First, as promised, we're going to hear Bernard Haitink and Eugen Jochum conduct the Finale of Beethoven 9. Then we have to hear the first three movements, right?

aka "Bernard Haitink (1929-2021), part 3"
[Now updated to include the first three movements of the Beethoven Ninth Symphony, plus a complete performance (from Tokyo!), with some additional additions still to come]

Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, baritone; St. Hedwig's Cathedral Choir, Berlin Philharmonic, Ferenc Fricsay, cond. DG, recorded in the Jesus-Christus-Kirche, Dec. 1957-Apr. 1958

Franz Crass, bass; Vienna Singverein, Philharmonia Orchestra, Otto Klemperer, cond. Live performance from the Vienna Musikvereinsaal, in the Wiener Festwochen (Vienna Festival), June 6, 1960

René Pape, bass; New York Choral Artists, New York Philharmonic, Kurt Masur, cond. Live performance from Avery Fisher Hall, Dec. 31, 1999

Martti Talvela, bass; Vienna State Opera Chorus, Vienna Philharmonic, Hans Schmidt-Isserstedt, cond. Decca, recorded in the Grosser Saal of the Vienna Singverein, Dec. 8-12, 1965

by Ken

Some you have seen the not-yet-a-post version of this maybe-still-not-really-much-of-a-post, containing just the five audio files of the Finale of the Beethoven Ninth Symphony as conducted by Bernard Haitink and Eugen Jochum, as promised in Part 2 of this series.

The series: Bernard Haitink (1929-2021)

Part 1 -- Haitink conducts Handel, assorted Brahms, assorted Shostakovich, very assorted Mahler, Wagner (from Act II of Siegfried), and Beethoven (Finale of Symphony No. 9)

Part 2 -- Haitink and Jochum conduct Bruckner: Symphony No. 7: ii. Adagio; and Haitink, Jochum, and van Beinum conduct Mahler: Das Lied von der Erde: i. "Das Trinklied von Jammer der Erde" and vi. "Der Abschied" (both with "related" perforrmances involving other participants)

Part 3 -- multiple Haitink and Jochum performances of the Finale of Beethoven: Symphony No. 9

LET'S GET RIGHT TO THOSE FIVE PERFORMANCES --
THEN WE'VE GOT SOME NEW BUSINESS TO TEND TO

You've had the tease for the Finale, at the top of the post (I hope you enjoyed those four fairly different but all luscious performances!). Now it's time to hear that great bass solo in context.

BEETHOVEN: Symphony No. 9 in D minor, Op. 125:
iv. Finale: Presto -- Allegro assai -- etc.

Inaugural Edition, no. 3: While I toil away at this week's Inaugural-themed post, let's hear the end of The Magic Flute in our five performances -- plus a couple of "new" ones

There doesn't look to be much sense of danger from this, er, highly decorative band of conspirators: John Easterlin as Monostatos, Kathryn Lewek as the Queen of the Night, and Deborah Nansteel, Sarah Mesko, and Jacqueline Echols as the Second, Third, and First Ladies, as designed by Jun Kaneko in a joint production by five American opera companies, seen here at Washington National Opera in 2014. (Photo by Scott Suchman)

A rocky landscape. Night. The dark-spirited MONOSTATOS has entered stealthily with the QUEEN OF THE NIGHT, accompanied by her THREE LADIES carrying torches. There is thunder, and the sound of water.

MONOSTATOS: But hush, I hear a terrible rushing
like rolling thunder and a waterfall.
THE QUEEN and THE LADIES: Yes, fearful is this rushing,
like the distant echo of thunder!
MONOSTATOS: Now they are in the hall of the temple.
ALL [variously]: There we will fall upon them,
exterminate the pious ones from the earth
with glowing fire and mighty sword.
THE THREE LADIES and MONOSTATOS:
To you, great Queen of the Night,
let our revenge be brought as a sacrifice.
[There is loud thunder and lightning, followed by streaming holiness.]
THE QUEEN, THE THREE LADIES, and MONOSTATOS:
Shattered, destroyed is our might!
We are all plunged into eternal night!
[They sink into the ground.]

Change of scene (without curtain): The Temple of the Sun. SARASTRO stands elevated on an altar, TAMINO and PAMINA in front of him, both in priestly clothing. Beside them the priests of Egypt on both sides. THE THREE BOYS hold flowers.

