Sunday Classics: Bruckner begins to establish his voice, hushed and clear

by Ken



I think I mentioned awhile back that one of the sudden onslaught of Sony BMG "big boxes" I ordered was a reissue of the late Günter Wand's 1974-81 traversal of the nine Bruckner symphonies with the Cologne Radio (now WDR, or West German Radio) Symphony. I was tempted to refer to it as Wand's "first Bruckner symphony cycle," since he would later endlessly rerecord many of the Bruckner symphonies with the NDR (or North German Radio) Symphony and the Berlin Philharmonic, but as far as I know he never rerecorded the Symphonies Nos. 1 and 2.



I can -- and with some frequency do -- listen straight through the symphonies of Mahler, or the nine of Beethoven, but the Bruckner Nine pose some difficult listening-straight-through challenges, not least the inferior quality of the first two symphonies. (It's even worse with conductors who out of some sense of misplaced "fidelity" included the two even earlier symphonies, which we know as "00" and "0," which the composer himself decided didn't belong among his symphonic canon.) Although the Bruckner Third Symphony either, I'm really not persuaded by it either. And then, out of not-quite-nowhere, comes the awesome Fourth (which we heard in its entirety in January 2010, "Bruckner's Fourth Symphony -- four stories for four movements")

In last night's preview, our first two mystery excerpts plunged us into the vast but also warmly enveloping world of the Brucknerian Adagio, a world we've already visited (here in addition to the Fourth Symphony post).



But of course the Bruckner Fourth hardly came out of nowhere. In those first three numbered symphonies we can hear Bruckner grappling with all sorts of issues of what sort, or sorts, of symphony he wanted to write -- and sometimes succeeding quite wonderful, notably in the middle movements of the Second Symphony, which is the music I had in mind when I mentioned in last night's preview that I'd just gotten a CD package in the mail "and soon after I started listening I encountered some music that simply transports me, beginning with this excerpt, from the slow movement:



Excerpt 1







FOR MORE OF THE BRUCKNER SECOND, CLICK HERE

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Sunday Classics preview: Would you want to hear more of this music?

Or better still, just listen to it. (There's no prize.)

by Ken

I think the reason I have such a hard time controlling my on-line record purchases (I mean, really now, is there any sense in which I can be said to need more records?) is the fun of having this little packages arrive like gifts from the exceptionally wise, thoughtful, generous person you wish you had in your life.

This week I got one of those little packages, and soon after I started listening I encountered some music that simply transports me.

Excerpt 1


I thought it would be nice share to share this music with you, and we're starting tonight with just a few especially, um, transporting moments. I'm sure a number of you will recognize this music, but for tonight that isn't the point so much as just taking in these tiny excerpts. Sometimes, even cruelly ripped out of context, they're enough to tell you that you've been transported by of a master spell-maker.


FOR EXCERPTS 2 AND 3, CLICK HERE

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Sunday Classics: The seething revolutionary rage of "Andrea Chénier" certainly strikes a chord at our present moment

Last night we heard two minutes' worth of Plácido Domingo singing the Improvviso. It seemed only fair to let him get through the whole thing.

by Ken

As I explained in last night's preview of Chénier's Improvviso, we're continuing the three-part series devoted to Giordano's best-known opera begun earlier this month with a post called "Giordano's Andrea Chénier and the class war that wrote the book on class warfare" (also with a Saturday preview), built on the premise -- well, my premise -- that Chénier is a great revolutionary opera. Our goal is to get to the great Madelon scene of Act III. (I know you may not know what a "Madelon scene" is, but I don't want to try to explain the scene until we get to it.)

It's true that eventually Giordano and librettist Luigi Illica (also one of Puccini's most important librettists) cared more about the doomed love of the anti-royalist poet Chénier and the aristocrat Maddalena di Coigny, and I don't have a huge problem with that, because that's interesting enough and occasioned a fair amount of swell music. But for me the opera sizzles when it focuses on the way its characters are caught up in the tide of revolution in France, starting -- literally starting -- the overwhelming opening scene in which the servant Carlo Gérard, observing his broken-down father still in service to the Contessa di Coigny, vents some volcanic rage that there's no escape from servitude not just for his father but for his father's children; they're a race of menials.

In that opening scene we saw Gérard occupied, along with all the other servants in the household, with preparations for a grand soirée at the Coigny home -- just as the French Revolution, as we learn, is about to break out. Later we see the Countess and her lovely, inquisitive daughter Maddalena engaged in final preparations for Maddalena, and then the guests arrive. At the party, one of the guests, a young poet, is going to be moved to share some recent experiences and observations that will scandalize everyone present except Gérard and Maddalena: the Improvviso we heard last night, which today we're going to put in context.

We're going to pick up as the arrival of the guests is well under way, a starting point that was determined by one of three recordings we're going to hear -- all that survives of the broadcast of a 1938 San Francisco performance -- once we've broken the scene down a little. It's actually not a bad starting point, though, as the Countess greets the first of her "special" guests.


FOR OUR CHUNK OF ACT I, CLICK HERE

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Sunday Classics preview: Is the moral of "Andrea Chénier" that poets make lousy party guests?

