Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, baritone; Manfred Clement, oboe; Munich Bach Orchestra, Karl Richter, cond. DG Archiv Produktion, recorded July 1968
Hermann Prey, baritone; Willy Garlach, oboe; Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, Kurt Thomas, cond. Eterna-EMI, recorded Dec. 14-19, 1959
Janet Baker, mezzo-soprano; Michael Dobson, oboe; Bath Festival Orchestra, Yehudi Menuhin, cond. EMI, recorded July 1966
by Ken
So a couple of weeks ago I told the story of how suddenly the audio cassette became a medium for music for me: when I listened to a DGArchiv cassette of Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau's second (1968) recording of the popular coupling of Bach's two solo-bass cantatas, and we heard all three of his recordings of the great central aria, "Schlummert etin," of Cantata No. 82, "Ich habe genug." I warned that we might be returning to the scene of the crime, in the form of taking a shot at hearing the margin of superiority of this not-really-wildly-heralded recording in collaboration with the once-admired (but not so much anymore) baroque specialist Karl Richter, over any other I've encountered.
So here we are.
But first, as noted above, I thought we might hear how Cantata No. 82 begins, with the aria "Ich habe genug." (This is not exactly a coincidence. We know the Bach cantatas by the title, usually the first line, of their opening number.)
Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, baritone; Munich Bach Orchestra, Karl Richter, cond. DG Archiv Produktion, recorded July 1968
by Ken
Awhile ago I shared WNYC's New Tech City's "Bored and Brilliant" project, which was aimed at helping smartphonomaniacs get some control over their habit. Judging from the onsite response the project seems to have stimulated a lot of phone compulsives to (a) recognize their jones and (b) take some steps to overcome it.
One thing I tried to refrain from was getting too judgy, even though I probably am pretty judgmental when it comes to the smartphone compulsion and the related "social media" one. As it happens, perhaps merely by some fluke, I don't seem to have any temptation toward either, and really can't fathom what the attraction is. But I try to be careful about judging others, first under the "There but for the Grace of God" precept, but also in recognition of my own technological compulsions.
MY TECHNOLOGICAL COMPULSIONS RUN MORE TO THE AUDIO AND -- MORE RECENTLY -- VIDEO
Sunday Classics preview: This is no happy wanderer Schubert presents to us
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SCHUBERT: "Der Wanderer" ("The Wanderer"), D. 493
Poem by Georg Philipp Schmidt von Lübeck
I come down from the mountains.
The valley streams;
the sea roars.
I wander, silent and joyless,
and my sighs always ask, "Where?"
Always "Where?"
[1:56-2:57] The sun seems so cold to me here,
the flowers faded and life old,
and what they say is empty sound.
I am a stranger everywhere.
Where are you? Where are you, my beloved land?
Sought for, dreamed of, but never known!
The land, the land, so green with hope,
the land where my roses bloom,
where my friends go wandering
where my dead rise up
the land where my language is spoken,
o land, where are you?
I wander, silent and joyless,
and my sighs always ask, "Where?"
Always "Where?"
In a ghostly whisper it calls back to me,
"There where you are not,
there is your joy!"
by Ken
We'll come back to the boldface highlighting in a moment. It happens to be our reason for listening to "Der Wanderer" this week, but it's a justly popular Schubert song in its own right, with a gravity that's beautifully captured by Gerald Moore in the above performance. This is not a happy wanderer.
PAPAGENO: Right, then, that's still how it is!
Since there is nothing holding me back,
good night, thou false world!
-- most of our Magic Flute translations by Robert A. Jordan
Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau (b), Papageno; Berlin Philharmonic, Karl Böhm, cond. DG, recorded June 1964
Or in English: "Fare thee well, thou world of pain!"
[in English] John Brownlee (b), Papageno; Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, Bruno Walter, cond. Live performance, Dec. 26, 1942
by Ken
We were just looking at Mozart's and Beethoven's exceptional use of minor keys for opening movements of symphonies and concertos, and one point I could have made more explicit is how frequently -- among these admittedly infrequent cases -- the "thematic" material that inspires such a plan is more "motivic" than really melodic -- think of Mozart's D minor Piano Concerto (No. 20) or of Beethoven's Fifth and Ninth Symphonies.
But of course the minor mode doesn't preclude great tunes, and I think that's what planted the thought of this great moment from The Magic Flute in my head. It's the moment when Papageno the lowly bird-catcher is driven by his loneliness to the ultimate despair, and I think the Fischer-Dieskau performance in particular makes it clear that Mozart plays this moment "for real." (Not to worry, we're going to hear the complete scene, er, eventually.)
As I suggested in Friday night's "double preview," "Enter the bird-catcher; exit Sir Colin Davis," we're focusing this week on Papageno, though as we often do, we're going to start with the Overture.
OUR THREE PRINCIPAL PAPAGENOS
AND THEIR DISTINGUISHED CONDUCTORS
To fill out the fourth LP side of their 1959 EMI recording of Mahler's Das Lied von der Erde (The Song of the Earth), with Fischer-Dieskau and tenor Murray Dickie as soloists, Paul Kletzki and the Philharmonia Orchestra made this recording of the haunting Adagietto from Mahler's Fifth Symphony.
"Over time, a great many people have written to me to say that my singing brought them to music. They heard me sing, and began to approach music with curiosity, and went on to hear a great deal more. For me, that is the greatest thing. Then you know that there was a point."
-- Fischer-Dieskau, in an 80th-birthday interview in the July 2005 issue of BBC Music Magazine
by Ken
I mentioned in Friday night's Fischer-Dieskau remembrance preview that a quick-and-dirty count of the audio clips I've made for Sunday Classics turned up some 46, not including this week's. The breakdown goes something like this: Mahler (17), Schubert (10), Wagner (5), Schumann (4), with two each of Berg, Verdi, and Richard Strauss, and one each of Gluck, Mozart, Rossini, and Britten.
