Around the turn of the twentieth century, music reached a crisis point. The increasing size and complexity of the Romantic musical language and orchestra were arriving at a state of tonal congestion. Numerous composers undertook many different experiments to try to cut through the chromatic web of post-Wagnerian music, or to start over again on a totally different track. But there were some composers who kept working in the style of the post-Romantic era, and who continued to produce significant and moving musical works in that style.
One was Franz Schmidt. Musically conservative by nature, he composed two major masterworks in the final years of his life which can stand comparison with the greatest earlier achievements of musical history. The first was his Fourth Symphony, composed in 1933 (read about it here: Sorrowful Beauty Part 1 ). The second, completed four years later, was his monumental oratorio Das Buch Mit Sieben Siegeln ("The Book With Seven Seals"), a setting of a large portion of the Book of Revelation which concludes the Bible. This work, so enormous in its emotional range and musical complexity, effectively puts an emphatic period to the tradition of the large Romantic oratorio form.
The Revelation of St. John is unique in the Scriptures: an extended prophecy of the end of time and the coming of the Kingdom of God couched in language which is by turns vivid, metaphoric, poetic, laconic, prosaic or ecstatic. The sheer range of style in the text is itself a huge challenge to musical setting. So is the total length of the book which -- although divided in chapters for ease in reading -- is a coherent whole, flowing from beginning to end in a single mighty current.
Other composers, including Handel, Brahms, and Vaughan Williams had set portions of the Revelation to music. But none before Schmidt had attempted a comprehensive setting, and perhaps it's just as well. Franz Schmidt was uniquely fitted, by belief, temperament, and position in musical history, to undertake this monumental task.
The result, premiered in Vienna in 1938 to great acclaim, is a musical experience of unprecedented power, beauty, terror, and magnificence. Schmidt's final masterwork doesn't just narrate the events contained in Revelation; it evokes vividly the emotional reactions of suffering humanity to the horrors which are sometimes described so briefly in the Biblical text and contrasts these with the triumphant jubilation of the souls of the righteous. All this is conveyed with the broadest palette of vocal and orchestral sound, yet all contained within a strongly classical framework in which symmetrical structure and fugal writing play a critical role. Perhaps never since Bach's B Minor Mass has there been a single work which has so thoroughly summarized and exemplified the choral and vocal art of its time.
The entire Book of Revelation is told in the words of St. John, so he naturally becomes the narrator of the oratorio. Schmidt traditionally uses a tenor voice for this role, but most untraditionally calls for a dramatic Heldentenor in the Wagnerian mode. This allows for the widest range of orchestral sound to be used to underline the narrations.
For maximum contrast, the Voice of God (heard in extended arias at three key points in the work) is given to a basso cantante, a deep lyrical bass voice. Besides these two singers, there is a further quartet of soloists who have short independent roles in the first part, as well as singing to provide contrast from the full choir. A large Romantic orchestra is called for, and there is a sizable independent part for the organ. The work lasts for nearly two hours.
I wish I had space to give a step-by-step account of all of this monumental work. I'll have to settle for a few highlights. The Prologue begins with John's introduction, followed by the first of the three solos for the Voice of God, and then the description of the Lamb being found worthy to open the Book which is in the hand of God.
The proper first part begins with a granitic organ solo, and then moves to the description of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Here, the arrival of the Red Horseman is the sign for war to be let loose on the land. To a relentless galloping rhythm the men's chorus sing fiercely of how they will kill, burn and destroy everything in their path while the women plead vainly for mercy for themselves and their children. These and other additional texts bring a very human dimension to the story of the destruction of the world, making it far more terrifying than the brief descriptions in the Scripture. By the way, the authorship of these additional texts -- whether by the composer or someone else -- is not known.
The Black Horseman of Hunger is followed by a tragic duet of a mother and daughter dying of hunger, short but poignant and heartfelt. Then comes the Pale Horseman, with Death riding on him, and we now hear a duet between two soldiers on the field of carnage. Schmidt clothes their broken dialogue with a sparse, almost spooky orchestration which in its lifeless air anticipates the final duet of Britten's War Requiem -- also sung by two soldiers meeting after a deadly battle.
The first part ends with the breaking of the sixth seal on the book, and the catastrophic earthquake, flood, fire, and rain of falling stars. This chorus is probably the most fiendish fugue ever written for voices. Schmidt uses all the classical devices of inverting and reversing the fugue subject, which is already full of jagged rhythms and unexpected harmonic leaps. Pity the poor singers! This gigantic chorus of fear and horror eventually works up to a terrible cry of despair which then dies away until a final huge staccato chord from the orchestra concludes the first part.
The lengthy organ solo opening Part Two uses the themes of that hair-raising fugue to great effect, rising to a climax built on the same chords as were sung by the choir. After it dies away, St. John enters for a lengthy narration broken into several sections. It's a challenging piece for the tenor, since it is in effect a twelve-minute aria with the singer often at full stretch, high up in his range, over very heavy orchestral writing.
The seven trumpets of the Apocalypse now sound. We've heard this before, of course. Handel, Berlioz, Verdi, Dvorak, and Mahler all composed effective musical descriptions of the Last Trumpet! However, the word used in the German Bible is Posaune which is today the modern German name for the trombone, and Schmidt's buildup makes much more use of these deeper instruments, playing very quietly. These final disasters which now fall upon the world are described one by one, first by the alto, then joined by various other soloists until the whole quartet is singing. From the fifth trumpet onwards, the chorus joins in a mighty quadruple fugue -- on four different themes -- and as far as I know this is the only comparable example in the whole of choral literature. This massive structure roars onwards to a terrifying climax with screaming trumpets and reverberating tam-tams capping the last notes.
We now come to the final great aria for the Voice of God, an unprecedented outpouring of beautiful and consoling melody after so much terror and suffering. The souls of the righteous then sing a majestic Hallelujah chorus, which with its rising sequences and accelerating phrases will make you forget for the moment all about Handel. Without striving after any overt "descriptiveness", it still conveys a most vivid picture of the redeemed souls mounting up to heaven. And then, after a short quietly chanted epilogue by the men's choir, John gives his concluding address to the same music with which he began, and the choir joins in a single mighty Amen to bring the work to its end.
Fifteen years ago I was privileged to be in the audience in Toronto for the Canadian premiere of this massive work. It was an unforgettable experience.
As with the Fourth Symphony, so too with Das Buch Mit Sieben Siegeln. The easiest way to hear these two marvellous pieces is to live in Vienna, Schmidt's home city, where both works are acknowledged masterpieces and performed regularly. Anywhere else, it's the luck of the draw if you happen to catch one of the much rarer live concerts of either work.
The recording to go for, if you can get it, is the EMI recording under the direction of Franz Welser-Most, simply because it was the first-ever recording to follow Schmidt's wishes and use a Heldentenor -- Stig Andersen in superb voice -- rather than a lighter-toned lyric tenor for the critical role of St. John. Rene Pape as the Voice of God is equally good. The superb performance by choir and orchestra in hair-raising digital sound also makes this version indispensable.
Monday 9 November 2015
Thursday 29 October 2015
A Startling New Sound
I know this isn't supposed to be a blog about well-known classical music, but bear with me.
One of the most famous works of religious choral music from the Italian Renaissance is the penitential psalm Miserere as set to music by Gregorio Allegri. Almost as famous as the music itself is the back story: how it was composed to be sung in the Sistine Chapel, how the papacy treasured it so dearly that no copies were allowed to be made, nor was it allowed to be sung anywhere else, and how Mozart heard it sung in the Sistine Chapel and copied it out from memory afterwards.
It's an undoubted masterpiece, with a small echo quartet alternating with the main body of singers, and with the echo soprano repeatedly singing a refrain that includes a soaring high C. Indeed, you will seldom read a review of a recording which doesn't discuss the soprano's ability to nail that high C over and over again.
So why am I writing about it on my rare music blog? I've just acquired a copy of a truly historic recording which is also a brand-new release. For the first time ever, the Holy See has permitted a recording company to record the Sistine Chapel choir in the chapel itself, and singing a repertoire of music composed for the choir through several centuries. Unsurprisingly, such a recording inevitably includes Allegri's Miserere -- but not the Miserere as we have known it. The recorded performance works from the manuscript in the Vatican library, and the music comes out sounding like a distant cousin of the version we have always heard until now.
I've listened to it several times already, and it's fascinating to hear the differences -- there are many -- and the relatively few moments when something familiar comes to the ear for a few seconds. The basic structure is similar, a verse and response form, with verse separated from response by two brief phrases of Gregorian chant each time. Each reiteration of the verse uses the same basic chord structure with the choir chanting the text on the same chords -- likewise the echo responses. What's startling is the fact that the verse and response do not at all resemble the music we have heard until now. There's a good deal more melodic and harmonic movement than we're accustomed to, and there's no soaring high C anywhere.
This fascinating new "original" version is an equally treasurable musical composition but definitely not the piece we've always heard and sung until now!
We do know that the first version to "escape" from the Vatican, years before Mozart's time, was a conflation of Allegri's work with verses by Tommaso Bai. Other versions also circulated before the ban was finally lifted. But the boy Mozart's achievement was no less remarkable for that, and we know that the Pope rewarded him with a papal knighthood for his musical skill. The first edition published from within the Vatican, in 1841, included notes on the ornamentation practices then current in the Papal Choir, which may actually have been the real secret that was so jealously guarded for so long! At any rate, the Allegri Miserere hitherto known has been effectively the combination of Allegri with Bai. Hence the fascination of being able to hear, for the first time, the original composer's own handiwork.
Aside from the Allegri, the remainder of the music on the recording is truly lovely. It includes several selections of Gregorian chant, as well as choral compositions by Victoria, Lassus, Anerio, and above all, Palestrina. The choir, as one would expect of the "house choir" of the Papacy, is first-rate. It's a larger body than we usually hear in this repertoire nowadays. A picture in the booklet shows a group of some sixty boys and men, although smaller numbers may have been used in some works. Director Massimo Palombella has provided a detailed program note in which he describes the changes which have been made in the performing style to keep this music as a living tradition -- a most laudable objective.
Scarcely less fascinating than the singing is the rich, resonant acoustic of the Sistine Chapel itself. As soon as the choir sang the opening notes of the first piece, I was transported back in time to 1971, the year when this eager young high school history student set foot in that remarkable place for the first time. How clearly I can recall the echoes of the hundreds of visitors' voices all around me! Although I can easily recall the visual impact of the famous frescoes, I had forgotten that auditory detail until this beautiful and remarkable recording so quickly refreshed my memory! The accompanying booklet specifies one particular detail of the Chapel's role in the enterprise: it states that the Miserere attempts to reconstruct the original sound of the work by having the echo group singing through from the adjacent Sala Regia. And indeed, the echo group is sufficiently distant that you have to listen carefully for their clearly enunciated words.
This DGG recording is a landmark that should be on the shopping list of anyone who enjoys the unaccompanied choral masterpieces of the Renaissance.
One of the most famous works of religious choral music from the Italian Renaissance is the penitential psalm Miserere as set to music by Gregorio Allegri. Almost as famous as the music itself is the back story: how it was composed to be sung in the Sistine Chapel, how the papacy treasured it so dearly that no copies were allowed to be made, nor was it allowed to be sung anywhere else, and how Mozart heard it sung in the Sistine Chapel and copied it out from memory afterwards.
It's an undoubted masterpiece, with a small echo quartet alternating with the main body of singers, and with the echo soprano repeatedly singing a refrain that includes a soaring high C. Indeed, you will seldom read a review of a recording which doesn't discuss the soprano's ability to nail that high C over and over again.
So why am I writing about it on my rare music blog? I've just acquired a copy of a truly historic recording which is also a brand-new release. For the first time ever, the Holy See has permitted a recording company to record the Sistine Chapel choir in the chapel itself, and singing a repertoire of music composed for the choir through several centuries. Unsurprisingly, such a recording inevitably includes Allegri's Miserere -- but not the Miserere as we have known it. The recorded performance works from the manuscript in the Vatican library, and the music comes out sounding like a distant cousin of the version we have always heard until now.
I've listened to it several times already, and it's fascinating to hear the differences -- there are many -- and the relatively few moments when something familiar comes to the ear for a few seconds. The basic structure is similar, a verse and response form, with verse separated from response by two brief phrases of Gregorian chant each time. Each reiteration of the verse uses the same basic chord structure with the choir chanting the text on the same chords -- likewise the echo responses. What's startling is the fact that the verse and response do not at all resemble the music we have heard until now. There's a good deal more melodic and harmonic movement than we're accustomed to, and there's no soaring high C anywhere.
This fascinating new "original" version is an equally treasurable musical composition but definitely not the piece we've always heard and sung until now!
We do know that the first version to "escape" from the Vatican, years before Mozart's time, was a conflation of Allegri's work with verses by Tommaso Bai. Other versions also circulated before the ban was finally lifted. But the boy Mozart's achievement was no less remarkable for that, and we know that the Pope rewarded him with a papal knighthood for his musical skill. The first edition published from within the Vatican, in 1841, included notes on the ornamentation practices then current in the Papal Choir, which may actually have been the real secret that was so jealously guarded for so long! At any rate, the Allegri Miserere hitherto known has been effectively the combination of Allegri with Bai. Hence the fascination of being able to hear, for the first time, the original composer's own handiwork.
Aside from the Allegri, the remainder of the music on the recording is truly lovely. It includes several selections of Gregorian chant, as well as choral compositions by Victoria, Lassus, Anerio, and above all, Palestrina. The choir, as one would expect of the "house choir" of the Papacy, is first-rate. It's a larger body than we usually hear in this repertoire nowadays. A picture in the booklet shows a group of some sixty boys and men, although smaller numbers may have been used in some works. Director Massimo Palombella has provided a detailed program note in which he describes the changes which have been made in the performing style to keep this music as a living tradition -- a most laudable objective.
Scarcely less fascinating than the singing is the rich, resonant acoustic of the Sistine Chapel itself. As soon as the choir sang the opening notes of the first piece, I was transported back in time to 1971, the year when this eager young high school history student set foot in that remarkable place for the first time. How clearly I can recall the echoes of the hundreds of visitors' voices all around me! Although I can easily recall the visual impact of the famous frescoes, I had forgotten that auditory detail until this beautiful and remarkable recording so quickly refreshed my memory! The accompanying booklet specifies one particular detail of the Chapel's role in the enterprise: it states that the Miserere attempts to reconstruct the original sound of the work by having the echo group singing through from the adjacent Sala Regia. And indeed, the echo group is sufficiently distant that you have to listen carefully for their clearly enunciated words.
This DGG recording is a landmark that should be on the shopping list of anyone who enjoys the unaccompanied choral masterpieces of the Renaissance.
Saturday 24 October 2015
Behold the Sea Itself
Like Elgar's The Dream of Gerontius, which I wrote about some months ago, the work I'm looking at today is extremely well-known on its home turf (again, the United Kingdom) but far less often heard outside that country. It comes from the same period of time, immediately before the first World War, and shares a few common stylistic elements. But the differences are far more notable than the similarities.
By now, anyone who knows the work in question will have recognized the headline of this blog post as being the first words sung in A Sea Symphony (the first symphony by Ralph Vaughan Williams). Like Mahler's famous Eighth Symphony (written around the same time and premiered in the following year) this is a symphony for choir, soloists and orchestra working together in unity. It is not in the least a work for singers accompanied by orchestra.
This wasn't the last time in Vaughan Williams' career that he imposed coherence and large structure on small bits of music composed independently (it happened again most notably in his Sinfonia Antartica). This work began life as a collection of Songs of the Sea for voices and orchestra, in homage to his teacher Stanford. Within a few years, Vaughan Williams realized that he was onto something a lot bigger than an orchestral song cycle and had begun calling the work the Ocean Symphony. The final name was settled before the 1910 premiere in Leeds.
