Best wishes to Antonio Meneses, with thanks for all you've given us

[photo by Marco Borggreve, 2023]

❇︎  the "Rococo theme" from Tchaikovsky's Rococo Variations

Antonio Meneses, cello; RTVE Symphony Orchestra (Madrid), Yoav Talmi, cond. Live performance, 2008
[NOTE: Not to worry -- we're going to hear the whole performance. -- Ed.]

❇︎  the little Adagio from Schubert's Arpeggione Sonata

Antonio Meneses, cello; Maria João Pires, piano. DG, recorded live in Wigmore Hall, London, Jan. 4, 2012
[NOTE: We're going to hear this whole performance too. It's a treat! -- Ed.]

We hear above: first, an urgently flowing 2008 statement of the theme of Tchaikovsky's Variations on a Rococo Theme, shaped with subtle jolliness and moments of charming tease, with ebullient support from Yoav Talmi and the RTVE Symphony Orchestra; and from 2012, the soaring Adagio of Schubert's Arpeggione Sonata, with the much-loved Portuguese pianist Maria João Pires. -- Ed.

by Ken

This is heartbreaking.

From The Strad (online), July 8, 2024 edition:

Cellist Antonio Meneses diagnosed with aggressive brain cancer

The Brazilian cellist has been diagnosed with an incurable brain tumour and has stepped down from his concert and teaching schedule

Brazilian cellist Antonio Meneses has announced that he has been diagnosed with glioblastoma multiforme, an aggressive form of brain cancer, and has stepped down from his concert and teaching engagements with immediate effect. He made the announcement on social media on 7 July:

"Brazilian cellist Antonio Meneses, one of the leading musicians of his generation, has cancelled his concert schedule and stepped down from his position as a teacher. He was diagnosed in June with Gliobastoma Multiforme, an aggressive type of brain tumour.

"Born in Recife and raised in Rio de Janeiro, Meneses is one of the most famous soloists and chamber musicians of his generation.

"Meneses is currently receiving palliative care at his home in Switzerland, supported by his family and friends, who have been an important source of comfort at such a difficult time."

Meneses, who was born in 1957, won the first prize at the Munich International Competition in 1977 and was awarded first prize and gold medal at the Tchaikovsky Competition in 1982. He was a member of the Beaux Arts Trio from 1998 to 2008 and performed regularly in duos with pianists Menahem Pressler and Maria João Pires. He was featured as The Strad’s cover star in August 2012.

THIS HIT ME JUST AFTER I'D COBBLED TOGETHER . . .

Taking our good old time withthe Gabrieli String Quartet

[STILL STITCHING THE THING TOGETHER, BUT THE MUSIC IS ALL IN PLACE (I THINK!)]

MONDAY MORNING UPDATE: I'm still stitching, and have to pause the effort. As it turned out, there was more music added, but I think now it's all here. (Further consideration of Schubert's song "Death and the Maiden," which we hear here, will come in a separate post.

The Gabrieli Quartet of the era 1969-86: violinists Kenneth Sillito and Brendan O'Reilly, cellist Keith Harvey, and violist Ian Jewel, whom we heard last week playing the first and second movements of . . .

BRAHMS: Clarinet Quintet in B minor, Op. 115:
ii. Adagio


Keith Puddy, clarinet; Gabrieli Quartet (Kenneth Sillito and Brendan O'Reilly, violins; Ian Jewel, viola; Keith Harvey, cello). Classics for Pleasure-EMI, released 1970

by Ken

It was over the identification of the players in this recording, for the EMI-affiliated budget-price Classics for Pleasure label, that I got bogged down in last week's "Do I hear a clarinet?" In the Gabrieli's early recordings, strangely, the individual musicians weren't identified, and even in a CD reissue still weren't. As regular readers know, in this department we like to know who the people are who are performing for us.

For three-fourths of the early Gabrieli String Quartet there's no problem. From its founding, in 1966 or 1967 (we'll come back to this in a moment), until the departure of its founding first violinist two decades later, there was only one change of personnel: Sometime in 1969 the original second violinist, Claire Simpson, gave way to Brendan O'Reilly. I don't know when in 1969, but I do know, at least according to the original Classics for Pleasure LP label (which we saw last week), that the Brahms Clarinet Quintet recording was published (I still don't know when it was made) sometime in 1970, the year Classics for Pleasure was born. Was there time for Brendan O. to take his place with the quartet in time for the recording? Or might Claire S. still have been in place?

