[12/11/2011] The old minor-to-major switcheroo as practiced by Schubert, Mahler, and Donizetti (continued)

Baritone Matthias Goerne sings the last of Mahler's Kindertotelieder, "In diesem Wetter," with Jonathan Nott conducting the Gustav Mahler Youth Orchestra at a Proms Concert in the Royal Albert Hall, Sept. 4, 2009. The switch from the minor to the major occurs at 2:47.


OF COURSE SCHUBERT AND MAHLER BOTH HAD
CONTEXTUAL REASONS FOR THE SHIFT TO MAJOR

Schubert's singing wanderer is heading off, in this first of the 24 songs in the Winterreise cycle (set to poems by the lightly regarded Wilhelm Müller), is embarking on a journey into utter desolation, a musical journey that looms as one of the landmarks of Western culture. (For ages now I've been trying to figure out how to slip our way into some proper consideration of Winterreise. That project is still on the drawing board. I've even started assembling audio files.)

As it happens, in each of the first three stanzas there's a moment of major-key recollection of his now-lost love, in the first half of the second quatrain. But the switch to the major for the final stanza is something else. I suppose it could be dismissed as no more than maudlin self-commiserating, but here our wanderer gives way to the "happy" thought that he so thoughtfully spared his former beloved any sort of disturbance as he disappeared permanently and silently from her life. While there may be people to whom the image of him scrawling "good night" on that gate won't mean anything, I know there are those to whom it's potentially emotionally devastating.

In Mahler's case, this image of the children safely lodged in their mother's house may perhaps bring the singer momentary consolation. For the audience, the gap between this moment of illusion and the horror of reality may be unbearably painful.

SCHUBERT: Winterreise (Winter Journey), D. 911:
No. 1, "Gute Nacht" ("Good Night")

Winterreise starts off with one of the toughest songs of the 24 to sell. It comes close to being a "strophic" song -- one that musically keeps repeating for each of the text's succession of strophes, or stanzas. You'll note from the music page below that the second stanza is a straight repetition of the first; it's not till the third stanza that Schubert introduces some changes. A basic challenge for the performer is whether he can sustain the listener's attention through those first two stanzas. (I refer to the performer as "he" since Müller's text makes clear even clearer than Friedrich Rückert's children's-death poems set by Mahler that the speaker is a man. However, the Schubert cycle too has been sung by a good number of women, and you can hardly blame them for trying to appropriate it.)

[Note that this music page and the two that follow in
this post can all be enlarged by clicking on them.]

The songs are properly written in tenor range but have always seemed better matched to baritones, and we start with one of each, from live performances with noted concert pianists. Baritone Matthias Goerne is well matched with Alfred Brendel; the plain-Janeness of those opening stanzas in particular are if anything even more of a challenge for the pianist. Normally to showcase a Winterreise tenor I would turn to Jon Vickers or perhaps Peter Anders, and definitely not the light - and not especially liquid-voiced though artful Peter Schreier, but Schreier has a not-so-secret weapon in the great Sviatoslav Richter.

Next we go down in range, and finally back up. I'm not sure that bass Kurt Moll rises to the challenge of grabbing the audience's attention in those sing-song early stanzas, but in the third and fourth he puts that full, beautiful bass to productive use. Finally we have one of those female Winter Journeyers in Brigitte Fassbaender. In her performance (with composer Aribert Reimann accompanying), note the considerable broadening for extra emphasis on the minor-to-major "switcheroo." Exquisite interpretive touch or ham-handed exaggeration of effect?

A stranger I arrived here,
a stranger I go hence.
Maytime was good to me,
with many a bunch of flowers.
The girl spoke of love,
the mother even of marriage.
Now the world is dismal,
the path veiled in snow.

For my journey I cannot
choose my own time;
I must pick the way myself
through this darkness.
My moon-cast shadow acts
as my companion,
and on the white meadow
I look for deer's footprints.

Why should I stay longer,
until they drive me away?
Let stray dogs howl
outside the master's house.
Love loves to wander --
God made it so --
from one to the other.
Sweetheart, good night!

Don't want to disturb your dreams;
would spoil your rest.
(You) mustn't hear my footsteps --
softly, softly close the doors.
(I) write, as I proceed,
on your gate: Good night.
So that you may see,
of you I have thought.