In the click-through we're going to hear Fischer-Dieskau immersed -- singing and conducting -- in the musical farewell to end all musical farewells. As a warm-up, we should probably have the customary Mahler valedictory, the Rückert setting "Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen" ("I have lost touch with the world"). It's certainly a beautiful song -- and we're going to get to it eventually (Fischer-Dieskau could sing it very beautifully) -- but I have to say, it's not really one of my favorite Mahler songs. For a composer who dealt so wide-rangingly and unsparingly with the subject of death, this song seems to me decidedly obvious and two-dimensional.
Instead, I'd like to rehash a song we only just heard: the last of the Wayfarer Songs, "Die zwei blauen Augen von meinem Schatz" ("The two blue eyes of my darling"). When we last heard the song, in a preview post and a main post last month, I had my say (or some of my say) about it, so I'm not going to rehash that. I will just say that while a lot of Fischer-Dieskau's singing of Lieder came out in obviously fake-expressive, "Look, Ma, I'm interpreting" mode, when the guy wanted, and when the voice was sufficiently under command for the purpose, he could do a job.
MAHLER: Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen (Songs of a Wayfarer): iv. "Die zwei blauen Augen von meinem Schatz" ("The two blue eyes of my darling") Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, baritone; Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, Rafael Kubelik, cond. DG, recorded December 1968
Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, baritone; Philharmonia Orchestra, Wilhelm Furtwängler, cond. EMI, recorded June 24-25, 1952
Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, baritone; Leonard Bernstein, piano. CBS/Sony, recorded in New York, Nov. 4, 1968
Sunday Classics preview: Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau (1925-2012)
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SCHUMANN: "Widmung" ("Dedication"), Op. 25, No. 1
You my soul, you my heart, you my joy, o you my pain, you my world in which I live, my heaven you in which I soar, o you my grave in which I have buried my sorrows forever.
You are rest; you are peace; you were destined for me by heaven. That you love me makes me feel worthy; your glance has transfigured me; you lift me, loving, above myself -- my good spirit, my better "I"!
You my soul, you my heart, you my joy, o you my pain, you my world, in which I live, my heaven you, in which I soar -- my good spirit, my better "I"!
-- original German text by Friedrich Rückert
Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, baritone; Jörg Demus, piano. DG, recorded c1960
Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, baritone; Christoph Eschenbach, piano. DG, recorded 1974
by Ken
Baritone Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau died last Friday, ten days short of his 87th birthday. Complex as my feelings about him as a performer are (and make no mistake, at his best he was one of the greats), he hasn't exactly been an unfamiliar presence here at Sunday Classics. I did a quick and probably only approximate count of the audio clips I've made for use here and came up with some 46 as a singer plus two as a conductor -- not including those added for this week's posts. (Both numbers will be going up.)
I can't think of a better way to remember Fischer-Dieskau than by rehearing the earlier of the two "Widmung" performances reprised above from a November 2011 post called "And then came 'Widmung'," where I spoke of the "vocal suppleness and tonal radiance that for me makes this a dream performance of this great song." (In the later recording we can hear what a difference the considerably rougher condition of the voice makes in the singer's interpretive choices, though I am rather taken by the greater contrast between the faster tempo for the outer sections and the slower one for the central "Du bist die Ruh'" section.)
This week I'm not going to attempt any proper appraisal -- we'll settle for a remembrance. And in the click-through we've got two sublime leave-taking numbers we've heard before, in a March 2011 post called "Sunday, Bloody Sunday and the depths of Mozart's humanity," performed by other people, but now we'll hear them sung by ensembles that include Fischer-Dieskau.
In Clarence Brown's Song of Love (1947), Paul Henreid as Robert Schumann introduces the newly composed "Widmung" to Katharine Hepburn as Clara; later Henry Daniell as Liszt plays his version, and finally Clara has her turn with it. (All the piano-playing is by Arthur Rubinstein, whom we'll hear playing the Liszt version straight through in the click-through.)
by Ken
Among the great creative feats on record, I'm not sure that any surpasses what is often referred to as Robert Schumann's Year of Song, 1840, the year in which he married Clara Wieck, which we talked about back in April 2010. As Eric Sams has put it, "In the 12 months beginning 1 February 1 1840 he wrote over 160 vocal works, including at least 135 of the 246 solo songs in the complete Peters Edition."
Near the head of the list is the collection of 26 songs published as Schumann's Op. 25, Myrthen (myrtles -- "European evergreen shrubs with white or rosy flowers that are often used to make bridal wreaths"), which the composer presented to Clara as a wedding gift and of course dedicated to her. And at the head of Myrthen is "Widmung" ("Dedication"), the exhilarating song we previewed Friday night.
SCHUMANN: "Widmung" ("Dedication"), Op. 25, No. 1
Baritone Hermann Prey, with pianist Leonard Hokanson (1975)
German text by Friedrich Rückert
You my soul, you my heart,
you my joy, o you my pain,
you my world in which I live,
my heaven you in which I soar,
o you my grave in which
I have buried my sorrows forever.
You are rest; you are peace;
you were destined for me by heaven.
That you love me makes me feel worthy;
your glance has transfigured me;
you lift me, loving, above myself --
my good spirit, my better "I"!
You my soul, you my heart,
you my joy, o you my pain,
you my world, in which I live,
my heaven you, in which I soar --
my good spirit, my better "I"!
In the click-through we're going to have much more of and about "Widmung," and then, well, as I mentioned Friday night, it was a recital this past week by pianist Anne-Marie McDermott that set me to thinking about the song, in both its original form and the bravura solo-piano expansion of it created by Liszt. This is all leading up to my threatened reflections on that recital and an attempt to describe, if not explain, the effect Ms. McDermott's performance of the Liszt version had on me; more about that in the click-through.
