Let's open this book of spells and see if we find a Stanley Drucker "moment" or two lurking inside

Okay, Des Knaben Wunderhorn (The Youth's Magic Horn) isn't really a "book of spells," but the three volumes of wildly diverse German folk poetry were a creative wellspring for Mahler. (Wikipedia can get you up to speed.)

LET'S START OFF WITH WHAT CYNTHIA PHELPS*
MIGHT CALL A STANLEY DRUCKER MAHLER "MOMENT"

*You recall from last week NY Phil principal violist Cynthia P.'s quote at the time Stanley D. retired (2009), at which point they'd been fellow principals since she joined the orchestra in 1992:

"I think the thing I'll miss most about Stanley is his unbelievable creativity, his ability to make a moment anytime he has the opportunity."

OH, ONE MORE THING: As we listen to a pair of performances of one itty-bitty Wunderhorn song setting, just for now I'm not going to identify the performers. For this moment, we can call them, oh, "Team X" and "Team Y."


MAHLER: Songs from "Des Knaben Wunderhorn":
"Lob des hohen Verstandes" ("In Praise of High Intellect")

Once in a deep valley,
a cuckoo and nightingale
struck a wager:
Whoever would sing a masterpiece,
whether he won by art or luck,
he would win the bet.

The cuckoo spoke: "If you consent,
I have chosen a judge."
And he instantly appointed the ass.
"For since he has two large ears,
he can hear all the better,
and know what is right."

Soon they flew before the judge.
When he was told about the matter,
he decreed that they should sing.
The nightingale sang out sweetly!
The ass spoke: "You confuse me!
Hee-haw! Hee-haw!
I can't get it into my head."

Thereupon the cuckoo immediately began
his song with thirds, fourths, and fifths.
It pleased the ass, who said only: "Wait!
I will pronounce your judgment.

"You have sung well, nightingale!
But cuckoo, you sing a true anthem!
And held the beat precisely!
I say that from my great wisdom!
And even if it costs a whole country,
I thus pronounce you the winner."
Cuckoo, cuckoo! Hee-haw!

-- translation by Cecilia H. Porter

Team X

Team Y


by Ken

The song, of course, is one of the dozen free-standing settings Mahler made in his first fully mature years -- roughly the decade 1892-1901 -- from the strange and wonderful, almost indescribably diverse three-volume collection of German folk verse Des Knaben Wunderhorn (The Youth's Magic Horn). (Again, keep the Wikipedia link handy.) "Lob des hohen Verstandes" falls in a category we might call "Wacky-Satirical Plays on Nature," the most familiar of which would be the riverside sermon preached to the wild assortment of fishes by the good St. Anthony of Padua: "Des Antonius von Padua Fischpredigt." We're going to be hearing that too.

Speaking of diversity, our two performances sure embody it, don't they? One thing they have in common is some pretty spiffy clarinet-playing (we'll talk about that later), but even that is different. Obviously one performance is sung by a man and the other by a woman, and just as obviously, one performance is a good deal perkier, if nothing else just plain quicker, than the other, which gives the song a markedly different character, I think. Maybe less obviously, or at least more subjectively, I would venture that one is warmer, more endearing, more user-friendly, though the other is equally, and cherishably, precise in its realization of the wealth of detail Mahler has crafted into both the vocal line and the orchestral setting.


WHICH REMINDS ME: WE CAN ACTUALLY SEPARATE
THE SONG FROM ITS ORCHESTRAL SWADDLING

After all, like Mahler's other Wunderhorn settings, "Lob des hohen Verstandes" was composed first for voice and piano. If we get the orchestras cleared away, making room to wheel in the piano so Team Z can take their places, it'll sound like this:

Team Z


AS I'M SURE YOU'VE FIGURED OUT, TEAM Z . . .

