Thursday 25 December 2014

Christmas Rarities with the Toronto Consort

Merry Christmas to all, and time to share some more rare, unusual and beautiful Christmas music with you!


For anyone who has ever attended a live concert  by the Toronto Consort, you need no introduction to the great verve, energy, and sense of fun which this ensemble brings to its work!  In the two recordings I am discussing today, these qualities are all present -- even if the sense of fun is only able to surface intermittently.


The first one, which I acquired a few years back, is a reconstruction of a Christmas Vespers service such as might have taken place in Germany in the 1600s, featuring the music of Michael Praetorius.  Most people, if they have heard of Praetorius at all, know his as the composer of a traditional Christmas carol known usually in English as "Lo, how a rose e'er blooming".  But there's a lot more to his music than just that one tune, although ingratiating melody is often one of his resources.  The program includes sacred canticles, antiphons, chanting, hymns and carols and lasts for an hour.  It's done on a generous scale, with 60 singers and players, and recorded in the ample and resonant acoustic of St. Anne's Church in Toronto.  The music is predominantly joyful with peaceful interludes, as befits the season.


For me, the richest treasures here are the beautiful old German carols, so little known (sadly) in North America.  Also impressive are the hymns, and here the magnificent organ of the church is called into use to grand effect.  All in all, a wonderful and impressive recording of a traditional Christmas service, albeit one from a tradition not familiar to many people in the Americas.


The second recording couldn't be more different!  It's a more recent recording (2012) entitled Navidad, and it features the Toronto Consort in a collection of songs and dances from Spain and Latin America in the 1500s and 1600s.  As I've mentioned before, I seem to have a natural affinity for the music of the Spanish world, and this recording put a smile on my face within the first minute of listening!  There's plenty of rhythm here, in the voices and instrumental parts, and a real sense of zip and go to the proceedings.


The very first song, Convidando esta la noche starts off as a slow unaccompanied choral introduction, but quickly swings into a lively dance.  The repeated refrains of Ay, ay, ay are sung in a different manner by a different voice on nearly every verse.  The same kind of innovative and imaginative interpretation is at work throughout the program.  The pieces are nicely arranged so that lively and contemplative numbers alternate. 


This recording received many plaudits when it came out, and no wonder.  Words like "lively", "toe-tapping", "infectious enthusiasm" and the like recur in many reviews.  I totally agree. 


Both of these are "don't miss" records, and I listen to both of them in season and out.  They're on the Marquis Music label and CDs can be ordered from that company's website.  The recordings can also be previewed or downloaded from iTunes.  Merry Christmas listening to all!





Wednesday 3 December 2014

To Everything There Is A Season....

It's intriguing to see how many composers have set down musical compositions based on the months or seasons of the year.  I've already blogged about a couple of them, Tchaikovsky's suite of piano pieces and Glazunov's ballet, back in the early days of this blog ( Season's Greetings ), but never carried out my long-held intention to write a bit about Haydn's last and biggest composition for choir, soloists and orchestra.  Well, here we go!

The idea of composing this work came about as a direct result of the success of The Creation, and with a libretto "adapted" by the same man, the Baron von Swieten.  I place the word "adapted" in quotation marks.  Von Swieten claimed that his source was the lengthy pastoral poem The Seasons by the Edinburgh poet James Thomson, but you won't find much trace of him in this libretto!  Haydn did a lot of grumbling about the effort this piece cost him, declaring that it nearly killed him, but don't let that mislead you.  The ultimate result in Die Jahreszeiten ("The Seasons") shows no sign of falling off in quality, or in the composer's always considerable powers of invention.

Yes, it is a long work -- but so are many of the great operas and oratorios.  The running time of my recording of Die Jahreszeiten is almost minute-for-minute with my recording of Messiah, and no one complains about the length of that piece!  Each of the four parts (Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter) lasts about 35 minutes.  Each one consists of an orchestral introduction, followed by a nicely-judged mixture of solo recitatives, arias and choral numbers.  The irrepressible cheerfulness of Haydn keeps breaking through on every side, in spite of the composer's complaints!

In adapting from Thomson, the librettist created three "characters" to carry the narration forward:  Hanne (soprano), Lucas (tenor), and Simon (baritone).  This set up the perfect formula for Haydn to compose a traditional oratorio on a most untraditional subject. 

I could go on at tremendous length about all the beauties of this greatly-undervalued score.  I'll just mention a few favourite highlights here.  In "Spring" the aria about the farmer going out to plow the fields is interspersed with quotations from Haydn's Symphony # 94 "Surprise".  The "Summer" section includes a thunderstorm, quite convincing, with the breathless silence before the storm especially well illustrated in the music.  Other illustrated sounds are the chirping of crickets and the croaking of frogs. 

"Autumn" ends with a spectacular one-two punch from the chorus.  First comes a hunting chorus with lively horn fanfares borrowed from Mehul's overture La chasse du jeune Henri.  The chorus sings about the hunt in a lusty 6/8 time.  After a brief recitative, this is followed by the even more rumbustious chorus in praise of the new wine, which rolls on endlessly -- also in 6/8 -- with rumbling bass notes that suggest the rolling of wine casks and shrilling wind trills invoking the raucous celebrations.  The choir brings Autumn to a close with jollity and great vigour!

"Winter" immediately follows with a bleak orchestral introduction suggestive of grey skies and icy fogs.  The traveller reaches safe haven in a warm, firelit house.  Women sing a spinning song (the forerunner of many others from Mendelssohn to Wagner).  Hanne sings an entertaining story about a young lord who makes an improper proposition to a village lass -- whereupon she promptly tricks him out of his horse and rides away laughing at him.  The chorus shout their approval of the girl's cleverness.  Simon sings an aria in which he summons the wisdom of a lifetime before looking towards the culminating morning of eternity.  The choir thereupon sings a splendid and energetic final choral fugue, accompanied by trumpets and drums, which ultimately leads to the opening of the gates of Heaven to the strains of resplendent fanfares and a final fortissimo Amen.

For me, there isn't a single boring bar in the nearly 2 1/2 hours of Die Jahreszeiten, and I hope you'll find it worth investigating any of the half dozen or so fine recordings that have been made through the years.

Friday 21 November 2014

Shorter Nielsen

Although Carl Nielsen's work is not nearly as well known in North America as in Denmark and Britain, there's a decent body of recordings, slowly growing, that offers multiple choices for almost all of his significant works. 


This post has two parts: first, about some of his shorter orchestral works, and then about some of his choral music.


Nielsen received many commissions for music for theatre stage plays, and he wrote a great deal for this purpose.  Typically, music for plays tends to come in short movements (except, perhaps, for overtures) and doesn't require nearly as intense a concentration on structure as symphonic writing.  Theatrical music also encourages writing that is highly colourful, yet still approachable and easily grasped at one hearing.


Nielsen's best-known theatre music is the extensive suite of pieces he composed for a production of Adam Oehlenschlager's play Aladdin.  The published suite consists of seven movements extracted from the much longer complete score.  All seven pieces contain scales and triads that suggest exotic environments, along with percussion parts to reinforce that impression.  Melodies are short, neatly turned, and frequently repeated.  The music stands well alone, too, for concert or home performance.


The recording of Aladdin that I own partners it with a number of shorter tone poems and overtures, not overtly theatrical but nonetheless pictorial.  Helios depicts a magnificent sunrise, high noon, and sunset over the Mediterranean.  An Imaginary Journey to the Faeroe Islands especially fascinated me after I had made the journey to the Faeroes myself (a Danish territory in the Atlantic Ocean between Scotland and Iceland).  It ends with a lively adaptation of a Faeroese folk dance, notable for its odd number of beats in each phrase.


Most fascinating to me is the tone poem Saga-Drøm ("Saga Dream"), inspired by an old mythical tale from the sagas of a wanderer having a nightmarish dream when he lies down to sleep during his journey.  The music is mostly quiet, with a recurring motif of mysterious block chords for horns in modal harmony that is obstinately memorable.  It also includes a revolutionary passage in which four instruments -- oboe, flute, clarinet and bassoon -- quietly play four quite separate and independent solo cadenzas in total freedom, until they slowly coalesce again on a single chord.  That moment of reunification then ushers in the final recurrence of the horn chorale.


Another favourite recording contains three significant cantatas for choir and orchestra from this composer.  The first, Hymnus amoris ("Hymn of Love") is set to a secular text, written in Latin, which praises Love as the divine essence of humanity.  Firmly tonal and diatonic in style, it passes through several connected sections, ending in a grand conclusion where the choir, instead of singing "Amen", sings "Amor".


Next came Søvnen ("The Sleep"), setting a poem about the different phases of sleep.  The central "Nightmare" section teems with startling discords which shocked the original audience.  Less shocking today, the music still effectively portrays the disquieting influence of nightmarish dreams.  These works date from 1897 and 1905 respectively.


The third cantata didn't appear till 1922, after World War One, but has become the most popular in Denmark because it is the most overtly Danish -- as well as being the sunniest and most entertaining of the three, by a wide margin.  Fynsk Foraar ("Springtime in Funen") is a loving and lovable tribute to the rural island communities in which Nielsen was raised.  The themes are broadly folklike in cut and harmonization, and the rhythms always seem to go with a swing in their step.  There's a lengthy section for children's choir depicting -- what else? -- the games of the children.  This is followed by a solemn but warm chorus of reminiscence and contentment for a group of old men.  I find it impossible to listen to this cheery cantata without getting a smile on my face.  The piece then ends with a rousing chorus of joy from all the singers.  It's an excellent piece for gloomy winter days!


