As we've noted, there's more than one reason to care about Mahler's loopy little Wunderhorn song "Ablösung im Sommer," Part 1

FOR STARTERS, IS THIS THE SAME SONG?

MAHLER: Lieder aus der Jugendzeit (Songs from Youth):
"Ablösung im Sommer" ("Summer Replacement")

Cuckoo has fallen to his death
on a green willow tree.
Cuckoo is dead!
Fallen to his death.

Who then for us this whole summer
will while away the time?
Cuckoo! Cuckoo!
Hey! Lady Nightingale must do so!

She sits on a green branch:
the small, delicate Nightingale,
the dear, sweet Nightingale!
She sings and hops, is ever happy,
even when other birds are silent.

We'll wait for Lady Nightingale,
who lives in green hedgerows.
And if the cuckoo is at an end,
then she will start to warble.

-- original text "based on" Des Knaben Wunderhorn but
mostly by Mahler, translation (mostly) by William Mann

Listen on YouTube (audio only)
Or click here to go to Internet Archive, then press ► to play


Janet Baker, mezzo-soprano; Geoffrey Parsons, piano. Hyperion, recorded in Rosslyn Hill Unitarian Chapel, Hampstead, London, Feb. 24-25, 1983

Or click here to go to Internet Archive, then press ► to play


Diana Damrau, soprano; Stephan Matthias Lademann, piano. Telos Music, recorded in Telos Music Studios, Mechernich-Floisdorf, Germany, May or Sept. 2003

Click here to listen on Internet Archive, then press ► to play


Anny Felbermayer, soprano; Viktor Graf, piano. Vanugard, recorded in Vienna, 1952

Click here to listen on Internet Archive, then press ► to play


Judith Raskin, soprano; George Schick, piano. Epic-CBS-Sony, recorded in New York City, June 1965

A NOTE ON THIS WEEK'S MUSIC (AND SOME
CONSIDERATIONS GOING FORWARD)

Happily, Internet Archive seems back to something like normal functioning, meaning that it's once again possible to draw on Sunday Classics clips that reside there. However, this post, as you may recall, was originally conceived to depend on YouTube for music, and so a fair amount of today's music is so sourced, though it's all audio-only.

A number of today's performances already existed in the SC Archive (chez Internet Archive), and I've returned to embedding clips, hoping they'll play normally. But for these selections I've also included links to their Internet Archive pages. And I've included them in a particular form: with the "Webamp" player active. I've done this for another reason. While I.A. was grounded, the team was also working on a new version of its player, which is what 's used to play the clips that are embedded here. So that even after access to the archive was restored, for a while it was necessary, even if you were listening on-site, to switch to the Webamp option in order to hear anything.

At some point the new player must have been activated, but it appears that, understandably, it wasn't designed to work on old, no-longer-supported browser versions. So anyone who's dependent on such browsers isn't going to be hearing much music. If there are any SC readers in that situation, I'd love to know about it, because this means that all those years' worth of posts are going to be music-less for you. K can at least continue going forward to provide on-site links.

by Ken

In last week's post ("Not that it takes much, but I'm in an 'Urlicht' frame of mind -- and we're going to have some other Mahler Wunderhorn songs too," Oct. 28) we listened to a pair of Mahler's great song hits, "
Urlicht" and "Father Anthony's Fish Sermon," both settings of texts drawn from the folk-song anthology Des Knaben Wunderhorn" ("The Youth's Magic Horn") -- and a little wisp of a third, less consequential Wunderhorn song: the song we've just heard again in an almost confounding range of renderings, "Ablösung im Sommer." It's one of Mahler's early Wunderhorn settings, which he felt no need (or reason) to orchestrate himself, though we've already heard it with orchestra (and we have in store performances with orchestratations by several different hands).