-- English translation of stanzas 1-3 by William Mann

Matthias Goerne, baritone; Alfred Brendel, piano. Philips, recorded live in Wigmore Hall (London), Oct. 8 and 10, 2003 [audio link]
Peter Schreier, tenor; Sviatoslav Richter, piano. Philips, recorded live at the Semper-Oper (Dresden), Feb. 17, 1985 [audio link]
Kurt Moll, bass; Cord Garben, piano. Orfeo, recorded May-June 1982 [audio link]
Brigitte Fassbaender, mezzo-soprano; Aribert Reimann, piano. EMI, recorded October 1988 [audio link]

SORRY, WE WON'T HAVE A VIDEO "GUTE NACHT"


If you'd seen what I've seen: After watching more video butcheries of the song than any one person should have to (study question: don't the performers realize?), I finally gave up on the idea of a video "Gute nacht." (The best I came up with was a sort of okay performance by Thomas Quasthoff, with Daniel Barenboim, and an okay one by Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, with Jörg Demus from 1966, in dreadful video and even worse audio.) This clip at least lets us see the music on the page while we hear what purports to be it, and I do enjoy Paul Lewis's piano playing. Alas, there's that puny, creepy noise generated by alleged tenor Mark Padmore. Is this a gag of some sort? (I'd never head any of Padmore's Winterreise recording, but have encountered near-worshipful references to it, and I see that it won Gramophone magazine's 2010 solo vocal record of the year award. I have to assume there were no other solo vocal records released in the 12 months in question.)

§

MAHLER: Kindertotenlieder (Songs on the Death of
Children): No. 5, "In diesem Wetter" ("In this weather")

As with "Gute Nacht," "In diesem Wetter" especially challenges the singer to hold the audience in the early, pre-switcheroo stanzas, with the added technical difficulty that Mahler puts so much crucial writing at the bottom of the singer's range (whether male or female). Even that peerless Mahler singer Christa Ludwig (whom we've heard sing most everything Mahler wrote that's singable by mezzo-soprano) can be reduced to something close to barking down there.

Nevertheless, I've included both Ludwig's 1958 and 1974 recordings; despite the 15-year gap, they're similar in a lot of ways, but also different. Then, with due respect to Thomas Quasthoff, who delivers a fine performance, what I especially like about this one is the raging storm that conductor Gary Bertini gets into the orchestral part. The performance by Andreas Schmidt, whom we last heard singing Wolfram in Wagner's Tannhäuser, seems to me beyond reproach; note that he can handle that low-lying writing.

Best for last. I've already described José van Dam's Mahler's CD containing the Kindertotenlieder, the five non-Kindertotenlieder Rückert settings, and the two big Des Knaben Wunderhorn "military" songs that were published along with the latter, as one of my all-time best-loved records, and his performances were the featured offerings when we focused on those military songs, "Revelge" and "Der Tamboursg'sell." It's not just that van Dam sings the song more beautifully than anyone else I've ever heard, which he does, with fuller and more expressive vocal control over the full range of the writing, but that he lives the whole thing so cgrippingly.

In this weather, in this bluster,
never would I have sent the children out.
They were taken out.
I had nothing to say about it.

In this weather, in this storm,
never would I have sent the children out.
I would have been afraid that they would catch sick.
Those are now idle thoughts.

In this weather, in this horror,
never would I have sent the children out.
I worried they might die tomorrow.
That's now not to be worried about.

In this weather, in this bluster,
never would I have sent the children out.
They were taken out.
I had nothing to say about it.

In this weather, in this storm, in this bluster,
they're resting as if in their mother's house,
not frightened by any storm,
by God's hand protected,
they're resting as if in their mother's house.

[switcheroo at 2:31] Christa Ludwig, mezzo-soprano; Philharmonia Orchestra, André Vandernoot, cond. EMI, recorded Oct. 18, 1958 [audio link]
[switcheroo at 2:28] Christa Ludwig, mezzo-soprano; Berlin Philharmonic, Herbert von Karajan, cond. DG, recorded May 1974 [audio link]
[switcheroo at 2:47] Thomas Quasthoff, baritone; Cologne Radio Symphony Orchestra, Gary Bertini, cond. Phoenix, broadcast performance, Jan. 22-23, 1993 [audio link]
[switcheroo at 2:45] Andreas Schmidt, baritone; Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, Jesús López-Cobos, cond. Telarc, recorded Apr. 30-May 1, 1991 [audio link]
[switcheroo at 2:43] José van Dam, bass-baritone; Orchestre National de Lille, Jean-Claude Casadesus, cond. Forlane, recorded April 1986 [audio link]

§

MEANWHILE, DONIZETTI HAS CAST THIS MOMENT
OF TRIUMPH FOR NEMORINO IN THE MINOR!

