Sunday Classics: Just like there's comfort food, there's comfort music

Mariss Jansons and the Berlin Philharmonic get just about everything there is to be gotten out of Carl Maria von Weber's spirit-cleansing Oberon Overture (in Tokyo's Suntory Hall, November 2000). NOTE: When the "HQ" button appears, if you're able to play clips in "High Quality," by all means do so. This clip looks and sounds amazing.

by Ken

It was a stressful day this week, and by mid-afternoon a point came when I had to get the hell away from my desk, and indeed out of the [expletive-deleted] building -- not soon, but right then.

I had the presence of mind to grab my portable CD player and headphones, but that meant I also had to grab a CD, with no time for thought. This is the oneI grabbed, not because my brain was up to Beethoven symphonies, not even one as user-friendly as the First, but I'm guessing because my eyes registered the non-Beethoven item on the disc: the much-performed overture to Carl Maria von Weber's not-much-performed opera Oberon.

I staggered into the elevator and then out to the street, which you may recall is the block of Broad Street in front of the New York Stock Exchange. Except for specially passed vehicles there's no traffic on that block, which is paved with not-really-cobblestones for a nice pedestrian-mall effect, and at this time of year nice stone benches [stone benches? -- c'mon, fella, don't you think they're probably concrete? -- Ed.] for passersby to sit on are set out right there in the street, or rather the half of the street that's not occupied as the fortress-like NYSE DMZ, which stretches about halfway out into Broad Street. And there are lots of passersby. A load of tourists find their way to our block every day, partly for the Stock Exchange, but also because Federal Hall is just up the short block at the corner of Broad and Wall Streets.

Safely outside, I started up the CD, and almost as soon as the opening horn call of the Oberon Overture sounded, answered by those muted strings, the pressure on my poor addled brain eased. As the flutes added their delicate chirps, and then first the trumpets and then the horns sounded their firm but gentle fanfares, I found myself feeling almost human.

It helped that the conductor of that performance, the late Klaus Tennstedt, had a gift bordering on genius for finding the inner animation of slow- to moderate-paced music (the slow movements of the Beethoven First and Fifth Symphonies on the same CD are so concentrated, they seem to sail forward), and so the whole of the majestic opening section of the Oberon Overture not only had the expected consciousness-expanding spaciousness but crackled with moment-to-moment tension.

Talk about "just what the doctor ordered"!

(Parenthetical note: Tennstedt (1926-1998) was a one-of-a-kind conductor of real depth who had the simultaneously good and bad fortune to have toiled in near-obscurity in East Germany until he was nearly 50. By the time he found his way onto the international stage, he had developed an artistic personality of a completeness that just doesn't happen often in these days of instant media celebrity. Sadly, he didn't have nearly enough time in the spotlight, though it's hard to bemoan a cruel tragic fate -- the steep decline in his health must have had something to do with the gazillion cigarettes a day he was reported to smoke. Nevertheless, his forced retirement and death was a terrible loss.)

THIS IS WHAT I MEAN BY COMFORT MUSIC

While Latvian-born Mariss Jansons (born 1943), in the above Oberon clip, may not match Tennstedt's intensity in that incomparably beautiful opening section, there's nothing whatsoever to apologize for in the performance he coaxes out of the Berlin Philharmonic here. I'd go so far as to say that this is a genuinely great performance of this much-performed masterpiece. For once this undeniably great orchestra is matched with a conductor who takes advantage of its greatness, pressing it to do all sorts of things that more ordinary orchestras can't -- and that the Berlin Phil itself isn't often challenged to do. Just listen, even in YouTube sound, to the glowing sound the Berlin strings produce here at hushed dynamic levels, something that only the greatest orchestras can do, and only when they're asked.

[TECHNICAL UPDATE: If you watch the Oberon clip onsite, you have the option of viewing it in "High Quality." I assume this requires additional system resources, but boy oh boy, does the clip look and sound fabulous in HQ! Wow! UPDATE TO THE UPDATE: Ooh, I see that once you start up the clip on our site, you get the button for the HQ option! I thought I'd seen the HQ button here on DWT -- then it disappeared and I thought I must be losing it!]

