'Sidebars' begin for last week's post, 'One Sunday afternoon in August 1943 in Carnegie Hall . . . ': (1) Fun with Dmitri Kabalevsky

NOTE: As you'll see when we get to the gap, this is a knowingly "to be filled in" post, which gives us a chance to do, as it were, some on-our-own listening together

Kabalevsky (1904-1987) at work

-- from the Carnegie Hall program for Sunday, August 15, 1943

KABALEVSKY: Colas Breugnon, Opp. 24/90:
Overture


Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, Fritz Reiner, cond. Columbia, recorded in the Syria Mosque, Pittsburgh, Mar. 26, 1945

Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Fritz Reiner, cond. RCA, recorded in Orchestra Hall, Mar. 14, 1959

by Ken

If you were here last week for the post in question, "One Sunday afternoon in August 1943 in Carnegie Hall . . ." [Nov. 28], you know that the date was August 15, the event was a New York Philharmonic "Summer Broadcast Concert," and that Fritz Reiner conducted a program consisting of the Overture to Dmitri Kabalevsky's opera Colas Breugnon, the Mendelssohn E minor Violin Concerto with Nathan Milstein as soloist, and the Shostakovich Sixth Symphony. And you know that we re-created the event after a fashion, though with the actual performance of the Shostakovich symphony that went out over the airwaves that day.

For the Kabalevsky overture we heard the recording we've just reherard above, which Reiner made a year and a half later, once Columbia Records made its peace with the striking musicians' union, with "his" orchestra at that time, the Pittsburgh Symphony. And for the Mendelssohn concerto we heard a 1945 performance when Milstein returned to Carnegie Hall to play and record the piece with Bruno Walter conducting the Philharmonic.

One other thing you may know from last week's post and the "pre-post" that preceded it, "Can we do a better job assembling the three movements of this symphony than, you know, the guy who composed them?" [Nov. 22], my main interest was the Shostakovich Sixth, of which we've also heard, in addition to the 1943 New York performance, a recording of the symphony that made in that flurry of activity when Reiner and the Pittsburgh Symphony were finally able to resume recording. In fact, the Colas Breugnon Overture was recorded as a filler for Side 8 of the four-78 set containing the Shostakovich Sixth.


IF YOU'VE BEEN HERE BEFORE, IT WON'T SHOCK YOU THAT
LAST WEEK'S POST PULLED MY MIND IN OTHER DIRECTIONS

Do we dare let Schubert's Gastein Sonata nudge us into the question of what we're looking for in music?

NOTE: THE POST IS STILL UNDER CONSTRUCTION, BUT AT A MORE ADVANCED STAGE (THERE'S LOTS TO LISTEN TO NOW)


dba "Schubert in a happy place, part 2"  [continued from "Schubert in a happy place: More on our mystery 'Con moto,' part 1"]

Historical Events
"New Faces of 1956" opens at Barrymore Theater NYC for 221 performances
Famous Birthdays
• Fred Funk, American golfer (The Tradition 2008, 10; US Senior Open 2009), born in Takoma Park, Maryland
• King Diamond [Kim Petersen], Danish heavy metal musician (Merciful Fate; King Diamond), born in Copenhagen, Denmark
• Sam Irvin, American director and producer (Guilty as Charged), born in Asheville, North Carolina

-- with thanks to onthisday.com

SCHUBERT: Piano Sonata No. 17 in D, D. 850 (Gastein):
ii. Con moto [With movement]

iv. Rondo: Allegro moderato

Sviatoslav Richter, piano. Praga, recorded live in the Rudolfinum, Prague, June 14, 1956

by Ken

No, on the evidence of Onthisday.com, June 14, 1956, doesn't seem to have been a day of great historical moment -- unless we count what we know happened in the Rudolfinum in Prague that day. I'd like to say "that evening," since it was after all a Thursday (finding out that it was a Thursday was what led me to Onthisday.com in the first place), and we can hear at the end that there was indeed an audience present, but can I say for sure that it happened in the evening?

