Two personal markers in the Relentless March of Time (plus timeless words of wisdom from the Rev. Dennis Sparrow)

Stephanie Cole (born 1941) and Graham Crowden (1922-2010)
as Diana and Tom in Waiting for God, in the early '90s

by Ken

This is an expanded version of an e-mail I wrote my friend Richard yesterday, and dealing almost entirely with one person's personal relationship to time will probably be of no interest to any other person. Well, look at little chunk of time you just saved!

I suppose when you're young, and even youngish, time seems barely to move. By and large it can't seem ever to move fast enough. Somewhere along the line, as most all of us who've crossed that line discover, this all changes, and you have no idea where masses of years, even decades, slipped away to. And the sharpest reminders tend to smack you unexpectedly.

I remember, for example, the day -- already a bunch of years ago -- when Howie was in New York and mentioned that he was shopping for a present for his "baby" sister's 50th birthday. (He has two sisters, both younger than him.) Since I remember her from a time when that appellation, "baby" sister, seemed appropriate, this just stunned me, to the point where I said so, and he indicated that it was having pretty much the same effect on him.

With regard to the first of today's two "markers" in the march of time, I should explain that it all begin with some subsequent noodling I've been doing following my recent Sunday Classics post devoted to Schubert's Trout Quintet, which at the moment I'm expecting to take the form of a Sunday Classics "flashback"-plus-Britcom-revistiation for tomorrow night. I had been talking to Richard on the phone the night before, and he mentioned something that somebody had done that the somebody had of course declared to be not his but somebody else's fault, and I couldn't help but interject a sublime line from the episode of the early-'90s Britcom Waiting for God which I had included in the Trout post. I had included it because the series used a sensational recording of the finale by the Nash Ensemble as its opening and closing theme music, and so at the time I embedded it I hadn't actually watched the episode -- the third-season opener, "The Funeral" -- beyond those opening credits.

However, after posting it, I finally got around to watching the episode, not having seen a Waiting for God episode in ages. I guess maybe I was a little afraid that it wouldn't hold up, that it would seem relic-like. On the contrary, I thought it was sensational!

The moment I couldn't help recalling was from "the funeral" itself, when the nincompoop vicar, the Rev. Dennis Sparrow -- known to crotchety Bayview Retirement Home resident Diana as "Reverend Vulture" (played by Tim Preece, fondly remembered as Reggie's pompous-twit son-in-law Tom in the first two series of the incomparable Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin) -- melts down completely. Instead of eulogizing the actual decedent, an 88-year-old former insurance salesman, he prattles on about some high-living 28-year-old who perished in a hang-gliding accident.

When poor dear daffy Dennis realizes how hopelessly and irretrievably he has botched the thing, he vamooses from the pulpit, snarling defiantly at the congregation these timeless words as he descends:

"It's not my fault. It's somebody else's fault."

Which I thought (and think) was (and is) simply sublime. Here we have human nature, or at any rate a nasty component of it, distilled into essence. Whatever it is, the garble or blunder or snafu, it's not my fault, it's somebody else's. It doesn't matter whose fault, or why or how -- it's just somebody else's damned fault. (However, the incident that actually gets the de-marbled Dennis into hot water with his ecclesiastical superiors is his christen of a parish infant as "Ugly Little Bastard Jones.")

BUT I DIGRESS . . .

The point is that I had a moment yesterday and dug out a link for the Trout post and e-mailed it to Richard. (Well, no, he doesn't read my DWT posts. Actually, as it happens, nobody I know personally reads my DWT posts, with the possible exception of Howie, which hardly counts.) Then I felt compelled to relate the first March of Time moment described below, which resulted from my finally taking a moment to try to sort out my puzzlement in the last several years as I've come to enjoy the first several seasons of the British series Doc Martin, in which Stephanie Cole plays Martin's elderly aunt -- in a series that began a full decade after she finished playing retirement-home resident Diana in Waiting for God.

As for the second March of Time marker, well, I think you'll grasp the sequence from what I wrote. I've had this seven-CD Sony reissue set, Charles Munch: Late Romantic Masterpieces, for a couple of weeks now.

What follows is basically what I wrote to Richard yesterday, with just some occasional tinkerings and nudges.

MARCH OF TIME: Marker 1

I finally looked it up and was shocked to discover that Stephanie Cole was 48 when Waiting for God began in 1990 -- 20 years younger than costar Graham Crowden. It makes sense, though. Over the last few years I've become very fond of the British comedy-drama series Doc Martin (with the title role played by that fine actor Martin Clunes [who played Reggie Perrin in the recent remake of Reginald Perrin; see how everything comes together?]), set in a small Cornwall village, which began in 2004. Cole plays Martin's elderly Aunt Joan, looking hardly anything like the "elderly" Diana of Waiting for God. That's her at left in June 2009, during the filming of Series 4 of Doc Martin. Now I understand that in Doc Martin for once in her career she was actually playing sonething like her actual age! (I also discovered that there's a Doc Martin series we haven't seen yet, with some bad news about Auntie Joan.)

MARCH OF TIME: Marker 2

In the first record purchase I've made in recent memory, I couldn't resist one of those Sony/BMG cheap-cheap anthology boxes, in this case devoted to Charles Munch: Late Romantic Masterpieces, if only because it contains the Mahler Kindertotenlieder and Wayfarer Songs with Maureen Forrester, which I've never seen on CD. (All I've got is an RCA Gold Seal LP reissue.) But it's also got a Wagner CD, presumably boiled down from two LPs, which includes Eileen Farrell singing both the "Immolation Scene" and Liebestod, and three CDs of Tchaikovsky.

