Two ways to celebrate summer -- but one's only free through Aug. 9

(1) WE CAN TAKE NOTE OF SUMMERTIME IN SONG

Summertime and the livin' is easy.
Fish are jumpin', and the cotton is high.
Oh, your daddy's rich, and your ma is good-lookin'.
So hush, little baby, don' you cry.

One of these mornin's you goin' to rise up singin'.
Then you'll spread yo' wings, an' you'll take the sky.
But till that mornin' there's a-nothin' can harm you,
with Daddy and Mammy standin' by.

[2:45] Leontyne Price, soprano; Vienna Philharmonic, Herbert von Karajan, cond. Decca, from the "Gala" sequence recorded for the 1960 Fledermaus recording conducted by Karajan (still for my money the best Fledermaus you can buy), recorded in the Sofiensaal, June 1960

Think the song can't be sung more movingly? Ms. P. again
(with a nice orchestral intro whittled down from the opening scene)

[4:42; "Summertime" at 1:11] Leontyne Price, soprano; RCA Victor Chorus and Orchestra, Skitch Henderson, cond. RCA, recorded in the St. George Hotel, Brooklyn, May 13-17, 1963
[This is from a really smartly conducted LP of Porgy excerpts, later reissued as a "High Performance" CD, with William Warfield and Leontyne Price reprising roles they first sang together in the early 1950s -- and Ms. P. gloriously poaching Clara's famous song (which includes the chorally punctuated reprise). My goodness, listen to what she makes of it! -- Ed.]

How the song fits into the actual scene (with a fine Clara)

[7:46; "Summertime" on track 2 (at 4:18)] Harolyn Blackwell (s), Clara; Glyndebourne Chorus, London Philharmonic Orchestra, Simon Rattle, cond. EMI, recorded in Abbey Road Studio No. 1, February 1988
[This complete Porgy, based on a Glyndebourne production, garnered gushing accolades -- for reasons I've never gotten. Were the accoladers just that unfamiliar with the piece? We do get a classy Clara, though. -- Ed.]

Here's the scene through the reprise of "Summertime"
(spotlighting a 26yo soprano headed for quite a career of her own)

[13:50; "Summertime" at 5:15] Barbara Hendricks (s), Clara; Joela Jones, piano (in the "Jasbro Brown Blues"); Cleveland Orchestra Chorus, Cleveland Orchestra, Lorin Maazel, cond. Decca, recorded in Cleveland's Masonic Auditorium, August 1975
[This performance is more like it, no? And note the pianist in the "Jasbo Brown Blues" -- we all know Joela Jones, right? A tip: In 2021, upon her retirement from a 54-year association with the Cleveland Orchestra, clevelandclassical.com published a gorgeous interview she did with Mike Telin. She recalled, for example, playing the accordion (an old love of hers) in Wozzeck, Final Alice, and even Rusalka -- the latter her suggestion to "Franz" (i.e., music director Franz Welser-Möst), happily accepted, when it proved hard to find a proper version of the harmonium Dvořák called for. -- Ed.]

(2) 7 COMPOSERS SHARE "WHAT I DID THIS SUMMER"

"In an age driven by productivity, the term 'workation' has arisen today which describes working whilst on holiday. Of course, the phenomenon itself is much older: composers such as Ludwig van Beethoven, Johannes Brahms, and Claude Debussy sought inspiration during the summer months in the countryside, at health resorts, or by the sea. Our playlist demonstrates how masterpieces of very different character were created as a result."

-- Introduction to the Berlin Philharmonic's Digital Concert Hall playlist "Musicians at leisure: Masterpieces from the summer retreat"
[STREAMING FREE from the DCH through August 9]

by Ken

Yes, I know. We have so much lost ground, lost time, unfinished work, so many posts-in-progress in varying states of incompletion. Meanwhile, I've shilly-shallied so unconscionably that the free music that inspired the post is in its final week of, er, freedom. However, If you miss the offer of this free playlist from the Berlin Philharmonic's Digital Concert Hall, I'll have some good, or at least good-ish, news at post's end.

WHAT ARE THE 7 MASTERPIECES "OF VERY DIFFERENT
CHARACTER" FROM COMPOSERS ON "SUMMER RETREAT"?

