And for Christmas day, our musical offering is Berlioz' always-unexpected "Childhood of Christ"

FAREWELL OF THE SHEPHERDS TO THE HOLY FAMILY
(from Part II of Berlioz' L'Enfance du Christ, "The Childhood of Christ" -- text by the composer)

He's going away, far from the land
where, in the stable, he first saw day.
Of his father and his mother
may he remain the constant love.
May he grow, may he prosper,
and may he be a good father in his turn.

If ever, among the idolaters,
he comes to experience misfortune,
fleeing the unkind land
may he return to good fortune in our midst.
May the poverty of the shepherd
remain always dear to his heart.

Dear child, may God bless you!
May God bless you, happy couple!
May you never be able to feel
the blows of injustice.
May a good angel warn you
of dangers hanging over you.

by Ken

Once more I'm at the mercy of the clips, but at least this performance of the shepherds' farewells, from a 1966 telecast of the complete L'Enfance du Christ by the Boston Symphony under its former music director, Charles Munch (released on DVD by VAI), isn't as hopelessly sentimentalized as most. Munch was known as a Berlioz specialist, and while his performances may have tended to a certain overripe softness, they did capture the music's basic sense and stature.

Berlioz was a composer of such extraordinary imagination and originality that it's perhaps not surprising when performers try to drag his unique musical constructions back into something conventionally sing-songy. And the "Shepherds' Farewells" is meant to strike a note of the conventional; it's written in a notoriously dittylike meter, 3/8. But Berlioz is always concerned with what lies beneath appearances, especially conventional ones. Try to imagine these farewells sung -- yes, earnestly and with deep concern, but without sloppy sentimentality -- by a band of shepherds gathered to offer this sad but hopeful farewell to a family forced to flee, in order to save the infant son's life, into the unknown of the desert.

It's worth noting that these good shepherds have no sense that there is anything special about this particular newborn, or this particular family. As the narrator has told us in the remarkable opening narration of L'Enfance, "No wonder had yet made [the infant Jesus] known." (At some point we're going to have to come back and talk about this astonishing opening narration -- a mere 30 bars of music, lasting about two minutes, which as a matter of fact I've never heard performed really well.) No, to our shepherds the urgency is simply to save the life of the child.

As I was saying last night about the miracle announced in Handel's "For unto us a child is born," the clear sense is that the miracle is not the child's divinity, but the mere fact of the birth of a child, with all the attendant promise and hope. Actually, I suppose you could say that Berlioz' entire enterprise in L'Enfance is blasphemous, since Joseph is treated throughout as, simply and unequivocally, the baby Jesus' father.

When, eventually, the Holy Family arrives in Sais, on the brink of death from fatigue and starvation, their desperate pleas for help are rebuffed the the Romanized Egyptians who scorn them as "vile Hebrews" -- until one Ishmaelite householder unhesitatingly takes them in and nurtures them back to life. And like nearly everything else in L'Enfance, almost everything in the wonderful scene inside the home of the Ishmaelites is unexpected and unexpectedly miraculous.

In short order a bond is formed between Joseph and the Ishamelite Father as they discover that they're both carpenters. But first comes a moment of delicacy and gentility that's almost unimaginable -- except by Berlioz. The Ishmaelite Father asks his revived guests their names, and Joseph says, "Her name is Mary, I'm Joseph, and we call the child Jesus.

"Jesus!" their host replies. "What a charming name!"

Which is something I think we can all celebrate. And on that note, once again, Merry Christmas!


OH YES, A RECORDING OF L'ENFANCE? HMMM --

This is tough. So many Berlioz performances don't even try to get beneath those deceptively simple surfaces (and don't necessarily do that great a job of realizing even those surfaces), and L'Enfance poses the additional difficulty of generally being performed as if it's a simple exercise in Christmas piety, when that's just about the last thing it is.

There hasn't been a recording that really satisfies me. The one that came closest was a sparely recorded French Radio performance issued on LP by Nonesuch, with Jean Martinon conducting, and principal soloists mezzo-soprano Jane Berbie, tenor Alain Vanzo, baritone Claude Cales as Joseph, and bass Roger Soyer as Herod (a rare souvenir of the voice before it dried out). I don't believe that recording has found its way onto CD.

