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 --

Sunday Classics snapshots: In D.C., still no Lincoln -- or even a Boccanegra

Leonard Warren as Simon Boccanegra

I weep for you, for the peaceful
sun on your hillsides,
where the olive branches
bloom in vain.
I weep for the deceptive
gaiety of your flowers,
and I cry to you "Peace!"
I cry to you "Love!"

Leonard Warren (b), Simon Boccanegra; Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, Fritz Stiedry, cond. Live performance, Jan. 28, 1950

Lawrence Tibbett (b), Simon Boccanegra; Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, Ettore Panizza, cond. Live performance, Jan. 21, 1939

by Ken

The great political chronicler Richard Reeves titled his book about the start of the post-Nixon (i.e., post-Watergate) presidency of Jerry Ford: A Ford, not a Lincoln. I think of George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Franklin D. Roosevelt. And while other American presidents have certainly risen to moments of great challenge, it's not something our political system can be counted on to make happen, and if anything even less so with the rabble that makes up our Congresses.

So perhaps it's not surprising that under the combined influence of the fratricidal follies rending the House of Representatives and a not-all-that-attentive watching of the whole of the upgraded-for-HD Ken Burns Lincoln film, and in addition with the notable contrast of the summonses to a very different sort of action delivered by Pope Francis on his American visit, my mind wandered to the rising-to-the-moment of Verdi's Simon Boccanegra, the plebeian Doge of Genoa faced with the riot that breaks out in his own Council Chamber between the blood-rival factions of Plebeians and Patricians, following the attempted abduction of the patrician daughter Amelia (in reality Boccanegra's long-lost daughter Maria, as he himself has only recently discovered, in the Recognition Scene of Act I, Scene 1, which we spent a fair amount of time on here once upon a time) on behalf of the Doge's henchman Paolo, which was foiled by Amelia's patrician fiancé, Gabriele Adorno, who killed the would-be abductor.


ABOVE WE'VE HEARD THE DOGE'S GREAT PLEA --

Sunday Classics snapshots: Swinging Haydn with Vilmos Tatrai playing and conducting

Violinist and conductor Tátrai (1912-1999)

Symphony No. 31 in D (Horn Signal) (1765):
i. Allegro

Symphony No. 73 in D (La chasse) (The Hunt) (1782):
iv. Presto

Hungarian Chamber Orchestra, Vilmos Tátrai, cond. Hungaroton, recorded 1965

by Ken

So I noticed this CD lying atop one of the millions of piles of CDs I've finally been trying to organize, and it didn't instantly ring a bell: a pair of D major sort of hunt-themed Haydn symphonies -- the Horn Signal, No. 31, and La Chasse, No. 73, performed by the Hungarian Chamber Orchestra conducted by Vilmos Tátrai. Above we've heard the movements most responsible for the symphonies' nicknames (though it should be noted that the then-overwhelming contingent of four horns is used throughout the Horn Signal Symphony).


MY FIRST THOUGHT WAS THAT THE CD WAS LYING ABOUT --

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.)

Sunday Classics holiday edition preview: For the first time since 2012, we bring back the legendary DWT gala "Nutcracker ('The Whole Deal')"

You'd want to think twice before bidding on this record. The ABC Command label tells you it's one of the inferior later pressings; you want an original gold-label issue. (Note: Unfortunately, last year's preview-opening video clip of the Nutcracker Suite segment of Walt Disney's Fantasia has disappeared -- not entirely surprisingly, I guess. To be honest, I don't like it much anyway.)

by Ken

As far back as the mind recalls, Sunday Classics has celebrated the holiday musically at last in part with music from Tchaikovsky's ballets, and last year I went whole hog and offered a complete Nutcracker, basically double-covered throughout, and assembled from, well, a whole bunch of recordings. And as I ventured in 2010's Nutcracker preview, what better way could there be to "warm up" for the main event than with the composer's own Nutcracker Suite, good old Op. 71a? In the click-through we've got two quite splendid, and interestingly different, performances.


WE HAVE TWO DIFFERENTLY SPLENDID
RECORDINGS OF THE NUTCRACKER SUITE

TCHAIKOVSKY: Nutcracker Suite, Op. 71a:
i. Miniature Overture


Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, William Steinberg, cond. Command, recorded c1963

Montreal Symphony Orchestra, Charles Dutoit, cond. Decca, recorded c1985

You'll note straightaway in the Miniature Overture that William Steinberg is taking a rather spritelier approach and Charles Dutoit a more buoyant, caressing one. Both the Pittsburgh Symphony and the Montreal Symphony play utterly delectably.


IN AUDIO TERMS, BOTH RECORDINGS HAVE
STELLAR PEDIGREES, IN CONTRASTING STYLES

Ghost of Sunday Classics: Hoffmann just can't get over his "three mistresses"

"It's a song of love that soars aloft sadlly or madly": Nazhmiddin Mavlyanov (Hoffmann) and Hibla Gerzmava (Antonia) at Moscow's Stanislavsky and Nemirovich-Danchenko Music Theater

by Ken

In preparation for our quick survey of the poet Hoffmann's account of his three "mad loves," as set out last week, in last night's preview we made the acquaintance of the first of them, Olympia-- the "artist," according to Hoffmann's reckoning. (We'll come back to this in a moment.) As I noted last night, making Olympia's acquaintance is more than Hoffmann did before he fell soul-convulsingly in love with her. (It doesn't help that the poor fellow is literally looking at her through the equivalent of rose-colored glasses, sold to him by one of Olympia's creators, the eccentric inventor Coppélius.) Of course this is only the teeniest exaggeration of the way many of us so frequently fall just as consumingly in love as our poor hero has.