IT'S A CHARMING, PERHAPS GOOFY
OR MAYBE EVEN WEIRD LITTLE SONG

Interim post: The proper post is in its final stages -- I got caught up in what I'm calling "Tales of a 'tail' "

I GUESS THIS COULD BE THOUGHT OF AS "Part 2b-ii"
OF OUR ONGOING SEIJI OZAWA REMEMBERANCE

Laurence Thorstenberg, English horn; Boston Symphony, Seiji Ozawa, cond.

by Ken

What we hear (and see!) above is the haunting English-horn solo that sets us in the "Chambre de Marguerite" -- the bedchamber of the now-"fallen" Marguerite, accused of murdering her mother by gradual poisoning and abandoned by Faust, of Part IV of Berlioz's Damnation of Faust. As we will see, or rather hear, however, abandoned though she may be, she spends all her days waiting by the window or outside her house waiting for him to return.

BERLIOZ: The Damnation of Faust, Op. 24: Part IV,
romance, Marguerite, "D'amour l'ardente flamme"

Rita Gorr, mezzo-soprano; Robert Casier, English horn; Orchestra of the Théâtre National de l'Opéra (Paris), André Cluytens, cond. EMI, recorded in the Salle Wagram, Oct. 5-10, 1959

Maria Callas, soprano; Orchestre de la Société des Concerts du Conservatoire de Paris, Georges Prêtre, cond. EMI, recorded in the Salle Wagram, May 2-8, 1963


SPOILER ALERT

Spun off from today's main post: All of Mahler 5!

Today's main post, "We hear the kinship between the Adagietto of Mahler 5 and 'Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen,' right? How about the differences?," is here.




The legendary Adolf Herseth, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra's trumpet principal for an amazing 53 years (1948-2001, plus three more in "emeritus" status!), launches the opening "Funeral March" of Mahler 5 in recordings made near the beginning and end of Georg Solti's 22-year tenure as music director -- the first in Chicago's Medinah Temple in March 1970, the second a CSO-on-tour performance recorded live in Vienna's Sofiensaal Nov. 30, 1990 (where you'll note that Sir Georg, as he'd been since 1972, is much more attentive to Mahler's dynamic marking of p [soft] for the first two bars, with sudden sf attacks just on the downbeats).

"Those closest to Mahler found the Fifth Symphony a particularly speaking likeness of his personality, and he too may therefore have wanted to make it as accurate as possible a self-portrait of himself in a particularly happy period of his life."

-- William Mann, from a booklet note on Mahler 5 (©1969)

by Ken

As I wrote in today's main post, "We hear the kinship between the Adagietto of Mahler 5 and 'Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen,' right? How about the differences?":

DON'T TELL ANYONE, BUT REMEMBER HOW I SAID
THAT WE REALLY NEED TO HEAR ALL OF MAHLER 5?

I've already made up audio clips for two complete performances. I may yet spin this off into a separate post, or postlet, with some added comment. But for now, here it is.

No, here it is, all spun off!

We're not going to attempt anything fancy here. The idea is just to be able to hear the whole of Mahler 5. As I noted in today's main post, as quoted above, the audio clips were all made and ready to roll: of two performances, a 2002 live one by Lorin Maazel and the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra and the 1947 recording by Bruno Walter and the New York Philharmonic that features in today's earlier post. We're just going to hear them part by part, each part prefaced by some helpful guidance from critic William Mann (from the same booklet note on the symphony which is quoted from above).


WE'LL START WITH A QUICK OVERVIEW FROM W.M.

Mahler's division of the Fifth Symphony into three parts but five movements is not one of convenience alone: the first and second movements are materially connected, and the finale takes some of its subordinate themes from the Adagietto; the central Scherzo stands alone, longer than the rest, effectively carrying the main symphonic weight of the piece. This Scherzo is in D major, so is the Finale, and it would be right, I think, to feel the whole symphony as being in D major. Part I of the symphony begins in C-sharp minor and ends in A minor: its two movements form a sort of prologue to the rest of the symphony, in which Mahler postulates a series of pessimistic ideas and argues them symphonically until they seem to be conquered by the bright, clean light of D major which is glimpsed in the second movement and emerges with the scherzo. -- W.M.

