Ohmygosh, it's turned into Garrulous Old Moneygrubbers' Week here at Sunday Classics --or has it?

NOTE: If the audio clips don't all load, try refreshing the post -- more than once if necessary. They're all ready and waiting.

His chance encounter-at-sea with the mysterious -- and rich as all get-out -- Dutchman (Darren Jeffery) gives Daland (Steven Gallop) ideas about his marriageable daughter's future, in Melbourne's 2019 Flying Dutchman.


CAUTIONARY NOTE ABOUT THIS SET OF AUDIO CLIPS: They're all, er, special, in a particular way, and are here for a reason. (Okay, okay: We might call these "Garrulous Old Moneygrubbers' versions.") If your ears and brain are screaming, "Yuck, I can't stand it!," farther down we've got a heap of clips, of both selections, that are special in a way different way. -- Ed.

BEETHOVEN: Fidelio: Act I, Rocco, "Hat man nicht auch Gold beineben" ("If you don't have money too")

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Kurt Böhme (bs), Rocco; Vienna Philharmonic, Lorin Maazel, cond. Decca, recorded March 1964

Herbert Alsen (bs), Rocco; Vienna Philharmonic, Wilhelm Furtwängler, cond. Live performance from the Salzburg Festival, Aug. 3, 1948

WAGNER: The Flying Dutchman: Act II, Daland, "Mein Kind, du siehst mich" ("My child, you see me") . . . "Mögst du, mein Kind" ("Might you, my child")

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["Mögst du, mein Kind" at 1:43] Josef Greindl (bs), Daland; Annelies Kupper (s), Senta; RIAS Symphony Orchestra (Berlin), Ferenc Fricsay, cond. DG, recorded 1952

["Mögst du, mein Kind" at 1:45] Josef Greindl (bs), Daland; Anja Silja (s), Senta; Bayreuth Festival Orchestra, Wolfgang Sawallisch, cond. Philips, recorded live, August 1961

by Ken

We've got so many balls hanging precariously in the air that I was really hoping we snatch and ground one or two this week. Instead we're tossing up another.

The obvious follow-up to the "post-taste" I offered earlier today (or maybe it was yesterday -- you know, one of those days in there), which included performances of Beethoven's Creatures of Prometheus Overture, would have been something I've had in mind for several weeks, for some point in the future: a look into the mystery of the master's overture-making skills, as reflected in the four specimens he created over that nine-year period for Fidelio, which include two gems and -- yes, I'm going to use the word -- two duds.

First page of the Fidelio Overture

The mystery becomes a little less mysterious when we factor in that, as I pointed out in the post-taste, while by 1805 the 35-year-old Beethoven had already have produced a large body of music of a high level of mastery in a wide variety of genres, as an overture-writer he was still a novice, whereas by 2014, when he sealed the deal with the fourth and final overture for the opera, the one we know as the Fidelio Overture, he was one of music's all-time master overturists. What may be most amazing is that in his second attempt at an operatic overture, as early as 1806, he gave us what may not be a useful operatic curtain-raiser but nevertheless is one of the great masterpieces of music. And then he produced a real dud. Maybe it just goes to show that by and large "easy" wasn't in Beethoven's working vocabulary.

Again, though, this was a subject for the future -- no way it was going to be doable on the spot, even if I curtailed the plan I'd roughed out, which would have included hearing all of the canonical Beethoven overtures.

Similarly, I didn't see any way of jumping from where we are to the lesson of Fidelio.


WHAT WE'RE DOING, THOUGH, ISN'T UNRELATED

The Minister is coming! The Minister is coming! Don Fernando and the lesson of Fidelio, Part 2

Welcome to what we might call "The Florestan Test"
We should talk about this at some point, but these two points in Florestan's monologue crystallize what separates him from the normal run of humans.

Moment 1
Note especially: the vocal and orchestral explosion on "Ketten" ("chains")
[NOTE: We pick up here in bar 3 and continue just into bar 8.]




Jon Vickers (t), Florestan; Berlin Philharmonic, Herbert von Karajan, cond. EMI, recorded 1970

Moment 2
Note especially: Florestan's emphatic repetitions of "Pflicht" ("duty")
[NOTE: Our clip runs from bar 2 to the start of the Poco Allegro.]