As noted, we're going to sample some of the astonishing music by which Offenbach captured the states of need and urgency and bliss that afflict Hoffmann in all three of his mad stories. First, though, let's meet another, very different object of the poet's passion: Antonia, one of the theatrical literature's great creations.

(Note that we're going to hear a sprinkling of German-language performances today. As with Gounod's Faust, the German-sourced Tales of Hoffmann -- the fantastic fables of E.T.A. Hoffmann, the source of the opera's tales, are standbys for German readers -- was taken up by German audiences if anything faster and more avidly than by French ones.)

OFFENBACH, The Tales of Hoffmann, Act III, Orchestral introduction and Romance, Antonia, "Elle a fui, la tourterelle" ("She has flown, the turtledove")

Munich. The home of Crespel. A bizarrely furnished room. At right a clavichord. Violins suspended from the wall. At left a window. At the back two doors, one the door to Antonia's room; in front, at left, a window casement that leads to a balcony, which is closed by a curtain. Between the two doors at the rear a large portrait of a woman hanging on the wall. The sun is setting. ANTONIA is seated at the harpsichord.

Romance, Antonia
She has flown, the turtledove!
Ah, a memory too sweet!
An image to cruel!
Alas, at my knees
I hear him, I see him!
Alas, at my knees
I hear him, I see him!
[She walks to the front of the stage.]
She has flown, the turtledove,
she has flown far from you;
but she is always faithful
and she keeps her faith!
My dearly loved, my voice calls to you!
All my heart is yours!
All my heart is yours!
She has flown, the turtledove,
she has flown, she has flown far from you!
[She approaches the harpsichord again and continues, standing, leafing through the music.]
Ah, dear flower that has just bloomed,
in pity answer me!
You that know if he still loves me,
if he keeps faith with me!
My dearly beloved, my voice implores you,
ah, let your heart come to me,
let your heart come to me!
She has flown, the turtledove,
she has flow, she has flown far from you.
[She lets herself fall on the couch in front of the harpsichord.]

[in German] Julia Varady (s), Antonia; Munich Radio Orchestra, Heinz Wallberg, cond. EMI, recorded 1979

Rosalind Plowright (s), Antonia; Symphony Orchestra of the Opéra National du Théâtre Royal de la Monnaie (Brussels), Sylvain Cambreling, cond. EMI, recorded June-July 1988

Victoria de los Angeles (s), Antonia; Paris Conservatory Orchestra, André Cluytens, cond. EMI, recorded 1964

Beverly Sills (s), Antonia; London Symphony Orchestra, Julius Rudel, cond. ABC-EMI, recorded July-Aug. 1972


HOFFMANN'S "THREE MISTRESSES"

THE TALES OF HOFFMANN POSTS

"The poet Hoffmann and the legend of Kleinzach" (Sept. 14)
Preview, "The name of the first was Olympia" (Sept. 19)
"Hoffmann just can't get over is 'three mistresses'" (Sept. 21)
Preview, "Our Frantz knows it's all a matter of technique" (Sept. 27)
"Who is the author of Hoffmann's misfortunes?" (Sept. 28)

Ghost of Sunday Classics Preview: "The name of the first was Olympia"

Party chez Monsieur Spalanzani! A real doll is Olympia, the first of Hoffmann's "mad loves" (Matthew Polenzani and Anna Christy at Lyric Opera of Chicago, 2011).

by Ken

We heard the ineffable line "The name of the first was Olympia" last week -- five times over, actually -- as the poet Hoffmann prepares to give his crowd of adoring students in Luther's tavern his account of the first of his promised three "mad loves." Now we hear it again, in three languages, showing how hard it is to make the line work quite as poetically in any language but French, where "Olympia," being accented -- like most all French words -- on the final syllable, can stand at the top of the line's upward rise.

We're also hearing the line with a bit more in context this week, including the hauntingly resonant chorus of the students, which we can now hear is the tune that echoes after Hoffmann's ethereal announcement of the name "Olympia," and also including the Entr'acte that follows immediately -- or rather two of them. Cambreling and Beecham use a quiet mediation on the haunting "Écoutons! Il est doux de boire" theme, while Wallberg uses the more traditional first statement of the grand minuet that will be heard later as entrance music for the guests at Monsieur Spalanzani's grande soirée.

STUDENTS: Let's listen! It's pleasant to drink
during the telling of a mad story . . .
STUDENTS and NICKLAUSSE: . . . watching the bright cloud
that a pipe throws into the air!
HOFFMANN [sitting on the corner of a table]: I'll begin.
NICKLAUSSE: Silence!
STUDENTS: Silence!
COUNCILOR LINDORF [aside]:
In an hour, I hope, they'll be dead drunk.
HOFFMANN: The name of the first was Olympia.
[The curtain falls while HOFFMANN speaks to all the attentive STUDENTS.]