DG herewith shares two minutes' worth of Plácido Domingo singing the Improvviso from Andrea Chénier (at the Vienna State Opera, 1981, Nello Santi conducting) from its Domingo 70th-birthday audio-and-video sampler.

by Ken

A few weeks ago I began what I explained would eventually be three sets of posts devoted to Giordano's opera Andrea Chénier. In that first post, "Giordano's Andrea Chénier and the class war that wrote the book on class warfare" (with a Saturday preview), we looked at the opening scene given to Carlo Gérard, a servant in the household of the Contessa di Coigny immersed in preparations for a swanky soirée on, literally, the even of the French Revolution.) We're headed for the Madelon scene of Act III, but before we get there we have to consider the poet Chénier's arresting Improvviso (which refers both to its improvisatory quality and to its suddennesss and unexpectedness), which shocks the dickens out of most of the guests.

In tomorrow's post we're going to work our way through the scene that leads up to the Improvviso as well as hearing the scene in its entirety (several times, actually).

Tonight we're going to listen just to the Improvviso itself. For the sake of my sanity I limited myself to what I've got on CD, but I think we've got an interesting assortment of performances -- in terms of voice types, national origins (two Italians, two Canadians, and an Argentinian), personalities, and interpretive thoughts -- beginning with Enrico Caruso's only recording of it, made when the opera, which had its premiere in March 1896, was little more than a decade old. Don't worry about hearing a bunch of antique recordings. After the Caruso, we jump to 1958, and everything is in stereo. (Which reminds me, there's also some notable variety in the conducting and orchestral playing. Just listen to the way the veteran Tullio Serafin balances, and the Rome Opera Orchestra plays, the chord that launches the aria proper.)

Believe it or not, I really don't have anything else to say tonight. I'll let the performances speak for themselves, and the music too, of course.


FOR TONIGHT'S IMPROVVISO PERFORMANCES, CLICK HERE

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Sunday Classics: Mahler's military songs -- (3) At last we come to "Revelge" and "Der Tamboursg'sell"

From the Fischer-Dieskau Mahler performances we've heard the last couple of days, you might reasonably conclude that the guy was a blustering hack. And for me that's not entirely untrue, at least some of the time. But then he gives a performance -- an actual performance -- like this one of "Der Tamboursg'sell," and you're reminded of what he could do. (Again, Hans Zender conducts the Saarbrücken Radio Symphony Orchestra, April 1979.)

by Ken

One last time, from Jack Diether's liner note for the original Columbia LP issue of the recording of Mahler's settings of poems from Des Knaben Wunderhorn by Christa Ludwig, Walter Berry, and Leonard Bernstein:

Mahler's unique power as a composer lies in his ability to catch the essence of the sounds of man and nature, and to transmute it into purely musical terms. From his early childhood, he was fascinated by the sounds that environed him: bird songs, bugle calls, tattoos, marches and, especially, dances and airs. It is said that when Mahler was only four or five years old he could already play more than a hundred peasant songs and dances on an accordion.

Where other composers such as Bela Bartok became increasingly interested in their native music as they grew older, Mahler seems to have absorbed the music of his homeland into his very cells at an exceedingly early age and seems then to have taken no further conscious interest in it. Instead, he built instinctively on the most powerful and primitive sources of expression throughout some of the most complex and sophisticated structures yet conceived by the Western musical mind. Perhaps that is one reason the strong appeal of Mahler's music continues to grow in our increasingly complex and often baffling age.

Again, the original plan this week was to prepare for today's program, the Mahler "military" songs "Revelge" ("Reveille") and "Der Tamboursg'sell" ("The Drummer Boy") with quick previews of some of the others from this subset of six songs within the canonical dozen Mahler Wunderhorn songs. (That's not including some early Wunderhorn songs and the three settings that found their way into the Second, Third, and Fourth Symphonies.)

If you were here for Friday night's installment, which offered two of what I called the "he said, she said" songs, "Trost im Unglück" ("Comfort in Misfortune") and "Lied des Verfolgten im Turme" ("Song of the Prisoner in the Tower"), sung both as duets and as solo narratives, and for last night's presentation of the hauntingly beautiful "Wo die schönen Trompeten blasen" ("Where the Lovely Trumpets Blow"), I think you understand why they couldn't just be "previewed," but instead had to be approached via some of the basic considerations of this material which I had planned to reserve for today's "real" post.

On the plus side, that means the heavy lifting is done, and today we can just listen to Mahler's final Wunderhorn settings, which in fact weren't published with the other Wunderhorn songs but wound up as the first two of Seven Songs, with no musical connection to the other five, settings of poems by Friedrich Rückert (also author of the Kindertotenlieder, or Songs on the Death of Children, which Mahler turned into one of his best-known works).