The symphony is divided into four movements, all setting poetry by Walt Whitman. The verses are sometimes pictorial, sometimes mystical, and throughout the work increasingly the texts point to the sea voyage as a metaphor for human life.
With the exception of one rapid passage evoking a sea-chantey, the first movement consists mainly of majestic processional music interspersed with quieter, more meditative passages, all moving in a steady but not overly quick tempo.
It opens with a commanding brass fanfare in B flat minor. The choir enters unaccompanied on the same chord, singing the title line quoted above and at the word "sea" the chord lifts ecstatically to D major with the full orchestra joining the voices. Simple, bold, and tremendous in its exhilarating power. The fanfare idea recurs a couple of times during the opening movement, in altered forms. Soprano and baritone soloists are prominently featured -- the baritone heard first during the sea-chantey, with the soprano entering emphatically at "Flaunt out, O Sea, your separate flags of nations." The movement swells to a final climax and then fades away in a quiet murmurous epilogue with the choir singing "One flag above the rest," while the soprano soars quietly above them with a final reiteration of "Behold, the Sea itself." And it is quiet, a taxing moment for the singer.
The second movement, a nocturne, sets the poem "On the beach, at night, alone." It's a sombre but beautiful reflection on "the clef of the universes" with the baritone leading the way, and the choir responding to his statements. This too ends quietly with the orchestra repeating the opening themes more and more quietly down to a ppp conclusion.
In third place comes "Scherzo: The Waves", a vigorous showpiece of virtuosity for the choir. The energetic cross currents of the music are twice contrasted with a more stately march for the lines beginning with "Where the great vessel sailing". The scherzo ends with three emphatic staccato chords for orchestra, the choir joining on the last one with the word "following" flung into space after the orchestra has ended -- much like the final "Gloria!" in the Beethoven Missa Solemnis.
The last and longest movement, titled The Explorers, is the most episodic in form. Here above all, many listeners feel, is where the composer fell shy of his symphonic ideal. But no matter, for it is also in this movement that some of the finest music of the entire work is heard: the quiet choral chanting on "Down from the gardens of Asia descending," the gentle but heartfelt soprano and baritone duet on "O soul, thou pleasest me, I thee" -- accompanied by some of the composer's signature lyrical musing solos on violin and viola -- and the grand upsurge of choir, orchestra and soloists at "O, thou transcendent, nameless, the fibre and the breath, light of the light, shedding forth universes, thou centre of them."
All of this passes in a moderate tempo, similar to the first movement, but now comes a truly rapid passage at the soloists' invocation: "Away, o Soul, hoist instantly the anchor." There's something about the entire passage from here to the last great climax that reaches right down into the deepest recesses of my heart and tugs on the strings with all its might. The poetry has a lot to do with that:
But the work doesn't end there. The conclusion is a slow, gentle quiet epilogue (fading at last down to silence) which sets the final words of Whitman's Passage to India, the poem that has provided the entire text of the finale:
For me, it's the most daring stylistic feature of the entire work, that three of the four movements in A Sea Symphony end slowly and quietly, in an era when loud and vigorous endings were much valued! It also fascinates me to see just how many of the elements in this powerful early work were to recur in one form or other throughout the composer's long and productive life.
Certainly this work is a rarity in live performance outside the British Isles. This week marks only the second time in my life that it has been undertaken by the Toronto Symphony and Mendelssohn Choir. The last occasion was on a weeknight, so I couldn't get to it from my teaching job in Elliot Lake. This is going to be a memorable concert -- and it's going to be reviewed in my companion blog, Large Stage Live .
There have been many fine recordings of this work -- it's been lucky on records! I have three in my collection, each one treasured for its own distinct qualities. Sir Adrian Boult in 1968 had as his soloists Sheila Armstrong and John Carol Case, each one (I feel) quintessential in this music. Andre Previn's London Symphony version is unique in highlighting the contribution of the orchestra as equal to the singers, which is ideal in this piece. Bernard Haitink, more than the others, creates a symphonically structured and unified reading. His spacious tempi pay off above all in that final great climax where you can hear all the thematic interweavings in the orchestra with no trouble at all.
By now, anyone who knows the work in question will have recognized the headline of this blog post as being the first words sung in A Sea Symphony (the first symphony by Ralph Vaughan Williams). Like Mahler's famous Eighth Symphony (written around the same time and premiered in the following year) this is a symphony for choir, soloists and orchestra working together in unity. It is not in the least a work for singers accompanied by orchestra.
This wasn't the last time in Vaughan Williams' career that he imposed coherence and large structure on small bits of music composed independently (it happened again most notably in his Sinfonia Antartica). This work began life as a collection of Songs of the Sea for voices and orchestra, in homage to his teacher Stanford. Within a few years, Vaughan Williams realized that he was onto something a lot bigger than an orchestral song cycle and had begun calling the work the Ocean Symphony. The final name was settled before the 1910 premiere in Leeds.
The symphony is divided into four movements, all setting poetry by Walt Whitman. The verses are sometimes pictorial, sometimes mystical, and throughout the work increasingly the texts point to the sea voyage as a metaphor for human life.
With the exception of one rapid passage evoking a sea-chantey, the first movement consists mainly of majestic processional music interspersed with quieter, more meditative passages, all moving in a steady but not overly quick tempo.
It opens with a commanding brass fanfare in B flat minor. The choir enters unaccompanied on the same chord, singing the title line quoted above and at the word "sea" the chord lifts ecstatically to D major with the full orchestra joining the voices. Simple, bold, and tremendous in its exhilarating power. The fanfare idea recurs a couple of times during the opening movement, in altered forms. Soprano and baritone soloists are prominently featured -- the baritone heard first during the sea-chantey, with the soprano entering emphatically at "Flaunt out, O Sea, your separate flags of nations." The movement swells to a final climax and then fades away in a quiet murmurous epilogue with the choir singing "One flag above the rest," while the soprano soars quietly above them with a final reiteration of "Behold, the Sea itself." And it is quiet, a taxing moment for the singer.
The second movement, a nocturne, sets the poem "On the beach, at night, alone." It's a sombre but beautiful reflection on "the clef of the universes" with the baritone leading the way, and the choir responding to his statements. This too ends quietly with the orchestra repeating the opening themes more and more quietly down to a ppp conclusion.
In third place comes "Scherzo: The Waves", a vigorous showpiece of virtuosity for the choir. The energetic cross currents of the music are twice contrasted with a more stately march for the lines beginning with "Where the great vessel sailing". The scherzo ends with three emphatic staccato chords for orchestra, the choir joining on the last one with the word "following" flung into space after the orchestra has ended -- much like the final "Gloria!" in the Beethoven Missa Solemnis.
The last and longest movement, titled The Explorers, is the most episodic in form. Here above all, many listeners feel, is where the composer fell shy of his symphonic ideal. But no matter, for it is also in this movement that some of the finest music of the entire work is heard: the quiet choral chanting on "Down from the gardens of Asia descending," the gentle but heartfelt soprano and baritone duet on "O soul, thou pleasest me, I thee" -- accompanied by some of the composer's signature lyrical musing solos on violin and viola -- and the grand upsurge of choir, orchestra and soloists at "O, thou transcendent, nameless, the fibre and the breath, light of the light, shedding forth universes, thou centre of them."
All of this passes in a moderate tempo, similar to the first movement, but now comes a truly rapid passage at the soloists' invocation: "Away, o Soul, hoist instantly the anchor." There's something about the entire passage from here to the last great climax that reaches right down into the deepest recesses of my heart and tugs on the strings with all its might. The poetry has a lot to do with that:
Sail forth—steer for the deep waters only,And as the music soars to its greatest height, the soprano rings out above the entire forces of choir and orchestra on the final repetition of "Sail forth!". If you're listening to the music, try to focus for a moment on the orchestra at this point -- if you can take your ears away from the glory unfolding in the voices! You'll hear that different sections of the orchestra are underlying this magnificent climax with three different themes heard earlier in the movement -- a symphonic synthesis indeed.
Reckless O soul, exploring, I with thee, and thou with me,
For we are bound where mariner has not yet dared to go,
And we will risk the ship, ourselves and all.
But the work doesn't end there. The conclusion is a slow, gentle quiet epilogue (fading at last down to silence) which sets the final words of Whitman's Passage to India, the poem that has provided the entire text of the finale:
O my brave soul!To British writer Hugh Ottaway I am indebted for his thorough analysis of the symphonic epilogue as the most characteristic contribution by Vaughan Williams to the symphonic form. Eight of the nine symphonies end with epilogues and seven of the eight are slow and quiet. In some cases it's the entire last movement, in others (such as this one) the concluding passage only.
O farther farther sail!
O daring joy, but safe! are they not all the seas of God?
O farther, farther, farther sail!
For me, it's the most daring stylistic feature of the entire work, that three of the four movements in A Sea Symphony end slowly and quietly, in an era when loud and vigorous endings were much valued! It also fascinates me to see just how many of the elements in this powerful early work were to recur in one form or other throughout the composer's long and productive life.
Certainly this work is a rarity in live performance outside the British Isles. This week marks only the second time in my life that it has been undertaken by the Toronto Symphony and Mendelssohn Choir. The last occasion was on a weeknight, so I couldn't get to it from my teaching job in Elliot Lake. This is going to be a memorable concert -- and it's going to be reviewed in my companion blog, Large Stage Live .
There have been many fine recordings of this work -- it's been lucky on records! I have three in my collection, each one treasured for its own distinct qualities. Sir Adrian Boult in 1968 had as his soloists Sheila Armstrong and John Carol Case, each one (I feel) quintessential in this music. Andre Previn's London Symphony version is unique in highlighting the contribution of the orchestra as equal to the singers, which is ideal in this piece. Bernard Haitink, more than the others, creates a symphonically structured and unified reading. His spacious tempi pay off above all in that final great climax where you can hear all the thematic interweavings in the orchestra with no trouble at all.
Friday 25 September 2015
Baroque Vocal Fireworks
Anyone who listens to Baroque music is familiar with the virtuoso lines often assigned to string sections, especially the violins, by the famous composers such as Vivaldi, Corelli, and Handel. If you've ever experienced a Handel opera, you've encountered a similar style of flashy writing for this or that soloist.
Today's piece is a work which hovers at the edge of the common repertoire -- well known to musicians, especially singers, but somewhat less familiar to the general musical public. Familiar it certainly deserves to be! If there's a hindrance to wider performance, it's the fact that the young Handel, in composing this work, sometimes seemed to forget that his singers were not in fact violins.
Handel composed his setting of Psalm 109, Dixit Dominus, in the year 1707 at the ripe old age of 22. It is the first work of Handel's for which an authentic autograph score exists. He wrote this music in Rome, where he had travelled to study and learn from the Italian musicians, the masters of the age.
How well he learned their style can clearly be seen and heard in this virtuoso showpiece, which makes huge demands on soloists, choir, and the string orchestra with continuo. In fact, Dixit Dominus is such a grand and spirited work that it came almost as a shock to me when I realized that there are no wind, brass or percussion parts in it. The large scale of this psalm setting, in nine movements lasting about 35 minutes, makes it a major contribution to the Baroque choral repertoire.
The long opening movement is nothing less than a full-throttle, high-energy concerto grosso for voices and strings. In it, you hear the rapid runs contrasted with a slower, stately cantus firmus set to the words "Donec ponam inimicus". It's followed, by way of contrast, with two gentler solo arias.
The centre of the work is the energetic double fugue on "Tu es sacerdos" and "secundum ordinem Melchizedek" -- sung simultaneously to two quite different themes. Following this comes the monumental triptych of the fast-running fugal "Dominus a dextris tuis", the slower "Judicabit in nationibus", and the vigorous hammerblows of "Conquassabit capita".
All of this energy is then discharged -- partially -- in the beautiful lyrical duet for two sopranos "De torrente in via bibet" with a murmured background from the male chorus. But even this gentler, slower movement is hardly a point of relaxation, as the tension is maintained by the frequent clashing semitones between the two voices.
The final "Gloria patri et filio" matches the opening in scale, and even recalls the cantus firmus from the first movement, now set to the words "Sicut erat in principio" ("As it was in the beginning") -- Handel's joking way of reminding us where we've heard it before! The final vigorous fugue on "Et in saecula saeculorum" maintains its speed and energy clear through to the finish line -- no slow majestic final cadence here! Also, and unusually, it stays firmly in the minor key, a characteristic of so much of the work, right up to the concluding bar.
Like many of my age group, I cut my eyeteeth on David Willcocks' classic 1960s recording with the King's College Choir of Cambridge. Revisiting it this week, in tribute to Willcocks' death after a long and prodigious career, I find it little short of astonishing to hear how nimbly the King's College boy trebles wrap their tongues and voices around such incredibly complex music!
I've heard several recordings since then, and of the more recent versions that have come to my notice the 2001 Philips recording conducted by John Eliot Gardiner is by far the best. Since the arrival of "authentic practice" in Baroque music, Dixit Dominus has far too often been treated to the "anything you can sing, I can sing faster" mode of performance. This, to me, is a huge mistake as the complex figurations of the vocal parts can easily blur into mush. Gardiner strikes the ideal combination of pace and weight, and his Monteverdi Choir clearly enunciate each note in the endless melismatic runs. This is, to me, the textbook example of how smaller ensembles can still communicate the weight and power of the music without sacrificing clarity and precision in the process.
On the classic Willcocks LP, this masterpiece stood alone. Gardiner, in the CD age, has it as one part of a trio of major vocal works, alongside Vivaldi's magnificent Gloria in D major and the then-newly discovered Gloria by Handel, another Italianate virtuoso showpiece for solo soprano with strings and continuo. It would be hard to find a more upbeat and exhilarating program of Baroque sacred music than this one!
Today's piece is a work which hovers at the edge of the common repertoire -- well known to musicians, especially singers, but somewhat less familiar to the general musical public. Familiar it certainly deserves to be! If there's a hindrance to wider performance, it's the fact that the young Handel, in composing this work, sometimes seemed to forget that his singers were not in fact violins.
Handel composed his setting of Psalm 109, Dixit Dominus, in the year 1707 at the ripe old age of 22. It is the first work of Handel's for which an authentic autograph score exists. He wrote this music in Rome, where he had travelled to study and learn from the Italian musicians, the masters of the age.
How well he learned their style can clearly be seen and heard in this virtuoso showpiece, which makes huge demands on soloists, choir, and the string orchestra with continuo. In fact, Dixit Dominus is such a grand and spirited work that it came almost as a shock to me when I realized that there are no wind, brass or percussion parts in it. The large scale of this psalm setting, in nine movements lasting about 35 minutes, makes it a major contribution to the Baroque choral repertoire.
The long opening movement is nothing less than a full-throttle, high-energy concerto grosso for voices and strings. In it, you hear the rapid runs contrasted with a slower, stately cantus firmus set to the words "Donec ponam inimicus". It's followed, by way of contrast, with two gentler solo arias.
The centre of the work is the energetic double fugue on "Tu es sacerdos" and "secundum ordinem Melchizedek" -- sung simultaneously to two quite different themes. Following this comes the monumental triptych of the fast-running fugal "Dominus a dextris tuis", the slower "Judicabit in nationibus", and the vigorous hammerblows of "Conquassabit capita".
All of this energy is then discharged -- partially -- in the beautiful lyrical duet for two sopranos "De torrente in via bibet" with a murmured background from the male chorus. But even this gentler, slower movement is hardly a point of relaxation, as the tension is maintained by the frequent clashing semitones between the two voices.