The disc closes out with three unaccompanied choral motets, which use a much more rarified and indeed more acerbic harmonic language than the orchestral cantatas.  But the whole disc (on Chandos) is a sheer delight.  There have also been other recordings of the three major works for choir and orchestra.







Thursday 20 November 2014

A Symphony Like No Other

I'm even a little surprised at myself, that it has taken me this long to get around to blogging about the music of a remarkable composer from Denmark, Carl Nielsen.  He's a firm favourite of mine and I could easily write a dozen posts about his music.  Well, all in good time....


This month the Toronto Symphony is giving a series of concerts pairing the symphonies of Nielsen with the piano concertos of Beethoven.  As unlike each other as they are, these two composers fit together surprisingly well and anyone who likes Beethoven should certainly give Nielsen a bit of a try.  There was one similar concert last year (read about it here:  A Repertory Staple and a Canadian Rarity) which featured Nielsen's Third Symphony, one of his sunniest creations.


This time around, it's the Fifth Symphony, and this work -- which was my introduction to Nielsen's music -- really is unlike any other symphony I have ever heard.


It consists of just two movements, the second somewhat longer than the first.  Unlike several of the preceding symphonies, this one has no title.  Unmistakable, though, is the sense that Nielsen is engaging in his most titanic struggle yet with the forces that strive to subdue Life in all its essence.  In saying that, I am referring to what George Bernard Shaw called "the Life Force" -- a concept which plainly finds a home in Nielsen's music as much as in the Irish dramatist's plays. 


The principal strength of Nielsen's music -- and the element which brings it close to Beethoven -- is the emphasis on rhythm as the driving force of the musical argument.  Also, and much more unusually for his time, Nielsen makes extensive use of unadulterated tonic major and minor chords and modes.  What is most unique about Nielsen is his method of casually jumping from chord to chord to chord, until any sense of a "home key" is lost.


Part of the strangeness of this particular symphony lies in the way it seems to abandon the traditional force driving symphonic argument -- the cut and thrust of interaction between themes.  In the Fifth Symphony, and especially in the first movement, the themes are set out, and simply sit there in contrast with each other.  The work opens with a wavering figure in the violas, alternating rapidly between 2 notes a third apart.  Eventually a melodic figure rises and falls in scale form on the violins.  A kind of shrill, wild skirling figure in the woodwinds is also heard.  All three of these elements appear and reappear without ever actually combining.  Then a militant rhythm is heard, rattled out repeatedly on the snare drum.  A theme of aspiring nobility arises from horns and strings and pursues its way into the brasses, unaffected by all the other material.  This solemn theme leads the way to the movement's climax.  The skirling woodwinds are heard again, fortissimo, and the snare drum returns, louder and louder -- Nielsen specifies that the drummer must "improvise as if at all costs he wants to stop the progress of the orchestra."  This wild improvisation, when played properly, should make the hair stand on end.  Eventually the noble theme swells louder and louder, swamps the militant drum, and proclaims its triumph in the full orchestra by converting the woodwinds to the melody.  But as the music slowly dies away, reminiscences of the drum motif are still heard from offstage (think Beethoven right at the end of the Missa Solemnis) and the movement ends with a mournful, plaintive solo clarinet.  Plainly the war is not yet ended.


The second movement opens with fiery energy, but with off-beats that take several moments to resolve into a clear triple-time pattern.  The heart of this movement is a high-speed, demonic fugue subject working its way through the various sections of the orchestra, which creates a battle almost as intense as the one in the first movement.  This exhausts itself and is then followed by a quieter, more severe fugue in the strings.  Eventually, the opening music returns and the symphony ends affirmatively on a clear tonic major chord.  Robert Simpson, in his book on Nielsen, suggested that this lengthy movement should either be analyzed very deeply or else described in the fewest number of words possible.


I am very much looking forward to hearing this symphony played live for the first time tonight, and will of course be writing about it in my "Large Stage Live" blog.  By the way, the companion work is the last and largest of Beethoven's piano concertos, the Concerto # 5 with Jan Lisiecki as soloist.

A Great Unknown Part 2: Orchestral Power and Depth

The English composer Sir Hubert Parry is one of those figures mainly known today for some of his less-significant compositions.  His fame in Canada is mostly confined to Anglican church musicians, and mainly rests on a couple of hymn tunes and one anthem.  A little more of his music has received attention more recently in England, yet even there much is relatively unknown.

In this second of two blog posts about Parry's music, I will talk about three orchestral works.

Like many people, I came to know the music of Sir Hubert Parry through his hymn Jerusalem which was still in the hymn book of the Anglican Church of Canada when I was raised in that faith.  In my choir-singing days I learned his anthem I was glad.  I had heard that he wrote orchestral music but had never heard any of it.  Apparently, even in Britain it was rarely played.

Then, in 1978, Sir Adrian Boult (a noted English conductor) was planning his retirement.  His company, EMI, offered him the opportunity to record any work of his choice for his final record, and he chose to do 3 works by Parry.  I purchased that record a few years later, and immediately fell under the spell of some truly remarkable music.

As soon as I began listening, I realized that Brahms was a major influence on Parry's orchestral style, and that his orchestration in particular had a distinctly Brahmsian cast to it.

On Side 1 of that historic record Boult gave a splendidly energetic reading of Parry's Fifth Symphony (his last).  It's not a lengthy work, running only about 25 minutes, but it gives the impression of being much larger in scale than it really is.  The themes are broad in scope, the developments intriguing, and the work is kept tight by the use of unusual structural devices.  The four linked movements are given cryptic titles:  Stress, Love, Play and Now.  What any of these might mean (especially the last one) is hard to say.  The music flows continuously from start to finish, without interruption.  Each movement is marked by graceful melody, but it's the sturdy, upbeat theme of the finale and its strong but not overblown conclusion that always sticks in my mind and memory.

On Side 2 Boult gave us the Symphonic Variations.  With this work, Parry joined his name to Brahms and Dvorak (to name only two) as the composer of a significant set of variations for orchestra.  This one has a feature that sets it apart from all others of the genre that I know: the variations are actually grouped in such a way that the layout resembles a four-movement symphony, albeit on a compact scale.  The opening group of variations is played through at the same basic tempo of the original theme.  Next follows a group in faster time, with a lighter, more fantastic scoring -- plainly the "scherzo".  The last of these closes into a long shake or trill on clarinet under which the strings pluck the outline of the theme, and then -- as Sir Donald Tovey so aptly said -- "the slow movement group sails in with tragic pomp".  The tempo shifts to an unusual and majestic 9/8, while the orchestration is dominated by horns and trombones, rich and dark.  Each variation in this slow section adds another layer of intensity to the music.  I truly believe that Brahms would have been proud to sign his name to this work on the strength of this powerfully dramatic passage.  After the slow section dies down, the original key and tempo return and the final set of variations work up to a rousing finale.  All this passes in the space of less than 20 minutes, yet those tragic slow variations lift the whole composition to the scale and weight of a full-length symphony.

And after that, the disc closes with the Elegy for Brahms.  This memorial work, for whatever reason, was never published and indeed may never have been performed before this 1978 recording session.  It's a true masterpiece, nothing less, a reverent acknowledgement by one master of his debt to another.  It opens with a wistful wind phrase, then a string line rises and falls, repeating itself over and over again -- but two tones lower at each step.  This descends into the depths and then gives birth to a whole series of thematic developments.  The music, in full sonata form, unfolds as naturally and organically as the best works of the man who inspired it.  There are moments of smiling reminiscence, moments of mourning, moments of anger.  At last, at the end, all passion is spent.  The rising and falling string phrase from the beginning is recalled briefly, as the music climbs up out of the depths and finally comes quietly to rest under a clear sky.  The inspiration from the closing pages of Brahms' Third Symphony is unmistakable.  This piece, so heartachingly beautiful, completely captured me at the first hearing.  I replayed it so often that I eventually wore the record out! 

More recent recordings of all these works, all five symphonies, and much more rewarding orchestral music by Parry, have been made on the Chandos label, and are readily available for download.  I've got them all from that source -- and I still press the repeat button every time I play the Elegy for Brahms.  It never fails to move me very deeply.

Sunday 16 November 2014

A Great Unknown Part 1: Choral Majesty and Power

The English composer Sir Hubert Parry is one of those figures mainly known today for some of his less-significant compositions.  His fame in Canada is mostly confined to Anglican church musicians, and mainly rests on a couple of hymn tunes and one anthem.  A little more of his music has received attention more recently in England, yet even there much is relatively unknown.

In this first of two blog posts about Parry's music, I will talk about three choral works.

Anyone who has ever attended, or watched a telecast of, the famous "Last Night of the Proms" concert from London has heard Parry's famous hymn, Jerusalem.  Few outside of England, perhaps, are even aware of the composer's name.  He lived during the closing decades of the nineteenth century and into the early years of the twentieth century.  As a teacher and writer about music, he was enormously influential to the next generation of English composers.

His own music is of higher quality than is generally admitted.  He had a powerful sense of structure and an innate gift for setting words to music, an art which is harder than many people realize. 

Many church and cathedral choirs around the world have sung his magnificent anthem for the Coronation of King Edward VII, I was glad.  It's probably also been recorded more often than any other work by Parry, but most often in the reduced version for chorus and organ.  To get the full and true impact of I was glad, you need to go to one of the rare recordings which present the work complete and uncut, with full orchestra. 

