Thursday, 11.29.07, 6:31 am
Classical Performances
The Dudamel Express in New York
Being a protégé of Claudio Abbado’s just about guarantees a great career – but not Daniel Harding, nor Patrick Lange or any other élève of his has had the meteoric rise in fame that Gustavo Dudamel enjoys. The native Venezuelan, born in 1981, became music director of the The Orquesta Sinfónica Simón Bolívar de Venezuela at age 18. At 23 he won the inaugural Gustav Mahler Conduction Competition of the Bamberg Symphony Orchestra in 2004. A year later he conducted at the Proms where only Simon Rattle and Daniel Harding had conducted at a younger age. He was filling in for Neeme Järvi with the Gothenburg Symphony then, but in 2006 he was appointed Principal Conductor of that orchestra. The same year he signed an exclusive contract with Deutsche Grammophon where his debut– a tradition at DG, it seems – was a recording of Beethoven’s Fifth and Seventh Symphonies.
This year he has been announced to succeed Esa-Pekka Salonen as music director of the LA Philharmonic in 2009 where he will start his tenure at the tender age of 28. This is quite a bit younger than Alan Gilbert, designated music director of the New York Philharmonic from 2009 on, whose appointment is more notable for it going to a native New Yorker, for the first time, rather than Mr. Gilbert’s 42 years – which is exactly average among starting New York Phil Music Directors since 1842.
Gustavo Dudamel will make his debut with the New York Philharmonic in a series of concerts between November 29th and December 4th. The program will include Chávez’s Symphony No. 2 (Carlos, thankfully, not Hugo), nicknamed Sinfonia India; Prokofiev’s Fifth Symphony, and the Dvořák’s Violin Concerto with Gil Shaham as soloist. (The concert will be broadcast the week of January 7, 2008, on The New York Philharmonic This Week, a nationally syndicated radio concert series.)
But even as Dudamel conducts more and more of the great orchestras in the world, the principle attraction in concert halls around the world are still the appearances of Dudamel with the over 100 heads strong Simon Bolivar Symphony Orchestra. The orchestra is (more or less) a youth orchestra and stands atop “El Sistema”, the 30 year old Venezuelan National Youth and Children Orchestra Network. Wherever these young players go and play, audiences are riveted by their energy, the raw passion, and the electricity that they can convey when at their best. Their virility easily overshadows the occasional lapse, such as when the lights in the orchestra hall go off and go back on only to reveal the entire orchestra, including conductor Dudamel, in jackets with the Venezuelan flag. (There’s nothing wrong with cultural diplomacy – even for or by a dictatorial country – but good taste should not be violated in the process.)
It is with this orchestra, often named the “Simón Bolívar Youth Orchestra of Venezuela” in English, that DG has so far recorded. It would be a delight if the sparks that fly in performance could be transferred easily unto record, but understandably that does not seem to be the case. The earlier Beethoven, full of vigor and breadth, seems oddly structured. All the vitality can’t help making this an awkward, rather than refreshing experience. I once played this recording when a friend and music critic stopped by, inquiring if it was Furtwängler conducting. Unfortunately he was referring to the sound which – while obviously not at low 1940’s mono standards – is rather hazy and undefined. A recording with merit, but not all that much.
Perhaps this release testifies to the Dudamel phenomenon that best (or only?) translates in live performance when the energy and the enthusiasm of his players – all orchestras, but especially the Simon Bolivar Youth Orchestra of Venezuela – can be transmitted to the audience. On disc it is a little more difficult to be infected with his urgent, high spirit. (Recorded at the great auditorium of the City University of Caracas – the sound is a bit ‘fuzzier’ than on the DG recording with Boulez – but it is better than on the Beethoven disc.)
If in New York, or soon enough in LA, one might like to try out the Dudamel-effect by attending one of his concerts.
Photos © Dan Porges (top) and © Frank Di Polo and Nohely Oliveros
Wednesday, 11.28.07, 7:42 am
The Yellow Label Goes On-Line
“Deutsche Grammophon (DG), a division of Universal Music Group, the world’s leading music company, will become the first major classical record label to make the majority of its huge catalogue available online for download with the launch of its new DG Web Shop (www.dgwebshop.com).”
It takes some creative re-thinking of the term “major classical record label” to exclude the excellent and by most counts larger Naxos label, but even if DG & Company don’t consider the humbly innovative budget label from Hong Kong en par, they do take note what the competition does. After all, their new and laudable web-venture does seem to have taken more than a cue from Naxos’s on-line offerings (on Naxos.com and ClassicsOnline.com) which have proven highly successful over the last years. Asked if there had been any inspiration from those ventures, UMG’s Johnathan Gruber said that “the DG Web Shop has in common with Naxos that we all want to see classical music expand its availability and its audience” but that “DG took little inspiration from Naxos” and that the DG Web Shop had been in the planning long before the ClassicsOnline site was launched. Of the other differences/advantages of the DG Web Shop I had pointed out, the most curious (or bold) is surely that their site “carries only Deutsche Grammophon products [therefore providing] the strongest guarantee possible that whatever you buy [...] is a great performance” (emphasis mine).
That’s the “shopping by brand-name” strategy, the virtues and disadvantages of which I have extolled in a previous post (where I used DG as an example) — but it’s still strange to hear from a seller the argument that less choice is really in the consumer’s interest.
In any case Deutsche Grammophon should not be chided for being late to the party, they should be applauded for joining others in what simply is a good idea and – presumably – good business. DG will launch its Web Shop on November 28th, enabling consumers in 40 countries to download music “at the highest technical and artistic standards.”