The final "Gloria patri et filio" matches the opening in scale, and even recalls the cantus firmus from the first movement, now set to the words "Sicut erat in principio" ("As it was in the beginning") -- Handel's joking way of reminding us where we've heard it before! The final vigorous fugue on "Et in saecula saeculorum" maintains its speed and energy clear through to the finish line -- no slow majestic final cadence here! Also, and unusually, it stays firmly in the minor key, a characteristic of so much of the work, right up to the concluding bar.
Like many of my age group, I cut my eyeteeth on David Willcocks' classic 1960s recording with the King's College Choir of Cambridge. Revisiting it this week, in tribute to Willcocks' death after a long and prodigious career, I find it little short of astonishing to hear how nimbly the King's College boy trebles wrap their tongues and voices around such incredibly complex music!
I've heard several recordings since then, and of the more recent versions that have come to my notice the 2001 Philips recording conducted by John Eliot Gardiner is by far the best. Since the arrival of "authentic practice" in Baroque music, Dixit Dominus has far too often been treated to the "anything you can sing, I can sing faster" mode of performance. This, to me, is a huge mistake as the complex figurations of the vocal parts can easily blur into mush. Gardiner strikes the ideal combination of pace and weight, and his Monteverdi Choir clearly enunciate each note in the endless melismatic runs. This is, to me, the textbook example of how smaller ensembles can still communicate the weight and power of the music without sacrificing clarity and precision in the process.
On the classic Willcocks LP, this masterpiece stood alone. Gardiner, in the CD age, has it as one part of a trio of major vocal works, alongside Vivaldi's magnificent Gloria in D major and the then-newly discovered Gloria by Handel, another Italianate virtuoso showpiece for solo soprano with strings and continuo. It would be hard to find a more upbeat and exhilarating program of Baroque sacred music than this one!
Thursday 24 September 2015
Dreams of Folly
Imagine a melody and bass line so widely known -- so ubiquitous -- that multiple composers from every nationality in the map of Europe raced to compose arrangements and sets of variations on that melody and bass. If you're thinking of the famous 24th Caprice by Paganini, you're certainly on the right track -- but your timing is out by more than a century. Nonetheless, Paganini's work -- itself a set of variations -- has attracted such diverse composers as Brahms, Rachmaninoff and Lutoslawski, to name only three.
But that track record pales in comparison with the anonymous -- yet obstinately memorable -- Renaissance theme known as La Folia. Its origin is not known. The earliest documentary reference to it comes from Portugal in 1577. Yet it is commonly referred to as Folies d'espagne or Folia di spagna ( "Folia of Spain").
The record of composers basing sets of variations on it is far, far longer than with Paganini's famous Caprice. Corelli, Vivaldi, Bach and Handel are only a few of the best known. Indeed, so many composers took to writing variations on this simple theme (over 150 are known for certain) that multiple whole recordings have been issued, consisting entirely of works which may be called chaconne or ciacona, passacaglia or passacaglie, or even differences -- all based on this one theme.
The tune itself is known by numerous spelling variants: Follia, folia, follie, and folie are all out there. But all refer to the same musical shape.
Some sources hold that the name doesn't really equate with the English word "folly". That just made for a catchy title for this post. It's actually a reference to the compositional technique which gave rise to the many different variants of the tune. The so-called Later Folia (said to have been perfected first by Jean-Baptiste Lully) is the one commonly used in most of the versions, including the ones I've heard.
The key to the matter is the clear, straight-forward bass line. Classical variation technique consists of building your varying melodies and harmonies on the unwavering bass pattern. Think of Pachelbel's famous Canon and you'll understand exactly what I mean. In practise the melody usually takes on a slightly more complex triple-time pattern in the form of a sarabande.
The true fascination, of course, lies in the infinite diversity of the music that composers have managed to coax out of this simple, apparently artless, musical material.
What is it that makes La folia so gripping? I can only speculate. The structure of the tune is of course well-nigh perfect for variation form, because of the neatly symmetrical structure and the ending which returns to its opening point. The clear bass line, using some of the most common intervals, also opens up huge possibilities. In our day, perhaps more so than in Renaissance and Baroque times, the use of the minor key invites thoughts of sadness, mourning or melancholy -- certainly an air of serious thought pervades any music based on this sequential theme.
Of course, I have to admit that for many people a whole programme of variations on the same theme might well be far too much of a good thing. But my personal reaction is that I can go on listening to these multiple versions of La folia for a very long time!
In fact, I first became aware of it as a musical entity when the cable radio network began playing one or two excerpts from a Jordi Savall recording of orchestral versions. One of these, by a Spanish composer, even incorporated the use of castanets! Some time after that, the cable radio broadcast a concerto by Corelli, which included a variation movement based on La folia. Since then, I have certainly become aware of some of the other possibilities floating around out there -- and there are many.
Sadly, that particular recording by Savall is now out of print, but there are certainly other choices available. Just recently I downloaded a harpsichord recording which consists largely (not entirely) of keyboard versions of La folia by multiple hands. I've also acquired a box set of the music of Vivaldi, and found a wonderful set of variations on La folia in one of his Trio Sonatas. With both of these recordings I had the exact same reaction. Having listened through to the end, I promptly repeated the entire program!
If you do follow my lead and look up some of the many versions of La folia, I venture to guess that you may find the tune and bass familiar. Even if you don't, you may very well find these many compositions as compelling and hypnotic as I do.
But that track record pales in comparison with the anonymous -- yet obstinately memorable -- Renaissance theme known as La Folia. Its origin is not known. The earliest documentary reference to it comes from Portugal in 1577. Yet it is commonly referred to as Folies d'espagne or Folia di spagna ( "Folia of Spain").
The record of composers basing sets of variations on it is far, far longer than with Paganini's famous Caprice. Corelli, Vivaldi, Bach and Handel are only a few of the best known. Indeed, so many composers took to writing variations on this simple theme (over 150 are known for certain) that multiple whole recordings have been issued, consisting entirely of works which may be called chaconne or ciacona, passacaglia or passacaglie, or even differences -- all based on this one theme.
The tune itself is known by numerous spelling variants: Follia, folia, follie, and folie are all out there. But all refer to the same musical shape.
Some sources hold that the name doesn't really equate with the English word "folly". That just made for a catchy title for this post. It's actually a reference to the compositional technique which gave rise to the many different variants of the tune. The so-called Later Folia (said to have been perfected first by Jean-Baptiste Lully) is the one commonly used in most of the versions, including the ones I've heard.
The key to the matter is the clear, straight-forward bass line. Classical variation technique consists of building your varying melodies and harmonies on the unwavering bass pattern. Think of Pachelbel's famous Canon and you'll understand exactly what I mean. In practise the melody usually takes on a slightly more complex triple-time pattern in the form of a sarabande.
The true fascination, of course, lies in the infinite diversity of the music that composers have managed to coax out of this simple, apparently artless, musical material.
What is it that makes La folia so gripping? I can only speculate. The structure of the tune is of course well-nigh perfect for variation form, because of the neatly symmetrical structure and the ending which returns to its opening point. The clear bass line, using some of the most common intervals, also opens up huge possibilities. In our day, perhaps more so than in Renaissance and Baroque times, the use of the minor key invites thoughts of sadness, mourning or melancholy -- certainly an air of serious thought pervades any music based on this sequential theme.
Of course, I have to admit that for many people a whole programme of variations on the same theme might well be far too much of a good thing. But my personal reaction is that I can go on listening to these multiple versions of La folia for a very long time!
In fact, I first became aware of it as a musical entity when the cable radio network began playing one or two excerpts from a Jordi Savall recording of orchestral versions. One of these, by a Spanish composer, even incorporated the use of castanets! Some time after that, the cable radio broadcast a concerto by Corelli, which included a variation movement based on La folia. Since then, I have certainly become aware of some of the other possibilities floating around out there -- and there are many.
Sadly, that particular recording by Savall is now out of print, but there are certainly other choices available. Just recently I downloaded a harpsichord recording which consists largely (not entirely) of keyboard versions of La folia by multiple hands. I've also acquired a box set of the music of Vivaldi, and found a wonderful set of variations on La folia in one of his Trio Sonatas. With both of these recordings I had the exact same reaction. Having listened through to the end, I promptly repeated the entire program!
If you do follow my lead and look up some of the many versions of La folia, I venture to guess that you may find the tune and bass familiar. Even if you don't, you may very well find these many compositions as compelling and hypnotic as I do.
Thursday 25 June 2015
Don Giovanni as a Tenor?
I've been working my way through the fabulous contents of the recent reissue box of "The Complete Sony Recordings" made by the Tafelmusik original-instruments orchestra. With 47 CDs in total, it's quite the treasure trove of music -- some rare, some well-known, and all beautifully performed.
One of the CDs contains an opera, complete except for the recitatives, of which I've never heard before: Don Giovanni, o sia Il Convitato di Pietra ("Don Juan, or the Stone Guest") by Giuseppe Gazzaniga, a composer who likewise has completely escaped my notice.
We're so used to thinking of Don Giovanni purely in terms of Mozart and his librettist, da Ponte, that it came as more than a bit of a surprise to me to discover another opera, to another librettist's text (Giovanni Bertati), also sung in Italian, and which in fact predates Mozart's masterpiece -- if only by a few months.
I was also surprised to learn that the descriptive term Dramma giocoso which Mozart applied to his work was not invented by him, but was the name of a whole tradition of operatic composition in Italy, especially in Naples, and that Gazzaniga was considered its last major exponent. He was no slacker by any yardstick, even if not as prolific as some composers. During his career he composed over fifty operas, as well as sacred music, three piano concertos and one symphony. Definitely, my encounter with this opera has been a learning curve for me!
Some of the character names, but not all, are the same in both works. All three of the ladies whose seduction Don Giovanni attempts are noblewomen -- there's no peasant girl corresponding to the role of Zerlina. In common with Mozart, though, the ladies are all portrayed by sopranos. The Don himself, however, is here portrayed by a tenor, not by a baritone. His servant, sung by a bass, is named Pasquariello. Also sung by a bass voice is the role of the Commendatore, whose statue in the end of the opera dispatches the unrepentant Don Giovanni to hell. The biggest single difference was that Gazzaniga composed his Don Giovanni as a one-act Dramma giocoso to be performed in harness with another opera. This more compact plan, and the decision to record the opera without recitatives, means that the entire work fits comfortably onto a single CD.
The recording session for this opera was actually taking place 25 years ago this week, in Haarlem, the Netherlands. The nine soloists are mainly European. The choral parts are contributed by voices of the Kammerchor Stuttgart. The conductor was Bruno Weil, who led a number of recordings with Tafelmusik around that time. These recordings led the way for the "period performance" movement to expand beyond the Baroque era, and featured such works as Haydn's Creation, several of the symphonies of Mozart, and the piano concertos of Beethoven.
Listening to Gazzaniga's opera is an enjoyable experience, and it certainly bears repeating. I find it annoying that the reissue box found no space for even a brief synopsis of the action, number by number, and certainly no room for a libretto! But that's one of the key differences which makes reissue recordings cheaper than the original issues. Now, if only I had made time to study Italian as well as French and German when I was young and my brain was still firing dependably on all cylinders!
While this opera poses little real challenge to the musical and dramatic pre-eminence of Mozart's famous work, it does highlight in no uncertain terms the strong Italian influences at work in Mozart's style. Or, to put it another way, the music sounds at first acquaintance rather like Mozart. This fact also points up something else that we're apt to forget -- namely, that Mozart and Haydn were only two among dozens or even hundreds of composers who were their contemporaries and who all worked in a broadly similar musical language. We're so used to thinking of the late eighteenth century as the era of Mozart and Haydn that we can readily forget all those others.
Well, I've now encountered Giuseppe Gazzaniga and certainly enjoyed his take on the famous legend of Don Juan, the libertine seducer of Seville. With 46 more CDs to explore in this reissue box, the adventures continue!
One of the CDs contains an opera, complete except for the recitatives, of which I've never heard before: Don Giovanni, o sia Il Convitato di Pietra ("Don Juan, or the Stone Guest") by Giuseppe Gazzaniga, a composer who likewise has completely escaped my notice.
We're so used to thinking of Don Giovanni purely in terms of Mozart and his librettist, da Ponte, that it came as more than a bit of a surprise to me to discover another opera, to another librettist's text (Giovanni Bertati), also sung in Italian, and which in fact predates Mozart's masterpiece -- if only by a few months.
I was also surprised to learn that the descriptive term Dramma giocoso which Mozart applied to his work was not invented by him, but was the name of a whole tradition of operatic composition in Italy, especially in Naples, and that Gazzaniga was considered its last major exponent. He was no slacker by any yardstick, even if not as prolific as some composers. During his career he composed over fifty operas, as well as sacred music, three piano concertos and one symphony. Definitely, my encounter with this opera has been a learning curve for me!
Some of the character names, but not all, are the same in both works. All three of the ladies whose seduction Don Giovanni attempts are noblewomen -- there's no peasant girl corresponding to the role of Zerlina. In common with Mozart, though, the ladies are all portrayed by sopranos. The Don himself, however, is here portrayed by a tenor, not by a baritone. His servant, sung by a bass, is named Pasquariello. Also sung by a bass voice is the role of the Commendatore, whose statue in the end of the opera dispatches the unrepentant Don Giovanni to hell. The biggest single difference was that Gazzaniga composed his Don Giovanni as a one-act Dramma giocoso to be performed in harness with another opera. This more compact plan, and the decision to record the opera without recitatives, means that the entire work fits comfortably onto a single CD.
The recording session for this opera was actually taking place 25 years ago this week, in Haarlem, the Netherlands. The nine soloists are mainly European. The choral parts are contributed by voices of the Kammerchor Stuttgart. The conductor was Bruno Weil, who led a number of recordings with Tafelmusik around that time. These recordings led the way for the "period performance" movement to expand beyond the Baroque era, and featured such works as Haydn's Creation, several of the symphonies of Mozart, and the piano concertos of Beethoven.
Listening to Gazzaniga's opera is an enjoyable experience, and it certainly bears repeating. I find it annoying that the reissue box found no space for even a brief synopsis of the action, number by number, and certainly no room for a libretto! But that's one of the key differences which makes reissue recordings cheaper than the original issues. Now, if only I had made time to study Italian as well as French and German when I was young and my brain was still firing dependably on all cylinders!
While this opera poses little real challenge to the musical and dramatic pre-eminence of Mozart's famous work, it does highlight in no uncertain terms the strong Italian influences at work in Mozart's style. Or, to put it another way, the music sounds at first acquaintance rather like Mozart. This fact also points up something else that we're apt to forget -- namely, that Mozart and Haydn were only two among dozens or even hundreds of composers who were their contemporaries and who all worked in a broadly similar musical language. We're so used to thinking of the late eighteenth century as the era of Mozart and Haydn that we can readily forget all those others.
Well, I've now encountered Giuseppe Gazzaniga and certainly enjoyed his take on the famous legend of Don Juan, the libertine seducer of Seville. With 46 more CDs to explore in this reissue box, the adventures continue!
Tuesday 16 June 2015
A Disappearing Genre -- Part 2
In the previous post, I discussed some of the reasons for the gradual disappearance of the concert overture. It's certainly not at a total vanishing point, yet, but this genre of music is becoming scarcer on the map than it used to be. Here are some more favourite examples.
Right off the bat, I'm going to cheat and use an example that was actually written for a stage play. Aleksey Tolstoy, the second cousin of the famous novelist Leo, wrote a trilogy of stage plays from Russian history that made him the leading dramatic playwright of his day in Russia. One of these, Tsar Boris, deals with the life of that same Russian ruler who was immortalized in Pushkin's verse play and in Mussorgsky's operatic version Boris Godunov. Few people now remember that Tolstoy's drama also attracted the attention of a Russian composer, Vasily Kalinnikov, who wrote incidental music for a production.