Sunday Classics: Bach's faith rouses devotion, not ennui (or ridicule), in this nonbeliever -- his Jesus isn't the Right's "macho Jesus"
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t Baritone Matthias Goerne sings the second aria, "Schlummert ein," from Bach's Cantata No. 82, Ich habe genug, with the Salzburg Camerata Academica conducted by Roger Norrington.
Fall asleep, you weary eyes, close softly and pleasantly!
World, I will not remain here any longer, I own no part of you that could matter to my soul. Here I must build up misery, but there, there I will see sweet peace, quiet rest.
"If I were setting out to 'sell' Bach, or even to try to sketch the Bach who most matters to me, I would start with the secular music -- with, say, the Brandenburg Concertos and the solo-cello suites. But the cantatas may be the place where one comes closest to encountering the soul of Bach."
by Ken
Bach. Johann Sebastian Bach. If the very name doesn't strike awe, maybe you aren't listening carefully.
The sheer quantity of music Bach (1685-1750) wrote is all but unimaginable. Scholars have speculated doubtfully as to how long it would have taken one person just to write out all that music, without even considering the act of creation -- not to mention the quality of it.
Here's another way of measuring the quantity. A few years ago among the new listings from my indispensable Berkshire Record Outlet I noticed the Hänssler Classics edition of the complete works of Bach, all 173 CDs' worth (171 audio plus 2 data), at a price so low that not only could I afford to buy it, I didn't see how I could afford not to. Figuring that BRO couldn't have a lot of copies of this mammoth set, and that every BRO customer with a grain of sense would want one, I had the sense to pounce, placing an immediate order.
When I received a shipping notice, beyond my enormous relief, for some reason what caught my attention was the shipping weight: 18 pounds. Ever since, I've thought of the Hänssler set as "18 pounds of Bach."
As to the quality of the music, it is if anything more awe-inspiring than the quantity. I wish it were possible to point to a piece here or there that appears "dashed off." That might make Bach appear more human. Not only does the quality never seem to lag, but large chunks of that 18 pounds of Bach remain at the core of the repertories they represent. For the next couple of centuries it would be hard to find a major composer who didn't consider Bach the master of them all. Far from any of this music being dashed off -- though one sometimes gets the feeling that old J.S.B. could toss off a four-voice fugue in his sleep (writing in his sleep would help explain how the man got all that music on paper) -- a sizable portion of it is among the most intellectually formidable music ever composed.
It's possible, though, and regrettable, to get carried away with the extraordinary intellectual content of Bach's music. Like every great musician, he had a compulsion to communicate, and his musical curiosity seems to have been insatiable. Unlike his exact contemporary Handel (1685-1759; the closest the music world would come to having another year like 1685 was 1813, when both Verdi and Wagner were born), he hardly traveled. Yet he managed to stay abreast of what was being done in music all over Europe, absorbing what suited him into his own musical personality.
To offset, or at least temper, the image of Bach the intellectual giant, is it possible to write music more meltingly beautiful than we have in the opening clip, the bass aria "Schlummert ein"? For all Bach's formidable intellectual powers, and the defining fact that he was by profession a church organist and composer, it would be a shame to overlook how deeply people-oriented his music was. I do believe he felt he was performing and composing in the service of God. Nevertheless, I have to believe that a crucial part of the mission his God intended for him when he set pen to music paper was to communicate with his fellow humans.
I have a slightly funny history with Cantata No. 82, Ich habe genug, long one of the most performed of Bach's nearly 200 sacred cantatas, in good part because of its unusual configuration -- a sequence of numbers written entirely for one vocal soloist, a bass. (It's really a baritone, but the distinction between baritones and basses hadn't yet come into play, so as far as Bach was concerned, he was just writing for a high bass.) It happens to have a close kin in Cantata No. 56, Ich will den Kreuzstab gerne tragen, and with the dawn of the LP era they became natural, even inevitable disc-mates.
WHAT THE HECK IS A CANTATA ANYWAY?
cantata. A musical composition, often using a sacred text, comprising recitatives, arias, and choruses.
Well, there may be choruses or there may not. And there may also be duets, and purely instrumental movements (often including a "sinfonia," or overture). And there may be one vocal soloist, or two, or three, or four. The "often using a sacred text" point is important, because in Bach's case, going by the standard BWV numbering, all but a handful of Cantatas Nos. 1-200 are sacred, and then Nos. 201-216 are all secular. Other composers also wrote secular cantatas, but more often than not when we think of the form, we think of a setting, often written for a particular occasion in the church calendar, of texts either drawn from the Bible or commenting on it.
(Bach's cantatas, by the way, are generally known by a combination of their BWV number, which is to say the numbering in Wolfgang Schmieder's monumental 1950 Bach-Werke-Verzeichnis, or Catalogue of Bach Works, plus the first line of the first vocal number.)
One of Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau's most successful early recordings was a 1951 coupling of Cantatas Nos. 56 and 82, with that fine baroque specialist Karl Ristenpart conducting. Throughout his career Fischer-Dieskau performed a great deal of Bach, and with the advent of stereo it was only natural that Deutsche Grammophon would want him to redo the baritone-cantata coupling. The remake was undertaken with the then-reigning baroque star conductor Karl Richter and his Munich Bach Orchestra.
About 1971 I acquired my first tape deck with pretensions to any kind of fidelity, a cassette deck. Naturally I felt the need to have cassettes to play on it, and among the titles I bought was the DG Archiv cassette edition of that Fischer-Dieskau-Richter Bach 56/82. I bought lots of other stuff, but it was when I put on the Bach tape that, despite what must have been a significant hiss level (DG cassettes weren't yet using Dolby noise reduction), I stopped listening to the medium and simply heard music.
For some reason the music that sticks in my head from those days isn't Cantata No. 56, which must have been on the "A" side, but No. 82. Here is what I remember being overwhelmed by: Fischer-Dieskau and Richter performing the opening aria, "Ich habe genug."