Admittedly, I further confused the point by mis-associating an entirely other young violin-playing Claire Simpson, who suffered a gruesome fate at the knife-wielding hands of a jealous ex-boyfriend, with the Gabrieli's second violinist. I thought I knew why Claire S. had left the Gabrieli; now I have no idea, just that according to Wikipedia a Simpson-to-O'Reilly succession happened sometime in 1969. However . . . .


A NEW CONFUSION ARISES IN MY GABRIELI TIMELINE

It surprised me that one of the Gabrieli Quartet's earliest recordings should have been a quintet with a clarinet soloist. Now it appears that before they recorded the Brahms quintet -- as much as three years before -- they had recorded the Mozart Clarinet Quintet, also with Keith Puddy. And now I realize that the association with Keith P. actually predates the formation of the Gabrieli String Quartet. In a 2003 interview for the Internet Cello Society, Keith Harvey, speaking of his time as principal cello with the English Chamber Orchestra (after some five years as the very young principal cello of the London Philharmonic) recalled:

During my time in the English Chamber Orchestra, the co-leader Kenneth Sillito and I, together with the pianist John Streets and clarinettist Keith Puddy, formed the Gabrieli Ensemble, which later became the Gabrieli String Quartet. In the Ensemble, we performed Messaien's Quartet for the End of Time at least two hundred times. The composer was present at one of these performances and wrote a glowing appreciation.

Let's leave for another the alarming image of four people performing the Quartet for the End of Time, in a fairly short span of time, 200-plus times. (It's not a terribly long piece, really, but in performance it always seems to me to last for two or three weeks. It amazes me that a piece can be simultaneously so tedious and so repulsive.) So Keith P. was already partnering with Kenneth S. and Keith H. before there even was a Gabrieli String Quartet!

A theory about the quartet's origin date: Maybe 1966 is when the oddly configured quartet calling itself the Gabrieli Ensemble was born in 1966, and 1967 the Gabrieli String Quartet in 1967. Of course this doesn't leave an awful lot of time for those 200-plus performances of the Quartet for the End of Time. So all we can say for sure is that somewhere in there the transformation took place. And in any case, it's interesting that the year 1967 should have popped up. Because --


LET'S GET BACK TO THE MOZART CLARINET QUINTET

We now hear our "elite" violin concertos in their entirety

As we edge forward with our Mendelssohn "sidebar" -- as I just explained -- it's time to hear these concertos in full.

[TUESDAY UPDATE: You might watch for updates to this post, like the one I just added for the Brahms Concerto.]

Last week ("Rondomania: A quick hit at violin-concerto rondo finales looking back from Mendelssohn to Mozart and Beethoven and ahead to Brahms and Sibelius"), pursuing the Mendelssohn "sidebar" that grew out of the Nov. 28 post "One Sunday afternoon in
August 1943 in Carnegie Hall . . .," we listened to the great chain of violin concertos with rondo finales stretching out before and after Mendelssohn. I said at the time that I'd really like to be able to present those concertos in full. Well, here they are!

This all still needs to be integrated with a mostly written first part that continues the Mendelssohnian thread. And probably it should be improved in all sorts of other ways. I wouldn't hold my breath about that part, though. -- Ken

AGAIN, WE REALLY HAVE TO START WITH MOZART

In our original consideration of the place of the rondo finale in the line of the great violin concertos, we started with Mozart --

• not because he invented either the violin concerto or the rondo or even the use of the rondo in violin (and other) concertos, which he didn't, but because he grasped the possibilities of this combination in a way, or ways, that made it stick.

• and not because Mozart's violin concertos, taken on their own, are equivalent in stature to the line of violin concertos they did so much to inspire. The form -- the Classical concerto, that is, not to be confused with the Baroque one -- was still too new to aspire to that stature. (Thank you once again, Herr Beethoven.)

Not that the three "mature" concertos (which followed with scarcely any separation from the not-yet-mature ones) can't still hold their own on a concert platform. But you kind of feel that the audience needs at minimum a somewhat bigger kick, and the performer has to put out a portion more to earn his/her fee. So, with no disrespect to any of these much-loved works, I'm thinking of them maybe more as a collective than as separate entires in our violin-concerto sweepstakes. (If it were piano concertos we were tracking, I'm not sure I would take the same position. But Mozart's piano concertos come from a more developed stage of his creative energies. There are at least half a dozen Mozart piano concertos I'd consider worthy of inclusion in such a survey.

