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

Sunday Classics: We're ready now to hear those "fraternal twin" symphonies, Beethoven's Fifth and Sixth

Post rehabilitated and updated, June 2018 (see below)



At top, Leonard Bernstein conducts the Vienna Philharmonic in the instantly recognizable first movement of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony (in the Vienna Konzerthaus, 1977); above, Arturo Toscanini conducts the NBC Symphony (March 22, 1952).

by Ken

The music is all set to go for this post, and I think this week I'm just not going to say very much. [Well, this was so in 2010, a little less so in 2018. -- Ed.] We've already established the chronological connection between Beethoven's Fifth and Sixth Symphonies (whose slow movements we heard in, respectively, Friday night's and last night's previews), which were created in almost a single continuous burst of inspiration, and had their first performances at that amazing four-hour-plus concert on December 22, 1808, at which not just the two symphonies but the Fourth Piano Concerto and Choral Fantasy for piano and orchestra (both of which we heard quite a lot of in a post on Beethoven's piano concertos) plus three movements from the C major Mass and the concert aria "Ah, perfido" also had their premieres -- and the composer also offered a solo piano improvisation, presumably worrying that the audience might not feel it was getting its money's worth.

We've also hinted at the thematic connection between these near-twin symphonies (fraternal twins, of course), which is basically that there doesn't seem to be one. Of course Beethoven had a horror of repeating himself, but when it comes to consecutive creations there seems also to have been an utterly understandable impulse to go somewhere wildly different.

* * *

Preview: And now for something pretty different -- Beethoven's NEXT symphonic slow movement

Leonard Bernstein conducts the Vienna Philharmonic in the second movement of Beethoven's Pastoral Symphony.

by Ken

I promised a companion piece to the one we heard in last night's preview, the flowing but muscular slow movement of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony). And pieces don't come much more companionable than Beethoven's Fifth and Sixth Symphonies, written in such quick succession that there must have been overlap in the composer's imagining of these two works, which nevertheless -- or perhaps for that very reason -- are staggeringly different works. But they came into the world together:

The Fifth Symphony was premiered at a mammoth concert at the Theater an der Wien in Vienna consisting entirely of Beethoven premieres, and directed by Beethoven himself. The concert went for more than four hours. The two symphonies appeared on the program in reverse order: the Sixth was played first, and the Fifth appeared in the second half. The program was as follows:

The Sixth Symphony
Aria: "Ah, perfido," Op. 65
The Gloria movement of the Mass in C major
The Fourth Piano Concerto (played by Beethoven himself)
[Intermission]
The Fifth Symphony
The Sanctus and Benedictus movements of the C major Mass
A solo piano improvisation played by Beethoven
The Choral Fantasy

Yikes!


FOR TONIGHT'S PREVIEW --

Preview: In which we dip into one of the most famous works ever written -- but not THAT movement

Glenn Gould plays Liszt's piano transcription of the slow movement of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony. (The movement concludes here.)

by Ken

In Beethoven's time, and Liszt's too, of course, concert opportunities to hear orchestral works were far more limited than they are now, and radio broadcasts and recordings still undreamt of. And so as a way of enabling the music to circulate, and of allowing music lovers to enjoy them in their own homes, and of providing publishers an opportunity to make some money, piano transcriptions were abundant -- sometimes done by the composers themselves, more often done by competent musical journeymen, and in rare cases done by musicians of the order of a Franz Liszt. The thing to remember about Liszt's transcriptions of the nine Beethoven symphonies is that they were undertaken as a labor of love, with no thought of any creative contribution by the distinguished transcriber.


TONIGHT, BY WAY OF A PREVIEW OF OUR PREVIEW --

The Prologue to Leoncavallo's "I Pagliacci" entreats, "Consider our souls"

Juan Pons as Tonio lip-syncs the Pagliacci Prologue in Unitel's 1982 film directed by Franco Zeffirelli, with Georges Prêtre conducting the La Scala orchestra. (Ignore the other clowns Zeffirelli's inserted, mere distractions.) We even get to see the traveling players arrive in the Calabrian village, with Plácido Domingo as the master of the troupe, Canio, and Teresa Stratas as his wife and costar, Nedda.

If I may? If I may?
Ladies! Gentlemen!
Excuse me if I present myself thus alone.
I am the Prologue.
Because the author is putting
the old-style masks
onstage again.
In part he wants to revive
the old customs, and to you
once again he sends me.

But not to tell you, as before,
"The tears that we shed are false,
by our agonies and our suffering
don't be alarmed."
No! No!
The author has sought
to paint truly for you
a slice of life.
He has for maxim only that the artist is a person,
and that he must write for people,
and draw inspiration from what's true.

A nest of memories in the depths of his soul
sang one day, and with real tears
he wrote, and his sobs beat time for him!

So then, you'll see loving, yes, the way
real human beings love; you'll see hate's
sad fruits, miseries' agonies.
Cries of rage you'll hear, and cynical laughter!

And you, rather than our poor
actors' costumes, consider
our souls, because we are people,
of flesh and bone, and since in this orphan
world, just like you, we breathe the air!

I've told you the concept.
Now hear how it worked out.
Let's go -- begin!

by Ken

Hanging on the grimy wall of my college newspaper office was a yellowed sheet that was the "key" to the 5-point rating system we used for movie reviews. Oh, I pooh-poohed the numerical ratings, on the ground that how can you reduce a sensible evaluation to a number? But the fact was that our readers all too clearly paid more attention to the ratings than to the ever-so-wise reviews.

Preview: Our "Vesti la giubba" recordings are identified, and the aria is put in context

Jussi Bjoerling sings the recitative and aria, with Howard Barlow conducting, from the Voice of Firestone telecast of Nov. 19, 1951.

by Ken

First, let's finish last night's unfinished business. Here again are our seven recordings of "Vesti la giubba," now properly identified. You'll notice that the singers are in alphabetical order.

