Sunday Classics: Rhapsodies from Sweden and points south and east

Now this is more like it! Unfortunately in audio only, Vladimir Horowitz plays the rhapsody of rhapsodies, Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2 (in, by the way, the composer's own version, more or less, not the pianist's famous arrangement). If you're looking for mediocre to revolting performances, there's no shortage on YouTube, as witness last night's fiasco.

by Ken

We still haven't quite finished with Norway's great composer, Edvard Grieg, even after pursuing him through Marching trolls and other lyric subjects (Lyric Pieces for piano, Lyric Suite for orchestra); "The Prophet has come!": The world of Peer Gynt (the two orchestral suites, enhanced); (more Peer Gynt and the Piano Concerto); Mastering the fine art of Edvard Grieg (the Lyric Pieces and Piano Concerto revisited, plus String Quartet No. 1). Meanwhile, we had a decent shot at Finland's Jan Sibelius, and at some point we'll come back for Denmark's Carl Nielsen.

Which leaves a gap in our Scandinavian itinerary. So today we're going to have a quick musical taste of Sweden in the form of a rhapsody, a form that composers have found well-suited to splashy musical quick portraits of their countries, dating back to the 19th-century rise of musical nationalism. And then we'll let the rhapsody transport us.

I. A QUICK TOUR OF SWEDEN AND ROMANIA:
WE'LL ALWAYS HAVE THEIR RHAPSODIES

No, I don't suppose Sweden and Romania have a whole lot in common, beyond the curious phenomenon of a composer, arguably each country's best-known, who remains known principally for rhapsodies. (No, I'm not going to attempt a definition of rhapsody. Feel free to look it up if you like. By the end of this post you should be in a position to concoct your own definition if that's important to you.)

In Sweden's case, our composer is Hugo Alfvén (1872-1960). Alfvén in fact produced quite a sizable output, and there are admirers who consider his general neglect a scandal. I can't claim to be an expert on the subject, but what I've heard of his music is agreeable enough if not especially memorable (it's fair to say that worse music is played on a regular basis by most of the world's orchestras). Nevertheless, I don't see much likelihood of a change in the composer's fortunes, which have him known almost entirely for a single work that remains on the edge of the international repertory: the first of his three Swedish Rhapsodies, titled Midsummer Vigil (1903).

I got to know it through the back door, as it were. When we talked about Sibelius (see link above), I mentioned that two of my first three stereo LPs were bought for works by Sibelius, because -- outrageously! -- that's what you had to do to get Eugene Ormandy and the Philadelphia Orchestra's recordings of The Swan of Tuonela and Finlandia. This left me with quite a lot of "filler" material. Okay, I suppose technically The Swan was the filler for Sibelius's Violin Concerto played by the great David Oistrakh, but that's not the way I looked at it in those days. The Finlandia fillers included Grieg's Peer Gynt Suite No. 1 (hmm, Peer Gynt, where have we heard about that?) and, yes, Alfvén's Swedish Rhapsody No. 1. Eventually I wound up listening to this stuff quite a lot. Here is that very recording of Midsummer Vigil.

ALFVÉN: Swedish Rhapsody No. 1: Midsummer Vigil, Op. 19


Philadelphia Orchestra, Eugene Ormandy, cond. Columbia/CBS/Sony, recorded Dec. 21, 1959

I don't think there's much question that the model for the rhapsody as nationalistic vehicle was Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsodies, which were written for piano solo, but half a dozen of which were soon orchestrated and absorbed into the international repertory. Surely Romania's Georges Enesco (1881-1955) had them in his head as models for his pair of Romanian Rhapsodies (1901-2). Awhile back Enesco's opera Oedipe got a bit of attention -- not to mention a prestigiously cast major-label recording -- and others of his works have been resurrected, but not much has stuck. As with Alfvén and the Swedish Rhapsodies, he remains pretty much the composer of the two Romanian Rhapsodies. Here's the somewhat more often played First.