I can report that while I was working on this blogpost, I pulled out the recording by Charles Dutoit with the Orchestre symphonique de Montreal, with mezzo Susan Graham, tenor John Mark Ainsley, baritone Francois Le Roux as Joseph, and bass Philip Cokorinos as Herod. All I was actually listening for was the amazing two-minute opening narration -- and you know, the Ainsley-Dutoit performance isn't bad! Which is a virtual rave. I don't remember the performance as a whole making much of an impression on me, and I'm a little nervous about rehearing the whole thing, but those first two minutes are at least a good start. (Oops, the recording seems to be out of print! Well, copies do seem to be available. Of course, I'm not exactly recommending it, necessarily.)

Video-wise, though the Munch/Boston performance doesn't break any ground, and probably is less successful as a whole than their earlier RCA studio recording, I can certainly recommend it as a memento of this productive Berlioz collaboration. Throughout the long tenure of Seiji Ozawa, the Boston Symphony remained probably the world's finest Berlioz orchestra (with awfully good recordings of The Damnation of Faust and Romeo et Juliette to show for it.)

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[3/2/2012] Flute-and-Harp Week, part 1 -- in which we somehow hear Bizet's "Toreadors" (continued)

BIZET: Carmen: Entr'acte to Act III


In printed form: the first 15 bars of the entr'acte, in piano reduction -- for flute-and-harp duo until the clarinet and strings join in in bar 13. The performance is by the London Philharmonic under Sir Thomas Beecham (1879-1961), from their 1939 British Columbia recording of the Carmen Suite transferred and restored by Bob Varney. (Coming up we have another Beecham performance, from two decades later.)


AS PROMISED, WE'RE GOING TO HEAR TWO
FLUTE-AND-HARP-HEAVY WORKS THAT I LOVE

Actually, we've already heard them both: the trio from Part III of Berlioz's Childhood of Christ before the click-through, the Entr'acte to Bizet's Carmen above. I guess the Carmen entr'acte can't properly be said to be "for" flute and harp, but as we heard, it starts out importantly with them, and I don't think I've heard anyone make more inspired use of this combination than Bizet did in this haunting little act-introducer. Here it is again (and again and again).

I thought it might be interesting, since we've heard the 1939 Beecham recording, to hear the version from his 1958-59 complete recording of the opera. Disclosure: The Beecham-EMI was my first Carmen recording, and I still love its vibrance and color. I like the more serene, ethereal Prêtre performance too, and I was kind of blown away rehearing the Frühbeck de Burgos -- more about this later.

BIZET: Carmen: Entr'acte to Act III


Orchestre National de la Radiodiffusion française, Sir Thomas Beecham, cond. EMI, recorded 1958-59

Orchestra of the Théâtre National de l'Opéra de Paris, Georges Prêtre, cond. EMI, recorded Dec. 1964-Jan. 1965

Orchestra of the Théâtre National de l'Opéra de Paris, Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos, cond. EMI, recorded 1969-70
[In case you were wondering, the Beecham-EMi Carmen features Victoria de los Angeles in the title role, Nicolai Gedda as Don José, Janine Micheau as Micaëla, and Ernest Blanc as the toreador Escamillo; the Prêtre-EMI -- Maria Callas, Gedda again, Andréa Guiot, and Robert Massard; and the Frühbeck-EMI -- Grace Bumbry, Jon Vickers, Mirella Freni, and Kostas Paskalis.]

MOVING ON, OR BACK, WE'VE SPENT A LOT OF
TIME ON BERLIOZ'S CHILDHOOD OF CHRIST . . .

. . . most recently here. Along with Handel's Messiah it's a Sunday Classics Christmas staple, and in fact from the 2011 Sunday Classics Christmas posts we still have a promised Berlioz follow-up (still!) in the works. It's scarcely at all a "religious" work, as I long dreaded before I finally got to know (and love) it.

It's true that Berlioz is at pains to refer to "Saint" Marie and "Saint" Joseph, and to the family unit of them plus the baby Jesus as "the Holy Family," and certainly a central feature of the piece is the "celestial warning" vouchsafed to them, which causes them to flee to Egypt to save the infant from King Herod's "Massacre of the Innocents." Neverthess, in both the text and the music the composer pointedly doesn't treat them as saints or "holy" people, but as a struggling, poor young family that, faced with dire peril (see the 2010 post "In Berlioz's telling, unto us child is saved"), forced to flee the people who know and care for them (we heard this painful parting first in 2008 and then as part of the 2009 post "A Christmas miracle, courtesy of Hector Berlioz") and following their desperate flight across the desert are within a breath of death from thirst, starvation, and exposure, when at the last possible moment they are taken in by an Ishmaelite family, which immediately abandons all other concerns except tending to the physical needs of the unknown wanderers. "The children of Ishmael are brothers of those of Israel," the Ishmaelite Father declares.