LEONCAVALLO: I Pagliacci: Act I, " Recitar! Mentre preso dal delirio . . . Vesti la giubba"

[English translation by Peggie Cochrane]

Recitative
To have to act, whilst caught up in mad frenzy;
I no longer know what I'm saying nor what I'm doing.
And yet you must -- force yourself to try!
You're the comedian!
Aria
Put on your costume and make up your face.
The public pays and wants to laugh here.
And if Harlequin should steal your Columbine,
laugh, comedian, and everyone'll clap!
Turn your agony and tears to jest,
your sobs and sufferings to a grimace.
Ah! Laugh, comedian, over your ruined love.
Laugh at the pain that is poisoning your heart.

A

Jussi Bjoerling, tenor; RCA Victor Orchestra, Renato Cellini, cond. RCA/EMI, recorded January 1953
B

Franco Corelli, tenor; Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, Fausto Cleva, cond. Live performance, Apr. 11, 1964
C

Mario del Monaco, tenor; Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, Dimitri Mitropoulos, cond. Live performance, Jan. 3, 1959
D

Giuseppe di Stefano, tenor; Orchestra of the Teatro alla Scala, Tullio Serafin, cond. EMI, recorded June 12-17, 1954
E

Plácido Domingo, tenor; San Francisco Opera Orchestra, Kenneth Schermerhorn, cond. Live performance, Nov. 5, 1976
F

Luciano Pavarotti, tenor; Philadelphia Orchestra, Riccardo Muti, cond. Philips, live performance, February 1992
G

[aria only] Lawrence Tibbett, baritone; orchestra, Alfred Newman, cond. Delos (Stanford Archive Series), recorded for the soundtrack of Metropolitan, 1935

The oddity is that our final Canio is not a tenor but a baritone, perhaps the finest America has produced, Lawrence Tibbett. (Okay, it's transposed down a tone, and yes, that would have been a correct answer to the question of what's odd about one of our recordings. But still . . . ) Tomorrow we're going to hear him back in his proper range, singing the Prologue to Pagliacci. Note that among our tenor Canios we've heard a not-quite-even split between lyric (Bjoerling, di Stefano, Domingo, Pavarotti) and dramatic (Corelli, del Monaco) tenors, and while "Vesti la giubba" is probably the part of the role most accessible to lyric tenors, I think you'll still hear a marked difference in the kind of effect the different voice types make in the music.

BONUS: NOW WE ARE GOING TO HEAR CARUSO

Last night I teased you with a photo of the label of Victor 88061, Enrico Caruso's third (I think) recording of "Vesti la giubba" (famous, by the way, as the first record to sell a million copies), with the news that no, we weren't going to hear it. Well, now we are. (Confession: I didn't realize I had it on CD.)


Enrico Caruso, tenor. Victor, recorded March 17, 1907

Here Giuseppe di Stefano sings just the aria.


NOW WHY DON'T WE HEAR THE ARIA IN ITS PROPER CONTEXT?

Although Pagliacci is normally thought of as a one-act opera -- usually in combination with Pietro Mascagni's one-act Cavalleria rusticana -- it's technically in two acts, separated by an intermezzo (just as Cavalleria is in two scenes separated by the famous Intermezzo). The scene that culminates in "Vesti la giubba" brings Act I to a pretty theatrical close, and since the opera is virtually always performed in one act, it's followed immediately by the Intermezzo sinfonico (technically really an entr'acte), so why don't we hear that as well? We're going to hear it again tomorrow, when it will make more musical sense after we've spent some time with the Prologue, which contributes important music to it. Our final Canio today, the Russian Vladimir Atlantov, is another specimen of the full-weight dramatic tenor.

LEONCAVALLO: I Pagliacci: Act I, Scene 4; Intermezzo sinfonico

A little troupe of traveling players, having only recently arrived in this Calabrian village, has a show to put on, "a ventitre ore," as Canio, the volatile boss of the troupe has put it so invitingly to the villagers -- "at 23 hours," or 11pm. Canio accepted an invitation from the villagers for a pre-show libation, and was joined by Beppe but not the hunchback Tonio, who claimed he had to groom the donkey and stayed behind with Canio's wife, the troupe's diva, the extremely unhappy Nedda. Leaving the donkey to fend for itself, Tonio made profoundly unwelcome overtures to Nedda, which she not only rejected but ridiculed, finally driving him off with a whip. Nedda was then joined by a man with whom, in a tender and passionate scene, she agreed to run off after the show, at midnight. Unfortunately Tonio saw them and to get revenge on Nedda has quietly brought Canio back to the scene.