SARASTRO: The rays of the sun drive away the night,
destroy the dissemblers' ill-gotten might.
CHORUS: Hail to you initiates!
You penetrate the night.
Thanks, thanks, thanks be to you, Osiris!
Thanks brought to you, Osiris!
[Allegro]
Strength conquers and crowns as reward
Beauty and Wisdom with an eternal crown!

Martti Talvela (bs), Sarastro; with Gerhard Stolze (t), Monostatos; Cristina Deutekom (s), Queen of the Night; Hanneke van Bork (s), Yvonne Minton (ms), and Hetty Plümacher (c), Three Ladies of the Queen of the Night; Vienna State Opera Chorus, Vienna Philharmonic, Georg Solti, cond. Decca, recorded 1969

Samuel Ramey (bs), Sarastro; with Aldo Baldin (t), Monostatos; Cheryl Studer (s), Queen of the Night; Yvonne Kenny (s), Iris Vermillion (ms), and Anne Collins (c), Three Ladies of the Queen of the Night; Ambrosian Opera Chorus, Academy of St. Martin in the Fields, Neville Marriner, cond. Philips, recorded July 1989

Kurt Moll (bs), Sarastro; with Robert Tear (t), Monostatos; Luciana Serra (s), Queen of the Night; Marie McLaughlin (s), Ann Murray (ms), and Hanna Schwarz (ms), Three Ladies of the Queen of the Night; Leipzig Radio Chorus, Staatskapelle Dresden, Colin Davis, cond. Philips, recorded January 1984

Franz Crass (bs), Sarastro; with Friedrich Lenz (t), Monostatos; Roberta Peters (s), Queen of the Night; Hildegard Hillebrecht (s), Cvetka Ahlin (ms), and Sieglinde Wagner (ms), Three Ladies of the Queen of the Night; RIAS Chamber Chorus, Berlin Philharmonic, Karl Böhm, cond. DG, recorded June 1964

Matti Salminen (bs), Sarastro; with Peter Keller (t), Monostatos; Edita Gruberová (s), Queen of the Night; Pamela Coburn (s), Delores Ziegler (ms), and Marjana Lipovšek (c), Three Ladies of the Queen of the Night; Chorus and Orchestra of the Zürich Opera House, Nikolaus Harnoncourt, cond. Teldec, recorded November 1987

by Ken

When last we met ("Post tease: Sarastro sings a mouthful when he sings, 'The sun's rays drive away the night'"), I was presenting the first of my three musical expressions of feelings I felt on Inauguration Day, namely the tiny block of two lines we had heard five notable Sarastros sing this tiny bit of the dénouement of The Magic Flute now heard buried in the above clips from the same five recordings, which we're hearing now in their proper context: the final minutes of Mozart's Magic Flute.

Our starting point last time comes a little after the one-minute mark.)

SARASTRO: The rays of the sun drive away the night,
destroy the dissemblers' ill-gotten might.

Martti Talvela (bs), Sarastro; Vienna Philharmonic, Georg Solti, cond. Decca, recorded 1969

Samuel Ramey (bs), Sarastro; Academy of St. Martin in the Fields, Neville Marriner, cond. Philips, recorded July 1989

Franz Crass (bs), Sarastro; Berlin Philharmonic, Karl Böhm, cond. DG, recorded June 1964

Matti Salminen (bs), Sarastro; Zürich Opera House Orchestra, Nikolaus Harnoncourt, cond. Teldec, recorded November 1987


WAIT, ISN'T THERE ONE MISSING?
SHOULDN'T THERE BE FIVE CLIPS?

Inaugural Edition, no. 2: Post tease: Sarastro sings a mouthful when he sings, "The rays of the sun drive away the night"

UPDATED WITH AN ALARMING QUANTITY OF POST-POSTING
THOUGHTS ABOUT THE PERFORMANCES WE HEAR HERE

SARASTRO: The rays of the sun drive away the night,
destroy the dissemblers' ill-gotten might.