That music began with an overture of stunning impact and power. It opens with a strong theme of folklike cut for the lower strings, and this leads to a spectacular entry of the full brass section in a majestic procession. The main allegro section of the overture similarly is based on a vigorous tune of folk inspiration, which gains weight and power as it develops. In the closing pages, the energetic build-up to the final coda is accentuated by brilliant flourishes from the brasses. It's one of the most spectacular showpieces I've ever heard, and I find its neglect quite unaccountable.
To hear this lost masterpiece, you should seek out Neeme Jarvi's Chandos recording of the two symphonies of Kalinnikov, both also lively and memorable, and there you will find the Overture to Tsar Boris as a fill-up.
Schubert composed two Overtures In the Italian Style which are a real delight. Each one is a tribute to the composer's gift of spinning out endlessly ingratiating melodies. Each begins with a slow introduction before launching into a faster allegro main section. These were much better known in earlier years, but have rather fallen out of sight more recently and it's a pity. In fact, Schubert composed many overtures, enough to fill two generous CDs, but these two are the best of the best. Like the earlier symphonies of Schubert, they have been unfairly overshadowed by the late masterpieces of the "Unfinished" and the "Great" C major symphonies.
Finally, I want to return to a favourite composer of mine whose music has only recently begun to re-emerge after long neglect. I may have discussed this piece earlier, but it's such a masterly example of adaptation that it bears repeating. Sir George Dyson was probably most famous in his lifetime for his musical portrait gallery, The Canterbury Pilgrims, a cantata for choir, soloists and orchestra setting a modern-English version of Chaucer's prologue to The Canterbury Tales. This entertaining and intriguing work has only a short orchestral prelude.
Years after its premiere, Dyson revisited the material and composed the concert overture At the Tabard Inn, using themes from the cantata. It can be, and is, used to preface a performance of the complete work, but it also stands as an independent piece. The melodic material of the larger work is adeptly organized into a workable orchestral structure, but with a striking difference. The original work runs largely to common time signatures, 2/4 and 4/4. In the overture, all the themes save one are recast into triple time, a truly remarkable metamorphosis that also (for me) greatly increases the interest of the music. The one exception is the theme for the Wife of Bath, since she already appears in the cantata to the strains of a lively waltz theme, a most appropriate choice for such an earthy character! The overture concludes with a truly lovely setting of the theme which ends the cantata, a flowing tune depicting the journeying and storytelling, and closes with the return of the brass fanfare which calls us to attention at the opening.
Right off the bat, I'm going to cheat and use an example that was actually written for a stage play. Aleksey Tolstoy, the second cousin of the famous novelist Leo, wrote a trilogy of stage plays from Russian history that made him the leading dramatic playwright of his day in Russia. One of these, Tsar Boris, deals with the life of that same Russian ruler who was immortalized in Pushkin's verse play and in Mussorgsky's operatic version Boris Godunov. Few people now remember that Tolstoy's drama also attracted the attention of a Russian composer, Vasily Kalinnikov, who wrote incidental music for a production.
That music began with an overture of stunning impact and power. It opens with a strong theme of folklike cut for the lower strings, and this leads to a spectacular entry of the full brass section in a majestic procession. The main allegro section of the overture similarly is based on a vigorous tune of folk inspiration, which gains weight and power as it develops. In the closing pages, the energetic build-up to the final coda is accentuated by brilliant flourishes from the brasses. It's one of the most spectacular showpieces I've ever heard, and I find its neglect quite unaccountable.
To hear this lost masterpiece, you should seek out Neeme Jarvi's Chandos recording of the two symphonies of Kalinnikov, both also lively and memorable, and there you will find the Overture to Tsar Boris as a fill-up.
Schubert composed two Overtures In the Italian Style which are a real delight. Each one is a tribute to the composer's gift of spinning out endlessly ingratiating melodies. Each begins with a slow introduction before launching into a faster allegro main section. These were much better known in earlier years, but have rather fallen out of sight more recently and it's a pity. In fact, Schubert composed many overtures, enough to fill two generous CDs, but these two are the best of the best. Like the earlier symphonies of Schubert, they have been unfairly overshadowed by the late masterpieces of the "Unfinished" and the "Great" C major symphonies.
Finally, I want to return to a favourite composer of mine whose music has only recently begun to re-emerge after long neglect. I may have discussed this piece earlier, but it's such a masterly example of adaptation that it bears repeating. Sir George Dyson was probably most famous in his lifetime for his musical portrait gallery, The Canterbury Pilgrims, a cantata for choir, soloists and orchestra setting a modern-English version of Chaucer's prologue to The Canterbury Tales. This entertaining and intriguing work has only a short orchestral prelude.
Years after its premiere, Dyson revisited the material and composed the concert overture At the Tabard Inn, using themes from the cantata. It can be, and is, used to preface a performance of the complete work, but it also stands as an independent piece. The melodic material of the larger work is adeptly organized into a workable orchestral structure, but with a striking difference. The original work runs largely to common time signatures, 2/4 and 4/4. In the overture, all the themes save one are recast into triple time, a truly remarkable metamorphosis that also (for me) greatly increases the interest of the music. The one exception is the theme for the Wife of Bath, since she already appears in the cantata to the strains of a lively waltz theme, a most appropriate choice for such an earthy character! The overture concludes with a truly lovely setting of the theme which ends the cantata, a flowing tune depicting the journeying and storytelling, and closes with the return of the brass fanfare which calls us to attention at the opening.
Friday 29 May 2015
A Disappearing Genre -- Part 1
I've already introduced examples of the concert overture a few times on this blog. Some years back, it occurred to me that this genre is in danger of disappearing altogether for a very interesting pair of reasons.
At one time, the concert overture appeared at the starting position of many, perhaps even most, orchestral concerts. This had a lot to do with tradition (the standard pattern of overture-concerto-intermission-symphony) and with the dominance of central European Romantic music in the repertoire of the world's orchestras (that location and era defines neatly the parameters of the rise and fall of the concert overture as a genre for composers).
Today, the appearance of a concert overture on a programme is an increasingly rare event. Music appreciation has broadened to incorporate more and more music from earlier and later eras, and from other regions.
On record, the concert overture reigned supreme as the most logical fill-up for a typical Romantic symphony which would occupy somewhere from 35 to 45 minutes on a long-playing LP record lasting for an hour. Today the focus has shifted, and the later generations of CDs were just as likely to incorporate a pair of symphonies, due to the longer 80-minute playing time of that format. New recordings of concert overtures, therefore, are also an increasingly rare event.
There are still a few concert overtures popular enough to withstand this shift in the musical tides. I think in this connection of the two by Brahms, several by Beethoven, a couple by Dvořák, and one by Mendelssohn, but not much else.
So this first part of a multi-part post is to introduce a few favourite concert overtures of mine which are not often heard, or recorded, or even known to many music lovers.
I'm starting with two overtures by Dvořák. His Carnaval and In Nature's Realm both continue to hold the stage, but the third partner of the trilogy is much less well known. Yet Othello, Op. 93, is a work of great substance and drama, well-structured, and well worthy of ranking with the other two. Perhaps the lack of overt "Czech" music has hindered it. At any rate, it does more -- developmentally speaking -- than either of its stable-mates with the melody which is common to all three. Here, that lovely lyrical idea (think of the opening of In Nature's Realm or the contrasting trio of Carnaval) is twisted around into the minor key, cut up into fragments, changes its shape, and finally is used to build up the dramatic crescendo into the catastrophic coda. It appears in the place of the second subject during the course of the overture, well-contrasted with the more abrupt first theme.
Another tune familiar from a different work is used to advantage in Dvořák's most overtly patriotic works, the concert overture Husitská ("The Hussite"), composed in 1883 for the festive opening of the National Theatre in Prague. It employs the hymn tune of the Hussite movement, "You Who Are Warriors of the Lord God". Lovers of Czech orchestral music will be already familiar with this theme, which forms the foundation of parts 5 and 6 of Smetana's cycle of tone poems, Má vlast. Dvořák imaginatively uses a restlessly energetic form of this tune to incorporate into the structure of a symphonic sonata-form movement. The overture develops a terrific head of steam, most of it in the minor key, until a crisis leads to the re-emergence of the hymn in a glorious major. This leads on to a powerful and ambitious coda in the form of a victory celebration.
Robert Schumann composed music for the theatre, and one opera, but these works are little heard today. Nonetheless, among all these works he did produce one unquestionable masterpiece in the overture to Manfred. This character, created by Lord Byron, is a kind of Romantic version of the man of vaunting ambition. His poem has been aptly described as "Faust without the Devil", since Manfred (a man of super-human force of will) succumbs entirely to his own flawed character without outside assistance.
Schumann's overture opens with three staccato fortissimo chords -- and these three chords have a peculiarly edgy sound to them. Without a score, you will not find out until much later on, when they recur in the full flow of the overture's coda, that these chords are actually written an eighth note ahead of the beat, forcing the orchestra to attack them more forcefully than if they were conventionally written on the beat.
There follows a questioning, seeking melody for the winds, incorporating some large leaps up and down. This slow, meandering tune eventually quickens to allegro tempo and becomes the principal theme of the overture, a turbulent and troubled piece of music which plainly foreshadows the anguished life of the principal character. It is combined effectively with a falling and rising arpeggio theme which generates plenty of energy in the music. In the coda, this arpeggio is combined with a completely new chordal theme which is heard twice and then does not reappear. The closing sombre pages recall the slow introduction and plainly depict the solitary death of Manfred.
Perhaps the most famous orchestral composition by Mendelssohn is the Hebrides Overture, also entitled Fingal's Cave. It's truly a masterpiece of the first order, and rightly prized by music lovers. How many of them, I wonder, know that Mendelssohn also composed several other concert overtures that are now almost unheard? The Fair Melusina is one of them. It's a lovely little tone poem depicting the story of the sea-nymph Melusina, who has the misfortune to fall in love with a mortal man. Central European mythology is full of tales where the mortal and immortal worlds mingle, almost inevitably with disastrous results (think of Dvořák's Rusalka for instance). The rippling opening plainly depicts Melusina's carefree life amid the waves. A second, more agitated and forceful theme intrudes and becomes the main substance of the overture. Plainly this new, somewhat rougher, music brings with it Melusina's lover and the trouble which his appearance sets off in both of their lives. In the end, of course, the overture slides neatly back into the nymph's music for the coda, as Melusina disappears once again below the waves.
Another Mendelssohn work concerned with the sea is his concert overture, Meeresstille und Glückliche Fahrt ("Becalmed Sea and Prosperous Voyage"). It's inspired by a little pair of poems by Goethe, poems which were interestingly set to music in a short choral work by Beethoven. The overture follows the shape of the poems closely. The first part is slow, dark, sombre, as befits the image of the sailing ship adrift in the vast ocean with no hint of breeze to stir the sails. And then, the wind rises most realistically from the orchestra and the music rouses to life along with it. The "prosperous voyage" is a lively allegro, in Mendelssohn's most spirited vein. The last line of the poem is "Already I see the land." Mendelssohn's coda seems to go farther than the text here, as the music slows down for a pompous march-like ending which (as Sir Donald Tovey so aptly remarked) sounds like some kind of official welcome for the voyagers. But Mendelssohn displays his true genius once more in the unexpected and poetic ending: three quiet chords forming a gentle cadence.
At one time, the concert overture appeared at the starting position of many, perhaps even most, orchestral concerts. This had a lot to do with tradition (the standard pattern of overture-concerto-intermission-symphony) and with the dominance of central European Romantic music in the repertoire of the world's orchestras (that location and era defines neatly the parameters of the rise and fall of the concert overture as a genre for composers).
Today, the appearance of a concert overture on a programme is an increasingly rare event. Music appreciation has broadened to incorporate more and more music from earlier and later eras, and from other regions.
On record, the concert overture reigned supreme as the most logical fill-up for a typical Romantic symphony which would occupy somewhere from 35 to 45 minutes on a long-playing LP record lasting for an hour. Today the focus has shifted, and the later generations of CDs were just as likely to incorporate a pair of symphonies, due to the longer 80-minute playing time of that format. New recordings of concert overtures, therefore, are also an increasingly rare event.
There are still a few concert overtures popular enough to withstand this shift in the musical tides. I think in this connection of the two by Brahms, several by Beethoven, a couple by Dvořák, and one by Mendelssohn, but not much else.
So this first part of a multi-part post is to introduce a few favourite concert overtures of mine which are not often heard, or recorded, or even known to many music lovers.
I'm starting with two overtures by Dvořák. His Carnaval and In Nature's Realm both continue to hold the stage, but the third partner of the trilogy is much less well known. Yet Othello, Op. 93, is a work of great substance and drama, well-structured, and well worthy of ranking with the other two. Perhaps the lack of overt "Czech" music has hindered it. At any rate, it does more -- developmentally speaking -- than either of its stable-mates with the melody which is common to all three. Here, that lovely lyrical idea (think of the opening of In Nature's Realm or the contrasting trio of Carnaval) is twisted around into the minor key, cut up into fragments, changes its shape, and finally is used to build up the dramatic crescendo into the catastrophic coda. It appears in the place of the second subject during the course of the overture, well-contrasted with the more abrupt first theme.
Another tune familiar from a different work is used to advantage in Dvořák's most overtly patriotic works, the concert overture Husitská ("The Hussite"), composed in 1883 for the festive opening of the National Theatre in Prague. It employs the hymn tune of the Hussite movement, "You Who Are Warriors of the Lord God". Lovers of Czech orchestral music will be already familiar with this theme, which forms the foundation of parts 5 and 6 of Smetana's cycle of tone poems, Má vlast. Dvořák imaginatively uses a restlessly energetic form of this tune to incorporate into the structure of a symphonic sonata-form movement. The overture develops a terrific head of steam, most of it in the minor key, until a crisis leads to the re-emergence of the hymn in a glorious major. This leads on to a powerful and ambitious coda in the form of a victory celebration.
Robert Schumann composed music for the theatre, and one opera, but these works are little heard today. Nonetheless, among all these works he did produce one unquestionable masterpiece in the overture to Manfred. This character, created by Lord Byron, is a kind of Romantic version of the man of vaunting ambition. His poem has been aptly described as "Faust without the Devil", since Manfred (a man of super-human force of will) succumbs entirely to his own flawed character without outside assistance.
Schumann's overture opens with three staccato fortissimo chords -- and these three chords have a peculiarly edgy sound to them. Without a score, you will not find out until much later on, when they recur in the full flow of the overture's coda, that these chords are actually written an eighth note ahead of the beat, forcing the orchestra to attack them more forcefully than if they were conventionally written on the beat.
There follows a questioning, seeking melody for the winds, incorporating some large leaps up and down. This slow, meandering tune eventually quickens to allegro tempo and becomes the principal theme of the overture, a turbulent and troubled piece of music which plainly foreshadows the anguished life of the principal character. It is combined effectively with a falling and rising arpeggio theme which generates plenty of energy in the music. In the coda, this arpeggio is combined with a completely new chordal theme which is heard twice and then does not reappear. The closing sombre pages recall the slow introduction and plainly depict the solitary death of Manfred.
Perhaps the most famous orchestral composition by Mendelssohn is the Hebrides Overture, also entitled Fingal's Cave. It's truly a masterpiece of the first order, and rightly prized by music lovers. How many of them, I wonder, know that Mendelssohn also composed several other concert overtures that are now almost unheard? The Fair Melusina is one of them. It's a lovely little tone poem depicting the story of the sea-nymph Melusina, who has the misfortune to fall in love with a mortal man. Central European mythology is full of tales where the mortal and immortal worlds mingle, almost inevitably with disastrous results (think of Dvořák's Rusalka for instance). The rippling opening plainly depicts Melusina's carefree life amid the waves. A second, more agitated and forceful theme intrudes and becomes the main substance of the overture. Plainly this new, somewhat rougher, music brings with it Melusina's lover and the trouble which his appearance sets off in both of their lives. In the end, of course, the overture slides neatly back into the nymph's music for the coda, as Melusina disappears once again below the waves.