That's because most versions omit the central 2 pages of the anthem, where Parry incorporated the traditional trumpet fanfares and the shouts of Vivat, vivat rex!/regina! which are contributed at a Coronation by the King's/Queen's Scholars of Westminster School.  The printed music neatly shows how this section can be eliminated for all other uses, and so it usually is.  But Richard Hickox on Chandos Records, as a fill-up to his recording of Elgar's The Dream of Gerontius, gives the piece whole, with the fanfares resounding and echoing splendidly in the church where the recording was made.  The choir re-enters with the lyrical line to "O pray for the peace of Jerusalem" and then the sound swells mightily to a glorious climax at "...and plenteousness within thy palaces."  The extra brass return at the end to crown the final orchestral bars with appropriate pomp.

The same recording also contains Parry's ode Blest pair of Sirens, a setting of a poem by Milton entitled At A Solemn Musick.  This work, vastly under-rated today outside of England, is (for my money) one of the most perfect settings of words to music from any composer of any period.  That is not least because the very clear structure of Parry's musical paragraphs exactly matches the structure of Milton's poem.  The poem as printed basically falls into two sentences: the first running through 24 lines of poetry, with one clear break in the meaning at the mid point, and the last encompassing the remaining 4 lines.  Parry's composition matches this poetic structure with a lengthy opening flow of music taking in the first half of the long first sentence, a distinct change of tone and style for the second half, and then a short interlude and a completely new melody for the final 4 lines.

Parry opens with an orchestral introduction, scored for strings and winds, which generates several melodies that will be intertwined throughout the first part of the piece.  The choir enters, singing in continuous 8-part harmony, which is also much more difficult to write than it seems.  The music flows along in the most natural and organic way, matching the sense of the lines beautifully.  At the mid-point break in the first section, the orchestral introduction resumes, with the choir re-entering almost at once and turning the music into darker regions as required by the text.  At the end of that long first sentence, there is another orchestral interlude, and then the last part begins with a brand-new tune from the sopranos.  This soon gives rise to a vigorous fugue built up on top of a continuous pedal point (as in the third movement of Brahms' German Requiem).  It's the use of this fugue that enables Parry to build a concluding portion equal in weight to the long opening section.  The pedal note is sustained while the fugue grows in power, strength, and velocity until the climactic moment when the bass note suddenly rises by a fifth, lifting the whole mass of choral and orchestral tone boldly towards the heavens -- a thrilling moment indeed.  The final cadence on the words "And sing with Him, in endless Morn of Light" is accompanied by the third and grandest appearance of the orchestral introduction.

Late in life, Parry composed a cycle of six motets for a cappella choir which he entitled Songs of Farewell.  That great gift of matching words to music was still working at full stretch, and with much more daring harmonic progressions than are found in the two earlier works -- proof positive that Parry was not simply trapped in the past, as many of his contemporaries mistakenly believed.  The cycle is noteworthy for the way that the number of parts expands from four voices in the first motet to seven in the fifth and to eight voices in the sixth and last.  The texts are a mixture of sacred and secular writings, characteristic indeed of a man who was a prominent agnostic or "freethinker" as the term was in his day.

There's a definite cumulative arc to the increasing complexity of the dissonances as the cycle proceeds, and also a building of emotional intensity which truly requires the motets to be performed as a group -- although separate performances of individual numbers do occur.  I've had the good fortune to hear the Songs of Farewell sung in concert, and it was very moving.  You can read about that concert here:  Choral Splendour 


Plainly, Sir Hubert Parry was a noteworthy composer for the human voice massed in chorus.  Not less noteworthy were his orchestral works, and I'll be discussing several of those next.

Sunday 9 November 2014

Dancing Your Way Through a Rough Life

England has never had a strong tradition of home-grown ballet music.  Several composers in the great English musical renaissance of the 20th century composed ballet scores, but these have remained largely unperformed as dance.  Where some of them have survived and triumphed is in the concert hall.


I've written before about a ballet score by Ralph Vaughan Williams (Christmas Delights 1) but never have I discussed his finest music for ballet, indeed one of the finest works he ever composed.


RVW was far from being the first composer to take a series of pictures as the inspiration for a work of music.  When he had the idea of writing a ballet that would revive old dance forms of the Tudor and Stuart eras, he turned to poet and artist William Blake's Illustrations of the Book of Job as his starting point, and created a ballet scenario that compressed Blake's twenty-some pictures into nine tableaux.  The result was Job: A Masque for Dancing.  As a ballet it was something of a flop.  As a concert work, on the other hand, it works beautifully.


Job runs about 45 minutes in playing time, and is scored for triple woodwinds and brass, 4 horns, percussion, 2 harps, organ and strings.  That's more orchestra than most theatre pits can easily accommodate, and for the premiere in 1931 a reduced version for smaller orchestra had to be arranged.  The original score, then, can quite appropriately be regarded as more of a symphonic poem than a ballet score. 




The score's dedicatee, Sir Adrian Boult, said of Vaughan Williams and Job: "His very broad mind is all there."  It's a comment worth noting.  Few of this composer's works span so many different styles of writing, or weave them so closely together. 


The three main contrasting elements are strongly presented in the first scene: the nobility and grandeur of the music for God and the angels of heaven, the simple yet positive music of Job, and the whirling, spiky, malicious material associated with Satan.  The first of the "set dances" is the Sarabande of the Sons of God, a stately chordal hymn-like theme.


In Scene II, Satan dances wildly before the throne of God (now vacant) and then runs to sit on the throne while the hosts of hell bow to him and the brass play a fanfare that sounds like a mockery of the angelic Gloria in excelsis.


The third scene depicts the sons of Job and their wives dancing and clashing their wine cups together in a gentle minuet.  Satan enters, summons a whirlwind, and the house collapses to a grinding discord, killing all those in it.


Scene IV depicts Job sleeping while Satan stands over him and summons visions of plague, famine, war and destruction.  This scene contains some of RVW's most violent and discordant "modern" idiom, very much akin to the contemporary Fourth Symphony.


In the fifth scene, the messengers arrive to tell Job of the death of his sons and their wives, yet Job still blesses God.  The Dance of the Messengers is a sombre, slow-moving theme.


The sixth scene is memorable for the slithery, unctuous tones of alto saxophone and bass clarinet as the voices of Job's hypocritical comforters.  At last Job loses patience and curses the day in which he was born -- this to an agonized minor-key version of the music for him in the first scene.  Heaven opens to reveal a vision of Satan and the hosts of hell enthroned in God's place and Job cowers down in terror.  This moment features one of the most remarkable and breathtaking inventions of the score: the vision is accompanied by a grinding, terrifying distortion of the Sarabande of the Sons of God played powerfully by the organ (conventionally considered a very religious musical instrument)!


In the shadow of that awe-inspiring climax the music dies away until a solo violin opens the seventh scene in a slow, rhapsodic, musing quasi-recitative accompanied by pizzicato strings and harp.  This favourite musical trademark of the composer leads into Elihu's Dance of Youth and Beauty, and it's a blessed relief (in the most literal sense) after the vehement emotional contrasts of the preceding scene.  This Dance in turn flows into the lyrical beauty of the Pavane of the Sons of the Morning, one of the most heartfelt and lovely musical ideas that Vaughan Williams ever composed.


In Scene VIII Satan enters to claim his victory and reward, but God rejects him and banishes him.  The Sons of the Morning dance a robust Galliard in joy and praise.  On earth, Job builds an altar and with his wife and daughters worships God in the Altar Dance.  As the Sons of the Morning resume their Pavane, the Altar Dance and Pavane intertwine beautifully together until the scene ends with three surging chords that then die away.  Scene IX resumes Job's pastoral music from the first scene, a perfect illustration of the text, "So the Lord blessed the latter end of Job more than his beginning." 


Sir Adrian Boult recorded this magnificent score for the first time in 1946, and made no less than three further commercial recordings, the last one in 1970.  I had that 1970 version on LP and it vividly characterized all the diverse aspects of then music.  Plainly the conductor knew the score like the back of his own hand, and loved every note of it.


The only other recording I've ever heard is one made by Vernon Handley for EMI.  Handley had worked extensively with Boult, and the reading comes across sounding very like Sir Adrian's, but with the advantage of more modern sound.  Where Handley's version triumphs is in Scene VI, where the organ entry at the vision of Satan is absolutely overwhelming (as it would have to be in a live performance) and yet firmly contained and clearly recorded with no distortion -- an impressive and hair-raising moment indeed.


I was set off on writing this particular post by having a dream of winning a gigantic lottery prize and using part of the money to pay the costs for a complete performance of Job at Roy Thomson Hall, in which I got to play the organ part!  Isn't it fun to dream?

Wednesday 22 October 2014

Getting Married the Hard Way

Today I'm coming up against one of those weird paradoxes that strike from time to time when you set out to shine a light on the hidden treasures.  The composer in this case is a well-known name, yet much (perhaps most) of his output is unknown outside his home country.  The opera in question is the most successful of his operas, and many music lovers will instantly recognize its overture and the three lively dances contained in the score.  Yet few will have ever made the acquaintance of the rest of the opera, and it's their loss.

The Bartered Bride was the second opera Bedrĭch Smetana composed.  His first was serious, and he certainly didn't escape from the charge of being too heavily influenced by Wagner.  (But then, very few composers of that day did escape the overwhelming influence of the Master of Bayreuth!)  Smetana made a conscious decision to make his second opera a comedy, a tale of the ordinary people and of village life, heavily laced with folk-like melody and dance.

