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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Roaming the landscape (and seascape!) of the imagination -- the full orchestral splendor of Debussy

Valery Gergiev conducts the London Symphony in the concluding "Dialogue of the Wind and the Sea" from Debussy's La Mer in March 2007.

by Ken

After Friday's quick look at Debussy's world of piano miniatures, in last night's preview we left off with the full orchestral splendor of one of the staples of the orchestral repertory, the Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune. As I noted, it's part of one of the seemingly endless stream of busted plans and projects that lined the creative career of Debussy (1862-1918), in this case what was to have been an orchestral suite inspired by Mallarmé's poem "L'après-midi d'un faune" ("Afternoon of a Faun"). As with so many of those aborted projects, however, the yield was nonetheless some extraordinary music.

(Quick faun-check: Remember, we're not talking about a fawn, such as Bambi, but a faun, the half-man, half-goat Roman woodland spirit known for its insatiable horniness.) Here's the Afternoon of a Faun again:


Alain Marion, flute; Orchestre National de l'ORTF, Jean Martinon, cond. EMI, recorded 1973-74

Here's another work of Debussy that was born of a plan that didn't come to fruition the way that was intended, of all things a Rhapsody for Saxophone and Orchestra:


Jean-Marie Londeix, alto saxophone; Orchestre National de l'ORTF, Jean Martinon, cond. EMI, recorded 1973-74


LET'S PLAY OUR FAVORITE DEBUSSY GAME,
"WHICH CAME FIRST?"

Preview: Debussy from "Syrinx" to "Afternoon of a Faun" -- or is it vice versa?

Paula Robison plays Debussy's "Syrinx" at the 1986 Festival Casals in Puerto Rico.

If you spend much time among flutists -- a course of action I'm neither recommending nor especially warning against -- you'll find that "Syrinx" is one of the standbys to which they return constantly in warmups and instrumental noodling.

by Ken

You may have noticed that in last night's preview featuring three simple but exquisite little pieces by Claude Debussy (1862-11918), in assorted arrangements as well as the piano originals, I neglected to include dates of composition. This wasn't entirely neglect. Except in the broadest terms, I have more difficulty hearing time with Debussy than with almost any other composer. The dates just didn't seem to come into the discussion. For the record, the Suite bergamasque, which includes "Clair de lune" ("Moonlight"), was written around 1890.

PLEASE DON'T ASK WHAT BERGAMASQUE MEANS

It's a good question, and deserves an answer. The answer is that nobody knows. Oh, it has a bunch of linguistic analogs that suggest various meanings, but what exactly it means, we don't know. You might think it would help that Gabriel Fauré (1845-1924)wrote a piece called Masques et bergamasques, but he didn't do that until 1919, when Debussy had recently died, and the likelihood is that what he meant by "Bergamasques" was, "whatever the heck Debussy meant, morbleu.")

Preview: Debussy -- the man who heard the music in moonlight

David Oistrakh plays "Clair de lune" ("Moonlight") with trusted accompanist Frida Bauer in Paris, 1962.

by Ken

So you think you don't know from Claude Debussy (1862-1918)? Here are three little pieces, originally written for piano solo, that have been absorbed into the general culture, arranged for just about every imaginable performance situation.

(1) "Clair de lune" ("Moonlight")

arranged (again) for violin and piano

Jascha Heiftez, violin; Emanuel Bey, piano (arr. Roelens). American Decca/MCA, recorded Nov. 29, 1945
arranged for guitar
Angel Romero, arr. and guitar. Telarc, recorded Aug. 3-6, 1987

played on the organ of New York City's Riverside Church

Virgil Fox, organ of the Riverside Church (New York City). Capitol/EMI, recorded Oct. 4, 1960

In perfect balance -- Rachmaninoff's 2nd Piano Concerto, where everything comes together just right

This is the first part (of three) of longtime pals Martha Argerich (born 1941) and Nelson Freire (born 1944) playing Rachmaninoff's delightful Second Suite for Two Pianos. (We last heard Argerich and Freire, separately, playing Schumann.) We'll hear more of the performance below.

by Ken

Friday night we heard the first movement of the Rachmaninoff Piano Concerto No. 2, as played by Arthur Rubinstein and Fritz Reiner -- the way I first encountered the music on RCA's Rubinstein Heart of the Piano Concerto compilation LP. Last night we detoured to make a quick run through Rachmaninoff's "other" piece for piano and orchestra -- other than the four concertos, that is -- the wonderful Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini. Today we're back to the Second Concerto.

