45 seconds' worth of musicI can't get out of my head

We've heard it before (and we're going to hear it again)

Technically, it's not really even part of a movement of the Mendelssohn E minor Violin Concerto, these 14 bars of Allegretto non tanto which provide a transitional bridge from the sublime central Andante to the romping rondo (as announced in the Allegro molto vivace above). I'm used to having the Andante seize control of me -- but this little Allegretto non troppo?

by Ken

Okay, I admit I was having a little fun with the part about our having "a soloist and conductor so closely in sync," but I wasn't kidding about "the conductor [having] the orchestra not just phrasing but practically breathing with the soloist."


LAST WEEK WE HEARD IT TACKED ONTO THE ANDANTE

ii. Andante -- Allegretto non tanto

Utah Symphony Orchestra, Joseph Silverstein, violin and cond. Pro Arte, recorded in Symphony Hall, Salt Lake City, Nov. 19 & 21, 1983

And I wrote this about it:

"No, don't crank up the volume at the start! Our soloist is really choosing to play this music -- which I sometimes think just may be the most beautiful ever written -- so, er, confidentially. There's plenty of presence in the sound; I'd describe it as quite intense; the soloist just isn't going to make a display of it. Meanwhile the conductor has the orchestra not just phrasing but practically breathing with the soloist. How often do you get a soloist and conductor so closely in sync?"

NOW LET'S BACK UP A BIT -- INTO THE ANDANTE --
AND LET IT RUN THROUGH TO THE END OF THE RONDO

end of ii. Andante -- Allegretto non troppo [at 1:05] --
iii. Allegro molto vivace [at 1:51]

Joseph Silverstein, violin, with the Utah Symphony (credits as above)


WE'VE ACTUALLY HEARD A BUNCH OF PERFORMANCES
OF THE ANDANTE OF THE MENDELSSOHN CONCERTO

And in a number of cases I stopped the clip at the end of what I would call "the Andante proper." No reason for this than I can recall -- I think it just hadn't occurred to me to be sure to tack on the Allegretto non tanto. Very possibly I was thinking that such a hanging-in-mid-air ending would be bad form for our listening experience, and only later came to realize that this very up-in-the-airness teaches us a lesson about the structure of the concerto.

Glancing back over the BSO's concertmaster path from 1962

When Erich Leinsdorf (center) became BSO music director in 1962, he engaged Joseph Silverstein as concertmaster; two years later he hired away Cleveland's principal cellist, Jules Eskin. Both long outlasted him -- Silverstein until 1984, Eskin until his death, at 85, in November 2016.

TCHAIKOVSKY: Swan Lake: Act II, Dance of the Swans - Pas d'action (Odette and the Prince; 2nd Dance of the Swan Queen)

Bernard Zighera, harp; Joseph Silverstein, violin [at 1:20]; Jules Eskin, cello [at 4:55]; Boston Symphony Orchestra, Seiji Ozawa, cond. DG, recorded in Symphony Hall, November 1978

by Ken

One measure of an orchestra's greatness is its principals, and we just heard the 1978-vintage Boston Symphony putting on quite a show -- one after the other after the other. I think we can hear then-music director Seiji Ozawa having a ball with the range of choices, both bold and intimate, made possible by his soloists' instrumental prowess and creative imagination, knowing too that pretty much anything he can think to ask of them, they can give him. Of course the same thing applies to the orchestra as a whole.

By 1978 Joseph Silverstein and Jules Eskin had been making music together for 14 years, not just as fellow orchestra principals but as fellow founding members of the Boston Symphony Chamber Players in 1964. (Was the prospect of Leinsdorf's plan for the BSCP part of the lure that brought Jules E. to Boston from Cleveland?) They remained as foundations of Seiji Ozawa's BSO, and Jules would wind up teaming up with Joseph S.'s successor, Malcolm Lowe, even longer than he had with Joseph S. (in the post-to-come we'll hear him paired with both); he was still on the job when current music director Andris Nelsons took the reins (in 2013 as music director designate, in 2014 as music director).

Harpist Bernard Zighera [right] dates way farther back, to the early years of the Koussevitzky era, having been imported from Paris in 1926 to be in place when the harp principalship opened, two years later. For his first 17 years he was the orchestra's pianist as well. (When he had to choose, and chose to retain his harp position, his piano duties were taken over in 1943 by a young Koussevitzky protégé name of Leonard Bernstein.)