BUT: We're skipping the Mozart Violin Concertos Nos. 1-2

Continuing with our Mendelssohn "sidebar," moving backwards through the E minor Violin Concerto we reach the 2nd movement

-- from Classic FM

Jascha Heifetz, violin; Boston Symphony Orchestra, Charles Munch, cond. RCA, recorded in Symphony Hall, Feb. 23 & 25, 1959

Arthur Grumiaux, violin; New Philharmonia Orchestra, Jan Krenz, cond. Philips, recorded September 1972

Johanna Martzy, violin; Philharmonia Orchestra, Wolfgang Sawallisch, cond. EMI, recorded in Kingsway Hall, June 9-10, 1954

Yehudi Menuhin, violin; Philharmonia Orchestra, Efrem Kurtz, cond. EMI, recorded in Abbey Road Studio No. 1, April 1958

by Ken

I know, I know, this is a heckuva way of doing things. Midnight came and went, with a column called Sunday Classics, which thereby purports to appear on, you know, effing Sunday, and there was midnight, or rather there went midnight, and I was still making more audio files, presumably in some sort of effort to illustrate some kind of point -- God-only-knows what kind. (Probably not even God knows, but only because He has more useful things to worry about and doesn't care. Can anyone blame Him?) All I can say about this way of doing things is that I plan to figure out a better one and have it at the top of my "to do" list. I bet it'll be up and running by next week. I feel sure of it.

Well, pretty sure.

Only wait! There is a point here. In recent times I've been making increasingly frequent references to "what it is we're looking for in music" (or, really, any other art form), why we get involved with it, what we think it can do for and to us, and what it actually can do for and to us. And here in these 7-8 minutes of gorgeous musical outpouring are the answers. Why we're here, what it's all about, what we hope and dream, what challenges and sorrows us, how we nevertheless persevere. It's all there. Of course it's all still in musical form, so we still have to decipher it.

And of course a significant part of the musical genius is that it can provide such overwhelming beauty-in-sound as it offers up its secrets. It can do so even when the news it bears isn't happy -- or even is out-and-out tragic. And nobody does this better than Jascha Heifetz, as we can hear in his Mendelssohn Andante. Or note the even more arrestingly beautiful tone of Arthur Grumiaux, and the seemingly unconditional openness and forthrightness.

If you're not familiar with Johanna Martzy, her Andante is a splendid sample of the deep introspection and passion she served up in a career that somehow never measured up to her abundant gifts. And I encourage you to check out a deeply knowledgeable and understanding 2018 appreciation by Sudip Bose in The American Scholar, marred only by the off-putting -- no, let's call it what it is, "repulsive" -- title, "The Cult of Johanna Martzy." There really is a Martzy cult, as he describes in pungent detail at the outset: a cult of record collectors who pay mind-boggling prices for original issues of her sadly limited recorded output, prices based mostly on rarity rather than artistic merit. But the meat of the piece is precisely Martzy's considerable and singular artistic merit. (I was intrigued by Bose's enormous enthusiasm for her recording of the Dvořák Violin Concerto that I searched it out online, and was impressed enough that we're going to hear it in our violin-concerto survey.

Here's a sample. Our little clip begins with a brief but grabbing slow section that probably sounds to most listeners like a newly begun slow second movement. In fact, this little section marked "Andante moderato" is a kind of postlude to the first movement, or maybe just the start of a transitional section.


Johanna Martzy, violin; RIAS Symphony Orchestra (Berlin), Ferenc Fricsay, cond. DG, recorded in the Jesus-Christus-Kirche, June 1953


SPEAKING OF THE "ELITE"-VIOLIN-CONCERTO, THAT'S WHERE
WE'VE BEEN HEADING. MAYBE WE SHOULD JUST DIVE RIGHT IN!

Rather than tack it on to this post, I'm going to just leave it in the form it's been parked in, and direct you there from here.