Continuing our countdown of clarinetist Allan Rosenfeld's "Top 10 [actually 11] Orchestral Clarinet Solos," at No. 6 we come to --

From the Manhattan soundtrack:

Stanley Drucker, clarinet; Gary Graffman, piano; New York Philharmonic, Zubin Mehta, cond. CBS-Sony, released 1979


THIS TIME: Gershwin, Bartók, Beethoven

❻

GERSHWIN: Rhapsody in Blue: beginning

ALLAN ROSENFELD: "Anyone who has ever seen Woody Allen's film Manhattan knows there's no way I could leave this showstopper off the list."

NOW, WE DID THE RHAPSODY OPENING PRETTY WELL -- in January 13's "There's more than one way you can launch a piece with a solo clarinet." But that doesn't mean we can't do it again!


Stanley Drucker, clarinet; New York Philharmonic, Leonard Bernstein, piano and cond. Live performance from the Royal Albert Hall, London, June 3-4, 1976 [Watch here]

Stanley Drucker, clarinet; New York Philharmonic, Leonard Bernstein, piano and cond. Live performance from the Jahrhunderthalle (Centennial Hall), Frankfurt, June 8-9, 1976 [Again, watch here]

Stanley Drucker, clarinet; Fazil Say, piano; New York Philharmonic, Kurt Masur, cond. Teldec, recorded in Avery Fisher Hall, December 1998

by Ken

As it says up top, we're resuming our countdown of Charlotte (NC) Symphony clarinetist Allan Rosenfeld's November 2020 "Top 10 [really 11, with the inclusion of an "Honorable Mention"] Orchestral Clarinet Solos," in our ongoing remembrance of the late Stanley Drucker, and we pick up at No. 6, the consciousness-blowing opening of Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue, which the New York Philharmonic's beyond-legendary Stanley D. can be readily heard playing with no fewer than three NY Phil music directors -- that I know of!

(I had to word that carefully, because as often as Stanley D. and Lenny B. must have performed the Rhapsody together, and as easy as it is to find performances they did together, as far as I know they never actually recorded it together. When Lenny B. did his inevitable DG remake, it was with the LA not NY Phil.)

THE LIST SO FAR

10) Respighi: Pines of Rome, end of "Pines of the Janiculum"
9) Tchaikovsky: Francesca da Rimini
8) Brahms: Symphony No. 3, opening of 2nd movement

-- in "An orchestra principal's most visible job is playing orchestral solos written for his/her instrument. He-e-re's Stanley D.!" [June 25]

7) Puccini: Tosca, Act III, "E lucevan le stelle"

-- in "We move on to No. 7 as we count our way through those 'Top 10 [or 11] Orchestral Clarinet Solos' with (mostly) Stanley Drucker" [July 2]

ABOUT ALL THERE REMAINS FOR US TO DO WITH
THE RHAPSODY IS TO HEAR THE WHOLE THING!

Rapid hits: Part 4 of 3 -- There's more than one way you can launch a piece with a solo clarinet

Our man in Frankfurt

Once again we hear Stanley Drucker tootling the opening of Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue, this time in Frankfurt's Jahrhunderthalle, June 8-9, 1976, mere days after the London performance we heard Wednesday (and will hear more of below), in the New York Philharmonic's Bicentennial Tour of Europe with then-laureate conductor Leonard Bernstein.

SIBELIUS: Symphony No. 1 in E minor, Op. 39:
i. Andante, ma non troppo; Allegro energico - opening


Stanley Drucker, clarinet; New York Philharmonic, Leonard Bernstein, cond. Columbia-CBS-Sony, recorded in Philharmonic Hall, Mar. 14, 1967

OH YES, WHAT AM I DOING ABOUT THE TECH
WALL I SMASHED INTO ON WEDNESDAY?

Not much. I chickened out of trying to bludgeon my way through it, after posting -- as "Rapid hits: Part 3 of 3 -- Some quick(ish) thoughts on Stanley Drucker (1928-2022)" -- the postable portion of the planned post and promising rapid action on a rehab-and-expansion of the rest. Looking at the positive, this has indeed enabled me to round up a better sampling of Stanley D. performing the most obvious assignment of an orchestra principal: playing solos in orchestral works. It's a grimly grinding project, but I've made progress since Wednesday and I'm still working on it. And I think we can get somewhere by listening to a pair of day-and-night-different clarinet-solo openings.