So we're all on the same page, let me note that we're picking up from last week's "The BSO's soon-to-be-seated new concertmaster, 'the other Nathan,' is only its 4th in the last 104 years," but the plans I had for a survey of the concertmaster succession from Joseph Silverstein to Malcolm Lowe to the incoming Nathan Cole have kept turning and twisting and been obstinate about resisting forward movement. So I got the idea of this sort of transitional post where we'll get to listen to a lot of nice music. Never mind that very little of it was in the plans and so had to be worked up from scratch.


WE'RE GOING TO RETURN TO SWAN LAKE IN THE POST-
TO-COME. FOR NOW LET'S JUST ENJOY SOME LISTENING

The BSO's soon-to-be-seated new concertmaster, 'the other Nathan,' is only its 4th in the last 104 years

"We had immense pleasure collaborating with Nathan last January on Shostakovich’s Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk."

-- from Boston Symphony music director Andris Nelsons's statement
on the naming of Nathan Cole as the orchestra's new concertmaster

"I feel fortunate to have known two people who held the position before me, Malcolm Lowe and Joseph Silverstein. Silverstein [pictured at right, c2008] was one of my idols, and I grew up with many of the Boston Symphony Chamber Players recordings. Any time that I had to learn a piece, BSCP would have a recording of it with Silverstein leading, so I had his sound in my ear early on and was lucky to get to work with him before he passed away. He was extremely generous with his time and wisdom. He took himself seriously enough to continue working on his craft all the way through the end of his life. But I always got the sense that he knew he was a custodian of the position, and that everything he did was for his colleagues and for the music, and that’s something that I want to carry forward." -- from Nathan C.'s statement (same link)

In October 2017, preparing for his first performance of the Beethoven Violin Concerto, Nathan C. video-recorded his choice for the first-movement cadenza, by "one of my heroes," Nathan Milstein (1904-1992). Nathan C. is playing the 1716 Strad formerly owned by Nathan M., which he had on loan for the occasion, an experience he detailed in a genuinely must-read account for Violinist.com: "Speed-dating a Strad: one week with Milstein's ex."

Welcome to natesviolin.com! Mentoring the next generations of violinists has been a longtime passion of the BSO's new concertmaster. An abundance of videos can be found online, and NatesViolin.com provides a wealth of resources and support for aspiring violinists as well as considerable interest for music lovers with curiosity about the nuts 'n' bolts of the medium (not to mention failed -- or shall we say "unaspiring"? -- fiddlers).

by Ken

I know that's a mouthful of a quote I've reproduced above from Nathan Cole on his appointment as BSO concertmaster. I expected to edit it down to a "tease" here, as I did with Andris Nelsons's statement, which we'll be reading in full later. But the danged quote just wouldn't edit down. I loved it when I first read it, and after several weeks of poking around Nathan C.'s career and gathering materials for some sort of overview of the succession of these three concertmasters, I'm even more impressed -- and touched. (I have pretty high regard for Joseph Silverstein myself.) And I felt even more strongly that the quote needs to be taken in one fell swoop. One thing you learn about Nathan C. is that not only is he highly knowing and communicative as a musician (we're going to be coming back to that 2017 performance of the Beethoven Concerto), but he's remarkably communicative with words.

If you were here for last week's SC pre-post, "At home with Nathan and Akiko (aka 'Stand partners for life')," you already heard Nathan C., at the time first associate concertmaster of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, "pre-performing" his choice of a third-movement cadenza, Fritz Kreisler's, for that October 2017 performance of the Beethoven Violin Concerto. We'll come back to that performance, but first I guess we should focus on the not-quite-breaking news.

When the Boston Symphony launches its Tanglewood season on July 5, with an all-Beethoven program under music director Andris Nelsons (who this year takes on the added role of Tanglewood "head of conducting"), the orchestra will at last have a new occupant for the Charles Munch Chair, which is to say the concertmaster's seat -- named of course for the BSO's 1949-62 music director [pictured at right]. The Charles Munch Chair hasn't been filled since 35-year incumbent Malcolm Lowe retired after the 2019 Tanglewood season. (The onset of the pandemic can't have had a salutary effect on the replacement process.)


