"When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying the cross."
-- Sinclair Lewis
Sunday, July 04, 2010
Sunday Classics: Our Fourth of July All-American Rerun continues with a taste of Ives, more Gershwin, and some Grofé
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Last night we began our musical celebration of the Fourth of July with a newly expanded "encore presentation" of our Thanksgiving tribute to "American Treasures." The tribute concludes tomorrow in this same time slot. -- Ken
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 New York Philharmonic in London's Royal Albert Hall; Part 2 is here. (The luscious "big tune" finally emerges at 3:03 of Part 2.) The clarinet soloist is of course our own Stanley Drucker, who just retired after the 2008-09 season. At the time he was already approaching 30 years of service with the orchestra -- with another 33 years ahead of him!
No grand propositions to prove this week. Just some deliciously wonderful music, in the Thanksgiving er, Fourth of July spirit.
JUST TO PROVE THIS IS A FOURTH OF JULY POST, HERE'S SOME MUSIC SPECIALLY CHOSEN FOR THE DAY
F. W. MEACHAM: American Patrol (march)
Goldman Band, Richard Franko Goldman, cond. Capitol/EMI, recorded 1965
CHARLES IVES: The Fourth of July
Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, David Zinman, cond. Argo, recorded September 1994
Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Michael Tilson Thomas, cond. CBS/Sony, recorded 1986
JAMES HEWITT: The Battle of Trenton (1792, arr. Roger Smith) i. Introduction; Army in Motion; Acclamation of Ye Americans; Drum Beats to Arms ii. Washington's March iii. Crossing the Delaware; Trumpets Sound the Charge iv. The Battle; Flight of the Hessians; General Confusion v. Grief of the Americans for the Loss of Their Comrades Killed in the Engagement vi. Yankee Doodle; Trumpets of Victory; Finale: General Rejoice
Goldman Band, Richard Franko Goldman, cond. Capitol/EMI, recorded 1965
JOHN PHILIP SOUSA: The Stars and Stripes Forever (march)
Morton Gould and His Symphonic Band. RCA/BMG, recorded Oct. 17, 19, and 26, 1956
Concert Arts Symphonic Band, Felix Slatkin, cond. Capitol/EMI, recorded 1958
Now let's continue with our Special Fourth of July All-American Rerun.
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GEORGE GERSHWIN (1898-1937)
George and Ira Gershwin (center and right)
at the keyboard with Fred Astaire
In last night's installment we sampled the work of Gershwin the theater composer, writing -- with brother Ira -- in both the musical and the operatic genres, and venturing into his concert music with the Variations on "I Got Rhythm." Today we move on to those concert stapeles Rhapsody in Blue (1924) and 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-Command version on CD, but here's the Ormandy.
FOURTH OF JULY EXTRA: I don't have the Steinberg-Pittsburgh Command American in Paris on CD, but I do have their earlier Everest recording, which is also pretty good.
GERSHWIN: An American in Paris
Philadephia Orchestra, Eugene Ormandy, cond. Columbia/Sony, recorded Jan. 5, 1967
Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, William Steinberg, cond. Everest, recorded c1959
FOURTH OF JULY GERSHWIN BONUS
Lenny B's bursting-with-life 1958-59 Columbia Masterworks coupling of the Rhapsody in Blue (with the Columbia Symphony) and An American in Paris (with the New York Philharmonic) was one of his happiest records, but he wasn't the only composer-conductor-pianist who found his way to Gershwin. In 1971 André Previn recorded a disc for EMI on which he played and conducted the Piano Concerto in F as well as the Rhapsody and conducted American in Paris. I can't say that I hear Previn's considerable keyboard experience with jazz, but in the Rhapsody in particular (where the great English clarinetist Gervase de Peyer, then still the London Symphony's clarinet principal,, plays the famous solo part) his approach is noticeably fleeter-fingered and less emphatic than Lenny's.