“This global penetration includes markets where the major e-business retailers, such as iTunes, are not yet available: Southeast Asia including China, India, Latin America, South Africa, and Central and Eastern Europe including Russia.
Almost 2,500 DG albums will be available for download in maximum MP3 quality at a transfer bit-rate of 320 kilobits per second (kbps) – an audio-level that experts agree is indistinguishable from CD quality audio; and which exceeds the usual industry download-standard of 128-192 kbps (as well as EMI’s 256 kbps on iTunes).”
A little jibe at EMI must be irresistible – and though I find that there is almost always a better word than “penetration” to use in a press release, the venture does sound impressive, indeed. (Audiophiles meanwhile might disagree about “indistinguishable from CD quality audio” — but then they often don’t find CD quality audio very appealing in the first place.)
The best news is surely that the DG Web Shop makes available almost 600 album titles which are no longer available on CD – with more out-of-print titles to follow.
“The goal is to digitize all the great Deutsche Grammophon recordings to be accessible for download – a treasure of music history, always available.”
This is the dream of perfect availability come true. Particular recordings need no longer have a minimum popularity to be available. Even if just a dozen ears consider Conductor X’s rendition of a particular piece a musical revelation (not enough to merit a costly re-issue and catalog maintenance in the traditional way), they will be now be able to have access to it.
Individual titles (< 7 min.) will be just over one dollar, regular-length albums just over $10. E-booklets - which include liner notes and cover art and would be particularly attractive to have for those out-of-print items, would be an extra dollar.
And for all those who are concerned about being able to play their downloads only on one player, or only so many times, or copy the music twice but then not be able to use the burned disc in the car etc., DG will offer all titles MP3s without Digital Rights Management – which is happy news for all your iPods and Walkmans and regular CD players for which you can burn copies.
Judging by Naxos’ success, DG won’t regret this move while classical aficionados and novices alike will benefit.
Tuesday, 11.27.07, 11:09 am
Classical Performances
Where Death Can no Longer Cry and Life no Longer Laugh
Hitler as an opera’s protagonist would strike most culture and opera-loving people as a somewhat tasteless choice. But what if the opera had been composed in a concentration camp? Inexorably wedded to the circumstance of its creation, “Der Kaiser von Atlantis” – considered Viktor Ullmann’s masterpiece – is just that. A work of art, theater, and music created under circumstances that must seem unlikely or impossible to us. But Viktor Ullmann, “Director for Musical Leisure Activities” at Theresienstadt (Terezín) seemed to have taken his cynically titled position at the transit camp (one of the camps, like Bergen-Belsen, intended to deceive international observers about the true atrocities going on elsewhere) with some vigor and zeal. For two years – from September 1942 to October 1944 – it was, tragically ironic, the most productive time of his life. Then, on October 18th, 1944 his life was brought to an end in Auschwitz, only two days after being deported from Terezín.
The short one act opera “The Emperor of Atlantis” (also known as “Death Resigns” or “Death’s Refusal”) was created with librettist Peter Kien in the Winter of 1943/44 for seven characters or “Archetypes” and small orchestra. Rehearsals faltered when too many of the participants were either shipped off or became sick in early 1944. Later that year, the inmates managed to put together a dress rehearsal, after all. Not surprisingly to anyone who has seen or heard the opera, the efforts to avoid censorship through abstraction and symbolism in the opera could not have fooled even the densest SS Guard. With the blatant references to Hitler via “The Emperor” a.k.a. “Supreme General” – more than just a hint at “GröFaZ”(1) – the opera was deemed unacceptable, was banned, and never premiered. Only shortly thereafter – related to the production or not – the collaborators on this opera were shipped off to Auschwitz. The opera only survived because Viktor Ullmann handed off the score to his fellow inmate at Terezín, Emil Utitz, whose fate was more fortunate.
The Orchestra Jakobsplatz München, formed by young musicians of the Jewish community of Munich and beyond, performed that infrequently heard (though hardly neglected) work at the opening of the 21st Festival of Jewish Culture in Munich. This was the third collaboration of the Orchestra and the Bavarian State Opera (after Philip Glass’ “The Fall of the House of Usher” in 2005 and Vivaldis’ “Juditha Triumphans” in 2006). And the involvement of one of the largest and most professional opera houses showed! I would not be surprised if, in turning the Jewish Community Center’s auditorium into a little opera house, twice as many technicians, artists, and stage hands than musicians were involved . (Markus Koch, direction; Iris Jedamski, stage; Michael Bauer, lighting.)
And since the State Opera also lent its singers to the effort, vocal contributions were extraordinary among all and perhaps most noteworthy with Christian Miedl’s Emperor and Kevin Conners’ Harlequin.
But no matter the amount of effort, there is of course no way to perform this opera with even the slightest degree of ‘authenticity’ – an authenticity that would not only demand the recreation of the ghastly and dire circumstances but also the execution of a random 80 percent of audience and musicians after the performance. If ever there was a good argument against “Period Performances”…
Viktor Ullmann’s life and work has been rescued from near total obscurity to relative prominence by this opera. Performances of it have increased appreciably since 1994 when Schott Publishing decided to make Ullmann’s work available in print. There are two recordings of it by now: Decca’s 1993 ‘luxurious’ version with a fine cast and full-size orchestra, part of the discontinued but sporadically reissued “Entartete Musik” edition, and a 1995 Czech release with a small orchestra (as indicated in the score) on STUDIO MATOUŠ MK. Washington National Symphony Orchestra Principal Guest Conductor Iván Fischer has just conducted an ‘prop-enhanced’ concert performance at the Budapest Mahlerfest. James Conlon has long championed it, too, and further contributed to the Ullmann reception with the DVD “Estranged Passengers – In Search Of Viktor Ullmann”. (The title is taken from Ullmann’s diary, written largely in verse; the DVD contains a documentary, an interview with Conlon, and a performance of Ullmann’s orchestrated Fifth Piano Sonata.)