THE ANNOUNCEMENT OF MALCOLM LOWE'S RETIREMENT . . .

At home with Nathan and Akiko(aka "Stand Partners for Life"*)

*"Stand Partners for Life": Check out Nathan and Akiko's podcast

LA Phil Home Recitals: Nathan Cole & Akiko Tarumoto
[For now you'll have to trust me that there's a reason why we're interested just now. -- Ed.]

Nathan and Akiko introduce themselves and the music, then --
[at 0:55] Wieniawski: Étude-Caprice, Op. 18, No. 2: Andante

And then -- Étude-Caprice, Op. 18, No. 4: Tempo di Saltarella,
ma non troppo vivo

[from their May 2020 LA Phil Home Recital]

by Ken

Back in early pandemic days, like their Los Angeles Philharmonic colleagues first associate concertmaster Nathan Cole and assistant concertmaster Akiko Tarumoto (or, as Nathan has put it in at least one introduction: "No. 2 and No. 4" among the LA Phil first violins) were on their own with their three children at home, and for the online series of "LA Phil Home Recitals" served up this potion of home-brewed music: Nos. 2 and 4 of Henryk (aka Henri) Wieniawski's Op. 18 set of eight Études-Caprices.

The Études-Caprices, as Nathan notes, were written as essentially violin solos with the accompaniment of a second violin, so he and Akiko have done some rearranging to allot equal measures of "good stuff" to the two parts. My original intention was to pluck out one of the two pieces, and I duly made a clip of No. 4, the sparkling Tempo di Saltarella. But it just seemed wrong to jump into it without the setup of the lovely Andante of No. 2 -- so there they both are.


OH, AND HERE'S NATHAN PLAYING "HOME RECITAL" BACH

BACH: Solo Violin Sonata No. 1 in G minor, S. 1001:
i. Adagio

"I'd like to play for you the first movement of Bach's First Sonata for Solo Violin in G minor. Now this is a piece I've played my whole life. It was the very first solo Bach that I ever learned. I'm sure I was 10 or 11 years old, way before I could understand the music of Bach. But I've had my ups and downs with it ever since. I've always loved this music dearly, but I've had some scary moments too. One recital that I played -- this very movement, I got about three lines in, and I had no idea what came next! So, very embarrassing, I had to just stop, start over, and when I got to that spot again, I thought it was going to happen again! Then miraculously I remembered the next notes! So, I'm going to hope that doesn't happen here! I always loved playing solo Bach, and I'm overjoyed to be able to share this music with you during this time. Thanks!"

[from his April 2020 "LA Phil Home Recital" -- watch here]

WHY JUST NOW DO WE CARE ABOUT NATHAN AND AKIKO?

We now hear our "elite" violin concertos in their entirety

As we edge forward with our Mendelssohn "sidebar" -- as I just explained -- it's time to hear these concertos in full.

[TUESDAY UPDATE: You might watch for updates to this post, like the one I just added for the Brahms Concerto.]

Last week ("Rondomania: A quick hit at violin-concerto rondo finales looking back from Mendelssohn to Mozart and Beethoven and ahead to Brahms and Sibelius"), pursuing the Mendelssohn "sidebar" that grew out of the Nov. 28 post "One Sunday afternoon in
August 1943 in Carnegie Hall . . .," we listened to the great chain of violin concertos with rondo finales stretching out before and after Mendelssohn. I said at the time that I'd really like to be able to present those concertos in full. Well, here they are!

This all still needs to be integrated with a mostly written first part that continues the Mendelssohnian thread. And probably it should be improved in all sorts of other ways. I wouldn't hold my breath about that part, though. -- Ken

AGAIN, WE REALLY HAVE TO START WITH MOZART

In our original consideration of the place of the rondo finale in the line of the great violin concertos, we started with Mozart --

• not because he invented either the violin concerto or the rondo or even the use of the rondo in violin (and other) concertos, which he didn't, but because he grasped the possibilities of this combination in a way, or ways, that made it stick.

• and not because Mozart's violin concertos, taken on their own, are equivalent in stature to the line of violin concertos they did so much to inspire. The form -- the Classical concerto, that is, not to be confused with the Baroque one -- was still too new to aspire to that stature. (Thank you once again, Herr Beethoven.)