Entr'acte

Ann Murray (ms), Nicklausse; Neil Shicoff (t), Hoffmann; José van Dam (bs-b), Councilor Lindorf; Chorus and Symphony Orchestra of the Opéra National du Théâtre Royal de la Monnaie (Brussels), Sylvain Cambreling, cond. EMI, recorded June-July 1988

[in German] Ilse Gramatzki (ms), Nicklausse; Siegfried Jerusalem (t), Hoffmann; Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau (b), Councilor Lindorf; Bavarian Radio Chorus, Munich Radio Orchestra, Heinz Wallberg, cond. EMI, recorded 1979

[in English] Monica Sinclair (ms), Nicklausse; Robert Rounseville (t), Hoffmann; [Lindorf's line omitted]; Sadler's Wells Chorus, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Sir Thomas Beecham, cond. Decca, recorded 1947-51 (soundtrack of the Powell-Pressburger film)


TONIGHT WE MEET THE FAMOUS OLYMPIA

THE TALES OF HOFFMANN POSTS

"The poet Hoffmann and the legend of Kleinzach" (Sept. 14)
Preview, "The name of the first was Olympia" (Sept. 19)
"Hoffmann just can't get over is 'three mistresses'" (Sept. 21)
Preview, "Our Frantz knows it's all a matter of technique" (Sept. 27)
"Who is the author of Hoffmann's misfortunes?" (Sept. 28)

Ghost of Sunday Classics preview: The Witch's Curse

Dame Hannah (Maya Stroshane) tells the impressionable young village bridesmaids the story of the Witch's Curse in Brown University Gilbert and Sullivan's 2010 Ruddigore.

by Ken

We first pondered "The Witch's Curse," though at the time I wasn't able to enable you to hear it, in a June 2007 post called "'Laws? I don't obey no stinkin' laws!' Are Chimpy the Prez and his partner in crime 'Big Dick' Cheney blood brothers of the Bad Baronets of Ruddigore?," in response to a Washington Post report, "'Signing Statements' Study Finds Administration Has Ignored Laws." Right-wing scum pols ignoring the law -- what a surprise! This has a special resonance now when degraded and demented right-wing life forms like Darrell "The Unembarrassable" Issa have made a daily habit of persecuting the Obama administration for sins that were in fact spécialités de maison of the Bush regime, when they went routinely unremarked upon, even defended, by degraded and demented right-wing life forms like Darrell "The Unembarrassable" Issa.

Though I wasn't able to enable you to hear it back in 2007, we did eventually hear one of our versions of Dame Hannah's song in June 2010. We actually have entirely other-than-political reasons -- leftover business from last week, to be exact -- for returning this week to the ghost of Sir Rupert Murgatroyd, the first and baddest of the whole long line of Bad Baronets of Ruddigore. But I think it's never out of place to recall the curse that lay so heavily upon the bad barts, as explained by the doughty Dame Hannah early in Act I of Gilbert and Sullivan's Ruddigore.


GILBERT and SULLIVAN: Ruddigore, or The Witch's Curse: Act I, Song, Dame Hannah and chorus, "Sir Rupert Murgatroyd, his leisure and his riches"

DAME HANNAH: Sir Rupert Murgatroyd,
his leisure and his riches,
he ruthlessly employed
in persecuting witches.
With fear he'd make them quake—
he'd duck them in his lake—
he'd break their bones
with sticks and stones,
and burn them at the stake!
CHORUS OF BRIDESMAIDS: This sport he much enjoyed,
did Rupert Murgatroyd—
no sense of shame
or pity came
to Rupert Murgatroyd!



DAME HANNAH: Once, on the village green,
a palsied hag he roasted,
and what took place, I ween,
shook his composure boasted.
For as the torture grim
aeized on each withered limb,
the writhing dame
'mid fire and flame
yelled forth this curse on him:
     "Each lord of Ruddigore,
     despite his best endeavour,
     shall do one crime, or more,
     once, every day, forever!
     This doom he can't defy,
     however he may try,
     for should he stay
     his hand, that day
     in torture he shall die!"

The prophecy came true:
each heir who held the title
had, every day, to do
some crime of import vital;
until, with guilt o'erplied,
"I'll sin no more!" he cried,
and on the day
he said that say,
in agony he died!
CHORUS OF BRIDESMAIDS: And thus, with sinning cloyed,
has died each Murgatroyd,
and so shall fall,
both one and all,
each coming Murgatroyd!

Monica Sinclair (c), Dame Hannah; Glyndebourne Festival Chorus, Pro Arte Orchestra, Sir Malcolm Sargent, cond. EMI, recorded Dec. 11-14, 1962

Gillian Knight (ms), Dame Hannah; D'Oyly Carte Opera Chorus, Orchestra of the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, Isidore Godfrey, cond. Decca, recorded July 1962

Ella Halman (c), Dame Hannah; D'Oyly Carte Opera Chorus, New Promenade Orchestra, Isidore Godfrey, cond. Decca, recorded July 21, 1950

Bertha Lewis (c); D'Oyty Carte Opera Chorus, orchestra, Harry Norris (or maybe George Byng?), cond. EMI, recorded June 30, 1924

I don't suppose we can any longer call the more-than-50-year-old EMI and Decca recordings "modern," though they sound better to me than an awful lot of recordings that are unquestionably "modern" chronologically. Stil, we have to distinguish them somehow from the two "historical" recordings I've included. Ella Halman, who recorded most of the G-and-S contralto roles in the late '40s and early '50s, has ardent Savoyard admirers, which has always mystified me. The greatness of Bertha Lewis, however, seems to me to glow through the 1924 acoustical sound.


IN THIS WEEK'S GHOST OF SUNDAY CLASSICS POST

We'll meet the ghostly Bad Baronets of Ruddigore, including their spokesghost, Sir Roderic Murgatroyd.