Jon Vickers (t), Florestan; Covent Garden Orchestra, Otto Klemperer, cond. Testament, recorded live, Feb. 24, 1961

by Ken

Where we are: Last week we took time off from the inquiry we began the week before into the minister Don Fernando and his literally life-saving arrival in the nick of time in the final scene of Fidelio "The Minister is coming! The Minister is coming! Don Fernando and the lesson of Fidelio, Part 1"): Who is he? What's right and what's wrong with his miraculous arrival? And what does it all mean for us? We paused to take a closer look at the protagonists for whom the Minister's arrival means miraculous rescue, Leonore Florestan and her imprisoned and near-death husband.

We did that by means of reconstituting a 2012 Sunday Classics post, in a preview, "Put these two little orchestral excerpts together, and you'll know the subject of this week's main post," and main post, "Meet the Florestans, Beethoven's supercouple." Which was okay as far as it went; it just didn't go far enough. Notably we looked, as we did in 2012, at Florestan's Act II-opening dungeon monologue, breaking it into several parts and hearing an assortment of tenors tackle them. What I really wanted to do, and had wanted to back in 2012, was to look at the monologue almost word by word, musical emphasis by musical emphasis, and that's what I aimed to do today.

It hasn't worked out, so for now the two examples will have to serve. I'm not going to go so far as to say that Florestan's monologue,definitely including the spiritually as well as physically gloom-and-doom-ridden orchestral introduction, is the most remarkable music ever written. I will say that I don't know of any more remarkable music.


SO HERE'S WHAT I PROPOSE --

Preview: Put these two little orchestral excerpts together, and you'll know the subject of this week's main post

Adapted from 2012 Sunday Classics posts,
May 11 (preview) and May 13 (main post)


Sneak peek: These are the first two pages of the work that's the source of Excerpt 2 below, which 2020 readers of this resurrected-from-2012 Sunday Classics post have had a chance to hear in full quite recently. Excerpt 2 itself begins at bar 8 (with the crescendo in the strings).




by Ken

Imagine my surprise -- a happy surprise, for once -- when I was actually able to retrieve the post I was looking for, which covered some ground we really need to re-cover as we try to coax out what for me is the real lesson of Beethoven's one and only opera, Fidelio, over which he labored so heroically.

You'll recall that we're poised between last week's Part 1 and next week's Part 2 of "The Minister is coming! The Minister is coming! Don Fernando and the lesson of Fidelio," and I worried that we're missing some vital information to proceed, namely who these people are we're dealing with. Because there's an awful lot we're given about our protagonists which seems to me usually ignored or trivialized. They're about as tough a pair as I've encountered in the world of artistic representation.

As in 2012, the post comes in two parts: a preview and a main post (to follow), though back in the day they ran on Friday night and Sunday, whereas barring unforeseen obstacles we should have the revamped main post up today. To be honest, I haven't had the courage to look too closely at it yet; I'm hoping it can be presented as much as possible "as was," introducing the necessary adjustments and amplifications when we get to Part 2 of "The Minister is coming! The Minister is coming! Don Fernando and the lesson of Fidelio." Which is what I've done with the preview.

Coming up we have two orchestral excerpts. The first, about four minutes, is clearly an introduction to something. (In the click-through we're going to hear it again and take it just a bit further.) The second, a scant minute, is a tiny morsel snatched out of the early going of a staple of the orchestral literature, which we've heard before and will hear again in its entirety in the click-through.


OKAY, OKAY, SO LET'S HEAR OUR EXCERPTS ALREADY

One of these "Parsifal" performances doesn't belong in the company of the others

WAGNER: Parsifal: Prelude and Good Friday Spell

Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, Eugen Jochum, cond. DG, recorded December 1957

by Ken

We first heard the Prelude and opening of Act I of Parsifal in a March 2010 post called "Wagner, master of musical motion, Part 2," in which I wrote: "Our subject this week, you'll recall, is "musical motion," how performers find -- or don't -- what makes a piece of music move forward from the inside, how they re-create it with real energy and purpose instead of just grinding out one damned note after another."

The Jochum studio recording of the frequent concert coupling of the Parsifal Prelude and "Good Friday Spell" (from Act III), by no means a speedy performance, seems to me a shining example of the "re-created with real energy and purpose" kind.


IN 2010, OUR PRINCIPAL WAGNER TESTING GROUND . . .