Another Mendelssohn work concerned with the sea is his concert overture, Meeresstille und Glückliche Fahrt ("Becalmed Sea and Prosperous Voyage"). It's inspired by a little pair of poems by Goethe, poems which were interestingly set to music in a short choral work by Beethoven. The overture follows the shape of the poems closely. The first part is slow, dark, sombre, as befits the image of the sailing ship adrift in the vast ocean with no hint of breeze to stir the sails. And then, the wind rises most realistically from the orchestra and the music rouses to life along with it. The "prosperous voyage" is a lively allegro, in Mendelssohn's most spirited vein. The last line of the poem is "Already I see the land." Mendelssohn's coda seems to go farther than the text here, as the music slows down for a pompous march-like ending which (as Sir Donald Tovey so aptly remarked) sounds like some kind of official welcome for the voyagers. But Mendelssohn displays his true genius once more in the unexpected and poetic ending: three quiet chords forming a gentle cadence.
Monday 27 April 2015
Was It Or Wasn't It...?
Schubert's sonata for piano 4-hands in C Major, usually known as the Grand Duo, is his largest work for piano duo and one of the greatest of works ever composed for this instrumentation. Like many of Schubert's mature piano compositions, the Grand Duo (not the composer's title, by the way) seems to burst the bounds of its genre, and the writing -- although undeniably pianistic in some places -- also teems with what seem to be orchestral effects in piano dress.
It was this duality in the character of the music that led Robert Schumann and others to suspect that this sonata might be in fact a 4-hand draft of a symphony which Schubert was believed to have composed at Gastein. More modern research has proved that the so-called "Gastein symphony" was in reality the work now universally known as the "Great" C Major Symphony (# 9 in the conventional numbering).
However, in the 1800s the first of a number of attempts to orchestrate the Grand Duo was made by the noted violinist, conductor and composer Joseph Joachim. There have been other versions made by other hands since then, but the Joachim version was the first to become known -- due in part to the enthusiastic advocacy of Sir Donald Tovey -- and the first to be recorded, under Toscanini in the 1920s. It has also achieved the distinction of being recorded twice. The second time, much more recent, was laid down in the late 1980s by the Chamber Orchestra of Europe under Claudio Abbado, as part of a cycle of the complete Schubert symphonies for DGG.
Some purists may cringe at the idea of listening to an arrangement by other hands of Schubert's great piano work. There are also those who find Joachim's orchestration dull and boring, and not worth the trouble of playing or listening.
It's clear right from the get-go that Abbado and company suffer from no such scruples or doubts. In line with the interpretation of the other seven standard symphonies, the orchestration of the Grand Duo is treated to a lively, bright-eyed performance finely recorded in a rich but clean acoustic.
The first movement is one of Schubert's rich outpourings of melody, yet remains firmly controlled within the classical sonata-form structure. One of the most striking moments is the series of rising modulations that carries the key from the tonic to the dominant for the second subject. In the recapitulation this sequence becomes an even longer ladder rising through still more keys to finally land the second subject in the tonic key itself, opening the way to the conclusion. Abbado manages this rising series of modulations beautifully, with each successive entry adding just a little more volume than the one before to keep the tension rising along with the pitch.
The gentle, lyrical andante of the second movement benefits enormously from the orchestration, since the legato lines are more easily sustained by the winds and strings than on the piano.
The scherzo is perhaps the least convincing in this version, as the writing in the original is at its most pianistic, with frequent chains of hammered chords in the bass. Although rooted in Austrian folk dance, this rapid movement points the way towards the symphonic scherzos of Bruckner in its scale and force. The orchestra here makes the most of the hairpin dynamics frequently repeated throughout the piece. The slower trio, which always sounds to me for all the world like an animal loping slowly along, is well contrasted, and the sharp attack at the return of the scherzo is perfect.
The finale is built up nicely from its quiet opening to the dramatic pages near the end, and here conductor and orchestra alike maintain absolute clarity even in the heaviest scoring. The grandiose "rejoicing" theme which is heard twice, rising on top of the harmony, comes across more clearly in the orchestrated version. Just a few bars from the end are two long-held chords, each ended by two quickly hammered notes. These are scored for nearly the full orchestra, and the two quick staccato chords in each case are nailed with impressive unanimity.
Does the orchestrated version supplant Schubert's original? By no means, and I'm sure Abbado would never have suggested that it did. But I certainly feel it's worth hearing in its own right, not least because the feel of the mature Schubert's orchestral style is so aptly captured by Joachim's skilled arrangement.
And since the 4-hand piano music of Schubert is itself rarely heard today, anyone who enjoys this should certainly seek out one of several recordings available of the Grand Duo as written, and hear the composer's own thoughts on this magnificent work.
Even if it's not a lost Schubert symphony, I'm glad Abbado recorded the Joachim arrangement of the Grand Duo and got it released as part of his complete Schubert symphony cycle.
It was this duality in the character of the music that led Robert Schumann and others to suspect that this sonata might be in fact a 4-hand draft of a symphony which Schubert was believed to have composed at Gastein. More modern research has proved that the so-called "Gastein symphony" was in reality the work now universally known as the "Great" C Major Symphony (# 9 in the conventional numbering).
However, in the 1800s the first of a number of attempts to orchestrate the Grand Duo was made by the noted violinist, conductor and composer Joseph Joachim. There have been other versions made by other hands since then, but the Joachim version was the first to become known -- due in part to the enthusiastic advocacy of Sir Donald Tovey -- and the first to be recorded, under Toscanini in the 1920s. It has also achieved the distinction of being recorded twice. The second time, much more recent, was laid down in the late 1980s by the Chamber Orchestra of Europe under Claudio Abbado, as part of a cycle of the complete Schubert symphonies for DGG.
Some purists may cringe at the idea of listening to an arrangement by other hands of Schubert's great piano work. There are also those who find Joachim's orchestration dull and boring, and not worth the trouble of playing or listening.
It's clear right from the get-go that Abbado and company suffer from no such scruples or doubts. In line with the interpretation of the other seven standard symphonies, the orchestration of the Grand Duo is treated to a lively, bright-eyed performance finely recorded in a rich but clean acoustic.
The first movement is one of Schubert's rich outpourings of melody, yet remains firmly controlled within the classical sonata-form structure. One of the most striking moments is the series of rising modulations that carries the key from the tonic to the dominant for the second subject. In the recapitulation this sequence becomes an even longer ladder rising through still more keys to finally land the second subject in the tonic key itself, opening the way to the conclusion. Abbado manages this rising series of modulations beautifully, with each successive entry adding just a little more volume than the one before to keep the tension rising along with the pitch.
The gentle, lyrical andante of the second movement benefits enormously from the orchestration, since the legato lines are more easily sustained by the winds and strings than on the piano.
The scherzo is perhaps the least convincing in this version, as the writing in the original is at its most pianistic, with frequent chains of hammered chords in the bass. Although rooted in Austrian folk dance, this rapid movement points the way towards the symphonic scherzos of Bruckner in its scale and force. The orchestra here makes the most of the hairpin dynamics frequently repeated throughout the piece. The slower trio, which always sounds to me for all the world like an animal loping slowly along, is well contrasted, and the sharp attack at the return of the scherzo is perfect.
The finale is built up nicely from its quiet opening to the dramatic pages near the end, and here conductor and orchestra alike maintain absolute clarity even in the heaviest scoring. The grandiose "rejoicing" theme which is heard twice, rising on top of the harmony, comes across more clearly in the orchestrated version. Just a few bars from the end are two long-held chords, each ended by two quickly hammered notes. These are scored for nearly the full orchestra, and the two quick staccato chords in each case are nailed with impressive unanimity.
Does the orchestrated version supplant Schubert's original? By no means, and I'm sure Abbado would never have suggested that it did. But I certainly feel it's worth hearing in its own right, not least because the feel of the mature Schubert's orchestral style is so aptly captured by Joachim's skilled arrangement.
And since the 4-hand piano music of Schubert is itself rarely heard today, anyone who enjoys this should certainly seek out one of several recordings available of the Grand Duo as written, and hear the composer's own thoughts on this magnificent work.
Even if it's not a lost Schubert symphony, I'm glad Abbado recorded the Joachim arrangement of the Grand Duo and got it released as part of his complete Schubert symphony cycle.
Sunday 26 April 2015
Unknown Ruins
It's one of those familiar little snippets of classical music that many music lovers can hum along when they hear it being played. It's been featured in TV shows and movies, played in the background of commercials, and often heard on radio. You probably recognize it too -- the "Turkish March". Yes, that Turkish March.
When I was a little boy, we had a book of simplified arrangements of Beethoven on our piano, and so I knew from an early age that the March was from a bigger piece called The Ruins of Athens, and of course I also knew who had written it!
In our high school library, I found a recording of the complete incidental music to The Ruins of Athens, and it's been a favoured item in my collection ever since. But this definitely qualifies as a rare bird.
In the nineteenth century, plays were often presented in theatres that had a full orchestra, and so music to go along with those plays was an important angle of the composing business. Think of Mendelssohn's A Midsummer Night's Dream as perhaps the best-known example. Despite the promising title, The Ruins of Athens is definitely not in the same theatrical league. As a theatre piece, it could best perhaps be described as a "pageant" rather than a play.
My recording included in the program notes a brief synopsis of the action. After being condemned to sleep for a thousand years by Zeus, Athene awakens and returns to Athens, her ancient home. There, she finds the ancient city in ruins and the Turks in occupation. Dismayed, she journeys instead to Pest (Hungary's capital), where she calls upon the aid of the muses Melpomene and Thalia (the Muses of tragedy and of comedy and pastoral poetry respectively). The people build an altar with statues of the muses on it and invoke the might of Zeus. A thunderclap is heard and a third statue appears between the other two, a statue of the Emperor of Hungary. General rejoicings end the piece.
Are your eyes rolling? Mine are!
This kind of patriotic pageantry appealed on many levels. The piece was written by August von Kotzebue for the opening of a splendid new theatre in Pest. The opportunity for spectacular new sets and costumes was the obvious corollary of such an occasion. If the Emperor wasn't a patron of either the theatre or the author, I'd be very surprised because this kind of kitschy material was typical of compliments paid by an author to a patron. The "Athens" angle -- bringing in the glories of the ancient world -- was also valuable to supply the opportunity for Turkish exotica in settings, costumes and music. Since the Ottoman Empire had been knocking at the gates of Vienna and Pest not too many years earlier, this was a timely and topical feature, another opportunity to contrast the supposed "barbarism" of the Ottomans with the "civilized" Europeans.
Beethoven did compose a lot of what might politely be termed "hack work", like this, and for the usual reason: it paid well. But Beethoven was a great artist and his artistic greatness keeps on sneaking in even when the motivating cause is money. The Ruins of Athens is no exception.
The score opens with an overture which is rather lightweight, but at least has the virtue of being well-constructed and not using any of the musical material still to come in the play itself. Believe it or not, von Kotzebue's play actually got staged a second time in Vienna, at the opening of a new theatre 10 years later. For that occasion, Beethoven composed a new, and much more solemn and powerful overture which was published separately as The Consecration of the House. (You can read about that work here: A Relatively Rare Pair of Beethovens)
The incidental movements (apart from the famous Turkish March and one short entr'acte) are all sung, and this may be a big part of the reason why this music has not been better known. The first is a chorus of invocation, sung to awaken Athene after her long sleep. This is followed by a masterly duet of a Greek man and a Greek girl, bemoaning their fate as slaves of the Turks. This is a deeply felt and moving lament, with the repeated cries of "Ah!" eventually rising to a climactic repetition of "What has befallen you, my poor fatherland?"
With the next movement the Turks enter, and so does the Turkish music. At least, so does what was thought to be Turkish music in central Europe, which actually just consists of the repeated use of a bass drum, cymbal, and triangle all beating out the same rhythmic pattern. Think of Mozart's Abduction From the Seraglio and you'll know exactly what I mean. These instrumental sounds usher in a Chorus of Dervishes which is another powerful conception, the music plainly depicting the procession entering, crossing the stage, and disappearing on the other side. The violins are tasked with obsessive triplets repeated at high speed throughout the piece, while the men's voices raise their triumphant cries to fortissimo. What gives this movement such unexpected distinction is the subtle use of key changes at two key points.
Following this chorus you get the famous Turkish March. No analysis required!
There follow several less distinguished vocal movements, and then comes a solemn and stirring aria for the High Priest (bass solo) which leads into the moment when the statue of the Emperor appears and the subsequent chorus of thanks to Zeus. This again is a movement of real musical power, leading to a conclusion of genuine grandeur. It always seems to me that this point, musically, feels like the ending. But there is one more movement, a final chorus of celebration, and with this we are (sadly) back again in Potboiler-Land, right to the final brief coda which feels like it was stuck on as an afterthought.
But no matter. The Ruins of Athens is certainly not out of Beethoven's top drawer as a whole, but the duet, the Chorus of Dervishes, and the High Priest's aria and subsequent chorus all deserve to be heard more often. Sadly, recordings are as thin on the ground as hen's teeth. The one I have is an old DGG LP conducted by the young Bernhard Klee, which probably dates in original release from around 1960 (that information isn't given on the reissue jacket). In 1989, Dennis Russell Davies recorded the music for EMI with the Orchestra of St. Luke's in New York, and copies of that one may still be available. As far as I know, those are the only recordings of the complete music ever made.
When I was a little boy, we had a book of simplified arrangements of Beethoven on our piano, and so I knew from an early age that the March was from a bigger piece called The Ruins of Athens, and of course I also knew who had written it!
In our high school library, I found a recording of the complete incidental music to The Ruins of Athens, and it's been a favoured item in my collection ever since. But this definitely qualifies as a rare bird.
In the nineteenth century, plays were often presented in theatres that had a full orchestra, and so music to go along with those plays was an important angle of the composing business. Think of Mendelssohn's A Midsummer Night's Dream as perhaps the best-known example. Despite the promising title, The Ruins of Athens is definitely not in the same theatrical league. As a theatre piece, it could best perhaps be described as a "pageant" rather than a play.
My recording included in the program notes a brief synopsis of the action. After being condemned to sleep for a thousand years by Zeus, Athene awakens and returns to Athens, her ancient home. There, she finds the ancient city in ruins and the Turks in occupation. Dismayed, she journeys instead to Pest (Hungary's capital), where she calls upon the aid of the muses Melpomene and Thalia (the Muses of tragedy and of comedy and pastoral poetry respectively). The people build an altar with statues of the muses on it and invoke the might of Zeus. A thunderclap is heard and a third statue appears between the other two, a statue of the Emperor of Hungary. General rejoicings end the piece.
Are your eyes rolling? Mine are!
This kind of patriotic pageantry appealed on many levels. The piece was written by August von Kotzebue for the opening of a splendid new theatre in Pest. The opportunity for spectacular new sets and costumes was the obvious corollary of such an occasion. If the Emperor wasn't a patron of either the theatre or the author, I'd be very surprised because this kind of kitschy material was typical of compliments paid by an author to a patron. The "Athens" angle -- bringing in the glories of the ancient world -- was also valuable to supply the opportunity for Turkish exotica in settings, costumes and music. Since the Ottoman Empire had been knocking at the gates of Vienna and Pest not too many years earlier, this was a timely and topical feature, another opportunity to contrast the supposed "barbarism" of the Ottomans with the "civilized" Europeans.
Beethoven did compose a lot of what might politely be termed "hack work", like this, and for the usual reason: it paid well. But Beethoven was a great artist and his artistic greatness keeps on sneaking in even when the motivating cause is money. The Ruins of Athens is no exception.