Martti Talvela (bs), Sarastro; Vienna Philharmonic, Georg Solti, cond. Decca, recorded 1969

Samuel Ramey (bs), Sarastro; Academy of St. Martin in the Fields, Neville Marriner, cond. Philips, recorded July 1989

Kurt Moll (bs), Sarastro; Staatskapelle Dresden, Colin Davis, cond. Philips, recorded January 1984
Franz Crass (bs), Sarastro; Berlin Philharmonic, Karl Böhm, cond. DG, recorded June 1964

Matti Salminen (bs), Sarastro; Zürich Opera House Orchestra, Nikolaus Harnoncourt, cond. Teldec, recorded November 1987

by Ken

As I mentioned in Wednesday's Sunday Classics "Inaugural Edition," I had very powerfully in mind some musical thoughts beyond the two noble marches we listened to, and I mentioned in particular moments from The Magic Flute and Pelléas et Mélisande. Add to that list Schoenberg's Gurre-Lieder, and you've got today's post laid out.


POST-POSTING THOUGHTS ABOUT THE PERFORMANCES
[NOTE (for those who saw my earlier note): The audio clips have now been resequenced to match (I think!) the order of discussion below.]

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")

[FOR ENGLISH TEXT, SCROLL DOWN IN POST]


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")

[FOR ENGLISH TEXT, SCROLL DOWN IN POST]


["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

You remember those clips of Siegmund's monologue I mentioned?* Just for laughs, let's see what happens if I try to "publish" them

"A sword my father promised me": Stuart Skelton as Siegmund, so starkly alone and defenseless, literally and figuratively in the dark, in Seattle, 2012 (set by Thomas Lynch, photo by Elise Bakketun)

by Ken

Okay, this is maybe actually just possibly working, in a very limited way.*

[*To understand what I'm talking about, you would need to have read my earlier doom-engulfed outpouring. I'm not necessarily recommending it, I'm just saying.]

Much to my surprise, we've got the Walküre clips posted (I'll bet you thought I was making it up, about having them made and ready to go!), and I've successfully -- as far as I can tell -- taken the further step of adding the promised English texts, though typographically I can't help feeling that this is sort of the way Ben Franklin would have cobbled his blog together. Still, if it works, it works! (You'll notice that I've even managed to add images to the previous post and this one.) There's time ahead for contemplating the implications, if any.

So let's go ahead, in pursuit of our listening project, and listen to Siegmund's monologue from Act I of Die Walküre; then we'll rehear Florestan's Act II monologue from Fidelio sung by the same three tenors. The idea is to see whether, and in what ways, we can hear the strong vocal kinship between the roles of Florestan and Siegmund. First off, we're hearing, twice each, probably the two most notable Siegmunds since Melchior, Jon Vickers and James King, and then we'll hear no-sort-of-dramatic-tenor at all but instead that jack-of-all-tenor-trades Plácido Domingo.

The plan then, in the event that we can actually get away with this much madness, is to retrieve from last week's post ("The Minister is coming! The Minister is coming! Don Fernando and the lesson of Fidelio, Part 2) the Vickers, King, and Domingo performances of Florestan's monologue.

NOTE ON THE EDITING OF THE AUDIO CLIPS: This bothered me while I was doing it, and it bothers me now. Normally with multiple clips of a selection, I try to make them start and stop at pretty much the same points. In this case, though, with all six sources containing Siegmund's monologue by itself on a single CD track, in the interest of sanity I just went with the CD track placements; doing otherwise would have involved having, for all six versions, the preceding and following tracks at hand in case it proved necessary to edit in bits from them. I sorta wish I'd done it that way. (On second thought, maybe not. As it turns out, the clips start in pretty much the same place, though the King-Böhm and Domingo-Barenboim go back a bit farther. More importantly, the King-Böhm continues on significantly farther, and if I'd done the editing as per "rule" it might regrettably not have -- see below.)

WAGNER: Die Walküre: Act I, Scene 2, Siegmund's monologue
("Ein Schwert verhiess mir der Vater")

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 --

The Minister is coming! The Minister is coming! Don Fernando and the lesson of Fidelio, Part 1

-- from Beethoven's setting of Schiller's "Ode 'To Joy',"
in the final movement of the Ninth Symphony

Jessye Norman, soprano; Brigitte Fassbaender, mezzo-soprano; Plácido Domingo, tenor; Walter Berry, bass-baritone; Vienna State Opera Concert Chorus, Vienna Philharmonic, Karl Böhm, cond. DG, recorded 1980


NOW, WHAT'S THE DEAL WITH DON FERNANDO?

