Brahms knew, and so did Mahler: Being a for-real functional artistic genius is (gosh!) really hard work

"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. . . ."

-- Neville Cardus, in his "Appreciation of Mahler's Third"
[reproduced in part in the last post in this Mahler 3 series]

"This final published version [of the Andante sostenuto of Brahms's First Symphony] is clearly both tauter and richer, for there is less repetition and more diversity, and Brahms has cast fresh light on his themes by bringing them into new relationships. Altogether these changes provide a deeply fascinating insight into genius at work."

-- Robert Pascall, vice chair of the New Complete Brahms Edition (and editor of the symphonies), in his notes for the Mackerras-Teldec Brahms 1

REMEMBER THE VERY DIFFERENT VERSIONS WE'VE
HEARD OF THE ANDANTE SOSTENUTO OF BRAHMS 1?

BRAHMS: Symphony No. 1 in C minor, Op. 68:
ii. Andante sostenuto

► A reconstruction of the "initial performing version":

► And this: the familiar published (i.e., final) version
(which we'll be hearing -- and thinking about -- a lot more!):

Scottish Chamber Orchestra, Sir Charles Mackerras, cond. Telarc, recorded in Usher Hall, Edinburgh, January 1997

WE'LL TALK ABOUT THEM, BUT FOR NOW MIGHT WE HAVE
MAESTRO M. PLAY US ANOTHER SYMPHONIC ANDANTE?

BBC Philharmonic, Sir Charles Mackerras, cond. BBC Music Magazine, recorded live in Bridgewater Hall, Manchester (England), Nov. 16, 2002 (published 2005)

by Ken

It's taken us a long time and a crazy path to get here, "here" being out-the-other-end of the first movement of the Mahler Third Symphony --

OUR CRAZY PATH TO WHEREVER WE ARE NOW:

► "Setting out to trace the lineage of Boston Symphony concert-masters back to 1962, we wind up trapped in the gigantic first movement of the Mahler Third Symphony," July 23

► "Coming momentarily (if not sooner): An adventure in musical metamorphosis -- presented in a pair of mutually accessible parts," Sept. 22

► "Part 1: Marching in anguish, or to triumph, or toward what? In the 1st movement of Mahler 3, we've sure left BrahmsWorld behind!," Sept 23

► "Part 2: Marching in anguish, or to triumph, or toward what? In the 1st movement of Mahler 3, we've sure left BrahmsWorld behind! (Then again, are we so sure?)," Sept. 27

► "Brahms knew, and so did Mahler: Being a for-real functional artistic genius is (gosh!) really hard work," today

BECAUSE THE ANDANTE SOSTENUTO IS SO DEAR TO ME,
THE SC ARCHIVE TEEMS WITH PERFORMANCES OF IT

While we've got another whole group of recordings coming up in this post, for immediate hearing I've plucked out two, from the Brahms symphony cycles I feel closest to, returning to them regularly with tingly expectation that's always rewarded. Kurt Masur's Andante sostenuto and Kurt Sanderling's are different; notably, though Masur sounds in no way rushed, Sanderling sets a still-more-spacious pace, which the Dresden players fill with glowing life. But both draw me back above all because the orchestras have achieved real identification with the music, playing not just with heart-enriching beauty and finesse but with a soul-stirring sense of really living the music, whether in melodic or accompanimental or ensemble writing -- all of it sounded and made to fit together with such fullness and depth and general "rightness" of expression.

(It sobers me to realize that I've been loving the Sandering-Dresden Brahms cycle for something like half a century now, especially enjoying, in the early decades, those beautiful Eurodisc LP pressings.)

Coming momentarily (if not sooner): An adventure in musical metamorphosis -- presented in a pair of mutually accessible parts

EARLY MORNING UPDATE: Part 1 of the post is now posted. Part 2 will be coming soon.

UPDATE: Two more clips added, clearly related to each other, and to the other clips -- can you figure out how they're related?

STAGE 1 -- a grand old theme, which comes to us stated in three distinctly different ways:


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

STAGE 2 -- Talk about a transformation! Again, we hear it at three slightly but noticeably different paces:


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 -- This one's a doozy, which'll really come into its own 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

by Ken

That's right, what's coming up is a two-part post, whose two parts (and I've never attempted this) are going to be posted at the same time and be mutually accessible, meaning that you can, if you wish, jump back and forth between them. I apologize for, but am not going to further comment on here, my long blog silence. (There'll be a few words in Part 1 of the post. But I can't change what is, or was. What is, or was, is -- or was.

