Quite right, Sir Georg: We'll need to hear not just Haydn's orchestral depiction of "pre-Creation" chaos but the "breathtaking" explosion when suddenly "there was light!"

[PLUS: Some serial aural remembrances of Kurt Moll]

[MONDAY EVENING UPDATE: Now with various sorts of upgrading, to bring the post a tiny bit closer to what I'd hoped to make -- notably fleshing out the section of Moll archival clips, with English text added, along with minimal comments and some non-Moll performances]

CHORUS: "Und es ward licht!" ("And there was light!")
[from "The First Day," in Part I of Haydn's Creation]

"I can think of no other work by any composer in which a single chord comes as such a surprise." -- Georg Solti (see below)

Bavarian Radio Chorus and Symphony Orchestra, Leonard Bernstein, cond. DG, recorded live in the Herkulessaal of the Residenz, Munich, June 1986

Stockholm Radio Chorus, Stockholm Chamber Chorus, Berlin Philharmonic, James Levine, cond. DG, recorded in the Jesus-Christus-Kirche, December 1987

Chicago Symphony Chorus and Orchestra, Sir Georg Solti, cond. Decca, recorded live in Orchestra Hall, Oct. 29-30 & Nov. 2, 1993

"A personal note by Sir Georg Solti" -- from the CD booklet for his 1993 re-recording of Haydn's Creation

The older I get, the more deeply I love the genius of Haydn, especially his two late oratorio masterpieces, The Creation and The Seasons.

In re-recording The Creation, I was struck by the incredible modernity as well as the startling originiality of so much of the score. To mention just two examples: the opening "Representation of Chaos," with music that so poignantly symbolizes the emptiness and hopelessness before creation; and, immediately thereafter, the breathtaking C major of "Light." I can think of no other work by any composer in which a single chord comes as such a surprise. How completely I can understand the reactions at the first public performance, as my friend Robbins Landon so well describes in his article [a reprint in the CD booklet of a long, wide-ranging background piece by the great Haydn scholar H. C. Robbins Landon].

I was joined in my excitement and passion for this work by all my colleagues, soloists, orchestra and chorus alike. Rarely can I recall such exuberant joy and sheer enchantment as we shared during these Chicago concerts. I hope this will come across to the listener.

[Note: In the first paragraph I've taken the shocking liberty of reversing the order of Sir Georg's reference to the great late-Haydn oratorios, so that The Creation comes before The Seasons, as they did in real life. Is it possible that an editor suggested this to him c1994? I don't think so; I think he'd not only have approved but been grateful. Now I'm afraid it's too late to ask. -- Ed.]

by Ken

I was surprised how moved I was re-encountering this "personal note" from Georg Solti (1912-1997) about his experience re-recording Haydn's Creation -- days after his 81st birthday. In that late period of his life he memorably re-recorded a number of big vocal works that were clearly close to his heart, some of which had gone just fine in his earlier efforts -- I think in particular of Mozart's Così fan tutte and Magic Flute and Verdi's Falstaff; the latter two, notably if possibly coincidentally, are works that as a fledgling conductor in the 1930s he had helped Arturo Toscanini prepare at Salzburg) -- and others, at least to me, not so fine, like Mozart's Don Giovanni, Wagner's Meistersinger, Verdi's Otello -- and The Creation. (Among those happy late-life "big works" recording projects we should note as well Sir Georg's companion recording, this one his first ever, of Haydn's final "big work," The Seasons.)

What's so moving about Solti's Creation note is that it rings so true. "The older I get, the more deeply I love" declarations are so common as to be commonplace as applied to, say, Mozart, but Haydn [seen here as sculpted on the Frieze of Parnassus, encircling the base of London's Albert Memorial -- from the blog London Remembers], not so much. In fact, real imaginative identification with Haydn isn't common at all. A lot of performers you sense approach Haydn's music as kind of like Mozart's only not quite -- an approach that hardly ever works. We can talk about this more after we've heard today's Creation clips.

For those who weren't here for yesterday's preview post ("I won't go out on a limb and say this is the most beautiful bass voice I've ever heard, or this the most beautiful minute-and-a-half of singing. Then again --"), the explosions of light we "heard" above are from the same recordings of The Creation I teased therein, offering their accounts of the remarkable hushed lines uttered by the angel Raphael -- the first singing heard in the oratorio, Haydn's setting of some of the most famous words in the human record, the opening of the Book of Genesis.

The plan for today, in addition to filling in the somehow-missing performer identifications (notably of the bass soloists), was to fill in Haydn's introductory orchestral depiction of the chaos out of which the world would be created. Now in addition, inspired by Sir Georg's personal note, I've realized we also have to continue on a few extra minutes, to hear God conjure up light. I've remade the ready-made audio clips accordingly.

The start of something: Here's the promised follow-up to the post spotlighting Till Eulenspiegel and the Symphonia domestica -- focusing now on the already-heard openings of six Strauss operas

Sure, literally speaking Guntram (with, we might note, a libretto by the composer, Wagner-style, something Strauss would attempt again only once more, still perhaps problematically but, I think, a lot more successfully, with the sort-of-autobiographical Intermezzo) was the start of something, but could anyone have guessed "of what"? (We can also note at the very top that Strauss's first opera was "Dedicated to my dear parents.")

by Ken

To recap, our subject is still Salome, Richard Strauss's third opera, focusing here on the powerful anecdotal evidence from these snatches of the operas that preceded and followed Salome of the startling transformation that took place, all at once, in Strauss's ability to make the operatic medium work for him. In the main portion of this week's post, "Strauss's operatic beginnings: We don't need an excuse to listen to Till Eulenspiegel -- but the Symphonia domestica, maybe so?" we heard these same operatic clips, in this same order, with no identification of either the operas or the performers. In this concluding portion of the post we have all those identifications available, as well as English texts for most of the sung portions of these excerpts.

