Some funny things happened on the way through Ives's Holidays

Among which the nicest thing was that
we ran into bass-baritone Gerald Finley

In recital at New York City's Alice Tully Hall, 2012

[photo by Richard Termine/New York Times]

Gerald Finley, bass-baritone; London Symphony Chorus and Orchestra. LSO Live, recorded live in the Barbican, Apr. 29-30, 2005

by Ken

So there we were ("Decoration Day greetings -- with 'old New England'-style memories provided for us by Charles Ives"), making typically (for this operation) unsteady one-step-forward, several-steps sideways progress toward Schumann's Humoreske, the final step in our Radu Lupu remembrance ("We're still targeting Radu Lupu's Schumann Humoreske, but first we're going to detour . . ."). Really, could we let another Decoration Day (probably better known lo this past half-century as Memorial Day) pass without taking note of Charles Ives's holiday musical reminiscence? From which it seemed only natural once and for all to retrace and then complete our circuit of the four remembrance pieces that make up Ives's Holidays Symphony.

It was while I was laboring on that detour down Ives alley that things started going haywire, with one thing leading to another and then another, until by happy chance we were arranging to hear first one and then two Ives songs sung by Canada's Gerald Finley, from the 61 he's recorded on his not one but two Ives song CDs. A fresh encounter with Gerald F seemed an altogether pleasanter prospect than the piling-up Ives craziness, or for that matter the hard-to-penetrate Schumann-piano perplex.

While Sunday Classics can hardly claim Gerald F as an "old friend" of Sunday Classics, we have heard him in some choice musical situations. For example, back when we were remembering conductor Bernard Haitink, and dipped into his 1980 and 2005 live recordings of the Beethoven Ninth Symphony, Gerald F was the 2005 bass soloist, and so we've already heard the magical moment I've pulled out above: when the symphony discovered that it could sing!


WE HEARD GERALD F. IN ANOTHER COLLEGIAL SETTING

We're still targeting Radu Lupu's Schumann Humoreske, but first we're going to detour through some miniatures: kiddie keyboard goodies and a whirlwind of a song

dba: "Radu Lupu (1945-2022) [4]"

Here are a couple of pretty nice performances
(and yes, one of them is Lupu's!):

Artur Schnabel, piano. EMI, recorded in Abbey Road Studio No. 3, London, June 3, 1947

Radu Lupu, piano. Decca, recorded in the Salle de Châtonneyre, Corseaux, Vaud (Switzerland), January 1993
[NOTE: We're going to be hearing more, and then still more, of the Schnabel and Lupu performances. -- Ed.]

And here are a clutch of performances by top-notch pianists -- from the SC archive -- which I find problematic (yes, even the Kempff!):

Wilhelm Kempff, piano. DG, recorded in the Beethovensaal, Hannover (Germany), February 1973

Claudio Arrau, piano. Philips, recorded in Amsterdam, March 1974

Nelson Freire, piano. Decca, recorded in Emil Berliner Studios, Berlin, Dec. 18-22, 2002

Martha Argerich, piano. DG, recorded in the Plenar-Saal of the Akademie für Wissenschaften, in the Residenz, Munich, April 1983
[NOTE: So what's the problem? Rhythmic chaos. We'll get to it in time. -- Ed.]

NOW FOR THE PROMISED "WHIRLWIND OF A SONG"

SCHUMANN: Myrthen, Op. 25: i. "Widmung" ("Dedication": "Du meine Seele, du mein Herz," "You my soul, you my heart")

You my soul, you my heart,
you my joy, o you my pain,
you my world in which I live,
my heaven you in which I soar,
o you my grave in which
I have buried my sorrows forever.

You are rest; you are peace;
you were destined for me by heaven.
That you love me makes me feel worthy;
your glance has transfigured me;
you lift me, loving, above myself --
my good spirit, my better "I"!

You my soul, you my heart,
you my joy, o you my pain,
you my world, in which I live,
my heaven you, in which I soar --
my good spirit, my better "I"!

-- German text by Friedrich Rückert

Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, baritone; Jörg Demus, piano. DG, recorded c1960

Jorma Hynninen, baritone; Ralf Gothóni, piano. Tactus Oy, recorded in Helsinki (I think!-- Ed.), c1978

Wolfgang Holzmair, baritone; Imogen Cooper, piano. Philips, recorded in the Jugendstiltheater, Vienna, Dec. 17-21, 1998

Elly Ameling, soprano; Dalton Baldwin, piano. Philips, recorded c1976
[NOTE: There are performance notes below. We'll get to them too. -- Ed.]

