"When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying the cross."
-- Sinclair Lewis
Sunday, April 19, 2015
Sunday Classics snapshots: Glinka's "Russlan" Overture packs a way more pungent wallop than you'd guess from "Mom"
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"The Father of Russian Music": Mikhail Glinka (1804-1867)
GLINKA: Ruslan and Ludmila: Overture
Kirov Orchestra (St. Petersburg), Valery Gergiev, cond. Philips, recorded February 1995
New York Philharmonic, Leonard Bernstein, cond. Columbia-CBS-Sony, recorded Oct. 14, 1963
Columbus Symphony Orchestra, Alessandro Siciliani, cond. CSO Showcase, recorded February 2001
Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Fritz Reiner, cond. RCA-BMG, recorded Mar. 14, 1959
by Ken
As I've mentioned occasionally in my occasional TV Watch reports, I occasionally try to watch Mom. And each a time I get a jolt when I hear the rousing strains of Glinka's Rusland and Ludmila Overture -- at least the couple of bars' worth that are all we get, for cheap 'n' cheesy effect. Whereas the piece itself is one of the glories of musical civilization, uniquely rousing but also soaring.
This week I got farther than usual into the episode, with that fine actress Allison Janney (who plays, you know, Mom) finally getting an opportunity to do something other than make herself look foolish, with the current plotline that has her sinking toward rock bottom in her pills and booze abuse. (Whether she has actually hit rock bottom remains to be seen. Or whether she in fact has a rock bottom.)
It happens too that the Ruslan Overture is one of the pieces I thought of when I was thinking recently about music that, as best I recall, we've never heard in Sunday Classics asI plan for the shutdown. So let's consider today's snapshot a gap-plugger -- and a perennial delight.
The opera it introduces is a delight too, but such a genre-bending farrago of story-telling modes -- fairy tale, heroic epic, romance -- that it makes almost impossible demands on the resources, not least of the imaginative kind, of an opera company.
Here's something different: the Air from the Water Music played by the Gateway Brass Quintet (Dan Smith and Robert Souza, trumpets; Cheryl Hoard, horn; Tom Vincent, trombone; Jeff Hoard, tuba), recorded at St. Anthony of Padua, St. Louis, Feb. 21, 2009. I didn't say good, mind you, just different.
by Ken
In last week's Royal Fireworks Music preview, Water Music preview, and main post devoted to both, I wound up with some musical leftovers. Having decided to give attention to the once-standard but now-widely-scorned suites arranged by Sir Hamilton Harty, I wound up with more samples than I used.
Basically we've got two "extra" versions of the Handel-Harty Water Music Suite. In the end, for an up-to-date stereo version, I didn't have to choose between the Szell/LSO recording I used and a rather different but equally lovely one by William Steinberg and the Pittsburgh Symphony, because it turned out that while I'd brought the jewel case for the CD that included the Steinberg performance home, I'd left the disc itself at the office. So we're going to hear that tonight.
Then, for a performance a bit more like the older-fashioned ones closer in spirit to Sir Hamilton's time, I produced my own digital rendering, a hybrid actually, from two LPs: the first four movements from Sir Malcolm Sargent's stereo recording with the Royal Philharmonic, which I had to complete, owing to intractable LP-surface problems, with two movements from Eugene Ormandy's stereo recording with the Philadelphia Orchestra, not of the Harty suite but of his own similar one. And after all that I wound up not using my hybrid creation!
Partly this was because I chose not to attempt a grand defense of the Harty arrangement. Now this certainly isn't the only way I would want to hear the Water Music. In part this is because the arrangement locks in certain performance choices that are totally defensible but not necessarily something one wants to have made part of the basic performing text. In part too this is because much wonderful music is left out -- but then, nobody's figured out a really effective way to present all that music. The Harty suite makes for a lovely presentation of the music that's included, and I would certainly rather hear it this way than in most of what currently pass for fetishistically "authentic" performances that show substantially less understanding of the music. So this week we're going to hear those additional versions of the "arranged" suites.
Sunday Classics: Rhapsodies from Sweden and points south and east
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Now this is more like it!Unfortunately in audio only, Vladimir Horowitz plays the rhapsody of rhapsodies, Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2 (in, by the way, the composer's own version, more or less, not the pianist's famous arrangement). If you're looking for mediocre to revolting performances, there's no shortage on YouTube, as witness last night's fiasco.
by Ken
We still haven't quite finished with Norway's great composer, Edvard Grieg, even after pursuing him through Marching trolls and other lyric subjects (Lyric Pieces for piano, Lyric Suite for orchestra); "The Prophet has come!": The world of Peer Gynt (the two orchestral suites, enhanced); (more Peer Gynt and the Piano Concerto); Mastering the fine art of Edvard Grieg (the Lyric Pieces and Piano Concerto revisited, plus String Quartet No. 1). Meanwhile, we had a decent shot at Finland's Jan Sibelius, and at some point we'll come back for Denmark's Carl Nielsen.
