant about the recording's unsatisfactoriness, I've gone the extra mile and invested -- after all these years! -- in a CD edition. And I have to say that listening to it again in this format has given me pause. But the more I listen to it, the more I sink back to a possibly refreshed version of the old disappointment, which I experience even in the minute's worth of the opera we hear above. I was surprised, when I dipped back into the 1972 Met performance while working on last week's post, how much more I enjoyed it than I remembered, very much including Caballé's vocally and dramatically focused Elisabeth. I also have to say that even in the context of a house like the Met that's not set up to encourage (allow?) individual conductorial statements, I hear a notably surer grasp of the opera's dramatic progress, and a noticeably more hospitable environment for the singesr to participate in that dramatic progress, with Francesco Molinari-Pradelli, a conductor about whom I didn't have a lot of good things to say back in the day, but whose considerable virtues I have come to value a lot more.


BEYOND THIS I'M NOT GOING TO SAY MORE,
EXCEPT TO NOTE TWO ADD-ONS THIS WEEK

Ghost of Sunday Classics: Bruckner 9 -- what "cathedrals of sound"? With a detour through Wagner's "Ring" cycle

BRUCKNER: Symphony No. 9 in D minor:
i. Feierlich, misterioso (Solemn, mysterious) -- opening

[A] Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Carlo Maria Giulini, cond. EMI, recorded Dec. 1-2, 1976

[B] Vienna Philharmonic, Carlo Maria Giulini, cond. DG, recorded live, June 1988

by Ken

Yes, these are the "A" and "B" performances of the opening of the Bruckner Ninth Symphony we heard in last night's preview ("We said it wasn't over till we heard Bruckner 9"), which I described as "very different (but significantly related)." Longtime readers will probably have guessed, because I've used this trick before, that the significant relationship between the performances is that they're by the same conductor, as noted in the listings above.

I want to get to the reason why I excerpted this pair of performances, but first, let me throw out a question for your consideration as we listen through the three movements of the Ninth Symphony that Bruckner actually composed. (Eventually I suppose we'll have to talk about the movement he never did compose, a finale, but for now we will be considering these three movements the "complete" symphony -- and they form a quite satisfying whole to me.) The question is:

Is this happy music?

Bruckner 7 -- a symphony built on its opening pair of musical twin towers

[As I explained at the top of Friday night's preview, this is the second part of a three-part Bruckner series, begun December 6-8 with "Bruckner's Fourth Symphony -- four stories for four movements," a reprise of a January 2010 post I've always been fond of. This Bruckner Seventh preview post appeared originally in July 2012. The Bruckner series -- and, I'm projecting, Sunday Classics -- will conclude with a new post on the Ninth Symphony. -- Ken]


The string chorale that bursts out shortly after the start of the Adagio (at bar 4 above) of the Bruckner Seventh

by Ken

As promised in Friday night's preview, our subject today is the seventh of Anton Bruckner's outsize nine symphonies, which unlike the Fourth Symphony, with its remarkably evenly weighted four movements, is cast in the form, as I put it, of "an opening movement and an ensuing slow movement of such emotional weight as to dominate the whole piece." (We heard the whole of the Fourth Symphony in the January 2010 post "Bruckner's Fourth Symphony -- four stories for four movements." We also heard the formative Second Symphony, in the August 2011 post "Bruckner begins to establish his voice, hushed and clear." The latter post, I just discovered, had a broken link to the click-through, which I've fixed -- in case anyone has been waiting all this time to read and hear that post.)

Which means that our obvious focus is going to be on those first two movements, which dramatically counteract the silly image of Bruckner which seems to me to excite the ardor of the composer's devout faithful: Bruckner as a a sort of musical idiot savant, a piously Catholic naïf piously erecting monumental musical cathedrals in the ether. About Bruckner being in some ways naïve I don't think there's much doubt, but I think we would have some serious disagreements, the Bruckner Faithful and I, as to where and how that naïveté kicks in. However, the idea that these symphonies are underpinned by reflexive piety seems to me fairly nutty. (I'm embarrassed to own that I've used one of those cheesy architectural mega-metaphors for the title of this post. It's just so tempting.)