But just as the opera cannot be performed in an even remotely ‘authentic’ way, it cannot be separated from its story, either. Viewed and heard in isolation, it would merely be a strange opera, pleasantly short at under 50 minutes, influenced by Revue and Jazz (reminiscent of “Johnny Spielt Auf”), veering between the lyrical, the alienating, and the ugly. Emperor “Űberall” (invariably translated as “Emperor Overall” – although that’s too literal; “Emperor Everywhere” is more apt, as would be “Emperor Above All”, or “Emperor Omnipresent”) cruelly rules, fighting a war of “all against all”. Death, feeling co-opted into the Emperor’s schemes, decides to go on strike. As a result, people can still get shot, mutilated, and torn apart, but they can no longer die. The Emperor tries to use this to his advantage, promising his soldiers eternal life. But even with his propaganda tool “The Drummer” (the beautifully acting and singing Stephanie Hampl), he cannot prevent more and more rebellions from springing up in response to the misery and suffering caused by the absence of death. The Emperor despairs and in a delirium he sees Death.
Death promises to resume his duties as long as the Emperor is willing to be the first to meet the “new” Death. Eventually the Emperor agrees – but not without prophesizing that his fall will hardly mean the end to violence. A chorale (a warped “A Mighty Fortress is our God”) praises Death as giving value to life and ends the opera. A “Speaker” (an imposing Andreas Kohn) announced the action and participants before the opera and serves as the communication manager for the Emperor. Harlequin (looking rather more like Pierrot in Claudia Gall’s costume) is a stand in for life and serves as a constant reminder of hope. A young soldier and a female colleague of his from the opposing army provide a romantic subplot in the third scene. They were sung by Michael McBride and Elif Aytekin who, if equipped with a more natural German, could have done more with the spoken elements, the same of which goes for Adrian Sâmpetrean’s otherwise striking Death.
The orchestra, led by their young and engaging founder Daniel Grossmann, who displays a charmingly nervous confidence, did as well as might have been expected, playing the music – which offers few ‘thankful’ parts to show off with, anyway – in a perfectly capable manner. As the Decca recording shows, a souped-up professional and polished orchestra can make the music sound much better. But whether that is desirable during a live performance that wishes to touch upon the spirit of the opera and perhaps also the occasion of its composition and first rehearsals, is questionable.
“Der Kaiser von Atlantis” – beyond being embraced as exciting due to its history – remains a troublesome work that is, in every way, difficult to come to terms with. And perhaps that’s precisely the message that an opera like this, born under such circumstances, should send to us and remind us of. In that sense the efforts of the Staatsoper, the Society for the Advancement of Jewish Culture and Tradition, and the Jakobsplatz Orchestra were well expended.
The In-Series brought this opera to Washington for the first and, so far, last time – which was in 1991. A local reprise might be in order.
1 – The German mocking acronym for “Greatest General of all Times” denoting Hitler and ridiculing the Nazi’s penchant for acronyms – while the title itself, coined by General Fieldmarshall Wilhelm Keitel, was ‘bestowed’ upon Hitler in all seriousness.
All pictures © Wilfried Hösl, published with kind permission of the Staatsoper München.
Depicting, from top to bottom, Andreas Kohn (A Speaker), Adrian Sampetrean (Death) and Kevin Conners (Harlequin), Christian Miedl (Emperor), Sampetrean and Miedl.
Errata corrige: Emperor Overall’s name is not a translation from the German “Überall” after all, but taken from the character’s title in the libretto which is the German-English mix of “Kaiser Overall”. My thanks to Mr. Grossmann for the clarification.
Monday, 11.19.07, 7:56 pm
New Releases: CDs
Transcriptions Revisited
"New Releases" posts are regular columns that feature reviews of new CDs that are, for one reason or another, truly outstanding among the many I come across every month.
Liszt and Brahms aimed to make great symphonic work more accessible with their transcriptions, either by playing them in concert (Liszt) or putting them within reach of amateur play at home (Brahms). But with high minded piano recitals increasingly rare and not reaching broad audiences, the demanding literature for solo piano was not possible to be enjoyed by the great unwashed.
That was a good enough excuse for Felix Weingartner to make a ‘missionary transcription’ by taking Beethoven’s Hammerklavier Sonata and orchestrating it for the public to experience this work in concert.
Never mind that the very notion defies all our modern sensibilities of Werktreue, op. 106 does not seem to be particularly suited to such treatment, though it is certainly symphonic in length. It’s a curious – and curious-making – monument of Weingartner’s admiration of Beethoven. I am not sure if it reveals anything new about the work. I am certain that it sounds better on the piano. Charles Rosen thought it “silly” and he was probably being kind. The 1930s sound is listenable – but no more. Alas, the very, very curious of us might still be tempted to hear the Hammerklavier thus strung up – a window onto another era, indeed.
We are in an age where the act of transcribing (or orchestrating, or arranging) is not terribly en vogue anymore. With recordings of even the most obscure pieces freely available and far more CD players than capable amateur pianists at home, the genre of transcription-as-introduction has run out of its arguments. Yet, with music consumption being easier than ever before, listening to obscure works and obscure versions thereof also comes at very little expense of effort, means, and time – and is therefore more tempting.
The raison d’etre for listening to transcriptions nowadays is usually that they are useful – or claimed to be – for shedding new light on a well-known work. That’s the reason I love Schoenberg’s or Webern’s or Alban Berg’s transcriptions of other composers’ works. They do offer insights – and of the gentlest nature – though mostly into the work, ideas and ideology of the transcribers, rather than the original composer.