Which leaves a gap in our Scandinavian itinerary. So today we're going to have a quick musical taste of Sweden in the form of a rhapsody, a form that composers have found well-suited to splashy musical quick portraits of their countries, dating back to the 19th-century rise of musical nationalism. And then we'll let the rhapsody transport us.
I. A QUICK TOUR OF SWEDEN AND ROMANIA: WE'LL ALWAYS HAVE THEIR RHAPSODIES
No, I don't suppose Sweden and Romania have a whole lot in common, beyond the curious phenomenon of a composer, arguably each country's best-known, who remains known principally for rhapsodies. (No, I'm not going to attempt a definition of rhapsody. Feel free to look it up if you like. By the end of this post you should be in a position to concoct your own definition if that's important to you.)
In Sweden's case, our composer is Hugo Alfvén (1872-1960). Alfvén in fact produced quite a sizable output, and there are admirers who consider his general neglect a scandal. I can't claim to be an expert on the subject, but what I've heard of his music is agreeable enough if not especially memorable (it's fair to say that worse music is played on a regular basis by most of the world's orchestras). Nevertheless, I don't see much likelihood of a change in the composer's fortunes, which have him known almost entirely for a single work that remains on the edge of the international repertory: the first of his three Swedish Rhapsodies, titled Midsummer Vigil (1903).
I got to know it through the back door, as it were. When we talked about Sibelius (see link above), I mentioned that two of my first three stereo LPs were bought for works by Sibelius, because -- outrageously! -- that's what you had to do to get Eugene Ormandy and the Philadelphia Orchestra's recordings of The Swan of Tuonela and Finlandia. This left me with quite a lot of "filler" material. Okay, I suppose technically The Swan was the filler for Sibelius's Violin Concerto played by the great David Oistrakh, but that's not the way I looked at it in those days. The Finlandia fillers included Grieg's Peer Gynt Suite No. 1 (hmm, Peer Gynt, where have we heard about that?) and, yes, Alfvén's Swedish Rhapsody No. 1. Eventually I wound up listening to this stuff quite a lot. Here is that very recording of Midsummer Vigil.
ALFVÉN: Swedish Rhapsody No. 1: Midsummer Vigil, Op. 19
Philadelphia Orchestra, Eugene Ormandy, cond. Columbia/CBS/Sony, recorded Dec. 21, 1959
I don't think there's much question that the model for the rhapsody as nationalistic vehicle was Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsodies, which were written for piano solo, but half a dozen of which were soon orchestrated and absorbed into the international repertory. Surely Romania's Georges Enesco (1881-1955) had them in his head as models for his pair of Romanian Rhapsodies (1901-2). Awhile back Enesco's opera Oedipe got a bit of attention -- not to mention a prestigiously cast major-label recording -- and others of his works have been resurrected, but not much has stuck. As with Alfvén and the Swedish Rhapsodies, he remains pretty much the composer of the two Romanian Rhapsodies. Here's the somewhat more often played First.
ENESCO: Romanian Rhapsody No. 1 in A, Op. 11, No. 1
RCA Victor Symphony Orchestra, Leopold Stokowski, cond. RCA/BMG, recorded February 1960
Philadelphia Orchestra, Eugene Ormandy, cond. Columbia/CBS/Sony, recorded Nov. 10, 1957
As long as we're at it, we might as well hear the Second Romanian Rhapsody, don't you think?
ENESCO: Romanian Rhapsody No. 2 in D, Op. 11, No. 2
Philadelphia Orchestra, Eugene Ormandy, cond. Columbia/CBS/Sony, recorded Nov. 10, 1957
II. LISZT AND THE RHAPSODY: THE HUNGARIAN RHAPSODY NO. 2
As I mentioned, Liszt wrote his Hungarian Rhapsodies for piano solo, and grand display pieces they are. Not surprisingly, half a dozen were quickly orchestrated, and approved by the composer for publication, though legions of conductors and arrangers have had a shot at these pieces since. In the case of No. 2 (about which Wikipedia incidentally has a quite extensive entry), the key has generally wound up dropping to C minor from C sharp minor. The piece itself follows the general form of the Hungarian Rhapsodies in having a soulful slow section and then an exhilarating fast one, though this hardly does justice to the piece's finely crafted structure.