Dvořák comes to the New World -- plus afterthoughts on last week's audio clips

The first page of the contract (put on public display in 2013 after being recently rediscovered) proffered by Mrs. Jeannette Thurber and signed by Antonín Dvořák in 1892 which brought the composer to New York to serve as director of her new National Conservatory for Music [from a photo by Chang W. Lee for The New York Times]

It was an audacious act of Gilded Age New York. Jeannette Thurber, a wealthy patron trying to create not just a new American music school but, more broadly, a new American school of music, decided in 1891 to hire one of the greatest composers of the day: Antonin Dvorak.

She offered him $15,000 a year — more than 25 times what he made at home in Prague — and promised him summers off. In exchange, she made him promise to work regular hours six days a week at her school, instruct “the most talented pupils only” and conduct concerts.

After months of trans-Atlantic negotiations, they eventually struck the deal that brought Dvorak to New York City in 1892 for an eventful three-year sojourn to lead Mrs. Thurber’s National Conservatory of Music of America — a period in which he composed some of his best work, including his American-inflected “New World” Symphony and Cello Concerto. . . .

-- Michael Cooper, in The Times, Aug. 24, 2013

Vienna Philharmonic, Rafael Kubelik, cond. Decca, recorded in the Sofiensaal, October 1956

by Ken

The last time I took the walking tour that Francis Morrone calls "Dvořák in Love" (a title borrowed from the novel by the Czech-Canadian novelist Josef Škvorecký, which takes off from the true-life story of the composer's three-year sojourn in the U.S., Francis gave me a quizzical look and asked, hadn't I already taken this tour?

Before I get to my answer, I should explain that while the title Dvořák in Love to most of us suggests some sort of romantic dalliance, in fact, as a Goodreads blurb puts it, "This splendid novel tells the story of Dvorak's utterly requited love affair with America."

Now, back to Francis's question. I acknowledged that I had taken the tour before, and explained that, first, even among Francis's tours, than which walking tours don't get any better, this one had left a powerful imprint in my imagination, and, second, given how much I forget of what I "learn" on a tour (my standard estimate is that I remember on a good day maybe 10 percent of what I've been told), not to mention how much probably never properly registered, I wanted a chance to "fix" more of the tour in my brain.

I might have added something I know from experience of other tours of Francis's that I've done more than once: that even when he repeats a tour, it isn't exactly the same tour. Not to mention that on the later occasion(s) I'm not exactly the same person I was.


I STILL MEAN TO TALK ABOUT THE "DVOŘÁK IN LOVE" TOUR,
BUT LET'S GET BACK TO THE BIT OF MUSIC WE JUST HEARD

For one thing, it was Francis who got me to thinking about Josf Suk and Kurt Masur as they relate to the subject of Dvořák, as you may have noticed in last week's post -- and maybe not just on that subject, which will also involve some more talk and, more happily, more music. I wasn't surprised, when I took a look in the Archive, to see how much from each of these special performers we've heard. This wasn't planned; it just happened that way.

And speaking of last week's post, I also want to make some remarks of a housekeeping nature about the audio clips, which I'm emboldened to want to talk about a bit -- just not right now.

What we've wound up with: (1) We inch our way back toward Dvořák's New World Symphony, and (2) We explore the problem of stuff going missing, G&S-style*

*Technically this should be "B&S-style," I know, but there's no such thing, is there? -- Ed.

UPDATE: I GIVE UP! THOSE CDs I NEEDED, WHICH I HAD LYING
ABOUT OR IN MY HAND, ARE MIA -- LET'S JUST GET ON WITH IT
(No "Schubert piano performance that knocked me over," for now)

When, in 1997, this statue of Dvořák by the Croatian-American sculptor Ivan Meštrović found a new home near the northern edge of Manhattan's Stuyvesant Square, it constituted a "homecoming" of sorts. There's a story here, and a personal story, er, inside the story which involves a remarkable walking tour and two remarkable musicians who both have powerful connections -- of very different sorts -- to the great Czech composer.