The score opens with an overture which is rather lightweight, but at least has the virtue of being well-constructed and not using any of the musical material still to come in the play itself. Believe it or not, von Kotzebue's play actually got staged a second time in Vienna, at the opening of a new theatre 10 years later. For that occasion, Beethoven composed a new, and much more solemn and powerful overture which was published separately as The Consecration of the House. (You can read about that work here: A Relatively Rare Pair of Beethovens)
The incidental movements (apart from the famous Turkish March and one short entr'acte) are all sung, and this may be a big part of the reason why this music has not been better known. The first is a chorus of invocation, sung to awaken Athene after her long sleep. This is followed by a masterly duet of a Greek man and a Greek girl, bemoaning their fate as slaves of the Turks. This is a deeply felt and moving lament, with the repeated cries of "Ah!" eventually rising to a climactic repetition of "What has befallen you, my poor fatherland?"
With the next movement the Turks enter, and so does the Turkish music. At least, so does what was thought to be Turkish music in central Europe, which actually just consists of the repeated use of a bass drum, cymbal, and triangle all beating out the same rhythmic pattern. Think of Mozart's Abduction From the Seraglio and you'll know exactly what I mean. These instrumental sounds usher in a Chorus of Dervishes which is another powerful conception, the music plainly depicting the procession entering, crossing the stage, and disappearing on the other side. The violins are tasked with obsessive triplets repeated at high speed throughout the piece, while the men's voices raise their triumphant cries to fortissimo. What gives this movement such unexpected distinction is the subtle use of key changes at two key points.
Following this chorus you get the famous Turkish March. No analysis required!
There follow several less distinguished vocal movements, and then comes a solemn and stirring aria for the High Priest (bass solo) which leads into the moment when the statue of the Emperor appears and the subsequent chorus of thanks to Zeus. This again is a movement of real musical power, leading to a conclusion of genuine grandeur. It always seems to me that this point, musically, feels like the ending. But there is one more movement, a final chorus of celebration, and with this we are (sadly) back again in Potboiler-Land, right to the final brief coda which feels like it was stuck on as an afterthought.
But no matter. The Ruins of Athens is certainly not out of Beethoven's top drawer as a whole, but the duet, the Chorus of Dervishes, and the High Priest's aria and subsequent chorus all deserve to be heard more often. Sadly, recordings are as thin on the ground as hen's teeth. The one I have is an old DGG LP conducted by the young Bernhard Klee, which probably dates in original release from around 1960 (that information isn't given on the reissue jacket). In 1989, Dennis Russell Davies recorded the music for EMI with the Orchestra of St. Luke's in New York, and copies of that one may still be available. As far as I know, those are the only recordings of the complete music ever made.
Saturday 25 April 2015
Another Take on Faust
When it comes to the world of music, no writer held more influence over the composers of the nineteenth century than Goethe, and no work of his had more impact on music than his lengthy poetic-philosophical drama Faust. The first part of this enormous work is full of elements calculated to fit perfectly into the sensual side of the Romantic movement: magic spells, demonic influences, exotic locales, mythical beauty queens, and passionate love affairs are only the most prominent ingredients. The second part ends in a mystical scene of an ascent to a kind of secular heaven revisioned in humanist terms.
It's no wonder that so many composers were drawn to this rich store of material. Among them, you have to number Berlioz and his famous "dramatic legend," La Damnation de Faust. Also, there is the magnificent Faust Symphony in Three Character Portraits by Liszt (discussed in this previous blog post: Three Characters in Sound ). Perhaps grandest of all the concert works on the Faust theme is the second part of Mahler's majestic Eighth Symphony (the Symphony of a Thousand as it's often called, not by the composer's wish!).
In the opera world, there's Gounod's Faust, which mainly appeals to me because of the delicious ballet score embedded in the work. There's Arrigo Boito's Mefistofele (discussed in this previous blog post: A Very "Heavenly" Opera ). Ludwig Spohr also wrote a Faust opera. Then there's the very rare Doktor Faust by Ferrucio Busoni which actually reaches back for source material beyond Goethe to the medieval puppet plays upon which Goethe based his work.
This is pretty impressive company, but certainly Robert Schumann's work can hold its head high with the best of these composers. And yet, for reasons which baffle me, his late masterpiece, Scenes from Goethe's Faust has remained a truly rare bird. It's not often performed and has only been recorded in studio twice, as far as I can discover. I can only say that I feel this work, which occupied Schumann at intervals over a period of nine years, is a real masterpiece deserving of much wider hearing.
Schumann has made no effort to cover the whole of the Faust story, as his title makes quite clear. Instead, he has covered selected events from both parts of Goethe in a sequence of six scenes divided into two parts. A third part sets the final scene of the entire drama, the scene of Faust's transfiguration and ascent. Listeners familiar with the Mahler Eighth Symphony will certainly recognise the text of this final extended scene! It's intriguing to compare and contrast between the approaches of these two composers to the same text.
Schumann's concert work opens with a turbulent, dramatic overture which he considered one of the finest things he ever wrote (I concur). The riches in the first two parts fully live up to the power of this opening. With skillful writing for solo and choral voices and suitably vivid orchestration, Schumann paints effectively each of the six scenes he has chosen: a Garden Scene, a scene in front of a statue of the Mater Dolorosa, a scene in the Cathedral, a sunrise, a midnight scene, and the death of Faust.
The third part, the transfiguration and ascent of Faust, consists of seven movements. Each of the seven is well suited to the portion of Goethe's esoteric and image-laden poetry being set. The approach is very different from Mahler's setting of the same text in one continuous movement with much reference to the same basic melodic materials throughout.
Up to this point the music has been beautifully suited to the texts at every point, eminently singable and with much originality in harmony and orchestration. The grand final Chorus mysticus starts out very much in keeping with the deeply mystical tone of the final stanza of Goethe's poem. But then comes the one real miscalculation in Schumann's scheme. When he arrives at the final line, "Das Ewig-Weibliche zieht uns hinan" ("The Eternal Womanly leads us onwards"), the choir and orchestra pause expectantly on a promisingly mysterious chord. Then, instead of a magnificent peroration as with Liszt or Mahler, the music lapses for that final line into a schoolboyish fugue of such robust jollity that it could as easily have been a drinking song in a beer cellar. The first time I heard it, it simply made me cringe!
It's an unfortunate lapse of judgement, and a sad blot on an otherwise impressive work. I can only think that Schumann was suffering from long-learned scruples about how a major work for choir and orchestra must contain a fugue! This is the kind of academic thinking that generated hundreds -- thousands -- of scholarly and boring fugal movements by all kinds of composers throughout this time in musical history. In many ways, I think the composers who are most known today were those who had the strength of will to burst through those academic rules and find their own path.
At any rate, after the fugue has mercifully run its course the music returns to a more subtle and contemplative tone for a brief, quiet coda.
Even with that misbegotten fugal movement sticking in the road, I certainly feel that Schumann's Scenes from Goethe's Faust is in no way unfit to stand alongside the settings by the other composers I've mentioned. It remained largely unknown until Benjamin Britten's trailblazing performances and recording in the 1960s. Much more recently, just a few years ago, Antoni Wit added to his long list of magnificent choral performances in Warsaw with a new recording for Naxos, which is still readily and easily available either on disc or as a download. I remember listening to the Britten recording once, many years ago, and would love to hear it again now that I've become much more familiar with the work from Wit's version.
It's no wonder that so many composers were drawn to this rich store of material. Among them, you have to number Berlioz and his famous "dramatic legend," La Damnation de Faust. Also, there is the magnificent Faust Symphony in Three Character Portraits by Liszt (discussed in this previous blog post: Three Characters in Sound ). Perhaps grandest of all the concert works on the Faust theme is the second part of Mahler's majestic Eighth Symphony (the Symphony of a Thousand as it's often called, not by the composer's wish!).
In the opera world, there's Gounod's Faust, which mainly appeals to me because of the delicious ballet score embedded in the work. There's Arrigo Boito's Mefistofele (discussed in this previous blog post: A Very "Heavenly" Opera ). Ludwig Spohr also wrote a Faust opera. Then there's the very rare Doktor Faust by Ferrucio Busoni which actually reaches back for source material beyond Goethe to the medieval puppet plays upon which Goethe based his work.
This is pretty impressive company, but certainly Robert Schumann's work can hold its head high with the best of these composers. And yet, for reasons which baffle me, his late masterpiece, Scenes from Goethe's Faust has remained a truly rare bird. It's not often performed and has only been recorded in studio twice, as far as I can discover. I can only say that I feel this work, which occupied Schumann at intervals over a period of nine years, is a real masterpiece deserving of much wider hearing.
Schumann has made no effort to cover the whole of the Faust story, as his title makes quite clear. Instead, he has covered selected events from both parts of Goethe in a sequence of six scenes divided into two parts. A third part sets the final scene of the entire drama, the scene of Faust's transfiguration and ascent. Listeners familiar with the Mahler Eighth Symphony will certainly recognise the text of this final extended scene! It's intriguing to compare and contrast between the approaches of these two composers to the same text.
Schumann's concert work opens with a turbulent, dramatic overture which he considered one of the finest things he ever wrote (I concur). The riches in the first two parts fully live up to the power of this opening. With skillful writing for solo and choral voices and suitably vivid orchestration, Schumann paints effectively each of the six scenes he has chosen: a Garden Scene, a scene in front of a statue of the Mater Dolorosa, a scene in the Cathedral, a sunrise, a midnight scene, and the death of Faust.
The third part, the transfiguration and ascent of Faust, consists of seven movements. Each of the seven is well suited to the portion of Goethe's esoteric and image-laden poetry being set. The approach is very different from Mahler's setting of the same text in one continuous movement with much reference to the same basic melodic materials throughout.
Up to this point the music has been beautifully suited to the texts at every point, eminently singable and with much originality in harmony and orchestration. The grand final Chorus mysticus starts out very much in keeping with the deeply mystical tone of the final stanza of Goethe's poem. But then comes the one real miscalculation in Schumann's scheme. When he arrives at the final line, "Das Ewig-Weibliche zieht uns hinan" ("The Eternal Womanly leads us onwards"), the choir and orchestra pause expectantly on a promisingly mysterious chord. Then, instead of a magnificent peroration as with Liszt or Mahler, the music lapses for that final line into a schoolboyish fugue of such robust jollity that it could as easily have been a drinking song in a beer cellar. The first time I heard it, it simply made me cringe!
It's an unfortunate lapse of judgement, and a sad blot on an otherwise impressive work. I can only think that Schumann was suffering from long-learned scruples about how a major work for choir and orchestra must contain a fugue! This is the kind of academic thinking that generated hundreds -- thousands -- of scholarly and boring fugal movements by all kinds of composers throughout this time in musical history. In many ways, I think the composers who are most known today were those who had the strength of will to burst through those academic rules and find their own path.
At any rate, after the fugue has mercifully run its course the music returns to a more subtle and contemplative tone for a brief, quiet coda.
Even with that misbegotten fugal movement sticking in the road, I certainly feel that Schumann's Scenes from Goethe's Faust is in no way unfit to stand alongside the settings by the other composers I've mentioned. It remained largely unknown until Benjamin Britten's trailblazing performances and recording in the 1960s. Much more recently, just a few years ago, Antoni Wit added to his long list of magnificent choral performances in Warsaw with a new recording for Naxos, which is still readily and easily available either on disc or as a download. I remember listening to the Britten recording once, many years ago, and would love to hear it again now that I've become much more familiar with the work from Wit's version.
Monday 6 April 2015
An Ancient and Modern Masterpiece
Every once in a while, memory -- "the weakest of all witnesses" -- trips me up. I can't recall if I have mentioned before that I am also working on a book with the same title, and covering the same turf, as this blog: "Off the Beaten Staff". The book and the blog tend to feed each other from time to time. But also this can cause confusion about which works I've covered in the book, and which in the blog!
Last night at dinner, I was mentioning that I had written about the Requiem of Maurice Duruflé in my blog. In fact, I now find that it was in the book manuscript that I had covered this piece. My bad. So here it is now.
Duruflé is one of the lesser-known names in French music, but that's certainly not a reflection of the quality of his works! Rather, it reflects the fact that he was an obsessive perfectionist, a man who destroyed far more than he ever published, and who laboured many long years over a single piece to get the end result just right. In the end, he published only 16 complete original works (not counting the multiple versions of several that he made), as well as a selection of organ transcriptions of works by other hands.
It's important to mention the concept of different versions, because the Requiem actually exists in three separate "orchestrations" (the music remains unchanged apart from the different instruments employed). The smallest version uses only organ. The middle version is for organ and strings, with optional trumpet, harp and timpani parts. The largest version, my particular favourite, is for full orchestra. I prefer this full-orchestra version because of Duruflé's beautiful use of the woodwind instruments in particular. The Requiem was first performed in 1947.
Curiously, for such a modern piece, it has a very ancient, timeless feel to it. This is due to the fact that almost all the melodic substance, whether for voices or instruments, is drawn from Gregorian chant. The use of chant basically dictates the other remarkable feature of the work, which is the very free and flexible approach to rhythm. Gregorian chant long predates our modern notions of musical time moving in neat groups of 2, 3, 4, or more beats, with each group the same length. Phrases in chant can have any number of notes in them, and are usually performed with each note being the same length. Duruflé respects that tradition, and his score flows freely into and out of different time signatures purely according to the length of the chant melody he uses at each point.
Some of the chants are used as long slow chorale-like passages, some as more up-tempo and even vigorous melodies, and some as ostinato accompaniments.
The writing for choir and instruments alike is unfailingly clear, with a serenity and a wise air of acceptance of death very like that of the much earlier Requiem of Gabriel Fauré, which was Duruflé's avowed model. As with the earlier work, Duruflé employs two soloists: a baritone and a mezzo-soprano.
It's hard to single out this or that passage for commentary. Every moment of this clear, lucid score is full of its own beauties. Unlike Fauré, Duruflé allows some heavy-duty drama at the darkest moment of the text, the Dies irae lines in the penultimate Libera me, with the chorus and orchestra rising briefly to a fortississimo climax. The mezzo-soprano's Pie Jesu solo is different in character, darker and warmer, as compared to the famous soprano solo in the Requiem by Fauré.
My own personal favourite moments are found in the middle of the score. First, there's the rapidly spinning ostinato of the Sanctus, which leads up to a resplendent full climax. Then comes the Pie Jesu, followed by the Agnus Dei. The most lovely movement of all for me is the Lux aeterna which then follows. A free chant melody intoned by cor anglais is followed by another chant from the choir in unison, repeated at a higher key (led by the oboe this time), and then the line Requiem aeternam dona eis, Domine is sung on a unison monotone while the orchestra weaves a beautifully harmonized chant in slow chordal fashion around the voices. The effect is absolutely magical.
I pity anyone who automatically dismisses any music written since 1900, because in so doing they are depriving themselves of one of the most purely beautiful musical compositions I've ever heard. It was sung with full orchestra at the very first concert of the Toronto Mendelssohn Choir which I ever attended. Some years later, I had the privilege of singing it myself (in the organ-only version, alas) in the fine church choir at St. George's United Church in North Toronto. I've only ever heard it performed once since then, and again it was the organ version. I'd certainly love to hear this wonderful piece performed live with the full orchestra again.
If you seek a recording, there's a good selection available, and all three versions are represented. The one I treasure in my collection is Andrew Davis's CBS (now Sony) recording from London, made in the 1980s, in which the warm and resonant acoustic supports and enhances the all-important woodwind parts to splendid effect.
Last night at dinner, I was mentioning that I had written about the Requiem of Maurice Duruflé in my blog. In fact, I now find that it was in the book manuscript that I had covered this piece. My bad. So here it is now.