Given the standing of the orchestral rhapsody as a vehicle for orchestral display, it's not surprising that we frequently encounter two names here: Leopold Stokowski (1882-1977) and his successor as music director of the Philadelphia Orchestra, Eugene Ormandy (1899-1985). Stokowski actually recorded an LP called Rhapsody, though even in expanded CD (now hybrid SACD) formit contains only two actual rhapsodies, the Enesco we just heard and the Liszt we're about to hear. Ormandy didn't record many rhapsodies en bloc, but Sony has assembled a splendid Famous Rhapsodies CDthat includes a lot of the music we're hearing today.
Stoky was famously willing to use any expressive device he thought he could make work, though he seems in pretty good behavior in the Enesco performance above -- that is one heckuva performance. The Liszt, however, strikes me as kind of weird. I suppose I've lived with the Ormandy too long to be totally objective about it, but I think it's sensational.
LISZT: Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2
RCA Victor Symphony Orchestra, Leopold Stokowski, cond. RCA/BMG, recorded February 1960
Philadelphia Orchestra, Eugene Ormandy, cond. Columbia/CBS/Sony, recorded February 1958
Now to return to the Liszt rhapsody's piano origins. The Horowitz recording of No. 2 that we heard at the top of this post finds that musical bad boy too on pretty good musical behavior, which is a good thing and a bad thing. With both Stokowski and Horowitz, even when we question their musical decisions, when they're on form, those decisions are at the service of a real musical vision. In this Horowitz rhapsody performance, fine as it is in many ways, I think we hear VH pulling his punches -- and so the performance is often more about what he chooses not to do than what he does.
I suppose people think it's a slapdown when they refer to this music as "rhetorical," but rhetoric, like most everything else, can be good or bad, effective or not. Most of what's passed off as musical rhetoric is mere self-indulgence or plain fakery, pathetically obvious lying bullshit. This is generally true of what is often passed off, by self-appointed guardians of the "Grand Romantic Style," as the Grand Romantic Style, which tends to be neither grand nor romantic nor really even a style, but just a pose. When you hear a great orator, you find out what real rhetoric is, and the same is true in music.
Let's listen to this performance of the Liszt "No. 2," which the International Piano Archive included in an ingenious compendiumof historical recordings of all 19 Hungarian Rhapsodies.
Benno Moiseiwitsch, piano. HMV/IPA/VAI, recorded Oct. 9, 1940
It's certainly not a bad performance, but has Moiseiwitsch (1890-1963, and therefore already 50 here; unfortunately he's known today mostly for later, and sometimes much later, and less good, recordings) really risen to the challenge of this grand showpiece?
How about this performance then?
Alfred Brendel, piano. Vanguard, recorded 1967
Alfred Brendel (born 1931), only recently retired from keyboard performance but still active as a lecturer, was an eminently tasteful pianist, and this is an eminently tasteful performance. The pieces fit together quite naturally, it seems to me. But the piece as a whole seems to me to have been shrunk to even smaller stature than with Moiseiwitsch. When a truly mesmerizing orator grabs hold of you, you don't come away praising his excellent "taste," or bemoaning his lapses in same.
Here's something I think you'll agree is different:
Georges Cziffra, piano. EMI, recorded in Budapest, 1956
I think we're really on to something. Cziffra, although a maddeningly erratic performer, at his best could make the piano truly sing. Unfortunately, the four rhapsodies, including No. 2, that Cziffra recorded in mono in Budapest in 1956 were done with what appears to be a dull piano without much beauty of sound in it, in two-dimensional recorded sound. Later, in Paris in 1958, these four rhapsodies were expanded into a set of 15 Hungarian Rhapsodies. The later recordings used a much better instrument, and benefited from much better recorded sound. (We'll hear a sample below.)
III. WHAT HAPPENS WHEN IT'S SOMEBODY ELSE'S COUNTRY YOU'RE RHAPSODIZING ABOUT?
The EMI "twofer" set that gathered Georges Cziffra's 1956/58 Liszt Hungarian Rhapsodies was filled out with Liszt's Spanish Rhapsody. Up till now we've been dealing with the rhapsody as a "national" form in which composers tried to represent their own countries. But what's to stop a composer from attempting to characterize another country?
Somehow, often as not, that meant foreigners trying to imagine themselves as Spaniards. Certainly French composers had a thing about their southern neighbor. And limiting ourselves just to the rhapsody form, we have two specimens that rank with the more popular works in the orchestral literature.