DVOŘÁK: Violin Concerto in A minor, Op. 53:
iii. Finale: Allegro giocoso, ma non troppo

Josef Suk, violin; Czech Philharmonic Orchestra, Karel Ančerl, cond. Supraphon, recorded in the Rudolfinum, Prague, August 1960

DVOŘÁK: Piano Trio No. 4 in E minor, Op. 90 (Dumky):
the first two of the trio's six movements --
i. Lento maestoso -- Allegro quasi doppio movimento -- Lento maestoso (Tempo I) -- Allegro
ii. Poco adagio -- Vivace non troppo -- Poco adagio -- Vivace

[ii. at 4:04] Suk Trio: Josef Suk, violin; Josef Chuchro, cello; Jan Panenka, piano. Supraphon-Denon, recorded in the Domovina Studio, Prague, May 11-13, 1978

DVOŘÁK: Symphony No. 8 in G, Op. 88:
i. Allegro con brio

New York Philharmonic, Kurt Masur, cond. Teldec, recorded live in Avery Fisher Hall, Jan. 1-4, 1993

DVOŘÁK: Slavonic Dance No. 15 in C, Op. 72, No. 7

Gewandhaus Orchestra (Leipzig), Kurt Masur, cond. Philips-Deutsche Schallplatten, recorded 1984-85

by Ken

Nothing continues to come together right, but we forge ahead, with one qualification: Tomorrow I'm going to the Richmond County Fair, come hell or high waters. On second thought, we best not kid around about "high waters, of which we Gothamites had a plentiful share this week. In fact, I'm going to have to check the website to make sure the fair is up and running -- they were supposed to open yesterday, which would have been quite a feat so soon after the deluge.

Anyway, that's my nonnegotiable schedule delimiter, and it remains to be seen how far further I can get tonight, especially with multiple CDs going missing on me. Meanwhile, these audio clips are ready to roll, so why don't we let them? (For the record, as it were, three of the four clips so far in place are Sunday Classics premieres, I think -- I did find an older version of one of the three in the Archive.)


FOR NOW, WE CAN AT LEAST HAVE THE STORY
OF THE STATUE THAT "FOUND ITS WAY HOME"

Maybe we should listen more to try to locate the wonderfulness of Till Eulenspiegel and the Largo of the New World Symphony

“I have already put together a very pretty scenario [i.e., for an operatic treatment of the part-historical, mostly-legendary figure of Till Eulenspiegel -- Ed.]," Strauss wrote in a letter, “but the figure of Master Till does not quite appear before my eyes.”

But if Strauss could not see Master Till, he could hear him, and before 1894 was out, he had begun the tone poem that he finished the following May. As always, he could not make up his mind whether he was engaged in tone painting or “just music.” To Franz Wüllner, who conducted the first performance, he wrote: “I really cannot provide a program for Eulenspiegel. Any words into which I might put the thoughts that the several incidents suggested to me would hardly suffice; they might even offend. Let me leave it, therefore, to my listeners to crack the hard nut the Rogue has offered them. By way of helping them to a better understanding, it seems enough to point out the two Eulenspiegel motifs [Strauss jots down the opening of the work and the virtuosic horn theme] [BUT SEE BELOW* -- Ed.], which, in the most diverse disguises, moods, and situations, pervade the whole up to the catastrophe when, after being condemned to death, Till is strung up on the gibbet. For the rest, let them guess at the musical joke a Rogue has offered them.”

-- from Michael Steinberg's San Francisco Symphony program
note on Richard Strauss's tone poem Till Eulenspiegel

*Strauss's "Eulenspiegel motif" no. 1

Philharmonia Orchestra, Otto Klemperer, cond.

*Strauss's "Eulenspiegel motif" no. 2 (played twice)

With the horn solo played by Philharmonia principal Alan Civil

THREE REMINDERS THAT A SPECIAL CONNECTION HAS
ALWAYS EXISTED BETWEEN STRAUSS AND DRESDEN

The composer hailed from Munich, and the Bavarian capital has a storied Strauss tradition, and he was at home in the musical capitals of the German-speaking world -- Berlin and especially Vienna, of course -- but the musical connection with Dresden was, well, something else.

R. STRAUSS: Till Eulenspiegels lustige Streiche
(Till Eulenspiegel's Merry Pranks), Op. 28


Staatskapelle Dresden, Herbert Blomstedt, cond. Denon-Deutsche Schallplatten, recorded in the Lukaskirche, February 5-9, 1989

Staatskapelle Dresden, Rudolf Kempe, cond. EMI-Deutsche Schallplatten, recorded in the Lukaskirche, June 1970

Staatskapelle Dresden, Franz Konwitschny, cond. Broadcast performance, Aug. 7, 1959

by Ken

So, for starters, we've got three Dresden performances of Till Eulenspiegel, same basic orchestra but pretty different performances, to which we can apply the wisdom left to us by that fine writer on music Michael Steinberg: that when it comes to the Strauss tone poems that seem to have "programs," do they really or don't they? I often worry that I'm not sufficiently up on the story-telling elements of even as short a piece as Till Eulenspiegel, let alone the considerably longer pieces that would come, and even with one I love as much as I do Don Quixote, for proper appreciation should I be listening with my nose buried in a printed "program," which I hate doing?

