In last week's tracing of Imogen Cooper's "Music that changed me," I always intended to pluck some samples of Dame Imogen's piano-playing from the SC archive

by Ken

I got so caught up in arranging our musical examples to enable us to trace Dame Imogen's five choices for "Music that changed me" that I just never got around to plucking those samples out of the archive. So, here are some samples.

MOZART: Piano Concerto No. 23 in A, K. 488:
i. Allegro

Piano Concerto No. 9, in E-flat, K. 271:
ii. Andantino

Northern Sinfonia, Imogen Cooper, piano and cond. Avie Records, recorded live in Hall One of the Sage Gateshead, Gateshead (across the River Tyne from Newcastle-upon-Tyne), England, Oct. 18-20, 2005

Try listening to just the orchestral opening of each of these concerto movements, up to the entrance of the piano. Of course, in the case of the first movement of K. 488, this means the entire exposition, and just listen to the way the conductor shapes the music: so flowing yet soulful, unfussy yet singing in gripping musical poetry.

Then listen to what happens when the soloist enters, taking over the material the orchestra has just introduced us to. Isn't it devilish how uncannily the two statements dovetail, and yet they're not quite the same, because, after all, an orchestra and a solo piano don't "hear" music exactly the same way -- and so the working out of the whole movement is set up: I think the basic reason I love Mozart's piano concertos so much is that somehow or other his unique dramatic imagination oversees them in much the say it does his great operas -- and I realize that that statement of the exposition of K. 488 could be the work of a great opera conductor.

All these musical roles are being played, of course, by one person: our pianist-conductor. Of course K. 488 is a masterpiece, but it isn't one of the Mozart piano concertos I eternally hunger for. Performed this way, though . . . .

K. 271, however, is one of the Mozart piano concertos I just plain adore. It doesn't come competely out of nowhere; we can hear intimations of it in any number of works Mozart composed shortly before it, including its predecesor, the Concerto No. 8 in C, K. 246. And yet, K. 271 explodes in at least my consciousness that had never existed before and maybe would never exist again -- except that Mozart kept performing this feat over and over. There are so many great slow movements among the Mozart piano concertos, and once again in her dual role as conductor and soloist Cooper leaves no doubt that the Andantino of K. 271 can stand with any of its successors.


GETTING INTIMATE WITH BRAHMS

Schubert's "Die Krähe": A pretty little song overlaid with creepiness or a creepy little song overlaid with prettiness?

"A crow has flown back and forth over my head"

José van Dam, bass-baritone; Dalton Baldwin, piano. Forlane, recorded in Villeneuve-lès-Avignon (France), January 1990

Wolfgang Holzmair, baritone; Imogen Cooper, piano. Philips, recorded in Salzburg, November 1994

Olaf Bär, baritone; Geoffrey Parsons, piano. EMI, recorded in London, December 1988

by Ken

I haven't been writing much lately -- well, at all, at least not that I've actually posted. (I don't expect the reasons are of any importance to anyone but me.) One day this week "Die Krähe" ("The Crow"), no. 15 of the 24 songs of Schubert's Winterreise (Winter Journey), the all but unique song cycle (the only close kin I'm aware of is Schubert's own Die schöne Müllerin, also set to poems by Wilhelm Müller) popped into my head and wouldn't go away. You know how that goes, right? Sometimes you can trace by which the thing lodged in your brain, but sometimes you can't, and I still can't figure how "Die Krähe" took possession of me. More worryingly, I'm not sure what to make of it -- I can't help feeling there's nothing good about it.

I started gathering recordings, in particular by singers I respect who've made multiple recordings of Winterreise. Some of you may have seen this compendium taking shape, since for technical reasons the pile proved easier to keep track of and spot-check in posted form. One thing I discovered quickly is how surprisingly different performances of the song are. "Surprisingly" different because, suggestive as the song is, it's such an unassuming one that I don't think the considerable differences in tone and emphasis (what does this whole overflight-by-crow business mean to the singer-narrator, let alone to us?) necessarily register. If you want a real jolt, listen in succession to the 1954 and 1961 Hotter recordings.

The 1962 Fischer-Dieskau and 1961 Prey take pride of place here, likely because the former's 1962 Winterreise and the latter's 1961 one were my first recordings of the cycle. (And I still enjoy the latter a lot. The Fischer-Dieskau Winterreise I really like, from which we've heard excerpts, is the 1971 DG one with Gerald Moore.) The singleton performances up top, by the way, are simply by performers whose Winterreise recordings I really enjoy.

I should probably want to talk about this a little. Who knows? Maybe I will. One thought for now, though: If "creepy" in the post title doesn't sound quite right, how about "spooky"? "Morbid"? "Foreboding"? For that matter, "pretty" isn't quite what I mean, I don't think. But isn't there something decidedly and weirdly, um, charming about a song whose subject matter is so weird?


Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, baritone; Klaus Billing, piano. Broadcast performance, Berlin, Jan. 19, 1948 (mono)

Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, baritone; Gerald Moore, piano. EMI, recorded in Berlin, Jan. 13-14, 1955 (mono)

Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, baritone; Gerald Moore, piano. EMI, recorded 1962

Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, baritone; Jörg Demus, piano. DG, recorded 1966

Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, baritone; Gerald Moore, piano. DG, recorded in Berlin, August 1971

Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, baritone; Alfred Brendel, piano. Philips, recorded in Berlin, July 1985
[This by no means exhausts even Fischer-Dieskau's commercial Winterreise recordings. When, with great difficulty, I rolled aside an audio cart that blocks the relevant section of my LP shelves, I found a 1979-ish DG one with Daniel Barenboim which I'd forgotten about, and even after the Brendel version there's a 1990 Sony one (audio and video) with Murray Perahia.]


Hermann Prey, baritone; Karl Engel, piano. EMI, recorded in Berlin, October 1961

Hermann Prey, baritone; Irwin Gage, piano. Italian Swiss Radio performance, Locarno, Oct. 2, 1978

Hermann Prey, baritone; Philippe Bianconi, piano. Denon, recorded in Hamburg, Apr. 3-6, 1984


Hans Hotter, bass-baritone; Michael Raucheisen, piano. DG, recorded in Berlin, November 1942 (mono)

Hans Hotter, bass-baritone; Hans Schörter, piano. Live performance from Frankfurt, Mar. 27, 1947 (mono)

Hans Hotter, bass-baritone; Gerald Moore, piano. EMI, recorded in London, May 24-29, 1954 (mono)

Hans Hotter, bass-baritone; Erik Werba, piano. DG, recorded in Vienna, Dec. 15-18, 1961
[There's also an April 1969 live performance from Tokyo with pianist Hans Dokoupil, recorded and released by Japanese Columbia, which I've been curious about since I first learned it exists but have never been able to lay hands on.]


Jon Vickers, tenor; Geoffrey Parsons, piano. EMI, recorded in Paris, July 9-13, 1983

Jon Vickers, tenor; Peter Schaaf, piano. VAI, live performance in Canada, Oct. 2, 1983

#