GERSHWIN: Rhapsody in Blue
Columbia Symphony Orchestra, Leonard Bernstein, piano and cond. Columbia/CBS/Sony, recorded June 23, 1959
London Symphony Orchestra, André Previn, piano and cond. EMI, recorded June 4-6, 1971
GERSHWIN: An American in Paris
New York Philharmonic, Leonard Bernstein, cond. Columbia/CBS/Sony, recorded Dec. 21, 1958
London Symphony Orchestra, André Previn, cond. EMI, recorded June 4-6, 1971
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 (including those Parisian car horns). 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 --
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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
Sunday Classics: Our all-American "encore presentation" kicks off with Copland and Gershwin
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You may remember how I was just going on about the jam-packed new-style summer TV season. No doubt you too have noticed that the cable networks tend to assume that either nobody is watching on holiday weekends, or it's different people who are watching, or at least that their regular viewers are watching differently. They seem to give their original series the week off over holiday weekends. In that tradition we're having our First Sunday Classics Rerun, or rather what the Car Talk guys might call an "encore presentation" -- an all-American celebration originally put together for Thanksgiving. (Of course if the idea was to give me a holiday, it didn't work so great. I wound up spending almost as much time on the "additional" material, not to mention reassembling the thing, as I do on a normal post. Oh well.) -- Ken
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PART 1: KICKING OFF OUR FOURTH OF JULY MUSICAL CELEBRATION WITH A COPLAND FANFARE
Thanks to skillful organ registration (and of course skillful playing), this 1995 rendition of Aaron Copland's Fanfare for the Common Man on the organ of Washington National Cathedral by the cathedral's organist and choirmaster from 1985 to 2002, Douglas Major, works surprisingly well, doesn't it?
The Fanfare for the Common Man originated as one of 18 fanfares premiered at the start of concerts in the 1942-43 season by the Cincinnati Symphony's music director, Eugene Goossens, who had similarly commissioned fanfares for concerts during World War I. Goossens commented of Copland's effort, "Its title is as original as its music." The composer subsequently recycled it as the opening of the fourth movement of his Third Symphony.
Since its creation, the Fanfare has tended to take on a more upbeat character, and tonight it heralds a Sunday post of some just-for-fun American treasures, including more Copland.
Here, by the way, is how the Fanfare sounds in more conventional orchestral form, conducted first [a Fourth of July addition -- Ed.] by the composer's young friend, protégé, and great champion Leonard Bernstein and then, more broadly, by the composer himself:
COPLAND: Fanfare for the Common Man
New York Philharmonic, Leonard Bernstein, cond. Columbia/CBS/Sony, recorded 1966
London Symphony Orchestra, Aaron Copland, cond. CBS/Sony, recorded October 1968
[The Copland-conducted Fanfare for the Common Man seems to have been issued in at least 50 couplings. I don't think you can do better, though, than the remarkably inexpensive two-CD Copland Celebration, Vol. 1, "Famous Orchestral and Chamber Works," including such Copland classics as the Four Dance Episodes from "Rodeo," the Billy the Kid suite, El Salón México, the Danzón Cubano, and the original chamber version of the "Ballet for Martha [Graham]," Appalachian Spring (with the bonus of 17 minutes' worth of rehearsal with the all-star "Columbia Chamber Ensemble" assembled for this historic 1973 recording).]
BONUS: COPLAND'S OLD AMERICAN SONGS
from Jet magazine, Nov. 29, 1951
In 1950, inspired by his friends the English singer/composer-pianist tandem of Peter Pears and Benjamin Britten, who frequently performed traditional English songs in Britten's arrangements, Copland arranged a set of five Old American Songs for voice and piano, which he recorded the following year with bass-baritone William Warfield (1920-2002). In 1952 he arranged a second set of five songs, and he and Warfield recorded them the following year. Copland subsequently orchestrated both sets, and in 1962 he and Warfield made a simply gorgeous stereo recording, which still hasn't been bettered. (Did Pears and Britten ever perform these songs? I don't know.)