Not that the three "mature" concertos (which followed with scarcely any separation from the not-yet-mature ones) can't still hold their own on a concert platform. But you kind of feel that the audience needs at minimum a somewhat bigger kick, and the performer has to put out a portion more to earn his/her fee. So, with no disrespect to any of these much-loved works, I'm thinking of them maybe more as a collective than as separate entires in our violin-concerto sweepstakes. (If it were piano concertos we were tracking, I'm not sure I would take the same position. But Mozart's piano concertos come from a more developed stage of his creative energies. There are at least half a dozen Mozart piano concertos I'd consider worthy of inclusion in such a survey.

BUT: We're skipping the Mozart Violin Concertos Nos. 1-2

Continuing with our Mendelssohn "sidebar," moving backwards through the E minor Violin Concerto we reach the 2nd movement

-- from Classic FM

Jascha Heifetz, violin; Boston Symphony Orchestra, Charles Munch, cond. RCA, recorded in Symphony Hall, Feb. 23 & 25, 1959

Arthur Grumiaux, violin; New Philharmonia Orchestra, Jan Krenz, cond. Philips, recorded September 1972

Johanna Martzy, violin; Philharmonia Orchestra, Wolfgang Sawallisch, cond. EMI, recorded in Kingsway Hall, June 9-10, 1954

Yehudi Menuhin, violin; Philharmonia Orchestra, Efrem Kurtz, cond. EMI, recorded in Abbey Road Studio No. 1, April 1958

by Ken

I know, I know, this is a heckuva way of doing things. Midnight came and went, with a column called Sunday Classics, which thereby purports to appear on, you know, effing Sunday, and there was midnight, or rather there went midnight, and I was still making more audio files, presumably in some sort of effort to illustrate some kind of point -- God-only-knows what kind. (Probably not even God knows, but only because He has more useful things to worry about and doesn't care. Can anyone blame Him?) All I can say about this way of doing things is that I plan to figure out a better one and have it at the top of my "to do" list. I bet it'll be up and running by next week. I feel sure of it.

Well, pretty sure.

Only wait! There is a point here. In recent times I've been making increasingly frequent references to "what it is we're looking for in music" (or, really, any other art form), why we get involved with it, what we think it can do for and to us, and what it actually can do for and to us. And here in these 7-8 minutes of gorgeous musical outpouring are the answers. Why we're here, what it's all about, what we hope and dream, what challenges and sorrows us, how we nevertheless persevere. It's all there. Of course it's all still in musical form, so we still have to decipher it.

And of course a significant part of the musical genius is that it can provide such overwhelming beauty-in-sound as it offers up its secrets. It can do so even when the news it bears isn't happy -- or even is out-and-out tragic. And nobody does this better than Jascha Heifetz, as we can hear in his Mendelssohn Andante. Or note the even more arrestingly beautiful tone of Arthur Grumiaux, and the seemingly unconditional openness and forthrightness.

If you're not familiar with Johanna Martzy, her Andante is a splendid sample of the deep introspection and passion she served up in a career that somehow never measured up to her abundant gifts. And I encourage you to check out a deeply knowledgeable and understanding 2018 appreciation by Sudip Bose in The American Scholar, marred only by the off-putting -- no, let's call it what it is, "repulsive" -- title, "The Cult of Johanna Martzy." There really is a Martzy cult, as he describes in pungent detail at the outset: a cult of record collectors who pay mind-boggling prices for original issues of her sadly limited recorded output, prices based mostly on rarity rather than artistic merit. But the meat of the piece is precisely Martzy's considerable and singular artistic merit. (I was intrigued by Bose's enormous enthusiasm for her recording of the Dvořák Violin Concerto that I searched it out online, and was impressed enough that we're going to hear it in our violin-concerto survey.

Here's a sample. Our little clip begins with a brief but grabbing slow section that probably sounds to most listeners like a newly begun slow second movement. In fact, this little section marked "Andante moderato" is a kind of postlude to the first movement, or maybe just the start of a transitional section.


Johanna Martzy, violin; RIAS Symphony Orchestra (Berlin), Ferenc Fricsay, cond. DG, recorded in the Jesus-Christus-Kirche, June 1953


SPEAKING OF THE "ELITE"-VIOLIN-CONCERTO, THAT'S WHERE
WE'VE BEEN HEADING. MAYBE WE SHOULD JUST DIVE RIGHT IN!