The libretto tells a typically convoluted tale of young love, overbearing parents, and tricks of hidden and mistaken identities, which eventually resolves with the young couple overcoming all obstacles to their marriage.  No real need to go into the details.

Anyone who is familiar with the fizzing overture and the energetic dances already knows some of the melodic substance of the remainder of the opera.  The overture was, in the mode of its time, built up from melodies that would be heard within the opera to follow.  Yet, so carefully and tightly did Smetana construct it that it stands beautifully on its own with or without the complete work -- which may explain in part why the opera is so rarely staged outside the Czech Republic!  Suffice it to say that the opera as a whole does a masterly job of evoking the varying moods of the libretto, yet remains always tuneful, harmonious, and engaging to the listener.

Now, I actually have to admit that even I have not heard the complete opera yet.  The recording I have at hand is a German translation with some cuts to the score.  Whether these were committed by that editor and translator, or simply to bring the work down to a manageable length for LPs, I don't know.  And yes, the recording is that old.

It was made in 1962 in Bamberg, Germany, with a roster of singers, most of whom are not familiar to me.  However, the three key roles are taken by singers who were major stars of that period.  As Hans, the romantic hero, you get Fritz Wunderlich, a lyric tenor with the kind of voice most singers can only dream of having (sadly, he died a few years later after a fall at the young age of 35).  Marie, the heroine, is sung by Pilar Lorengar, with her usual clarity of tone and diction.  And as Kecal, the marriage broker (a comic basso buffo role) we get the great German bass Gottlob Frick.  With these three holding down the key parts, and with the magnificent Rudolf Kempe on the podium, the performance holds securely together with plenty of sparkle and energy.

The third act appearance of the troupe of comedians is the occasion for some genuine stage business.  First of all, the entry march (although it was scored for several instruments) is played just by a piccolo and drums.  Then, the subsequent speech by Springer, the leader of the comedians, is punctuated by some absolutely awful trumpet fanfares, replete with wrong notes, missed notes, and sputtering sounds.  I'm sure the first trumpet of the Bamberg orchestra had a lot of fun with this scene!  Gertrud Freedmann, the soprano who sings the role of the acrobat Esmeralda, manages a convincing Spanish accent when greeting the crowd with "Buenos dias", although the accent vanishes in her subsequent patter duet with Springer.

The comic keystone of the opera is the role of Wenzel, the shy, stuttering young man who is in line to marry Marie before Hans turns up.  To stutter and stammer convincingly while singing is a singular accomplishment, and Karl-Ernst Mercker manages it very well -- so well, in fact, that I wouldn't be at all surprised to hear that the other great stutterer of comic opera, Dr. Blind in Die Fledermaus, was another of his specialty roles!

Throughout the opera, the numerous choral numbers are all sung with verve and precision by the RIAS Chamber Choir.  Conductor Rudolf Kempe is as convincing in this lighter music as he was in such repertoire heavyweights as Lohengrin.  All in all, a delightful re-release from EMI on 2 discs, and copies may still be available.

Only a few other complete recordings have ever been made, including one in English conducted by Sir Charles Mackerras which I have not heard.  But given his success in other Czech repertoire, I'm sure it would make a good choice.  That one is from Chandos Records, and available for download on their website.

Tuesday 21 October 2014

Visions and Dreams

Every once in a while there comes along a work of choral or vocal music in which words and music are so powerfully and movingly allied together that it almost seems as if the composer and the author were subconsciously communing with each other.   Or perhaps it might be closer to say that the writer set down the words in anticipation that the composer would some day appear to set them in perfect, shining musical order.

One thing is certain: when such a masterly alliance of words and music is achieved, it becomes pointless for any other composer ever to attempt to set the same text.

In the Pentecost scene of Sir Edward Elgar's oratorio The Kingdom the composer puts into the mouth of St. Peter the following Biblical words:

And your young men shall see visions
And your old men shall dream dreams.

I wonder whether, as he pondered that text, he was recalling the most memorable instance of visions and dreams which he had already composed?  I am, of course, referring to his greatest choral work, perhaps the greatest single work he ever set down on paper, The Dream of Gerontius.

This is one more of the many, and scandalous, instances where a major masterpiece is well-known and well-loved in the country where it was created, yet remains sadly little-known and under-valued elsewhere.  I am, of course, not directing this particular post to other Elgar lovers, who will be thoroughly familiar with Gerontius already!

The poem by John Henry (Cardinal) Newman describes an allegorical dream of the journey from death towards the judgement of God, and then to Purgatory.  It's somewhat Dante-esque, and overtly Roman Catholic in its theology.  Elgar, himself a devout Catholic, was perhaps the only British composer of the day who could do it justice.  The result is like no other choral work heard until that time, and can't be described accurately as oratorio, cantata, or by any other term.  It was, and is, and will likely remain sui generis.  

The music opens with an orchestral prelude announcing various major themes that will be heard throughout the ensuing musical journey and this flows directly into Part One, which is the deathbed scene.  Interpretation of this tends to turn on whether the conductor and soloist take it as a reminiscence of what has happened or a dreamed foreshadowing of what will happen.  What matters is to achieve proper contrasts between the different sections of what is, in effect, a lengthy death aria for Gerontius (tenor), interspersed with choral prayers.  The entire scene flows without interruption up to the final words of Gerontius.  Then, after the slightest pause, the Priest (baritone) enters to lead the chorus into the final invocatory hymn Go Forth Upon Thy Journey, Christian Soul which ends the first part.

Part Two again opens with an orchestral prelude, this time gently flowing to set the sense of timelessness of the journey which the Soul of Gerontius now undertakes, a timelessness which is discussed between the Soul of Gerontius and his guardian Angel (mezzo-soprano) in the ensuing dialogue.  From here the music moves directly into the furious chorus of the Demons, forever shut out of the House of God.  Here Elgar took his cue from Newman's vivid poetic text and fashioned one of the fiercest, most vicious pieces of choral writing ever composed.

Who, after expelling
Their hosts, gave
Triumphant still,
And still unjust,
Each forfeit crown
To psalm-droners,
And canting groaners,
To every slave,
And pious cheat,
And crawling knave,
Who licked the dust
Under his feet.

The best performances are the ones in which the choristers are actually encouraged to sing these words with a snarling tone of voice, and to get the utmost degree of mockery into the subsequent repeated cries of Ha ha!, with which they interrupt their sardonic degradation of sainthood.

The blazing fury of the Demons leads without pause to the Angel's exquisite poetic description of the Stigmata of St. Francis of Assisi, and this in turn flows directly into the quiet beginning of the angelic hymn, Praise to the Holiest in the Height.  After the first verses of this hymn, the Soul of Gerontius sings:
The sound is like the rushing of the wind --
The summer wind -- among the lofty pines.

And here Elgar achieved a most remarkable wind-like sound from the combination of instruments and voices.  It was after composing this passage that he wrote in a letter to a friend: "The trees are singing my music -- or have I sung theirs?"  This remark captures the air almost of inevitability which hovers over every note of this remarkable score.  

The hymn builds, verse by verse, and page by page to a remarkable climax of double choir writing with full orchestra.  This passage accelerates and accelerates until it finally erupts into a rapid 1-beat-to-a-bar climactic conclusion.  But the finality of this glory is not so final as it seems, for the final cutoff of orchestra and choir leaves a diminishing timpani roll that leads into the next section.  

As Gerontius approaches the Throne of God we hear next the remarkable chromatic aria for the Angel of the Agony (bass), who pleads for the souls of the departed in memory of Christ's sufferings. This solo lies in a much lower range than the earlier solo for the Priest in Part One, but only once on records, in the very first complete recording in 1945, were the two parts given to different singers. The moment when the Soul sees God in the face is depicted by a short orchestral passage ending in a powerful fff staccato chord which then passes on to Gerontius' plea to be taken away to Purgatory.

And with that, the music flows into the final section for the Angel and chorus, Softly and gently, dearly ransomed soul.  This beautiful, lyrical music brings the work to its conclusion in an air of peaceful resignation and hope.

The point and purpose of my writing about The Dream of Gerontius at this time is twofold.  First of all, as a work which I have known and loved from my earliest record-collecting days, it absolutely deserves the honour of being my 100th post on this blog.  

Second, I'm directing attention to it because, next week, the Toronto Symphony will be mounting a live performance of this masterpiece for the first time since 1985, 29 years ago.  Gerontius was a particular love of Sir Andrew Davis, and he performed it twice during his tenure as the TSO's music director.  He gave it during his first season, and that was the first time I ever heard it sung live.  The experience was so overwhelming that I rushed to the box office at the intermission and bought another ticket to hear it again 2 nights later.  Since I was a student at the time, that was a considerable extravagance, but it was worth every penny.  He performed it again in 1985, as part of his farewell season.  Somewhere during the intervening years, I also heard it given under Dr. Melville Cook at Metropolitan United Church in Toronto.  I've never heard Gerontius live since, and if it's another 29 years until the next time I may well not be around when it happens again.  If you come to the concert on Saturday, look around and say hello if you see me!

Elgar seems to have been quite well aware, as he composed Gerontius, that he was achieving something uniquely special and of enduring value -- as indeed he was.  At the end of the score, on the day he completed those ineffably lovely final pages, he appended some lines by the essayist Ruskin:

This is the best of me; for the rest, I ate, and drank, and slept, 
loved and hated, like another: my life was as the vapour and is not; 
but this I saw and knew; this, if anything of mine, is worth your memory.