DON FERNANDO: Our best of kings' will and pleasure
leads me here to you, poor people,
that I may uncover the night of crime,
which black and heavy encompassed all.
No longer kneel down like slaves,
stern tyranny be far from me!
A brother seeks his brothers,
and gladly helps, if help he can.
CHORUS: Hail the day! Hail the hour!
DON FERNANDO: A brother seeks his brothers,
and gladly helps, if help he can. . . .

-- from the final scene of Fidelio

Martti Talvela (bs), Don Fernando; Leipzig Radio Chorus, Staatskapelle Dresden, Karl Böhm, cond. DG, recorded c1968

by Ken

Even a seasoned operagoer may be forgiven for forgetting, even when Don Fernando appears at the top of a Fidelio cast list, as he often does, just who the heck he is. The fact is, if you add to what we've just heard a few lines we're going to hear in a while and just a few more we heard a few weeks ago ("'In this life scoundrels always receive their just desserts': Now that we know the lesson of Don Giovanni, how does it square with the lesson of Fidelio?," June 28), you've got the entire role!

And listen to who we've got singing it! Yes, it's early-career Martti Talvela, but he'd already established himself as a star, and just listen to that voice. There's none of that yawny, slidey quality that settled in dispiritingly quickly. (A reference point: the King Marke he sang in the 1965 live-from-Bayreuth Tristan und Isolde with Birgit Nilsson and Wolfgang Windgassen (and Christa Ludwig the spectacular Brangäne, one of my favorites of her recordings, conducted by, well, as it happens, Karl Böhm.) Here that ringing, booming bass slashes and soars and I'm going to say dazzles with its strength and beauty and ease. I think I need to revisit some more of those early recordings!


BUT THEN, "A-LIST" CASTING OF THE ROLE
IS MORE THE RULE THAN THE EXCEPTION

'In this life scoundrels always receive their just desserts': Now that we know the lesson of Don Giovanni, how does it square with the lesson of Fidelio?

(And say, what fate exactly did Don Giovanni deserve?)


AND NOW, THE MORALS OF OUR STORIES



THE MORAL OF OUR STORY NO. 1:
from the six survivors of the fiery demise of Don Giovanni

"This is the end that befalls evildoers,
and in this life scoundrels
always receive their just desserts."

Claire Watson (s), Donna Anna; Christa Ludwig (ms), Donna Elvira; Mirella Freni (s), Zerlina; Nicolai Gedda (t), Don Ottavio; Walter Berry (bs-b), Leporello; Paolo Montarsolo (bs), Masetto; New Philharmonia Orchestra, Otto Klemperer, cond. EMI, recorded June-July 1966

THE MORAL OF OUR STORY NO. 2:
from Florestan, Leonore, and the rest of the Fidelio crew

"He who has won such a wife
may join in our rejoicing.
Never can we too much hymn
the savior of her husband's life."

Jon Vickers (Florestan), Sena Jurinac (Leonore), et al., with Otto Klemperer conducting, Covent Garden, February 1961

by Ken

We've put in a fair amount of effort, first in the June 14 post "If you're just dying to know, is Don Giovanni a comedy or a tragedy?, you've come to the wrong place," then in last week's post, ("Homing in on that moment in Don Giovanni when 'Everything returns to normal' -- or should we say 'the new normal'?"), to extract the moral of da Ponte and Mozart's Don Giovanni, which is so tidily contained in the opera's final lines, as we just heard them again above, in a form described as "l'antichissima canzon" (which I've been translating as "the most antique refrain," even though a canzon is really just a song) by the incantators themselves -- as we've heard previously, and are going, by gosh, to hear again.

As I mentioned last week, the episode of homiletic moralizing that follows hard upon the tumultuous scene of Don Giovanni resolutely consigning himself to a descent into the fires of hell, brings this epic tale to a seemingly incongruous end -- and we know that in the early decades of the opera's performing history the whole postlude was often simply lopped off, sending audiences off on a more satisfyingly cathartic note.

I also suggested that this wielding of the editorial hatchet seems to me a truly ghastly idea, and that the issue arises again with the homiletically moralizing ensemble that will in time draw Beethoven's one and only opera, Fidelio, to a close.


IT'S CERTAINLY TRUE -- ISN'T IT? -- THAT "IN THIS LIFE
SCOUNDRELS ALWAYS RECEIVE THEIR JUST DESSERTS"?