First we hear España, rapsodie pour orchestre (1883) by Emanuel Chabrier (1841-1894), a wonderfully tuneful farrago, some of whose tunes I'm pretty sure you'll recognize.
CHABRIER: España
London Symphony Orchestra, Ataulfo Argenta, cond. Decca, recorded January 1957
Detroit Symphony Orchestra, Paul Paray, cond. Mercury, recorded Nov. 18, 1959
Philadelphia Orchestra, Eugene Ormandy, cond. Columbia/CBS/Sony, recorded Feb. 24, 1963
And then we hear what is surely the greatest rhapsody of them all, the Spanish Rhapsody of Maurice Ravel (1875-1937). We're going to hear a really wonderful, wonderfully idiomatic performance by Jean Martinon, from his series of the complete Ravel orchestral works with the Orchestre de Paris. But then, because this is still a rhapsody, and Ravel was among other things a master orchestrator (remember that it's his orchestration of Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition that is still most often played), we have to hear our pal Stoky have a go at it -- first at the age of 92 (a live performance, note!), and then as a youngster of a mere 75. This is a significantly sultrier image of Spain, wouldn't you say?
RAVEL: Rapsodie espagnole
i. Prélude à la nuit (Prelude to the Night) ii. Malagueña iii. Habañera iv. Feria
Orchestre de Paris, Jean Martinon, cond. EMI, recorded 1974
New Philharmonia Orchestra, Leopold Stokowski, cond. BBC Classics, recorded live in the Royal Albert Hall, London, May 4, 1974
London Symphony Orchestra, Leopold Stokowski, cond. EMI, recorded June 27-28, 1957
ONE LAST SPANISH RHAPSODY
As long as we've wound up listening to all these foreign-imagined Spanish rhapsodies, maybe you're wondering what the Liszt Spanish Rhapsody I mentioned sounds like. Here is that Cziffra recording. Note how much more seductive piano sound Cziffra coaxes out of this piano in Paris, in markedly better recorded sound, than he and the Budapest engineers were able to manage for the 1956 recording of the Second Hungarian Rhapsody.
Georges Cziffra, piano. EMI, recorded in Paris, 1958
Sunday Classics preview: An old Tchaikovsky hand holds up
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Eugene Ormandy and the Philadelphia Orchestra rehearse (1960).
by Ken
No, I still don't know what tomorrow's Sunday Classics post is going to be, but it does seem likely that one Sunday this month we're going to have a Second Annual "It's a Tchaikovsky Christmas" post, and it happens that the other CDs I mentioned last night -- of performances I always considered "basic library" items on LP (in last year's post on the Tchaikovsky ballets, I wrote in connection with Eugene Ormandy, longtime music director of the Philadelphia Orchestra: "The single LP's worth of each [of the three Tchaikovsky ballets] that he recorded for Columbia Masterworks ranks with the great Tchaikovsky on records.") but hadn't yet heard on CD -- are of music from Tchaikovsky's ballets. More often these days I listen to recordings of the complete ballets rather than excerpts, and also, since most of my listening is done "on the go," on CD, so it's been awhile since I've listened to those much-loved old Ormandy Tchaikovsky LPs.
Then this week I was rummaging through the $1.99 bins of my used-CD emporium, and what did I find but first one, then two, then all three of the Ormandy-Columbia Tchaikovsky ballets on CD. Now at regular price these would be somewhat economical for an average of 53 minutes -- though in line with what I suggested last night, 53 wonderful minutes may represent better value than 80 plodding ones. Of course, at $1.99 each, it was a no-brainer. Or at least should have been. Apparently my brain wasn't working all that well. When I got home I discovered that I had the Swan Lake and Sleeping Beauty CDs, but not the Nutcracker one. I couldn't get back to the emporium till two days later, and by then it was gone.
Nevertheless, the Swan Lake and Sleeping Beauty CDs easily lived up to, and perhaps exceeded, my memories. Here are some samples.
The Sleeping Beauty, Op. 66
In the Introduction, note that Ormandy doesn't have to take a lickety-split tempo to create excitement. He does it with the sheer unforced power and drive and sonic luster of the Philadelphians' playing. The luster of the Philadelphia strings of that era is (or should be) legendary. In the Act III "Pas de quatre" we get a sampling of the brilliance and virtuosity of the Philadelphia woodwinds as well. Note the suppleness and ease and, where called for, lightness of touch. And for all that the recording is 48 years old, I've never heard a more beautiful orchestral recording.