Tuesday 30 September 2014

One Bird Deserves Another!

The idea of writing about this work came to me directly from one of the subjects of my last blog post, the overture to "The Birds" by Alphons Diepenbrock.

This time, the subject is a complete opera based on that ancient Greek satirical comedy by Aristophanes.  And once again, it comes from a composer very little known.  This time, though, he's not just unknown because of shifting tastes and fashions.

One of the many crimes committed by the Nazi Party during their years in power in Germany was the labelling of art by Jewish artists and Jewish sympathizers as "entartete" -- "degenerate".  Any works or artists so labelled were of course banned.  Many of the creative artists labelled as "entartete" escaped from Europe and resettled in North America.  Others were swept up by the hundred-headed hydra that was the Nazi killing machine, and disappeared into the death camps.  Their works, in many cases, also disappeared.

Some years back, the Decca Records label launched a special line called "Entartete Musik", dedicated to recovering the works of the "degenerate" composers from obscurity.  And the opera Die Vogel ("The Birds") was one of the major recording projects in this line of CDs.

The composer (and librettist) was Walter Braunfels.  He was not himself Jewish (in fact he was a devout Roman Catholic), but he did have partly Jewish ancestry and of course counted many eminent Jewish musicians among his friends and colleagues, and that was enough to put him on the Nazi radar.  It didn't help his cause at all that this opera definitely skewers the heaven-storming delusions of ambitious, power-hungry people!

But don't get me wrong!  Die Vogel is no political tract, and certainly not advanced music for the time when it was composed (the 1920s).  The nearest benchmark to Braunfels' style that I know is found in some of the later operas of Richard Strauss.  Braunfels certainly shared Strauss' ability to coax beautiful, bewitching sounds out of singers and players alike, and this score has many examples of that gift in it.  Not only that, but the composer has most effectively devised musically beautiful material to suggest (without slavishly imitating) the songs of many different species of birds.

The Aristophanes play involves a plot, suggested by two humans, for the birds to build a citadel in the sky and intercept all the prayers and sacrifices winging their way to the gods.  Inevitably, of course, the all-powerful Zeus destroys the city of the birds.

The opera is in 2 acts, the first considerably shorter.  The best of the music comes in the second act.  This begins with a duet of heart-tugging beauty between the Nightingale and the human Hoffegut ("Good Hope").  The Nightingale is a high lyric soprano, and her voice soars effortlessly along a gently curving vocal line while her human admirer's voice punctuates it.  For sheer lyrical gift there are few passages in all of music to match this.  Later there is a delightful wedding scene of two doves with appropriate vocal comments from different birds. 

The comedy turns darker with the arrival of Prometheus who warns the birds that they are tempting the wrath of Zeus (pronounced "Zoyss" in German).  This passage has a splendid chordal theme that sets the name of the god on the highest note.  But they ignore him and carry on.

Zeus himself then appears, and in a passage of power and drama summons the winds from north and south, until the winds and a thunderbolt blast the city into fragments.

The cowering birds then sing a hymn of homage to Zeus, with the Nightingale's voice rising above them all onto the high note of the Zeus theme heard earlier.  The hymn-like harmonies of this passage are plain block triads, but the simple modulations are all the more effective for that.  The humans then make their way back to their homes, with Hoffegut trying to describe and fix in his mind the change that his hour with the Nightingale has brought over him.  As he disappears, the opera ends with a last brief lyrical outpouring from the distant voice of the Nightingale.

It seems a little hard on the rest of the singing cast that the soprano who sings the Nightingale gets all the most memorable moments!  But in the premiere recording in the Decca Entartete Musik series, Hellen Kwon proves more than memorable in the part, and especially in that marvellous duet.

Her partner, Endrik Wottrich (tenor) sings with clarity and precision as Hoffegut, but has a curious tone quality to his voice which is quite distinctive and hard to describe -- and may not be to all tastes.  Baritone Michael Kraus is equally clear as the other human character, Ratefreund (Loyal Friend).

Baritone Matthias Görne sings powerfully in his one scene as Prometheus.  Wolfgang Holzmair, another baritone, is nicely contrasted in tone to both Kraus and Görne in his role as Wiedhopf (Hoopoe, the king of the birds).  The many smaller roles are all effectively taken by various singers.  The entire opera is lovingly played by the German Radio Symphony Orchestra of Berlin under the direction of Lothar Zagroszek.

This marvellous opera absolutely deserves to be rescued from obscurity, and performed much more often.  If you can find a copy of this Decca recording (dating from 1994), grab it fast!
 

Saturday 20 September 2014

Beautiful Rarities from the Netherlands

It's interesting that the people of the Netherlands are powerful connoisseurs of the fine arts, and of music in particular (witness the Amsterdam Concertgebouw Orchestra, consistently ranked one of the world's finest and with good reason).  Yet the Netherlands has produced relatively little music of continuing popularity, and none apart from the Renaissance choral music of Sweelinck which has become well-known outside the country.

Just recently I pulled out and revisited two CDs of music by the Dutch composer Alphons Diepenbrock, a contemporary of Gustav Mahler.  These two records were issued in 1990 by the Chandos Records label in England, and I can only find one other disc of this composer's music.  Even the apparently ubiquitous Naxos label doesn't seem to have touched him.

More's the pity, because Diepenbrock was a composer of considerable individuality and quality, and this music survives repeated listening uncommonly well.  Most of Diepenbrock's list of over 100 compositions consists of vocal music, often with orchestra.  In spite of his skillful handling of the orchestra, he wrote very few purely orchestral works apart from those destined for use in the theatre.

The title of one of the works in this collection is Hymn to the Night and the note writer shrewdly remarks that this could stand as the motto of Diepenbrock's entire musical output.  Definitely his music is often quiet, lightly orchestrated with constantly shifting textures, and shot through with equal measures of lyrical beauty mixed with melancholy and sadness.  The quality, subtlety and beauty of his works is the more remarkable when you find out that he was entirely self-taught as a composer and musician.

The first of the two CDs comprises orchestral works, and here we get three compositions written for the theatre: suites to the plays Marsyas and Elektra, and an overture to The Birds.  Any experts reading this will have recognized that two of these are classical Greek dramas, and the third (Marsyas) is a Dutch play based on a Greek legend.  The affinity is explained by the fact that Diepenbrock was trained as a scholar of classical Greek and Latin language and literature, and worked all his life as a teacher and tutor of those disciplines.

The overture to The Birds is one of the few genuinely happy pieces Diepenbrock wrote, and has a jolly, upbeat atmosphere entirely appropriate to the satirical comedy which it prefaced.  The two suites are full of interesting touches, and the accompanying notes summarize the stories of the plays well enough that the listener can sense how the music would fit in with the stage action.

Set amid these riches is the crown jewel of the collection, the ineffably lovely Hymn for Violin and Orchestra.  This is a single long movement, almost 13 minutes, in which two simple slow melodies are developed through transformations and varied orchestrations in an almost endless stream of melody from the solo instrument and orchestra.  It remains for long periods grounded firmly in the home key, a fact which throws into the highest relief two simple modulations given to the orchestra right at the end of the work.  Violinist Emmy Verhey plays with beautiful tone and long singing legato lines.

The second disc contains four symphonic songs, a form which Diepenbrock cultivated and developed throughout his life.  The nearest parallel I can think of in the music of others is the long final movement of Mahler's Das Lied von der Erde, in which a single soloist sings an extended setting of poetry developing a whole string of related but contrasting ideas.  In many ways, I find that Diepenbrock's work in this form is fully up to that high standard, and indeed his music was known to and admired by Mahler (and by Richard Strauss).

In these pieces, Diepenbrock set poetry or prose-poetry of high quality to music of remarkable transparency, often achieved by using small chamber-like ensembles within the orchestra, and by scoring many of the parts for solo instruments.  The result is certainly similar in texture to Mahler's work which was not widely known at the time.

He composed two pieces titled Hymn to the Night and we hear the second one here (words by Novalis).  It's followed by another piece simply entitled The Night (Hölderlin).  Both of these are for mezzo-soprano and orchestra.  The third work is a shorter piece, Few understand the mystery of Love (Novalis again) for tenor and orchestra.  Finally, for baritone and orchestra, we hear In the great silence to words by Nietzche.  All four have moments of memorable melody and harmony, and repay close study with the texts in hand to see how the composer's music artfully follows the meanings of the words he chose to set.  My own personal favourite is the Hymn to the Night but all four are fine works and merit greater attention.  The vocal soloists all provide first-rate work, but the best of them (in my opinion) is mezzo-soprano Linda Finnie.  However tenor Christoph Homberger and bass-baritone Robert Holl are by no means also-rans.

Throughout the two discs, the playing of the Residentie Orchestra of The Hague under conductor Hans Vonk is exemplary, as is the rich Chandos sound which serves this music uncommonly well.  The entire recording is available for download as a complete 2-for-1 album from Chandos, and from Classics Online (the Naxos download website).  Chandos also stocks the 2-for-1 CD album.

Monday 8 September 2014

A Spectacular Mediaeval Journey

I'm ashamed that I have neglected this blog for the last 6 weeks or so because I have been so busy writing about summer theatre and concerts in Large Stage Live, and about my travels in Round and Round My World.  But here I am with another delightful musical rarity.