Even a ‘difficult’ beauty like Berg’s violin concerto must be appreciated slowly by most listeners. Any such work needs to be met with a certain ‘benefit of the doubt’… a kind of generosity of the mind and ears with which ‘difficult’ music is approached before it can be liked. (My own process of appreciating composers like Wagner, Bruckner, late Beethoven, or Debussy has not been much different than for Webern, Berg, Boulez, or Dutilleux.) Hearing a much admired artist speak with passion about the piece or style in question is one way of attaining this ‘presumption of worthiness’. And Webern’s and Schoenberg’s transcriptions, too, help do just that. They are in and of themselves gorgeously beautiful, even to neophyte ears, and occasionally they can hand over the key to understanding more complex works of the composer in question.
There is an anecdote of Bruno Walter premiering the Schoenberg orchestration of the Brahms Quartet for Piano and Strings no 1 in G minor, Op. 25 in California where one of the ‘Dragon-Ladies’ of the Board came up to him afterwards and proclaimed: “I don’t know what everyone’s problem is with that Schoenberg. I think that was quite beautiful.” It is safe to say that she did not gain much insight into Schoenberg’s (actual) work, but at least she enjoyed his orchestration, which indeed – insight or not – any Brahms-lover will.
It was Walter who had suggested to Schoenberg to arrange and orchestrate that quartet – and it was Walter who coined the term “Brahms’ Fifth Symphony” for the result. It is, despite Schoenberg’s insistence that he only ‘opened up the inherent possibilities’ of works of past masters (certainly not true with a piece like the Monn Cello Concerto, though), a musical work of its own. And not just for the last movement’s instrumentation which really revels in surges of Hungarian color that Brahms would never have come up with.
This monumental and stunningly beautiful work is good to have in any performance. I’ve never heard it played quite as beautifully as on Christoph Eschenbach’s RCA recording with the Houston Symphony (coupled with Schoenberg’s excellent Bach transcriptions of BWV 552, BWV 654, and BWV 631) but the recording is sadly out of print. The finest sounding version currently available is probably Neeme Järvi’s on Chandos.
Another fine account has recently been offered by Robert Craft on Naxos – coupled with the aforementioned cello concerto, which is more based on, rather than “transcribed from”, Georg Matthias Monn’s (1717 – 1750) work. It’s a rare, albeit minor, gem and alternatively available with Yo-Yo Ma on Sony under Ozawa. It’s like a C.P.E. Bach-ish concerto twice removed, romanticized, and re-assembled. Significantly altered, it makes for a wholly new, oddly familiar, even disorienting work – but with its creator’s idiom still “pleasantly” intact.
Tacked onto that disc are Schoenberg’s “Five Pieces for Orchestra” which is great if you want to get into the ‘difficult’ (that is: real) Schoenberg on the strength of one disc. Still, it might be more attractive to get Robert Craft’s early Columbia recording only of Schoenberg transcriptions reissued by RCA.
Anton Webern’s Ricercata, his orchestration of Bach’s Ricercar a 6 voci from Ein musikalisches Opfer, is an even better example of coming through one composer’s work to the transcriber’s musical thought. Webern, as Schoenberg, understood Bach like few other composers and what Webern does to the austere fugue is a miracle on top of the wonder that is Bach. Like a film that gains in translation, structures and strands become clearer and more visible while the impression of the whole does not suffer but instead gains in coherence.
The recording of it that towers above the rest is Andrey Boreyko’s with the Hamburger Symphoniker (live). Their contribution cannot be overstated – especially when compared to other recordings like Pierre Boulez’ 1969 Sony version with the London Symphony Orchestra. The latter makes for a less divine or ethereal experience in its disjointed, pixillated ways, creating a yet more Webern-ite feel, but sacrificing much of the transcriptions ideal beauty.
(Further contributing to the attractiveness of Boreyko’s recording on edel / Berlin Classics is that it ingeniously brings together Alfred Schnittke’s riotous, crazy, and lovable “polystilistik” Faust Cantata and two beautifully performed Bach chorales. That has nothing to do with transcriptions, per se, but it’s always good to give the work of Schnittke a plug, in case it still needs it.)
When the ever-popular Kaiserwaltzer (Emperor Waltz), Rosen aus dem Süden (Roses from the South), Wein, Weib und Gesang (Wine, Women, and Song), and the Schatzwaltzer (Treasure Waltz) from Der Zigeunerbaron (The Gypsy Baron) are presented in their arrangements by Arnold (pre-“oe”) Schönberg, Alban Berg, and Anton Webern, even I can love Johann Strauss.
These three composers’ takes on Strauss are all part of the arrangements the created for Schönberg’s exclusive “Verein für musikalische Privataufführungen” (Association for Private Musical Performances). The Waltzes are not radical re-compositions but – as was the club’s goal and achievement – true-as-possible arrangements for a small group of players (usually including strings, piano, harmonium, and occasionally some assorted winds) so as to present and better understand the works at hand. (This all-Strauss event was a one-off fundraising concert and the only of the series that was open to the public – and that may explain the choice of such popular tunes.) The lush Straussian textures that the cynic might call saccharine get a notably more modern, obviously leaner touch. None of the Viennese lilt is sacrificed, however. These waltzes are all included on a beautifully played and handsomely packaged CD by the Berliner Streichquartett on edel/Berlin Classics. The transcriptions were a most happy surprise to me when I happened upon them. The whole CD is like a luxurious little dessert, and perfectly understood as such: short and sweet (at 43 minutes) and packed of a refreshing twist on undeniably delightful music. And if it is not new light that is being shed on the arrangers of the Second Viennese School here, at least they appear in a warm glow.