Some out-of-this-world sounds from a singer who proves mistress of a surprising role

How good it is to see in the moon.
It is like a silver flower, cool and chaste.
Yes, like the beauty of a virgin,
who has remained pure.

How sweet is the air here.
Here I can breathe.

by Ken

Yes, yes, something happens at the end of the first clip, something I couldn't edit out, which is actually kind of the point. In Richard Strauss's Salome things just kind of happen, one thing after another, and one of the miracles of Strauss's breakthrough opera -- here we might bear in mind that his operatic breakthrough didn't come till he was 40 -- is that he had music, utterly extraordinary music, for all those things that happen.

As many of you will know, the two audio clips we've already heard are reversed -- for visual effect, the visual effect being the illustration of the full moon, which clearly favors our moon-clip. In the opera, though, the "How sweet is the air" clip comes first; it's almost the first thing we hear from Salome after she makes her entrance -- fleeing from the banquet inside to the terrace of the palace of the Tetrarch Herod, her stepfather (and also her uncle, which is even worse than it sounds, but that's another sordid story for another time). We'll be hearing these musical bits in context shortly, with all participants properly identified.


OH YES, THE SINGER, OF COURSE, IS . . .

Sunday Classics snapshots: Meet the composer, Richard Strauss-style

The first part of the Prologue to Ariadne auf Naxos, with Paul Schoeffler as the Music Master and Sena Jurinac as the Composer (we're going to hear the radiant Jurinac in her glorious 1958 studio recording, which I've described as the best recorded performance I know of any operatic role, and Schoeffler in a 1944 live performance), staged by Günter Rennert and conducted by Karl Böhm, filmed at Salzburg in 1965 -- the remaining four parts are also on YouTube.

by Ken

It was a long, arduous path from conception to ultimate creation, the strange entertainment concocted by Richard Strauss and Hugo von Hofmannsthal, his librettist on two previous, wildly different operas, Elektra and Der Rosenkavalier, in collaboration with the great stage director Max Reinhardt, who had collaborated with them on Rosenkavalier.

The original idea was to provide a half-hour musical entertainment to be inserted in an adaptation (by Hofmannsthal) for Reinhardt of Molière's Le bourgeois gentilhomme. Not surprisingly, the half-hour entertainment grew and grew, until it was a weird one-act opera that -- despite being scored for chamber orchestra -- would tax the vocal resources of the greatest opera houses. And it combined two seemingly uncombinable art forms: a deeply serious opera seria that is observed, commented on, and eventually intruded on by a troupe of commedia dell'arte musical comedians. And of course it was imprisoned inside the play, and constitued too much opera for playgoers and too much play for operagoers.

Long story short: Eventually Hofmannsthal and Strauss liberated Ariadne by creating a Prologue, set backstage in the room of the home of the richest man in Vienna where the evening's entertainment is shortly to be performed. And they created the character of the Composer, the creator of a deeply serious opera seria. The new Prologue not only explains how these two wildly different entertainments came to be scheduled for the same evening's entertainment (and, eventually, how they come to be combined) but creates for us the world of a theatrical backstage. (The always-practical Strauss arranged an orchestral suite from the incidental music he had written for the play, in its German guise as Der Bürger als Edelmann.)

We've already heard the very opening of the Prologue -- still scored for chamber orchestra, as the original opera-intermezzo was.

R. STRAUSS: Ariadne auf Naxos: Prologue: Orchestral introduction


Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, Karl Böhm, cond. Live performance, Mar. 28, 1970


AS THE CURTAIN RISES ON THE PROLOGUE --

Ghost of Sunday Classics preview: Attention, please!

Can you imagine a more ravishing musical attention-getter?



London Symphony Orchestra, Charles Mackerras, cond. Philips-Mercury, recorded July 1961

by Ken

What we hear above is really and truly a preview; we're not going to hear any more of this piece until tomorrow's Ghost of Sunday Classics post. Many of you will recognize it (we've actually heard it before), but for now I just want to focus on this ravishing opening.

This is a talent, I think, the ability to grab a listener's attention musically. Not in a mechanical, conk-over-the-head way, which I suppose can be done by formula, but in a genuinely imagination-engaging way. The talent can certainly be cultivated, shaped, refined, but I think either you've got stuff in you head that can do the trick or you don't. We've listened, for example, to the way Puccini opened nearly all of his mature operas -- that, I think, is simply astounding, and a measure of unique genius.

