Here's the key -- or is it?

Piano Trio: 
i. Allegro moderato -- opening

Arthur Rubinstein, piano; Jascha Heifetz, violn; Emanuel Feuermann, cello. RCA-BMG, recorded in Holllywood, Sept. 12-13, 1941

Vladimir Ashkenazy, piano; Itzhak Perlman, violin; Lynn Harrell, cello. EMI, recorded in New York, c1979

UPDATE: If you looked at this post before 10pm ET/7pm PT, you saw only the Ashkenazy-Perlman-Harrell clip, and in fact originally the whole first movement. When I went back to edit it to include just the opening, I was disheartened by how namby-pamby the performance is. (I actually thought the EMI CDs contained a different one, and then I figured how far wrong could we go with this one? I learned.) Most of my CD versions are on a hard-to-get-at shelf, so as an add-on I chose a much grander performance that happened also to be more readily at hand.

by Ken

This piece suddenly popped into my head this afternoon, and I couldn't have been happier that it did. So we're going to hear it tomorrow. Meanwhile it set me to thinking about other works in the same key, with the realization (I'm sure not for the first time, but then, who remembers?) that it's hard to find others of the same character.


SOME OTHER WORKS IN THE SAME KEY

" 'La Traviata' at the foot of Masada" -- say what?

"La Traviata at the foot of Masada"



VERDI: La Traviata: Prelude and Opening Scene
(through Alfredo and Violetta's Brindisi)
[You can find an Italian-English libretto for La Traviata
at "DM's opera site."]

[in English] Valerie Masterson (s), Violetta Valéry; Della Jones (ms), Flora Bervoix; Denis Dowling (b), Marquis d'Obigny; Geoffrey Pogson (t), Gastone, Viscount of Létorières; John Brecknock (t), Alfredo Germont; John Gibbs (b), Baron Douphol; English National Opera Chorus and Orchestra, Sir Charles Mackerras, cond. EMI, recorded Aug.-Oct. 1980


[clip 1: Prelude; clip 2: Opening Scene] Rosanna Carteri (s), Violetta Valéry; Lydia Marimpietri (s), Flora Bervoix; Leonardo Monreale (bs), Marquis d'Obigny; Glauco Scarlini (t), Gastone, Viscount of Létorières; Cesare Valletti (t), Alfredo Germont; Arturo La Porta (b), Baron Douphol; Rome Opera Chorus and Orchestra, Pierre Monteux, cond. RCA-BMG, recorded 1956 (mono)

by Ken

I'm not suggesting that you shouldn't go just because the idea strikes me as a tiny bit, er, peculiar. It's certainly an amazingly dramatic as well as historic site -- there in the Judean desert, at the foot of the towering plateau of Masada, in range of the Dead Sea.

But "dramatic" in rather particular ways, I would think. I imagine that when the Israeli Opera Festival did Verdi's crypto-Old Testament epic Nabucco, much of which takes place outdoors in the ancient Near East, with scenes of definite blockbuster character, the site may have enhanced the experience. Ditto with Verdi's Egyptian epic, Aida.

The Opera Festival

We witness here the realization of the vision of an international opera festival in one of the most meaningful sites in our history, proving that the State of Israel can become a centre for culture tourism from all over the world. And indeed more than 4,000 tourists will attend these performance of Nabucco in tandem with thousands of Israelis coming to Masada from all corners of the land.

Many partners have joined us in this cultural, historic grandiose cultural celebration including the Tamar Regional Council, The National Parks Authority, The Ministry of Tourism, The Ministry of Culture, The Dead Sea Hotel Association, Discount Bank, IDB who enable thousands of spectators from the periphery attend the performances, The Meitar Family Fund and others. We thank all of them and many others without whom we would not have been able to be here today and enjoy a production that will not be easily forgotten.

I thank you dear guests that you have chosen to enjoy with us Nabucco at the footsteps of Masada. I wish you a unique operatic experience and already am looking forward to seeing you here next year for Aida.

Hanna Munitz
Israeli Opera General Director

But La Traviata?

"La traviata at the foot of Masaada" was the actual legend on the online promotional something-or-other that caught my eye. And what could say "19th-century Parisian demimonde" more surely than the Judean desert, Masada, and the Dead Sea? Not to mention that, while Traviata has party scenes that are crucial to the drama, the heart of the thing is the scenes among the three principals -- Violetta and Alfredo and, later, papa Giorgio Germont.

There are four performances scheduled between June 12 and 17. If you go, let us know how it turned out!