There are moments of ineffable charm, as when the Ishmaelite Father asks the baby's name and, being told, responds, "Jesus! What a charming name!" Or when he discovers that his Israelite counterpart, like himself, is a carpenter. And then there's what long seemed to me a bizarre digression: a trio for two flutes and harp, offered by the Ishmaelite Father as sustenance for his now-physically-strengthening guests' needs. The standard explanation is that Berlioz had this trio in his drawer and found here a place to use it. But such explanations only explain the behavior of mediocrities. In the case of a genius of Berlioz's thoroughness, the point has to be why this seemed to him a suitable place to insert this trio.

It finally occurred to me that the piece begins to make sense when, instead of being played for "prettiiness," it's played for the crazy energy that underlies it. According to the score heading, as I've noted in the title, it is "performed by the young Ishmaelites." What this little performance is, then, is what the Ishamelite family has to offer their guests by way of diversion and mental and emotional restorative. Specifically, it's something shared by the Ishmaelilte young 'uns to their infant Israelite counterpart. (We all remember who he is, right?)

I'm not sure I've ever heard a performance that actually offers much of this. Certainly these don't. And I don't have the initiative to undertake a search of all my L'Enfance recordings to see if I can find one closer to what I may now be hearing only in my head. Neverteless, these are all certainly very pretty performances, of notably different kinds, and at least in the quick sections you can hear some of that weird energy I'm talking about. Now just try to imagine it carried over even to the "lyrical" sections.

BERLIOZ: L'Enfance du Christ (The Childhood of Christ), Op. 25: Part III, The Arrival in Saïs: Trio for Two Flutes and Harp (Performed by the young Ishmaelites)


Jean Chefnay and Eugène Masson, flutes; Annie Challan, harp (Colonne Concerts Orchestra); Pierre Dervaux, cond. Adès, recorded 1959

Doriot Anthony Dwyer and James Pappoutsakis, flutes; Bernard Zighera, harp (Boston Symphony Orchestra); Charles Munch, cond. RCA/BMG, recorded Dec. 23-24, 1956

William Bennett and Paul Davies, flutes; Thelma Owen, harp (English Chamber Orchestra), Philip Ledger, cond. ASV, recorded December 1985
(You'll note that on this first page there's a repeat, which among our performers only the ASV team observes.)

DIGRESSION: ABOUT DORIOT ANTHONY DWYER,
JAMES PAPPOUTSAKIS, AND BERNARD ZIGHERA

Doriot Anthony Dwyer (born 1922) became principal flute of the Boston Symphony Orchestra in 1952, engaged by incoming music director Charles Munch to replace retiring 34-year incumbent Georges Laurent. At the time, a female orchestra principal wasn't unprecedented but was certainly rare. Dwyer went on to top Laurent's tenure by four years, retiring only in 1990. (I'm startled to see her first name rendered as "Dorothy" in the BMG anthology of Munch-BSO Berlioz recordings -- apparently available now only in MP3 download form -- from which this selection is drawn. The story goes that in her application for the BSO job she took pains to identify herself as "Miss" Doriot Anthony, to prevent any mistaking her gender.)

Dwyer was a splendid flutist, no doubt about it. But it's her partners in this performance who are the subject of this digression. When she joined the BSO, Jimmy" Pappoutsakis (1911-1979, born in Cairo to Greek parents who shortly thereafter relocated to Boston) was in place as assistant principal flutist, and remained in that post until his retirement in 1978 after a remarkable 40 years (!) with the orchestra, during which he established himself as a mainstay of the local music community. The photo, from the James Pappoutsakis Flute Competition website, is from 1967.

Following Jimmy's death "from complications of emphysema" a little over a year after his retirement, a James Pappousakis Memorial Fund was established, which since 1981 it has overseen the annual competition. In addition, each year the Memorial Fund commissions a new composition for flute, to be played by the finalists in the final round. The 2012 winner, announced just last month, is 20-year-old Jisun Oh; the second-place winner, Bethanne Walker; and the other finalists, Michel Dew and Hanol Lee.