Introduction
Act III: Pas de quatre
Swan Lake, Op. 20
Moving backward in time to Swan Lake, from which we hear first the ravishingly shaped Act II "Pas d'action" (the violin soloist is presumably the orchestra's longtime concertmaster Anshel Brusilow), and then one of the series of national dances, the Mazurka, from Act IV.
Act II: Pas d'action
Act IV: Mazurka
Philadelphia Orchestra, Eugene Ormandy, cond. Columbia/Sony, recorded 1961
HUH? WE'RE NOT GONNA HAVE ANYNUTCRACKER?
Just because of my shoddy shopping skills? Doesn't seem quite fair.
OK, let's go back to the recording that set off last year's celebration of the Tchaikovsky ballets: the set of all three as recorded by the celebrated ballet conductor-arranger-composer John Lanchbery with the Phiharmonia Orchestra in 1981. Actually, at that time I wasn't able to let you hear any of the Lanchbery performances, which I found myself enjoying so much more on CD than I had in many attempts at the LPs. Here are the "miniature" Overture and the beautiful climax of Act I.
The Nutcracker, Op. 71
Overture
Waltz of the Snowflakes (Act I finale)
Ambrosian Singers (in the "Waltz of the Snowflakes"), Philharmonia Orchestra, John Lanchbery, cond. EMI, recorded 1981
Sunday Classics: Just for fun -- American treasures
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Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue was always a Leonard Bernstein specialty. This is Part 1 of a 1976 performance in which he plays and conducts the London Symphony; Part 2 is here. (The luscious "big tune" finally emerges at 3:03 of Part 2.) CORRECTION:That's not the London Symphony, it's the New York Philharmonic, though in London's Royal Albert Hall. The clarinet soloist is of course our own just-retired Stanley Drucker, already approaching 30 years' service with the Philharmonic back then, with another 33 years ahead of him (to the end of the 2008-09 season). Sorry, can't imagine what I was thinking!
by Ken
No grand propositions to prove this week. Just some deliciously wonderful music, in the Thanksgiving spirit.
GEORGE GERSHWIN (1898-1937)
George and Ira Gershwin (center and right)
at the keyboard with Fred Astaire
When I first "finished" last night's preview piece, it seemed kind of meager music-wise. By the time I finished filling it out a bit, it had grown into something close to a full-fledged Gershwin post, the notable exception being the way it tiptoed discreetly around the music I expected to include in today's post, either the Rhapsody in Blue (1924) or An American in Paris (1928). We've already got the Rhapsody accounted for, so why don't we just throw in American in Paris? I'm especially fond of two recordings, made at opposite ends of Pennsylvania, the Command recording by William Steinberg and the Pittsburgh Symphony, and Eugene Ormandy's Columbia recording with the Philadelphia Orchestra. I don't have the Steinberg version on CD, so here's the Ormandy.
GERSHWIN: An American in Paris
Philadephia Orchestra, Eugene Ormandy, cond. Columbia/Sony, recorded Jan. 5, 1967
By the time Gershwin composed An American in Paris, he was confident enough to do his own orchestration, and I think one and all will concede that it's a bang-up job. Both the 1924 jazz-band arrangement of Gershwin's two-piano original of the Rhapsody in Blue -- which was commissioned by Paul Whiteman for his band -- and the now-standard 1942 full orchestration were done by a longtime Whiteman associate, an expert arranger and a composer of some note in his own right: Ferde Grofé, whose Mississippi Suite was first performed in 1925, with the Grand Canyon Suite following in 1931. Which provides us a natural segue to --
FERDE GROFÉ (1892-1972)
In writing about Sibelius, I mentioned that my very first three stereo LPs, all featuring Eugene Ormandy and the Philadelphia Orchestra included two with works by Sibelius plus the Grand Canyon Suite. I loved that Grand Canyon Suite then, both the work and the performance, and I still do. I don't have that Ormandy Grand Canyon on CD, but I do have his 1967 remake, which is almost as good. And we're going to here it complete, after a bit of "tease," or preview.
We're going to hear two of the five movements separately, starting with the atmospheric opening movement, "Sunrise," and then the movement that might function as a scherzo if this were a symphony, the third, the rhythmically irrepressible "On the Trail" (by donkey or mule, of course). Then we'll hear the whole suite; between "Sunrise" and "On the Trail" comes a beautiful slow movement, "The Painted Desert," and the general plan of the final movementsn is well suggested by their titles, "Sunset" and "Cloudburst."
