"When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying the cross."
-- Sinclair Lewis
Sunday, February 02, 2014
Sunday Classics: In our missing "Song of the Earth" song, Mahler's "Lonely One in Autumn" begs for "peace" and "consolation"
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Christa Ludwig, mezzo-soprano; Israel Philharmonic, Leonard Bernstein, cond. CBS-Sony, recorded live, May 18, 20, and 23, 1972
by Ken
In the above audio clip we're near the end of the second song of Das Lied von der Erde (The Song of the Earth), "Der Einsame im Herbst" ("The Lonely One in Autumn"), where Mahler pulls another of those minor-to-major switcheroos we've talked about. It occurs at 1:25 of our clip. Well, that's the lead-in; the actual moment occurs at about 1:31 -- and it's one of the stupendous moments of this extraordinary song-symphony, the first new project the composer undertook after learning that he was suffering from terminal heart disease.
From the heaven-storming conclusion of the Eighth Symphony to Das Lied represents, one of the most striking sudden changes of course in the work of any creative artist I'm aware of. We actually heard the juxtaposition in the August 2010 post "In the opening vision of Mahler's Song of the Earth: 'Dark is life, is death,'" which focused on the opening tenor song, "The Drinking Song of Earth's Sorrow," but also included the two later tenor songs.
In this week's preview I said we would be filling in the one song we still haven't covered and then hearing the six movements of Das Lied finally put together. For all sorts of reasons we're not going to manage that today. I'm going to content myself with presenting that final missing link, the second song (and the first for the alto or baritone soloist who alternates with the tenor).
THERE'S A DIFFERENCE IN CHARACTER
BETWEEN THE TENOR AND ALTO SONGS
Sunday Classics preview: One loose end we CAN tie up -- our missing movements from Mahler's "Song of the Earth"
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[Click to enlarge]
by Ken
Das Lied von der Erde (The Song of the Earth) is sort of Mahler's Symphony No. 8½. Even though it's a series of six songs with orchestra, alternating between tenor and alto (or baritone) soloists, he probably would have called is his Ninth Symphony if the already-dying composer hadn't been such a baby about that "Ninth Symphony" business -- their Ninths had been so fateful for Beethoven and Bruckner. Since he had his next symphony mapped out, he thought that by calling that his Ninth, when it was really his Tenth, he would have the jinx beaten. As we know, though, the joke was on him. He did complete the symphony he called his Ninth, but died leaving his Tenth incomplete.
From the same performance as last night's Fischer-Dieskau performances, Brigitte Fassbaender offers a significantly more persuasive account of the haunting song "Wo die schönen Trompeten blasen," again with Hans Zender conducting the Saarbrücken Radio Symphony Orchestra, April 1979
Where other composers such as Bela Bartók became increasingly interested in their native music as they grew older, Mahler seems to have absorbed the music of his homeland into his very cells at an exceedingly early age and seems then to have taken no further conscious interest in it. Instead, he built instinctively on the most powerful and primitive sources of expression throughout some of the most complex and sophisticated structures yet conceived by the Western musical mind. Perhaps that is one reason the strong appeal of Mahler's music continues to grow in our increasingly complex and often baffling age.
-- from Jack Diether's liner note for the Ludwig-Berry-Bernstein recording of Mahler's Des Knaben Wunderhorn songs
by Ken
This is the paragraph from Jack Diether's liner note which I quoted in last night's first part of this glimpse at Mahler's "military"-themed settings from the folk-poetry anthology Des Knaben Wunderhorn (The Youth's Magic Horn), where we focused on two of the shorter, less grave military songs, "Trost im Unglück" ("Comfort in Misfortune") and the "Lied des Verfolgten im Turm" ("Song of the Prisoner in the Tower"). I said last night that when we put the two paragraphs together, we would have "as good a description and summation of Mahler's art and particular genius as I can imagine in two paragraphs." (For those disinclined to click through to last night's post, we'll put those paragraphs together in tonight's click-through, though of course you'll have to click through to get to that.)
Tonight, as promised, we hear the longer and graver "Wo die schönen Trompeten blasen" {"Where the Lovely Trumpets Blow"), Mahler's chiefest gift to the female soloist among the dozen "standard" Wunderhorn-group songs that aren't part of a symphony -- thereby excluding the luminous "Urlicht" ("Primal Light"), which found a place before the Finale of the Second (Resurrection) Symphony, of which we've actually heard quite a few performances, including three by Maureen Forrester: a grainy black-and-white videowith Glenn Gould conducting (!) and then performances from 1958 and 1987, from recordings of the Resurrection Symphony conducted by Bruno Walter'and Gilbert Kaplan, respectively. That post, by the way, offered Forrester singing large quantities of Mahler, including two Wunderhorn songs, "Antonius of Padua's Fish Sermon" and -- of all things! -- "Wo die schönene Trompeten blasen.").
