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.