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Ghost of Sunday Classics: Everybody loves Luisa

NBC Symphony Orchestra, Arturo Toscanini, cond. RCA-BMG, broadcast performance from Studio 8-H, July 25, 1943

Berlin Philharmonic, Herbert von Karajan, cond. DG, recorded 1976

RCA Italiana Orchestra, Fausto Cleva, cond. RCA-BMG, recorded June 1964

Orchestra Filarmonica della Scala, Riccardo Muti, cond. Sony, recorded Sept. 5-7, 1993

by Ken

The rousing and stirring Overture to Luisa Miller is a piece I adore, and I'm surprised to see that, as far as I can tell, we've never listened to it. I thought we would at least have heard the performance from Tullio Serafin's EMI Italian Opera Overtures disc, but I see now that it's not included on that disc, which could explain it! I've had my copy off the shelf so long that I don't know where it is anyway.)

The Toscanini performance has a scorching intensity I've never heard anyone else even try to get. The Karajan performance (with, of all orchestras, the Berlin Philharmonic -- from a strange set of complete Verdi overtures and preludes I've never had much fondness for) takes the piece in a fairly different direction, and since the Schiller-based Luisa is set in the early-17th-century Tyrol (and even the southern Tirol didn't become Italian until after World War I, and itself isn't all that Italian), perhaps it's not such a demerit that the performance doesn't sound especially Italian.

The piece itself is in a very simple sonata form -- exposition, development, recapitulation, and whirlwind coda -- with the wrinkle that the secondary theme of the exposition, sounded by the solo clarinet, is simply the principal theme switched from the minor to the major -- a hallowed old trick we spotlighted in the December 2011 post "It's the old minor-to-major switcheroo -- courtesy of Mahler, Schubert, and Donizetti."

I could continue plying you with performances of the Luisa Overture, but I think I'll offer just one more: a fine all-purpose job from RCA's 1964 Luisa, the first stereo recording (my goodness, now 50 years old, but holding up very nicely), conducted by that age-old opera-house veteran Fausto Cleva. Well, okay, I threw in one more -- from a Sony Verdi overtures-and-preludes series by Riccardo Muti, to hear the concert version of La Scala's orchstra.


WE'RE ACTUALLY CONTINUING LAST WEEK'S
"GHOST" POST DEVOTED TO VERDI'S DESDEMONA

I began that post with the haunting orchestral prelude to Act IV of Verdi's Otello, asking, "How would you describe the atmosphere? Autere? Melancholy? Solitary? Foreboding?" Here it is again.

Preview 1: Feel free to identify the music -- and, if you can, the conductor

[This post originally appeared in somewhat different form on January 8, 2010. By Sunday it should be clear why I've resurrected it.]



by Ken

Yes, this audio clip is in mono -- and we'll have another one [nope! change of plans -- Ed/] in a second preview tomorrow at 6pm PT/9pm ET, but Sunday's main-post offerings will be all stereo, and for this music, it does matter. For tonight's clip, it was necessary to return to mono years in order to represent this conductor. That might give you a clue as to his identity. (Yes, I'll give you that much: It is a man.)

Many of you will recognize the music, of course. It's hardly obscure. But I'm at least as interested in the reactions of those of you hearing it for the first time.

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Getting through, but not quite finishing with, Mahler's "Songs of a Wayfarer" -- studies in emotional contrasts

Baritone Christian Gerhaher sings the raging, then emotionally wiped-out third of Mahler's Wayfarer Songs, "Ich hab' ein glühend' Messer," at the 2010 Proms in the Royal Albert Hall, with Herbert Blomstedt (age 83) conducting the Mahler Youth Orchestra.

by Ken

Here I was thinking we could cover the four songs of Mahler's Lieder eines farhrenden Gesellen) (Songs of a Wayfarer) in two posts (plus previews). Now it turns out that it's going to stretch to three.

In the first installment we got through the first two songs, "Wenn mein Schatz Hochzeit macht" ("When my darling has her wedding day") and "Ging heut' Morgen übers Feld" ("Went this morning across the field"), which trace -- in an impressionistic rather than narrative way -- the aftermath of the wayfarer's rejected love. Then in Friday night's preview to today's post, we jumped to the great final song, "Die zwei blauen Augen von meinem Schatz" ("The two blue eyes of my darling"), which seems to resolve into some sort of acceptance. Along the way we've listened to the way Mahler recycled the second and fourth songs, or portions thereof, into key portions of the first and third movements of his First Symphony.

Well, we're going to hear the third and fourth songs today, all right. In fact, we've already heard the third, "Ich hab' ein glühend' Messer" ("I have a glowing knife") up top. But we're not going to do much more than that. I'm still struggling with how I want to get just a bit inside "Die zwei blauen Augen." And so I'm going to defer most of that to another time. We will, however, entertain a couple of Schubertian digressions.


SO LET'S HEAR THE FINAL WAYFARER SONG

Preview: From song to symphony -- the journey of Mahler's lonely wayfarer

Thomas Allen sings the second song, "Ging heut' Morgen übers Feld," from Mahler's Songs of a Wayfarer, in a 1991 performance conducted by Václav Neumann. (See below for German and English texts.)

by Ken

As we've already established, Mahler's early symphonies -- through, say, No. 4 -- were intertwined with his song-writing of the period, especially drawing on the folk-poetry collection Des Knaben Wunderhorn (The Youth's Magic Horn). The poems that became his first great song cycle, the Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen (Songs of a Wayfarer), sound like Wunderhorn poems, but they're not -- they're actually the composer's own.

Mahler's First Symphony took shape by an almost indescribably convoluted process -- in other words, pretty much the way all the later symphonies did. And when the dust settled, some of the Wayfarer Songs had found their way into the symphony, most conspicuously the second, "Ging heut' Morgen übers Feld" ("Went this morning across the field"). And here is more or less how that transformation sounds, allowing for the fact that we're skipping a step. By the time the song was pressed into service to provide the exposition of the first movement of the First Symphony, Mahler had already produced an orchestral version of the originally piano-accompanied Wayfarer Songs.