So, it seems that Strauss himself took a pretty casual view of the program business, at least as applied to Till. I still have to wonder, when we come eventually to the Alpine Symphony and Symphonia domestica, don't we really need to know what the composer thinks is going on section by section? I usually settle for taking in the "effects" I "get," with maybe the occasional glance at some sort of cheat sheet, but should I be more rigorous about all this? For what it's worth, as we make our way again through Till, I note that there are really useful Wikipedia articles both on the background of the character Till Eulenspiegel and on Strauss's musical rendering. (We're not done with Till, by the way.)

In case it hasn't been obvious, or you weren't here for the previous post, I should say for the record that I've already been referring back to Wednesday's "Post tease (I guess?): Does music get wonderfuller than this?" Almost as soon as I put that post up, I realized that I didn't want to tell the story I thought I was going to about the day that had been marked by my happening upon Blomstedt and Karajan performances -- in totally different media -- of Till Eulenspiegel and the Largo of Dvořák's New World Symphony.

I thought I was kind of looking forward to sharing, um, what I was setting out to share, and had only been held up by the teensy-weensy complication that the story is pretty complicated to tell, and also pretty sensitive, so that unless I get it close enough to "right," I can't even think of posting it.

What I think we can accomplish without an inordinate amount of fuss is taking a closer look at the wonderfulness of these two pieces, since this can take us into territory that the dozen or so still-loose threads of posts past were designed to nudge us toward: what it is that we're looking for from music and what it's offering.


IN A MOMENT I'LL SHARE THE BARE BONES OF THE "STORY," BUT RIGHT NOW MAYBE SOME MORE MUSIC WILL HELP . . .

Sure! Why don't we move on to our other "core piece" from Wednesday, the New World Largo, doing basically what we started going above with Till Eulenspiegel: listen again to the performance we heard in the post "tease" and setting it alongside some others, mostly drawn from the SC Archive? For the record, while the Kempe-Dresden Till indeed came from the archive, I just made the Konwitschny-Dresden clip.

Let me check what we've got stashed away to add to the Karajan-Vienna New World Largo we heard last time. Then we can pick up on the other side of the jump.

Post tease (I guess?): Does music get wonderfuller than this?

UPDATE: Now with (more than) twice as much music!

Herbert Blomstedt (born July 11, 1927), seen here at 90-plus

R. STRAUSS: Till Eulenspiegel's Merry Pranks, Op. 28

Staatskapelle Dresden, Herbert Blomstedt, cond. Denon-Deutsche Schallplatten, recorded in the Lukaskirche, Feb. 5-9, 1989

Herbert von Karajan (1908-1989)

DVOŘÁK: Symphony No. 9 in E minor (From the New World), Op. 95: ii. Largo

Vienna Philharmonic, Herbert von Karajan, cond. DG, recorded in the Musikverein, Feb. 9, 1985

by Ken

This isn't so much "a post tease" as "a post so's I can -- as you're no doubt sick of hearing me whine about -- see and listen to the embedded versions of the audio clips and thus actually see and hear them together at will.

For now you'll have to trust me that there's a reason why we're hearing these particular selections. (Like as if we needed some damned reason.)


OKAY, MAYBE A COUPLA BACKGROUND NOTES,
KIND OF RELATIVE TO THE MARCH OF TIME

At the very least, we can listen to this vaguely weird and utterly beguiling little Dvořák piece

Recent Berlin Phil Series live-streamed events have had a profusion of chamber music. This week the strings-and-winds Berlin Philharmonic Octet played the great Schubert Octet and two shorter works, including the world premiere of Toshio Hosokawa's Textures, which was to have been played 10 times during a tour to Japan and Taiwan. And chamber music figured prominently in last week's Tribute to Daniel Stabrawa.