TONIO [to CANIO]: Tread softly and you'll catch them!
SILVIO [climbing over the wall, to NEDDA]: I'll be waiting there at midnight. Clamber down cautiously and you'll find me.
NEDDA [to SILVIO]: Till tonight, and I'll be yours forever. CANIO [overhearing these words]: Ha!
NEDDA [shouting in Silvio's wake, as she becomes aware of CANIO's presence]: Fly!
[CANIO rushes to the wall. NEDDA goes to bar his way but, shoving her aside, he vaults over.]
NEDDA: Help him, Lord!
CANIO's voice offstage: Coward! You're hiding!
TONIO [laughing cynically]: Ha ha ha!
NEDDA [to TONIO]: Bravo! Bravo, my Tonio!
TONIO: I do what I can.
NEDDA: That's what I thought.
TONIO: But I don't despair of doing a great deal better!
NEDDA: You revolt and disgust me!
TONIO: Oh, you don't know how happy I am about it! Ha ha ha!
CANIO [clambering back across the wall]: Derision and scorn! Nothing! He knows that path well. No matter -- [furiously, to NEDDA]: since you're going to tell me your lover's name now!
NEDDA: Who?
CANIO: You, by our eternal Father! [Drawing his knife] And if I haven't cut your throat before this it's because, before I soil this blade with your stinking blood, you shameless woman, I want his name! Speak!
NEDDA: Insults won't do any good. My lips are sealed.
CANIO: His name, his name, don't delay, woman!
NEDDA: No!
[At this point BEPPE comes hurrying onto the scene.] No! I'll never tell it!
CANIO [rushing at NEDDA, knife upraised]: By Our Lady!
BEPPE [seizing him, as he rushes at NEDDA, wrestling the knife away from him and flinging it away]: Boss! What are you doing? For the love of God! People are coming out of church and coming here for the show. Let's go . . . come along. Calm yourself!
CANIO: Let me go, Beppe! His name! His name!
BEPPE [calling to TONIO]: Tonio, come and hold him!
CANIO: His name!
BEPPE: Let's go, the public is arriving! You'll talk things over later! [To NEDDA] And you, come away from there. Go and get dressed. [As he pushes her inside and goes in with her] You know, Canio is violent but good-hearted.
CANIO: Disgrace! Disgrace!
TONIO [softly, to CANIO]: Calm yourself, boss. It's better to dissemble; the gallant'll return. Rely on me! I'll keep a watch on her. Now let's give the performance. Who knows but he won't come to the show and give himself away. Come now. One must dissemble, in order to succeed!
BEPPE [coming from the stage]: Let's go, come on, get dressed, boss. [Turning to TONIO] And you beat the drum, Tonio.
[Both go off, leaving CANIO alone.]
CANIO: [Recitative]
To have to act, whilst caught up in mad frenzy;
I no longer know what I'm saying nor what I'm doing.
And yet you must -- force yourself to try!
You're the comedian!
[Aria]
Put on your costume and make up your face.
The public pays and wants to laugh here.
And if Harlequin should steal your Columbine,
laugh, comedian, and everyone'll clap!
Turn your agony and tears to jest,
your sobs and sufferings to a grimace.
Ah! Laugh, comedian, over your ruined love.
Laugh at the pain that is poisoning your heart.

Bernd Weikl (b), Tonio; Wolfgang Brendel (b), Silvio; Lucia Popp (s), Nedda; Vladimir Atlantov (t), Canio; Alexandru Ionita (t), Beppe; Munich Radio Orchestra, Lamberto Gardelli, cond. Eurodisc, recorded December 1983

Tito Gobbi (b), Tonio; Mario Zanasi (b), Silvio; Lucine Amara (s), Nedda; Franco Corelli (t), Canio; Mario Spina (t), Beppe; Orchestra of the Teatro all Scala, Lovro von Matačić, cond. EMI, recorded 1961


TOMORROW: The Prologue to Pagliacci begs us, "Consider our souls."

#

Preview: What's odd about one of these "Vesti la giubba" performances?

And while we're at it, you might
as well name the singers

No, we're not hearing Caruso sing "Vesti la giubba."

by Ken

One of these performances of Vesti la giubba (from Leoncavallo's I Pagliacci) has something distinctly unusual about it. (No, I don't mean that one that doesn't include the prececding "Recitar!" recitative.)

I can't identify the singers for you, for reasons that will become obvious in tomorrow night's preview when we do identify all the recordings. But these are seven of the most recognizable voices since . . . well, since they began recording voices. And so, as I said, while we're at it, you might as well identify them, just to get that out of the way

LEONCAVALLO: I Pagliacci: Act I, " Recitar!
Mentre preso dal delirio . . . Vesti la giubba"
[English translation by Peggie Cochrane]

Recitative
To have to act, whilst caught up in mad frenzy;
I no longer know what I'm saying nor what I'm doing.
And yet you must -- force yourself to try!
You're the comedian!

Aria
Put on your costume and make up your face.
The public pays and wants to laugh here.
And if Harlequin should steal your Columbine,
laugh, comedian, and everyone'll clap!

Turn your agony and tears to jest,
your sobs and sufferings to a grimace.
Ah! Laugh, comedian, over your ruined love.
Laugh at the pain that is poisoning your heart.

A

B

C

D

E

F

G [aria only]



SATURDAY NIGHT: The "Vesti la guibba" recordings are identified, and supplemented with a special bonus performance, and the aria is put in its dramatic context.

SUNDAY: The Prologue to Pagliacci begs us, "Consider our souls."

#

The piano-and-orchestra Liszt -- the orator meets the poet

Here's the first part of the Second Piano Concerto played by Alfred Brendel, with Eliahu Inbal conducting the Frankfurt Radio Symphony. (The performance concludes here. There's an interesting video performance by pianist Yakov Fliere, from 1974, with Maxim Shostakovich conducting -- part 1 here, part 2 here, and part 3 here.)

by Ken

We've heard a sampling of Liszt the orchestral virtuoso (in the form of the best-known of his 13 symphonic poems, Les Préludes, Friday night) and of his virtuosic but equally poetic keyboard wizardry (performances by Sviatoslav Richter, Georges Cziffra, and Aldo Ciccolini last night, along with a video performance of the First Piano Concerto).

We've talked before about the emergence in the West of the roster of great Soviet musicians long prevented from performing here by the Stalinist and immediately post-Stalinist regimes. When Emil Gilels, by any standard one of the century's great pianists, caused the predictable furor, he told interviewers that the pianist they really needed to hear was Richter, who was still being kept under wraps. Rather amazingly, he lived up to the hype.