It's a gift: This week we have a Brahms "Rückblick" ("Lookback") -- yup, still Brahms, but this time all (or mostly) in slow(er) motion

And we start with four Brahms slow movements --
two we've heard before and two we haven't

ii. Andante sostenuto (1876)


Staatskapelle Dresden, Kurt Sanderling, cond. Eurodisc, recorded in the Lukaskirche, 1971

New York Philharmonic, Kurt Masur, cond. Teldec, recorded live in Avery Fisher Hall, May 1994

Cleveland Orchestra, George Szell, cond. Columbia-CBS-Sony, recorded in Severance Hall, Oct. 7, 1966
[UPDATE: Szell performance added early Sunday afternoon]

ii. Adagio (1858)


Clifford Curzon, piano; London Symphony Orchestra, George Szell, cond. Decca, recorded in Kingsway Hall, May 1962

Arthur Rubinstein, piano; Boston Symphony Orchestra, Erich Leinsdorf, cond. RCA, recorded in Symphony Hall, Apr. 21-22, 1964

ii. Andante espressivo (1853)


Arthur Rubinstein, piano. RCA, recorded at the American Academy of Arts and Letters, New York City, December 17, 1959

Clifford Curzon, piano. Decca, recorded in the Sofiensaal, Vienna, December 1962

iv. Intermezzo (Rückblick): Andante molto (1853)


Arthur Rubinstein, piano. RCA, recorded at the American Academy of Arts and Letters, New York City, December 17, 1959

Clifford Curzon, piano. Decca, recorded in the Sofiensaal, Vienna, December 1962


TROUBLE LOADING THE AUDIO FILES?

I'm sure having trouble today, but hey, it's Sunday at Internet Archive, which means heavy traffic. It's funny how this once made me crazy -- ah, the good old days! Trust me, the files are all there, so if need be just keep refreshing. I say the music is worth it.

Of course there's more -- a whole lot more -- to come. Which of course will include proper identification of the music we've heard so far.-- Ken

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Reminder: Leon Fleisher tonight at 7:30!* (Oops -- the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center's Musical Heritage tribute, that is)

*"Tonight" meaning Monday, the 24th of May (though if you've missed it, you haven't necessarily missed it -- see below)

[HINT: Eventually, if you stick it out, we've even got a spot o' music!]

MONDAY EVENING UPDATE: The Brahms waltzes in their full four-handed glory (near the end of the post)

TUESDAY UPDATE: The CMS Fleisher tribute was absolutely swell in all sorts of ways, most hilariously for pianist Jonathan Biss's story of earning -- though through no fault of his own, really -- his old teacher's withering scorn at LF's 2007 Kennedy Center Honors event. When the recording is posted, it should turn up in the link for all the Chamber Music Society Heritage programs. LATEST WORD is that as of Friday, May 28, the Fleisher Heritage program can be accessed at this link.

Leon Fleisher (1928-2020)

We hear LF, age 28, play No. 1 in B and (at 0:47) No. 2 in E from Brahms's solo version of his delectable Op. 39 set of 16 four-hand-piano mini-waltzes, recorded in Columbia 30th Street Studio, New York City, in August 1956.

by Ken

Big-time apologies. The last four or five days have been a strange time for me, with closer to three days than two without Internet, phone, or e-mail access. Still, by later yesterday it should have been possible for me to get up, in more timely fashion, the intended reminder about the latest installment in the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center's Musical Heritage series, devoted to Leon Fleisher -- again, tonight (Monday) at 7:30. If the timing is just right, you might still be able to register. Happily, even if you can't, we know now that all of CMS's Heritage programs can be accessed online.

Even I was surprised, when I went looking for the post that contained the CMS Musical Heritage link (which turned out to be from April 4, the day before the Pablo Casals tribute) and tried searching by "Leon Fleisher," to see how many SC posts that turned up. Mostly, of course, they pertain to the initial, physically unencumbered part of LF's career, when with his remarkable pianistic capabilities and his preternaturally early full-blown musical maturity, it seemed like he could do anything that can be done at a keyboard.

Pardon me for saying it again, but it still hits home for me that the recordings LF made with George Szell of the combined seven piano concertos of Beethoven and Brahms (with a fine assortment of others, like Schumann and Grieg, thrown in as a bonus) have for some six decades remained pretty much continuously available in the recorded-music medium-of-the-day, and through all those decades have remained part of the elite circle of best-ever recordings of some of the most-recorded works in the repertory.