Both of the masterly songs we're working toward tomorrow, "Revelge" ("Reveille") and "Der Tambourg'sell ("The Drummer Boy"), are pretty nearly the exclusive province of male singers, normally baritones and bass-baritones. "Wo die schönen Trompeten blasen," of very nearly comparable stature, is just as near-exclusively female turf. (In further compensation, "Urlicht" itself is often performed as part of the Wunderhorn "set.")
MAHLER: "Wo die schönen Trompeten blasen" ("Where the Lovely Trumpets Blow")
"Who then is outside and who is knocking, waking me so gently?"
"It is your heart's beloved, and let me in with you! Why should I stand here longer?
"I see daybreak rising, daybreak, two bright stars. I surely wish I were with my sweetheart! With my sweetheart!"
The girl got up and let him in. She also bids him welcome.
"Welcome, my dear boy! You've been standing so long!" And she gives him her snow-white hand. In the distance the nightingale sang. The girl began to weep.
"O do not weep, my beloved! By year's end you will be my own. My own you will certainly be, as no other is on earth! O love, on the green earth. I go off to war on the green heath; the green heath, it's so far!
"There where the beautiful trumpets blow, there is my house of green turf."
Christa Ludwig, mezzo-soprano; Philharmonia Orchestra, Otto Klemperer, cond. EMI, recorded Feb. 17-19, 1964
This performance is part of a group of five Mahler songs that Christa Ludwig and Otto Klemperer recorded as a fourth-side filler for their recording of Das Lied von der Erde. Their Das Lied, with Fritz Wunderlich as the tenor soloist, turned out spectacularly, one of the glories of the phonograph. But the "filler" songs turned out pretty spectacularly too. In "Wo die schönen Trompeten blasen" the intensity of atmosphere and emotional concentration are established at the initial downbeat and never let up.
Let's back up and put those two paragraphs of Jack Diether's together, then add his brief note on tonight's song.
Mahler's unique power as a composer lies in his ability to catch the essence of the sounds of man and nature, and to transmute it into purely musical terms. From his early childhood, he was fascinated by the sounds that environed him: bird songs, bugle calls, tattoos, marches and, especially, dances and airs. It is said that when Mahler was only four or five years old he could already play more than a hundred peasant songs and dances on an accordion.
Where other composers such as Bela Bartók became increasingly interested in their native music as they grew older, Mahler seems to have absorbed the music of his homeland into his very cells at an exceedingly early age and seems then to have taken no further conscious interest in it. Instead, he built instinctively on the most powerful and primitive sources of expression throughout some of the most complex and sophisticated structures yet conceived by the Western musical mind. Perhaps that is one reason the strong appeal of Mahler's music continues to grow in our increasingly complex and often baffling age. . . .
[T]he largest and most important category [of Mahler's settings of poems from the folk anthology Des Knaben Wunderhorn (The Youth's Magic Horn)] comprises the so-called "military" songs, where Mahler's penchant for the ironic, the pathetic and the macabre is given full rein. Of the six in this genre, three are duets and three are solos. . . .
"Wo die schönen Trompeten blasen" is compounded of eeriness and sad beauty in a manner that is virtually unparalleled in the art of song. This too would be a duet, were it not that the whole thing is cast in narrative form -- therefore one voice.
Now you'll recall that Jack was a proponent of duet performance of the "he said, she said" Wunderhorn songs. It turns out that he's wrong in thinking that nobody would contemplate performing "Wo die schönen Trompeten blasen" as a duet.
"Wo die schönen Trompeten blasen" ("Where the Lovely Trumpets Blow")
Diana Damrau, soprano; Iván Paley, baritone; Stephan Matthias Lademann, piano. Telos, recorded 2003
I think a duettized "Wo die schönen Trompeten blasen" would be a tough sell even in a better performance than this one (where I have to say I don't think the piano-playing is the problem).