SO LET'S GET RIGHT ON WITH IT. TO HEAR MORE OF
"DER TAMBOURSG'SELL" AND "REVELGE," CLICK HERE

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Sunday Classics: Mahler's "military" songs -- (2) Blow, trumpets, blow

From the same performance as last night's Fischer-Dieskau performances, Brigitte Fassbaender offers a significantly more persuasive account of the haunting song "Wo die schönen Trompeten blasen," again with Hans Zender conducting the Saarbrücken Radio Symphony Orchestra, April 1979

Where other composers such as Bela Bartók became increasingly interested in their native music as they grew older, Mahler seems to have absorbed the music of his homeland into his very cells at an exceedingly early age and seems then to have taken no further conscious interest in it. Instead, he built instinctively on the most powerful and primitive sources of expression throughout some of the most complex and sophisticated structures yet conceived by the Western musical mind. Perhaps that is one reason the strong appeal of Mahler's music continues to grow in our increasingly complex and often baffling age.

-- from Jack Diether's liner note for the Ludwig-Berry-Bernstein recording of Mahler's Des Knaben Wunderhorn songs

by Ken

This is the paragraph from Jack Diether's liner note which I quoted in last night's first part of this glimpse at Mahler's "military"-themed settings from the folk-poetry anthology Des Knaben Wunderhorn (The Youth's Magic Horn), where we focused on two of the shorter, less grave military songs, "Trost im Unglück" ("Comfort in Misfortune") and the "Lied des Verfolgten im Turm" ("Song of the Prisoner in the Tower"). I said last night that when we put the two paragraphs together, we would have "as good a description and summation of Mahler's art and particular genius as I can imagine in two paragraphs." (For those disinclined to click through to last night's post, we'll put those paragraphs together in tonight's click-through, though of course you'll have to click through to get to that.)

Tonight, as promised, we hear the longer and graver "Wo die schönen Trompeten blasen" {"Where the Lovely Trumpets Blow"), Mahler's chiefest gift to the female soloist among the dozen "standard" Wunderhorn-group songs that aren't part of a symphony -- thereby excluding the luminous "Urlicht" ("Primal Light"), which found a place before the Finale of the Second (Resurrection) Symphony, of which we've actually heard quite a few performances, including three by Maureen Forrester: a grainy black-and-white videowith Glenn Gould conducting (!) and then performances from 1958 and 1987, from recordings of the Resurrection Symphony conducted by Bruno Walter'and Gilbert Kaplan, respectively. That post, by the way, offered Forrester singing large quantities of Mahler, including two Wunderhorn songs, "Antonius of Padua's Fish Sermon" and -- of all things! -- "Wo die schönene Trompeten blasen.").

Both of the masterly songs we're working toward tomorrow, "Revelge" ("Reveille") and "Der Tambourg'sell ("The Drummer Boy"), are pretty nearly the exclusive province of male singers, normally baritones and bass-baritones. "Wo die schönen Trompeten blasen," of very nearly comparable stature, is just as near-exclusively female turf. (In further compensation, "Urlicht" itself is often performed as part of the Wunderhorn "set.")


FOR TONIGHT'S PERFORMANCES OF "WO DIE
SCHÖNEN TROMPETEN BLASEN," CLICK HERE

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Sunday Classics: Mahler's "military" songs -- (1) He said, she said

Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau blusters through Mahler's "Trost im Unglück" ("Comfort in Misfortune") with the Saarbrücken Radio Symphony Orchestra under Hans Zender, April 1979.

Mahler's unique power as a composer lies in his ability to catch the essence of the sounds of man and nature, and to transmute it into purely musical terms. From his early childhood, he was fascinated by the sounds that environed him: bird songs, bugle calls, tattoos, marches and, especially, dances and airs. It is said that when Mahler was only four or five years old he could already play more than a hundred peasant songs and dances on an accordion. . . .

-- from Jack Diether's liner note for the Ludwig-Berry-Bernstein recording of Mahler's Des Knaben Wunderhorn songs

by Ken

You'll notice that I haven't labeled this post a Sunday Classics "preview." Originally I expected to. As I promised in last week's post on Mahler's Sixth Symphony (which I hope you'll look at if you haven't already; it's one that I think accomplished surprisingly well what it set out to), I suggested that this week we would catch up with two of Mahler's greatest songs, "Revelge" ("Reveille") and "Der Tamboursg'sell" ("The Drummer Boy"), from his settings of poems from Achim von Arnim's and Clemens Brentano's three-volume anthology Des Knaben Wunderhorn (The Youth's Magic Horn). That's still the plan, and I'm going to stick with the idea that occurred to me to "preview" those epic songs with some of the other "military" Wunderhorn settings. But --

We can't "just listen" to those other songs. I don't plan to chatter a lot tonight, but some basic issues that apply to Sunday's material really need to be addressed in connection with tonight's and tomorrow night's programs. And I couldn't think of a better way to start than with the paragraph up top filched from Jack Diether's liner note for the original Columbia LP issue of the glorious 1967-69 recording of the Wunderhorn songs by Christa Ludwig, Walter Berry, and Leonard Bernstein.

Even though I've touted that recording for ages as one of the all-time great recordings, I hadn't looked at Jack's liner note in ages, but I wasn't surprised to find gold there. In last week's Mahler Sixth post, drawing heavily on Jack's booklet note for the Leinsdorf-Boston-RCA recording, I described him as "a gentle and wise human being and an acute and astute listener who earned the fierce admiration of music lovers discovering Mahler's music because he dealt so credibly with the experience of it." And when we put that paragraph up top together with the one that follows it in the original note, which I'm saving for tomorrow night, we'll have as good a description and summation of Mahler's art and particular genius as I can imagine in two paragraphs. (A slew of self-proclaimed Mahler experts have written whole books without getting this close to the essence.)

