Rapid hits: Part 2 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]


(2) VW'S LARK: ONE SOLOIST, THREE VARIED VISIONS

Neville Marriner & Iona Brown: Collaborators from the time I.B. joined the violins of the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields (1964) -- in time becoming concertmaster, frequent soloist and conductor, eventually director.

by Ken

It was yet another seemingly inescapable (try though a person might!) attention-diverter, but in this case a happy one. While playing with Vaughan Williams's musical lark, I kept being drawn back to one performance, liking it more and more: Iona Brown's 1983 Proms performance with conductor Elgar Howarth. I was responding to I.B.'s strikingly personal, boldly confident, even daredevilish playing, so different (my memory was telling me) from her decade-plus-earlier recording with Neville Marriner. Indeed, on rehearing, the 1971 performance seemed coolly, carefully poised -- the word "nocturnal" occurred to me. Listening to it more, I found it more and more fascinating in its own right, all the more intriguing for the contrast with the 1983 Royal Albert Hall performance.

The CD with the 1983 Lark (unfortunately not in general circulation)

THEN I REALIZED I HAVE A THIRD I.B. LARK

It's with Marriner again, and I'd kind of assumed it was a recoupling of assorted older Marriner recordings (the only other Vaughan Williams on the disc is the Thomas Tallis Fantasia) and safely shelved it away as a Marriner collection. But no, it's a 1982 recording -- a year before the Prom performance! It's not the 1983 performance, but it's not the 1971 either.

Let's listen to just the opening in all three I.B. Larks, featuring the grand, finger-twisting solo-violin cadenza.

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.]

Preview: Working back from the "Mikado" and "Yeomen of the Guard" Overtures to "The Gondoliers"

GILBERT and SULLIVAN: The Mikado (1885): Overture

GILBERT and SULLIVAN: The Yeomen of the Guard (1888): Overture

Academy of St. Martin in the Fields, Sir Neville Marriner, cond. Philips, recorded February 1992

by Ken

If you haven't been around Sunday Classics much, you may not be aware that I take my Gilbert and Sullivan right seriously. (See, for starters, the June 2010 post "The Mikado says, 'It's an unjust world, and virtue is triumphant only in theatrical performances.'") I don't think of their run of comic masterpieces, from Trial by Jury (1875) through The Gondoliers (1889), as frothy light entertainments of about a millimeter's depth. Oh, there's plenty of froth; I don't ever want to lose sight of how funny these pieces are, or can be. But even the humor seems to me to come from a very different place, and to work in a very different way, from that imagined by an awful lof ot fans.

I PLAN TO TRY TO EXPLAIN THIS BETTER SUNDAY . . .

Anatomy of an overture -- Rossini's "L'Italiana in Algeri"

Sir Neville Marriner conducts the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields in a 2006 Rheingau Music Festival performance of Rossini's L'Italiana in Algeri Overture that's even a bit broader than the wonderful 1974 recording we're going to hear.

by Ken

In the concert hall there aren't many more atmospheric musical openings than that of the Overture to Rossini's L'Italiana in Algeri (The Italian Woman in Algiers), an it makes for an opening that's if anything more atmospheric in the opera house.

As I mentioned in Friday night's preview, we're at the opposite end of Rossini's career from what I called the "post-theatrical" one, which followed the 1829 premiere of William Tell in Paris, where the composer had relocated in 1824. The reason I wanted to present something from that long period (remembering that he lived on till 1868), in this case the tenor's "Cujus animam" from the Stabat Mater (1831-41), was to show that Rossini (a) didn't stop composing and (b) hadn't suddenly lost his skills or inspiration.

In fact, the very busy decade of opera composing that preceded Rossini's sudden withdrawal from the stage raises a lot of questions of its own. There's a lot of fine music there, and a number of operas that can speak to audiences given adeqaute consideration, understanding, and in many cases casting -- conditions that pretty much never apply. A lot of William Tell itself rises to powerful heights, as we've discussed and heard a bit, but I think it would be incredibly difficult to make this real for audiences and also deal with the portions of it that don't seem to work so well.

In fact, for all the explorations and exhumations of Rossini's vast output, his position in the repertory still rests on the three comic masterpieces he wrote between 1813 and 1817. This may be a good time to listen again to the very opening of the Overture to L'Italiana in Algeri, eight bars scored just for softly plucked strings until that thundering from the full orchestra on the downbeat of bar 8.

ROSSINI: L'Italiana in Algeri: Overture -- Andante, part 1


(1) Bamberg Symphony Orchestra, Giuseppe Patané, cond.
(2) Philharmonia Orchestra, Erich Leinsdorf, cond.
(3) National Symphony Orchestra, Riccardo Chailly, cond.
(4) Academy of St. Martin in the Fields, Neville Marriner, cond.

Note that in just these eight bars we can hear that we have four very different performances, starting with the quickest, Giuseppe Patané's (using tempos very similar to those of Arturo Toscanini) and proceeding to almost equally broad ones from Riccardo Chailly and Nville Marriner. The Marriner performance is set apart by a distinctive, much more firmly plucked pizzicato from his strings.