Just a bit more teasing before we get to the main post . . .

MAY 11 UPDATE: New! New! New! Now comes with a box at the end: "(SPOILER ALERT!) THE PATH TO BRAHMS 1: The series so far"


NBC Symphony Orchestra, Arturo Toscanini, cond. RCA, recorded live in Carnegie Hall, Nov. 9, 1951

Scottish Chamber Orchestra, Sir Charles Mackerras, cond. Telarc, recorded in Usher Hall, Edinburgh, January 1997

Gerhart Hetzel, violin; Vienna Philharmonic, Leonard Bernstein, cond. DG, recorded live in the Musikvereinssaal, Oct. 3, 1981

by Ken

It's not that complicated a story, and by no means an especially profound one, I'm trying to tell here, about this searingly beautiful movement we heard in Sunday's preliminary "post tease" ("How do we -- or maybe I mean how did Brahms -- get to this from this?"). I thought, though, that we could use an additional round of teasing before we get to it, and so we've started by rehearing our not-exactly-mysterious "mystery" Adagio sostenuto, in three performances that are about as different -- not just in pacing but in outlook and texture and tone -- as I could throw together on short notice.


FOR THE RECORD, I'M KEEPING ONE "TEASE" PROMISE

Sunday Classics holiday edition: It's "The Nutcracker" -- the whole deal! (One more time!)

With the "Nutcracker Suite" sequence of Disney's Fantasia now unavailable, I thought to kick off we'd just look at this little teaser from Helgi Tómasson's San Francisco Ballet staging.

by Ken

[To repeat, this is a second "encore presentation" of 2011's complete-Nutcracker post (the first since since all the way back in 2012!), which I thought came out pretty darned well. As I wrote in 2012, you probably think it's a huge labor-saver just running a post "rerun," and perhaps I thought so too, but it didn't work out that way.]

The plan is pretty simple. As promised in last night's preview, when we heard two quite differently terrific performances of Tchaikovksy's own Nutcracker Suite, today we're going to hear the complete ballet, and chunks of it -- solely at my discretion -- twice!

Pretty much the last thing I added to what you'll see in the click-through is the plot synopsis (filched from Wikipedia). I went back and forth a lot about this, because I really don't pay much attention to plots, or even programs, when I listen to music written for the dance. I'm not a dance person to begin with, and I guess my listening orientation is to allow the music to plug its own built-in "program" into my imagination. Still, in the end it seemed to me that this curious format (for want of a better word) we've got going here at Sunday Classics is actually an extremely good way to hook up the plot and the music.

I'll have some quick (I hope) notes about the specifics when we get to the click-through, so let me just throw out two points about The Nutcracker:

(1) Tchaikovsky really didn't want to write the damned thing. So no, it was about as far from a "labor of love" as you can get.

(2) It was written to share a double bill with one of the composer's less-performed operas, Yolanta, which is the part of the bill that really interested and moved him. It has, in fact, nothing (that I can see or hear) in common with its birth billmate, and it strikes me as an incredibly difficult piece to really bring to life, but as with many difficult, fragile creations, its specialness holds special rewards. It deals, first, with the desperate desire of a very powerful man -- a king, in fact -- to shield a loved one, in this case his only daughter, from pain, in her case the knowledge that she's blind. But in the larger sense it deals with the futility of trying to protect someone from something it's impossible to "protect" her from, like reality. Someday we should undoubtedly talk about Yolanta. (But it's difficult.)


MOVING ON TO OUR COMPLETE NUTCRACKER

Ghost of Sunday Classics: "Kaleidoscope" -- a fondly remembered LP happily holds up under decades-later scrutiny

HOW DO WE GET FROM POINT A TO B TO C?

Point A, the opening of the piece (as heard last night):

Shortly we'll hear how we get from there to Point B:

However, Point B leads directly into Point C:

London Symphony Orchestra, Charles Mackerras, cond. Philips-Mercury, recorded July 1961

by Ken

Last week I reported my discovery of a hidden treasure trove (free!) of overtures, F. Reeder's Internet Archive compendium of "Overtures - Recorded 1926-1847)" -- 33 mp3 transfers of 29 overtures conducted by 18 conductors, most of them legendary (e.g., Barbirolli, Beecham, Furtwängler, Mengelberg, Mitropoulos, Reiner, Rodzinski, Toscanini, Walter, Weingartner). That helped nudge me into an overtury mood. I recalled that a happy heap of my listening over the years has been to recorded collections of overtures and related short orchestral pieces.