A NONBELIEVER AMID BACH'S SACRED WORLD
When I've thought about Bach in connection with Sunday Classics, it never occurred to me that I might write first about the cantatas. Certainly if I were setting out to "sell" Bach, or even to try to sketch the Bach who most matters to me, I would start with the secular music -- with, say, the Brandenburg Concertos and the solo-cello suites, music that is as personal to me as any music there is.
It was another accident that got me thinking about the Bach cantatas. I must have been feeling guilty about neglecting my "18 pounds of Bach," and one morning, when it was time to choose some music for the subway journey to work, I decided to pick something from it at random. It's packaged in overstuffed jewel boxes of four CDs each, and the one I grabbed happened to be of cantatas (Nos. 103-114, to be specific). I almost allowed myself a do-over, on the ground that the cantatas were the one portion of the compendium I had actually listened to complete and in sequence when I got it. But then I decided, what the heck? It's not as if I'd listened carefully to all those cantatas that first time through. So Cantatas Nos. 103-114 it was. And I found that once I was immersed in the world of the Bach cantatas, it was hard to un-immerse myself. The cantatas may be the place where one comes closest to encountering the soul of Bach.
The second time I had occasion to interview then-New York Philharmonic music director Kurt Masur, the subject was Bach, in connection with his upcoming performance of the St. Matthew Passion. This is kind of a funny story in itself, although not of the "ha-ha" funny sort.
Masur of course had a long history in Leipzig, which was and is above all Bach's city. As longtime music director of the city's historic Gewandhaus Orchestra, he had frequently programmed Bach's great choral masterworks -- the two great Passions, the St. Matthew and St. John; the B minor Mass; and the Christmas Oratorio. But in New York, he was told by the orchestra's management, he couldn't do that. New York, you see, is "a Jewish city." And while Masur is known to have presided over the orchestra with typical Germanic absoluteness, he does seem to have been bullied quite a lot by the management, and probably quite wrongly -- I think he knew a great deal more about musical audiences than they did. And finally he had been allowed to schedule the St. Matthew.
In the interview, the Bach association Masur talked about first went back to childhood, to his first aural memories: the sounds of Bach's organ music in his small hometown church. This was the soundtrack that played in his head as he grew up, and somehow I've never been able to get that aural image out of my head. (I suppose I'm envious.) For Masur the experience led naturally to a desire to play the organ, which he learned to do in that church, and then to become a pianist, which he was working toward when a hand injury put an end to that.
HIS SOUL FINDS VOICE IN THE ARIA
I imagine there's a good chance that in addition to Bach's organ music, Masur heard at least some of Bach's sacred cantatas performed in his church. That's what they were written for, after all -- some of them for special occasions in the liturgical calendar, others for ordinary Sunday-service use. And the church cantatas occupy a special place among the composer's output.
Bach wrote a staggering quantity of staggering-quality secular music, but I don't think there's any question that the spirit of the sacred imbues all his work -- that as a musician he always thought of himself as in service to God, and this is perhaps nowhere expressed more personally than in the many hundreds of arias he wrote for the intimate performance circumstances of the church cantatas.
Of course there are also stupendous arias throughout the "big" choral masterworks. I don't know a more beautiful vocal performance of anything than the 1929 recording by the baritone Friedrich Schorr -- the supreme Wotan and Hans Sachs -- of the bass solo "Et in Spiritum Sanctum" from the B minor Mass (included on Preiser's second Schorr CD).While there's no clear demarcation between the arias written for the "big" choral works and those written for the cantatas (and indeed there was a certain amount of shuffling of arias back and forth; for that matter, the Christmas Oratorio itself is in fact a set of six cantatas), still the cantatas, by virtue of the compact scale of their format and occasion, have a particular intimacy of utterance.
Bach's arias are basically familiar in form; they're more or less standard baroque arias of the A-B-A form familiar from our discussion of Handel's "Lascia ch'io pinga" (Whether it's Handel or Wagner, the good old "A-B-A" form mirrors real-life experience): a main section, a middle section, and a repeat of the main section -- with a very little bit of text made to go a very long way thanks to considerable repetition.
Bach's arias do, however, have one powerful distinguishing quality. Although we think of the aria, logically enough, as the ultimate solo form for singers, Bach's arias are by and large not solos but duets.
WHAT? THE ARIA AS DUET???
How does a solo singer have a duet? Who with???
Well, how about your friendly nearby flutist, or oboist, or fiddler? Somebody from the small group of instrumental soloists Bach has included in the instrumentation for this cantata. (That instrumentation, by the way, varies widely from cantata to cantata. Bach generally chose the forces he wanted with careful consideration of what he planned to do in that particular canata.)
By way of illustration, here is Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau again, now in 1974, singing the section "Aber wer gen Himmel siehet" from the aria "Ächzen und embärmlich Weinen" from Cantata No. 13, Meine Seufzer, meine Tränen, a bass-and-violin duet with Yehudi Menuhin playing the violin part and cellist Mstislav Rostropovich providing the bass continuo line, and Menuhin providing voice-over commentary. And here is soprano Christine Schaefer, giving a lovely performance of a soprano-and-violin duet, "Bereite dir, Jesu" from one of the better-known cantatas, No 147, Herz und Mund und Tat und Leben, with Nikolaus Harnoncourt and the Vienna Concentus Musicus.
Better still for our purposes, here is a soprano-and-oboe duet, "Die Seele ruht in Jesu Händen," from Cantata No. 127, Herr Jesu Christ, wahr' Mensch und Gott, sung by Barbara Schlick, with oboist Ofer Frenkel and the Accademia Daniel directed by Shalev Ad-El:
The soul rests in Jesus’ hands, when earth covers this body. Ah, call me soon, you death-knell, I am unafraid of death, because my Jesus will awaken me again.