GROFÉ: Grand Canyon Suite
i. Sunrise
Eastman-Rochester Orchestra, Howard Hanson, cond. Mercury, recorded May 1958
iii. On the Trail
John Corigliano, violin; New York Philharmonic, Leonard Bernstein, cond. Columbia/Sony, recorded May 20, 1963
i. Sunrise ii. The Painted Desert iii. On the Trail iv. Sunset v. Cloudburst
Norman Carol, violin; William Smith, celesta and piano; Philadelphia Orchestra, Eugene Ormandy, cond. Columbia/Sony, recorded Dec. 12 and 20, 1967
AARON COPLAND (1900-1990)
"Hoe-Down,"
No. 4 of Four Dance Episodes from "Rodeo"
Utah Symphony Orchestra, Maurice Abravanel, cond. Westminster, recorded December 1958
[note: volume level considerably lower than the above] St. Louis Symphony Orchestra, Leonard Slatkin, cond. EMI, recorded c 1985
We already had our Copland preview Friday night. While Copland wrote a generous amount of interesting music, like a lot of music-lovers I find I listen mostly to the "Americana" works, which represent a small portion of his output. We've already heard the Fanfare for the Common Man, and two of the Copland-arranged Old American Songs. The great ballet Appalachian Spring, one of my very favorite pieces of music, I want to reserve for consideration on its own -- beyond the "Simple Gifts" finale, that is, which we've already heard. This is how we wound up at the Four Dance Episodes from "Rodeo." "Hoe-Down," the last of the four episodes, has been absorbed into the American musical vocabulary; is there anyone who didn't recognize it?
Here's the complete Rodeo suite, conducted first by -- who else? -- Leonard Bernstein. As we noted back when we heard Aaron Copland conduct Lenny's Candide Overture in Prague, the two had a close relationship, and there was no more effective champion of Copland's music than LB. Eventually, of course, the composer himself developed into one of his own most effective champions, and so we're going to hear his version too.
COPLAND: Four Dance Episodes from "Rodeo"
i. Buckaroo Holiday ii. Corral Nocturne iii. Saturday Night Waltz iv. Hoe-Down
New York Philharmonic, Leonard Bernstein, cond. Columbia/Sony, recorded 1960
London Symphony Orchestra, Aaron Copland, cond. CBS/Sony, recorded Oct. 26, 1968
CHARLES IVES (1874-1954)
Symphony No. 2: i. Andante moderato
Detroit Symphony Orchestra, Neeme Järvi, cond. Chandos, recorded Apr. 29 and May 1, 1995
After hurling Ives's Thanksgiving and Forefathers' Day at you on Thursday (even in David Zinman's remarkably sympathetic performance, it doesn't seem to me one of his more approachable works, but heck, what are you going to do on Thanksgiving Day?), I wanted to plunge you into the composer's sound at what seems to me its most "grabbingly" appealing. Unfortunately, I've never heard anybody but Leonard Bernstein really "get" this potentially haunting opening movement of his Second Symphony, which adds the usual Ives mélange on top of that bedrock of full-throated New England hymn-singing.
I don't doubt that that wonderfully musical Estonian-born conductor Neeme Järvi understands the music, but like so many conductors, he seems afraid to really dig in and make those broad singing lines really sing. Lenny B made it sound like the easiest, most obvious thing in the world, and I won't mind if you cheat and sneak down to his complete 1958 recording of the Ives Second, to my hearing one of the loveliest things he ever did, and listen to just the first movement.
Hey, I'm not the audio-file police. If you want to listen to more than the first movement, who's going to stop you? Especially since Ives meant the broad opening Andante moderato to proceed without interruption into the spirited second-movement Allegro. As it happens, the Allegro had an extra frisson for me, as I got to know the piece amid the granite of New Hampshire as a Dartmouth student. I expect you noticed in the first movement that Ives was very free about incorporating tunes from various walks of American (and sometimes non-American) life. The lovely second theme of the Allegro, played so caressingly by the pair of flutes [first heard at 1:58 of the Andrew Litton performance below], is the old Dartmouth song "Where oh where are the pea-green freshmen?"
SIDEBAR: THE DOPIEST COLLEGE SONGS IN ACADEME
At least in my time, Dartmouth was known, at least to its students, for having the dopiest songs in North American academe. The worst example, in those pre-coeducation days, was the first stanza of our "school song," "Men of Dartmouth," which drew to an, er, rousing close with the lines:
They have the still North in their hearts, The hlll winds in their veins, And the GRANITE of New Hampshire [yes, the music actually spat out the word "granite"] In their muscles and their brains, And the GRANITE of New Hampshire In their muscles and their brains.