Aida at Masada 2011

YouTube caption: For the second year running Eyal Lavee and his production team at The Design Group in Israel returned to the purpose built site they carved out of the desert last year for the Israeli Opera at the foot of Masada Mountain at the Dead Sea.

This historically significant and exquisitely raw setting saw the staging of Verdi's Aida, conducted by Daniel Oren, a co-production with Les Choragies d'Orange in France for the 2011 Dead Sea & Jerusalem Opera Festival 2011.

The Design Group - encompassing 3 different companies - Stage Design, Irgunit and LEDIM - and embracing multiple technical disciplines, handled all aspects of the technical production and site management. Lavee worked with his core production management team of Elad Mainz and Eviatar Banayan, and up to 150 other crew and technicians at peak times on site.

Once again, The Group's international connections were energised to bring onboard HSL and Britannia Row from the UK to provide lighting and audio equipment respectively. "Last year was a huge success, so it made sense to keep the same teams and collaborate with the best companies in the industry to supply the large quantities of premium kit required. Both HSL and Britannia Row did another fantastic job," says Lavee.

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In our missing "Song of the Earth" song, Mahler's "Lonely One in Autumn" begs for "peace" and "consolation"

Christa Ludwig, mezzo-soprano; Israel Philharmonic, Leonard Bernstein, cond. CBS-Sony, recorded live, May 18, 20, and 23, 1972

by Ken

In the above audio clip we're near the end of the second song of Das Lied von der Erde (The Song of the Earth), "Der Einsame im Herbst" ("The Lonely One in Autumn"), where Mahler pulls another of those minor-to-major switcheroos we've talked about. It occurs at 1:25 of our clip. Well, that's the lead-in; the actual moment occurs at about 1:31 -- and it's one of the stupendous moments of this extraordinary song-symphony, the first new project the composer undertook after learning that he was suffering from terminal heart disease.

From the heaven-storming conclusion of the Eighth Symphony to Das Lied represents, one of the most striking sudden changes of course in the work of any creative artist I'm aware of. We actually heard the juxtaposition in the August 2010 post "In the opening vision of Mahler's Song of the Earth: 'Dark is life, is death,'" which focused on the opening tenor song, "The Drinking Song of Earth's Sorrow," but also included the two later tenor songs.

In this week's preview I said we would be filling in the one song we still haven't covered and then hearing the six movements of Das Lied finally put together. For all sorts of reasons we're not going to manage that today. I'm going to content myself with presenting that final missing link, the second song (and the first for the alto or baritone soloist who alternates with the tenor).


THERE'S A DIFFERENCE IN CHARACTER
BETWEEN THE TENOR AND ALTO SONGS

Preview: One loose end we CAN tie up -- our missing movements from Mahler's "Song of the Earth"

by Ken

Das Lied von der Erde (The Song of the Earth) is sort of Mahler's Symphony No. 8½. Even though it's a series of six songs with orchestra, alternating between tenor and alto (or baritone) soloists, he probably would have called is his Ninth Symphony if the already-dying composer hadn't been such a baby about that "Ninth Symphony" business -- their Ninths had been so fateful for Beethoven and Bruckner. Since he had his next symphony mapped out, he thought that by calling that his Ninth, when it was really his Tenth, he would have the jinx beaten. As we know, though, the joke was on him. He did complete the symphony he called his Ninth, but died leaving his Tenth incomplete.

Finally we get to the Final Scene of "Carmen"

Teresa Berganza and Plácido Domingo sing the final scene of Carmen.

by Ken

One loose thread we're going to not so much tie up as pull all the way out before we close up shop here is the Final Scedne of Bizet's Carmen, which we were headed toward ever so gradually in a series of posts that stretched out quite awhile and got us into the scene. But I had it in mind to continue through it, trying to explain, or describe, or just show the point at which the fates of Carmen and Don José intersect so tragically. Well, now that I'm past trying to explain or describe or even just show, I rediscover a large number of audio files I already made of most or all of this scene, clearly intended to be used at some point in some way that I never did figure out. It seems a shame to let them go to waste.

I could have sworn there was one more post, in which I just dumped out the whole scene, and I distinctly remember doing texts for it, but it appears that never got done either. And now I have to re-create the texts for the portions of the scene we didn't cover previously. There are links for all the posts that I can find at the end of this post.