Inescapably, immersion in Bach's sacred music means immersion in the teachings and person of Jesus. As I contemplated writing about Bach's cantatas -- or rather specifically about Bach's cantata arias -- I found myself reflecting on this oddity: that I, who have never been a Christian of any sort, and haven't for many decades even pretended to subscribe to any clump of religious superstitions, am so prepared to be swallowed up in the depths of Bach's unflinching religious faith?
I actually thought I would write a piece explaining this. Ha! I can't offer an explanation, just some observations relative to the subject.
"PRINCE OF PEACE" VS. "MACHO JESUS"
I once tried to explain to a friend, one of the wisest and most sensitive people I know, how it is that Handel's Messiah, which had once struck me as a pile of wheezy old religionist hooey, came to have deep personal meaning for me. In this space I took advantage of last Christmas season to express my wonder at Handel's sense of wonder at the miracle of birth (For Christmas Eve, savor the true miracle: "For unto us a child is born), and the sense of hope it brings, the sense of possibilities, of realizing who and what we can be.
Really, Handel gives us the feeling that that is the miracle: that a child is born (and a son given). Even when this particular child's future responsibilities are set out ("Wonderful counsellor, the mighty God, the everlasting Father), note how Handel italicizes the additional role: "the Prince of Peace."
I tried to explain to my friend that I don't need to believe in a Redeemer in the Christian sense to take personally the soprano's great aria "I know that my Redeemer liveth." The aria is just as powerful if for me that Redeemer refers not to some mysterious external force but to the spark of goodness inside us which drives us to be the best people we can be -- against considerable opposing forces, both within and without. And I guess Bach's faith energizes me in much the same way.
(Parenthetically, I find it fascinating that two composers as dominant in their age as Bach and Handel, in so many ways so different, nevertheless so often cross-reference, complement, and even explain each other.)
Bach's belief in Jesus as a representation of the best in us, the fullest and most meaningful humanity of which we are capable, the Prince of Peace, doesn't require much of a stretch for me. In fact, that belief, not to mention the actual teachings of Jesus, is what makes me crazy in the incessant braying of modern-day crap Christianity. Longtime DWT readers have heard both Howie and me sound this theme frequently. The ignorant, lying, bellicose, immoral crap Christians not only seem blitheringly unaware of what Jesus actually preached, but represent something very close to the forces of oppression and inhumanity that were Jesus's lifelong antagonists.
By coincidence (or is it coincidence?), in the Introduction to Max Blumenthal's book Republican Gomorrah: Inside the Movement that Shattered the Party,I just encountered this remarkable description of the "macho Jesus" central to "the authoritarian mindset driving the movement that has substantially taken over the modern Republican Party: the Christian right," as he experienced it personally in five years of interviewing hundreds of its leaders, attending dozens of rallies and conferences, listening to "countless hours" of radio broadcasts, and sitting "in movement-oriented houses of worship where no journalists were permitted."
As I explored the contours of the movement, I discovered a culture of personal crisis lurking behind the histrionics and expressions of social resentment. This culture is the mortar that bonds leaders and followers together. . . .
The movement's Jesus is the opposite of the prince of peace. He is a stern, overtly masculine patriarch charging into the fray with his sword raised against secular foes; he is "the head of a dreadful company, mounted on a horse, with a double-edged sword, his robe dipped in blood," according to movement propagandist Steve Arterburn. Mark Driscoll, a pastor who operates an alternative Christian rock venue from his church, stirs the souls of twenty-something evangelical males with visions of "Ultimate Fighting Jesus." This same musclebound god-man starred in Mel Gibson's blood-drenched The Passion of the Christ, enduring bone-crushing punishment at the hands of Jews and pagans for two hours of unrelieved pornographic masochism.
A portrait of virility and violence, the movement's omnipotent macho Jesus represents the mirror inversion of the weak men who necessitated his creation. As [psychologist Erich] Fromm explained, "the lust for power is not rooted in strength but in weakness [italics in original]. It is the expression of the individual self to stand alone and live. It is the desperate attempt to gain secondary strength where genuine strength is lacking."
No indeed, Bach's Jesus has nothing in common with this macho Jesus. And I imagine Bach's deep Christian faith must be an irrelevance if not an outright outrage to the crap Christian worshippers of macho Jesus. Indeed, having come this far with Max, we need to continue on at least one more paragraph:
The movement's macho Jesus provided purpose to Tom DeLay, a dallying, alcoholic Texas legislator transformed through evangelical religion from "Hot Tub Tommy" into a dictatorial House majority leader known as "The Hammer." Macho Jesus was the god of Ted Haggard, a closet homosexual born-again and charismatic megachurch leader, risen to head of the National Association of Evangelicals, preaching the gospel of spiritual warfare and anti-gay crusades. And he was the god of Howard F. Ahmanson Jr., an eccentric millionaire whose inheritance of massive wealth literally drove him mad, prompting his institutionalization, who found relief as one of the far right's most reliable financial angels. Macho Jesus even transformed the serial killer Ted Bundy, murderer and rapist of dozens of women, who became a poster child for anti-pornography activists with his nationally televised death row confessional. . . .
QUICK HITS: CANTATAS 56 & 82; "COMPLETE BACH"
Matthias Goerne's recording of Cantatas Nos. 56, 82, and 158 with Nikolaus Harnoncourt conducting is still available.
Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau's stereo version of Nos. 56 and 82 with Karl Richter conducting, with one of the most famous of the cantatas, No. 4, Christ lag in Todesbaden, thrown in, is available as a mid-price CD.Fischer-Dieskau's mono version with Karl Ristenpart has been reissued on Hänssler's Profit label,with his 1950 Brahms Four Serious Songs accompanied by the fine pianist Hertha Klust thrown in.
The Hänssler complete Bach set is apparently currently unavailable. It's highly recommendable, but not for $599. Brilliant Classics has a 155-CD complete Bach,as usual assembled from a wide variety of sources, which you can find as low as $100. (Amazon lists it at present at $119.) The price is certainly right, but from the dabbling I've done in the set, the performance level is, shall we say, problematic.