Duruflé is one of the lesser-known names in French music, but that's certainly not a reflection of the quality of his works! Rather, it reflects the fact that he was an obsessive perfectionist, a man who destroyed far more than he ever published, and who laboured many long years over a single piece to get the end result just right. In the end, he published only 16 complete original works (not counting the multiple versions of several that he made), as well as a selection of organ transcriptions of works by other hands.
It's important to mention the concept of different versions, because the Requiem actually exists in three separate "orchestrations" (the music remains unchanged apart from the different instruments employed). The smallest version uses only organ. The middle version is for organ and strings, with optional trumpet, harp and timpani parts. The largest version, my particular favourite, is for full orchestra. I prefer this full-orchestra version because of Duruflé's beautiful use of the woodwind instruments in particular. The Requiem was first performed in 1947.
Curiously, for such a modern piece, it has a very ancient, timeless feel to it. This is due to the fact that almost all the melodic substance, whether for voices or instruments, is drawn from Gregorian chant. The use of chant basically dictates the other remarkable feature of the work, which is the very free and flexible approach to rhythm. Gregorian chant long predates our modern notions of musical time moving in neat groups of 2, 3, 4, or more beats, with each group the same length. Phrases in chant can have any number of notes in them, and are usually performed with each note being the same length. Duruflé respects that tradition, and his score flows freely into and out of different time signatures purely according to the length of the chant melody he uses at each point.
Some of the chants are used as long slow chorale-like passages, some as more up-tempo and even vigorous melodies, and some as ostinato accompaniments.
The writing for choir and instruments alike is unfailingly clear, with a serenity and a wise air of acceptance of death very like that of the much earlier Requiem of Gabriel Fauré, which was Duruflé's avowed model. As with the earlier work, Duruflé employs two soloists: a baritone and a mezzo-soprano.
It's hard to single out this or that passage for commentary. Every moment of this clear, lucid score is full of its own beauties. Unlike Fauré, Duruflé allows some heavy-duty drama at the darkest moment of the text, the Dies irae lines in the penultimate Libera me, with the chorus and orchestra rising briefly to a fortississimo climax. The mezzo-soprano's Pie Jesu solo is different in character, darker and warmer, as compared to the famous soprano solo in the Requiem by Fauré.
My own personal favourite moments are found in the middle of the score. First, there's the rapidly spinning ostinato of the Sanctus, which leads up to a resplendent full climax. Then comes the Pie Jesu, followed by the Agnus Dei. The most lovely movement of all for me is the Lux aeterna which then follows. A free chant melody intoned by cor anglais is followed by another chant from the choir in unison, repeated at a higher key (led by the oboe this time), and then the line Requiem aeternam dona eis, Domine is sung on a unison monotone while the orchestra weaves a beautifully harmonized chant in slow chordal fashion around the voices. The effect is absolutely magical.
I pity anyone who automatically dismisses any music written since 1900, because in so doing they are depriving themselves of one of the most purely beautiful musical compositions I've ever heard. It was sung with full orchestra at the very first concert of the Toronto Mendelssohn Choir which I ever attended. Some years later, I had the privilege of singing it myself (in the organ-only version, alas) in the fine church choir at St. George's United Church in North Toronto. I've only ever heard it performed once since then, and again it was the organ version. I'd certainly love to hear this wonderful piece performed live with the full orchestra again.
If you seek a recording, there's a good selection available, and all three versions are represented. The one I treasure in my collection is Andrew Davis's CBS (now Sony) recording from London, made in the 1980s, in which the warm and resonant acoustic supports and enhances the all-important woodwind parts to splendid effect.
Wednesday 1 April 2015
Brazen and Dissolute Splendour
Among the out-of-the-way corners of classical music, there are works which have gained immense popularity only to then fall into shadow. There are works which have remained unique in their composers' output, and works which have remained unique in the world of music. There are works which are better known by name than by sound, rarely performed in public because of the daunting requirements for numbers and quality of performers. And there are works which absolutely shatter the traditional borders of whatever genres they seem to inhabit. All of these descriptions intersect to perfection in a remarkable work written by the English composer William Walton (later Sir William) between the ages of 27 and 29, and premiered in 1931 at the Leeds Triennial Festival.
Of course, Belshazzar's Feast is still often heard in Britain, where it's a definite repertoire staple. Not so, sadly, in North America where it has largely dropped off the charts after its early and remarkable success in the 1930s through to the 1960s.
Belshazzar's Feast resists classification because it is definitely sui generis. Although the text is drawn entirely from the Bible, and tells a Biblical story, it's hardly an oratorio since the devotional aspect so characteristic of oratorio in general is absent. Nor is it a dramatic cantata, since its structure totally ignores the typical layout of such works. Much later in life, Walton tried to describe it as a "choral symphony" but that won't do because the vivid and all-important orchestral writing still serves primarily the function of illustrating the sung text, rather than advancing a symphonic structure. Like Elgar's earlier The Dream of Gerontius, Walton's work refuses to fit into any genre because it is a genre, literally in a class of its own. And, like Gerontius, it is no less than a masterpiece.
Once we've said that, dismiss Elgar from your mind. The influences at work here certainly include the long tradition of choral writing for the Church of England, but heavily interwoven with the Stravinsky of The Rite of Spring and the popular sounds of contemporary jazz. The work is conceived on the largest Festival scale, including a vast percussion section and extra brass bands (this happened because the 1931 Leeds programmes included the huge Berlioz Requiem, and Sir Thomas Beecham, the director, told Walton that he might as well use the brasses too "because you're never going to hear it again, anyway"!).
The result was a shocker to the sensibilities of the audience in 1931, but also hugely exhilarating. One writer described the initial impression of the work as a noisy, modernistic masterpiece. Yet, in looking again at Belshazzar now, it's easy to see that it actually lives in a very tonal musical world; the dissonances are carefully calculated and used for maximum effect at key moments of the work. It remains, as it was from the outset, the most intensely dramatic and hugely energetic work ever written for chorus and orchestra.
Belshazzar's Feast falls into three basic sections, each one in turn divided into three. The first of these is prefaced by an unaccompanied recitative for divided male choir, a fierce utterance of the prophecy of Isaiah that the Israelites would be enslaved in Babylon. The first main part is a long, mournful song for the people of Israel, with a contrasting middle section where the chorus first encounters the jagged, jazzy fast rhythms so characteristic of the piece. This rhythmic power underscores the words, "For they that wasted us required of us mirth, they that carried us away captive required of us a song." More viciously still, the choir then sings "Oh, daughter of Babylon, that art to be destroyed, happy shall he be that taketh thy children and dasheth them against a stone." The slow song of mourning then resumes and winds down to its quiet, deep conclusion.
A bass soloist sings an unbarred and unaccompanied recitative about the merchandise of Babylon, which the composer used to ironically call "the shopping list". The second main section then launches with a rapid four-note downward arpeggio spread across the interval of the minor ninth. This motif dominates and frequently recurs in the ensuing pages. This is the description of the feast itself. The music is energetic, joyful, almost orgiastic, and demands the utmost precision from singers and orchestra alike.
After the king and his wives and concubines drink from the sacred vessels taken from the Temple in Jerusalem, the King's demand to "Praise ye the god of gold" is announced by the soloist. This launches the gigantic march in praise of all the gods of Babylon, punctuated by blazing brass fanfares and specific different percussion instruments to illustrate each of the gods of gold, silver, wood, stone, iron and brass. The climax of the march enlists all the forces in full cry at once to sing "Praise ye the gods!"
Another silence, and the wild song of the feast resumes. The people of Babylon drink from the sacred vessels again, crying in dissonant harmonies, "Thou, O King, art King of Kings! O King, live forever!" A shocked silence falls.
The music then moves swiftly to the climax of the drama. The soloist sings of the appearance of the handwriting upon the wall, accompanied by some of the creepiest and most chilling orchestral sounds ever heard outside a Hollywood movie. The climax of his narrative -- "In that night was Belshazzar, the King, slain!" -- is echoed by an exultant shout of "Slain!" from the chorus. That's right, a shout -- not even a musical pitch, just a single staccato yell.
(At one of the infamous Hoffnung Festival concerts in London in the 1950s, Walton himself appeared and directed the shortest-ever "performance" of Belshazzar's Feast: the single shout of "Slain!", which he conducted with a fly-swatter!)
The final section then erupts into the exultant celebrations of the people of Israel. Once again the syncopated jazz rhythms of the score are well to the fore, and chorus and orchestra are again at full stretch. The centrepiece of this final part is a contrasting slow, quiet lament for the fallen city. But the rapid music soon bursts forth again, swinging into the roaring, frenzied Alleluias which bring the work to its breathtaking conclusion.
Fortunately for those of us who rarely have an opportunity to hear Belshazzar's Feast live, there are numerous fine recordings -- definitely this has been a lucky piece in the studio. Trying to record this work, incidentally, raises virtuoso challenges not just for singers, players, and conductor, but also for the producer and recording engineer who have to encompass the hugely percussive climaxes without losing sight of detail, and without changing the sound picture too much from the quieter, more reflective moments.
Wednesday 18 March 2015
Royall Consorts of Lawes
Despite appearances, this title does not refer to a historical document on jurisprudence which has made its way into my blog! William Lawes was a well-known and respected musician and composer at the court of King Charles I of England. His life came to a premature end when he fought on the side of the King during the Civil War, and was killed at the siege of Chester. Perhaps it was the ultimate victory of the Puritans that prevented any publication of his music. Given his high standing and reputation, the music certainly would have been published under other circumstances, for it circulated widely in handwritten copies. Publications came later.
The Royall Consorts are a series of 10 suites of dances for an ensemble of two viols and two viola da gamba, with two theorbos (bass lute) supplying a plucked bass continuo. The form is recognizably the ancestor of the type of suites composed a century later by Bach and Handel: a prelude to each suite (here called a "Fantazy") is followed by some mix of such dances as the "Saraband", "Aire", "Corant", "Alman", "Galliard" -- the very names draw attention to the structural similarity of later suites from other hands. In several cases, the dances appear in pairs of common type, also pointing towards later practice.
The actual music, on the other hand, is very much of its time and the closest resemblance among the better-known composers is found in the madrigals of Monteverdi -- their expressive lines, piquant dissonances, and emotional intensity are all here.
The ten suites or "Setts" together add up to some two hours of music. The complete recording I have at hand comes from the enterprising ATMA Classique label in Quebec, and the recording sessions took place between 2002 and 2006. The ensemble performing this stimulating and pleasurable music is called "Les Voix Humaines". These artists bring the long-gone era of the Stuart court to life with their sprightly playing of this music. The pieces cover a surprisingly large emotional range, greatly increasing their attraction to modern audiences.
This recording is a delightful find, and copies are still available.
The Royall Consorts are a series of 10 suites of dances for an ensemble of two viols and two viola da gamba, with two theorbos (bass lute) supplying a plucked bass continuo. The form is recognizably the ancestor of the type of suites composed a century later by Bach and Handel: a prelude to each suite (here called a "Fantazy") is followed by some mix of such dances as the "Saraband", "Aire", "Corant", "Alman", "Galliard" -- the very names draw attention to the structural similarity of later suites from other hands. In several cases, the dances appear in pairs of common type, also pointing towards later practice.
The actual music, on the other hand, is very much of its time and the closest resemblance among the better-known composers is found in the madrigals of Monteverdi -- their expressive lines, piquant dissonances, and emotional intensity are all here.
The ten suites or "Setts" together add up to some two hours of music. The complete recording I have at hand comes from the enterprising ATMA Classique label in Quebec, and the recording sessions took place between 2002 and 2006. The ensemble performing this stimulating and pleasurable music is called "Les Voix Humaines". These artists bring the long-gone era of the Stuart court to life with their sprightly playing of this music. The pieces cover a surprisingly large emotional range, greatly increasing their attraction to modern audiences.
This recording is a delightful find, and copies are still available.
Wednesday 25 February 2015
Powerful Beginning
Sorry, I have been absent from this blog for a long time now. I was on a long trip out of the country so naturally my travel blog was getting all the attention (see the link on the left side of the page).
Anyway, I recently pulled out and listened to a CD of an early work which belies its author's immaturity as a musician, sounding both assured and experienced.
The opening is a brief fortissimo fanfare for trombones in slow common time. It begins with a drop of a minor third and return to the original note. This motif will colour almost all of the succeeding movement. As soon as the fanfare ends (a mere matter of a few seconds) the strings and winds set up a motoric pulse in 6/8 time, unusually sounding on the beats 2, 3, 5, and 6 of the bar. Over this begins a rising and falling scale figure which gradually gains power and intensity as the movement builds up to its full head of steam. Along with it comes a restless ostinato which is built on that falling and rising minor third. All these ingredients share one dominant quality: they are huge generators of energy, and this music is full of tension, power, and an almost irresistible driving force.
This breathtaking opening, impossible to erase from your mind once you've heard it, marks the beginning of the symphonic career of Antonin Dvořák. He composed it in 1865 when he was just 24 years of age, and it was perhaps his first really large-scale composition. Compare that with Brahms whose first symphony was not completed until he was 33 years old and had many more compositions, including numerous major works with orchestra, behind him.
Dvořák composed the first symphony to enter into a competition in Germany. He did not win, and the score was not returned to him. Later in life, he made a catalogue of his own works and in it he mentioned the symphony with the subtitle "The Bells of Zlonice", a reference to the village where he was living and working at the time. Since the music has no apparent programmatic content whatsoever, certainly containing no overt bell figures or sounds, this title may as well be discarded. He also stated incorrectly that he had destroyed the manuscript. However, it reappeared in an auction sale in Leipzig in the 1930s and was subsequently published and performed.
I have to admit that the rest of the symphony is not terribly interesting. Even the first movement contains severe structural weaknesses, but the restless energy and forward drive of the music (for me) overcomes all problems, and makes it a memorable listening experience.
I previously described the opening bars, a minute or so of music already full of materials promising for good symphonic development. In fact, the exposition section of the movement lasts for six full minutes and is (in my recording) repeated in full, thereby accounting for 12 of the 18 minutes which the movement lasts. The development section is severely compressed, taking only a few minutes, but managing to work some of the figures around very creatively in that time. During the course of the movement, the energetic ostinato of 5 notes only slackens once or twice, replaced by smiling major-key melodic material which might be called the "second subject", but these respites last mere moments before the darker minor of the powerful, driving main tempo resumes.
As the movement rolls forward towards its climax, the opening fanfare is heard again on the trombones several times, while the ostinato (another form of the same melody) is tossed around to virtually every main instrument in the orchestra, even appearing for a time on the timpani. The final build-up is a virtuoso reworking of all the main materials, and at the very climax the trombones re-enter fortissimo with the rising and falling scale from the opening, a hair-raising culmination which leads shortly to the emphatic final cadence -- and the movement stops abruptly (but punctually) on a series of slamming staccato chords.
I can think of few examples in all of music of a piece which keeps on rolling forwards so relentlessly, a musical juggernaut in effect, for such a prolonged time. This overpowering energy might indeed be judged a fault by some, but to me it's the feature which totally justifies this movement as being worthy of preservation. What is even more remarkable is the fact that, unlike all his other symphonic works, Dvořák never had the opportunity to revise this one. His first thoughts in this opening movement are remarkably strong and clear, and I love listening to it.
As an interesting footnote: even though he had not seen the score for almost 30 years, it seems possible that he may have remembered this symphony well enough that he was consciously quoting it in his Requiem, Op. 89 of 1891 ( A Beautiful Choral Rarity ). The Dies Irae movement uses the same restless ostinato figure as this symphonic movement, but played much faster and translated into common time.
Anyway, I recently pulled out and listened to a CD of an early work which belies its author's immaturity as a musician, sounding both assured and experienced.