We're going to hear "I Bought Me a Cat" from Set 1 and "At the River" from Set 2, in both versions -- with Warfield sounding that decade (more or less) younger and fresher in the piano-accompanied ones. (The piano-accompanied version of the Old American Songs is included in Vol. 2 of the Sony Copland Celebration; the orchestral version, in Vol. 3.)
FOURTH OF JULY UPDATE:We're going to hear some other songs/performances as well.
COPLAND (arr.): Old American Songs
Set 1, No. 5: "I Bought Me a Cat"
William Warfield, bass-baritone; Aaron Copland, piano. Columbia/Sony, recorded Aug. 16, 1951
William Warfield, bass-baritone; Columbia Symphony Orchestra, Aaron Copland, cond. Columbia/Sony, recorded May 3-4, 1962
Set 2, No. 4, "At the River"
William Warfield, bass-baritone; Aaron Copland, piano. Columbia/Sony, recorded Aug. 18, 1953
William Warfield, bass-baritone; Columbia Symphony Orchestra, Aaron Copland, cond. Columbia/Sony, recorded May 3-4, 1962
Set 1, No. 3: Long Time Ago
William Warfield, bass-baritone; Aaron Copland, piano. Columbia/CBS/Sony, recorded Aug. 16, 1951
William Warfield, bass-baritone; Columbia Symphony Orchestra, Aaron Copland, cond. Columbia/CBS/Sony, recorded May 3-4, 1962
Eleanor Steber, soprano; Edwin Biltcliffe, piano. VAI, recorded live, 1956
Set 1, No. 4: "Simple Gifts"
William Warfield, bass-baritone; Aaron Copland, piano. Columbia/CBS/Sony, recorded Aug. 16, 1951
William Warfield, bass-baritone; Columbia Symphony Orchestra, Aaron Copland, cond. Columbia/CBS/Sony, recorded May 3-4, 1962
And here's the tongue-twisterishly fastest "Simple Gifts" you're likely ever to hear:
Eleanor Steber, soprano; Edwin Biltcliffe, piano. VAI, recorded live, 1956
Set 1 (complete): i. The Boatmen's Dance ii. The Dodger [3:09] iii. Long Time Ago [5:06] iv. Simple Gifts [8:05] v. I Bought Me a Cat [9:20]
Sherrill Milnes, baritone; Cincinnati Pops Orchestra, Erich Kunzel, cond. Telarc, recorded 1985-86
MORE COPLAND TO COME: We'll have more Copland in Monday's "Sunday Classics on Monday" post.
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ALL-AMERICAN "ENCORE" HOLIDAY KICKOFF, PART 2: GERSHWIN'S "I GOT RHYTHM" (DOES HE EVER!)
It's only 33 seconds' worth, but if those 33 seconds of "I Got Rhythm" don't lift you out of your chair, I don't know what will. (The 1943 date on the clip seems dubious, since Gershwin died, alas, in July 1937, following surgery for a brain tumor, two and a half months short of his 39th birthday.)
We have more Gershwin coming in our All-American rerun, but for tonight we're focusing on the song "I Got Rhythm." It was written for the Broadwqy musical Girl Crazy (1930), with music by George and lyrics by his brother Ira, one of the most brilliant lyricists in the English language. Both on Broadway and in Hollywood, George and Ira were among the most successful and sought-after songwriters of the '20s and '30s.
We'll come back to the original, but let's start with the set of variations George wrote for piano and orchestra.
GERSHWIN: Variations on "I Got Rhythm"
Earl Wild, piano; Boston Pops Orchestra, Arthur Fiedler, cond. RCA/BMG, recorded 1961
STILL MORE "I GOT RHYTHM": THE ORIGINAL! THE GERSHWINS ON BROADWAY
Girl Crazy included a couple of other numbers you may have heard of. We're going to hear a little suite drawn from the Nonesuch recording of the show, part of the ambitious series of scrupulously reconstructed Gershwin musicals, cast reasonably enough and conducted attentively if not incandescently by John Mauceri, and remarkably thoroughly annotated.