It's not Rachmaninoff's most ambitious concerto, which would be the Third. I know people who are nuts for the Third Concerto, but I've never warmed to it nearly as much as the Second, which seems to me not only one of the most beautiful pieces of music ever written, but one of the most amazingly well-balanced, in terms of its movements, in the classical literature.

NOW THIS ISN'T WHAT MAKES IT A MASTERPIECE

Preview: A peek at the "fifth" Rachmaninoff piano concerto

Paganini started it all, with the theme that every composer wanted to write variations on -- as if Paganini (1782-1840) hadn't already done it himself in the 24th Caprice for solo violin. We've got a proper violin performance below, but here guitarist Eliot Fisk plays his own transcription.

by Ken

Last night we sampled the second of Sergei Rachmaninoff's four piano concertos, in anticipation of our look tomorrow at the entire piece. In addition to the four formal concertos, Rachmaninoff's piano-and-orchestra output includes a remarkable set of variations, the Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini, on "the" Paganini tune. It's one of his most inspired and loved creations, and I don't know of any better way to illustrate the richness of his imagination than to make a tactical leap from the early variations to the most famous of them, the 18th (of 21).

To go back to the beginning, here's what Paganini actually wrote, as played by the young Itzhak Perlman.

PAGANINI: Caprice No. 24 in A minor


Itzhak Perlman, violin. RCA/BMG, recorded March 1965

Preview: Heart of the piano concerto, Part 2: Rachmaninoff's 2nd

The opening movement of Rachmaninoff's Second Piano Concerto works even if the soloist (Arkady Volodos here) doesn't have all that much imagination. Fortunately the movement (not quite complete -- these aren't exactly speedsters, and that introductory piffle runs the clock down) is nicely conducted by Riccardo Chailly.

by Ken

I explained recently how I was first exposed to Beethoven's Third Piano Concerto: via an RCA compilation LP called Heart of the Piano Concerto, which consisted of single movements from Arthur Rubinstein's then-most-recent RCA recordings of six popular piano concertos. It was the biting, driving Rondo finale of the Beethoven concerto that was included, and that had won my heart by the 50th or 60th playing.



MY SECOND-FAVORITE PIANO CONCERTO MOVEMENT WAS
THE OPENING OF RACHMANINOFF'S SECOND CONCERTO

In the piano concertos, we hear Beethoven in hard-fought sort-of-harmony with the universe

No less than Van Cliburn introduces the piano-playing Serkins, Rudolf (1903-1991) and Peter (born 1947), playing Schubert's four-hand Military March in G, D. 733, No. 2, on the occasion of Serkin père's 85th birthday in 1988, from a 1988 concert featuring 26 pianists, issued by VAI.

"Rudolf Serkin was once asked, jokingly of course, if Beethoven had composed the Choral Fantasy for Marlboro. The piece has everything Marlboro could have wanted for its final concert: an orchestra in which everyone could play; solos within the orchestra; ensemble playing among various instruments; piano solo; and a chorus for everyone else in the Marlboro community. Rudolf Serkin responded, with his characteristic smile, 'No, Beethoven didn't compose it for Marlboro.... But he approves.'"

-- from a 2000 Amazon.com comment by Christopher Serkin
on a two-CD Marlboro Festival 50th-anniversary release

by Ken

What Christopher Serkin, a distinguished law professor, discreetly doesn't mention here -- though his last name is certainly suggestive -- is that Rudolf Serkin, a co-founder of the Marlboro Music Festival who was for decades its presiding artistic spirit -- was his grandfather, and Peter Serkin, whom he later mentions conducts the Choral Fantasy performance included in this Marlboro anniversary issue, is his uncle. (Peter Serkin, while a dramatically different sort of musician from his father, established himself at an early age as one of the leading pianists of his generation. It's kind of weird, for me at least, to think that young Peter is now in his 60s.)


NOT MANY PEOPLE TAKE THE CHORAL FANTASY SERIOUSLY