Sunday, 11.11.07, 7:13 pm
New Releases: CDs
Conducting / Composing: A Dichotomy That Wasn’t (Part II)
"New Releases" posts are regular columns that feature reviews of new CDs that are, for one reason or another, truly outstanding among the many I come across every month.
(Part One can be found here.)
How many people know that Rafael Kubelik composed five operas, three requiems, two symphonies, a violin concerto, more miscellaneous sacred music and many chamber works? One of the most respected conductors of his time and much loved, still, for his unassuming musicality, Rafael Kubelik was never one to press himself or his own music into the foreground. Some of his operas were performed (in Augsburg, I believe), but there is not one recording of his music that I am aware of. From the sound of the snippets caught on the lovely DVD “Rafael Kubelik – A Portrait” (Unitel/DG) we might be missing out on much beauty, actually. A small piece for strings and parts of his opera are excerpted or played in the background of the 45-some minute section that describes Kubelik’s career. While the DVD centers around Beethoven Sys.2, 3, Leonore III), Mozart (Sy.38), and Bruckner (Sy.4) performances with the Berlin Phil, the Vienna Phil, and the Concertgebouw, it is the inclusion of the Bruckner rehearsal and the “Scenes From a Musical Life” bonus that might well be the main reason to own this set.
There is a nostalgic “what-might-have-been” feeling when Chicago and New York music critics talk about Kubelik’s short lived career in the US. He was the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s Music Director from 1950 – 1953 in which he introduced over seventy (!) new works but was more or less driven out of town by the Chicago Tribune music critic Claudia Cassidy and/or the board of trustees (depending on who you ask). In either case it was precisely his departure from the “tried and true” ways that caused the discontent. Kubelik also served as the first music director of the Metropolitan Opera in 1973 – but when his friend, general manager Göran Gentele, died, so did Kubelik’s reason for having accepted that position newly created for him and he was succeeded by James Levine. But whether US audiences would have heard any of Kubelik’s own music is highly doubtful, seeing that he put his energies to the introduction of modern composers other than himself. Perhaps composing was an activity for inner balance for Kubelik – much like re-playing chess matches of the great masters was.
Pierre Boulez is the most notable exception to being taken seriously as either composer or conductor (but never both) nowadays. (Pace Esa Pekka Salonen.) His conducting is exemplary, the results often riveting or at least special for their (analytic) insight into the music, their clarity and cogency. He’s also a famous composer, of course, but if you think of him mainly – though possibly wrongly – as a conductor, there’s a reason for that, too. To make that point (without necessarily agreeing with it) I loosely paraphrase Robert R. Reilly: “Boulez is said to be a great conductor. I’ve not heard him conduct – but knowing his compositions, I wish he had done more of it.”Pretty funny – although I happen to be a sucker for Sur Incises, Explosante-fixe, Pli selon Pli, or the Piano Sonatas. Yet I’d be hard pressed to explain exactly why any better than I did when I said about the sonatas:
“Beautiful? Nay. Unless you have a mildly strange sense of what beauty is. Is it the wispy, slow second movement Lent of Sonata No. 2? Or the quirky, sprightly, darkly bubbling trios of the third movement’s scherzo (Modéré, presque vif) from the same work? For non-musicologist ears, what you get is largely a jumble of sound, an intellectual challenge. And yet it can be utterly enjoyable. Not the same as listening to a middle Beethoven sonata, of course, but anyone who knows what it takes to learn to like Beethoven’s op. 95 string quartet, a work as austere as Boulez’s sonatas are (seemingly) erratic, is on his way to find entertainment, solace, pleasure in these keyboard paintings. If looking at Barnett Newman’s work can fill you with an inexplicable sense of awe, you will likely enjoy these works. It isn’t always the music that counts, but the faintly grasped, hardly understood pictures it evokes.”
In fact, whether one likes his work or not (it seriously lacks all humor and the warm grace that makes Elliot Carter’s equally modern or “difficult” œuvre so much more accessible and widely appealing), Pierre Boulez is probably the only modern figure that is – and is considered – both: a great conductor and a great composer. (Savor the difference in the splendid JuxtaPositions film “Elliot Carter – A Labyrinth Of Time” when the two speak to and about each other.)
Even long after Beethoven, one of the most notable free-lance composers who – due to his deafness – retreated from the duties of conducting and performing, composing was a byproduct of being a conductor and vice versa. The roles were inseparable and it was expected that the leader of an orchestra provided it with the material to play with. From Bach up to Wagner, if you were going to sell pottery, you also dug the clay. There are obvious gains in efficiency achieved by a division of labor, and the separation of conductor from the material he presents did not do much harm, but the separation of the composer from the public he presents his material to, did. And even if only to the extent that a much adored conductor, much loved and applauded for great Brahms or Bach, would likely get more of the benefit of the doubt and credit of an open mind from his audience when he presented them with something (difficult) from his own pen. If you’ve noted the difference in applause during a new piece between a performance with the composer present or absent, you’ll know what I mean.
When Wilhelm Furtwängler composes, he means it!
We are back with Furtwängler, the composer. Perhaps you have heard his achingly somber and square jawed symphonies that, in the best of hands, can sound like imposing and attractive, 80+ minute, neo-Bruckner. It is the kind of music that absolutely has to be played well to be convincing at all – and just like Daniel Barenboim does that with Second Symphony, so do Matthias Wollong (violin) and Birgitta Wollenweber (piano) in their recording of the two violin sonatas. The shorter one of which (No.2) is 46 minutes long. There’s an overwhelming seriousness here, too, but that does not make them third-rate works.
