Sunday Classics flashback: A complete "Gurre-Lieder" from (gasp!) 1932

No, this isn't the 1932 Stoky-Philadelphia Gurre-Lieder. This is Leopold Stokowski and the Philadelphia Orchestra giving the U.S. premiere of Mahler's monumental Eighth Symphony, the so-called Symphony of a Thousand, in 1916!

by Ken

There was so much to try to squeeze in, even while leaving so much out, last week in connection with Arnold Schoenberg's peerless dramatic cantata Gurre-Lieder that I dropped the ball on a subject I meant to cover: RCA Victor's audacious first recording of the piece, made -- astonishingly -- in 1932, during Leopold Stokowski's live performances with the Philadelphia Orchestra.

There were performances on March 8, 9, and 11, 1932, and Victor apparently intended to record all three, but the last eight minutes of the March 8 performance went unrecorded. Sound-restoration guru Ward Marston, who has heard the 18 surviving sides (out of 25 recorded) speculates that the recording wasn't completed because of technical problems with the performance itself. Ward Marston mastered the exceedingly March 9 recording, done at 33 rpm to take advantage of the significantly longer per-side playing time, for release by Pearl. Mostly what we've heard is the March 11 performance, recorded at the standard 78-rpm speed.

To fill out the odd side in both formats, Maestro Stokowski recorded an introduction to Gurre-Lieder, with musical examples provided on the piano by his then-assistant, Artur Rodzinski (soon to be one of the world's leading conductors). For the 33-rpm edition, logically enough, a single side's worth enabled him to do a 12-minute version (as against the four minutes and change possible on a 78).

Now I thought I was going to tickle you by offering that Stokowski lecture-demonstration, in the full-length 33-rpm version. As far as I know, I've never actually listened to either the longer or the shorter version, so I thought we could listen to it together. Alas, the sound file I produced is a technical disaster, and cuts off, no doubt mercifully after abour four minutes! And you know what? Those four minutes really aren't that interesting.

Meanwhile, I discovered that you can actually download the Stokowski-Philadelphia Gurre-Lieder for a grand total of $1.98 -- no, joke, it's in two files (one for Part I, and one for Parts II and III), and you can download each for 99 cents! So I thought we would listen to Part I in that form, complete! (I confess that I have yet to do any comparative listening to the March 9 [33 rpm] and March 11 [78 rpm] performances. In theory, the faster-speed recording should sound noticeably better, but again, you have to have something to compare. What I'm getting at is that I can't tell you which this is. The only date on the Amazon website is provided by the commenter: March 8, which we know is wrong.)

SCHOENBERG: Gurre-Lieder: Part I (complete)

THE VOCAL TEXTS

Once again, you can find German and English texts for Gurre-Lieder at http://www.recmusic.org/lieder/get_text.html?TextId=24028.

Paul Althouse (t), Waldemar; Jeanette Vreeland (s), Tove; Rose Bampton (ms), Voice of the Wood Dove; Philadelphia Orchestra, Leopold Stokowski, cond. RCA, recorded live, March 9 or 11, 1932

[Note: There's a four-CD Andante set of Stokowski-Philadelphia recordings, including the Gurre-Lieder, in transfers by Ward Marston, which makes you suspect that this is the 33-rpm performance (March 9), which Marston transferred for Pearl. On the other hand, the other Marston-transferred Stokowski-Philadelphia recordings included in the Pearl set, Scriabin's Poem of Ecstasy and Prometheus: Poem of Fire, are not included in the Andante set.]

Meanwhile, for the benefit of those expecting some "quick hit"-type listening in this Friday-night slot, I thought it might be worth bringing back the Schoenberg selection from the Guess the Composer quiz that unleashed these last couple of weeks of whatever it is that we've been doing, the awesome Iron Brigade. Not the strange version with the animal noises, but the one that won my heart, from the London Sinfonietta's set of Schoenberg's Complete Works for Chamber Ensemble.

ENCORE PERFORMANCE (BY POPULAR DEMAND!!!)

SCHOENBERG: Die eiserne Brigade
(The Iron Brigade)


London Sinfoniettta: Nona Liddell and Joan Atherton, violins; Donald McVay, viola; Jennifer Ward Clarke, cello; John Constable, piano. Decca, recorded Oct. 1973-May 1974

SUNDAY CLASSICS POSTS

The current list is here.