The starting point for this music is a king -- Alfonso X "El Sabio" ("The Wise") who ruled Castile in Spain during the latter half of the 1200s.  Among his numerous interests the arts and sciences ranked highly, and he co-authored or sponsored numerous treatises, books, and catalogues.  One of the most noteworthy is the immense collection of Cantigas de Santa Maria ("Songs of the Virgin Mary").  There are over 400 poems, with music, in this collection, describing the miracles of the Blessed Virgin in vivid and colourful terms -- and even including one miracle which the King said happened to him!  The manuscript forms the single largest collection of music and poetry in the vernacular from the Middle Ages.

Numerous artists have made reconstructions and recordings of selections from the cantigas.  Among them, Philip Pickett (director of the New London Consort) came up with a unique "hook" on which to hang his collection.  He surmised that songs like this were very likely sung and played by pilgrims travelling along the ancient pilgrim's road to the shrine of Santiago de Compostela, and set out to recreate a collection of music that might well have been so used.  The result is a 2-CD album which appeared on the Oiseau-Lyre label, entitled The Pilgrimage to Santiago.

The Cantigas manuscript supplies only a melodic line -- no indications of instrumentation or vocal distribution are given.  As is well understood, this freed musicians everywhere to make what they would of the material with the resources at hand.  There's also the whole question of what kind of rhythmic pattern should be used in each number.  And here is where Pickett had his real inspiration, which makes his recording lift off the disc and burst into vivid life.

In the Portico de la Gloria of the cathedral at Santiago de Compostela there is a remarkable stone carving above the door.  It depicts the Twenty-Four Elders gathered around the throne of God (as described in the book of Revelation), with all of them holding instruments.  But unlike the harps so often associated with celestial music, these players comprise an entire orchestra of mediaeval instruments -- fiddles, rebecs, flutes, tabors, an organistrum (a hurdy-gurdy played by 2 people), and so on.  Pickett simply made the reasonable assumption that the carver was depicting an ensemble he had actually seen and heard.  He then set out to recreate the ensemble for the recording.

The result is fantastic -- energetic, lively, brilliant, earthy in style, and tremendous fun for listening.  The selection of instruments constantly shifts and changes from song to song, even from verse to verse within a song.  Rhythms are splendidly vigorous.  The opening Que la Virgen ben servira has a catchy syncopated rhythm that keeps performers and listeners alike keyed up for the story.  While the lengthy strophic songs could be tedious, the energy and variety of the performance keeps them moving right along.  Interspersed among the cantigas are other vocal numbers known in Castile at the time of the cantigas: plainsong chants, tropes, teaching songs, love songs, and much more.

The climax of each disc is the splendid processional of Dum pater familias, the traditional song in honour of St. James of Compostela sung by the pilgrims.  It's a four-square march tune, entirely appropriate for a walking song, and employs the full instrumental resources of the ensemble.  At the end of the first disc it appears as a purely instrumental version, but on the second disc it concludes the entire concert with full choral participation as well.

Singers and instrumentalists alike are first-rate throughout.  Words are clearly sung, and complete texts with translations are provided, as well as lengthy notes about the process of reconstructing the music for performance.  This recording is now several decades old, but you might be lucky enough to find a copy in a used-CD dealer's store, and if you do you should grab it fast.  It's a real winner!

Saturday 12 July 2014

A Forgotten # 2 Hit Composition

From the premiere in 1898 until the 1950s, it consistently vied with Mendelssohn's Elijah as the second-most popular choral work in England, the land of large amateur choral societies and festivals.  (Messiah, of course, reigned unchallenged in first place!).  Since then, it has dropped so far out of sight that most music lovers today have never heard of it, let alone actually heard the music.  For that matter, how many people today have even heard of the composer, Samuel Coleridge-Taylor?

No, that is not the poet, and no, I did not get the name backwards.  Coleridge-Taylor's father came from a mixed African-European parentage in Sierra Leone, and was living in London when he met Alice Hare Martin.  However, they were not married and Daniel Taylor returned to West Africa without finding out that she had borne him a son.  One of the most remarkable aspects of the story of Samuel Coleridge-Taylor is the way that a man of African descent rose to such high prominence in both Britain and the United States at a time long before the modern Civil Rights movement.  Indeed, he was personally invited to the White House by Theodore Roosevelt, an almost unheard-of honour for an African at that time!

However, during his upbringing in England he studied with major musical figures of the day, particularly Charles Stanford, and was given an early boost by Edward Elgar.  Given his English upbringing, it's hardly surprising that he set out to compose a work for choir and orchestra at the relatively early age of 23.  His choice of text was fashionable, but still unusual for a choral work:  Hiawatha's Wedding Feast from the poem of Henry Longfellow.  Great interest was aroused when copies of the score were on sale even before the premiere on Nov. 11, 1898, and the hall was so packed that hundreds of people had to be turned away.  The success of the work was immediate, and Coleridge-Taylor swiftly followed with two more cantatas, The Death of Minnehaha and Hiawatha's Departure.  All three were frequently performed, but the first one far more than the other two.  Until its popularity declined after World War Two, Hiawatha's Wedding Feast was performed literally thousands of times throughout the English-speaking world, and sales of the vocal score soared into the hundreds of thousands.  

Listening to the work now, I get the distinct impression that it certainly was a breath of fresh air blowing through the cobwebs of the English choral tradition.  Sanctimonious harmonies, stodgy accompaniments and learned academic fugues are swept away.  In their place we hear a profusion of pleasing melody, and orchestral parts of independent distinction (the woodwind lines in many sections are especially lovely).  There's nothing at all revolutionary about the choral writing -- indeed, it seems simple almost to a fault because the very sophistication is itself neatly concealed.  The lightness of texture throughout the work is notable.

The first notes heard from the orchestra outline a motto theme which works throughout the score.  A simple set of four notes -- A up to D, down to the D below, and back to the original A -- just the tonic and dominant formula, played quietly by flutes and trumpets, somewhat like a fanfare to call us to attention.  This same motto reappears in many guises, changing keys and rhythms with the changing course of the work.  It's interesting that Coleridge-Taylor avoids the obvious course of using the same music every time the chorus sings the repeated refrain:
That the feast may be more joyous
And the time may pass more gaily
And the guests be more contented.

Thus, each time we hear these words, the melody, harmony, and orchestration are different!

Most of the work is for the chorus, and the constant varying of vocal and orchestral textures is one of the delights of the score.  But the centrepiece is the soaring, lyrical aria for tenor, Onaway!  Awake, beloved!, which became such a staple of the tenor recital repertoire for half a century.  Here the motto theme is slightly varied.  It now starts on the dominant rather than the tonic:  D-flat up to G-flat, down to the G-flat below, and back to the original D-flat.  How many listeners, I wonder, have clued in to the slight variation?  Even with my musical background and experience, I only caught on today, when I have known the piece for over 40 years!  (Okay, so I'm kind of slow in the uptake sometimes!)  But it's such little subtleties that give the work its true distinction and quality.

In today's harsher, more politically correct world, a work treating of the First Nations culture could never be written in this way!  But then, Coleridge-Taylor never pretended that his work was "authentic" in any sense.  In fact, he was drawn to Longfellow's poem by the euphony of the names.  What you get here is a romantic musician's interpretation of a poem that is itself a highly-romanticized version of First Nations legends.  The very lack of pretension in the music is what makes Hiawatha's Wedding Feast so delightful.

For many years, it was closely identified with the name of British conductor Sir Malcolm Sargent, and he in fact led the EMI recording I have here.  It was recorded in 1961, using the Philharmonia Orchestra, the Royal Choral Society, and tenor soloist Richard Lewis.  I could hardly think of a better voice for that rapturous solo, and the choral singing and orchestral playing are of equal distinction.  The 35-minute cantata is joined on the CD re-release (Classics for Pleasure) by the Petite Suite de Concert and The Bamboula: Rhapsodic Dance.  These were both later works, written not long before the composer died of pneumonia in 1912 -- at the tragically early age of 37.  Both are lively works displaying more of the same melodic sense and virtuoso handling of the orchestra that distinguishes the earlier cantata.

Tuesday 8 July 2014

The Fine Line Between Masterpiece and Muddle

I've often pondered the role of "popularity" in the growth of classical music.  This blog is devoted to the numerous delightful, and indeed wonderful, works of music which languish in the shadows because they (or their composers) are not popular, and hence not well known.  Popularity can be fickle too.  An extreme example is the opening "sunrise" passage from Richard Strauss' tone poem Also sprach Zarathustra.  This work definitely lay in obscurity until those opening bars were given spectacular vision by Stanley Kubrick in his epic film, 2001: A Space Odyssey.  Since then, Strauss' sunrise has become part of the popular cultural landscape (although the rest of the work still remains rarely heard). 

The issue gets further confused when the "great experts" anoint this work or composer as masterly while consigning that work or composer to the discard bin.  Sadly, many music-lovers base their choices on those of the "great experts", while forgetting that these experts too are human beings and have their likes and dislikes.  I strongly suspect that personal likes and dislikes, not to mention McCarthy-era politics, lie at the root of the matter in the case I am going to examine today.

Imagine, if you will, a piece which begins with a simple, obsessive rhythm beaten quietly on a snare drum.  Over a span of some minutes, the drum is joined by one instrument after another.  Each instrument that joins repeats the same melody given out by the first one.  At each repetition the music gets bigger, louder, brasher, until the entire orchestra is engaged -- yet the rhythm, melody and key never change.  UNTIL -- with a sudden modulation the orchestra swerves mightily into a different key, bringing the piece at last to its thunderous climax.