As I'm sure you guessed, Operas X and Y were Strauss's pre-Salome operatic endeavors, the turgid late Romantic stinker Guntram (first performed in 1894) and its "satirical" successor, Feuersnot (first performed in 1901). Perhaps surprisingly, given how adept Strauss would become at devising operatic openings that plunge us directly into the action, he began his operatic career with a full-fledged overture. Oy, is it full-fledged; it just fledges on and on -- and on. (Note that it's not entirely free-standing, as we might expect an "overture" to be in one frequently proposed distinction between an "overture" and a "prelude," which not only tends to be shorter but normally flows directly into the opening scene. The Guntram whatever-you-want-to-call-it flows directly into the equally nondescript music of the opening scene.

[AFTERTHOUGHT: I have to say that rather unexpectedly the Guntram Overture has started to grow on me -- hey, this is not some no-talented musical hack we're dealing with. But it still seems to meander hopelessly, stretching this thin material many long, long minutes beyond the breaking point. -- Ken]

[X] R. STRAUSS: Guntram, Op. 25: Overture


BBC Symphony Orchestra, John Pritchard, cond. Gala, broadcast performance, 1981

Hungarian State Orchestra, Eve Queler, cond. CBS-Hungaroton, recorded 1984


MOVING ON TO "OPERA Y": FEUERSNOT

Remembering Risë Stevens

Risë Stevens sings the "Habañera" from Act I of Bizet's Carmen -- I gather from a 1951 TV performance.

by Ken

As I mentioned in Friday night's preview, since Risë Stevens was an important exponenet of a number of roles that have commanded attention here at Sunday Classics that we've already heard a fair amount of her. For the most part, then, today's musical remembrance will involve literal remembrances, with the addition of a couple of items we haven't heard before.

The plan couldn't be much simpler: We're just going to revisit each of these classic roles from Stevens's repertory, starting with what I suppose must be considered her real signature role, Carmen.

Remembering Rafael Kubelik, Josef Krips, and Rudolf Kempe

The arrival of the Comedians in Act III of The Bartered Bride

BEDRICH SMETANA: The Bartered Bride:
Overture and Dances (Polka; Furiant; Dance of the Comedians)

Philharmonia Orchestra, Rafael Kubelik, cond. EMI, recorded 1951

by Ken

With no particular rhyme or reason, as I explained in Friday night's preview, we're hearing snatches of treasures I found in an embarrassingly large order I just received from that indispensable repository of (mostly but by no means only) classical cut-out and overstock CDs and DVDs, the Berkshire Record Outlet. These particular snatches spotlight three "K" conductors. I'm especially fond of their solidly grounded musicianship, making music from the inside rather than imposing external "rules" or playing for crowd-grabbing "effects."

Friday night we heard orchestral excerpts by Berlioz and Hindemith from a four-CD "portrait" of the wonderful Czech conductor Rafael Kubelik (1914-1996, seen here around the time he was music director of the Chicago Symphony, 1950-53) drawing on his early recordings for EMI, Mercury, and Decca. I thought we'd start out today's wider sampling by listening to some of my favorite music, the Overture and Dances from Bedrich Smetana's comic opera The Bartered Bride (which in fact we already heard back in a November 2009 post, "It's not for nothing that Smetana was dubbed 'the father of Czech music'").


LONGTIME READERS HAVE HEARD LOTS OF KUBELIK,
AND ALSO LOTS OF JOSEF KRIPS AND RUDOLF KEMPE

Preview: A decidedly unorthodox musical tribute (if you can call it that) to Italy

by Ken

Tonight's music doesn't plug directly into the musical lovefest with Italy we've been celebrating the last couple of weeks with Tchaikovsky's Capriccio italien and string sextet Souvenir de Florence and Mendelssohn's Italian Symphony. Eventually I think you'll see how it all hooks up, but for tonight you may have to take it on faith.

The Italian Singer conjured here by our emphatically non-Italian lyricist and composer isn't exactly what you'd call a homage, but is at least meant to be, well, sort of Italian. The aria our team created for their tenor is by no means easy to sing. Without getting fancy about it, I've simply plucked out three very famous tenors who happen to have recorded it (plus another from a famous recording), and none of them has an easy time with it. Indeed I've alway suspected that one of them still wishes he could have had another crack at it, or perhaps he doesn't think it would have helped.

Given the degree of difficulty, it's always an intriguing question as to how well our composer expected it to be sung. At least when well sung, though, it's such a ravishing piece that with almost any other composer it would seem all but inconceivable that it didn't aim deliberately at being one of the most beautiful pieces of music ever written. With this particular composer, however, there are a number of instances of startling beauty that doesn't seem to fit the general understanding of the situations for which it was written. My feeling is that the deficiency lies in the general understanding of the situations and not the composer's calibration of musical appropriateness, but as I say, it's a legitimate question.

Right now we're going to hear just the aria itself, and for these cuts I've left myself at the mercy of the CD track editors, and have therefore arranged the performances in the order of how much of the orchestral lead-in is included in the aria track -- [A] includes hardly any, [C] and [D] the whole thing. Of course all the music is included in all the recordings; I'm speaking only of where the track point occurs.

In the click-through, where we're going to hear the whole little scene for which this aria was created, I've made sure that we hear the fulll orchestral lead-in all three times.

[A]


[B]


[C]


[D]



HERE'S A QUESTION AS YOU LISTEN

Since this is supposed to be an Italian tenor, can you tell which if any of our four tenors is/are in fact Italian?