As I've explained (see "What effect (if any) does this 32-second audio clip have for you?," Sept. 26, in which we heard four pianists play the movement, and that day's follow-up post, "Our four pianists revealed"), and last week's "Schubert in a happy place: more on our mystery 'Con moto,' part 1"), it was the Con moto from the Richter performance that day in Prague -- from which we've now heard the opening movement of the sonata as well -- that so forcefully grabbed hold of me and got me listening to and pondering the sonata.


WELCOME TO THE GASTEIN SOUNDWORLD!
LET'S PLUNGE RIGHT IN -- WE CAN CHAT LATER!

Schubert in a happy place: More on our mystery "Con moto," part 1

Enchanted souvenir of an enchanting getaway spot: It's not surprising that the grand piano sonata Schubert composed during his August 1825 sojourn in the Austrian spa town of Gastein (in Salzburg state) has always been known as the "Gasteiner." Sources seem well agreed that Schubert's time in the storied resort area was something of an idylllic interlude.

SCHUBERT: Piano Sonata No. 17 in D, D. 850 (Gastein):
ii. Con moto [With movement]

Walter Klien, piano. Vox, recorded in the early 1970s

Wilhelm Kempff, piano. DG, recorded in the Beethovensaal, Hannover, August 1968

by Ken

If you were here last time ("What effect (if any) does this 32-second audio clip have for you?" and "Our four pianists revealed," both Sept. 26), you'll recall the above performances as two of those we heard, under the spell of one of the others, which you can be sure we'll be hearing again), of the second movement of this now-properly-identified Schubert piano sonata, which -- unlike so much of the composer's output -- was published in lifetime, and is still often known as Op. 53.

And among the performances we'll have sampled between the earlier posts and today's, I'm now designating the two we've just reheard as our Group I: renderings that seem to hear this sonata generally, and its lovely slow movement in particular, as more than anything, charmed expressions of the something-like-carefree state of mind (so unusual for this mind!) induced by the composer's Gastein experience.


IF THIS IS GROUP I, WHAT ARE GROUPS II AND III?

No, for all of Brahms's admiration of Chopin, his ballades really aren't much like Chopin's

Ballade is also a typeface -- or, more precisely, a font: Ballade-Bold.

ballad  n  1. a.  A narrative poem, often of folk origin and intended to be sung, consisting of simple stanzas and usually having a recurring refrain.  b.  The music for such a poem.  2.  Music  A popular song especially of a romantic or sentimental nature.

ballade  n.  1.  A verse form usually consisting of three stanzas of eight or ten lines each along with a brief envoy, with all three stanzas and the envoy ending in the same one-line refrain.  2.  Music  A composition, usually for the piano, having the romantic or dramatic quality of a ballad.

-- The American Heritage Dictionary of the
English Language, Third Edition (1992)

A BALLADE BY CHOPIN -- No. 1 in G minor, Op. 23


Alfred Cortot, piano. Victor, recorded in New York City, Dec. 27, 1926

Josef Hofmann, piano. Live recording from the Metropolitan Opera House, New York City, Nov. 28, 1937

AND ONE BY BRAHMS -- in D minor, Op. 10, No. 1


Wilhelm Kempff, piano. DG, recorded in the Beethovensaal, Hannover (Germany), February 1972

Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli, piano. Live performance from Lugano, 1981

[Now, having heard in yesterday's pre-post ("This jolly Brahms duet really isn't part of our 'work unit,' but we kind of have to hear it about now") the vocal-duet setting Brahms did a couple of decades later of the Herder ballad that inspired this ballade, we can appreciate more fully the grimness of the setting.]

by Ken

We've been peeking at the fascinating process by which Brahms acquired mastery of musical forms. Our view of the process, we should note, is seriously hampered by the fiercely high standards the composer maintained, which caused him to destroy so much music which in his view didn't meet his standards, which he tended to think, especially when he looked back at his younger years, were rather too low than too high. So we really don't get to hear him experimenting much. What we hear are the results of experiments that he considered to have had a satisfactory outcome.

We came to this line of inquiry, for those who may still be wondering, by working backwards through Brahms's long, arduous path to the creation of a symphony, a goal he thought early on would be the achievement that really put him on the international compositional map. Luckily for him and us, he managed to fashion a rather spectacularly successful career even without managing the symphonic feat, which didn't come till his Op. 60.