As I mentioned, this mood inspired me to finally order CD issues of material that had once been part of my "go to" listening material. As a result, we're not going to do much with the Reeder treasure trove this week, but we'll come back to it. Also, I should mention that in a February 2011 post I already flashed back to one of those treasured overture discs, the Capitol Paperback Classics reissue of Erich Leinsdorf's wonderful c1958 catchily titled Opera Overtures LP with the Philharmonia, augmented on CD with some fine overture performances by Felix Slatkin and Miklós Rózsa.

Another of those LPs sprang back to life with the arrival of those ordered CDs: a Mercury Living Presence CD reincarnation of sorts of Charles Mackerras's Philips LP Kaleidoscope. What we heard in last night's preview was the music that more than anything made me fall in love with the original Kaleidoscope. The CD isn't the original Kaleidoscope, exactly. On it material from two LPs is smooshed together (from the Kaleidoscope LP everything is here except two additional Brahms Hungarian Dances, a minimal loss), all recorded at the same time by the legendary Mercury "Living Presence" team of Wilma Cozart Fine, recording director; Harold Lawrence, musical supervisor; and C. Robert Fine, chief engineer and technical supervisor. The domestic Philips LP was in effect a "Living Presence" LP, which explains why it sounded so good. Unfortunately as with the general run of domestic Philips pressings, it could be, well, problematic -- my copy came badly warped.

But that didn't stop me from listening to it a few zillion times, especially the piece we began hearing last night. What we heard was the hushed, haunting opening -- "Point A" in the A-to-B-to-C sequence above. Now here's the whole thing, starting with the Mackerras recording. Then we have that wise old German hand Robert Heger (from a complete Merry Wives recording) and vintage Herbert von Karajan, plus a dip into the F. Reeder overture grab bag, turning up a conductor now hardly known, Nikolai Sokoloff (1886-1965), who does a pretty nice job while squeezing the thing onto one 78 side.

NICOLAI: The Merry Wives of Windsor: Overture


London Symphony Orchestra, Charles Mackerras, cond. Philips-Mercury, recorded July 1961

Bavarian State Orchestra, Robert Heger, cond. EMI, recorded 1964

Berlin Philharmonic, Herbert von Karajan, cond. EMI, recorded c1959

[trimmed (and rushed) to fit on one 78 side] Cleveland Orchestra, Nikolai Sokoloff, cond. Brunswick, recorded May 1927 (digital transfer by F. Reeder)


A CONDUCTOR NOT SO EASY TO "TYPE"

Ghost of Sunday Classics preview: Attention, please!

Can you imagine a more ravishing musical attention-getter?



London Symphony Orchestra, Charles Mackerras, cond. Philips-Mercury, recorded July 1961

by Ken

What we hear above is really and truly a preview; we're not going to hear any more of this piece until tomorrow's Ghost of Sunday Classics post. Many of you will recognize it (we've actually heard it before), but for now I just want to focus on this ravishing opening.

This is a talent, I think, the ability to grab a listener's attention musically. Not in a mechanical, conk-over-the-head way, which I suppose can be done by formula, but in a genuinely imagination-engaging way. The talent can certainly be cultivated, shaped, refined, but I think either you've got stuff in you head that can do the trick or you don't. We've listened, for example, to the way Puccini opened nearly all of his mature operas -- that, I think, is simply astounding, and a measure of unique genius.

One reason I'm so bowled over by the way our composer above seizes hold of our imaginations is precisely because there isn't any conking over the head. Just listen to what he does with that out-of-nothing hush, then gradually gathers momentum. Gorgeous!

This makes me think of the musical solutions Puccini's great predecessor Verdi found for the first of his two supreme masterpieces, Otello. We've heard all of these before (if anyone would like links, please just let me know in the comments; it's so tedious gathering them when there's no earthly purpose), but let's listen first to the similarly quiet orchestral introductions to Acts II, III, and IV.

VERDI: Otello

" 'La Traviata' at the foot of Masada" -- say what?