So in what I guess becomes "Part 4 of 3," we're setting our already-heard opening of Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue alongside the singular opening Sibelius crafted for his First Symphony. (In the case of the Sibelius, it has occurred to me that maybe all we needed to do was hear Stanley D.'s chill-inducing performance.)

by Ken

This could just be me, but I hear either of these mind-enflaming orchestral openings and what I want to hear -- next-most to what comes next in each piece, of course -- is a repeat of the opening, again and again. In the case of the Gershwin Rhapsody, we're going to have the fixings for doing that -- over and over and, well, over and over. In the case of Stanley Drucker's riveting performance of the 28-bar opener of the Sibelius First Symphony, marked Andante, I have just this one performance, but that doesn't stop me from clicking to hear it over and over.

It's just 28 bars in all: the first 16 with the solo A clarinet singing its mournful song over a hushed but relentless single-note timpani roll, marked by a couple of swells and fadebacks; the remaining 12 bars entrusted solely to the clarinet, dying away (yes, it's marked "morendo") from pp to ppp, until the startling intrusion of the second violins with a tremolo-like repeated note (well, pair of notes) of their own, kick-starting the movement's main Allegro energico -- marked, interestingly, mf, only moderately loud. Sibelius means to build us a climax, and a whopper of a climax it's going to be.


A FEW WORDS ABOUT LENNY B. AND SIBELIUS

Rapid hits: Part 3 of 3 --

(1) MEDIC NEEDED FOR VAUGHAN WILLIAMS'S LARK? [Oct. 9]
(2) ONE SOLOIST, MULTIPLE VIEWS OF VW'S LARK [Oct. 10]
(3) A WHOOSH OF MEMORY OF AN EPIC CLARINET GUY [Oct. 11]

[SORRY, I'M BATTLNG A TECHNICAL GLITCH I'VE NEVER ENCOUNTERED. HERE'S THE START OF THE POST -- Ken]

(3) SOME QUICK(ISH) THOUGHTS ON STANLEY DRUCKER (1929-2022)

NY Phil caption: "Stanley Drucker was appointed Assistant
Principal and E-Flat Clarinet by Bruno Walter in 1948."

"The New York Philharmonic deeply mourns the passing of the legendary orchestral clarinetist Stanley Drucker, who joined the Philharmonic in 1948, at age 19, and was appointed Principal Clarinet by Leonard Bernstein in 1960. Over the course of his 60-year tenure he appeared in more than 10,200 concerts in 60 countries, with solo turns including 64 performances of Copland’s Clarinet Concerto, and worked during the tenures of nine NY Phil Music Directors. Accolades on his retirement in 2009 included the Guinness World Record for “longest career as a clarinetist” and being named an Honorary Member of the New York Philharmonic. At the time, then Music Director Lorin Maazel said: “He stands alone in the world of clarinetists. His contribution to the orchestra and its fame is immeasurable.” The Philharmonic extends condolences to his wife, Naomi, and to his children and grandchildren." -- from the New York Philharmonic website

As often happens these days, I was late catching up with the news, in this case of the passing, on December 19, of Stanley D., closing in on his 94th birthday, following a career that seems that beggars description -- I find myself reaching for words like "epic." For a while I thought I'd shove aside (temporarily, of course) all the work we're, you know, working on and do a musical remembrance, and we may yet do that. I even devised not one but two openers for such a post. One you've already seen, above. Here's the other:

Stanley D. plays the opening solo of Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue -- with Leonard Bernstein of course playing the piano solo as well as conducting the New York Philharmonic -- in the Royal Albert Hall, London, June 3-4, 1976. (Not to worry, we are going to hear the whole performance. Have patience.)

The Gershwin Rhapsody is a piece S.D. was closely associated with, and he played it like nobody else. Commentators have noted the ring of klezmer in parts of the piece, and not many clarinetists have been better positioned to bring that to life. One of the enduring fascinations of the career he built is that, growing up in Brooklyn, son of Russian Jewish immigrants, he seems to have had no serious music in his family history or in his surroundings. How then did he happen upon the clarinet? He mentioned in interviews that one thing that inclined him toward it was the sound of klezmer.

UP ABOVE I PROMISED THE WHOLE RHAPSODY.
MAYBE WE SHOULD JUST GO AHEAD AND HEAR IT