Rather than tack it on to this post, I'm going to just leave it in the form it's been parked in, and direct you there from here.

(Maybe one more little pre-post?)No, these 14 bars aren't The Most Beautiful Music Ever Written; they're what comes right after it

Yes, we're still in "sidebar" mode from the Nov.28 post,
"One Sunday afternoon in August 1943 in Carnegie Hall"

We've already had a sidebar prompted by the opening work on that 1943 New York Philharmonic "Summer Broadcast Concert" program conducted by Fritz Reiner, the Overture to Dmitri Kabalevsky's opera Colas Breugnon ("Fun with Dmitri Kabalevsky," Dec. 5), in which we heard delicious compact concertos for violin, cello, and piano played by, respectively, David Oistrakh, Daniel Shafran, and Emil Gilels, with the composer conducting. And on Dec. 12 we edged forward with a "Pre-post to the upcoming post, 'Sidebars: (2) Mendelssohn and (4) More Mendelssohn'" -- mostly inspired by the second work on the August 1943 program, the Mendelssohn E minor Violin Concerto, which we heard in a recording made by Columbia in 1945 with the 1943 soloist, Nathan Milstein, rejoining the Philharmonic in Carnegie Hall, this time conducted by Bruno Walter. -- Ken

We have 8 performances by 4 violinists (from fastest to slowest):

[1] April 1944, violinist = age 43

[2] February 1959, violinist = age 58

[3] April 1935, violinist = age 60

[4] May 1945, violinist = age 41

[5] October 1949, violinist = age 41

[6] December 1955, violinist = age 47

[7] March 1973, violinist = age 69

[8] December 1926, violinist = age 51


by Ken

What we see and hear above is a mere 14 bars of music, music I'd heard, oh, probably a million times before it suddenly lodged in my head and wouldn't shake loose. As suggested in the post title, it follows immediately some music that's quite special to me -- music that in fact once did pretty much the same thing to me, back when I'd only heard it maybe a half-million times. But that at least was a whole movement, albeit not a terribly long one. Still, this is only a snippety 14 for-gosh-sakes bars.

So what I've done is gather these eight performances by four well-known violinists of the past, all long gone now -- the last survivor from the group left us in December 1992, and from this remove in time they probably all seem impossibly, even ridiculously ancient. Yet there are distinctions to be made. The oldest of them was a full 26 years older than the next-oldest. In fact, exactly 26 years older, as they shared a birthday, and I think it's fair to say that each was in turn the most famous violinist of his time. In fact, the older led the cheering for the wizardly upstart who had arrived to displace him.

The age gap matters. I think you'll instantly hear a stylistic difference between him and the younger men, who were born within an eight-year period of each other. And there's not just an age difference. One of our chaps hailed from Vienna, the other three from what we might call borderlands of the Soviet empire -- one from Lithuania, the other two from Ukraine (both from Odessa, actually).

The performances, you'll note, are arranged from fastest to slowest, though I can't claim scientific precision for my clip-making or -measuring. The three performances in the 46-47-second range can be considered a dead heat, for example. But note the gap between the two fastest peformances and the others, and for that matter between the slowest one and the others.

When we resume, we're going to have our eight perfomances again, this time all properly identified. And then we're going to call on our fiddlers four to answer the question these 14 hallowed bars so powerfully prompt.

Pre-post to the upcoming post, "Sidebars: (2) Mendelssohn and (4) More Mendelssohn" -- in our series "One Sunday afternoon in August 1943 in Carnegie Hall . . . "

MONDAY EVENING UPDATE: Without quite intending it, I wound up giving this "pre-post" an overhaul, especially as regards the sequence of Mendelssohn excerpts at the end, which I'd assembled before posting with a speed that startled me, but at the expense of proper consideration of its explanatory requirements. I think we're way better prepared now to proceed to the post that this pre-post is supposed to set up. I just have to produce it. -- Ken

Columbia Masterworks' ML 4001 (1948), "the first classical long-playing record, and the first 12" LP of any kind" (per Wikipedia), was a rerelease of the May 1945 recording -- issued on 78s the year it was made -- of the Mendelssohn Concerto by Nathan Milstein, Bruno Walter, and the New York Philharmonic, which we first heard two weeks ago as a substitute for Milstein's August 1943 NY Phil broadcast performance with Fritz Reiner.