WHO COULD HAVE IMAGINED THAT LF'S CAREER WAS
GOING TO TAKE A MARKEDLY DIFFERENT DIRECTION?

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"

'In modo di canzone': If it's singing we aim to talk about, how come we're listening to 'Le Tombeau de Couperin'? (Part 1)

Hints: It has to do with: (1) a birthday-gift concert of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center and (2) the 2013 Carnegie Hall master class of master oboist Albrecht Mayer

Note: Updated with some expansions and Sunday Classics links,
notably in the section on the Brahms First Symphony

What is it?
The oboe is a woodwind instrument in the double reed family. It has a conical bore and a flaring bell, which gives it a clear, penetrating voice compared to other woodwind instruments. A person who plays the oboe is an oboist.

[from the Manning Music website]

by Ken

And not just Ravel's Tombeau de Couperin, which I can reveal was included (in an unexpected form) in the above-hinted-at Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center concert, which set off this whole line of inquiry. No, for reasons that will eventually become clear (though perhaps only clearish this week), we've also got music by Tchaikovsky, Brahms, and Rossini, none of it with any singing -- and never mind (maybe?) that all four of these are composers for whom vocal music was a prime concern.

At least there's no singing in the literal vocal sense. Consider this, however:

TCHAIKOVSKY: Symphony No. 4 in F minor, Op. 36:
ii. Andantino in modo di canzone


London Symphony Orchestra, George Szell, cond. Decca, recorded September 1962

RIAS Symphony Orchestra (Berlin), Ferenc Fricsay, cond. DG, recorded Sept. 9-10, 1952

Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra, Andrew Litton, cond. Virgin Classics, recorded 1988-91


AT THIS MOMENT, THIS IS MY FAVORITE MUSICAL
DIRECTION: "ANDANTINO IN MODO DI CANZONE"

Ghost of Sunday Classics: Nocturne!

MENDELSSOHN: Notturno from A Midsummer Night's Dream (incidental music), Op. 61

Concertgebouw Orchestra (Amsterdam), George Szell, cond. Decca, recorded Dec. 2-4, 1957

Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, Otto Klemperer, cond. Broadcast performance, May 23, 1969

by Ken

A much-loved little piece latched onto my brain this weeko. It was the "Nocturne" from Mendelssohn's Midsummer Night's Dream incidental music, and it really still hasn't let go. That's the sort of thing that might once have triggered a post, especially since we don't seem to have spent as much time as I remembered with the incidental music. The only traces I can find are from a November 2008 Mendelssohn post, where we heard the Szell-Concertgebouw recording of the commonly played four-movment grouping of the Overture, Scherzo, Notturno, and Wedding March. and a more expanded suite that I drew from a Klemperer-Bavarian Radio Symphony broadcast performance of a generous selection from the incidental music.

I've re-extracted just the "Notturno" from those performances, as heard above.


AS LONG AS WE'RE REHEARING THE SZELL AND
KLEMPERER "NOTTURNO" PERFORMANCES --

I thought we might as well listen again to the full selections from the MSND music we heard back in 2008.

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

Fleshing out our sound picture of Leon Fleisher

RAVEL: Sonatine
i. Modéré
ii. Mouvement de menuet
iii. Animé

Leon Fleisher, piano. Epic-Sony, recorded July 14-16, 1958

by Ken

In Friday night's "Leon Fleisher postscript" -- a "postscript," that is, to the previous week's post on "Schubert's mighty Wanderer Fantasy," in which Fleisher had been featured -- we heard a bit of perhaps unexpected repertory from Fleisher, Debussy's "Clair de lune," from a 1958 Debussy-Ravel LP. I suggested we might hear the complete Suite bergamasque, from which "Clair de lune" derives, but I thought instead we'd hear Ravel's Sonatine.


FLEISHER 2.0: THE ONE-HANDED PIANIST

In April 2012 I wrote about a pleasant evening at the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center at which Fleisher had shared the bill with a very different sort of pianist but a longtime colleague, Gilbert Kalish, who had served with him as faculty chairman during Fleisher's long stint as artistic director of one of the country's prestigious music-education programs, the summer Tanglewood Music Center.