WHY IS BRAHMS'S EARLIEST SURVIVING WORK HIS 'OP. 4'?

Even if Brahms's new work-in-progress was going to be a piano concerto rather than a symphony, he still had to create forms for it

aka Part 2 of "More 'pre-post' than 'tease': If our sights are set on Brahms's First Symphony, why are we listening to his First Piano Concerto? (Part 1)" -- also now variously updated

MONDAY EVENING UPDATE: The promised after-post, "As promised, here's a proper quick-sampling of the three Brahms piano quartets," is up now

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

Hungarian-born George Szell (1897-1970) was past 40 when he first recorded the Brahms D minor Concerto -- in 1938, with no less than the great Artur Schnabel! We see him here c1965, after his recordings of the concerto with Leon Fleisher and Clifford Curzon but before his second recording of it (the one we've been hearing) with Rudolf Serkin.

by Ken

I've left you hanging (from Thursday's "pre-post") with those unidentified Performances A, B, anc C -- plus two "bonus" performances -- of the enormous and enormously complex first movement of the Brahms First Piano Concerto, into which we crashed at the start of our look at the composer's enormously difficult path to the creation of his First Symphony. The young Brahms, you'll recall, flush with the excitement of his "discovery," notably via the gushing seal of approval delivered by Robert Schumann (and now enjoying the warm support of both Robert and Clara Schumann), thought he was on the way to nailing the symphony that would be expected of any touted successor to the line of Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Mendelssohn, and of course Schumann himself.

Somewhere along the line, alas, during the hopeful repurposing-into-a-symphony of a sonata for two pianos of which he'd composed three movements, he found himself faced with an impasse: a first movement growing to supersize which his inner voices told him he couldn't make a symphony of. It doesn't seem to have taken him long, though, to conjure up a Plan C: not a sonata for two pianos, not a symphony, but . . . .

MAYBE, JUST PERHAPS, A PIANO CONCERTO?

Say, can you do this in a symphony?


Emil Gilels, piano; Berlin Philharmonic, Eugen Jochum, cond. DG, recorded in the Jesus-Christus-Kirche, June 1972

Revisiting our musical glimpse into the sublime, Part 2

As I explained last week, in the post "Found Music Dept.: When music that pops into your path grabs hold and won't let go," the "found music" that made such an impact on me came in an early episode of the FX-via-Netflix series Pose, when 17-year-old Damon (Ryan Jamaal Swain), whom we see here making his way to NYC, having been thrown out of his home for dreaming of being a dancer (and, oh yes, being gay), has his world turned upside-down when he gets his first glimpse of real, live ballet, in the form of a dance choreographed to music by the Dance King himself.


Claudio Arrau, piano; Staatskapelle Dresden, Sir Colin Davis, cond. Philips, recorded November 1984

Alfred Brendel, piano; Vienna Philharmonic, Sir Simon Rattle, cond. Philips, recorded February 1998

Leif Ove Andsnes, piano and cond.; Mahler Chamber Orchestra. Sony, recorded in Prague, May 20-21, 2014

by Ken

Of the music in question, I wrote in Part 1 of this week's post earlier today ("Revisiting our musical glimpse into the sublime, Part 1"), "It's a piece I know about as well as I know my own name," which though accurate may have been a trifle misleading, in that these days there are moments when I give some thought to dredge up my name, and the truth is that while I knew the composer right away, it took me a bit to home in on the identity of the piece, of which I went on to write: "I don't think I'd ever heard it in quite this way: as a prime example of Beethoven's singular ability to give us a musical glimpse into the sublime."

The fact that it did take me a bit to make the positive ID puzzled me, and the best guess I came up with is that it stands as the middle movement between two movements I might best describe as "colossal" -- Beethoven at his "E-flat major"-est. There are keys that are known to be hospitable to string instruments, and there are keys known to be hospitable to wind instruments, among which perhaps none is more so than E-flat major, which always lends itself to full-throated musical celebration.

IS THERE ANY MORE FULL-THROATEDLY E-FLAT-MAJOR-ISH
MUSIC THAN THE OUTER MOVEMENTS OF THIS CONCERTO?