One reason I'm so bowled over by the way our composer above seizes hold of our imaginations is precisely because there isn't any conking over the head. Just listen to what he does with that out-of-nothing hush, then gradually gathers momentum. Gorgeous!

This makes me think of the musical solutions Puccini's great predecessor Verdi found for the first of his two supreme masterpieces, Otello. We've heard all of these before (if anyone would like links, please just let me know in the comments; it's so tedious gathering them when there's no earthly purpose), but let's listen first to the similarly quiet orchestral introductions to Acts II, III, and IV.

VERDI: Otello

Bruckner 7 -- a symphony built on its opening pair of musical twin towers

[As I explained at the top of Friday night's preview, this is the second part of a three-part Bruckner series, begun December 6-8 with "Bruckner's Fourth Symphony -- four stories for four movements," a reprise of a January 2010 post I've always been fond of. This Bruckner Seventh preview post appeared originally in July 2012. The Bruckner series -- and, I'm projecting, Sunday Classics -- will conclude with a new post on the Ninth Symphony. -- Ken]


The string chorale that bursts out shortly after the start of the Adagio (at bar 4 above) of the Bruckner Seventh

by Ken

As promised in Friday night's preview, our subject today is the seventh of Anton Bruckner's outsize nine symphonies, which unlike the Fourth Symphony, with its remarkably evenly weighted four movements, is cast in the form, as I put it, of "an opening movement and an ensuing slow movement of such emotional weight as to dominate the whole piece." (We heard the whole of the Fourth Symphony in the January 2010 post "Bruckner's Fourth Symphony -- four stories for four movements." We also heard the formative Second Symphony, in the August 2011 post "Bruckner begins to establish his voice, hushed and clear." The latter post, I just discovered, had a broken link to the click-through, which I've fixed -- in case anyone has been waiting all this time to read and hear that post.)

Which means that our obvious focus is going to be on those first two movements, which dramatically counteract the silly image of Bruckner which seems to me to excite the ardor of the composer's devout faithful: Bruckner as a a sort of musical idiot savant, a piously Catholic naïf piously erecting monumental musical cathedrals in the ether. About Bruckner being in some ways naïve I don't think there's much doubt, but I think we would have some serious disagreements, the Bruckner Faithful and I, as to where and how that naïveté kicks in. However, the idea that these symphonies are underpinned by reflexive piety seems to me fairly nutty. (I'm embarrassed to own that I've used one of those cheesy architectural mega-metaphors for the title of this post. It's just so tempting.)

There's a reason why Bruckner's Fourth and Seventh Symphonies, and perhaps also the three movements he completed of the Ninth, are the symphonies of his which are often enjoyed by music-lovers who don't have much use for the rest of his work. And yet it seems to me that it would be hard to think of anything more quintessentially Brucknerian than the orchestral chorale we just heard from near the opening of the Adagio of the Seventh, or the opening two minutes of the symphony which we're about to hear, which already demonstrate Bruckner's dependence on repetition as well as the way he can build the orchestra from the softest hush to the most thundering outburst.

BRUCKNER: Symphony No. 7 in E: opening




IT'S AN ALL-VIENNA PHILHARMONIC POST TODAY

The performances we've heard so far, by the way, both feature the Vienna Philharmonic (the orchestra best known to Bruckner), as indeed do all the performances we're going to hear today. The snatch of the Adagio at the top is conducted by Carlo Maria Giulini, that of the opening of the symphony by Karl Böhm.

Next we'll hear the complete performances of these movements -- and more.

Father's Day special -- Wagner's Daland usually knows better than to trust in the wind