In case you haven't guessed, I have a history with the Oberon Overture. My experience with it this week set me to thinking about a record I must have played, oh, a jillion times: a collection of six opera overtures played by the Philharmonia Orchestra under Erich Leinsdorf.

I imagine that every music lover, of whatever genre, has records that through repeated playing become enmeshed in his or her consciousness. Interestingly -- to me, anyway -- the pieces I remember best from that record are the Oberon and the sparkling overture to Rossini's comic gem, L'Italiana in Algeri, another long and multifaceted piece that by curious coincidence features a breathtakingly beautiful hushed opening section, this one built around plucked strings.

I think this truncated jacket must be from the original Capitol issue of the record in question, but I never had or even saw that. The form in which I know it is the reissue in Capitol's '60s series of "Paperback Classics." A blurb on the front proclaimed: "World renowned artists in modern recordings of highest fidelity . . . A top quality pressing in new economy packaging," and that's just what they were. The jackets (blue for mono, red for stereo) were either the lightest of cardboards or simply heavy paper, with no notes -- just a list of the works and artists on the front and a list of series releases on the back.

As I recall, the Paperback Classics sold for something like 99 cents, but there was no skimping on the music. My copy of that Leinsdorf overture LP, pulled off the shelf a couple of days ago for the first time in, well, I have no idea how long, still sounds splendid. And the series releases were drawn, not just from Capitol's own extensive domestically recorded classical catalog, but from the vast EMI treasure trove, Capitol being EMI's U.S. company. (Leinsdorf was actually under contract to Capitol, not to EMI, but this London-made record was presumably recorded by EMI.)

From my memories of the Leinsdorf LP, I would have guessed that the Oberon and L'Italiana Overtures, the pieces I remember listening to all the time, were placed at the start of the two LP sides. And I would have been wrong. In fact, they filled out Side 1, following Wagner's massive and mighty Meistersinger Prelude -- the Rossini and then the Weber. On Side 2, you had Mozart's incomparably buoyant Marriage of Figaro Overture, Beethoven's monumental Leonore No. 3, and the grandest of Verdi's overtures, La Forza del destino.

Now that is one hell of a package, about as much musical greatness as it's possible to stuff onto two LP sides. After listening to it again, I can assure you that, deeply conflicted as I am about Erich Leinsdorf (for me there were about six different Erich Leinsdorfs, and the large and diverse body of work they produced includes a fair number of first-rate performances along with some of the most loathsome ones I've heard), these Philharmonia overture performances are all quite fine.

Still, it intrigues me that the record lingers in my mind above all for the Oberon and L'Italiana in Algeri Overtures. And it doesn't take much analysis to figure out why. For me, this was a "comfort" record. And as I flashed back to it that day, my mind leapt to a couple of others.

SHIMMERING MERRY WIVES, POETIC POET AND PEASANT

There was, for one, a domestic Philips LP called Kaleidoscope, on which a then only moderately known Charles Mackerras conducted the London Symphony in a number of overtures and other short orchestral works, including the piece we heard last night, Otto Nicolai's overture to his opera The Merry Wives of Windsor.

Again, there were curious things about my recollection. Most obviously, Mackerras isn't a conductor who has since then much impressed me. In fact, this Merry Wives performance constitutes must about my fondest recollection of a conductor who otherwise has struck me as generally an earnest plodder. Then there's the fact that I couldn't even remember what else was on the LP. As often as I put it on, I must have listened almost exclusively to the Merry Wives Overture.

The other record that popped into mind was an overture collection by the dynamic younger Leonard Bernstein, with (of course) the New York Philharmonic, officially titled William Tell And Other Favorite Overtures. (No, that's not it, at least not exactly, at right. See below.) Now, the younger Lenny was nothing if not a drama freak, and I listened to that rock 'em, sock 'em performance of Rossini's William Tell Overture easily a zillion times. Quietly as it too begins, and achingly beautiful as its earlier sections are, I wouldn't describe this as "comfort music," though. This is almost the opposite: music designed to send the blood racing.