FIRST LET'S REMEMBER HOW THE OPERA BEGINS

Now we hear Mahler's heartbreaking "Kindertotenlieder"

Baritone Matthias Goerne sings "Nun will die Sonn' so hell aufgeh'n" ("Now will the sun rise just as brightly"), the opening song of Mahler's Kindertotenlieder, with Jonathan Nott conducting the Mahler Youth Orchestra, at a Proms concert in the Royal Albert Hall, Sept. 4, 2009.

Now will the sun rise just as brightly
as if no misfortune had happened in the night.
The misfortune happened to me alone;
the sun shines for everyone.

Your must not hoard the night within,
it must be absorbed into the eternal light.
A little lamp in my shelter has gone out;
hail to the joyful light of the world!

-- translation by Lucy E. Cross

by Ken

Aa promised, after focusing on the last of Mahler's Kindertotenlieder (Songs on the Death of Children), "In diesem Wetter" ("In this weather"), with its final stanza minor-to-major "switcheroo," in Friday night's preview, today we hear the whole of this haunting song cycle.

It's worth recalling that at the time Mahler undertook to set this handful of the poems written on the subject by Friedrich Rückert, his own daughters were still healthy, and Alma Mahler was more than a little upset at this challenge to fate. This was likely not ameliorated as their own tragedies struck. A case could be made that she never forgave him.

In the case of other Mahler songs we've listened as well to the original piano-accompanied settings. We're going to skip that in the case of this cycle we're going to skip that step. It would be especially hard to forego Mahler's orchestral setting, which is notably spare and chamberlike -- the chilly, melancholy opening oboe-and-horn duet sets the tone. There's a normal complement of woodwinds, but of brasses there are only horns, a pair in Nos. 1-4 and four in "In diesem Wetter," and there are only dabs of percussion. The harp is a notable presence.

Approaching Mahler's heartbreaking "Kindertotenlieder"

For the final stanza of "In diesem Wetter," the last of the Kindertotenlieder, Mahler switches from minor to major


Thomas Hampson, baritone; Vienna Philharmonic, Leonard Bernstein, cond. DG, recorded live, October 1988

In this weather, in this storm, in this bluster,
they're resting as if in their mother's house,
not frightened by any storm,
by God's hand protected,
they're resting as if in their mother's house.

by Ken

I'm trying to think -- among the infinity of loose ends and gaps we'll leave when the tent folds up -- which few among them we might still deal with. It seems rather hopeless, but it has occurred to me that for all the Mahler we've listened to (I always want to compile a master list, but it's a big job; would it be of interest to anyone?), we haven't done the song cycle Kindertotenlieder (Songs on the Death of Children).

However, we have done the final song, "In diesem Wetter" ("In this weather"), in a December 2011 post devoted to "The old minor-to-major switcheroo as practiced by Mahler, Schubert, and Donizetti" (preview and main post), in which we listened to the opening song of Schubert's great song cycle Winterreise (Winter Journey), "Gute Nacht" ("Good night"), and Nemorino's haunting aria "Una furtiva lagrima" ("A furtive tear") from Donizetti's Elixir of Love in addition to "In diesem Wetter."


TO APPROACH THE KINDERTOTENLIEDER,
WE'RE GOING BACK TO "IN DIESEM WETTER"

Bruckner 7 -- a symphony built on its opening pair of musical twin towers

[As I explained at the top of Friday night's preview, this is the second part of a three-part Bruckner series, begun December 6-8 with "Bruckner's Fourth Symphony -- four stories for four movements," a reprise of a January 2010 post I've always been fond of. This Bruckner Seventh preview post appeared originally in July 2012. The Bruckner series -- and, I'm projecting, Sunday Classics -- will conclude with a new post on the Ninth Symphony. -- Ken]


The string chorale that bursts out shortly after the start of the Adagio (at bar 4 above) of the Bruckner Seventh

by Ken

As promised in Friday night's preview, our subject today is the seventh of Anton Bruckner's outsize nine symphonies, which unlike the Fourth Symphony, with its remarkably evenly weighted four movements, is cast in the form, as I put it, of "an opening movement and an ensuing slow movement of such emotional weight as to dominate the whole piece." (We heard the whole of the Fourth Symphony in the January 2010 post "Bruckner's Fourth Symphony -- four stories for four movements." We also heard the formative Second Symphony, in the August 2011 post "Bruckner begins to establish his voice, hushed and clear." The latter post, I just discovered, had a broken link to the click-through, which I've fixed -- in case anyone has been waiting all this time to read and hear that post.)