DALAND: [coming down from the cliff]:
No doubt! Seven miles away
the storm has driven us from safe port.
So near our goal after a long voyage,
this trick was saved up for me!
STEERSMAN [on board, shouting through cupped hands]:
Ho! Captain!
DALAND: On board with you -- how goes it?
STEERSMAN [as before]: Good, captain!
We have firm grounding.
DALAND: It's Sandwike! I know the bay well.
[0:53] Damn! I already saw my house on the shore.
Senta, my child, I imagined myself already embracing.
Then came this blast from the depths of hell.
Who trusts in wind trusts in Satan's mercy.
Who trusts in wind trusts in Satan's mercy,
trusts in Satan's mercy.
[He goes on board the ship.]
There's no help for it! Patience! The storm is abating;
so fierce a storm couldn't last long.
[On board] Hey, lads! Your watch was long --
to rest then! I'm not concerned anymore.
[The sailors go below deck on the ship.]
Now, steersman, will you take the watch for me?
There's no danger, but it's good if you keep watch.
STEERSMAN: Be without worry! Sleep peacefully, captain!
[DALAND goes into his cabin. The STEERSMAN is alone on deck. The storm has abated somewhat and returns only at sporadic intervals. The waves are still rough on the open sea. The STEERSMAN makes his round once more, then sits down near the rudder. He yawns, then rouses himself as sleep comes over him.]

Karl Ridderbusch (bs), Daland; Harald Ek (t), Steersman; Bayreuth Festival Orchestra, Karl Böhm, cond. DG, recorded live, 1971

by Ken

In Friday night's preview we met the Norwegian sea captain Daland in happy homecoming mode, in Act II of The Flying Dutchman -- not just happy to be returning to his home and his beloved daugher Senta from an unusually perilous voyage with life and limbs intact, but returning in the company of a stranger, met under extraordinary circumstances, who is the best son-in-law material fate could have sent his way.

Now we're returning, not quite to Act I curtain rise (we'll get there in a moment), but to the brush with death, for him and his crew, that Daland has just survived thanks to a combination of luck and his own nautical skill. With his ship becalmed but safe just off the coast, not far from home, he berates himself for having, incredibly foolishly, let slip his guard against the vagaries of fate. The section we're especially concerned with here is the highlighted one, where for the first time he indulges in sustained singing, when he recalls that literally within sight of home, already imagining himself there, with Senta in his arms, he was beset by a violent storm outburst that caught him almost tragically unprepared.

This extraordinary little set piece he sings is at once one of the most vivid examples I know of the way music, and in particular vocal music, can be used to create character and dramatic urgency and one of the most challenging but potentially rewarding pieces of vocal writing I know. And I've never heard anyone do it fuller justice than Karl Ridderbusch in this live performance from the 1971 Bayreuth Festival.

He sings high, he sings low; he sings with unmatched power and unrivaled delicacy; he attacks every pitch dead-on while binding phrases with ravishing tone and dramatic sweep. Above all he really does sing every note, filling out each syllable with the ravishing sound of a great bass voice under complete, sculpting phrases with seemingly effortless control.

To be perhaps a little clearer, I though we'd listen to this amazing scene chunk again, in an assortment of performances that I consider admirable in many respects (much better than the average one encounters; it would be too easy to make the case with that sort of performance), and then listen to Ridderbusch's again.

WAGNER: The Flying Dutchman: Act I, Daland, "Kein Zweifel! Sieben Meilen fort" ("No doubt! Seven miles away")

"Good night, thou false world!" -- (final) exit Papageno?

"Good night, thou false world!"

PAPAGENO: Right, then, that's still how it is!
Since there is nothing holding me back,
good night, thou false world!

-- most of our Magic Flute translations by Robert A. Jordan

Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau (b), Papageno; Berlin Philharmonic, Karl Böhm, cond. DG, recorded June 1964

Or in English: "Fare thee well, thou world of pain!"

[in English] John Brownlee (b), Papageno; Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, Bruno Walter, cond. Live performance, Dec. 26, 1942

by Ken

We were just looking at Mozart's and Beethoven's exceptional use of minor keys for opening movements of symphonies and concertos, and one point I could have made more explicit is how frequently -- among these admittedly infrequent cases -- the "thematic" material that inspires such a plan is more "motivic" than really melodic -- think of Mozart's D minor Piano Concerto (No. 20) or of Beethoven's Fifth and Ninth Symphonies.

But of course the minor mode doesn't preclude great tunes, and I think that's what planted the thought of this great moment from The Magic Flute in my head. It's the moment when Papageno the lowly bird-catcher is driven by his loneliness to the ultimate despair, and I think the Fischer-Dieskau performance in particular makes it clear that Mozart plays this moment "for real." (Not to worry, we're going to hear the complete scene, er, eventually.)

As I suggested in Friday night's "double preview," "Enter the bird-catcher; exit Sir Colin Davis," we're focusing this week on Papageno, though as we often do, we're going to start with the Overture.