However, placed before it on that side of the LP was another of my comfort treasures, Franz von Suppé's Poet and Peasant Overture. While Suppé was in fact a composer of operettas, and most of his overtures were written to introduce those (mostly forgotten) operettas, Poet and Peasant was written as part of some incidental music composed for a now-forgotten play.

Poet and Peasant has another of those slow-and-soft introductions that have the power to drain nasty stress out of my brain. Soon enough it leads into a lovely cello solo. Well, listen --


In another of these wonderful MGM CinemaScope "films," this one from 1955 (in stereo!), the widely underrated Alfred Wallenstein conducts the MGM Symphony in Franz von Suppé's poetic Poet and Peasant Overture. (Again, because of the wide-screen format, the best way to view it may be on YouTube directly. Again, though, when the "HQ" button appears in our version of the clip, punch it!)

The other side of the Bernstein William Tell LP contained three lovely French overtures: Louis Joseph Hérold's Zampa and Ambroise Thomas's Mignon and Raymond. I'm sure I listened to that side too, but not nearly as often as the Poet and Peasant-plus-William Tell side. Not long afterward, incidentally, Lenny and the New York Phil recorded an overture LP that included Suppé's other blockbuster overture, The Light Cavalry (and also his Beautiful Galathea), and, yes, Nicolai's Merry Wives of Windsor. I'm sure that LP got its share of hearings too.

As noted, by the way, the above illustration is not the one that housed the Bernstein overture collection I treasured. The original jacket featured a big photo of an apple with a large painted target superimposed on it. Get it? William Tell? An apple with a target painted on? The LP must have been reissued in CBS's "Great Performances" LP series, which was eventually transferred to CDwith just the same five overtures -- not much over 46 minutes' worth of music, which made for a not especially generous LP and a decidedly chintzy CD.)

I really don't have any grander point to make today. I just hope you enjoy the music. I know I feel better.


OUR COMFORT MUSIC ON RECORDS

These pieces have all been recorded countless times, but in such diverse couplings (and of course re-couplings) that it's not easy to keep track of them -- and not so easy to find really good performances.

DG has already deleted its CD of attractive performances of German Overturesby Christian Thielemann and the Vienna Philharmonic, including both Oberon and Merry Wives of Windsor -- along with such other staples as Weber's Euryanthe, Mendelssohn's A Midsummer Night's Dream and The Hebrides, and Wagner's Rienzi. Thielemann (born 1959) is probably the foremost German conductor now plying his trade, and is clearly a very talented guy, but I don't recall ever hearing a performance from him that didn't leave me frustrated, and if you listen closely, or repeatedly, to these overture performances you find, or anyway I find, that they're slack at the core. The music doesn't really have any internal reason to move forward. Still, for some of these old warhorses there don't seem to be a lot of ready alternatives, and this CD lops off a gorgeous chunk of repertory in reasonably satisfying form. Copies shouldn't be that hard to find.

One way to get the Oberon Overture is as part of a program of Weber overtures, and in the absence of an available CD issue of Rafael Kubelik's lovely DG LP's worth, EMI offers a solid collectionby Wolfgang Sawallisch and the Philharmonia Orchestra.

Lenny B's Poet and Peasant is of course obtainable on the above-noted Sony "Great Performances" CD, but here I've got something really special to suggest: an indispensable Mercury CD(I wish I knew what the hell happened to my copy!) on which three overtures by Daniel-François Auber have been added to the six by Suppé that were recorded for a magical LP by Paul Paray (1886-1979) and the Detroit Symphony in 1959. I actually didn't know the LP; I fell in love with the Paray Suppé overtures later in the form of a budget cassette edition. Listen to the effortless and serene playfulness of the woodwind figurations in Pique Dame, and I think you'll be hooked. (As much as I try not to pay too much attention to the reviews on Amazon.com, I think it's noteworthy that one reviewer after another goes wild over this CD.)


SUNDAY CLASSICS POSTS

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