Is it any wonder there was so much alumni resistance to going coed? What prideful alum would want to give all that up?
But we digress. Um, maybe this would be a good time to continue on to the Allegro of the Second Symphony.
IVES: Symphony No. 2: ii. Allegro
Dallas Symphony Orchestra, Andrew Litton, cond. Hyperion, recorded Jan. 6-9, 2005
One curiosity: The Litton recording has the movement marking, normally just "Allegro," as "Allegro molto (con spirito)." It's an odd irony that LItton's performance is one of the less spirited I know.
[Parenthetical note: Did you notice that that's two cases in a row of British record companies recording American music with American orchestras; Hyperion in fact recorded all four Ives symphonies with Andrew Litton and the Dallas Symphony. (The Fourth Symphony, which was finally given its world premiere in 1965 by Leopold Stokowski with the orchestra he'd founded in 1962, the American Symphony, is quite a production -- I hope we'll have a chance to come back to it someday -- and if there's one thing Stoky knew, it was how to put on a show. Happily, Columbia made a recording at the time.) In addition, the Zinman-Baltimore Symphony Ives CD featuring the Holidays Symphony and Three Places in New England from which I extracted Thanksgiving and Forefathers' Day was recorded by yet another British company. I guess this is good, unless it means that American companies aren't doing the job.]
It's a wonder that Ives himself got to hear the Second Symphony. Indeed, it's lucky that, despite a lifelong litany of health problerms, he survived to surprisingly near his 80th birthday, because the symphony, written in 1902-10, wasn't performed until 1951, when it was conducted by a brash young conductor then making a name for himself, that name being Leonard Bernstein! By then Ives's Third Symphony (1910) had already been performed, way back in 1946, after a mere 36-year wait, and won the Pulitzer Prize.
So what was Ives doing all that time when his music was busy being unheard? Selling insurance, or rather overseeing the selling of same, having cofounded his own firm, with considerable success. He was by general consent a visionary in the field. He trained seriously in music (he had worked first with his father, a band leader, then studied with Horatio Parker at Yale, producing his (fairly conventional) First Symphony as a senior thesis, but nobody was clamoring to hear his music, and he had to make a living, and he drifted into insurance and discovered he was good at it. Remarkably, he seems to have though of insurance in terms of how it could help the buyer; interestingly, he wound up making a very good living at it. (Hmm.)
Even as his career flourished (with the occasional bump), Ives continued composing well into the '20s, and then found himself unable to continue. We don't know why, but then, it can't be easy to maintain life as a composer when you never get to hear your music performed, and never get to experience other people experiencing it. At the same time, it can't be fun to find yourself unable to continue creating -- and we may guess at Ives's state of mind relative to composition by the fact that he declined to attend that much-belated 1946 premiere of his Third Symphony.
If you look up "labor of love" in the dictionary, or at any rate a dictionary with sound files, you'll hear Lenny B's 1958 recording of the Ives Second Symphony. Columbia Masterworks seems to have been dubious enough about its commercial prospects that it put the record in the "KS" rather than "MS" series, charging an extra buck, which was pretty chintzy for 40 minutes' worth of music. In compensation, they offered a little bonus record with a Lenny talk about Ives, but at some point -- before I bought my copy -- they seem to have stopped packing the bonus record, but not stopped charging the extra buck. Of course at standard discount prices of the era it was more like half a buck, but remember, the buck of those days was worth a lot closer to a dollar.
I don't think digital sound does justice to the tonal intensity of the orchestral playing as heard on the LP. The New York Philharmonic strings were never what you'd call a lustrous group, but on that day in October 1958 they played with a vibrancy that was something to behold. Anyway, here's the complete symphony.
IVES: Symphony No. 2
i. Andante moderato ii. Allegro iii. Adagio cantabile iv. Lento maestoso v. Allegro molto vivace
New York Philharmonic, Leonard Bernstein, cond. Columbia/Sony, recorded Oct. 6, 1958
LOUIS MOREAU GOTTSCHALK (1829-1869)
For a virtuoso finish, we jump back now to the 19th century, to the days of barnstorming composer-performers, and the home-grown pianist-composer Louis Moreau Gottschalk -- "America's first great musician" to pianist Eugene List, one of his more persistent champions in the later 20th century. By profession if not talent level Gottschalk was a sort of American Liszt, an outsize personality (for all his slender stature) whose brief but adventure-packed life was almost as much a work of art as his music.