In 1961 in London Richter played both Liszt piano concertos and the Hungarian Fantasia for piano and orchestra with his compatriot Kiril Kondrashin and the London Symphony, and happily Philips recorded the concertos, for a disc that remains a phonographic landmark -- recorded, incidentally by the Mercury "Living Presence" team of producer Wilma Cozart Fine and engineer Robert Fine, though the tapes have for decades now rested exclusively in the hands of the sonically more conservative Philips technical people. It's a pity the two concertos made such a convenient LP, which is presumably what discouraged Philips from recording the Hungarian Fantasia, which turns out to be quite a loss when we hear the live performance. True, notes get spilled all over the place when all hell breaks loose, and this would have been fixed in a studio recording, but my goodness, is it possible not to be blown over by the hurricane force of this outburst?

LISZT: Hungarian Fantasia for Piano and Orchestra


Sviatoslav Richter, piano; London Symphony Orchestra, Kiril Kondrashin, cond. Live performance, 1961

Jorge Bolet, piano; Symphony of the Air, Robert Irving, cond. Everest, recorded c1959

Michel Béroff, piano; Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, Kurt Masur, cond. EMI, recorded June 1979

Liszt wrote his two piano concertos (and indeed most of a third, only in modern times come to light) at basically the same time, which allowed him to pursue markedly different expressive agendas; the two are so different, and yet so complementary, that they have flourished in each other's company since early LP days. The First Concerto, as you may gather from the video clip we saw last night, is in large measure the Liszt of Les Préludes: grandiose, sweeping, a robust treat. While the Second Concerto indeed builds to a wonderfully grandiloquent march finale, the wonder of this piece is the gentle songfulness of its opening theme, and the way it evolves into that finale.

The piece is basically a theme-and-variations set, in a single movement, though with significant changes of tempo -- and, more significantly, and deliciously under-conspicuously, a slide from triple meter, first to 6/8 duple meter (at the Allegro agitato assai), then briefly back to the 3/4 of the opening (Tempo del Andante) before switching to good old-fashioned square-jawed 4/4 at the Allegro moderato -- the very tempo we're going to need (even with a brief return to the still-duple-meter 6/8) for the outbreak of the Marziale. (And when the Marziale finally breaks out, you really shouldn't have any difficulty hearing in it the lovely original theme.)

We're going to hear the 1961 Richter-Kondrashin studio recording I mentioned above, and also a performance by the highly poetic Polish pianist Krystian Zimerman, whom we heard playing the Rachmaninoff Second Piano Concerto, also with Seiji Ozawa and the Boston Symphony, and finally Alfred Brendel's first recording (for Vox).

On a technical note: CD programmers naturally enough treat some (and some cases all) of the tempo changes in the Liszt A major Concerto as appropriate points for tracking; of course on a CD we don't hear those track points. Since in our format I have no way of creating seamless track switches, we're going to hear the piece somewhat broken up, and not identically broken up, so that in the Richter-Kondrashin recording we hear the buildup to and outbreak of the Marziale un poco meno allegro, whereas in the Zimerman-Ozawa the Marziale gets its own track point, and the Vox recording has a slightly different breakdown.

LISZT: Piano Concerto No. 2 in A:
Adagio sostenuto assai; Allegro agitato assai Allegro moderato Allegro deciso; Marziale un poco meno allegro; Allegro animato


Sviatoslav Richter, piano; London Symphony Orchestra, Kiril Kondrashin, cond. Philips, recorded 1961

Krystian Zimerman, piano; Boston Symphony Orchestra, Seiji Ozawa, cond. DG, recorded April 1987

Alfred Brendel, piano; Vienna Symphony Orchestra, Michael Gielen, cond. Vox, recorded 1975

#

In the opening vision of Mahler's "Song of the Earth": "Dark is life, is death"

Jon Vickers, not in his best vocal shape but still a powerful presence, sings "The Drinking Song of the Sorrow of the Earth" in a 1985 Proms concert, with Simon Rattle and the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra. (The other soloist was Vickers' partner in the 1982 Philips recording with Colin Davis, Jessye Norman.)

by Ken

Nobody who's visited Sunday Classics will be surprised that we're taking on Mahler's Song of the Earth (Das Lied von der Erde) backwards. This is the work, you'll recall that Mahler conceived, after soaring with Goethe to the cosmological heights in his Symphony No. 8, in the aftermath of the diagnosis of his terminal heart condition.

In Hans Bethge's German translation and adaptation of Chinese poems, The Chinese Flute, Mahler found texts for the six song-movements that made up what should by rights have been his Symphony No. 9, if he hadn't had such superstitious dread of the doom a Ninth Symphony had spelled for Beethoven and Bruckner. (To compound the craziness, by the time the decision about naming was made, the work he would call his Ninth Symphony was mapped out in his head, which led him to believe that he had circumvented the jinx. Of course the joke, such as it was, was on him. He didn't live to complete the work that by his numbering would have been his Tenth Symphony.)

Talk about working backwards! First, in a need to celebrate the artistry of Maureen Forrester, we simply blundered into the undisputed crowning glory of Das Lied, the half-hour final alto song-movement, "The Farewell" ("Der Abschied"). In a way, though, it was helpful to be focusing on Forrester, since it allowed us to focus on her stupendous performances of this music. That spared us the distraction of other, differently glorious performances.

Now, as I explained in Friday's and last night's previews, we've been working our way backwards through the three tenor songs of Das Lied: movements No. 5, "The Drunk in Spring"; No. 3, "On Youth"; and now finally No. 1, "The Drinking Song of the Sorrow of the Earth." I made the point, in connection with "On Youth," that I have found rather circuitious paths to personal identification with the songs of Das Lied, and I might make the general point that this is what, for me, music or any other art form is about: finding one's own connection to it. I don't believe that anyone can "teach" us how to listen, though many people can, by design or otherwise, provide us with lessons of varying usefulness as we develop our own way of listening.