His own description of his compositional style really needs little added: “I attempt to write [in a style that is] simple, grand, monumental”. Lucian Schiwietz writes in the (sloppily translated) liner notes of this CPO release: “The musical process [of these sonatas] is not driven forward by developmental work with concise, notable themes but through tonal tensions of chromatic alteration pushed to its very limits. The cohesion gained from this follows from rather basic musical forms like the triad, diatonic elements, or melodic ascents and descents.”
Or, to put it in somewhat more accessible words: If you like the most(ly) pleasing violin sonatas of Christian Sinding, Joseph Joachim Raff, Rued Langgard, Richard Franck, or (late) Gabriel Fauré, or – why not – George Enescu, then you’ll be happy to discover nearly two hours of Furtwängler this way.
Thursday, 11.8.07, 4:50 am
New Releases: CDs
Conducting / Composing: A Dichotomy That Wasn’t (Part I)
"New Releases" posts are regular columns that feature reviews of new CDs that are, for one reason or another, truly outstanding among the many I come across every month.
Listening to Wilhelm Furtwängler’s Violin Sonatas recently (cpo 777 217-2), I was again struck with the seriousness of his work: When Furtwängler composes, he means it!
By now, Furtwängler is well known as a musical figure best thought of as a conductor who also composed. In other words: The influx and availability of recordings of rare (sometimes neglected, sometimes plain secondary) compositions has made many classical music lovers aware of Furtwängler as a composer – and perhaps even of the fact that he thought himself a conducting composer, not vice versa.
He was far from being the only “composing conductor” or “conducting composer” of his time, but he is a fine example of that dichotomy that is – or was – none: Composing / Conducting.
There are a few popularly known examples, of course, but they strike us as exceptions that prove the rule: Leonard Bernstein, a conductor who was also a successful composer. Or, if we go a little further back, Gustav Mahler. A great composer who apparently was a really successful conductor, too.
Why do we think of Bernstein and Mahler the way we do (conductor first, composer second and the other way around) ? Because Bernstein’s music is trite and Mahler’s isn’t? A tempting suggestion, but probably not the main reason. More likely because Bernstein’s work as a conductor lives in countless (427, actually) CD and DVD recordings.
We think of Bernstein’s Sibelius, or Bernstein’s Mahler, or Bernstein’s Shostakovich, or of Bernstein as a brilliant communicator and educator of the young (it is difficult not to whine about the decay of standards in how we treat children, listening to or watching his broadcasts). Try his New York recordings of five great symphonies, each with an analysis (too engaging to be called a ‘lecture’), from the early 50s. They’re good listening for yourself – and if you have musically inclined children, you owe them this offering. Just as his Young People’s Concerts, too, should be on your list.
All this is to say that we know Bernstein as a brilliant performer – and perhaps that was his finest role. There’s an odd Mass and of course the exceptional opera Candide, and there is trouble brewing somewhere in Tahiti, and then there is West Side Story: Bernstein’s best to some, a cringe-fest to others. (I personally shudder recalling José Carreras’ Brooklyn-Tony-Romeo.) But none of that lives on as much as Bernstein’s interpretations of others. Especially since Bernstein the composer has lost his most fervent champion in the death of Bernstein the conductor.
Gustav Mahler, on the other hand, has left us no audible record of his gifts as a conductor. And though contemporaries described his conducting to have been breath-taking and path-breaking, the modern listener will never know. But we do know Mahler through his compositions and have plenty opportunity to listen to that aspect of his creative achievement. (See also the previously posted “Moreover Mahler”.) Perhaps it is a boon to Mahler as a composer that we do not have “Mahler’s Beethoven”, or “Mahler’s Brahms”, or “Mahler’s Wagner”.
Speaking of Wagner: Fewer listeners than are aware of Mahler’s conducting know that Wagner was considered among the finest (and most modern) Beethoven conductors of his time. Even this ‘quintessential composer’ conducted – and apparently very well. (Quintessential in the sense that he thought that that’s all he ought to be bothered with doing – and that everything else, except of course, the occasional depraved diatribes against Meyerbeer, Mendelssohn, & Co., was a waste of his time). And having now mentioned him, here comes perhaps the most important composer-conductor: Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy. The fifth Kapellmeister of the Gewandhausorchester Leipzig, more or less the founder of classical music as tradition, the ‘repertoire’, and tending to – and conserving – a core of ‘classic’ works that would be interpreted over and over again.
His work and influence might be considered the beginning of classical music as we know it; the most important step in the reception of classical music, and the induction of classical music into the taxidermists’ house of great art. Next time you begrudge having to sit still in concert or wonder why you can’t be served coffee and cake mid-Mozart go ahead and blame Mendelssohn (in part).
It is from this point forward that you can follow the greater specialization of musicians which eventually led to the de-facto division of labor between composer and conductor. Whether that has been a beneficial trend or not may well depend on whether you contemplate your complete cycles of Beethoven symphonies at home or your enjoyment of modern classical music. (Or maybe that already says it all?)
Just as conductors, the re-creative champions of our day, and composers are neatly separated in our minds, they are (or seem) separated from each other. One is involved in the daily work of attracting audiences into concert halls, motivating 100+ musicians, and making some of the finest music of the last 300 years come alive. The other sits in his-or-her office and indulges in transcribing the moon-phases of 1743 into a pantonal operatic masterwork to celebrate his career’s crowning achievement: tenure at Stanford University. That’s an unfair exaggeration, of course, but you get the point.