We're going to hear the orchestral version of "Ging heut' Morgen" in the click-through, along with the complete first movement of the First Symphony. For now let's just hear the piano-accompanied version of the song and the incorporation of the song as the symphonic movement's exposition.

MAHLER: Songs of a Wayfarer:
No. 2, "Ging heut' Morgen übers Feld"
("Went this morning across the field")


Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, baritone; Leonard Bernstein, piano. CBS/Sony, recorded in New York, Nov. 4, 1968

MAHLER: Symphony No. 1 in D:
1st movement exposition
New York Philharmonic, Leonard Bernstein, cond. CBS/Sony, recorded Oct. 4 and 22, 1966



Leonard Bernstein conducts the Vienna Philharmonic in this October 1974 performance of the first half of the first movement of Mahler's First Symphony. (The rest of the movement is here. The later movements are also posted.)


FIRST LET'S HEAR THE ORCHESTRAL VERSION OF THE SONG

Sunday Classics: Is Mahler's Sixth Symphony any more "tragic" than life itself?

The conclusion of the 1976 Bernstein-Vienna Phil Andante -- we heard the first half in last night's preview post. The "climactic" section we heard Valery Gergiev whip into a frenzy begins at 3:05 of the clip.

by Ken

Do I have to have an ulterior motive for backing our way into the Mahler Sixth Symphony via the awesomely beautiful Andante we heard in last night's preview? (Just as a reminder, we started -- in Friday night's pre-preview, by listening to the radiant Andante sostenuto of the Brahms First Symphony, played by "Mahler's orchestra," the Vienna Philharmonic, under Sir John Barbirolli in 1967 and Leonard Bernstein in 1981.) Okay, I do have an ulterior motive, but do I have to? Goodness, there's so much I could, and want to, say about this symphony, but instead let me just explain how it came onto this week's Sunday Classics schedule.

It all started with the new 10-CD Sony BMG Classics compendium of 1974-80 Levine-RCA Mahler recordings I mentioned last week I had ordered. The set arrived, and I started listening through it, which was kind of enjoyable, though I can't say I much enjoyed the actual performances. I certainly understood why I'd hardly listened to them again since they were first issued -- and I actually liked some of them better then. It's kind of eerie how little audible concern there is here for how the music gets from one note to the next, which is, oh, about 98 percent of what matters in Mahler's music, and that of most any other composer of consequence, or at least 98 percent of what makes it music instead of just a bunch of notes.

Nevertheless, I was listening through happily enough. The performances contain a fair number of ideas -- no, I'd rather call them "performance choices," since they're really qualities slapped onto musical moments, which don't really rise to the level of "ideas." I got through Nos. 1, 10, 4, 7, and 5 before crashing with No. 6, which seemed to be so far from adding up to any sort of performance of the piece that I had to seek relief in various sorts of actual performances.

My original idea was that a good subject for a post might be the kind of phony-baloney issue that musical dim bulbs like to fixate on instead of trying to deal with the music: the question of the "correct" order of the middle movements of the Mahler Sixth. And that's still what we're going to be looking at. But since we're also going to be hearing the the much larger outer movements as well, as I thought about what to say to you about them, I realized that a different version of this same phony-baloney musical "issue" comes into play: Just how "tragic" is this symphony that Mahler himself dubbed, at least at the time of the premiere, Tragic?


HOW "TRAGIC" IS THE MAHLER SIXTH SYMPHONY?
TO JUDGE FOR YOURSELF, CONTINUE READING

Preview: The Andante of the Sixth Symphony -- the most beautiful movement Mahler ever composed?

If you think the climax of the slow movement of the Mahler Sixth needs to be made "exciting," I guess Valery Gergiev's your man -- here are the final four minutes (beginning at bar 138) of a November 2007 performance with the London Symphony. (Note that he's playing the Andante as the second movement -- i.e., before the Scherzo.)

by Ken

I can't prove to you that Mahler had the gorgeous Andante of the Brahms First Symphony (which we heard in last night's preview) in mind when he composed the Andante of his Sixth, but you'd have to go a long way to convince me that he didn't. Most composers, at least those with a modicum of sense, would shy away from such an exalted precedent; Mahler lived up to it.

The climactic section that we hear in the Gergiev clip above begins at 10:35 in this recording, Leonard Bernstein's first of the Mahler Sixth.

MAHLER: Symphony No. 6 in A minor:
iii. (or maybe ii.) Andante moderato


New York Philharmonic, Leonard Bernstein, cond. Columbia/CBS/Sony, recorded May 1967


TO HEAR MORE OF THIS AMAZING MOVEMENT, READ ON

Preview: Do we need a reason to listen to the radiant Andante sostenuto of Brahms's First Symphony?

Theo Alcantara conducts the Andante sostenuto of the Brahms First Symphony at Festival Casals, San Juan, Puerto Rico, February 2005. (The whole performance is posted.)

by Ken

We've heard the radiant slow movement of Brahms's First Symphony, back in July 2009, though I see that that Karajan clip has been disappeared. Well, tonight we're hearing it again! I don't think we need a reason, but in fact we have one, which will become clear tomorrow night.


FOR MORE OF THIS GLOWING MOVEMENT, READ ON

In the piano concertos, we hear Beethoven in hard-fought sort-of-harmony with the universe

No less than Van Cliburn introduces the piano-playing Serkins, Rudolf (1903-1991) and Peter (born 1947), playing Schubert's four-hand Military March in G, D. 733, No. 2, on the occasion of Serkin père's 85th birthday in 1988, from a 1988 concert featuring 26 pianists, issued by VAI.