ENESCO: Romanian Rhapsody No. 1 in A, Op. 11, No. 1


RCA Victor Symphony Orchestra, Leopold Stokowski, cond. RCA/BMG, recorded February 1960


Philadelphia Orchestra, Eugene Ormandy, cond. Columbia/CBS/Sony, recorded Nov. 10, 1957

As long as we're at it, we might as well hear the Second Romanian Rhapsody, don't you think?

ENESCO: Romanian Rhapsody No. 2 in D, Op. 11, No. 2


Philadelphia Orchestra, Eugene Ormandy, cond. Columbia/CBS/Sony, recorded Nov. 10, 1957

II. LISZT AND THE RHAPSODY:
THE HUNGARIAN RHAPSODY NO. 2

As I mentioned, Liszt wrote his Hungarian Rhapsodies for piano solo, and grand display pieces they are. Not surprisingly, half a dozen were quickly orchestrated, and approved by the composer for publication, though legions of conductors and arrangers have had a shot at these pieces since. In the case of No. 2 (about which Wikipedia incidentally has a quite extensive entry), the key has generally wound up dropping to C minor from C sharp minor. The piece itself follows the general form of the Hungarian Rhapsodies in having a soulful slow section and then an exhilarating fast one, though this hardly does justice to the piece's finely crafted structure.

Given the standing of the orchestral rhapsody as a vehicle for orchestral display, it's not surprising that we frequently encounter two names here: Leopold Stokowski (1882-1977) and his successor as music director of the Philadelphia Orchestra, Eugene Ormandy (1899-1985). Stokowski actually recorded an LP called Rhapsody, though even in expanded CD (now hybrid SACD) formit contains only two actual rhapsodies, the Enesco we just heard and the Liszt we're about to hear. Ormandy didn't record many rhapsodies en bloc, but Sony has assembled a splendid Famous Rhapsodies CDthat includes a lot of the music we're hearing today.

Stoky was famously willing to use any expressive device he thought he could make work, though he seems in pretty good behavior in the Enesco performance above -- that is one heckuva performance. The Liszt, however, strikes me as kind of weird. I suppose I've lived with the Ormandy too long to be totally objective about it, but I think it's sensational.

LISZT: Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2


RCA Victor Symphony Orchestra, Leopold Stokowski, cond. RCA/BMG, recorded February 1960


Philadelphia Orchestra, Eugene Ormandy, cond. Columbia/CBS/Sony, recorded February 1958

Now to return to the Liszt rhapsody's piano origins. The Horowitz recording of No. 2 that we heard at the top of this post finds that musical bad boy too on pretty good musical behavior, which is a good thing and a bad thing. With both Stokowski and Horowitz, even when we question their musical decisions, when they're on form, those decisions are at the service of a real musical vision. In this Horowitz rhapsody performance, fine as it is in many ways, I think we hear VH pulling his punches -- and so the performance is often more about what he chooses not to do than what he does.

I suppose people think it's a slapdown when they refer to this music as "rhetorical," but rhetoric, like most everything else, can be good or bad, effective or not. Most of what's passed off as musical rhetoric is mere self-indulgence or plain fakery, pathetically obvious lying bullshit. This is generally true of what is often passed off, by self-appointed guardians of the "Grand Romantic Style," as the Grand Romantic Style, which tends to be neither grand nor romantic nor really even a style, but just a pose. When you hear a great orator, you find out what real rhetoric is, and the same is true in music.

Let's listen to this performance of the Liszt "No. 2," which the International Piano Archive included in an ingenious compendiumof historical recordings of all 19 Hungarian Rhapsodies.


Benno Moiseiwitsch, piano. HMV/IPA/VAI, recorded Oct. 9, 1940

It's certainly not a bad performance, but has Moiseiwitsch (1890-1963, and therefore already 50 here; unfortunately he's known today mostly for later, and sometimes much later, and less good, recordings) really risen to the challenge of this grand showpiece?

How about this performance then?