DONIZETTI: L'Elisir d'amore (The Elixir of Love): Act II,
Aria, Nemorino, "Una furtiva lagrima" ("A furtive tear")

"Una furtiva lagrima" has a back story. The story, which I have no reason to doubt, is that Donizetti already had the tune -- surely one of the most beautiful to spring from the mind of mankind -- in his head and had to find something to do with it. The thing is, the story doesn't even begin to explain how the way he used the tune came to be one of the most indelible moments in the Western musical and theatrical literature.

We need to have the situation fresh. The peasant Nemorino is wildly, madly, hopelessly in love with the village hottie, Adina, who is so far from thinking of him as a romantic possibility that he might as well not exist. Well, "hopelessly" may be wrong, because when the traveling quack Dr. Dulcamara passes through the village touting his bogus wares, Nemorino suddenly has hope: for a magic elixir of love that will cause Adina to return his love. He's so far gone that to pay for the elixir he enlists in the army for the signing payment. In Act II, unbeknownst to Nemorino, word arrives in the village that he has inherited a fortune, and suddenly Adina looks at him differently.

This is the change in Adina, and the cause of that "furtive tear" in her eye which Nemorino has noticed, and which has suddenly filled him with hope. Why, then, should his rumination on this moment be cast mostly in the minor? I could lay out in plodding detail why this seems to me so ineffably right, and to reflect such profound understanding of Nemorino's mind and heart, but I think that would only take away from the moment.

One thing I regret: that we've already heard the best performance of the aria any of us are likely ever to hear, in Friday night's preview. On second thought, at the cost of some straight repetition (not entirely unknown in this department), with some simple cutting-and-pasting we can hear it again. Come to think of it, it didn't occur to me to note that this celebrated recording just celebrated its centenary. It hasn't lost any of its jaw-dropping amazingness. I suppose for the sake of "differentness" we could hear one of the earlier Caruso recordings of the aria, but I don't wanna. I wanna hear the 1911 one again. If you want to know what great singing sounds like, here it is.

As for the other performances, even without digging deeply into my collection I think I've got a nice assortment. This aria is something of a test case for a lyric tenor's sustained beauty, agility, and expressivity of sound. Jussi Bjoerling, not surprisingly, approaches Caruso territory.
With Giuseppe di Stefano we can regret the tendency to ram the sound, already in 1955 (this would become much worse, especially as he moved more into heavier-weight roles, though it's hard to determine cause and effect here), and we can regret all the clumsy scooping (i.e., sliding upward into pitches), and no, he doesn't show any inclination to attempt soft singing -- it's all loud and louder. But my goodness what an amazing sound, and what intensity of line.

Next we hear the liquid beauty of the sound produced in his younger, pre-Three Tenors years by José Carreras, and then we round out the "three tenors" with a solid rendition -- with the same conductor and orchestra, though in the recording studio rather than the opera house -- by Plácido Domingo.

A furtive tear
welled up in her eye.
Those carefree girls
she seemed to envy.
Why should I look any further?
She loves me, yes, she loves me.
I can see it, I can see it.

To feel for just one moment
the beating of her dear heart!
To blend my sighs
for a little with hers!
Heavens, I could die;
I ask for nothing more.
I could die of love.

-- English translation by Kenneth Chalmers

["M'ama" at 1:30] Jussi Bjoerling, tenor; Stockholm Radio Orchestra, Sten Frykberg, cond. Broadcast performance, Oct. 3, 1952 [audio link]
["M'ama" at 1:47] Giuseppe di Stefano, tenor; Orchestra of the Accademia di Santa Cecilia (Rome), Francesco Molinari-Pradelli, cond. Decca, recorded 1955 [audio link]
["M'ama" at 1:44] José Carreras, tenor; Orchestra of the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, John Pritchard, cond. Live performance, Jan. 7, 1976 [audio link]
["M'ama" at 1:31] Plácido Domingo, tenor; Orchestra of the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, John Pritchard, cond. CBS/Sony, recorded 1977 [audio link]
Finally our centennial celebration encore hearing:
["M'ama" at 1:39] Enrico Caruso, tenor; orchestra. Victor, recorded in New York, Nov. 26, 1911 [audio link]


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