NOW LET'S HEAR THE SYMPHONY!

We hear the kinship between the Adagietto of Mahler 5 and "Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen," right? How about the differences?

Including an unflinching glimpse into the rarely
visited innards of the Sunday Classics blogworks

REVISED CAUTIONARY NOTE: This post as, er, "finished" grew really long ("hellaciously long" is how I put it in an earlier cautionary note). Feel free to jump around, picking at anything that may catch your eye. You can always go back and fill in. Note that there's a surprise at the end.

[PRE-CAUTIONARY LOOKBACK: In case anyone happens to have seen earlier versions of this post and remembers the post-in-progress "cautionary" notes, or if anyone who hasn't seen them is curious, I've snipped them out of here and dumped them in -- purely for the record! -- at the end.]


When Christa Ludwig (born March 16, 1928, and so now 92) made her splendid first (piano-accompanied) recording of the haunting Mahler Rückert setting "Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen," in November 1957, with her voice still in its sunny prime, she was at 29 already a veteran, remarkably mature singer. When she made her final recording of the song, in January 1993 (again with piano), she was closing in on 65, but you may decide that this last version is her most beautiful -- because before we're done today we'll have heard five performances recorded over this 35-year period. (Do I have to underscore what a remarkable span this is for a singer? Not just to still be singing at 65 but to be singing with such poised beauty as well as artistic purpose.) Before we get back to Christa, however, we have other business to take care of, including hearing two other singers' differently special performances of what may be Mahler's best-known song.


"Pervaded by the familiar romantic mood of withdrawal from the hurly-burly of life into the quietude of the inner self, not untouched with sadness, the Adagietto has much in common with Mahler's great song 'Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen' ('I am lost to the world'), which ends with the words 'I am alone, in my own heaven, in my love, in my music.' "

-- Deryck Cooke, from a CD booklet note on the Mahler Fifth Symphony

MAHLER: Symphony No. 5:
iv. Adagietto. Sehr langsam (Very slow)


BBC Symphony Orchestra, Pierre Boulez, cond. Live performance, 1970

Vienna Philharmonic, Pierre Boulez, cond. DG, recorded March 1996

MAHLER: "Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen"
("I have lost track of the world")

Janet Baker, mezzo-soprano; New Philharmonia Orchestra, Sir John Barbirolli, cond. EMI, recorded May 4, 1967

José van Dam, bass-baritone; Orchestre National de Lille, Jean-Claude Casadesus, cond. Forlane, recorded April 1986

by Ken

Okay, folks, we have a game plan of sorts, and we're by golly gonna stick to it, sort of. Two weeks ago I was lost in wonder ("Hokey-smoke, it's like we're actually in Berlin (sort of) for Easter week") over the Berlin Philharmonic's four-event free live-streamed virtual Easter Festival, during the time when they were supposed to be in Baden-Baden for their annual actual Easter Festival. Each of the four episodes consisted of material -- interviews, conversations, and some chamber performances -- coming to us direct from the orchestra's audienceless Berlin home, the Philharmonie, surrounding performances by the Berlin Philharmonic itself of single movements or in some cases whole works drawn from the orchestra's extensive video archive in its Digital Concert Hall.

As it happened, the first of the four episodes I saw, and the only one I'd seen when I started writing that piece, was Episode 2, an all-Mahler extravaganza, so that's what I was most caught up in, and what I first thought we might sort of re-create here at Sunday Classics. (Note that all four episodes are now safely ensconced in the DCH, still free. In fact, as I noted, in recognition of the current world crisis the DCH is offering everyone a free 30-day subscription for its paid content. You have to register for the site, but registration has always been free, and has always entitled everyone access to some wonderful always-free content: some concerts, but most importantly a splendid collection of guest-performer interviews conducted by members of the orchestra. Be sure to check it out.)


A QUESTION: WHAT MADE ME FEEL SO "DANGLY"
HEARING THE FINALE OF MAHLER 5 ON ITS OWN?