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Sunday Classics preview: "Tot ist Tove" -- Schoenberg's "Song of the Wood Dove"

Mezzo-soprano Ann Murray sings 10 minutes' worth (alas, not the whole thing; the clip even lops off the beginning, starting instead with the chilling words "Tot ist Tove" -- "Dead is Tove") of the "Song of the Wood Dove" from Arnold Schoenberg's stupendous dramatic cantata Gurre-Lieder. It's from a 1994 London Proms performance, of which we're going to hear more tomorrow, with Andrew Davis conducting the BBC Symphony Orchestra.

by Ken

We have lots of unfinished business to deal with, and some we're going to and some we aren't. This is not a good weekend for me for thinking, so my efforts to explain what I already tried to explain in last week's post, both about the exhaustion of our musical language and about the weird wonders of Shostakovich's Sixth Symphony, are going to have to be put on hold. And while I thought we might get deeper into Schoenberg's massive and glorious dramatic cantata (for want of a better description) Gurre-Lieder (Songs of Gurre), I think we'll just pick up with what I planned to say and play last week.

Last week we were headed for the end of Part I, following the exchange of increasingly passionate utterances between King Waldemar and Tove, which come to a thudding, terrifyingly abrupt end when a Wood Dove announces to its fellow doves of Gurre the unimaginably horrible news: "Tot ist Tove -- "Dead is Tove," allowing for the German-allowable word order. (Later the Wood Dove does sing the more normal "Tove ist tot.")

One of the most astonishing performances I've ever heard was the complete Gurre-Lieder that Seiji Ozawa conducted at the Tanglewood Music Festival in 1974 (the Schoenberg centenary year), at the end of his first season as music director of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Eventually (in 1979, to be exact), Seiji and the BSO did the piece again, performances that Philips had the great good sense to record -- the result is still by a wide margin the best recording of the piece we've had, including the only really satisfactory Waldemar, James McCracken (who had been in the 1974 cast too).

In some respects, though, the 1974 performance remained unmatched. One of those respects was the stupendous Wood Dove of the outstanding American contralto Lili Chookasian. As it happens, Chookasian had recorded the "Song of the Wood Dove," also with the BSO, in 1964, under then-music director Erich Leinsdorf. This performance isn't as hair-raising as the 1974 one, but it will give you an idea of the basic suitability of the voice for this unique music.

SCHOENBERG: Gurre-Lieder: conclusion of Part I,
Orchestral Interlude and "Song of the Wood Dove"

Original German text by Robert Franz Arnold, translated from the Danish of Jens Peter Jacobsen; English translation by Linda Godry, from The Lied and Art Songs Text Page

Doves of Gurre! Full of sorrow I am,
while on my way across the island!
Come! Listen!
Dead is Tove! Night in her eyes,
Which were the kings daylight!
Silent is her heart,
but the King's heart is wildly beating,
Dead and wild as yet!
Oddly like a boat
on heaving waves,
if the one, to whose welcome
the planks have bent
in tribute,
the ship's helmsman is dead,
entangled in the weeds of the deep.
Nobody brings them news,
impassable the path.
Like two streams
have been their thoughts,
flowing side by side.
Where do Tove's thoughts flow now?
The King's are oddly winding,
searching
for those of Tove,
and can't find them.
Far did I fly, laments to search,
and found aplenty!
The coffin I saw
on the King's shoulders,
Henning supported him;
dark was the night,
a single torch burned
beside the path;
the Queen held it,
high on the donjon,
full of vengeful musings.
Tears
she denied herself,
but glistened in her eye.
Far I flew, laments to search,
and found aplenty!
The King I saw,
with the coffin he drove,
in a peasant's dress.
His charger,
that often had carried him to victory,
was pulling the coffin.
Wild was the King's eye,
searching for that gaze,
irritated listened the King's heart,
for that word.
Henning talks to the King,
but still he is searching
word and gaze.
The King opens Tove's coffin,
Stares and listens
with quivering lips,
Tove is silent!
Far I flew, laments to search,
and found aplenty!
A monk went to pull the bell rope
for the evening's blessings [prayers];
but then he saw the coachman
and heard the bad news:
The sun sank, while the bell
rang out the death knell.
Far I flew, laments to search
and death!
Helwig's falcon it was, who
cruelly tore apart Gurre's dove.

Lili Chookasian (c), Voice of the Wood Dove; Boston Symphony Orchestra, Erich Leinsdorf, cond. RCA/BMG, recorded Oct. 19, 1964

I shouldn't inflict this on you, but here is a quite poor transfer and MP3 rendering (I did it myself!) of the London Sinfonietta's recording of Schoenberg's 1923 chamber-ensemble arrangement of the "Song of the Wood Dove" (from Decca's Schoenberg Complete Works for Chamber Ensemble set, from which last week we heard The Iron Brigade):


Anna Reynolds (ms), Voice of the Wood Dove; London Sinfonietta, David Atherton, cond. Decca, recorded Oct. 1973-May 1974


IN TOMORROW'S SUNDAY CLASSICS POST --

More Gurre-Lieder. Not as much as we should have, but still, a lot more Gurre-Lieder!


SUNDAY CLASSICS POSTS

The current list is here.

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