"La Traviata at the foot of Masada"



VERDI: La Traviata: Prelude and Opening Scene
(through Alfredo and Violetta's Brindisi)
[You can find an Italian-English libretto for La Traviata
at "DM's opera site."]

[in English] Valerie Masterson (s), Violetta Valéry; Della Jones (ms), Flora Bervoix; Denis Dowling (b), Marquis d'Obigny; Geoffrey Pogson (t), Gastone, Viscount of Létorières; John Brecknock (t), Alfredo Germont; John Gibbs (b), Baron Douphol; English National Opera Chorus and Orchestra, Sir Charles Mackerras, cond. EMI, recorded Aug.-Oct. 1980


[clip 1: Prelude; clip 2: Opening Scene] Rosanna Carteri (s), Violetta Valéry; Lydia Marimpietri (s), Flora Bervoix; Leonardo Monreale (bs), Marquis d'Obigny; Glauco Scarlini (t), Gastone, Viscount of Létorières; Cesare Valletti (t), Alfredo Germont; Arturo La Porta (b), Baron Douphol; Rome Opera Chorus and Orchestra, Pierre Monteux, cond. RCA-BMG, recorded 1956 (mono)

by Ken

I'm not suggesting that you shouldn't go just because the idea strikes me as a tiny bit, er, peculiar. It's certainly an amazingly dramatic as well as historic site -- there in the Judean desert, at the foot of the towering plateau of Masada, in range of the Dead Sea.

But "dramatic" in rather particular ways, I would think. I imagine that when the Israeli Opera Festival did Verdi's crypto-Old Testament epic Nabucco, much of which takes place outdoors in the ancient Near East, with scenes of definite blockbuster character, the site may have enhanced the experience. Ditto with Verdi's Egyptian epic, Aida.

The Opera Festival

We witness here the realization of the vision of an international opera festival in one of the most meaningful sites in our history, proving that the State of Israel can become a centre for culture tourism from all over the world. And indeed more than 4,000 tourists will attend these performance of Nabucco in tandem with thousands of Israelis coming to Masada from all corners of the land.

Many partners have joined us in this cultural, historic grandiose cultural celebration including the Tamar Regional Council, The National Parks Authority, The Ministry of Tourism, The Ministry of Culture, The Dead Sea Hotel Association, Discount Bank, IDB who enable thousands of spectators from the periphery attend the performances, The Meitar Family Fund and others. We thank all of them and many others without whom we would not have been able to be here today and enjoy a production that will not be easily forgotten.

I thank you dear guests that you have chosen to enjoy with us Nabucco at the footsteps of Masada. I wish you a unique operatic experience and already am looking forward to seeing you here next year for Aida.

Hanna Munitz
Israeli Opera General Director

But La Traviata?

"La traviata at the foot of Masaada" was the actual legend on the online promotional something-or-other that caught my eye. And what could say "19th-century Parisian demimonde" more surely than the Judean desert, Masada, and the Dead Sea? Not to mention that, while Traviata has party scenes that are crucial to the drama, the heart of the thing is the scenes among the three principals -- Violetta and Alfredo and, later, papa Giorgio Germont.

There are four performances scheduled between June 12 and 17. If you go, let us know how it turned out!


Aida at Masada 2011

YouTube caption: For the second year running Eyal Lavee and his production team at The Design Group in Israel returned to the purpose built site they carved out of the desert last year for the Israeli Opera at the foot of Masada Mountain at the Dead Sea.

This historically significant and exquisitely raw setting saw the staging of Verdi's Aida, conducted by Daniel Oren, a co-production with Les Choragies d'Orange in France for the 2011 Dead Sea & Jerusalem Opera Festival 2011.

The Design Group - encompassing 3 different companies - Stage Design, Irgunit and LEDIM - and embracing multiple technical disciplines, handled all aspects of the technical production and site management. Lavee worked with his core production management team of Elad Mainz and Eviatar Banayan, and up to 150 other crew and technicians at peak times on site.

Once again, The Group's international connections were energised to bring onboard HSL and Britannia Row from the UK to provide lighting and audio equipment respectively. "Last year was a huge success, so it made sense to keep the same teams and collaborate with the best companies in the industry to supply the large quantities of premium kit required. Both HSL and Britannia Row did another fantastic job," says Lavee.