Just by way of demonstrating how never-ending this process is, in the course of my relistening for these posts, I put on the 1959 EMI recording conducted by Paul Kletzki (made, by cosmic coincidence, some two weeks before the memorable RCA recording conducted by Fritz Reiner), intending to listen, of course, to the first movement, but I let it play, and for as much as I've said I'm unpersuaded by the octave-lower baritone option Mahler offered for the alto songs, and as often as I've listened to Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau's performance in this recording and been left unpersuaded by it, this time I found myself warming to it more, especially in the movement that I confess remains most elusive for me, No. 4, "On Beauty." Just goes to show ya . . . er, something.

I've already made an embarrassing attempt to describe my personal connection to "On Youth." You'll surely be relieved to learn that I don't propose to do the same with "The Drinking Song of the Sorrow of Earth." Let me just say that this movement, despite being not even a third as long as "The Farewell," has come to be just as personal. But then, it is perhaps one of the abiding deep truths of Das Lied that the small matters as much as the big.

Mahler doesn't leave much idea about the central idea of this drinking song. Three times, at the end of what we might think of as the song's three stanzas, the tenor sings to us:

"Dunkel ist das Leben, ist der Tod"
("Dark is life, is death")


Jon Vickers, tenor; London Symphony Orchestra, Sir Colin Davis, cond. Philips, recorded March 1981

BREAKING IT DOWN

I've broken this movement down according to those three "stanzas" defined by the "Dunkel ist das Leben"s. I had a much more ambitious musical plan, though still following this breakdown plan, but it self-destructed via my clumsy editing skills and the obstreperousness of the editing software I'm using. Still, we do have what I'm calling parts A, B, and C, more or less as I intended them, with parts parts A and B going beyond their "Dunkel ist das Leben" to include the orchestral music between "stanzas" (and in one case maybe a tiny bit into the next) and parts B and C going back to the previous "Dunkel ist das Leben," so that there is considerable musical overlap. That was intentional, if only to give you an opportunity to hear this amazing music more often.

Before we go there, however, I thought it might be helpful, since I keep mentioning the shocking transformation of Mahler's artistic identity between the climax of the Eighth Symphony and the start of its successor work, to hear that climax of the Eighth Symphony, a setting of the final scene of Goethe's Faust, so here it is.

MAHLER: Symphony No. 8 in E-flat: Part II, conclusion: "Alles Vergängliche ist nur ein Gleichnis"

[English translation by Peggie Cochrane]

All things transitory are but parable;
here insufficiency becomes fulfillment,
here the indescribable is accomplished;
the ever-womanly draws us heavenward. [much repeated]


Soloists, choruses, London Symphony Orchestra, Jascha Horenstein, cond. BBC Legends, recorded live in the Royal Albert Hall, March 20, 1959

Now let's hear the start of Mahler's Song of the Earth, the opening chunk of "The Drinking Song of the Sorrow of the Earth." Note that all of the Das Lied translations are by Deryck Cooke.

part A

Now beckons the wine in the golden goblet,
but drink not yet, first I'll sing you a song!
The song of sorrow
shall in gusts of laughter through your souls resound.
When sorrow draws near,
wasted lie the gardens of the soul.
Withered and dying are joy and song.
Dark is life, is death.

Murray Dickie, tenor; Philharmonia Orchestra, Paul Kletzki, cond. EMI, recorded October 1959

part B

Dark is life, is death.
Master of this house! Your cellar holds its fill of golden wine!
Here, this lute I name my own!
To strike the lute and to drain the glasses,
these are the things that go together.
A full goblet of wine at the right time
is worth more than all the kingdoms of this earth!
Dark is life, is death.

Francisco Araiza, tenor; Berlin Philharmonic, Carlo Maria Giulini, cond. DG, recorded Feb.15-17, 1984
[UPDATE: Thanks to my clip-editing and -processing ham-handedness, and to my general organizational gracelessness under time pressure, I originally posted a defective version of this clip, which started in the right place but continued to the end of the movement. I've got it right now. I think.]

part C

Dark is life, is death.

The firmament is blue eternally, and the earth
will long stand fast and blossom in spring.
But thou, O man, how long then livest thou?
Not a hundred years canst thou delight
in all the rotten trash of this earth!

Look there, down there! In the moonlight, on the graves
squats a mad spectral figure!
It is an ape! Hear how his howling
screams its way through the sweet fragrance of life!

Now take the wine! Now it is time, companions!
Drain your golden goblets to the dregs!
Dark is life, is death!

James King, tenor; Concertgebouw Orchestra, Bernard Haitink, cond. Philips, recorded September 1975


NOW LET'S PUT IT BACK TOGETHER

Now we're going to hear "The Drinking Song of the Sorrow of the Earth" from my three all-around favorite recordings of Das Lied. (There's a large group of wonderful recordings, including some we've sampled, like the Reiner-RCA, the Kletzki-EMI, and the Giulini-DG, or even better the live Giulini performance with the Vienna Philharmonic on Orfeo, that occupy what for me is an elite "second tier.")

We start with Bruno Walter's final recorded crack at this work whose premiere he had conducted not quite 50 years earlier, in Munich in November 1911, five months after the composer's death. This is the eternally splendiferous New York Philharmonic recording for Columbia, from which we heard tenor Ernst Häfliger sing the fifth song, "The Drunk in Spring," Friday night.

Colin Davis's Philips Das Lied offers its share of frustrations but nevertheless seems to me a truly great performance. Davis has never been known for his "way" of working with singers, and in this recording he seems hardly aware of what sort of tenor he's working with in Jon Vickers, with that oddly produced but engulfingly huge voice and singular personal intensity; clearly, to take advantage of his special qualities, he should have had less driven tempos, and a bit of give and take with his conductor, which might also have smoothed out his German. (Vickers traveled with his own set of vowels, which weren't right for any of the languages he sang regularly in -- German, Italian, French, and English.) Davis was more considerate of his alto soloist, Jessye Norman, whose voluminous soprano descended easily into true contralto territory.