Soprano Elly Ameling with pianist Dalton Baldwin (1980)
You my soul, you my heart,
you my joy, o you my pain,
you my world in which I live,
my heaven you in which I soar,
o you my grave in which
I have buried my sorrows forever.
You are rest; you are peace;
you were destined for me by heaven.
That you love me makes me feel worthy;
your glance has transfigured me;
you lift me, loving, above myself --
my good spirit, my better "I"!
You my soul, you my heart,
you my joy, o you my pain,
you my world, in which I live,
my heaven you, in which I soar --
my good spirit, my better "I"!
Although actually I prefer the live performance above, here -- in consideration of the clip's technical limitations -- is the studio recording of "Widmung" that Elly Ameling and Dalton Baldwin made several years earlier.
Elly Ameling, soprano; Dalton Baldwin, piano. Philips, recorded c1976
In Friday night's preview I expressly chose Jessye Norman's video performance for its breathless, even breakneck rendering of the "A" section of this simple-ish A-B-A song, in marked contrast to the performance we heard earlier by Hermann Prey and especially Elly Ameling's performances above. Not quite as exhilarating their way, is it? (I think every performer grasps that for the "B" section, dealing with "rest" and "peace," a slowdown -- though unmarked -- is appropriate.
Of course the faster tempo requires a willing-and-able vocal apparatus. In our next two performances, baritone Wolfgang Holzmair takes it about as quickly as he dares, while the fine Finnish baritone Jorma Hynninen gives it full voice at even quicker pace. (Note that we have two truly outstanding pianists here, by the way, both known for significant solo-piano careers. Hynninen was especially fortunate in his collaboration, in most of his song recordings, with Ralf Gothóni.)
Wolfgang Holzmair, baritone; Imogen Cooper, piano. Philips, recorded December 1998
Jorma Hynninen, baritone; Ralf Gothóni, piano. Tactus Oy, recorded c1978
WHICH PACE DID SCHUMANN WANT?
I honestly don't know. I have two editions of the song, neither notable for scholarly scrupulousness. The tempo marking on one is Animato ("animated"), while the other has the same marking that Liszt carried over to his version: "Innig, lebhaft." For innig my Langenschedit German-English dictionary offers "tender, affectionate; ardent, fervent; heartfelt, sincere," while for lebhaft we can straightforwardly read "lively." How exactly is the performer supposed to combine what might almost be taken as contradictory directions?
Coming up we've got a performance that, without sacrificing lebhaft-ness underlines the Innigkeit, with a vocal suppleness and tonal radiance that for me makes this a dream performance of this great song. The Fischer-Dieskau performance with Jörg Demus, which I'm dating at "c1960," would thus presumably have been recorded at almost the same time as the Tannhäuser in which he sang the Wolfram that I've latterly surprised myself by enthusing fairly wildly about. Some 14 years later, when he recorded the later version I've included, as part of his four-volume anthology of all the Schumann songs he deemed suitable for male voice, his upper range wasn't nearly as full and free.
Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, baritone; Jörg Demus, piano. DG, recorded c1960
Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, baritone; Christoph Eschenbach, piano. DG, recorded 1974
"WIDMUNG" ARRANGEMENTS DIDN'T END WITH LISZT
In October 1919, two years after he made a triumphant American debut at Carnegie Hall (the photo is from November 1917), a now-18-year-old violin phenom named Jascha Heifetz recorded an arrangement of "Widmung" for violin and piano by the violinist-conductor-composer Leopold Auer. Although Heifetz would continue recording for well over a half-century, he never rerecorded the piece.
SCHUMANN (arr. Auer): "Widmung"
Jascha Heifetz, violin; Samuel Chotzinoff, piano. Victor/RCA/BMG, recorded Oct. 13, 1919
LISZT-VERSION PERFORMERS TEND TO OPT
FOR INNIGKEIT, AT LEAST TO BEGIN WITH
Yevgeny Kissin has always been fond of the Liszt "Widmumg." This clip is from July 2010.
As I noted Friday night, Liszt's rendering of the song can't be called a "transcription," which would describe a straight transfer of the material from one medium to another. What Liszt did was to add an expansion to both the original and the repeat of the "A" section -- in the Rubinstein performance below, that's roughly 0:43-1:26 and 2:41-end.
Some editions (but not others) include a metronome marking for the tempo at the start -- how authentic I have no idea -- which is pretty moderate. Certainly the performance tradition calls for a fairly moderate (Ameling-ish) opening "A" section. But the expansions of "A" pile on so much sonic whoopee, especially the one for the repeat of "A," marked fff, that performers tend to accelerate accordingly and build to a tingly climax.
SCHUMANN (arr. Liszt): "Widmung"
Arthur Rubinstein, piano. RCA/BMG, recorded Mar. 11-12, 1947
NOW ABOUT THOSE RECITAL REFLECTIONS
Oops! It's already written, but the way this whole post has grown, that really amounts to another post. So I'm going to make it another post. Tune in next week.
OF COURSE WE'VE BEEN HEADING TOWARD THE GREAT CLIMACTIC "FAREWELL" FROM THE SONG OF THE EARTH
We've been through the monumental (roughly half-hour) final movement, "Der Abschied" ("The Farewell"), of Mahler's song-symphony Das Lied von der Erde" (The Song of the Earth), swallowing it first in pieces and then whole in the course of remembering Maureen Forrester in July 2010. (Really, could we have remembered Forrester properly without "Der Abschied"?
As I've said before, I've never been that big a fan of Fischer-Dieskau's way with Mahler, which generally seemed to me overly fussed and fake-interpreted. But if we're going to traffic in farewells -- and I don't mean the tidy "parting is such sweet sorrow" kind we listened to Friday -- then I think we turn inevitably to the great final movement of Das Lied.