In the space Columbia allotted him for the Wunderhorn songs Jack unfortunately couldn't say much about the individual pieces, but his bare-bones descriptions are more useful than most writers' dissertations, so in the click-through I'm going to ask him to introduce tonight's two songs, "Trost im Unglück" ("Comfort in Misfortune") and "Lied des Verfolgten im Turm" ("Song of the Prisoner in the Tower") -- the first decidedly comical, the second at least not tragic, as compared with the military songs we're going to hear tomorrow and Sunday.


FOR TONIGHT'S WUNDERHORN MILITARY SONGS, CLICK HERE

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Sunday Classics: Is Mahler's Sixth Symphony any more "tragic" than life itself?

The conclusion of the 1976 Bernstein-Vienna Phil Andante -- we heard the first half in last night's preview post. The "climactic" section we heard Valery Gergiev whip into a frenzy begins at 3:05 of the clip.

by Ken

Do I have to have an ulterior motive for backing our way into the Mahler Sixth Symphony via the awesomely beautiful Andante we heard in last night's preview? Okay, I do, but do I have to? Goodness, there's so much I could, and want to, say about this symphony, but instead let me just explain how it came onto this week's Sunday Classics schedule.

It all started with the new 10-CD Sony BMG Classics compendium of 1974-80 Levine-RCA Mahler recordings I mentioned last week I had ordered. The set arrived, and I started listening through it, which was kind of enjoyable, though I can't say I much enjoyed the actual performances. I certainly understood why I'd hardly listened to them again since they were first issued -- and I actually liked some of them better then. It's kind of eerie how little audible concern there is here for how the music gets from one note to the next, which is, oh, about 98 percent of what matters in Mahler's music, and that of most any other composer of consequence, or at least 98 percent of what makes it music instead of just a bunch of notes.

Nevertheless, I was listening through happily enough. The performances contain a fair number of ideas -- no, I'd rather call them "performance choices," since they're really qualities slapped onto musical moments, which don't really rise to the level of "ideas." I got through Nos. 1, 10, 4, 7, and 5 before crashing with No. 6, which seemed to be so far from adding up to any sort of performance of the piece that I had to seek relief in various sorts of actual performances.

My original idea was that a good subject for a post might be the kind of phony-baloney issue that musical dim bulbs like to fixate on instead of trying to deal with the music: the question of the "correct" order of the middle movements of the Mahler Sixth. And that's still what we're going to be looking at. But since we're also going to be hearing the the much larger outer movements as well, as I thought about what to say to you about them, I realized that a different version of this same phony-baloney musical "issue" comes into play: Just how "tragic" is this symphony that Mahler himself dubbed, at least at the time of the premiere, Tragic?


JUST A REMINDER: WE STARTED BY LISTENING TO THE
ANDANTE SOSTENUTO OF THE BRAHMS FIRST SYMPHONY

In Friday night's preview, you'll recall, we heard the Andante of the Brahms First played by the Vienna Philharmonic under Sir John Barbirolli in 1967 and Leonard Bernstein in 1981.


Günter Wand (1912-2002) conducts the Andante sostenuto of the Brahms First Symphony with the North German Radio (NDR) Symphony Orchestra at the 1997 Schleswig-Holstein Festival. (As with the 2005 Festival Casals performance we heard Friday night, the whole symphony is posted on YouTube.)


HOW "TRAGIC" IS THE MAHLER SIXTH SYMPHONY?
TO JUDGE FOR YOURSELF, CLICK HERE

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Sunday Classics preview: The Andante of the Sixth Symphony -- the most beautiful movement Mahler ever composed?

If you think the climax of the slow movement of the Mahler Sixth needs to be made "exciting," I guess Valery Gergiev's your man -- here are the final four minutes (beginning at bar 138) of a November 2007 performance with the London Symphony. (Note that he's playing the Andante as the second movement -- i.e., before the Scherzo.)

by Ken

I can't prove to you that Mahler had the gorgeous Andante of the Brahms First Symphony (which we heard in last night's preview) in mind when he composed the Andante of his Sixth, but you'd have to go a long way to convince me that he didn't. Most composers, at least those with a modicum of sense, would shy away from such an exalted precedent; Mahler lived up to it.

The climactic section that we hear in the Gergiev clip above begins at 10:35 in this recording, Leonard Bernstein's first of the Mahler Sixth.

MAHLER: Symphony No. 6 in A minor:
iii. (or maybe ii.) Andante moderato

New York Philharmonic, Leonard Bernstein, cond. Columbia/CBS/Sony, recorded May 1967


TO HEAR MORE OF THIS AMAZING MOVEMENT, CLICK HERE

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Sunday Classics 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, CLICK HERE

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Sunday Classics: Giordano's "Andrea Chénier" and the class war that wrote the book on class warfare

Giorgio Zancanaro as Gérard at Covent Garden, with Julius Rudel conducting, 1985.

by Ken

In last night's preview I indicated that we're taking a slow journey toward the tear-jerker of all tear-jerker scenes, the Madelon scene of Act III of Giordano's Andrea Chénier, starting with the very opening of the opera and going up to, well, a particular point. We heard the bustle of the preparations for a grand party in the home of the Countess of Coigny, on the very eve of the French Revolution, including some of the ruminations of the household servant Carlo Gérard.