Alfred Brendel, piano. Vanguard, recorded 1967

Alfred Brendel (born 1931), only recently retired from keyboard performance but still active as a lecturer, was an eminently tasteful pianist, and this is an eminently tasteful performance. The pieces fit together quite naturally, it seems to me. But the piece as a whole seems to me to have been shrunk to even smaller stature than with Moiseiwitsch. When a truly mesmerizing orator grabs hold of you, you don't come away praising his excellent "taste," or bemoaning his lapses in same.

Here's something I think you'll agree is different:


Georges Cziffra, piano. EMI, recorded in Budapest, 1956

I think we're really on to something. Cziffra, although a maddeningly erratic performer, at his best could make the piano truly sing. Unfortunately, the four rhapsodies, including No. 2, that Cziffra recorded in mono in Budapest in 1956 were done with what appears to be a dull piano without much beauty of sound in it, in two-dimensional recorded sound. Later, in Paris in 1958, these four rhapsodies were expanded into a set of 15 Hungarian Rhapsodies. The later recordings used a much better instrument, and benefited from much better recorded sound. (We'll hear a sample below.)

III. WHAT HAPPENS WHEN IT'S SOMEBODY ELSE'S
COUNTRY YOU'RE RHAPSODIZING ABOUT?

The EMI "twofer" set that gathered Georges Cziffra's 1956/58 Liszt Hungarian Rhapsodies was filled out with Liszt's Spanish Rhapsody. Up till now we've been dealing with the rhapsody as a "national" form in which composers tried to represent their own countries. But what's to stop a composer from attempting to characterize another country?

Somehow, often as not, that meant foreigners trying to imagine themselves as Spaniards. Certainly French composers had a thing about their southern neighbor. And limiting ourselves just to the rhapsody form, we have two specimens that rank with the more popular works in the orchestral literature.

First we hear España, rapsodie pour orchestre (1883) by Emanuel Chabrier (1841-1894), a wonderfully tuneful farrago, some of whose tunes I'm pretty sure you'll recognize.

CHABRIER: España


London Symphony Orchestra, Ataulfo Argenta, cond. Decca, recorded January 1957


Detroit Symphony Orchestra, Paul Paray, cond. Mercury, recorded Nov. 18, 1959


Philadelphia Orchestra, Eugene Ormandy, cond. Columbia/CBS/Sony, recorded Feb. 24, 1963

And then we hear what is surely the greatest rhapsody of them all, the Spanish Rhapsody of Maurice Ravel (1875-1937). We're going to hear a really wonderful, wonderfully idiomatic performance by Jean Martinon, from his series of the complete Ravel orchestral works with the Orchestre de Paris. But then, because this is still a rhapsody, and Ravel was among other things a master orchestrator (remember that it's his orchestration of Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition that is still most often played), we have to hear our pal Stoky have a go at it -- first at the age of 92 (a live performance, note!), and then as a youngster of a mere 75. This is a significantly sultrier image of Spain, wouldn't you say?

RAVEL: Rapsodie espagnole

i. Prélude à la nuit (Prelude to the Night)
ii. Malagueña
iii. Habañera
iv. Feria


Orchestre de Paris, Jean Martinon, cond. EMI, recorded 1974


New Philharmonia Orchestra, Leopold Stokowski, cond. BBC Classics, recorded live in the Royal Albert Hall, London, May 4, 1974


London Symphony Orchestra, Leopold Stokowski, cond. EMI, recorded June 27-28, 1957

ONE LAST SPANISH RHAPSODY

As long as we've wound up listening to all these foreign-imagined Spanish rhapsodies, maybe you're wondering what the Liszt Spanish Rhapsody I mentioned sounds like. Here is that Cziffra recording. Note how much more seductive piano sound Cziffra coaxes out of this piano in Paris, in markedly better recorded sound, than he and the Budapest engineers were able to manage for the 1956 recording of the Second Hungarian Rhapsody.


Georges Cziffra, piano. EMI, recorded in Paris, 1958


SUNDAY CLASSICS POSTS

The current list is here.

#