The caption text in this screen grab is a translation of voiceover commentary from Daniel S. himself, part of one of the "tribute" sections of the May 30 Digital Concert Hall event.

by Ken

Stipulating that you already love Dvořák's strange and surprising and also singularly luscious Terzetto in C for two violins and viola (after all, aren't Dvořák's surprises, especially the stranger ones, usually singularly luscious?), and you know that longtime Berlin Philharmonic first concertmaster Daniel Stabrawa is going to be playing it with two colleagues from the orchestra, violinist Krzysztof Polonek and violist Ignacy Miecznikowski. Would you think maybe that "something's up"?

Since heaving up a preliminary version of this post earlier this afternoon, after I'd started rewatching last the May 30 Berlin Phil Series tribute to Daniel Stabrawa (now that it's available in the Digital Concert Hall), I've started re-rewatching, this time loading it on my computer so I could make some screen grabs, including those above. I've rewatched Daniel playing the Panufnik Concerto for Violin and Strings (which now seems to me quite a lovely piece; I'll be rewatching again) and especially I've rewatched the performance of the Dvořák Terzetto, which is absolute gold.

To return to the lineup for the Dvořák trio, you were probably smarter, not to mention more suspicious, than I am, even without my prompting. Let's take this a step farther and look at Krzysztof's and Ignacy's official Berlin Phil webpix.


SO, WHAT DO YOU NOTICE?

Sunday Classics: Dvořák's "Slavonic Dances": a world, or 16 worlds, in 16 miniatures

Probably the greatest Czech conductor (at least of the stay-at-home-Czech variety) of whom we have record, Václav Talich (1883-1961), conducts the Czech Philharmonic in Dvořák's Slavonic Dance No. 10 in E minor, Op. 72, No. 2 (a dumka), in this 1955 video.

by Ken

I've made this point before, but we need to make it again before proceeding to the Slavonic Dances, as promised in Friday night's preview (when we heard both the first of them in both the original piano-duet version and the composer's orchestration. Although it was obvious from the outset that Dvořák's Slavonic Dances were inspired by Brahms's Hungarian Dances, which proved a huge commercial success, what Brahms was producing was genuine trifles -- luscious trifles, but still (mostly) trifles, which doesn't seem to me at all the case with the Slavonic Dances.

I've also argued that the Hungarian Dances seem to me more effective, more atmospheric, in their original piano-duet form, where they really create a sound world of their own -- though necessarily a sound world limited by what you can get from four hands pounding a single piano keyboard.

An obvious example is the most famous of the Hungarian Dances. Note that the prevailing form in all these dances is our old friend A-B-A, most often either fast-slow-fast or slow-fast-slow, but in any case with a contrasting mood for the middle section.

BRAHMS: Hungarian Dance No. 5: Allegro

original version for piano duet: in F-sharp minor

Alfred Brendel and Walter Klein, piano. Vox, recorded 1956

orchestral version by Martin Schmeling: in G minor

Staatskapelle Berlin, Otmar Suitner, cond. Denon/Deutsche Schallplatten, recorded Aug. 28-Sept. 2, 1989

violin-and-piano version by Joseph Joachim: in G minor

Fritz Kreisler, violin; Carl Lamson, piano. Victor, recorded Feb. 17, 1916

Preview: Sampling the musical relish of Dvořák's Slavonic Dances

Seiji Ozawa conducts the Vienna Philharmonic in the first of Dvořák's Slavonic Dances, in C minor, Op. 46, No. 1.

by Ken

I could swear that we've sampled Dvořák's Slavonic Dances in Sunday Classics, but so far I haven't been able to find a link. (I really have to do something about updating the index.) I've had it in mind for a while now devote a post to these little treasures. I had fantasies of a really incisive in-depth listen, which might have been possible considering the miniatureness of the form. That's not going to happen, though, at least not this week.

I thought for tonight we'd just start at the beginning, with the blazingly proclamatory opening dance, with -- naturally -- its contrastingly tender central section. So here's how Dvořák composed it originally, for piano duet, and then how he opened it up into a new world of color and excitement when he orchestrated the Slavonic Dances.

DVOŘÁK: Slavonic Dance No. 1 in C, Op. 35, No. 1: Presto

Original version for piano duet

Michel Béroff and Jean-Philippe Collard, piano. EMI, recorded Feb. 9-12, 1976

Orchestral version by the composer

Cleveland Orchestra, George Szell, cond. Columbia/CBS/Sony, recorded Jan. 4-5, 1963

IN THIS WEEK'S SUNDAY CLASSICS POST

Well, we're going to hear some more of the Slavonic Dances. Surprise!

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