There's a reason why Bruckner's Fourth and Seventh Symphonies, and perhaps also the three movements he completed of the Ninth, are the symphonies of his which are often enjoyed by music-lovers who don't have much use for the rest of his work. And yet it seems to me that it would be hard to think of anything more quintessentially Brucknerian than the orchestral chorale we just heard from near the opening of the Adagio of the Seventh, or the opening two minutes of the symphony which we're about to hear, which already demonstrate Bruckner's dependence on repetition as well as the way he can build the orchestra from the softest hush to the most thundering outburst.

BRUCKNER: Symphony No. 7 in E: opening




IT'S AN ALL-VIENNA PHILHARMONIC POST TODAY

The performances we've heard so far, by the way, both feature the Vienna Philharmonic (the orchestra best known to Bruckner), as indeed do all the performances we're going to hear today. The snatch of the Adagio at the top is conducted by Carlo Maria Giulini, that of the opening of the symphony by Karl Böhm.

Next we'll hear the complete performances of these movements -- and more.

Parting, though not without a struggle -- with "an increasingly calm acceptance of fate"

A symphonic finale in search of an ending

In the first not-quite-six minutes or so of this clip, Lenny B's comments are superimposed over a rehearsal, which gives way to the actual performance at about 5:55. We first saw this clip in the January 2012 post "At how bad a point did the cell-phone ring heard 'round the world interrupt the NY Phil's Mahler Ninth? Let's complete the symphony." (We also heard Lenny conducting the complete finale from a July 1979 Tanglewood performance with the Boston Symphony. Later we're going to hear the broadest of his recordings of the movement.)

by Ken

Well, when we attacked "Der Abschied" ("The Farewell"), the half-hour sixth and final song of the song-symphony Das Lied von der Erde (The Song of the Earth (in a July 2009 Maureen Forrester remembrance post), we pretty much just plunged in (in August 2010 we followed up with the three tenor songs), and I'm afraid that's what we're going to do as well with the other completed work composed after Mahler's diagnosis of terminal heart disease, the Ninth Symphony.

I noted when we listened to Mahler's "most characteristic" and "least loved" symphony, the Seventh (in November -- first the three middle movements, then the outer movements), that the composer would use this basic plan again. In the Seventh it's a pair of enormous outer movements bracketing a core of "other" musics: the two "Night Music"s wrapped around a scherzo. This is very much the plan of the unfinished Tenth Symphony, with a core consisting of a pair of scherzos bracketing the little "Purgatorio" movement (we heard this core of the Tenth later in November) -- with the crucial difference that those gigantic outer movements are now slow rather than normal symphonic fast ones.

That switch, of course, had already been made in the Ninth Symphony (which, as I noted in Friday night's preview, should properly have been the Tenth, if Mahler had had the courage to tempt fate and give Das Lied the dangerous-for-symphony-composers number nine). It's hard to think of words to convey the scale and dimension of the opening Andante commodo and concluding Adago of the Ninth.


AS I MENTIONED IN FRIDAY NIGHT'S PREVIEW . . .

Most listeners are likely to agree that the prevailing subject matter of the Mahler Ninth is farewell, the final parting -- as we can surely divine from the clip we've seen again up top, with Leonard Bernstein providing voice-over commentary over the final 10½ minutes of the finale. But even in those majestic outer movements the tone is hardly singlemindedly elegiac, and in those "otherish" middle movements the parting journey covers some very different ground.

Anatomy of an overture -- Rossini's "L'Italiana in Algeri"

Sir Neville Marriner conducts the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields in a 2006 Rheingau Music Festival performance of Rossini's L'Italiana in Algeri Overture that's even a bit broader than the wonderful 1974 recording we're going to hear.

by Ken

In the concert hall there aren't many more atmospheric musical openings than that of the Overture to Rossini's L'Italiana in Algeri (The Italian Woman in Algiers), an it makes for an opening that's if anything more atmospheric in the opera house.

As I mentioned in Friday night's preview, we're at the opposite end of Rossini's career from what I called the "post-theatrical" one, which followed the 1829 premiere of William Tell in Paris, where the composer had relocated in 1824. The reason I wanted to present something from that long period (remembering that he lived on till 1868), in this case the tenor's "Cujus animam" from the Stabat Mater (1831-41), was to show that Rossini (a) didn't stop composing and (b) hadn't suddenly lost his skills or inspiration.