i. Allegro molto passionato
ii. Andante [at 11:06]
iii. Allegretto non troppo -- Allegro molto vivace [at 18:58]


Nathan Milstein, violin; New York Philharmonic, Bruno Walter, cond. Columbia, recorded in Carnegie Hall, May 16, 1945

by Ken

To catch up: We're enmeshed in a series of posts with the overall title "One Sunday afternoon in August 1943 in Carnegie Hall . . . ," which began on Nov. 28 with "Part 1: The concert." Part 2 was originally intended to present a series of "sidebars" to the concert post, which unfortunately turned out to be not amenable to single-post containment. As some readers will recall, the concert in question, by the New York Philharmonic under Fritz Reiner, on August 15, 1943, comprised three works: the Overture to Dmitiri Kabalevsky's first opera, Colas Breugnon; the Mendelssohn E minor Vioiin Concerto, with soloist Nathan Milstein; and the Shostakovich Sixth Symphony.

Last week we got as far as the Colas Breugnon sidebar, "(1) Fun with Dmitri Kabalevsky." (And even that post, I have to own, remains incomplete as of this writring. I haven't yet gotten to the promised follow-up insert music and performance thoughts prompted by the composer-conducted recordings we heard of Kabalevsky's Opp. 48-50: concertos for, respectively, violin, cello (No. 1, of two), and piano (No. 3, of four).

Which brings us to this week's installment, still under construction, with the working title "Sidebars: (2) Mendelssohn and (4) More Mendelssohn," leaving us still with one sidebar to come, "Sidebar (3)," which will take off from our hearing, in the Nov. 28 re-creation of the August 1943 concert, of the actual broadcast performance of the Shostakovich symphony, the work in which I was principally interested when I originally set us off on this post path. (At right we see again, from the New York Philharmonic Digital Archives, the Shostakovich Sixth score Leonard Bernstein marked up, which we can even digitally thumb through, for his 1963 Philharmonic performances and Columbia recording.)


IN OUR 1943 CONCERT RE-CREATION, THE ONLY
PERFORMANCE WE HEARD FROM THE CONCERT --

Pre-post: Can we do a better job assembling the three movements of this symphony than, you know, the guy who composed them?

LET'S PUT TOGETHER OUR OWN SYMPHONY!
(By juggling the movements of this 1943 broadcast performance)

(1)
Here's the thing in "traditional" fast-slow-fast configuration:
i. Allegro  || ii.  Largo [at 6:38]  ||  iii. Presto [at 28:06]


(2)
Here, the short quick movements lead up to the big slow one:
i. Allegro  ||  ii. Presto [at 6:38]  ||  iii. Largo [at 14:02]


(3)
Or, start with the giant movement, then tack on the 'quickies':
i. Largo  ||  ii. Allegro [at 21:32]  ||  iii. Presto [at 28:10]


by Ken

Haven't we all had the itch at some time to rejigger some or all of the movements of some symphony or other? Thinking, you know, that we can do a better assembly job than the person whose only authority was having composed the damned things?

This is basically what I've played at doing above, with a symphony that has the strangest structure of any I can think of from the pen of what I'm going to call a "serious symphonist," as anyone who approaches the piece for the first time is bound to notice quickly: three movements, with a slow movement that is considerably longer than the two fast movements put together. Many readers will recognize this symphony. For those who don't, I should disclose at the outset that in this "pre-post" I'm not going to disclose the identity of either the composer or the work -- a little experiment I'm hoping will be more interesting, even fun, for those who don't recognize the symphony. (For anyone who feels cheated, I would suggest that by pre-post's end, enough information will have been disclosed to enable online searchers to track the piece down in a minute or two.


BY CLICKING THROUGH TO THE PRE-POST
JUMP, THE READER WILL BE ABLE TO:

Revisiting our musical glimpse into the sublime, Part 2

As I explained last week, in the post "Found Music Dept.: When music that pops into your path grabs hold and won't let go," the "found music" that made such an impact on me came in an early episode of the FX-via-Netflix series Pose, when 17-year-old Damon (Ryan Jamaal Swain), whom we see here making his way to NYC, having been thrown out of his home for dreaming of being a dancer (and, oh yes, being gay), has his world turned upside-down when he gets his first glimpse of real, live ballet, in the form of a dance choreographed to music by the Dance King himself.