The Munch-BSO recording of Berlioz's L'Enfance du Christ was made in December 1956, and thus almost exactly midway through Jimmy Pappousakis's tenure with the orchestra. The story I can't resist sharing, which links him and BSO harp principal from 1926 to 1980, Bernard Zighera (1904-1984), dates back to the beginning, or rather before the beginning. It comes from Jimmy's website bio, following a paragraph that takes him through his studies at the New England Conservatory of Music (NEC). (The photo below shows Jimmy in 1937, the year he joined the BSO.)

To sustain a living in the years following his graduation from NEC [the New England Conservatory of Music], Jimmy freelanced, taught privately and played in small opera companies, theater pit orchestras, and radio concerts in Boston and the surrounding areas. At a concert in the Boston Public Library in 1937, then BSO harpist Bernard Zighera attended a recital of one of his finest pupils, Miss Louise Came. Among other repertoire, this particular harp recital featured Louise performing a work for flute and harp with Jimmy as flutist. Zighera remembered the concert a few weeks later, when BSO conductor Serge Koussevitsky remarked at a meeting at Symphony Hall that he would soon be holding auditions for the position of assistant principal flute. Zighera spoke up and Jimmy was called to ask if he would audition. The forthcoming audition went well, with several standard excerpts, at which time Koussevitsky called for the 1st flute part of "Daphnis and Chloe" from the library. Jimmy surprised all with a quick offer to play it there on the spot from memory. The conductor was delighted and the position was promptly offered to Pappoutsakis. Incidentally, Miss Came eventually entered the BSO and the Boston Pops Orchestra (Pops) as harpist, and a few years later became Mrs. James Pappoutsakis. They can be heard together on one of the earliest Pops recordings featuring flute and harp in a performance of the Menuette from "L'Arlesienne Suite" of Georges Bizet.

TO RETURN TO CARMEN: I ENJOYED THE FRÜHBECK
PERFORMANCE OF THE ACT III ENTR'ACTE SO MUCH . . .

. . . that I couldn't resist extracting all four act-openers -- the Prelude and the entr'actes to Acts II-IV -- from his 1969-70 EMI recording of the opera (which featured the original spoken dialogue instead of the recitatives composed by Ernest Guiraud, but spoken -- given the exceedingly "international" singing cast, what with an American Carmen, Canadian José, Italian Micaëla, and Greek Escamillo -- by a disconcertingly different-sounding speaking cast). It may be worth noting that unlike so many Carmen recordings, even French ones, this one was made with an actual opera-house orchestra, with plenty of experience of playing the music in the orchestra pit in context.

Frühbeck's incisively vigorous way certainly isn't the only way to play this music -- sometime we should listen to Leonard Bernstein's Met recording (which unfortunately I'd have to dub from LP) -- but Frühbeck's performances of these orchestral excerpts strike me as outstandingly persuasive. And if the recorded sound strikes you, as it did me on this rehearing, as remarkably good, let the record show that the EMI producer was Christopher Bishop.

Note that the track with the Prelude goes on to include the first statement of the "Fate" motif, which is properly speaking part of Act I. Note too that all four act-openers are included in the Carmen Suite No. 1 (not) assembled by the composer): the Prelude (with the "Fate" motif) as No. 1, Prelude; the Act II Entr'acte as No. 5, Les Dragons d'Alcala; the Act III Entr'acte as No. 3, Intermezzo; and the Act IV Entr'acte as No. 2, Aragonaise.

BIZET: Carmen:
Prelude

Entr'acte to Act II

Entr'acte to Act III

Entr'acte to Act IV

Orchestra of the Théâtre National de l'Opéra de Paris, Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos, cond. EMI, recorded July 1969-Feb. 1970

OH, WHAT THE HECK! WHEN ARE WE GOING
TO GET BACK TO CARMEN? HERE'S . . . LENNY!

Besides, what else do I have to do but sit around dubbing LPs for MP3 files?

You'll notice we're in a different musical world here -- not just broader and more spacious, but weightier and more richly and variously textured, with greater intensity and depth. Remember, I really, really like the Frühbeck de Burgos performances, which have what I can only call "earned energy," seemingly generated from within, rather than slathered on from the outside. But Lenny's Met Carmen wasn't like any other I've heard.

BIZET: Carmen: Prelude; Entr'actes to Acts II-IV

Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, Leonard Bernstein, cond. DG, recorded 1973

COMING UP: FLUTE-AND-HARP WEEK, PART 2

On Sunday we'll hear Mozart's Concerto for Flute and Harp.


RETURN TO THE BEGINNING OF THE POST

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