The baritone option for the three low-voice songs always seems like a good idea, but I've never heard it really work, mostly because while baritones can sing the music, it sits differently enough in the male voice to leave them mostly worrying about vocal problems. That said, I think Fischer-Dieskau's first recording, with that much-underrated conductor Paul Kletzki, is as close an attempt as I've heard.
The later recording with Leonard Bernstein has always been hard for me to peg. A lot of the time it doesn't much engage or compel me, but if I'm in the right mood, it can do both.
We hear first Fischer-Dieskau's two recordings of Das Lied as soloist, and then the recording he made as conductor. The three movements out of the six written for the "low voice" soloist are singable by either a mezzo-soprano (or contralto) or a baritone. Given the overwhelming predominance of female performances, I think we've all gone through the phase of imagining that the music would really work better dropped down into the male range. Unfortunately, it just doesn't. When the music goes high, it moves into an area that in any self-respecting mezzo or even contralto voice should have a distinctive fullness and expressivity, whereas in the male voice it lands the singer right smack in the area of the vocal break, where his first concern has to be just singing it respectably, never mind fine points of interpretation. (It took me awhile, but I came to really love LB's audio and video remake with Christa Ludwig, René Kollo, and the Israel Philharmonic.)
As for the Fischer-Dieskau-conducted performance, how could we not include it?
MAHLER: Das Lied von der Erde (The Song of the Earth): vi. "Der Abschied" ("The Farewell")
The sun is going down behind the mountains. In every valley evening is descending, bringing its shadows, which are full of coolness. O look! where like a silver bark afloat, the moon through the blue lake of heaven soars upwards. I sense the shivering of a delicate breeze behind the dark fir trees.
The flowers grow pale in the twilight. The earth is breathing, full of rest and sleep; all desire now turns to dreaming. Weary mortals wend homewards, so that, in sleep, forgotten joy and youth they may learn anew. The birds huddle silent on the branches. The world is falling asleep!
It blows cool in the shadow of my fir trees. I stand here and wait for my friend. I wait for him, to take the last farewell. I long, O my friend, to be by your side, to enjoy the beauty of this evening. Where are you lingering? You leave me long alone! I wander to and fro with my lute on pathways that billow with soft grass. O beauty! O eternal life- and love-intoxicated world!
Orchestral interlude
He alighted from his horse and handed him the drink of farewell. He asked him whither he was going, and also why, why it had to be. He spoke; his voice was veiled: "You, my friend -- In this world fortune was not kind to me! Whither I go? I go, I wander in the mountains, I seek rest for my lonely heart! I journey to the homeland, to my resting place; I shall never again go seeking the far distance. My heart is still and awaits its hour!
The dear earth everywhere blossoms in spring and grows green again! Everywhere and eternally the distance shines bright and blue! Eternally . . . eternally . . .
Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, baritone; Philharmonia Orchestra, Paul Kletzki, cond. EMI, recorded October 1959
Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, baritone; Vienna Philharmonic, Leonard Bernstein, cond. Decca, recorded April 1966
Yvi Jänicke, mezzo-soprano; Stuttgart Radio Symphony Orchestra, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, cond. Orfeo, recorded live, June 22, 1996
FINALLY, I PROMISED YOU "ICH BIN DER WELT ABHANDEN GEKOMMEN," AND HERE IT IS
The orchestral performance is of particular interest for the conductor. This 1963 coupling of Mahler Rückert songs (the complete Kindertotenlieder and four of the five separate Rückert settings) is the only Mahler I recall ever hearing Karl Böhm conduct. (This obviously isn't the case with Fischer-Dieskau's piano colleague in the -- really drawn-out -- piano-accompanied performance.)
MAHLER: Rückert-Lieder: "Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen" ("I have lost touch with the world")
I have lost touch with the world, with which I formerly wasted much time. It has for so long heard nothing of me, it may well think that I have died.
And for me it doesn't matter at all if it takes me for dead. I can't even say anything against it, for really I am dead to the world.
I am dead to the worldly tumult, and rest in a quiet place. I live alone in my heaven, in my loving, in my song.
Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, baritone; Berlin Philharmonic, Karl Böhm, cond. DG, recorded June 18, 1963
Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, baritone; Leonard Bernstein, piano. CBS/Sony, recorded Nov. 6, 1968
[5/25/2012] Preview: Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau (1925-2012) (continued)
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"Is this the most beautiful music ever written?"I asked when we first heard this astounding trio from Act I of Mozart's Così fan tutte, in a March remembrance of soprano Margaret Price. I'm still not prepared to say no.
MOZART: Così fan tutte, K. 588: Act I, Trio, Fiordiligi, Dorabella, and Don Alfonso, "Soave sia il vento"
Gentle be the breeze, Calm be the waves, And every element Smile in favour On their wish.
Irmgard Seefried (s), Fiordiligi; Nan Merriman (ms), Dorabella; Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau (b), Don Alfonso; Berlin Philharmonic, Eugen Jochum, cond. DG, recorded December 1962
FOR MOST MUSIC LOVERS, THERE ARE NO MORE BEAUTIFUL EXPRESSIONS OF THE PAIN OF PARTING . . .
. . . than the Così trio we just heard and the Magic Flute quintet we're about to hear. Of course these farewells both contain at least the hope if not the expectation of seeing one another again. After all, the sisters in Così think their sweethearts are going off to war (Don Alfonso knows better, having set this whole charade in motion), while the gentlemen in The Magic Flute, being sent off to rescue the beautiful daughter of the Star-Flaming Queen of the Night from -- as they believe -- the evil Sarastro, don't know where the damn hell they're going.