MAHLER: Das Lied von der Erde (The Song of the Earth):
i. "Das Trinklied vom Jammer der Erde"
("The Drinking Song of the Sorrow of the Earth")

Now beckons the wine in the golden goblet,
but drink not yet, first I'll sing you a song!
The song of sorrow
shall in gusts of laughter through your souls resound.
When sorrow draws near,
wasted lie the gardens of the soul.
Withered and dying are joy and song.
Dark is life, is death.

Master of this house!
Your cellar holds its fill of golden wine!
Here, this lute I name my own!
To strike the lute and to drain the glasses,
these are the things that go together.
A full goblet of wine at the right time
is worth more than all the kingdoms of this earth!
Dark is life, is death.

The firmament is blue eternally, and the earth
will long stand fast and blossom in spring.
But thou, O man, how long then livest thou?
Not a hundred years canst thou delight
in all the rotten trash of this earth!

Look there, down there! In the moonlight, on the graves
squats a mad spectral figure!
It is an ape! Hear how his howling
screams its way through the sweet fragrance of life!

Now take the wine! Now it is time, companions!
Drain your golden goblets to the dregs!
Dark is life, is death!

Ernst Häfliger, tenor; New York Philharmonic, Bruno Walter, cond. Columbia/CBS/Sony, recorded April 1960

Jon Vickers, tenor; London Symphony Orchestra, Sir Colin Davis, cond. Philips, recorded March 1981

And now, from what just may be my very favorite Das Lied recording, Otto Klemperer's EMI stereo remake (which by the way was Christa Ludwig's first recording of the piece, when she claims she didn't understand the music yet -- ha! so much for the importance of "understanding"), let's hear all three tenor songs, in part for the opportunity to hear the astounding Fritz Wunderlich sing them. I think, by the way, that it must surely have been via the Wunderlich-Klemperer recording that I experienced the revelation regarding "On Youth" which I tried to describe last night; now if only Colin Davis had had the sense to take a tempo like this in his recording with Jon Vickers!

(I notice that we haven't talked at all about the strange vocal requirements of this music, which result in its being sung by such a strange assortment of tenors, from light "character" tenors like Murray Dickie and Richard Lewis to full-fledged heroic tenors like Vickers and James King. Well, some other time perhaps.)

MAHLER: Das Lied von der Erde
i. "Das Trinklied vom Jammer der Erde"
("The Drinking Song of the Sorrow of the Earth")

Now beckons the wine in the golden goblet,
but drink not yet, first I'll sing you a song!
The song of sorrow
shall in gusts of laughter through your souls resound.
When sorrow draws near,
wasted lie the gardens of the soul.
Withered and dying are joy and song.
Dark is life, is death.

Master of this house!
Your cellar holds its fill of golden wine!
Here, this lute I name my own!
To strike the lute and to drain the glasses,
these are the things that go together.
A full goblet of wine at the right time
is worth more than all the kingdoms of this earth!
Dark is life, is death.

The firmament is blue eternally, and the earth
will long stand fast and blossom in spring.
But thou, O man, how long then livest thou?
Not a hundred years canst thou delight
in all the rotten trash of this earth!

Look there, down there! In the moonlight, on the graves
squats a mad spectral figure!
It is an ape! Hear how his howling
screams its way through the sweet fragrance of life!

Now take the wine! Now it is time, companions!
Drain your golden goblets to the dregs!
Dark is life, is death!

iii. "Von der Jugend" ("On Youth")

In the middle of the little pool
stands a pavilion of green
and of white porcelain.

Like the back of a tiger
arches the bridge of jade
over to the pavilion.

In the little house friends are sitting,
beautifully dressed, drinking, chatting;
several are writing verses.

Their silken sleeves slip
backwards, their silken caps
perch gaily on the back of their necks.

On the little pool's still
surface everything appears
fantastically in a mirror image.

Everything is standing on its head
in the pavilion of green
and of white porcelain;

Like a half-moon stands the bridge,
upside-down its arch. Friends,
beautifully dressed, are drinking, chatting.

v. "Der Trunkene im Frühling" 
("The Drunk in Spring")

If life is but a dream,
why then toil and fret?
I drink till I can drink no longer,
the whole livelong day!

And when I can drink no longer,
since gullet and soul are full,
then I stagger to my door
and sleep stupendously!

What do I hear on awakening? Hark!
A bird sings in the tree.
I ask him if the spring is here;
I feel as if it were a dream.

The bird twitters, "Yes!
Spring is here -- came overnight!"
In deepest wonder I listen.
The bird sings and laughs.

I feel my glass again,
and drain it to the dregs,
and sing, until the moon shines bright
in the black firmament.

And when I can sing no longer,
then I go back to sleep;
for what does spring matter to me?
Let me be drunk!

Fritz Wunderlich, tenor; Philharmonia/New Philharmonia Orchestra, Otto Klemperer, cond. EMI, recorded 1965-66

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Preview: Mahler's view of idyllic youths turns them upside-down

Tenor Robert Dean Smith sings "On Youth" from Mahler's Song of the Earth, with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra conducted by Bernard Haitink, in November 2006 (part of the celebration of the 50th anniversary of Haitink's association with the orchestra).

MAHLER: Das Lied von der Erde (The Song of the Earth):
iii. "Von der Jugend" ("On Youth")
[English translation by Deryck Cooke]

In the middle of the little pool
stands a pavilion of green
and of white porcelain.

Like the back of a tiger
arches the bridge of jade
over to the pavilion.

In the little house friends are sitting,
beautifully dressed, drinking, chatting;
several are writing verses.

Their silken sleeves slip
backwards, their silken caps
perch gaily on the back of their necks.

On the little pool's still
surface everything appears
fantastically in a mirror image.