Ravel's Bolero, of course.  Probably a few of my gentle readers guessed that already.  Bolero is certainly not to everyone's taste.  All the same, it is -- rightly, I think -- regarded as a great masterpiece for the orchestra.

But no.  I was not actually describing Bolero.  It came as a shock to me when listening to another favourite work to realize that there is a lengthy passage in it which repeats the recipe of Bolero almost exactly.  And yet, this passage has been described as a "monumental miscalculation" and "banal beyond belief."

The piece I am referring to here is Shostakovich's Symphony No. 7 in C Major, the "Leningrad" Symphony.  This work was mainly composed in Leningrad and completed in Kuibyshev during the famous Siege of Leningrad by Nazi German armies in World War Two.  When performed, it was presented as a tribute to the people of the city and their endurance in the face of adversity.  Shostakovich himself said that the first movement was dedicated to the struggle and the last to the victory.  The piece achieved instant fame, and when the score was flown out by way of Tehran and Casablanca to New York, it quickly received over a hundred performances in the United States alone.  The propaganda value of the symphony was immense.

After the war, though, it was dismissed as being "only" a piece of propaganda, written off as a noisy socialist potboiler, and in any case almost all Russian music of the 20th century became suspect during the McCarthy era.  That judgement has continued to be repeated by many critics and commentators right to the present day.  I would submit, though, that after 70 years the time is ripe to reappraise the Leningrad Symphony.

Much of the negative critical reaction has centred on the long central passage of the first movement, the passage which so effectively uses the same formula as Bolero.  The tune in this case is a perky little melody, almost folk-like in shape, which takes on much more militaristic tone as the orchestration grows step by step.  In wartime terms, this was taken as a depiction of the German armies coming closer and closer, surrounding the city, and moving in to crush it.  Perfectly believable. 

But with Shostakovich, as we now know better, nothing is ever quite that simple.  You need to take his public utterances with a grain of salt, because it was in his public words that he bowed to the Stalinist empire.  Recent research, though, has shown a very different possible interpretation, and one that makes much more sense of the repeated, obsessive nature of that long central passage.  Take it instead as the invasion, suppression, and brutal destruction of the Trotskyite Leningrad cultural community by the relatively uncultured and uncouth Stalin, and suddenly that simple, obsessive melody which rises finally to a roar makes much more sense.  After all, thousands of prominent citizens of Leningrad disappeared in the Stalinist purges, yet the German armies never actually entered the city.  That possibility also adds much more depth and poignancy to Shostakovich's comments about the struggle and the victory -- and of the hard-won triumph when the central passage is finally subsumed in an altered version of the symphony's dogged opening theme.

All four movements of this symphony have moments of peace and austere beauty which were so characteristic of the composer.  All four also have moments of emphatic bombast, equally characteristic.  Take it as a whole, though, and I think it is by no means the least of Shostakovich's achievements in the symphonic form. 

I've heard several recordings, but have yet to hear a live performance.  Unfortunately, when the Toronto Symphony did it some years back, I was still teaching in Elliot Lake and unable to get down to Toronto for a mid-week concert.

My favourite recording is quite old now, but stands the test of time well.  It's one of a group of recordings done in the early 1970s by EMI with the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra under the direction of Paavo Berglund.  The entire 70-minute work is held together with force and conviction and the playing is of high calibre. 

Where Berglund scores over all rivals is in the closing 5 minutes of the finale.  There are several different musical lines at work in this long, loud climax.  Berglund wisely chose a speed just a couple of notches less than others have done, and with care managed to balance the orchestra so that all the notes in all the levels come through clearly.  Quite a trick in such a massive work, but he definitely managed it.  It's a truly great performance, effectively raising the Leningrad Symphony to its proper stature as a major twentieth-century work for the orchestra, and (in my humble opinion) redeeming the symphony from its long exile in the outer reaches of the musical world.

Thursday 3 July 2014

Approved Alternates

Back in the nineteenth century, before the invention of recording, people who wanted to hear music had to make a lot of it for themselves.  Any home that could afford one had a piano, and some families went further by buying string and wind instruments.  Well-to-do people often played one or more instruments as a hobby, or perhaps avocation would be a better word.

To meet the demand, music publishers printed and sold numerous arrangements of classical orchestral works set down for piano duo (or 4 hands at 1 piano, the most common kind of arrangement), for string quartet, for flute or clarinet with piano -- the possible combinations were almost endless.  Some of the most popular pieces made it into a dozen or more different forms of arrangement.

In the midst of all this activity, there were composers -- here and there -- who arranged their own works for 4-hands or 2 pianos, and published these as authorised alternative versions of the better-known full score works.  In this post, I want to discuss three such authorised alternatives.

Johannes Brahms was primarily a pianist and preeminently a composer for the piano.  It's not surprising that he often turned to that instrument as a vehicle for his ideas.  One of his early masterpieces began life as a string quintet.  He then recast it in 1863 as a sonata for 2 pianos, lasting 3/4 of an hour!  From that stage, he finally moved on to the form in which it is best known today, the Piano Quintet Op. 34 for string quartet and piano.  But wait!  He also published the 2-piano version under Op. 34b!  Thus, the intermediate stage was clearly approved by the composer as worthy of circulation in its own right.

Ten years later, Brahms produced co-equal versions at the same time of his Variations on a Theme by Haydn:  the orchestral version as Op. 56a and the 2-piano version as Op. 56b.  Again, there is no doubt that the composer regarded both versions as having equal validity.

In both works, the character of the music is significantly altered when translated to the percussive sound of the pianos, but the musical ideas shine through with equal effectiveness.  Indeed, in the Variations especially, there is a fair bit of detail which sometimes gets submerged in an orchestral performance but has a much better chance of shining clearly through when played on 2 pianos.

Fast forward to 1940.  The Russian composer Sergei Rachmaninoff, then living in the USA, produced his last and (in some ways) most complex work, the Symphonic Dances, Op. 45.  This score, which bristles with stabbing cross-rhythms and hammered percussion sounds, is much more obviously apt to the piano medium than the two Brahms works I discussed above.  No surprise, then, that Rachmaninoff -- himself a foremost piano virtuoso of his day -- simultaneously composed a version for 2 pianos.  While this was never actually published in his lifetime, he gave it his imprimatur by himself giving the first performance alongside Vladimir Horowitz.  It has been recorded a number of times since then.

In each of these three cases, the 2-piano version exists very much in the shade of the orchestral parallel versions.  This is scandalous!  These three works each present significant challenges to the virtuoso pianist, and in addition there is the significant challenge of keeping the two pianists firmly in sync with each other.  In each case, too, I feel that the 2-piano version enormously illuminates and clarifies the orchestral text, and certainly ought to be heard by anyone who enjoys these particular works.

In the 1990s, the legendary pianist Martha Argerich teamed up with Russian pianist-composer Alexandre Rabinovitch, to record all three of the works mentioned here, as well as some Brahms waltzes and the two Rachmaninoff Suites for 2 pianos.  Many people have expressed preference for this or that other version of this or that piece, but for me these two collections are special because of the fire that invades all of the music -- unwavering Apollonian lamps in Brahms and flaring Dionysian torchlight in Rachmaninoff.  Playing and recording alike are exemplary.  If you can find these 2 Teldec CDs, don't hesitate to buy them!

Sunday 8 June 2014

A Very "Heavenly" Opera

One of the most unusual nineteenth-century operas has to be Mefistofele by Arrigo Boito.  This is the same man who later became famous as the librettist of Verdi`s two final masterpieces, Falstaff and Otello.  But he was also a composer in his own right, and Mefistofele was his masterpiece.


The opera had a checkered career.  Boito, although Italian, was an ardent Wagnerian and wanted to bring the principles of Wagnerian music drama into the Italian opera houses.  Mefistofele, loosely based on Goethe`s Faust, was certainly a suitable subject for such a work.   But the work was badly received at the 1868 premiere, provoking a riot in the audiences, and the police intervened to close the production after two performances!  Boito withdrew the score for reworking, during which he produced a much shorter and more conventionally Italianate opera.  The biggest change was converting the part of Faust from a baritone to a tenor.


The opera as completed begins with a Prologo in cielo (`Prologue in Heaven") which is the most "Wagnerian" part of the work remaining.  This scene all by itself lasts for 25 minutes, and calls for a large mixed choir, children's choir, and the bass soloist who plays Mefistofele, as well as a large orchestra with extra percussion.  Following from Goethe the music first moves in a stately 3/4 tempo, with fanfares depicting the seven trumpets and a thunder sheet and full percussion standing in for the seven thunders.  A choir hymns the praise of God.  Mefistofele appears and the music changes to a lively scherzando.  His part is nimble, lightning-quick, and almost comedic (he finishes by saying that it amuses him to find the Almighty remains on such good terms with the devil!).  He offers to wager with God for Faust's soul, and the male choir replies "Sia" ("Let it be so!").  After Mefistofele vanishes (suddenly), a choir of young cherubs is heard dancing by like fireflies and then the main chorus returns with their hymn to God, rising to an overwhelming and thunderous climax to end the Prologue. 


Many years ago, I had the privilege of hearing Robert Shaw conduct this dramatic Prologue at Roy Thomson Hall as part of the annual Choirs in Contact conference of the Ontario Choral Federation.  The choir consisted of over 400 singers from all over Ontario, plus the children, and the American bass-baritone Thomas Paul sang the role of Mefistofele.  It was coupled with four short choral works of Brahms, all rarely heard, with the great Maureen Forrester in the Alto Rhapsody.  A memorable day indeed!  As for recordings, there have been a few of the Prologue.  Leonard Bernstein recorded a memorable one for DGG in Vienna, which may still be available -- Nicolai Ghiaurov was his soloist.