Which means that our obvious focus is going to be on those first two movements, which dramatically counteract the silly image of Bruckner which seems to me to excite the ardor of the composer's devout faithful: Bruckner as a a sort of musical idiot savant, a piously Catholic naïf piously erecting monumental musical cathedrals in the ether. About Bruckner being in some ways naïve I don't think there's much doubt, but I think we would have some serious disagreements, the Bruckner Faithful and I, as to where and how that naïveté kicks in. However, the idea that these symphonies are underpinned by reflexive piety seems to me fairly nutty. (I'm embarrassed to own that I've used one of those cheesy architectural mega-metaphors for the title of this post. It's just so tempting.)

There's a reason why Bruckner's Fourth and Seventh Symphonies, and perhaps also the three movements he completed of the Ninth, are the symphonies of his which are often enjoyed by music-lovers who don't have much use for the rest of his work. And yet it seems to me that it would be hard to think of anything more quintessentially Brucknerian than the orchestral chorale we just heard from near the opening of the Adagio of the Seventh, or the opening two minutes of the symphony which we're about to hear, which already demonstrate Bruckner's dependence on repetition as well as the way he can build the orchestra from the softest hush to the most thundering outburst.

BRUCKNER: Symphony No. 7 in E: opening




IT'S AN ALL-VIENNA PHILHARMONIC POST TODAY

The performances we've heard so far, by the way, both feature the Vienna Philharmonic (the orchestra best known to Bruckner), as indeed do all the performances we're going to hear today. The snatch of the Adagio at the top is conducted by Carlo Maria Giulini, that of the opening of the symphony by Karl Böhm.

Next we'll hear the complete performances of these movements -- and more.

Preview: Two Scherzos

[This preview begins the second part of a three-part Bruckner series, begun December 6-8 with "Bruckner's Fourth Symphony -- four stories for four movements," a reprise of a January 2010 post I've always been fond of. This Bruckner Seventh preview post appeared originally in July 2012. The Bruckner series -- and, I'm projecting, Sunday Classics -- will conclude with a new post on the Ninth Symphony. -- Ken]


Eugen Jochum conducts the Bavarian Radio Symphony in the Scherzo (third movement) of Bruckner's Seventh Symphony.

by Ken

In writing recently about the structure of Tchaikovsky's string sextet Souvenir de Florence, I noted that it employs a particular movement format:

an opening movement and an ensuing slow movement of such emotional weight as to dominate the whole piece. Haydn was already doing it when he invented the [four-movement symphonic] form, doing it in both symphonies and string quartets. It's the format of the wonderful Symphony No. 88, with the otherworldly slow movement, which we heard in September 2010.) It's also the format of Mendelssohn's Italian Symphony, which we heard last week.

I added:

Bruckner, who supersized everything else about the symphony, also supersized this ratio in his Seventh Symphony, which has that massive opening movement and then that haunting Adagio, followed by an invigorating but comparatively brief Scherzo and Finale. The trick is to have those later movements hold up their end of the deal even while conceding emotional primacy to the first two movements. This is in marked contrast to Bruckner's differently remarkable achievement in the Fourth Symphony: producing four movements of roughly equal musical and emotional weight. (We actually took in the whole shebang in January 2010, in "Bruckner's Fourth Symphony -- four stories for four movements." ) It just goes to show that there really aren't any rules about any of this, that it's all about what you can make work.

For better or worse, I'm so highly suggestible musically that this naturally set the Bruckner Seventh running in my head. For tonight I thought it would be fun to listen just to the Scherzos of the Bruckner Fourth and Seventh. You'll notice that they're not radically different in length, but they seem to me radically different in emotional weight (we can talk about this Sunday), and of course the Scherzo of the Seventh is rendered virtually svelte by the vastly greater weight of the symphony's first two movements.

BRUCKNER: Symphony No. 4 in E-flat:
iii. Scherzo: Bewegt (Lively)


Philharmonia Orchestra, Otto Klemperer, cond. EMI, recorded Sept. and Nov. 1963

Cleveland Orchestra, Christoph von Dohnányi, cond. Decca, recorded Oct. 8 and 10, 1989

BRUCKNER: Symphony No. 7 in E:
iii. Scherzo: Sehr schnell (Very fast)


Philharmonia Orchestra, Otto Klemperer, cond. EMI, recorded November 1960

Cleveland Orchestra, Christoph von Dohnányi, cond. Decca, recorded August 1990


IN THIS WEEK'S SUNDAY CLASSICS POST

As you may have guessed, we're going to hear the Bruckner Seventh Symphony.