Everything is standing on its head
in the pavilion of green
and of white porcelain;

Like a half-moon stands the bridge,
upside-down its arch. Friends,
beautifully dressed, are drinking, chatting.

by Ken

As I explained last night, heading toward tomorrow's Sunday Classics post, we're working our way backwards through the three tenor songs (Nos. 1, 3, and 5) of Mahler's Song of the Earth (Das Lied von der Erde), starting last night with the last of them, "The Drunk in Spring" ("Der Trunkene im Frühling"). Tonight we come to the shortest of the song symphony's six movements, No. 3, "On Youth" ("Von der Jugend"), which typically lasts 3-3½ minutes -- though tomorrow we're going to hear the longest as well as most remarkable performance of the song I've ever heard.


FOR THIS SONG I PROMISED YOU A STORY . . .

. . . of "the special personal identification that opened this song up for me -- or perhaps opened me up for this song" type. Here goes.

Preview: In Mahler's "Song of the Earth" we meet a springtime drunk

The elegant Swiss tenor Ernst Häfliger is our first

soloist in Mahler's song "The Drunk in Spring."

by Ken

Bruno Walter's 1960 Columbia recording of Mahler's song symphony Song of the Earth (Das Lied von der Erde), the composition that fell between his Eighth and Ninth Symphonies and would have been No. 9 if he hadn't been so superstitious about allotting that fateful number to a symphony, was originally released on three LP sides. Surprisingly quickly, though, it was compressed onto two very well-filled sides, and that was my first recording of Das Lied, whose texts are German adaptations by Hans Bethge (from the collection The Chinese Flute) of Chinese originals.

Even as I was getting to know the piece, it was obvious that the emotional center of gravity was the concluding sixth movement, the half-hour song "The Farewell" ("Der Abschied," which we blundered our way into in our Maureen Forrester remembrance), about equal in length to its five predecessors put together, so that was where I usually headed, and since it was preceded on Side 2 by the last of the tenor songs, that meant I listened just as often to the contrastingly very brief song "The Drunk in Spring" ("Der Trunkene im Frühling"), as sung by the elegant Swiss tenor Ernst Häfliger -- a studio replacement, you'll recall, for the English tenor Richard Lewis, who sang in Walter's live New York performances that April but had only months earlier recorded Das Lied with Fritz Reiner and the Chicago Symphony for RCA. (We're going to hear some of that performance tomorrow night.)


INEVITABLY, THE ATTENTION OF THE DAS LIED LISTENER
GRAVITATES TO THE WEIGHTIER ALTO SONGS (NOS. 2, 4, 6)

Preview: En route to Berlioz' "Harold in Italy," we have to pass through his "Symphonie fantastique"

UPDATED to include some consideration of Berlioz' post-composition decision to make the whole Fantastique a dream rather than just the "psychedelic" 4th and 5th movements

Witches' sabbath -- as imagined by Arthur Rackham
in pen and ink and watercolor

by Ken

Our subject this week is Berlioz' symphony with viola solo Harold in Italy. Last night we heard three very different performances, all with William Primrose as soloist, of the second movement, "March of the pilgrims singing their evening prayer." Our big Harold push comes tomorrow, but just to touch base -- and since I happen to have an extra file left over from tomorrow's music, let's listen to the opening movement:

BERLIOZ: Harold in Italy, Op. 16:
i. Harold in the mountains: Scenes of melancholy,
of happiness, and of joy


Gérard Caussé, viola; Orchestre du Capitole de Toulouse, Michel Plasson, cond. EMI, recorded March 3-7, 1991


IN WHICH WE DISPOSE OF BERLIOZ' SYMPHONIE
FANTASTIQUE IN A MERE PREVIEW!

As we noted last week in connection with the dramatic symphony Roméo et Juliette, Arturo Toscanini took his Berlioz seriously, and was a great champion of both Roméo and Harold in Italy, which I think we can fairly describe as neglected masterpieces in those years, and for some years to come. After the great triumph of his NBC Symphony broadcast of the complete Roméo in 1949, he turned his attention to The Damnation of Faust, but sadly was never able to solve logistical problems starting with the availability of a suitable tenor.

Curiously, Toscanini seems not to have thought much of most of the Symphonie fantastique, an opinion I don't think many of us would share. The Fantastique remains one of the best-loved pieces of music ever written, and I'm kind of astonished that we're "dispatching" it in a "preview." Nevertheless, the piece's close connection to Harold in Italy, which we'll talk about more tomorrow, makes it suitable fare for this preview.

The history of the Fantastique, both its creation and the composer's subsequent thinking about it, is much too elaborate for us to go into here. But it's well to remember that symphonie fantastique was originally just part of the piece's subtitle. The working title was Episode from the life of an artist, which became the subtitle -- we assume with Berlioz' approval if not at his instigation.

I go into this because Berlioz' thinking about the "program" of the Symphonie fantastique evolved in a number of ways, and there are two significantly different versions, at least for the first four movements. Some of the changes reflect the inclusion of the strange sequel he had by then written, the "lyrical monodrama" Lélio, or The Return to Life. But clearly, by the time of the revised program, he had done some rethinking about the role of the program itself. In the new introductory note, in fact, he says that if the symphony is performed by itself, without Lélio, it's possible if necessary to refrain from distributing the program to the audience -- "retaining only the titles of the five pieces; the symphony (or so the author hopes) being able to offer on its own a musical interest independent of all dramatic intention."

AN ALL-IN-ONE RESOURCE FOR THE FANTASTIQUE

I should express my debt here to Edward T. Cone's outstanding essay on "The Symphony and the Program" in his invaluable Norton Critical Score edition, which presents not just "an authoritative score," but "historical background," "analysis," and "views and comments" (principally by composers). I'm delighted to see that it's still in print, though the list price is now closer to seven than six times the $3.25 printed on my copy -- but Amazon.com lists copies almost that cheap (not counting shipping)!