It was many years before I gave the complete opera a shot, but when I did buy a complete recording I certainly enjoyed it!  There's a great deal of excellent and memorable music throughout the score, and the final scene of Faust's death and redemption (and the defeat of Mefistofele) returns to the overwhelming conclusion of the prologue, rounding the work off very satisfactorily!  This Decca records release starred Luciano Pavarotti as Faust and Nicolai Ghiaurov as Mefistofele with Mirella Freni as Margarita.  The conductor was Olivero de Fabritiis.  This was certainly not the last word on the score, but it's a very recommendable version.


This opera has actually been recorded a number of times.  Why then do I classify it as a "rarity" for inclusion in this blog?  The scale of the piece is so great that a really good performance lies beyond the in-house capabilities of many opera companies.

Thursday 5 June 2014

Simple Baroque Grandeur

I'll get the rant out of the way first:  in my ever-so-humble opinion, there is no sin in the world of the performing arts greater than the sin of giving a dull, boring performance.  If the work you are performing is itself dull, that's one thing, but when you take a piece that should make the audience's hair stand on end and perform it in a boring manner, that is both ridiculous and indeed unforgivable.

There!  Rant over!

It's relevant because I have two recordings of this particular work, Heinrich Schütz's setting of Psalm 150.  It's one of a sizable number of Psalm settings that he wrote which were published in 1619.  In fact, I'd hazard a guess that Schütz came closer than any other composer of his day to setting the entire Book of Psalms to music. 

Psalm 150 is the last song of praise in the Book of Psalms, and absolutely cries out for musical treatment.  It invokes the use of various musical instruments (by name) to celebrate God, and ends with the stirring and all-inclusive command, "Let every thing that has breath praise the Lord."  Schütz set the Psalm in the German text of the Lutheran Bible, for two choirs, two instrumental groups, and continuo.

The first recording was an early "authentic performance" traversal of Schütz's complete collection of Psalmen Davids.  It was done at Regensburg Cathedral in Germany by DGG's Archiv label with the famous boys choir of the Cathedral, the so-called "Regensburg Sparrows".  And it's boring.  The wind instruments used are rather weak in tone, the boys choir and instrumentalists alike have serious tuning issues, the tempo is simply too rapid, there's no sense of power at all.  Indeed, the Psalm sounds positively playful and jolly at this speed!  Authentic it may have been (as far as the research went in 1972), but it comes across to me like a quickie run-through by a lot of people who want to get to their lunch break. 

But now turn to an almost exactly-contemporary 1973 recording by the King's College Choir of Cambridge under Sir David Willcocks.  This record uses modern instruments -- the Wilbraham Brass Soloists and the chapel's organ.  No suspicious intonation here at all, nor would I expect it with Willcocks in charge.  The modern brass instruments give a brilliance and grandeur entirely in keeping with the music and text alike.  The singers and players are clearly divided into two discrete groups, with stereo accentuating the division, which gives maximum impact in the antiphonal passages as choir answers choir, or in the passages where their entries overlap frequently.

Willcocks uses a slower tempo.  This is in part forced on him by the very resonant acoustic of King's College Chapel, but the result is all gain.  To the brilliance and grandeur of the modern brasses you can now add a weight and majesty that are totally apt for such a grandiose hymn of praise.

The music is divided into a series of short sections in varying styles.  The opening is a grand "Alleluia" for the full forces, and from there on the quieter verses accompanied by organ and maybe one instrument alternate with bigger verses for full choir and more instruments.  The final verse and a reprise of the "Alleluia" sound so resonant that I strongly suspect there was an extra brass group held in reserve to be added on for this grand finale, and placed at a distance from the other performers (perhaps in the chapel's central organ loft?). 

This comes as one item in an EMI collection of similar polychoral music, mainly by Giovanni Gabrieli (Schütz's teacher), all of it as expertly played and sung.  There is the sombre unaccompanied motet O Magnum Mysterium for contrast, as well as the brass group alone in the Canzon septimi toni a 8.  The whole recital is a splendid listening experience.  In the reissue I have it comes coupled with Philip Ledger's King's College recording from 1975 of Monteverdi's monumental Vespro della beata Vergine of 1610, another perennial favourite of mine.

Tuesday 27 May 2014

Opera Based on Newspaper Cartoons!

From time to time I read articles bemoaning the supposed "fact" that concert audiences don't like modern music.  This kind of sweeping generalization makes me want to tear out whatever hair I have left!  The authors always focus on the hundreds of people who leave the hall when a modern work comes around.  What about the thousands who show up?  It's just the old story of the optimist and pessimist.  I'd always rather look at the donut than the hole (metaphorically -- since I'm diabetic any actual looking at donuts is just trouble!).  My rant for the day.


Perhaps the trick is that modern concert music has become so diverse in its range -- more so than any previous era -- that music lovers develop an appreciation for particular composers, while not enjoying the works of others so much.  Take me as an example;  I'm a lifelong fan of the music of Leoš Janáček, a Slovak composer who lived from 1854 to 1928.  And yet I'm quite well aware that many people don't enjoy his music.  But then, maybe they haven't sampled this particular piece.  By the dates, it's obvious that his life and career overlapped those of the famous Czech composers Smetana and Dvořák, but don't look for similarities!  All of  Janáček's greatest works were composed during the last decade of his life (that is, of course, after World War One) and that includes the beautiful opera I'm writing about today: The Cunning Little Vixen.


I said "cartoons" in the headline, but it would actually be truer to refer to the source material as what is now called a "graphic novel" -- a detailed story told by means of a series of illustrated panels accompanied by text, where the words and pictures equally help to carry the story forward.  The original was published as a newspaper serial.  Janáček adapted his own libretto (in consultation with the original author), making an important change that turned the ending darker while still holding out hope for a cycle of renewal, death and new life.  This is the theme in the work which speaks loudest and most deeply to me.


This story is a tale of nature in the forest.  There are several human characters, including a teacher, a forester and his wife and so on.  But the key characters are all animals and birds and insects, including the title character.  In the first act the Forester is asleep when he's woken up by a frog jumping into his lap.  He sees and catches the young Vixen and takes her home to confine her, but she manages to chew through the rope that holds her, attacks the rooster and the crested hen, kills the chickens and escapes.  In Act Two, grown to adulthood, she meets a young fox and falls in love -- with the inevitable result.  The gossiping forest creatures all tell tales and the act ends with a wedding scene.


In Act Three the poacher sets out a fox trap, which makes the young vixen cubs laugh.  But the poacher, seeing the Vixen, shoots and kills her.  The Forester sees the Vixen's fur hanging around the neck of the woman he loved at her wedding, and flees back into the forest where he falls asleep.  The opera ends when a baby frog jumps into his lap, wakes him, and says that he is the grandson of the frog who woke him at the beginning. 


Janáček set this pastoral tale -- almost a fable, really -- at the very height of his musical powers.  The techniques he used are familiar from other mature works of his.  The orchestral parts in many places are dominated by short little ostinato phrases repeated on and on, while other themes wind around them.  Melodic lines have some smooth contours, but also some wide, difficult leaps.  The music always is grounded in some kind of tonality, but the use of unexpected chord relationships and modal harmonies derived from folk music gives it an astringency foreign to the work of Smetana and Dvořák.  Please note, though, that "astringent" doesn't mean positively painful to the ear!


The first act in particular is chock-full of delightful and memorable melodies, and this is certainly not always the case with Janáček.  If you've ever heard a suite of excerpts from the opera played in a concert, it usually will consist of excerpts from Act One!  In particular there is a charming, gossamer-light waltz tune for a dance of grasshoppers and crickets, who obviously can't be thumping around to the strains of a full orchestra!  The final scene of the act, showing the Vixen's escape, would do duty very nicely for a cartoon or movie chase scene, complete with a squalling soprano line from the Crested Hen!


The gossiping birds in Act Two are beautifully represented by an unaccompanied chorus, eventually joined by orchestra for the concluding wedding.  The third act begins with an ominous march-tune for the poacher setting out his traps.  And so it goes.  The music couldn't possibly be more unlike the work of Wagner, but it does share with Wagner's works the illustrative quality that allows us to see equally the dancing flames around Brunnhilde or (in this case) the flittering dancing of insects.


The title role of the Vixen needs a lyric soprano voice, not without weight, but certainly not a Wagnerian soprano from what Anna Russell once called the "brass bra brigade"!


The opera has been recorded several times and has seen performance more often in recent years.  Indeed, there has even been a TV cartoon version created, with singers and players under the direction of Kent Nagano!  Every reviewer I've ever read, though, has said that the closest to a definitive recorded version is the classic Decca set conducted by Sir Charles Mackerras.  It's a striking thought that an Australian should become the first conductor to record all the Janáček operas complete.  His complete identification with the music of the composer is one of the two major strengths of this recording.


The other one is the singing of the late, lamented Lucia Popp in the title role.  No less than with Daphne by Richard Strauss which I wrote about a few months back, this is a role written in the subconscious hope that some day she would come along to sing it!  Her voice is ideally attuned to the composer's sound world, light in tone but sufficient in weight for louder passages, and with a soaring lyrical quality matched to spot-perfect intonation even on sweeping high phrases with big leaps in them. What a peerless performance -- surely the one to which all later performers of the role will and must be compared.