What comes after Mozart's and Beethoven's minor-key symphonic opening movements?

What comes after the monumental, mysterious opening movement of the Beethoven Ninth Symphony, which we heard last week? At the link, Christian Thielemann conducts the Vienna Philharmonic in what seems to me a grindingly prosaic rendering of the thunderingly dramatic scherzo.

by Ken

I realize I should have been saying more about this amazing music we've been hearing, dipping into the two symphonies apiece for which Mozart and Beethoven composed opening movements in the minor mode. But really, when it comes to an incandescent movement like the opening one of Mozart's great later G minor symphony, No. 40, could I really have said anything more helpful than, say, "Wouldja listen to that?" And ditto when it comes to the opening movements of Beethoven's Fifth and Ninth Symphonies. I mean, we're talking here about two of the monuments of human civilization, and I thought talking should take distant second place to listening.

What we began pursuing in this week's preview is the question I raised last week: Where do you go from there?

My point was, if we accept that writing a minor-mode symphonic first movement is an uncommon and nervy thing to do, and is likely to happen only if a composer has been seized by some gripping musical material that requires it, where does he want to take his audience next?

Consider, for example, the most modest of the four Mozart and Beethoven symphonies we began last week: Mozart's earlier G minor symphony, No. 25. Let's add the second movement to the performances we heard last week of the first.

Preview: Moving on with those Mozart and Beethoven minor-key symphonic opening movements

Tonight we hear both Leonard Bernstein's 1961 and 1977 recordings of the second movement of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony.

by Ken

Last week we heard all of the minor-key symphony opening movements that Mozart and Beethoven wrote -- two apiece. I suggested that one obvious question is: Where do you go from there?

We're going to explore that a little on Sunday. (Last week I said I thought it would be in two weeks -- wrong!) And we're going to start tonight by hearing what comes next in two of those symphonies: emphatically, spaciously major-key slow movements.

MOZART: Symphony No. 40 in G minor, K. 550:
ii. Andante

Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, William Steinberg, cond. Capitol-EMI, recorded 1958

Cleveland Orchestra, George Szell, cond. Columbia-CBS-Sony, recorded 1955

BEETHOVEN: Symphony No. 5 in C minor, Op. 67:
ii. Andante con moto

New York Philharmonic, Leonard Bernstein, cond. Columbia-CBS-Sony, recorded Sept. 25, 1961

Vienna Philharmonic, Leonard Bernstein, cond. DG, recorded live, September 1977

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Sunday Classics: We're ready now to hear those "fraternal twin" symphonies, Beethoven's Fifth and Sixth

Post rehabilitated and updated, June 2018 (see below)



At top, Leonard Bernstein conducts the Vienna Philharmonic in the instantly recognizable first movement of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony (in the Vienna Konzerthaus, 1977); above, Arturo Toscanini conducts the NBC Symphony (March 22, 1952).

by Ken

The music is all set to go for this post, and I think this week I'm just not going to say very much. [Well, this was so in 2010, a little less so in 2018. -- Ed.] We've already established the chronological connection between Beethoven's Fifth and Sixth Symphonies (whose slow movements we heard in, respectively, Friday night's and last night's previews), which were created in almost a single continuous burst of inspiration, and had their first performances at that amazing four-hour-plus concert on December 22, 1808, at which not just the two symphonies but the Fourth Piano Concerto and Choral Fantasy for piano and orchestra (both of which we heard quite a lot of in a post on Beethoven's piano concertos) plus three movements from the C major Mass and the concert aria "Ah, perfido" also had their premieres -- and the composer also offered a solo piano improvisation, presumably worrying that the audience might not feel it was getting its money's worth.

We've also hinted at the thematic connection between these near-twin symphonies (fraternal twins, of course), which is basically that there doesn't seem to be one. Of course Beethoven had a horror of repeating himself, but when it comes to consecutive creations there seems also to have been an utterly understandable impulse to go somewhere wildly different.

* * *