Overture
Orchestra
"Embraceable You" (with encore)
David Carroll and Judy Blazer, vocals
"I Got Rhythm" (with encore)
Lorna Luft, vocals In the encore: vocal quartet (Guy Stroman, Stan Chandler, Larry Raben, and David Engel); Dick Hyman, piano solo
Entr'acte
Orchestra and vocal quartet (see above)
"But Not for Me" (with "comic reprise")
Judy Blazer and (in the reprise) Frank Gorshin, vocals
Orchestra, John Mauceri, cond. Nonesuch, recorded Feb. 26-28, 1990
THE GERSHWINS TRY THEIR HAND AT OPERA: PORGY AND BESS
George and Ira's most ambitious project was a full-fledged opera: Porgy and Bess. It was produced on their home turf, Broadway, and its 124-performance run in 1935-36 (followed by two months of tour performances) was a flop by Broadway standards but stands as one of the more remarkable box-office accomplishments in operatic history. For all its limitations and flaws, Porgy is a brilliant piece of musical theater, and probably still the most successful American opera.
"Summertime," sung by the Catfish Row neighbor Clara shortly after the Act I curtain rises to help set the atmosphere of the scene, is as beautiful as any song ever written. It's hard to imagine that it's ever been sung more beautifully than it is here by the young Leontyne Price, in the celebrity "Gala" sequence from Decca's 1960 recording of Johann Strauss's Die Fledermaus.
Price with Herbert von Karajan, recording Carmen in Vienna, 1963
GERSHWIN: Porgy and Bess: Act I, "Summertime"
Leontyne Price, soprano; Vienna Philharmonic, Herbert von Karajan, cond. Decca, recorded June 1960
Here's "Summertime" as it fits into the early minutes of the opera. I can't say I'm crazy about the conducting of either of these performances, which really don't have rhythm, but it's what I've got on CD. (Note that the Glyndebourne-EMI performance includes a significantly expanded version of the Introduction.)
Porgy and Bess: Act I, Introduction; "Summertime"
Nicole Cabell (s), Clara; Nashville Symphony Orchestra, John Mauceri, cond. Decca, recorded Feb. 26-March 1, 2006
Harolyn Blackwell (s), Clara; Glyndebourne Chorus, London Philharmonic Orchestra, Simon Rattle, cond. EMI, recorded February 1988
Finally, here are some Porgy excerpts from a recently released 1952 broadcast performance from the Berliner Festwochen. It's based on a production that was touring Europe at the time, with our friend William Warfield as Porgy, the really young Leontyne Price as Bess, and Cab Calloway as the drug dealer Sportin' Life. The conductor is Alexander Smallens, who conducted the original Broadway run of the opera.
Act I, Introduction; "Summertime"
Helen Colbert (s), Clara
Act I, "Oh, the train is at the station"
Leontyne Price (s), Bess
Act II, "I got plenty o' nuttin'"
William Warfield (bs-b), Porgy
Act II, "It ain't necessarily so"
Cab Calloway (t), Sportin' Life
Chorus of the Blevins Davis and Robert Breen production, RIAS Light Orchestra, Alexander Smallens, cond. Membran, recorded live in the Titania Palast, Berlin, Sept. 21, 1952
We proceed with our all-American encore presentation, with "American Treasures" by Gershwin, Grofé, Ives, and bandmasters. Then "Sunday Classics on Monday" features, Copland, Ives, Gottschalk, and Bernstein.
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)
FERDE GROFÉ (1892-1972)
"Famous Orchestral and Chamber Works," including such Copland classics as the Four Dance Episodes from "Rodeo," the Billy the Kid suite, El Salón México, the Danzón Cubano, and the original chamber version of the "Ballet for Martha [Graham]," Appalachian Spring (with the bonus of 17 minutes' worth of rehearsal with the all-star "Columbia Chamber Ensemble" assembled for this historic 1973 recording).]
of the Sony Copland Celebration; the orchestral version, in 
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