Neither of the roles represented here figured much in Fischer-Dieskau's repertory. He did sing Don Alfonso in Così, but not much, and Papageno in The Magic Flute he never sang onstage, only for two complete recordings. (He explained once that he thought that at his over-six-foot height he would look ridiculous as the feathered bird-catcher Papageno.) However, in this later Magic Flute, with Karl Böhm conducting (not to mention Fritz Wunderlich singing Tamino), he sings (and in the spoken dialogue speaks) the best Papageno I've ever heard. It seems to me one of his finest recorded performances.
Turning to The Magic Flute, as a matter of fact when we first heard this quintet, which ends the opening scene of Act I, we didn't hear the whole thing. I owned up to having "edited the quintet brutally." At that time we picked up with the "farewell" sequence (about 4:15 of the clip below).
MOZART: The Magic Flute, K. 620: Act I, Scene 1, Quintet, Tamino, Papageno, and the Three Ladies, "Hm-hm-hm-hm!"
The mysterious Three Ladies, emissaries of the Star-Flaming Queen of the Night, have padlocked the bird-catcher Papageno's mouth for claiming to have slain the serpent lying dead before him. In fact, it was the Three Ladies who slew the serpent, just as it was about to smite the handsome Prince Tamino.
PAPAGENO [points sadly at the lock on his mouth]: Hm-hm-hm-hm, hm-hm-hm-hm, hm-hm-hm-hm, hm-hm-hm-hm. TAMINO: The poor fellow can talk about his punishment because his speech is gone. PAPAGENO: Hm-hm-hm-hm, hm-hm-hm-hm, hm-hm-hm-hm, hm-hm-hm-hm. TAMINO: I can't do anything but pity you because I'm too weak to help. [THE THREE LADIES enter.] 1st LADY: The Queen pardons you, [takes the lock away from his mouth] remits your punishment through me. PAPAGENO: Now Papageno can chatter again? 2nd LADY: Yes, chatter! Just don't lie again! PAPAGENO: I'll never lie again! No! No! THE THREE LADIES: This lock will be your warning. PAPAGENO: This lock will be my warning. ALL: If all liars were given such a lock on their mouths, instead of hate, defamation, and black bile love and brotherhood would endure. 1st LADY: O Prince, take this gift from me! This is sent to you by our ruler. [Gives him a golden flute.] The magic flute will protect you, in the greatest misfortune sustain you. THE THREE LADIES: With it you can act all-powerfully, transform the passions of your fellow men. The sad one will become happy, The bachelor will take on love. ALL: Oh, such a flute is worth more than gold and crowns, because through it human happiness and contentment will grow. PAPAGENO: Now, you beautiful ladies, may I so take my leave? THE THREE LADIES: You can always take your leave. However, the ruler intends for you -- with the Prince, without dallying -- to hurry to Sarastro's castle. PAPAGENO: No, I thank you for that! From you yourselves I've heard that he's like a tiger. Surely Sarastro without mercy would have me plucked and roasted; he would set me out for the dogs. THE THREE LADIES: The Prince will protect you -- trust him alone! That's why you are to be his servant. PAPAGENO [to himself]: Let the Prince go to the devil! My life is dear to me; in the end, by my honor, he will creep away from me like a thief! 1st LADY [gives him a wooden box with bells inside]: Here, take this treasure, it's yours. PAPAGENO: Hey, hey, what might be inside there? THE THREE LADIES: In there you'll hear little bells sound. PAPAGENO: Will I even be able to play them? THE THREE LADIES: Oh, absolutely! Yes, yes, indeed! Little silver bells, magic flute are needed for your protection. Farewell, we are going. Farewell, until we see you again! TAMINO and PAPAGENO: Little silver bells, magic flute are needed for our protection. Farewell, we are going. Farewell, until we see you again! [All are about to go.] TAMINO: Yet, fair ladies, tell us . . . PAPAGENO: How the castle may be found. TAMINO and PAPAGENO: How the castle may be found.
We should take some note of the tune that Mozart introduces here, at 4:46 of the clip, which for all its simplicity is of such sublimity, especially with its otherworldly harmonization and insistent rhythmic underpinning, as to make clear that this isn't some ordinary fairy tale we're dealing with here.
THE THREE LADIES: Three little boys, young, beautiful, gracious, and wise, will accompany you on your journey. They will be your guides, follow nothing but their advice. TAMINO and PAPAGENO: Three little boys, young, beautiful, gracious, and wise, will accompany us on our journey. THE THREE LADIES: They will be your guides, follow nothing but their advice. ALL: So farewell, we are going; farewell, farewell, until we see you again!
Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau (b), Papageno; Frtiz Wunderlich (t), Tamino; Hildegard Hillebrecht (s), Cvetka Ahlin (ms), and Sieglinde Wagner (ms), the Three Ladies; Berlin Philharmonic, Karl Böhm, cond. DG, recorded 1964
As noted, we'll he hearing Fischer-Dieskau singing farewells of his own, through the medium of the composer we've heard him singing most often here in Sunday Classics.
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While there's no clear demarcation between the arias written for the "big" choral works and those written for the cantatas (and indeed there was a certain amount of shuffling of arias back and forth; for that matter, the Christmas Oratorio itself is in fact a set of six cantatas), still the cantatas, by virtue of the compact scale of their format and occasion, have a particular intimacy of utterance.
I just encountered this remarkable description of the "macho Jesus" central to "the authoritarian mindset driving the movement that has substantially taken over the modern Republican Party: the Christian right," as he experienced it personally in five years of interviewing hundreds of its leaders, attending dozens of rallies and conferences, listening to "countless hours" of radio broadcasts, and sitting "in movement-oriented houses of worship where no journalists were permitted."
Fischer-Dieskau's mono version with Karl Ristenpart has been reissued 
with his 1950 Brahms Four Serious Songs accompanied by the fine pianist Hertha Klust thrown in.
Brilliant Classics has 
as usual assembled from a wide variety of sources, which you can find as low as $100. (Amazon lists it at present at $119.) The price is certainly right, but from the dabbling I've done in the set, the performance level is, shall we say, problematic.