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Tapping into "Broadway in a Box"

Maybe it was a little unfair of me to include William Warfield's performance of "Ol' Man River" from the 1966 Music Theater of Lincoln Center revival of Show Boat in Friday's selections (though he was only 46, the voice showed heavy signs of wear), but I couldn't resist. However, here he is 15 years earlier, in the 1951 film version.

by Ken

In Friday night's preview I explained how I found myself pondering Sony's Broadway in a Box, a 25-CD anthology of 25 Broadway musicals in either Original Broadway Cast recordings (18), later Broadway revivals (4), or Music Theater of Lincoln Center revivals (3) drawn from the combined archives of RCA and Columbia Records, the two most active producers of such recordings, both now under the Sony Music umbrella. And I explained how I realized that among the participants in those 25 efforts I had noticed two five-peaters and even one six-peater. (If you haven't had a crack at this, or you just want to see the contents of the set again, they're listed in the Friday post.)

Then we heard six classic Broadway numbers, among which, I said, both of our five-peaters and our six-peater were represented at least once. I thought we would start by hearing those six songs again -- in the same order, but this time properly identified:

Preview: "Broadway in a Box"

by Ken

I was looking at this box, Broadway in a Box, that I got for some agreeably modest price as an Amazon special -- 25 cast recordings of Broadway musicals, mostly Original Broadway Cast recordings, but with seven revivals mixed in, four from Broadway and three from the Music Theater of Lincoln Center. I only had two on CD, and one of those wasn't an original-label reissue, so I figured what the heck.

So I was looking at the box, which contains an interesting selection. Not necessarily the 25 I would have chosen from the RCA and Coiumbia musical-theater vaults (all now in the Sony fold, of course, making for quite a musical-theater vaultload), but all of at least some interest. And I was trying to see whether any "themes" popped out at me. And after a while I realized I could identify two five-peaters among the contributors and one six-peater. All three are represented at least once in the following six numbers, a pretty grand assortment, I think.

"The Lonely Goatherd"


"Ol' Man River"


"It's the little things you do together"


"Some Enchanted Evening"


"Everything's coming up roses"


"Officer Krupke"



OF COURSE YOU'LL NEED TO KNOW THE
25 RECORDINGS INCLUDED IN THE SET --

It's "The Nutcracker" -- the whole deal! (again -- our last annual encore presentation)

With the "Nutcracker Suite" sequence of Disney's Fantasia now unavailable, I thought to kick off we'd just look at this little teaser from Helgi Tómasson's San Francisco Ballet staging.

by Ken

[To repeat, this is an "encore presentation" of last year's encore presentation of 2011's complete-Nutcracker post, which I thought came out pretty darned well. You probably think it's a huge labor-saver just running a post "rerun." Perhaps I thought so too, but it never works out that way.]

The plan is pretty simple. As promised in Friday night's preview, when we heard (once again) two quite differently terrific performances of Tchaikovksy's own Nutcracker Suite, today we're going to hear the complete ballet, and chunks of it -- solely at my discretion -- twice!

Pretty much the last thing I added to what you'll see in the click-through is the plot synopsis (filched from Wikipedia). I went back and forth a lot about this, because I really don't pay much attention to plots, or even programs, when I listen to music written for the dance. I'm not a dance person to begin with, and I guess my listening orientation is to allow the music to plug its own built-in "program" into my imagination. Still, in the end it seemed to me that this curious format (for want of a better word) we've got going here at Sunday Classics is actually an extremely good way to hook up the plot and the music.

I'll have some quick (I hope) notes about the specifics when we get to the click-through, so let me just throw out two points about The Nutcracker:

(1) Tchaikovsky really didn't want to write the damned thing. So no, it was about as far from a "labor of love" as you can get.

(2) It was written to share a double bill with one of the composer's less-performed operas, Yolanta, which is the part of the bill that really interested and moved him. It has, in fact, nothing (that I can see or hear) in common with its birth billmate, and it strikes me as an incredibly difficult piece to really bring to life, but as with many difficult, fragile creations, its specialness holds special rewards. It deals, first, with the desperate desire of a very powerful man -- a king, in fact -- to shield a loved one, in this case his only daughter, from pain, in her case the knowledge that she's blind. But in the larger sense it deals with the futility of trying to protect someone from something it's impossible to "protect" her from, like reality. Someday we should undoubtedly talk about Yolanta. (But it's difficult.)


MOVING ON TO OUR COMPLETE NUTCRACKER