Richard Strauss: "Music is a holy art," sings Strauss's Composer -- plus Two (out of Four) Last Songs, part 1

"What is music then?"


The question is asked at 0:28 of this concluding clip of the Prologue to Ariadne auf Naxos -- asked and then answered by the composer of the about-to-be-performed "opera seria" (Sena Jurinac), as filmed at the 1965 Salzburg Festival, directed by Günther Rennert and conducted by Karl Böhm (with Paul Schoeffler, nearly 68, as the Music Master; in a moment we'll hear him 21 years earlier).

COMPOSER: What is music then?
[With almost drunken solemnity] Music is a holy art, which brings together all men of courage, like cherubim around a shining throne, and for this reason it is the holiest of the arts. Holy music!
[ZERBINETTA appears at the back and calls her partners onto the stage. HARLEKIN comes hastily out of the room on the right, buckling his belt as he runs onstage.]
What is that? From where?
[SCARAMUCCIO enters, like HARLEKIN finishing his dressing as he comes.]
These creatures!
[TRUFFALDIN and BRIGHELLA enter.]
In my holy sanctuary cutting their capers! Ah!
MUSIC MASTER: You allowed it!
COMPOSER [furious]: I ought not to have allowed it; you shouldn't have allowed me to allow it! Who told you to drag me into this world? Let me freeze, starve, die in my own!
[He runs off in despair. The MUSIC MASTER looks after him, shaking his head.]

-- English translation by Peggie Cochrane

Julia Varady (s), Composer; Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau (b), Music Master; Gewandhaus Orchestra (Leipzig), Kurt Masur, cond. Philips, recorded January 1988

Imrgard Seefried (s), Composer; Paul Schoeffler (bs-b), Music Master; Vienna State Opera Orchestra, Karl Böhm, cond. Live performance in honor of Strauss's 80th birthday, June 11, 1944

Tatiana Troyanos (ms), Composer; Paul Schoeffler (bs-b), Music Master; Vienna State Opera Orchestra, Karl Böhm, cond. Live performance, Nov. 29, 1967

[in English] Janet Baker (ms), Composer; Malcolm Donnelly (b), Music Master; Scottish Chamber Orchestra, Norman Del Mar, cond. Live performance from Glasgow's Theater Royal, 1977

by Ken

In last week's post, "Why won't everyone just let poor abandoned Ariadne die in peace?," as we focused on the two-part monologue of the title character of Hugo von Hofmannsthal's Ariadne auf Naxos, one thing I was constantly on the verge of saying was: Just listen to the epic, unrestrained gorgeousness of this music. For sheer unrestrained gorgeousness, I'm not sure I know anything like it in all of music. Somehow, though, I managed to leave it to the music to speak for itself.

Last week we were stressing the "serious" side of Ariadne -- without, I hope, completely losing sight (or sound) of the comic side, because it's the combination of the two that make the opera, in its revised 1916 form, with the Prologue added, such a treasure -- treasured not least by its composer. It wasn't an accident that it was chosen to honor Strauss on his 80th birthday, via the performance from which we heard the whole Prologue in the October 11 post "Meet the composer, Richard Strauss-style."


"MUSIC IS A HOLY ART"

Fischer-Dieskau and Richter just perform "Schlummert ein" way better than anybody else I've heard

So here's how the cantata begins

BACH: Cantata No. 82, "Ich habe genug":
i. Aria, "Ich habe genug"

-- from the Bach Cantatas Website

Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, baritone; Manfred Clement, oboe; Munich Bach Orchestra, Karl Richter, cond. DG Archiv Produktion, recorded July 1968

Hermann Prey, baritone; Willy Garlach, oboe; Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, Kurt Thomas, cond. Eterna-EMI, recorded Dec. 14-19, 1959

Janet Baker, mezzo-soprano; Michael Dobson, oboe; Bath Festival Orchestra, Yehudi Menuhin, cond. EMI, recorded July 1966

by Ken

So a couple of weeks ago I told the story of how suddenly the audio cassette became a medium for music for me: when I listened to a DG-Archive cassette of Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau's second (1968) recording of the popular coupling of Bach's two solo-bass cantatas, and we heard all three of his recordings of the great central aria, "Schlummert etin," of Cantata No. 82, "Ich habe genug." I warned that we might be returning to the scene of the crime, in the form of taking a shot at hearing the margin of superiority of this not-really-wildly-heralded recording in collaboration with the once-admired (but not so much anymore) baroque specialist Karl Richter, over any other I've encountered.