[AFTERTHOUGHT: I finally mustered enough mental leisure to do some clip-listening, and could I just say, this is some display of pianistic grace! Four quite different but really terrific pianists performing heroic feats in service to both Schumann's brilliant accompaniment and the needs of their gloriously diverse singing partners, none better than that one-of-a-kind piano partner Dalton Baldwin supporting the, er, least flamboyant of our singers, Elly Ameling. But JD, RG, and IC as well -- what a treat! This may be something we should talk about sometime. -- K.]

by Ken

I admit it, I'm being deferentially cautious about diving into the creative ocean that is Schumann's body of large-scale solo-piano writing. In earlier installments of this Radu Lupu remembrance series we had -- going into last week's post ("Radu Lupu (1945-2022) [3]: We are going to hear more Lupu, but I'm afraid we're sticking awhile longer with the 'opening sections' of Schumann's Humoreske") -- polished off four of the five suggested listenings offered by The Guardian's Andrew Clements ("Radu Lupu: Five key performances"), and last week we ventured partway into the remaining one, Schumann's Humoreske, Op. 20.

Now I admit as well that the Humoreske isn't representative of the largest-scale of Schumann's "large-scale solo-piano writing." It does, however, share some of the large issues, such as complexities of structure and manner of musical argumentation, multiplicities of identities and points of view, and technical challenge. And so I thought we might slip back into it via a detour through some pleasingly more manageable Schumann miniatures, starting with the beloved little piano suite Kinderszenen (Scenes of Childhood). A side benefit is that we get to hear a Lupu recording that, as suggested above, I can really get behind.

All the same, the seemingly unrelated song "Widmung" may be more directly on our path back to the "Humoreske" than its keyboard cousin, the Kinderszenen.


HOW ABOUT ANOTHER SONG TO HELP EXPLAIN THIS ONE?
(Like Jack Point & Elsie Maynard's "I have a song to sing, O!"?)

On pause from our Mahler matters, we play with yesterday's live-streamed-from-Berlin "Evening in Vienna"

Post-in-progress (now with Mon & Tues updates)
[See the opening paragraph as well as "Still to come" notes
and, now, updates from both Monday and Tuesday]



In this unusual socially distanced configuration, with the clarinetist's back to the string players, Mozart's Clarinet Quintet was performed yesterday in the live-streamed Berlin Phil Series program "An Evening in Vienna" by Wenzel Fuchs, clarinet; Daishin Kashimoto and Romano Tommasini, violins; Naoko Shimizu, viola; and Ludwig Quandt, cello.


NO, THIS ISN'T THE MOZART CLARINET QUINTET
BUT THE OTHER FEATURED WORK YESTERDAY:

i. Allegro con brio

ii. Adagio

iii. Theme with variations ("Pria ch'io l'impegno"): Allegretto

Of the three recordings sampled above, one is American, one British, and one Czech -- think you can tell which is which? (All will be revealed eventually.)

MONDAY UPDATE: Um, hold on a sec! Obviously the continuation of this proto-post has been taking way longer than anticipated (see note below), but while playing with the new audio clips, I was waylaid by one you really ought to hear, like now. (For sure, we'll be talking about it eventually.)

It's the finale, Allegretto con variazioni, of the Mozart Clarinet Quintet:


Nash Ensemble: Michael Collins, clarinet; Marcia Crayford and David Ogden, violins; Roger Chase, viola; Christopher van Kampen, cello. CRD, recorded July 1-2, 1986

by Ken

For today we're taking a break from Mahler (while I ruminate on how to proceed with Mahler 4 and the world of Mahler's Des Knaben Wunderhorn songs), in the form of a happy lookback at yesterday's live-streamed Berlin Phil Series program "An Evening in Vienna," featuring both of the orchestra's principal clarinetists, Wenzel Fuchs and Andreas Ottensamer, who happen both -- as I learned from the Digital Concert Hall's promotional note -- to be Austrian!

This "Evening in Vienna" was not, as the title led me to expect, a toe-tapping program of waltzes, polkas, and such by the Vienna Strausses and kindredly Viennese composing spirits, as you can tell from the above screen grab from the opening work: Mozart's sublime (a word I don't throw around casually) Clarinet Quintet. Which is one reason I decided to create this blog interlude -- I couldn't remember whether we've ever heard the Mozart Clarinet Quintet here at Sunday Classics. I couldn't remember a post that included it, but I've learned not to trust memory for, well, all sorts of things, but certainly not each and every blogpost past. As best I can tell, though, looking in the SC audio archive, we haven't. I guess I never found what seemed a fit peg on which to hang it.

This omission ends today. We've got a lot of music to cover today, including a more leisurely stroll through the Clarinet Quintet, but let's jump in and plug this particular hole right now.

MOZART: Clarinet Quintet in A Major, K. 581

i. Allegro (at 0:02)
ii. Larghetto (at 8:41)
iii. Menuetto (at 14:59)
iv. Allegretto con variazioni (at 21:12)


Peter Simenauer, clarinet; Pascal Quartet (Jacques Dumont and Maurice Crut, violins; Léon Pascal, viola; Robert Salles, cello). Musical Masterpiece Society, recorded c1953 (digital transfer by F. Reeder)


MONDAY UPDATE ABOUT THE CONTINUATION OF THIS
PROTO-POST'S TAKING WAY LONGER THAN ANTICIPATED