Gottschalk was born in New Orleans when the city was still mostly Spanish and French, within living memory of the Louisiana Purchase, which had made this vast swath of central North America the property of the young United States. He functioned as a sort of American good-will ambassador in his tours of Europe and especially South America. For his performing use, he wrote a large quantity of solo piano music as well as music for multiple pianos and assorted other piano-plus combinations. Naturally he was a great connoisseur of dance rhythms from around the world, as he demonstrates in this infectious four-hand "Cuban dance."
GOTTSCHALK: La Gallina (The Hen), Danse cubaine
for piano four hands
Eugene List and Cary Lewis or Brady Millican, piano. Vox, recorded c 1972 [Note: The packaging for the Vox set from which all our Gottschalk musical selections come, while it generously includes both an essay by Mr. List on Gottschalk and program notes by Richard Freed, is skimpy on other information, such as who among Mr. List's supporting artists plays what, or the recording dates. Where I could, I've gleaned (or guessed) such info, drawing on other sources.]
Between 1860, when he first composed the Grande Tarantelle, and his death (at 40) in 1869, Gottschalk seems to have arranged the thing for just about every piano-plus instrumental combination imaginable, but when Eugene List went searching for the piano-and-orchestra version in the '50s, the best he could do was a two-piano version in the British Museum. He persuaded the composer Hershy Kay to produce this 1957 reconstruction.
GOTTSCHALK-KAY: Grande Tarantelle for Piano
and Orchestra
Eugene List, piano; one of two orchestras, either Igor Buketoff or Samuel Adler, cond. Vox, recorded c 1972
Gottschalk wasn't all flash, though. Here is an orchestral piece that has won favorable attention even from some of his detractors, the two movement La Nuit des tropiques (Night in the Tropics), which the composer gave the rather highfalutin designation "Symphony No. 1." On its own terms, though, the piece is a beauty. Annotator Freed evokes Berlioz, and in the sinuous, long-breathed melodic lines of the Andante in particular, I hear what he means.
GOTTSCHALK: Symphony No. 1, La Nuit des tropiques (Night in the Tropics)
i. Andante ("Nuit dans les tropiques")
ii. Allegro moderato ("Une fête sous les tropiques") ("A Festival Under the Tropics")
Vienna State Opera Orchestra, Igor Buketoff, cond. Vox, recorded c 1972
APPENDIX: OOPS, AN AMERICAN TREASURE LOST, OR AT LEAST SOMEHOW MISPLACED
I can't believe I did a grabbag of American musical treasures, with Leonard Bernstein's name plastered all over the damned place, and even mentioning the Overture to LB's Candide, without including it -- me of all people, having gone on record as admitting it's a piece I can listen to dozens of times in succession.
LEONARD BERNSTEIN (1918-1990)
"Once one dismisses the rest of all possible worlds, One finds that this is the best of all possible worlds."
-- Dr. Pangloss, in Leonard Bernstein's Candide (lyrics for "The Best of All Possible Worlds" by John LaTouche)
In my mind, of course, we've "done" Candide, and done it. Oh, I know we've barely scratched the surface, but what was this post about but scratching surfaces? And of course many of you have never read those posts.
So herewith, a little Candide suite: the Overture and the great philosopher Dr. Pangloss (in the person of the late Adolph Green, the distinguished lyricist) teaching his charges that this is "The Best of All Possible Worlds" from the studio recording of the complete Candide that Lenny made at the time of his happily televised (and therefore now-on-DVD)concert performance; and the Candide-Cunegonde duet "Oh Happy We!" and Cunegonde's great aria "Glitter and Be Gay" from the Original Broadway Cast recording, featuring the great Barbara Cook.
BERNSTEIN et al.: Candide
Overture
London Symphony Orchestra, Leonard Bernstein, cond. DG,recorded December 1989
"The Best of All Possible Worlds" (lyrics by John LaTouche)
Adolph Green (Dr. Pangloss), June Anderson (Cunegonde), Della Jones (Paquette), Jerry Hadley (Candide), Kurt Ollmann (Maximilian); from the DG recording (see above)
it contains only two actual rhapsodies, the Enesco we just heard and the Liszt we're about to hear. Ormandy didn't record many rhapsodies en bloc, but Sony has assembled 
that includes a lot of the music we're hearing today.
of historical recordings of all 19 Hungarian Rhapsodies.
concert performance; and the Candide-Cunegonde duet "Oh Happy We!" and Cunegonde's great aria "Glitter and Be Gay" from the Original Broadway Cast recording, featuring the great Barbara Cook.
recorded December 1989
Dec. 9, 1956