One point to note about the Ludwig-Klemperer performance is that, relatively speaking, it's fast. It doesn't sound fast to me, but the just-over-six-minutes timing is practically lickety-split. I haven't combed my holdings, but I don't think I've got a performance anywhere near that short. Ludwig's next recordings, with Leoanrd Bernstein conducting and at the piano (in the glorious Des Knaben Wunderhorn with her then-husband, baritone Walter Berry; last night I ventured that their "Trost in Unglück" and "Lied des Verfolgten im Turm" pretty much sweep the field) are almost a minute longer. But thanks to the amazing intensity and concentration of the performance, it doesn't sound rushed, or even quickish, to me.
Our next two performances, in addition to showcasing distinctly different voice types (Jessye Norman's full-fledged dramatic soprano with that contralto-like lower range, Lucia Popp's lyric-weight soprano), stretch the song out significantly -- to 7:31 and 8:41, respectively.
"Wo die schönen Trompeten blasen" ("Where the Lovely Trumpets Blow")
Jessye Norman, soprano; Concertgebouw Orchestra, Bernard Haitink, cond. Philips, recorded April 1976 Lucia Popp, soprano; London Philharmonic Orchestra, Klaus Tennstedt, cond. EMI, recorded 1985-86
And finally, I promised last night that we would hear Anne Sofie von Otter's performance from the Wunderhorn recording conducted by Claudio Abbado. (Last night we heard baritone Thomas Quasthoff, the sturdy male soloist, give fine performances of both our songs.)
Anne Sofie von Otter, mezzo-soprano; Berlin Philharmonic, Claudio Abbado, cond. DG, recorded February 1998
By now you should be able to say it before me: It's the last of Mahler's Wunderhorn settings, "Revelge" ("Reveille") and "Der Tamboursg'sell" ("The Drummer Boy").
[6/5/2012] Preview: In which we hear a lady weighted by a heap of hurt
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Waiting for Samson:the Sorek valley in modern-day Israel
SAINT-SAËNS: Samson et Dalila, Op. 47: Act II: Dalila, "Samson, recherchant ma présence" ("Samson, seeking my presence again") . . . "Amour! viens aider ma faiblesse!" ("Love! come aid my weakness!")
[For an English translation of the text, see below.]
Maria Callas (s), Dalila; Orchestre National de la Radiodiffusion Française, Georges Prêtre, cond. EMI, recorded Mar.-Apr. 1961
NOW LET'S PUT THE ACT II PRELUDE
AND DALILA'S GREAT SOLO TOGETHER
Note that in these excerpts, not only do we have the Act II Prelude before the aria, but afterward we hear the orchestral transition up to the actual entrance of the High Priest. In this brief passage we hear a continuation of Saint-Saëns's musical characterization of the approaching thunderstorm -- surely begun in the Act II Prelude -- of the approaching thunderstorm, which will run through Dalila's great scenes with the High Priest and then Samson.
SAINT-SAËNS: Samson et Dalila, Op. 47: Act II: Prelude: Dalila, "Samson, recherchant ma présence" ("Samson, seeking my presence again") . . . "Amour! viens aider ma faiblesse!" ("Love! come aid my weakness!")
The stage represents the valley of Sorek in Palestine. At left, the dwelling of DALILA, fronted by a light portico and surrounded by Asiatic plants and luxuriant vines. Night is beginning, and becomes complete through the course of the act.
Prelude
At curtain rise, DALILA is seated on a rock near the portico of her house, seeming lost in reverie.
DALILA: Samson, seeking my presence again,
this evening is to come to this place.
Here is the hour of vengeance,
which must satisfy our gods.
Love! come aid my weakness!
Pour the poison in his breast!
Make it happen that, conquered by my artfulness,
Samson is in fetters tomorrow!
In vain would he wish to be able
to chase me out of his soul, to banish me.
Could he extinguish the flame
that memory feeds?
He is mine! my slave!
My brothers fear his wrath;
I, along among all, I defy him
and hold him at my knees!
Love! come aid my weakness!
Pour the poison in his breast!
Make it happen that, conquered by my artfulness,
Samson is in fetters tomorrow!
Against strength is useless,
and he, the strong among the strong,
he, who broke his people's chains,
will succumb to my efforts.
Christa Ludwig (ms), Dalila; Munich Radio Orchestra, Giuseppe Patanè, cond. Eurodisc/BMG, recorded 1973
Marjana Lipovšek (ms), Dalila; Vienna Symphony Orchestra, Sylvain Cambreling, cond. Koch-Schwann, recorded live at the Bregenz Festival, July 21, 1988