The opening is a brief fortissimo fanfare for trombones in slow common time. It begins with a drop of a minor third and return to the original note. This motif will colour almost all of the succeeding movement. As soon as the fanfare ends (a mere matter of a few seconds) the strings and winds set up a motoric pulse in 6/8 time, unusually sounding on the beats 2, 3, 5, and 6 of the bar. Over this begins a rising and falling scale figure which gradually gains power and intensity as the movement builds up to its full head of steam. Along with it comes a restless ostinato which is built on that falling and rising minor third. All these ingredients share one dominant quality: they are huge generators of energy, and this music is full of tension, power, and an almost irresistible driving force.
This breathtaking opening, impossible to erase from your mind once you've heard it, marks the beginning of the symphonic career of Antonin Dvořák. He composed it in 1865 when he was just 24 years of age, and it was perhaps his first really large-scale composition. Compare that with Brahms whose first symphony was not completed until he was 33 years old and had many more compositions, including numerous major works with orchestra, behind him.
Dvořák composed the first symphony to enter into a competition in Germany. He did not win, and the score was not returned to him. Later in life, he made a catalogue of his own works and in it he mentioned the symphony with the subtitle "The Bells of Zlonice", a reference to the village where he was living and working at the time. Since the music has no apparent programmatic content whatsoever, certainly containing no overt bell figures or sounds, this title may as well be discarded. He also stated incorrectly that he had destroyed the manuscript. However, it reappeared in an auction sale in Leipzig in the 1930s and was subsequently published and performed.
I have to admit that the rest of the symphony is not terribly interesting. Even the first movement contains severe structural weaknesses, but the restless energy and forward drive of the music (for me) overcomes all problems, and makes it a memorable listening experience.
I previously described the opening bars, a minute or so of music already full of materials promising for good symphonic development. In fact, the exposition section of the movement lasts for six full minutes and is (in my recording) repeated in full, thereby accounting for 12 of the 18 minutes which the movement lasts. The development section is severely compressed, taking only a few minutes, but managing to work some of the figures around very creatively in that time. During the course of the movement, the energetic ostinato of 5 notes only slackens once or twice, replaced by smiling major-key melodic material which might be called the "second subject", but these respites last mere moments before the darker minor of the powerful, driving main tempo resumes.
As the movement rolls forward towards its climax, the opening fanfare is heard again on the trombones several times, while the ostinato (another form of the same melody) is tossed around to virtually every main instrument in the orchestra, even appearing for a time on the timpani. The final build-up is a virtuoso reworking of all the main materials, and at the very climax the trombones re-enter fortissimo with the rising and falling scale from the opening, a hair-raising culmination which leads shortly to the emphatic final cadence -- and the movement stops abruptly (but punctually) on a series of slamming staccato chords.
I can think of few examples in all of music of a piece which keeps on rolling forwards so relentlessly, a musical juggernaut in effect, for such a prolonged time. This overpowering energy might indeed be judged a fault by some, but to me it's the feature which totally justifies this movement as being worthy of preservation. What is even more remarkable is the fact that, unlike all his other symphonic works, Dvořák never had the opportunity to revise this one. His first thoughts in this opening movement are remarkably strong and clear, and I love listening to it.
As an interesting footnote: even though he had not seen the score for almost 30 years, it seems possible that he may have remembered this symphony well enough that he was consciously quoting it in his Requiem, Op. 89 of 1891 ( A Beautiful Choral Rarity ). The Dies Irae movement uses the same restless ostinato figure as this symphonic movement, but played much faster and translated into common time.
Friday 16 January 2015
Endless Melody
Today I'm sliding a bit away from my normal field for this blog and commenting on a piece that is actually fairly well-known. My bad. But I was listening to this piece the last few days, and felt moved to play it several times over. The more I played it, the more I appreciated the special form of genius at work in this music, a genius which I feel is not often appreciated for what it truly is.
Among Mahler's symphonies, the longest without question is the Third. It's a remarkable symphonic fresco or panorama of the layers of life on earth and beyond. In Mahler's original programme for the work, the final movement was entitled "What Love Tells Me". Coming after the angel song of the penultimate fifth movement, it's pretty obvious that Mahler intended to make a reference to the Love of God for humanity. That, by the way, is reinforced by several letters he wrote at the time he composed the work.
How can you, in music, depict the Love of God? Many composers have evaded this supreme challenge. Mahler tackled it head-on, and the result is a most unusual symphonic movement. One of the greatest rarities in all of music is a symphony that ends with a slow movement. But Mahler actually did just that twice in his career -- here in the Third Symphony, and again in the Ninth. In both cases, the music is dominated by the sound of the strings.
This is easy to understand. When you choose to move in a slow tempo, the strings can convey a long singing legato line far more easily than the winds or brasses. But there's more to it than just technical ease. When the strings are played quietly, with sordines, and high in their range, they can produce the most gentle, unearthly sounds, filled with a sensation of peace and serenity. And that's just what happens in this finale.
All this is beautiful, and easy to understand. What amazes me is that no commentator I have ever read has drawn attention to Mahler's truly unique achievement in this music. The movement opens with a rising fourth followed by a descending and ascending melody which spans four bars of music. This much will recur. But after the first four bars, the music never traces the same path twice. Without haste, and in an atmosphere of true calm and peace, the melody continues to unfold in 4-bar phrases, no two alike. The only exception is the four-bar opening. That's remarkable enough evidence of pure creativity at work in itself. Even more remarkable is the length of the melody which Mahler continues to spin from this simple beginning. At the six-minute mark, a new melody played high up in the violins takes matters into a new direction. Finally, at about eight minutes in, the music rises to the first of several loud passages and then dies back down to a repeat of the opening.
Put that in perspective. Most popular songs last for 3-4 minutes. Many symphonic movements, even in Mahler, are over in seven minutes or less. Here, Mahler has taken eight minutes just to unfold the first stream of continuous, uninterrupted melody. It's truly amazing -- as well as being one of the most purely beautiful pieces of music ever written, in my humble opinion.
As the movement continues to unfold, it rises to two Bruckneresque climaxes which Jack Diether so memorably described as "evocative of burning pain." The second is the anguished, tortured height of the entire movement, and dies slowly away into a silence which is finally broken by what I can only describe as a gentle, quiet voice of blessing intoned by a solo flute.
Then the main melody returns, now played quietly in a high register by a solo trumpet. This sound in context is so unearthly beautiful that one senses Mahler must have been putting his own personal gloss on the Christian tradition of the "Last Trumpet" which will sound at the end of the world -- notably, a totally different gloss from the one he used in the Second "Resurrection" Symphony.
The feeling that this huge slow finale is perfectly balanced arises not least from the fact that the long final statement of the melody and the majestic coda together last almost exactly as long as the sustained opening where the melody unfolded without any significant repetition for eight minutes.
Perhaps it was an unsolvable problem, but I have to confess that the lengthy final chord with slow timpani open fifths played beneath doesn't quite crown this movement or complete it as convincingly as I would like. But never mind. The entire movement, the final pages apart, stands as one of the most extraordinary sustained outpourings of melody in the entire musical repertoire. For that reason, if for no other, it certainly deserves to ranks as a masterpiece.
Among Mahler's symphonies, the longest without question is the Third. It's a remarkable symphonic fresco or panorama of the layers of life on earth and beyond. In Mahler's original programme for the work, the final movement was entitled "What Love Tells Me". Coming after the angel song of the penultimate fifth movement, it's pretty obvious that Mahler intended to make a reference to the Love of God for humanity. That, by the way, is reinforced by several letters he wrote at the time he composed the work.
How can you, in music, depict the Love of God? Many composers have evaded this supreme challenge. Mahler tackled it head-on, and the result is a most unusual symphonic movement. One of the greatest rarities in all of music is a symphony that ends with a slow movement. But Mahler actually did just that twice in his career -- here in the Third Symphony, and again in the Ninth. In both cases, the music is dominated by the sound of the strings.
This is easy to understand. When you choose to move in a slow tempo, the strings can convey a long singing legato line far more easily than the winds or brasses. But there's more to it than just technical ease. When the strings are played quietly, with sordines, and high in their range, they can produce the most gentle, unearthly sounds, filled with a sensation of peace and serenity. And that's just what happens in this finale.
All this is beautiful, and easy to understand. What amazes me is that no commentator I have ever read has drawn attention to Mahler's truly unique achievement in this music. The movement opens with a rising fourth followed by a descending and ascending melody which spans four bars of music. This much will recur. But after the first four bars, the music never traces the same path twice. Without haste, and in an atmosphere of true calm and peace, the melody continues to unfold in 4-bar phrases, no two alike. The only exception is the four-bar opening. That's remarkable enough evidence of pure creativity at work in itself. Even more remarkable is the length of the melody which Mahler continues to spin from this simple beginning. At the six-minute mark, a new melody played high up in the violins takes matters into a new direction. Finally, at about eight minutes in, the music rises to the first of several loud passages and then dies back down to a repeat of the opening.
Put that in perspective. Most popular songs last for 3-4 minutes. Many symphonic movements, even in Mahler, are over in seven minutes or less. Here, Mahler has taken eight minutes just to unfold the first stream of continuous, uninterrupted melody. It's truly amazing -- as well as being one of the most purely beautiful pieces of music ever written, in my humble opinion.
As the movement continues to unfold, it rises to two Bruckneresque climaxes which Jack Diether so memorably described as "evocative of burning pain." The second is the anguished, tortured height of the entire movement, and dies slowly away into a silence which is finally broken by what I can only describe as a gentle, quiet voice of blessing intoned by a solo flute.
Then the main melody returns, now played quietly in a high register by a solo trumpet. This sound in context is so unearthly beautiful that one senses Mahler must have been putting his own personal gloss on the Christian tradition of the "Last Trumpet" which will sound at the end of the world -- notably, a totally different gloss from the one he used in the Second "Resurrection" Symphony.
The feeling that this huge slow finale is perfectly balanced arises not least from the fact that the long final statement of the melody and the majestic coda together last almost exactly as long as the sustained opening where the melody unfolded without any significant repetition for eight minutes.
Perhaps it was an unsolvable problem, but I have to confess that the lengthy final chord with slow timpani open fifths played beneath doesn't quite crown this movement or complete it as convincingly as I would like. But never mind. The entire movement, the final pages apart, stands as one of the most extraordinary sustained outpourings of melody in the entire musical repertoire. For that reason, if for no other, it certainly deserves to ranks as a masterpiece.
Friday 2 January 2015
Snow: Be Careful What You Wish For
Snegurochka, "The Snow Maiden", is a Russian fairy-tale play by Alexander Ostrovsky. It tells the story of the divine Snow Maiden who makes the mistake of falling in love with a mortal, only to then become subject to the rays of the sun -- with predictable and lamentable results. It's one of many folk tales from various traditions which examine the grave dangers of immortals and mortals trying to join their lives together. Not incidentally, it also shows the dangers of wishing for something that you really can't or shouldn't have.
Well-known, at least by name, is Rimsky-Korsakov's operatic version of the play. If the complete opera is not heard outside of Russia, the orchestral suite which the composer prepared from it is certainly familiar to many people.
Just recently, I stumbled across a Chandos recording from 1994, conducted in Detroit by Neeme Jarvi, of the incidental music which Tchaikovsky composed for the play's premiere. It was the first time I had ever heard of Tchaikovsky having any connection with this story!
I popped the record on to listen, and was immediately hooked. This is a fairly early Tchaikovsky work, his Op. 12, and it predates all the famous concertos, the three great ballets, and all the symphonies except #s 1 and 2. Four years after composing The Snow Maiden music, Tchaikovsky produced his finest opera, Eugene Onegin, and I was immediately reminded of that work as I sat down to listen to The Snow Maiden.
This resemblance is due in no small measure to the fact that much of The Snow Maiden consists of vocal solos and choral movements. The melodic style, harmony, and orchestration of these numbers, the very innate "Russian-ness" of the musical world, definitely point the way towards Onegin. Right from the Dance and Chorus of the Birds which follows the introduction, the tone is set. The lively chattering woodwinds introduce a folk-like melody which, as folk tunes tend to do, simply repeats its phrases over and over, relying on masterly orchestration to sustain interest. The programme notes, by the way, point out the use of over a dozen actual folk songs in the music, without specifying whether this is one of them. However, Tchaikovsky was certainly a good enough melodist to be more than capable of writing a tune in folk-song style!
A key character in the story is Lel, the shepherd who introduces the Snow Maiden into the mortal world. She has three songs in all, and two of them use authentic folk tunes.
The score is laced with instrumental movements which served as introductions and entr'actes. In these Tchaikovsky demonstrated his already-advanced gifts in orchestration, especially the use of the woodwinds for their specific colours. A "Jester's Dance" provides a lively contrast, reaching back to the musical world of the second symphony and forward to the first act of Swan Lake.
The choral movements are the ones where the score is at its most "Onegin-ish". The harmonies are laid out mostly in block chords, the choral sound generally used as a single 4-part mass.
The entire score runs to just a few seconds under 80 minutes. It may not be absolutely top-drawer Tchaikovsky all the way, but the composer retained a strong fondness for this music -- and no wonder. It has a kind of spring-time freshness and brilliance which makes it unique in his output The brooding melancholy of so many of his later scores is almost entirely absent, in spite of the unhappy ending of the Snow Maiden herself.
The excellence of the playing and singing makes this record self-recommending. Any Tchaikovsky fan should certainly investigate this release, still available through the Chandos records website!
Well-known, at least by name, is Rimsky-Korsakov's operatic version of the play. If the complete opera is not heard outside of Russia, the orchestral suite which the composer prepared from it is certainly familiar to many people.
Just recently, I stumbled across a Chandos recording from 1994, conducted in Detroit by Neeme Jarvi, of the incidental music which Tchaikovsky composed for the play's premiere. It was the first time I had ever heard of Tchaikovsky having any connection with this story!
I popped the record on to listen, and was immediately hooked. This is a fairly early Tchaikovsky work, his Op. 12, and it predates all the famous concertos, the three great ballets, and all the symphonies except #s 1 and 2. Four years after composing The Snow Maiden music, Tchaikovsky produced his finest opera, Eugene Onegin, and I was immediately reminded of that work as I sat down to listen to The Snow Maiden.
This resemblance is due in no small measure to the fact that much of The Snow Maiden consists of vocal solos and choral movements. The melodic style, harmony, and orchestration of these numbers, the very innate "Russian-ness" of the musical world, definitely point the way towards Onegin. Right from the Dance and Chorus of the Birds which follows the introduction, the tone is set. The lively chattering woodwinds introduce a folk-like melody which, as folk tunes tend to do, simply repeats its phrases over and over, relying on masterly orchestration to sustain interest. The programme notes, by the way, point out the use of over a dozen actual folk songs in the music, without specifying whether this is one of them. However, Tchaikovsky was certainly a good enough melodist to be more than capable of writing a tune in folk-song style!
A key character in the story is Lel, the shepherd who introduces the Snow Maiden into the mortal world. She has three songs in all, and two of them use authentic folk tunes.
The score is laced with instrumental movements which served as introductions and entr'actes. In these Tchaikovsky demonstrated his already-advanced gifts in orchestration, especially the use of the woodwinds for their specific colours. A "Jester's Dance" provides a lively contrast, reaching back to the musical world of the second symphony and forward to the first act of Swan Lake.
The choral movements are the ones where the score is at its most "Onegin-ish". The harmonies are laid out mostly in block chords, the choral sound generally used as a single 4-part mass.
The entire score runs to just a few seconds under 80 minutes. It may not be absolutely top-drawer Tchaikovsky all the way, but the composer retained a strong fondness for this music -- and no wonder. It has a kind of spring-time freshness and brilliance which makes it unique in his output The brooding melancholy of so many of his later scores is almost entirely absent, in spite of the unhappy ending of the Snow Maiden herself.
The excellence of the playing and singing makes this record self-recommending. Any Tchaikovsky fan should certainly investigate this release, still available through the Chandos records website!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)