I didn't offhand remember the recordings of the Tchaik 4th and 6th Symphonies (after all, Munch recorded so much in his years in Boston), but today I decided to listen to the Pathétique (does that say something about my mood of the moment? I could have gone for the 4th, after all!), and I checked the recording date, being curious since after all Pierre Monteux had made stereo recordings of Tchaik 4, 5, and 6 with the BSO. The Pathétique turns out to be from March 1962.

And then it hit me! I remember that recording being issued. I can almost see it in the new-release ads in High Fidelity and Hi-Fi/Stereo Review (as the magazine must still have been at the time [only later becoming just Stereo Review])! That must have been one of Munch's last Boston recordings, and as I recall it was included in the first batch of RCA Dynagroove LPs! [Later thought: maybe not in the very first batch, but I still think one of the first.] With that memory, the recording is suddenly lodged in my head as relatively "new," though in fact it's less than two months away from being 50 years old!!!

As I suspected, the Mumch Pathétique is a lovely performance.

The Munch Tchaik 4th turns out to be from 1955, and thus earlier than the Monteux/Boston recording -- I'll have to check the date of that. It occurs to me: How many people in 2012 consider the time gap between 1955 and 1962 a significant one? I may not remember much these days, but I remembeer when to me that time gap seemed like practically a lifetime! (It sort of was.)

THE MONTEUX AND MUNCH BSO TCHAIKOVSKY SYMPHONIES

Symphony No. 4
Munch: Nov. 7, 1955
Monteux: Jan. 28, 1959

Symphony No. 5
Monteux: Jan. 8, 1958
no Munch-BSO recording (that I know of!)

Symphony No. 6 (Pathétique)
Monteux: Jan. 26, 1955
Munch: Mar. 12, 1962

YOU MAY THINK YOU DON'T KNOW THE PATHÉTIQUE, BUT --

I had this clever idea of offering you both the Monteux and Munch BSO recordings of the first movement of the Pathétique, but when I got home tonight I discovered that the Munch CD must still be sitting in my computer at work. Well, here's the Monteux. And if you think you've never heard this music, note the secondary theme of the main Allegro (aka the "big tune") at 4:20 in the Monteux performance.

TCHAIKOVSKY: Symphony No. 6 in B minor, Op. 74 (Pathétique):
i. Adagio; Allegro non troppo


Boston Symphony Orchestra, Pierre Monteux, cond. RCA/BMG, recorded Jan. 26, 1955

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Sunday Classics Preview: Marching with Berlioz' pilgrims in Italy

Violist William Primrose is our soloist tonight in all

three performances of Berlioz' Harold in Italy.

by Ken

For once, there's been no change of plan -- yet. I said last week that we might stick with Berlioz and take a peek at his symphony with viola obbligato Harold in Italy, inspired by Byron's Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, though nothing seems to have been taken directly or depicted from the long (very long; four cantos' worth) poem. Berlioz seems mostly to have responded to the idea of wandering around Italy.

Harold was a sequel of sorts to Berlioz' Symphonie fantastique, and in its four-movement form it actually behaves more like a symphony than the Fantastic Symphony -- except for that matter of the viola obbligato. It's clearly not a concerto, it's . . . well, a symphony with viola obbligato (an important solo part). And I thought tonight we would plunge right in, with three very different performances of the lovely second movement, the "March of the pilgrims singing their evening prayer." Note how much more jauntily Charles Munch's pilgrims march than Sir Thomas Beecham's (actually a fairly standard pace, but a hard one to maintain with real movement), with Arturo Toscanini's smack in between.

Different as these performances may be, they have one important thing in common: the great Scottish-born violist William Primrose, heard here over a 19-year span as soloist. In 1939, when he first played Harold with Toscanini, he was in fact a member of the NBC Symphony Orchestra, which had a host of outstanding musicians in its principal chairs.

One thing to listen for: As in the Symphonie fantastique, Berlioz used the idea of an idée fixe, a musical theme that recurs in each movement. In this second movement of Harold in Italy, which begins with some chords of taut expectation that quickly give way to a wonderful pastoral marching tune, the viola slips in with a bit of what sounds like decoration to the melodic line, and then suddenly it's singing, as a beautifully straightforward viola solo, the idée fixe -- at 1:27 of the Toscanini performance, 1:42 of the Beecham, and 1:18 of the Munch.

BERLIOZ: Harold in Italy, Op. 16:
ii. March of the pilgrims singing their evening prayer


William Primrose, viola; NBC Symphony Orchestra, Arturo Toscanini, cond. Music & Arts, recorded live, Jan. 2, 1939


William Primrose, viola; Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Sir Thomas Beecham, cond. Columbia/CBS/Sony, recorded Nov. 13 and 15, 1951


William Primrose, viola; Boston Symphony Orchestra, Charles Munch, cond. RCA/BMG, recorded March 31, 1958


IN TOMORROW NIGHT'S PREVIEW --

I haven't thought that far ahead. It'll be Berlioz, I'm pretty sure, though, and then Sunday we'll take in the whole of Harold in Italy.


SUNDAY CLASSICS POSTS

The current list is here.

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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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