Few composers now conduct – simply because they are not good enough at it, compared to the specialists. When composer (slash-conductor) Peter Ruzicka led the Munich Philharmonic in Mahler’s Ninth Symphony last season, the orchestra allegedly balked; wishing to be led by a more inspiring, better conductor in their only Mahler concert of 2006/2007. Igor Stravinsky was famously derisive of his own conducting skills, and John Adams usually knows best handing the baton off to someone who earns his living with it.
Few conductors compose either – simply because they have too little time. Or if they do, they are aware of the difficulties with which their music will be received. Modern audiences think of a conductor programming his own music as engaging in some form of nepotism no less shameless than programming your reasonably talented wife-soprano or -cellist.
Of course there’s no rule without an exception – some (surprising ones) of which I will outline next week.
Monday, 11.5.07, 1:01 am
New Releases: CDs
Further Transcribed
"New Releases" posts are regular columns that feature reviews of new CDs that are, for one reason or another, truly outstanding among the many I come across every month.
Transcription is as old as composition. It has gone through a wide variety of changes and was at many points not considered just a derivative art or just a method of practical study but as a natural part of composing. Bach, for example, took the works of others without thinking anything by it (Telemann’s work on copyright issues had not yet transformed the way we think of ‘intellectual property’) and used them as the source for many of his works. Directly or – as in the famous “Concerto Italien” – indirectly as inspiration. With a lesser composer we might think of plagiarism, but of course when Bach does it we deem this act a rarefaction, a sort of musical Midas touch.
Actually, if you listen to Alexandre Tharaud play some of these Bach transcriptions for harpsichord on a Steinway (itself an act of transcription), you’d be inclined to agree: The combination of musical and interpretive genius is dizzying on what must be one of the best classical CDs there is.
Later on transcriptions became very useful to circulate rarely performed orchestral works among a wider public and to sell print music to musical households because orchestras were not at hand. A laudable missionary and monetary cause, if not always with the most convincing musical results. Brahms’ transcriptions (briefly discussed recently) served that purpose – as did much of Franz Liszt’s work, which also had the convenient side effect of him being able to show off his virtuosity at the piano. But the demands of most of his transcriptions already go beyond the abilities that could be expected from average dilettantes, even back then.
With Liszt we also get the first transcriptions made for that purpose that add their own add musical worth. (Brahms said that anyone who really wanted to learn to play the piano should play his opera paraphrases.) The Beethoven symphonies, for example, don’t remain the same in their piano versions, of course, but neither are they just utilitarian compromises: they are works of art in their own right. If you listen to Konstantin Scherbakov (Naxos), Leslie Howard (Hyperion), or – my favorite by some measure – Cyprien Katsaris (Warner) in these works, they turn out to be so much more than oddities with which to stump your friends in an after-dinner guessing game. For just Symphonies no.5 and 6 you might want to listen to Glenn Gould (Sony) – who is his least quirkiest and most sublime in this kind of odd-ball repertoire. (Which it certainly was considered to be in the late 60s when Gould recorded those two albums.)Then there are orchestrations of smaller scale work. Perhaps the expression of one composer thinking of his predecessor as having missed an opportunity. Liszt made a veritable piano concerto out of Schubert’s Wandererfantasie – a fine work that, if you hear it for the first time, will drive you nuts because it is just familiar enough for you to be guessing which piano concerto you are listening to – but not necessarily so obvious that you’d figure a Schubert-transcription to be the source.
I’m not sure exactly, but I think it was last heard live in the region in 1897 at the Astoria Hotel’s ballroom in New York – with M. Raoul Pugno at the piano in a concert that featured Ysaÿe as a soloist in the Saint-Saëns B-minor concerto. The New York Times reviewer notes that the “Wanderer Fantasia” is “made out of” Schubert’s Song Der Wanderer (D493, op.4 no.1). Which is a confusing, if not incorrect, statement. But it’s also and happily another example of transcription at work: A small section of that song (from “Die Sonne dünkt mich so kalt…” onward) served Schubert as the theme for the second movement of the Wandererfantasie, the sublime work for solo piano that became more famous than the song.
There are at least eight recordings available – which speaks to the Liszt transcriptions’ musical merit. Suffering from somewhat inferior sound (mono 1937) is the most genial rendering from Clifford Curzon under Sir Henry Wood. It’s available in volume three of the Decca Original Masters series which you might like to own anyway, if you are into pianists, Clifford Curzon – the chamber musician among the great pianists – being one of the finest musical souls and this set offering many hidden gems. Alfred Brendel recorded it under Michael Gielen, earlier in both men’s career (now on VOX), as did Jorge Bolet with Georg Solti which comes in Bolet’s must-have Decca box of Bolet’s complete (original) Liszt piano works. Also tempting, because it is part of a cheap Brilliant Classics set that includes what may be the finest Liszt piano concerto recordings (Freire/Plasson), is Jenő Jandó’s 1990 recording.
Leslie Howard, of course, contributed this as part of his “every-note-that-Liszt-ever-wrote-for-the-piano” Hyperion collection (like Jandó with the Budapest Symphony Orchestra, the only band that actually has the work in its repertoire, I surmise), Michel Béroff conspired with Kurt Masur (EMI), Philip Thomson with Kerry Stratton (Hungaroton), Joshua Pierce with Paul Freeman (Msr), and most recently Louis Lortie threw his hat in the ring, too (Chandos).
(Playing a sort of compositional Telephone game, Liszt later in life decided to re-arrange the arrangement of the song-inspired fantasy for: solo piano – coming nearly full-circle, but thrice removed.) The reason for Liszt to orchestrate Schubert in the first place may well have been his fascination with the form of the Wanderer Fantasy – where one motif serves as the guiding principle of a work though all its movements. That, and too much time on his hands, I posit.