Here's what we've heard so far:

GIORDANO: Andrea Chénier: Act I, Gérard, "Compiacente a' colloqui" . . . "Son sessant'anni"

The country estate of the Coigny family. The winter garden, the grand conservatory.

The curtain rises on a scene bustling with activity. Servants, lackeys, valets, all under the command of an officious MAJOR-DOMO, run hither and thither carrying pieces of furniture about and placing it down where he instructs them to. GÉRARD, in full livery, lends a hand in carrying a heavy blue sofa.

MAJOR-DOMO: This blue sofa, let's put it there.

GÉRARD and the lackeys obey his orders. Then the MAJOR-DOMO goes to another part of the château followed by all the servants. GÉRARD, left behind, kneels before the blue sofa, unruffling the fringe, smoothing the satin covering, and arranging the curtains.

GÉRARD: Obliging to the discourse
of the dandy
who offered his hand
to mature ladies here!
Here Red Heels
said sighing to the Beauty-patch:
"Orinthia, or Chloris, or Nike, powdered,
oldish and painted,
I long for you
and, only on this account, perhaps,
I love you!"
Such is the custom of the times.

An old man comes in from the garden carrying a heavy piece of furniture. GÉRARD throws down the duster he is holding and goes to help him. Weak and shaky, the old man leaves, disappearing through the garden. GÉRARD, much moved, watches him go.

GÉRARD: It's sixty years, old man,
that you've been a servant here!
On your insolent,
arrogant masters
you've lavished fidelity, sweat,
the strength of your nerves,
your soul, your mind . . .
and as if your own life didn't suffice
to carry on
eternally
the horrendous suffering,
you've given the existence
of your children . . .
[With immense disdain he strikes his breast with open hand, murmuring through tears]
You've fathered menials!

Louis Sgarro (bs), Major-Domo; Leonard Warren (b), Carlo Gérard; Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, Fausto Cleva, cond. Live performance, Dec. 28, 1957

As I indicated, something extraordinarily dramatic is about to happen. Right after the click-through. (New genre, the click-hanger?)


TO CONTINUE WITH THE OPENING SCENE
OF ANDREA CHÉNIER, CLICK HERE

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Sunday Classics preview: Giordano's "Andrea Chénier" and the class war that wrote the book on class warfare

The opening of Andrea Chénier: The Major-Domo directs party preparations (at Covent Garden, 1985), with the servant Carlo Gérard (Giorgio Zancanaro) looking on at right. We'll hear this bustling opening music in a moment, played two ways -- very perky and not so perky -- in a moment. (And we'll see this Covent Garden clip tomorrow.)

by Ken

There was a plan to this week's post which made sense in its way. Working up to one of the great tear-jerking scenes in Western theater, the Madelon scene of Act III of Giordano's Andrea Chénier, we were going to "preview" two of the high spots that pave the way to it: the very opening of the opera, with the baritone Gérard's great monologue; and Chénier himself's great Act I "Improvviso." Which would have meant either a pair of ginormous previews or the merest dabs at two of the most remarkable chunks of musical theater ever created.

So, on the theory that both Gérard's monologue and Chénier's "Improvviso" deserve posts of their own, they're going to get them. We'll simply proceed to the Madelon scene in, if not baby steps, then at least babier ones.

For starters, we're going to more or less literally raise the curtain. As regular readers know, we always like to know how a piece starts, and in the then-modern way, pioneered in Italian opera by Verdi in his last two operas, Otello (1887) and Falstaff (1893), and made standard practice by Puccini (whose first successful opera, Manon Lescaut had premiered in 1893, followed by La Bohème in February 1896, eight weeks before Chénier), Giordano plunges us into the action without a formal prelude.

This is obviously "bustling" music, which we're going to hear played two ways. First, Riccardo Chailly plays it for the "bustle." Then Marcello Viotti trusts that the bustle is built in and drives it less hard. This would probably be more effective in a more confident, knowing performance, but you get the the idea that Viotti is facing an orchestra doesn't really know the music, possibly having played no more than a single run-through.

GIORDANO: Andrea Chénier: Act I, Major-Domo, "Questo azzurro sofà"

The country estate of the Coigny family. The winter garden, the grand conservatory.

The curtain rises on a scene bustling with activity. Servants, lackeys, valets, all under the command of an officious MAJOR-DOMO, run hither and thither carrying pieces of furniture about and placing it down where he instructs them to. GÉRARD, in full livery, lends a hand in carrying a heavy blue sofa.

MAJOR-DOMO: This blue sofa, let's put it there.

GÉRARD and the lackeys obey his orders. Then the MAJOR-DOMO goes to another part of the château followed by all the servants. GÉRARD, left behind, kneels before the blue sofa, unruffling the fringe, smoothing the satin covering, and arranging the curtains.