Revisiting our musical glimpse into the sublime, Part 1

If what follows looks familiar, these are the performances we heard last week -- except now with the performers identified



Leon Fleisher, piano; Cleveland Orchestra, George Szell, cond. Epic-CBS-Sony, recorded Mar. 3-4, 1961

Emil Gilels, piano; Cleveland Orchestra, George Szell, cond. EMI, recorded Mar.-Apr. 1968

Emil Gilels, piano; Philharmonia Orchestra, Leopold Ludwig, cond. EMI, recorded Apr. 30-May 1, 1957

by Ken

This was supposed to be a ridiculously easy post, before I let it grow in my head -- as I so often do -- into something larger, and something important enough to me that I despair of being able to get it right.

So just to be clear, while we're on the subject of Beethoven's one and only opera, Fidelio, I interrupted this thread last week to share a piece of music that had come at me from an unexpected direction ("Found Music Dept.: When music that pops into your path grabs hold and won't let go"). It's a piece I know about as well as I know my own name, and yet I don't think I'd ever heard it in quite this way: as a prime example of Beethoven's singular ability to give us a musical glimpse into the sublime.


MAYBE I FELT I HAD TO EXPLAIN WHAT I MEAN
BY "A MUSICAL GLIMPSE INTO THE SUBLIME"

Here's the key -- or is it?

Piano Trio: 
i. Allegro moderato -- opening

Arthur Rubinstein, piano; Jascha Heifetz, violn; Emanuel Feuermann, cello. RCA-BMG, recorded in Holllywood, Sept. 12-13, 1941

Vladimir Ashkenazy, piano; Itzhak Perlman, violin; Lynn Harrell, cello. EMI, recorded in New York, c1979

UPDATE: If you looked at this post before 10pm ET/7pm PT, you saw only the Ashkenazy-Perlman-Harrell clip, and in fact originally the whole first movement. When I went back to edit it to include just the opening, I was disheartened by how namby-pamby the performance is. (I actually thought the EMI CDs contained a different one, and then I figured how far wrong could we go with this one? I learned.) Most of my CD versions are on a hard-to-get-at shelf, so as an add-on I chose a much grander performance that happened also to be more readily at hand.

by Ken

This piece suddenly popped into my head this afternoon, and I couldn't have been happier that it did. So we're going to hear it tomorrow. Meanwhile it set me to thinking about other works in the same key, with the realization (I'm sure not for the first time, but then, who remembers?) that it's hard to find others of the same character.


SOME OTHER WORKS IN THE SAME KEY

In the piano concertos, we hear Beethoven in hard-fought sort-of-harmony with the universe

No less than Van Cliburn introduces the piano-playing Serkins, Rudolf (1903-1991) and Peter (born 1947), playing Schubert's four-hand Military March in G, D. 733, No. 2, on the occasion of Serkin père's 85th birthday in 1988, from a 1988 concert featuring 26 pianists, issued by VAI.

"Rudolf Serkin was once asked, jokingly of course, if Beethoven had composed the Choral Fantasy for Marlboro. The piece has everything Marlboro could have wanted for its final concert: an orchestra in which everyone could play; solos within the orchestra; ensemble playing among various instruments; piano solo; and a chorus for everyone else in the Marlboro community. Rudolf Serkin responded, with his characteristic smile, 'No, Beethoven didn't compose it for Marlboro.... But he approves.'"

-- from a 2000 Amazon.com comment by Christopher Serkin
on a two-CD Marlboro Festival 50th-anniversary release

by Ken

What Christopher Serkin, a distinguished law professor, discreetly doesn't mention here -- though his last name is certainly suggestive -- is that Rudolf Serkin, a co-founder of the Marlboro Music Festival who was for decades its presiding artistic spirit -- was his grandfather, and Peter Serkin, whom he later mentions conducts the Choral Fantasy performance included in this Marlboro anniversary issue, is his uncle. (Peter Serkin, while a dramatically different sort of musician from his father, established himself at an early age as one of the leading pianists of his generation. It's kind of weird, for me at least, to think that young Peter is now in his 60s.)


NOT MANY PEOPLE TAKE THE CHORAL FANTASY SERIOUSLY