And if I, too, have too much time on my hands, I will see to revisiting the transcription issue post-Liszt next week.
Friday, 11.2.07, 11:50 am
Classical Performances
Four Hands Transcribing
"New Releases" posts are regular columns that feature reviews of new CDs that are, for one reason or another, truly outstanding among the many I come across every month.
Transcriptions are not everyone’s cup of tea. All too often they either seem to take something away from the original or add something that wasn’t desired in the first place. Piano reductions can be quaint entertainment, but chances are that unless they are done by Franz Liszt or Feruccio Busoni, they are going to be dull, rather than exciting. But every rule has its exceptions and then there’s of course a special place for composers who transcribed or reduced their own work.
Beethoven who probably wrote, but at least approved, reductions of his Second Symphony for piano trio and his Fourth Piano Concerto for piano quintet. The latter is lovely, the former is fantastic. Indeed, if the Second Symphony did not exist at all, the piano trio would probably be considered on par with the “Ghost” and “Kreutzer” trios. There are a few recordings of that work, too. Sadly absent from the catalog – so far – is the Florestan Trio, but Robert Levin’s superb account (on a Hammerflügel) with members from the Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique on Archiv can still be found used on Amazon and it comes with the Quintet. The Beaux Arts second recording of every one of Beethoven’s works for piano trio is an unbeatable bargain from Philips, and the Guarneri Piano Trio’s recording (either as part of their box set or individually) couples the op.36 Trio version with the Clarinet Trio Op. 38 which is a transcription by Beethoven of the Septet, Op. 20.
Another case is Brahms, some of whose works we only know in their transcribed form. Both, the Piano Quintet and the D-minor Piano Concerto, were once a Sonata for Two Pianos. Brahms knew the genre well because he arranged most of his works for two pianos, and it shows in the F-minor sonata that became the Quintet. Far from being a mere study for the later, more famous work, or a slimmed-down version of it, it stands on its own solid legs (six, I suppose) and instead of pointing toward the quintet, perhaps Brahms’s quintessential chamber work, it suggests an orchestral piece underneath. The Turkish-delight piano duo, the Pekinel sisters Güher and Süher, are up for anything (Bach à la Jacques Loussier was a recent album of theirs) and they make this substantial (40-minute) work the main attraction of a disc that also includes two Hungarian Dances (5 and 17) and the Five Waltzes, op. 39, as well as Saint-Saëns’ Variations on a Theme of Beethoven, op. 25. Delightfully-novel as all of them are in their own right, you should want to listen to this for the sonata alone!
All of Brahms’ compositions and reductions for Four Hand Piano Music are being recorded for Naxos by Christian Köhn and Silke-Thora Matthies, who have, at last count, reached volume 17. Needless to say there’s lots of material here that will never make it into a mainstream collection. But that’s not to say these discs do not deserve your ear. The symphonies (recorded on volumes 6-8), for example, make for excellent listening as grandiloquent and enlarged piano sonatas. The German Requiem for two pianos (volume 5), on the other hand, safely deserves the label ‘curiosity’. One of the most recent discs, volume 16, presents music of other composers that Brahms turned his eye to. Not in greedy appropriation of Schumann’s Piano Quartet op.47, or Joachim’s Hamlet Overture, or Schubert’s Ländler, but for the same reason he arranged his own works: To allow them to be heard by a greater public and played at home by appreciating amateurs.
That’s nowadays a pointless task as regards most of Brahms’ own works or the Schumann quartet. But the music is at the very least delightful pleasantry. (The Andante cantabile of the quartet sounds so naturally wonderful in its arrangement, it might be worth the budget CD alone.) It is less pointless for Joachim’s short overture which you are more likely to hear in this version than the original. It would be tempting to add that once you heard it, you’d know why, too… but it isn’t actually bad. Slight perhaps, but full of charming ideas and pathos and not the worst way to have condensed Hamlet into under 16 minutes.
Juilliard Manuscript Collection.
There are other great transcribers of course – and I hope to get to deal with Schoenberg, Berg, and Webern some time soon – but for now I have only enough room to point out Stravinsky’s own version of Le Sacre du Printemps for piano four hands. A veritable monster even for four very talented hands – and surprisingly apt at recreating the idea and even impression of the orchestral version. Once you’ve heard it, you’ll never again doubt that the piano technically belongs to the percussion instruments. And hear it you can – on November 17th at the Left Bank Concert Society’s “Bellwethers of the 20th Century” concert at the Kennedy Center’s Terrace Theater. I can’t tell you why it is so titled when three of four pieces are by Beethoven, but I know it looks to be a grand treat. The recently discovered piano four hands version of Beethoven’s Grosse Fuge will be performed alongside the original as well as String Quartet op.130.
The aforementioned Stravinsky, by the way, can be heard in a recording by the Turkish (self-styled) l’enfant terrible of the piano, Fazil Say. By himself, dubbing over his own tracks. Difficult as it might be to imagine, he manages to add to the music, rather than subtracting from it, bristling with raw energy, a rhythmicality that will convert any open-eared listeners, from Techno to Bartók fan. It remains one of the most outstanding discs I have heard, period. The sounds and rhythms Say elicits from the piano don’t cease to amaze. From erupting dissonances and jostling bounces to eerie and creepy moments, this Rite, if I were only to own one—orchestral or otherwise—would be it. Out of print for a while it will soon be re-released as part of a Teldec 4-CD box of Fazil Say’s recordings for that label. The price is right even if you consider the included Tchaikovsky concerto, Liszt sonata, and the Gershwin Rhapsody without merit – because the Stravinsky and (slightly kinky) Bach are that good.