Neil Howlett (b), National Philharmonic Orchestra, Riccardo Chailly, cond. Decca, recorded August 1982Michele Pertusi (bs), Major-Domo; Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra, Marcello Viotti, cond. Capriccio, recorded Aug. 30-Sept. 2, 1989


GÉRARD AND THE SOFA: FOR MORE OF
THE CHÉNIER OPENING SCENE, CLICK HERE

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Sunday Classics recordings note: The Budapest's stereo Beethoven and James Levine's RCA Mahler highlight a massive Sony BMG reissue series

The great Budapest stereo Beethoven cycle --
for $21.14 (including shipping)?

by Ken

Sony BMG Classics, the heir to the whole of the RCA and Columbia-CBS-Sony classical catalogs, recently dumped onto the market a bunch of big CD boxes containing lots of exceedingly interesting recordings. Of course the packaging is no-frills, and more seriously I never know what to expect in the way of technical quality with these megadumps. But for the two sets I've already ordered -- the Budapest Quartet's Columbia stereo complete Beethoven cycle on eight CDs and the eight Mahler symphonies James Levine for RCA on ten CDs I've paid $21.14 and $22.40, respectively -- including shipping.

This is, in other words, about the same price that's being asked for many brand-new single CDs, which are apt to be, if they're lucky, maybe a tenth as good. If there were such a thing as a "record industry" today, you could ask, "Can you sustain a record industry with economics like this?" But there is no record industry, just a bunch of companies continuing for some arcane reason to put out records.

If I didn't already have nearly all of the contents of the nine-CD Arthur Rubinstein Brahms set on CD, I would have jumped at that; ditto for the four CDs' worth of Haydn symphonies conducted by George Szell, the nine CDs' worth of Isaac Stern playing Beethoven, and the eight CDs of Charles Munch conducting "Romantic Masterworks." Meanwhile
I'm still ogling the five CDs' worth of Mozart piano concertos played by Robert Casadesus with various conductors, and the six-CD set of most but frustratingly not quite all of the Prokofiev that Erich Leinsdorf recorded for RCA in his time with the Boston Symphony. And I haven't really checked carefully to see what I may have missed. (Oops, I just noticed that there's a six-CD set of some of Glenn Gould's Bach (presumably only an installment, since neither the Well-Tempered Clavier nor the French nor English Suites are here), and a six-CD set of Gould Beethoven (some sonatas plus the five concertos), and Günter Wand's first Bruckner symphony cycle, with the Cologne Radio Symphony Orchestra.

And that's not even dealing with a bunch of Sony BMG and EMI operatic reissues. I'm trying to be good, really I am. But I'm weak.

FOR MORE ON THE TWO SETS I HAVE ON ORDER,
WITH SOME MUSICAL SAMPLES, CLICK HERE

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Sunday Classics: Bruno Walter rehearses and plays Wagner's "Siegfried Idyll"

This is, as best I can tell, a mockup for a Japanese issue of the rehearsal for Bruno Walter's recording of the Siegfried Idyll.

by Ken

When we did our first exploration of the Siegfried Idyll in May, I promised that we would be coming back to the piece, approaching from a different direction. This is it. As I indicated in Friday night's and last night's previews, we've been heading toward a return engagement with Wagner's Siegfried Idyll as seen through the eyes of the 82-year-old Bruno Walter. Happily, Columbia Records released a 45-minute slab of rehearsal, which gives us an even closer view of his view than the lovely finished recording. Let's plunge right in:

BRUNO WALTER REHEARSES WAGNER'S SIEGFRIED IDYLL
(American Legion Hall, Hollywood, Feb. 27, 1959)

"You see, In Wagner, più piano means 'blot out,' you know, just give in, and it goes to the nothing . . ."

The published rehearsal begins at the upbeat to bar 4.



For reference, here's the finished recording of this same chunk of the piece (though starting at the beginning), bars 1-25.




FOR MORE OF WALTER'S SIEGFRIED IDYLL, INCLUDING A
REMINISCENCE BY PRODUCER THOMAS FROST, CLICK HERE

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Sunday Classics preview: The "American" Bruno Walter brings his humanity to Wagner

The "Good Friday Spell" at Bayreuth, 1983

WAGNER: Parsifal: Act III, Good Friday Spell
Columbia Symphony Orchestra, Bruno Walter, cond. Columbia/CBS/Sony, recorded Feb. 25, 1959

by Ken

It's a nonstandard view, I know (and I've expressed it here before), but for me the really cherishable music-making Bruno Walter did was done here in North America. It's not just that this was Walter in the last two decades of his life -- as I noted in last night's preview, in which we heard a 1958 radio interview with him and the Fidelio and Leonore No. 3 Overtures from his 1941 Met Fidelio broadcast, he was 64 when he made his Met debut in 1941 -- though it's partly that. Walter unquestionably did "ripen" in his advancing years. But in what I've heard of his European performances of the later period, they still reflect an eyes-straight-ahead German traditionalism that hardly hints at the more spacious, lyrical, humane, frequently profound music-making he did so much of on this side of the Atlantic.