#

It's "The Nutcracker" -- the whole deal! (again -- our last annual encore presentation)

With the "Nutcracker Suite" sequence of Disney's Fantasia now unavailable, I thought to kick off we'd just look at this little teaser from Helgi Tómasson's San Francisco Ballet staging.

by Ken

[To repeat, this is an "encore presentation" of last year's encore presentation of 2011's complete-Nutcracker post, which I thought came out pretty darned well. You probably think it's a huge labor-saver just running a post "rerun." Perhaps I thought so too, but it never works out that way.]

The plan is pretty simple. As promised in Friday night's preview, when we heard (once again) two quite differently terrific performances of Tchaikovksy's own Nutcracker Suite, today we're going to hear the complete ballet, and chunks of it -- solely at my discretion -- twice!

Pretty much the last thing I added to what you'll see in the click-through is the plot synopsis (filched from Wikipedia). I went back and forth a lot about this, because I really don't pay much attention to plots, or even programs, when I listen to music written for the dance. I'm not a dance person to begin with, and I guess my listening orientation is to allow the music to plug its own built-in "program" into my imagination. Still, in the end it seemed to me that this curious format (for want of a better word) we've got going here at Sunday Classics is actually an extremely good way to hook up the plot and the music.

I'll have some quick (I hope) notes about the specifics when we get to the click-through, so let me just throw out two points about The Nutcracker:

(1) Tchaikovsky really didn't want to write the damned thing. So no, it was about as far from a "labor of love" as you can get.

(2) It was written to share a double bill with one of the composer's less-performed operas, Yolanta, which is the part of the bill that really interested and moved him. It has, in fact, nothing (that I can see or hear) in common with its birth billmate, and it strikes me as an incredibly difficult piece to really bring to life, but as with many difficult, fragile creations, its specialness holds special rewards. It deals, first, with the desperate desire of a very powerful man -- a king, in fact -- to shield a loved one, in this case his only daughter, from pain, in her case the knowledge that she's blind. But in the larger sense it deals with the futility of trying to protect someone from something it's impossible to "protect" her from, like reality. Someday we should undoubtedly talk about Yolanta. (But it's difficult.)


MOVING ON TO OUR COMPLETE NUTCRACKER

It's "The Nutcracker" -- the whole deal! (Again!)

With the "Nutcracker Suite" sequence of Disney's Fantasia now unavailable, I thought to kick off we'd just look at this little teaser from Helgi Tómasson's San Francisco Ballet staging.

by Ken

[To repeat, this is an "encore presentation" of last year's complete-Nutcracker post, which I thought came out pretty darned well. You probably think it's a huge labor-saver just running a post "rerun." Perhaps I thought so too, but it never works out that way.]

The plan is pretty simple. As promised in Friday night's preview, when we heard two quite differently terrific performances of Tchaikovksy's own Nutcracker Suite, today we're going to hear the complete ballet, and chunks of it -- solely at my discretion -- twice!

Pretty much the last thing I added to what you'll see in the click-through is the plot synopsis (filched from Wikipedia). I went back and forth a lot about this, because I really don't pay much attention to plots, or even programs, when I listen to music written for the dance. I'm not a dance person to begin with, and I guess my listening orientation is to allow the music to plug its own built-in "program" into my imagination. Still, in the end it seemed to me that this curious format (for want of a better word) we've got going here at Sunday Classics is actually an extremely good way to hook up the plot and the music.

I'll have some quick (I hope) notes about the specifics when we get to the click-through, so let me just throw out two points about The Nutcracker:

(1) Tchaikovsky really didn't want to write the damned thing. So no, it was about as far from a "labor of love" as you can get.

(2) It was written to share a double bill with one of the composer's less-performed operas, Yolanta, which is the part of the bill that really interested and moved him. It has, in fact, nothing (that I can see or hear) in common with its birth billmate, and it strikes me as an incredibly difficult piece to really bring to life, but as with many difficult, fragile creations, its specialness holds special rewards. It deals, first, with the desperate desire of a very powerful man -- a king, in fact -- to shield a loved one, in this case his only daughter, from pain, in her case the knowledge that she's blind. But in the larger sense it deals with the futility of trying to protect someone from something it's impossible to "protect" her from, like reality. Someday we should undoubtedly talk about Yolanta. (But it's difficult.)


MOVING ON TO OUR COMPLETE NUTCRACKER