So by all means feel free to pay little or even no attention to the program. However, if you need to see the program in order to decide how much heed to pay it, here it is, in the revised version, which you'll note now makes the entire piece a product of the young musician's drug trip.

Originally only the "psychedelic" fourth and fifth movements, the "March to the scaffold" and "Dream of a night of witches' sabbath," were drug-induced dreams of the young musician. Edward Cone makes the interesting suggestion:

Berlioz certainly realized that whatever music can or cannot portray, there is no way that music alone can distinguish between the depiction (a) of an experience, (b) of a memory of the experience, and (c) of a dream about the experience. The distinction between waking and dream in the earlier program had thus been artificial and nonmusical, and the obliteration of the division might have been a confession that the descriptive powers of music were even more limited than the composer had hitherto admitted. It is possible, then, that the new program was his way of telling the audience: "Look, don't take all this too seriously; it's only a dream. The main thing is the music."

Speaking of the young musician's drug trip, for $2.97 you can download Leonard Bernstein's 15-minute illustrated talk on the Fantastique, "Berlioz Takes a Trip." I'm not sure if I've ever actually listened to it, but I'm sure you can expect, as usual with the "teaching" Lenny, much useful audible analysis of the piece -- provided you can get past the unfortunate '70s-style marketing hype that seems to suggest, "If you like drugs, you'll love this music."

Just to keep the performance selection within manageable bounds, I've confined the selection to Francophone conductors -- not strictly speaking French, or we would lose our Belgian maestro, André Cluytens. The orchestras aren't necessarily French (or even Francophone), though, but we have managed to work in a couple.

First Berlioz sets the scene:

A young musician with a morbid sensibility and an ardent imagination poisons himself with opium in a fit of amorous despair. The dose of narcotic, too weak to bring him death, plunges him into a heavy sleep accompanied by strange visions, during which his sensations, his feelings, his memories are translated in his sick brain into musical thoughts and images. The beloved woman herself has become for him a melody, like an Idée fixe that he reencounters and hears everywhere.

BERLIOZ: Symphonie fantastique, Op. 14:
i. Rêveries. Passions

1st PART
Reveries. Passions

He remembers first that malaise of the soul, that vague des passions [wave of passions], those melancholies, those joys without origin which he experienced before having seen her whom he loves; then the volcanic love that she instantaneously inspired in him, his delirious agonies, his jealous furies, his returns of tenderness, his religious consolations.

Orchestre national de l'ORTF, Jean Martinon, cond. EMI, recorded January 1973

* * *

Symphonie fantastique:
ii. Un bal

2nd PART
A ball

He reencounters his beloved at a ball in the setting of the tumult of a great festivity.

Orchestre philharmonique de Strasbourg, Alain Lombard, cond. Erato, recorded c1972

* * *

Symphonie fantastique:
iii. Scène aux champs

3rd PART
Scene in the fields

A summer evening in the country; he hears two shepherds who dialogue a "ranz des vaches"; this pastoral duo, the setting of the scene, the light rustling of the trees gently stirred by the wind, some trains of hope that he has recently developed, everything comes together to bring to his heart an unaccustomed calm, to give his ideas a more jocular color; but she appears again -- his heart is torn, dolorous presentiments disturb him: if she were deceiving him. . . . One of the shepherds repeats his naive melody; the other no longer answers. The sun retires . . . distant noise of thunder . . . solitude . . . silence . . .

Detroit Symphony Orchestra, Paul Paray, cond. Mercury, recorded Nov. 28, 1959

* * *

Symphonie fantastique:
iv. Marche au supplice

4th PART
March to the scaffold

He dreams that he killed the one he loved, that he is condemned to death, led to the scaffold. The procession advances, to the sounds of a march at once somber and fierce, at once brilliant and solemn, in which a noise of heavy steps gives way without transition to the most clamorous outbursts. At the end the idée fixe reappears for an instant, like a last thought of love interrupted by the fatal blow.

Boston Symphony Orchestra, Charles Munch, cond. RCA/BMG, recorded Nov. 14-15, 1954

* * *

Symphonie fantastique:
v. Songe d'une nuit du sabbat

5th PART
Dream of a night of witches' sabbath

He sees himself at the witches' sabbath, in the midst of a frightful troupe of ghosts, sorcerers, monsters of every sort gathered for his funeral. Strange noises, groans, bursts of laughter, distant cries to which other cries seem to respond. The beloved melody reappears again; but it has lost its character of nobility and shyness; it's no longer anything but a base, trivial, and grotesque dance; it's she who's come to the witches' sabbath. . . . Blast of joy at her arrival. . . . She mingles with the diabolical orgy. . . Funeral-bell tolling, burlesque parody of the Dies irae. Witches' sabbath round-dance. The witches' sabbath round-dance and the Dies irae together.

Boston Symphony Orchestra, Georges Prêtre, cond. RCA/BMG, recorded Feb. 3, 1969


PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER:
THE SYMPHONIE FANTASTIQUE

Here's a recording I like a lot, which I don't think has gotten as much attention as it deserves.

BERLIOZ: Symphonie fantastique; Episode from the life of an artist, Op. 14

i. Reveries. Passions
ii. A ball
iii. Scene in the fields
iv. March to the scaffold
v. Dream of a night of witches' sabbath


ii at 14:00, iii at 20:26. iv at 36:50, v at 41:39
Philharmonia Orchestra, André Cluytens, cond. EMI, recorded November 1958


IN TOMORROW'S SUNDAY CLASSICS POST --

As noted, we take in the whole of Harold in Italy, noting its connections to the Symphonie fantastique. We'll also have a Berlioz bonus.


SUNDAY CLASSICS POSTS

The current list is here.

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