I am, as far as i know, the only person on the planet who considers Walter's 1936 and 1951 Vienna Philharmonic recordings of Mahler's Das Lied von der Erde (The Song of the Earth) okay but nothing special -- not remotely in a class with the glorious 1960 Columbia recording with the New York Philharmonic. (See, for example, this August 2010 Sunday Classics post.) This of course is a work with which Walter was singularly connected, dating from the final years of Mahler's life, when Walter was most closely associated with him, and it would be the first major work of Mahler's whose premiere he did not live to conduct, a job that fell to Walter.

Anyway, this "Good Friday Spell" from Parsifal seems to me a fine example of what I mean, and it should sound even more so when we hear it again in the click-through in its more expected position following the opera's prelude, which I think will set us up pretty well for our glimpse tomorrow of Walter's special accomplishment with Wagner's Siegfried Idyll, which again seems to me very much the work of the deeply feeling "American" Walter.


FOR TONIGHT'S SAMPLING OF THE "AMERICAN"
WALTER CONDUCTING WAGNER, CLICK HERE

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Sunday Classics preview: Bruno Walter comes to America

A 1958 interview with conductor Bruno Walter (1876-1962)

by Ken

Although the sound suggests that this interview was recorded on an Edison cylinder (it actually improves suddenly in the last minute or two), we know from internal evidence that it took place in 1958. The maestro explains in his charming accent that he "started conducting in eighteen hundred and ninety-four -- so, sixty-four years ago." In September 1958 Walter turned 82.

It's an interview where fairly pedestrian questions turn out to have fairly interesting answers. I actually transcribed some of it, for the benefit of non-audio-clickers, only I don't know what I did with the transcription, and I'm just not up to doing more transcribing just now. So let me commend to you Walter's description of the nature of a conducting career, especially the peculiar conditions under which a would-be conductor learns his craft -- without benefit of his actual "instrument" until he actually gets a job! Beyond that I hope you'll be charmed (I was, and I'm not easily charmed) by his description of the personal and imaginative qualities required of a conductor.

The interview is included as a bonus with the Guild International issue of Walter's 1941 Met broadcast performance of Beethoven's Fidelio, and our musical offerings tonight come from that performance.


TO HEAR SOME MUSIC, CLICK HERE

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Sunday Classics: Schubert's Octet may stretch our endurance but also stretches our delights

The (eventually) ebullient finale of the Schubert Octet, played by Chen Halevi, clarinet; Radovan Vlatkovic, horn; Sergio Azzolini, bassoon; Janine Jansen and Julia-Maria Kretz, violins; Maxim Rysanov, viola; Jens Peter Maintz, cello; and Stacey Watton, double bass -- from an undated AVRO (Dutch) telecast

by Ken

I don't think it's terribly controversial to suggest that Beethoven deliberately tried to limit the musical "difficulty" level in his Septet, with a view toward winning a larger audience, which would explain why he came to resent the piece's popularity. It's fine for what it is -- sort of an extension of established entertainment forms like the divertimento and serenade, which tended to jumble a whole bunch of movements together and then aim to provide agreeable diversion rather than excessive stimulation. But it hardly represented Beethoven's real musical ambitions even at the time it was written.

Of course even at that reduced level of musical invention Beethoven couldn't keep himself from stretching the forms he used, and when Schubert accepted his friend the clarinetist Ferdinand Troyer's challenge to write a successor piece, even though I think he too was trying to keep his musical ambitions in check, in Schubert's case this was an even more hopeless ambition. One result is that the piece is huge, pressing the hour mark. Its six movements are too ambitious to string together as casually as the movements of a divertimento. This means the musicians not only have to solve the six movements but find some sort of "through line" that holds the piece together.

It's the Schubert Octet we've been aiming toward, having heard both Beethoven's and Schubert's minuets and scherzos Friday night and their andante variations movements last night. In the click-through we start -- where else? -- at the very beginning.


TO BEGIN OUR JOURNEY THROUGH
THE SCHUBERT OCTET, CLICK HERE

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Sunday Classics preview: More of the Beethoven Septet and the Schubert Octet -- two Andantes

The start of the fourth-movement theme and variations of the Schubert Octet played by Chen Halevi, clarinet; Radovan Vlatkovic, horn; Sergio Azzolini, bassoon; Janine Jansen and Julia-Maria Kretz, violins; Maxim Rysanov, viola; Jens Peter Maintz, cello; and Stacey Watton, double bass -- from an undated AVRO (Dutch) telecast; we're going to hear more of this performance tomorrow.

by Ken

Last night we heard the minuets and scherzos that (in flip-flopped order) bracket the theme-and-variations fourth movements of the Beethoven Septet and the Schubert Octet. As promised, tonight we hear those theme-and-variations movements.

I suggested that the two works, for virtually identical ensembles. (Schubert simply added a second violin to Beethoven's lineup of clarinet, horn, bassoon, violin, viola, cello, and double bass) are connected. This isn't hypothetical.) The composition of Schubert's Octet was in fact prompted by a suggestion from clarinetist Ferdinand Troyer, hoping to have another work to play which might tap into the popularity of Beethoven's Septet.