Claudio Arrau, piano; Staatskapelle Dresden, Sir Colin Davis, cond. Philips, recorded November 1984

Alfred Brendel, piano; Vienna Philharmonic, Sir Simon Rattle, cond. Philips, recorded February 1998

Leif Ove Andsnes, piano and cond.; Mahler Chamber Orchestra. Sony, recorded in Prague, May 20-21, 2014

by Ken

Of the music in question, I wrote in Part 1 of this week's post earlier today ("Revisiting our musical glimpse into the sublime, Part 1"), "It's a piece I know about as well as I know my own name," which though accurate may have been a trifle misleading, in that these days there are moments when I give some thought to dredge up my name, and the truth is that while I knew the composer right away, it took me a bit to home in on the identity of the piece, of which I went on to write: "I don't think I'd ever heard it in quite this way: as a prime example of Beethoven's singular ability to give us a musical glimpse into the sublime."

The fact that it did take me a bit to make the positive ID puzzled me, and the best guess I came up with is that it stands as the middle movement between two movements I might best describe as "colossal" -- Beethoven at his "E-flat major"-est. There are keys that are known to be hospitable to string instruments, and there are keys known to be hospitable to wind instruments, among which perhaps none is more so than E-flat major, which always lends itself to full-throated musical celebration.

IS THERE ANY MORE FULL-THROATEDLY E-FLAT-MAJOR-ISH
MUSIC THAN THE OUTER MOVEMENTS OF THIS CONCERTO?

Yet another digression that will be explained (eventually): Revisiting Sir Malcolm Sargent

MIDNIGHT UPDATE: Okay, I think we're just about there. For anyone who's been following along as this post filled out from its original "preliminary version," thanks for your patience and persistence. -- Ed.

It all started when I couldn't resist a too-cheap-to-pass-up copy of this 18-CD EMI set devoted to "The Great Recordings" of Sir Malcolm Sargent (from which some of the music files we're hearing today are drawn).

by Ken

Yes, as it says above, another digression, following upon last week's "'Spurn not the nobly born': No, not the proper post planned for this week, but we do make a little progress, and we hear some really nice music." And yes, we're still enmeshed in Wagner's Die Meistersinger, going back to September 23's "Still on the trail of our two classic Operatic Bad Days, we pause to sniff an elder tree."

In fact over the past week I've gotten enmeshed-er, which is far from an unpleasant thing, except for the expanses of lower-male-voice growling and rasping and grinding one is expected to endure -- and indeed lots of apparent Wagner fans smile and nod, as if this is perfectly normal and acceptable. Yikes! Of course in other Wagner operas the problem becomes even more acute, especially in the higher vocal categories: the heroic soprano and tenor roles (Isolde and Brünnhilde; Tannhäuser, Tristan, Siegmund, and Siegfried).


SO HOW DID SIR MALCOLM SARGENT (1895-1967) OF ALL
PEOPLE BECOME THIS WEEK'S DESIGNATED DIVERSION?

From brooding depths to sparkling heights -- Bruch's G minor Violin Concerto

Itzhak Perlman plays the opening Prelude (Allegro moderato) of the Bruch G minor Violin Concerto, with Kazuyoshi Akiyama conducting the Tokyo Symphony Orchestra.

by Ken

In Friday night's "Max Bruch preview" we heard the composer's Kol Nidrei, an "Adagio based on a Hebrew melody," which I described as his second-best-known work. "The best-known," I wrote, "surely is his G minor Violin Concerto," noting that we would be listening to it today.

An obvious point of reference for what used to be known as "the Bruch Violin Concerto" but now has to be called "the Bruch First Violin Concerto" because there are two more (both craftsmanlike works but neither with anything like the irresistible appeal of the first), is the Sibelius D minor Violin Concerto, which is also through much of its way darkly brooding, then bursts out into a more animated finale. The Sibelius Concerto, though (which we heard in the November 2009 post "An intrepid voice from the rugged North -- Jan Sibelius"), was written 35-plus years later.