OUR THREE PRINCIPAL PAPAGENOS
AND THEIR DISTINGUISHED CONDUCTORS

The symphonic Mozart and Beethoven open in minor mode

They look so simple, these eight notes, but they form one of the most striking and readily identifiable motifs in all of music -- the opening of one of Beethoven's two minor-key symphonic first movements.

by Ken

In Friday night's preview we listened to all of the first movements among Mozart's 40 or so symphonies which are in minor keys. That's right, both of them, which happen to be in the same key, G minor.

Partly this was out of abiding affection for the masterpiece among them, the great Symphony No. 40, and partly it was as a springboard to listening to the two first movements among Beethoven's nine symphonies which are in minor keys, Nos. 5 (C minor) and 9 (D minor). It seems clear to me that these movements have something in common, something that sets them apart from all their major-key brethren -- and something that even sort of applies to the littler Mozart G minor Symphony, No. 25.

Let's listen again to the Mozart G minor opening movements.

MOZART: Symphony No. 25 in G minor, K. 183:
i. Allegro con brio

Columbia Symphony Orchestra, Bruno Walter, cond. Columbia, recorded Dec. 10, 1954 (mono)

Concertgebouw Orchestra (Amsterdam), Josef Krips, cond. Philips, recorded June 1973

MOZART: Symphony No. 40 in G minor, K. 550:
i. Molto allegro

Columbia Symphony Orchestra, Bruno Walter, cond. Columbia-CBS-Sony, recorded 1959

Concertgebouw Orchestra (Amsterdam), Josef Krips, cond. Philips, recorded June 1972


I DON'T WANT TO MAKE THIS SOUND MORE
MYSTERIOUS THAN IT ACTUALLY IS

Bruckner 7 -- a symphony built on its opening pair of musical twin towers

The string chorale that bursts out shortly after the start of the Adagio (at bar 4 above) of the Bruckner Seventh

by Ken

As promised in Friday night's preview, our subject today is the seventh of Anton Bruckner's outsize nine symphonies, which unlike the Fourth Symphony, with its remarkably evenly weighted four movements, is cast in the form, as I put it, of "an opening movement and an ensuing slow movement of such emotional weight as to dominate the whole piece." (We heard the whole of the Fourth Symphony in the January 2010 post "Bruckner's Fourth Symphony -- four stories for four movements." We also heard the formative Second Symphony, in the August 2011 post "Bruckner begins to establish his voice, hushed and clear." The latter post, I just discovered, had a broken link to the click-through, which I've fixed -- in case anyone has been waiting all this time to read and hear that post.)

Which means that our obvious focus is going to be on those first two movements, which dramatically counteract the silly image of Bruckner which seems to me to excite the ardor of the composer's devout faithful: Bruckner as a a sort of musical idiot savant, a piously Catholic naïf piously erecting monumental musical cathedrals in the ether. About Bruckner being in some ways naïve I don't think there's much doubt, but I think we would have some serious disagreements, the Bruckner Faithful and I, as to where and how that naïveté kicks in. However, the idea that these symphonies are underpinned by reflexive piety seems to me fairly nutty. (I'm embarrassed to own that I've used one of those cheesy architectural mega-metaphors for the title of this post. It's just so tempting.)

There's a reason why Bruckner's Fourth and Seventh Symphonies, and perhaps also the three movements he completed of the Ninth, are the symphonies of his which are often enjoyed by music-lovers who don't have much use for the rest of his work. And yet it seems to me that it would be hard to think of anything more quintessentially Brucknerian than the orchestral chorale we just heard from near the opening of the Adagio of the Seventh, or the opening two minutes of the symphony which we're about to hear, which already demonstrate Bruckner's dependence on repetition as well as the way he can build the orchestra from the softest hush to the most thundering outburst.

BRUCKNER: Symphony No. 7 in E: opening




IT'S AN ALL-VIENNA PHILHARMONIC POST TODAY

The performances we've heard so far, by the way, both feature the Vienna Philharmonic (the orchestra best known to Bruckner), as indeed do all the performances we're going to hear today. The snatch of the Adagio at the top is conducted by Carlo Maria Giulini, that of the opening of the symphony by Karl Böhm.

Next we'll hear the complete performances of these movements -- and more.