"Rudolf Serkin was once asked, jokingly of course, if Beethoven had composed the Choral Fantasy for Marlboro. The piece has everything Marlboro could have wanted for its final concert: an orchestra in which everyone could play; solos within the orchestra; ensemble playing among various instruments; piano solo; and a chorus for everyone else in the Marlboro community. Rudolf Serkin responded, with his characteristic smile, 'No, Beethoven didn't compose it for Marlboro.... But he approves.'"

-- from a 2000 Amazon.com comment by Christopher Serkin
on a two-CD Marlboro Festival 50th-anniversary release

by Ken

What Christopher Serkin, a distinguished law professor, discreetly doesn't mention here -- though his last name is certainly suggestive -- is that Rudolf Serkin, a co-founder of the Marlboro Music Festival who was for decades its presiding artistic spirit -- was his grandfather, and Peter Serkin, whom he later mentions conducts the Choral Fantasy performance included in this Marlboro anniversary issue, is his uncle. (Peter Serkin, while a dramatically different sort of musician from his father, established himself at an early age as one of the leading pianists of his generation. It's kind of weird, for me at least, to think that young Peter is now in his 60s.)

Not many serious music people take the Choral Fantasy seriously, and for a long time I didn't get either. At some point the pieces fell into place, and that was thanks mostly to Rudolf Serkin's recordings. However, I was unaccountably unaware of something Christopher Serkin points out in his comment: "For almost 40 years, the Choral Fantasy was the last piece in the last [Marlboro Festival] concert of the summer." He goes on:

Especially in recent years when Marlboro has been exclusively a chamber music festival, the Choral Fantasy was the one time during the summer when all of the chamber musicians would come together into an orchestra, and the results were invariably magical. In any given year, the orchestra would include a mixture of some of the great luminaries of the musical world playing alongside brilliant younger musicians -- soloists and chamber musicians briefly forming an orchestra. For that one moment, it could be the greatest orchestra in the world. . . .

Despite all of the remarkable Choral Fantasy performances over the years, this CD marks the first time that a Marlboro recording of the piece has been released. Whatever one's view of the work itself, it represents Marlboro to many of us who have spent summers there.

[Note: You know where Amazon asks, at the end of each "customer review," "Was this review helpful to you?" When I looked, "27 out of 28 people found the following review helpful." I made it 28 out of 29. I'm wondering what the deal is with the person who didn't find this review helpful.]

We're going to talk more about the piece later. For now, let's just plunge into Serkin's first recording, made in 1962 as the second-side LP filler for his new recording of the Beethoven Third Concerto with Leonard Bernstein and the New York Philharmonic.

BEETHOVEN: Fantasy in C for Piano, Chorus, and Orchestra, Op. 80

The most obvious observation to be made is that the Choral Fantasy of 1808 (thus at roughly the time of the Sixth Symphony, the Pastoral is a dry run for the monumental finale of the Ninth Symphony, which culminates in a setting of Schiller's Ode to Joy including four vocal soloists and chorus, composed more than a decade later. As in the finale of the Ninth, Beethoven takes us through a winding, surprise-filled landscape before we reach the unexpected choral destination. Wikipedia has German and English texts in a pleasantly sympathetic article on the Choral Fantasy. Here's Decca's translation:

Enticingly fair and lovely sound
the harmonies of our life,
and from a sense of beauty arise
glowers that bloom forever.

Peace and joy flow hand in hand
like the changing play of the waves;
what was crowded together in chaos and hostility
now shapes itself into exalted feeling.

When music's enchantment reigns
and poetry's consecration speaks,
wondrous things take shape;
night and storm change to light.

Outer peace, inner bliss
are the rulers of the happy man.
But the spring sun of the arts
causes light to flow from both.

Great things that have penetrated the heart
blossom anew and beautifully on high,
and the spirit that has soared up
is always echoed by a chorus of spirits.

Take them, then, you noble souls,
gladly, these gifts of noble art.
When love and strength are wedded together
mankind is rewarded with divine grace.

Rudolf Serkin, piano; Westminster Choir, New York Philharmonic, Leonard Bernstein, cond. Columbia/CBS/Sony, recorded May 1, 1962

THERE'S SOMETHING SPECIAL ABOUT
BEETHOVEN'S FIVE PIANO CONCERTOS

It may be with his five piano concertos that Beethoven's link to Mozart feels most direct. They were written more than anything for the composers' own use, as exceedingly public demonstrations of what they could do. The concerto we know as Beethoven's Second could be one that Mozart never lived to write.

(Let's get the numbering straight: No, I'm not concerned about the earlier concerto or two Beethoven wrote. The "canon" is appropriately five concertos. But the first two have come down to us numbered wrong. The one we know as No. 2, which could pass for a concerto Mozart never lived to write, was composed first, and then "No. 1," the mighty C major Concerto, which recalls Mozart's grandest concerto, No. 25, also in C major, and expands it yet another step.)

The C major Concerto is thought to have been written in 1798 and revised in 1800, whereupon Beethoven seems to have set to work almost immediately on a companion piece in C minor, which also has an illustrious antecedent in Mozart's No. 24. We've already heard the finale of Beethoven's C minor Concerto. Let's listen now to the whole thing, in what I'm calling an "all-Rubinstein performance," assembled from his first three recordings of the piece. (I didn't consider using the fourth, from his third and final Beethoven concerto cycle, from 1975, with his young keyboard colleague Daniel Barenboim conducting, which I actually quite like, for all the evidence of Rubinstein's advancing age. But I don't have it on CD, which I guess says something about just how much I like it, at least relative to the earlier versions.)