In fact, the very busy decade of opera composing that preceded Rossini's sudden withdrawal from the stage raises a lot of questions of its own. There's a lot of fine music there, and a number of operas that can speak to audiences given adeqaute consideration, understanding, and in many cases casting -- conditions that pretty much never apply. A lot of William Tell itself rises to powerful heights, as we've discussed and heard a bit, but I think it would be incredibly difficult to make this real for audiences and also deal with the portions of it that don't seem to work so well.

In fact, for all the explorations and exhumations of Rossini's vast output, his position in the repertory still rests on the three comic masterpieces he wrote between 1813 and 1817. This may be a good time to listen again to the very opening of the Overture to L'Italiana in Algeri, eight bars scored just for softly plucked strings until that thundering from the full orchestra on the downbeat of bar 8.

ROSSINI: L'Italiana in Algeri: Overture -- Andante, part 1


(1) Bamberg Symphony Orchestra, Giuseppe Patané, cond.
(2) Philharmonia Orchestra, Erich Leinsdorf, cond.
(3) National Symphony Orchestra, Riccardo Chailly, cond.
(4) Academy of St. Martin in the Fields, Neville Marriner, cond.

Note that in just these eight bars we can hear that we have four very different performances, starting with the quickest, Giuseppe Patané's (using tempos very similar to those of Arturo Toscanini) and proceeding to almost equally broad ones from Riccardo Chailly and Nville Marriner. The Marriner performance is set apart by a distinctive, much more firmly plucked pizzicato from his strings.

Bruckner 7 -- a symphony built on its opening pair of musical twin towers

The string chorale that bursts out shortly after the start of the Adagio (at bar 4 above) of the Bruckner Seventh

by Ken

As promised in Friday night's preview, our subject today is the seventh of Anton Bruckner's outsize nine symphonies, which unlike the Fourth Symphony, with its remarkably evenly weighted four movements, is cast in the form, as I put it, of "an opening movement and an ensuing slow movement of such emotional weight as to dominate the whole piece." (We heard the whole of the Fourth Symphony in the January 2010 post "Bruckner's Fourth Symphony -- four stories for four movements." We also heard the formative Second Symphony, in the August 2011 post "Bruckner begins to establish his voice, hushed and clear." The latter post, I just discovered, had a broken link to the click-through, which I've fixed -- in case anyone has been waiting all this time to read and hear that post.)

Which means that our obvious focus is going to be on those first two movements, which dramatically counteract the silly image of Bruckner which seems to me to excite the ardor of the composer's devout faithful: Bruckner as a a sort of musical idiot savant, a piously Catholic naïf piously erecting monumental musical cathedrals in the ether. About Bruckner being in some ways naïve I don't think there's much doubt, but I think we would have some serious disagreements, the Bruckner Faithful and I, as to where and how that naïveté kicks in. However, the idea that these symphonies are underpinned by reflexive piety seems to me fairly nutty. (I'm embarrassed to own that I've used one of those cheesy architectural mega-metaphors for the title of this post. It's just so tempting.)

There's a reason why Bruckner's Fourth and Seventh Symphonies, and perhaps also the three movements he completed of the Ninth, are the symphonies of his which are often enjoyed by music-lovers who don't have much use for the rest of his work. And yet it seems to me that it would be hard to think of anything more quintessentially Brucknerian than the orchestral chorale we just heard from near the opening of the Adagio of the Seventh, or the opening two minutes of the symphony which we're about to hear, which already demonstrate Bruckner's dependence on repetition as well as the way he can build the orchestra from the softest hush to the most thundering outburst.

BRUCKNER: Symphony No. 7 in E: opening




IT'S AN ALL-VIENNA PHILHARMONIC POST TODAY

The performances we've heard so far, by the way, both feature the Vienna Philharmonic (the orchestra best known to Bruckner), as indeed do all the performances we're going to hear today. The snatch of the Adagio at the top is conducted by Carlo Maria Giulini, that of the opening of the symphony by Karl Böhm.

Next we'll hear the complete performances of these movements -- and more.