So here we are.

But first, as noted above, I thought we might hear how Cantata No. 82 begins, with the aria "Ich habe genug." (This is not exactly a coincidence. We know the Bach cantatas by the title, usually the first line, of their opening number.)

In our missing "Song of the Earth" song, Mahler's "Lonely One in Autumn" begs for "peace" and "consolation"

Christa Ludwig, mezzo-soprano; Israel Philharmonic, Leonard Bernstein, cond. CBS-Sony, recorded live, May 18, 20, and 23, 1972

by Ken

In the above audio clip we're near the end of the second song of Das Lied von der Erde (The Song of the Earth), "Der Einsame im Herbst" ("The Lonely One in Autumn"), where Mahler pulls another of those minor-to-major switcheroos we've talked about. It occurs at 1:25 of our clip. Well, that's the lead-in; the actual moment occurs at about 1:31 -- and it's one of the stupendous moments of this extraordinary song-symphony, the first new project the composer undertook after learning that he was suffering from terminal heart disease.

From the heaven-storming conclusion of the Eighth Symphony to Das Lied represents, one of the most striking sudden changes of course in the work of any creative artist I'm aware of. We actually heard the juxtaposition in the August 2010 post "In the opening vision of Mahler's Song of the Earth: 'Dark is life, is death,'" which focused on the opening tenor song, "The Drinking Song of Earth's Sorrow," but also included the two later tenor songs.

In this week's preview I said we would be filling in the one song we still haven't covered and then hearing the six movements of Das Lied finally put together. For all sorts of reasons we're not going to manage that today. I'm going to content myself with presenting that final missing link, the second song (and the first for the alto or baritone soloist who alternates with the tenor).


THERE'S A DIFFERENCE IN CHARACTER
BETWEEN THE TENOR AND ALTO SONGS

Now we hear Mahler's heartbreaking "Kindertotenlieder"

Baritone Matthias Goerne sings "Nun will die Sonn' so hell aufgeh'n" ("Now will the sun rise just as brightly"), the opening song of Mahler's Kindertotenlieder, with Jonathan Nott conducting the Mahler Youth Orchestra, at a Proms concert in the Royal Albert Hall, Sept. 4, 2009.

Now will the sun rise just as brightly
as if no misfortune had happened in the night.
The misfortune happened to me alone;
the sun shines for everyone.

Your must not hoard the night within,
it must be absorbed into the eternal light.
A little lamp in my shelter has gone out;
hail to the joyful light of the world!

-- translation by Lucy E. Cross

by Ken

Aa promised, after focusing on the last of Mahler's Kindertotenlieder (Songs on the Death of Children), "In diesem Wetter" ("In this weather"), with its final stanza minor-to-major "switcheroo," in Friday night's preview, today we hear the whole of this haunting song cycle.

It's worth recalling that at the time Mahler undertook to set this handful of the poems written on the subject by Friedrich Rückert, his own daughters were still healthy, and Alma Mahler was more than a little upset at this challenge to fate. This was likely not ameliorated as their own tragedies struck. A case could be made that she never forgave him.

In the case of other Mahler songs we've listened as well to the original piano-accompanied settings. We're going to skip that in the case of this cycle we're going to skip that step. It would be especially hard to forego Mahler's orchestral setting, which is notably spare and chamberlike -- the chilly, melancholy opening oboe-and-horn duet sets the tone. There's a normal complement of woodwinds, but of brasses there are only horns, a pair in Nos. 1-4 and four in "In diesem Wetter," and there are only dabs of percussion. The harp is a notable presence.