BEETHOVEN: Piano Concerto No. 3 in C minor, Op. 37
ALL-RUBINSTEIN PERFORMANCE

i. Allegro con brio

Arthur Rubinstein, piano; Symphony of the Air, Josef Krips, cond. RCA/BMG, recorded April 1956
ii. Largo
https://archive.org/embed/BeethovenPianoConcertoNo.3LargorubinsteinLeinsdorf
Arthur Rubinstein, piano; Boston Symphony Orchestra, Erich Leinsdorf, cond. RCA/BMG, recorded Apr. 5-6, 1965
iii. Rondo: Allegro

Arthur Rubinstein, piano; NBC Symphony Orchestra, Arturo Toscanini, cond. RCA/BMG, recorded live, Oct. 29, 1944

ABOUT THE THIRD CONCERTO'S LINEAGE

You don't have to take my word -- listen for yourself. It seemed obvious to go with hour honorees Rubinstein and Serkin (and then, which of their recordings?), so I just picked one of each.

MOZART: Piano Concerto No. 24 in C minor, K. 491:
i. Allegro

Rudolf Serkin, piano; London Symphony Orchestra, Claudio Abbado, cond. DG, recorded October 1985

BEETHOVEN: Piano Concerto No. 1 in C, Op. 15:
i. Allegro con brio

Rudolf Serkin, piano; Boston Symphony Orchestra, Seiji Ozawa, cond. Telarc, recorded Oct. 5, 1983

Here, then, is an "all-star" performance of the Third Concerto.

BEETHOVEN: Piano Concerto No. 3 in C minor, Op. 37
ALL-STAR PERFORMANCE

i. Allegro con brio

Murray Perahia, piano; Concertgebouw Orchestra, Bernard Haitink, cond. CBS/Sony, recorded c1985
ii. Largo

Sviatoslav Richter, piano; Vienna Symphony Orchestra, Kurt Sanderling, cond. DG, recorded Sept. 28-30, 1962
iii. Rondo: Allegro

Rudolf Firkusny, piano; Philharmonia Orchestra, Walter Süsskind, cond. EMI, recorded c1958

We've already talked about the remarkable opening of Beethoven's Fourth Concerto, in last night's preview, so why don't we just go right into it? Note that the scale of the concluding Rondo has grown conspicuously over its predecessor, but between these mammoth outer movements, Beethoven chose to go short with the slow movement, which is nevertheless a piece of considerable emotional weight. Our "all-Schnabel performance" consists of one movement from each of Since Artur Schnabel's three recordings (about which more in a moment).

BEETHOVEN: Piano Concerto No. 4 in G major, Op. 58
ALL-SCHNABEL PERFORMANCE

i. Allegro moderato

Artur Schnabel, piano; London Philharmonic Orchestra, Malcolm Sargent, cond. HMV/EMI, recorded Feb. 16, 1933
ii. Andante con moto

Artur Schnabel, piano; Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Frederick Stock, cond. RCA/BMG, recorded 1942
iii. Rondo: Vivace

Artur Schnabel, piano; Philharmonia Orchestra, Issay Dobrowen, cond. HMV/EMI, recorded June 5-7, 1946

Schnabel's 1932-35 Beethoven concerto cycle remains a recording landmark, not just historically but musically, and again -- as with the Pearl transfers of the equally legendary Beethoven sonata recordings -- my piano maven Leo tipped me off to one transfer from the 78s that's so far superior to any other he's heard as to make it an all-or-nothing proposition. This one, however, is readily available: It's Naxos's, done by Mark Obert-Thorn.

THE LATER SCHNABEL BEETHOVEN CONCERTOS

In 1946-47 EMI had the excellent idea of rerecording Schnabel in the Beethoven concertos, taking advantage of all the improvements in recording technology, and two concertos were recorded each year. (In 1942, as we know, Schnabel had rerecorded No. 4 with the Chicago Symphony under Frederick Stock. They also recorded No. 5, the Emperor. Schnabel never did rerecord No. 1.)

Even though Schnabel was still Schnabel -- and it should be said that, while he put up with it, he hated the recording process -- and two very good conductors, Issay Dobrowen and Alceo Galliera, were engaged (though Galliera, who was brought in for the 1947 Emperor, was only 37, and possibly more influenceable if anyone had wished to influence him), not many music lovers have ever been wildly enthusiastic about the remakes, which objectively seem like Schnabel performances but just don't seem to have the inner life of the real thing. (This sounds horribly pat coming so soon after my vicious attack on Walter Legge for systematically draining outstanding musicians' recorded performances of the connective tissue that made their real performances sound so different, but the symptoms do seem to fit. Do I have to tell you who produced those 1946-47 recordings?

With that, let's have one final go at the Fourth Concerto:

BEETHOVEN: Piano Concerto No. 4 in G major, Op. 58
ALL-STAR PERFORMANCE

i. Allegro moderato

Leon Fleisher, piano; Cleveland Orchestra, George Szell, cond. Epic/CBS/Sony, recorded Jan. 10, 1959
ii. Andante con moto

Wilhelm Kempff, piano; Berlin Philharmonic, Ferdinand Leitner, cond. DG, recorded July 1961
iii. Rondo: Vivace

Emil Gilels, piano; Philharmonia Orchestra, Leopold Ludwig, cond. EMI, recorded Apr. 26-May 1, 1957

THE LINE ENDS WITH THE EMPEROR

After the Fourth Concerto, Beethoven did return to the piano concerto once more, to produce the grandest and most majestic of the series, the Emperor. It's possible that this is as far as he could have taken the concerto form, but we'll never know, because although his voluminous musical sketchbooks do contain sketches for a sixth concerto, it was never written, and apparently for the simplest of reasons: The composer's hearing had deteriorated to the point where public performance with an orchestra was no longer a realistic possibility.