FOR TONIGHT'S INSTALLMENT OF THE BEETHOVEN
SEPTET AND THE SCHUBERT OCTET, CLICK HERE


IN TOMORROW'S SUNDAY CLASSICS POST: The complete Schubert Octet

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Sunday Classics preview: Beethoven and Schubert try to play it simple(r)

The rollicking Tempo di menuetto (third movement) of the Beethoven Septet is played by Jacques Meertens, clarinet; Jacob Slagter, horn; Gustavo Nunez, bassoon; Liviu Prunaru, violin; Michael Gieler, viola; Gregor Horsch, cello; and Thomas Braendstrup, double bass -- in Amsterdam's Concertgebouw, November 2007.

by Ken

This week we ponder the musical questions:

(1) What happens when you have a clarinetist, a horn player, a bassoonist, a violinist, a violist, a cellist, and a double-bass player in the same place?

(2) And if there's another violinist as well?

The answer to (1) is: They play the Beethoven Septet. And the answer to (2) is: They play the Schubert Octet, which was written in 1824, some 24 years later, and consciously echoed the Beethoven, which was one of the composer's most attention-getting works in the early part of his career. Tonight and tomorrow night we're going to hear snatches of these two pieces -- and then Sunday the complete Schubert Octet.


FOR UPBEAT EXCERPTS FROM THE BEETHOVEN
SEPTET AND THE SCHUBERT OCTET, CLICK HERE

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Sunday Classics: "Wretches like us" -- class warfare and the tragic depths of Berg's "Wozzeck"

WOZZECK: What is to be poor! You see, sir, it's all a matter of money, money.
But if you haven't any, just try bringing children into the world in a moral fashion then.
We are flesh and blood as well.
Certainly, if I were a gentleman and owned a hat and a watch and a monocle and spoke in a genteel way, then I would be virtuous too.
It must be a fine thing to be virtuous, sir. But I'm only a poor fellow.
People like us are always unfortunate in this world and the next.
I believe that if we went to heaven, we should be set to work to help make the thunder.

-- Wozzeck, to the Captain, in Act I, Scene 1
(translation by Sarah E. Soulsby for Decca Records, 1988)

Mack Harrell (bs-b), Wozzeck; New York Philharmonic, Dimitri Mitropoulos, cond. Columbia/CBS/Sony, live recording of a concert performance, 1951

by Ken

"Wretches like us" isn't exactly what Wozzeck says when he finally expounds beyond "Jawohl, Herr Hauptmann" ("Yes indeed, Captain"). It's Richard Stokes's English rendering of the simpler phrase "Wir arme Leut'" -- "We poor people." But it's a rendering that's not only vivider but maybe even truer to the original, or anyway truer to the sense of the original.

I was kind of shocked when my friend Richard mentioned, in whichever season the Met last did Alban Berg's Wozzeck (based on the play be the tragically short-lived Georg Büchner, 1813-1837), that he had traded in his subscription tickets for it. I knew it couldn't be because of that awful "modern" music (can a piece first performed in 1925 still really be thought of as "modern"? perhaps so), because I know he loves Wozzeck. He's an old-fashioned romantic opera-lover, but that romantic operatic passion extends naturally to repertory that some people might find surprising, like the operas of Janáček -- and Wozzeck.

No, the problem was almost that he loves the opera too much, and takes it too seriously. He just wasn't prepared to face the horribleness of it, and he mentioned specifically the opera's final image: of the toddler who has just lost both his parents -- who up to that moment had hardly anything or anyone in the world and now has nothing and no one -- riding his hobby horse chanting, "Hop-hop, hop-hop, hop-hop."

BERG: Wozzeck, Op. 7: Act III, Scenes 4-5

WOZZECK, having murdered MARIE in a jealous rage by plunging a knife in her throat by a pond in the woods, has staggered his way back to the pond, realizing that he lost his grip on the knife. Overwhelmed with terror and guilt, he stumbles over the corpse, then actually finds the knife and throws it in the water, then decides it will be found and incriminate him. He staggers into the water after it, but is dragged into the water.

Who should happen by the pond then but WOZZECK's old nemeses the CAPTAIN and the DOCTOR? They imagine they hear the voice of a drowning man and naturally hurry off.

The scene shifts to the street in front of MARIE's dwelling, where her little son is riding a hobby horse. Word spreads among the neighborhood children of her murder. Before they rush off to the pond to see for themselves, one of them thoughtfully tells her son: "You! Your mother is dead!" The child is left riding the hobby horse, chanting, "Hop-hop, hop-hop, hop-hop."

Eberhard Wächter (b), Wozzeck; Heinz Zednik (t), the Captain; Alexander Malta (bs), the Doctor; Vienna Philharmonic, Christoph von Dohnányi, cond. Decca, recorded December 1979


FOR MORE JOLLY BITS FROM WOZZECK, CLICK HERE

OUR WOZZECK PREVIEWS

(1) Friday night: Meet Marie (the Act I solo scene, including the lullaby)
(2) Saturday night: Meet Wozzeck -- "Wretches like us" (the scene with the Captain)

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