His most remarkable music was yet to be written, and in a quantity that seems astonishing under the circumstances. But it was increasingly music that he heard only in his head, and not surprisingly his gaze turned increasingly inward. He also had increasingly less need of a form that enabled him to express harmony, however hard-fought, with the universe.

TO RETURN FINALLY TO THE CHORAL FANTASY

Though its opus number is higher, the Choral Fantasy was written shortly before the Emperor, and while it can seem like a wild hodgepodge, to its admirers its wildness is one of its glories.

I'm not going to attempt a detailed analysis. Wikipedia's article, as I noted earlier, does a surprisingly effective job of it. I'm just going to suggest a way of listening to it, focusing on the hysterically overwrought piano solo that occupies roughly the first four minutes.

I think it's important to recognize that it is overwrought. I've just been listening to Vladimir Ashkenazy's self-conducted recording, which rounds out the Beethoven concerto cycle from which we heard the first movement of the Fourth Concerto last night. Ashkenazy plays the music with the utmost beauty; I'm quite sure I've never heard it played with this roundness and finish of tone. He makes it all sound quite logical, quite reasonable, and really rather unintersting, even pointless. Not surprisingly, his performance really has nowhere to go from there.

I don't want to suggest anything quite as extreme as "parody," but there is definitely the sense of a grand orator, a rhetorician trying desperately to express matters too grand and important to be readily within reach, at least at this particular moment, and coming off as maybe slightly hysterical. I'm not sure I would go so far as to suggest that it's even "humorous," but surely there is something going on in the innards of this solo, which doesn't seem able to figure out where it's trying to get let alone how to get there. The word "ironic" comes to mind, or maybe better "laconic."

And here we're in terrain where Rudolf Serkin ruled. I know I'm risking accusations of gross ethnic stereotyping, but I don't think of Germans as being an especially humorous people. Oh sure, there are funny Germans, but by and large it doesn't seem to be a trait that comes quite naturally. But irony, laconic-ness (laconicity?), a sense of the wry -- this is something that is far from uncommon among cultured Germans, and this I sense Serkin had a large supply of. Attitudinally, in other words, I think he was born to champion the Choral Fantasy.

BEETHOVEN: Fantasy in C for Piano, Chorus, and Orchestra, Op. 80


Rudolf Serkin, piano; Nan Nall (s), Beverly Morgan (ms), Shirley Close (ms), Gene Tucker (t), Sanford Sylvan (b), David Evitts (b), Marlboro Festival Chorus and Orchestra, Peter Serkin, cond. Sony, recorded live, Aug. 9, 1981

When the orchestra finally makes its relatively inconspicuous entrance, there's a sort of sense that it's extending a hand, trying to guide the piano gently back from the precipice. And sure enough, with a little working out the piano is able to get it together enough to announce, now with some confidence, the simple, charming little ditty that will eventually provide the grand vocal finale in the way that the dittylike "Ode to Joy" tune later would in the finale of the Ninth Symphony. Whereupon the orchestra takes up the tune for a set of quite charming variations, at first with minimal contribution from the piano, which eventually rallies to make its own contribution.

As I mentioned last night, there is now a fourth commercially issued Serkin recording of the Choral Fantasy, with Orfeo's release of the Beethoven concerto cycle he did in 1977 with Rafael Kubelik and the Bavarian Radio Symphony, which included the Choral Fantasy. Now that I know it exists, I'll be watching for a copy that falls within my "cheapskate" price range, but for the moment you're spared.

We do have one last recording, though, and this one has the best singers and chorus.

BEETHOVEN: Fantasy in C for Piano, Chorus, and Orchestra, Op. 80


Rudolf Serkin, piano; Faye Robinson (s), Mary Burgess (s), Lili Chookasian (c), Kenneth Riegel (t), David Gordon (b), Julien Robbins (bs); Tanglewood Festival Chorus, Boston Symphony Orchestra, Seiji Ozawa, cond. Telarc, recorded Oct. 2 and 4, 1982


REVIEWING THIS WEEK'S PREVIEWS

Friday: Beethoven and the "heart of the piano concerto"
Rondo from Piano Concerto No. 3 played by Arthur Rubinstein, with the Symphony of the Air under Josef Krips); also by Krystian Zimerman (video, with the Vienna Philharmonic under Leonard Bernstein) and by Evgeny Kissin (with the London Symphony under Sir Colin Davis). Plus Rubinstein "Beethoven bonus": Moonlight Sonata.

Saturday: Down in the basement with Beethoven
1st movement of Concerto No. 4, played by Artur Schnabel, with the Chicago Symphony under Frederick Stock (1942); also by Claudio Arrau (video, with the Philadelphia Orchestra under Riccardo Muti), by Arthur Rubinstein (with the Symphony of the Air under Krips), and by Vladimir Ashkenazy (also conducting the Cleveland Orchestra). Plus Schnabel "Beethoven bonuses": Sonata No. 27 in E minor, Op. 90; Bagatelle, Für Elise.


SUNDAY CLASSICS POSTS

The current list is here.

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