"When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying the cross."
-- Sinclair Lewis
Sunday, September 06, 2015
Sunday Classics snapshots: Swinging Haydn with Vilmos Tatrai playing and conducting
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Violinist and conductor Tátrai (1912-1999)
Symphony No. 31 in D (Horn Signal) (1765):
i. Allegro
Symphony No. 73 in D (La chasse) (The Hunt) (1782)
iv. Presto
Hungarian Chamber Orchestra, Vilmos Tátrai, cond. Hungaroton, recorded 1965
by Ken
So I noticed this CD lying atop one of the millions of piles of CDs I've finally been trying to organize, and it didn't instantly ring a bell: a pair of D major sort of hunt-themed Haydn symphonies -- the Horn Signal, No. 31, and La Chasse, No. 73, performed by the Hungarian Chamber Orchestra conducted by Vilmos Tátrai. Above we've heard the movements most responsible for the symphonies' nicknames (though it should be noted that the then-overwhelming contingent of four horns is used throughout the Horn Signal Symphony).
MY FIRST THOUGHT WAS THAT THE CD WAS LYING ABOUT --
Sunday Classics report: The Schneider Quartet's legendary Haydn recordings finally make it to CD!
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The cover of the booklet accompanying the indispensable Music and Arts CD reissue of the legendary not-quite-complete 1951-53 Haydn Society cycle of the Haydn string quartets by the Schneider Quartet
by Ken
For decades now it has been one of the gaps in the ranks of available recordings, through much of the LP era and, until now, the whole of the CD era. But this month Music and Arts has released a specially priced 15-CD set of the 54 Haydn quartets recorded by the Schneider Quartet in the early '50s, "newly remastered mostly from the original master tapes." The massive project was spearheaded by company founder Frederick J. Maroth but was pursued, becoming a memorial, following his death in November 2013.
Alexander Schneider (1908-1993), described by Tully Potter, in his customarily excellent essay for the album booklet, as "one of the more remarkable musicians of the last century." was a violinist who expanded into something of a one-man music industry." He had spent a dozen years (1932-44) as second violinist of the Budapest Quartet, the third Russian to replace the old Hungarian players. (His older brother Mischa, a cellist, had preceded him by two years. A few years later, with the coming of violist Boris Kroyt, the Russianization of the Budapest would be complete.) Schneider eventually rejoined the Budapest, and even though the second violinist is normally thought to play the least defining role in a string quartet, to be the most interchangeable element, it's fascinating how much animated and musically probing the Budapest was with Schneider than without.
In the period between his Budapest stints, Schneider undertook also sorts of chamber music initiatives and became a mainstay, first of Pablos Casals' Prades Festivals and then of the Marlboro Festival (more and more often as a conductor), and devoted more and more of his energies to performances with young performers. Around 1950 his attention turned to the great body of Haydn's string quartets, and it became known that the newly formed Haydn Society, taking advantage of the dawn of the LP era, was planning to record all of the string quartets with a Haydn formed for the purpose by Schneider, which came to include violinist Isidore Cohen (later second violinist of the Juilliard Quartet and the violinist of the Beaux Arts Trio), violist Karen Tuttle, and cellist Madeline Foley, in time replaced by Herman Busch (whose brothers included the outstanding conductor Fritz Busch and violinist Adolf Busch, the father-in-law of pianist Rudolf Serkin).
The quartet did perform all the Haydn quartets in concert, but with funds critically short was unable to record the 24 quartets of Opp. 9, 54/55, 64, and 71/74, though it turns out that Op. 64 was actually begun; the first and last movements of Op. 64, No. 1 have their first commercial release, edited from unedited master tapes from a session in October 1954. The Schneider Quartet Haydn performances remain unmatched for their combination of structural integrity with personal relish and big and bold interpretive choices.
By way of illustration, I thought we would listen to a couple of movements we've already heard, the first movement of Op. 33, No. 2, and the famous theme and variations movement of Op. 76, No. 3, and then dip into the early quartets.
Sunday Classics chronicles: Remembering Eugen Jochum (2) -- Haydn and Bruckner, part 2
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The First Day
The Fourth Day
Orchestral depiction of the lighting of the firmament
URIEL: In full splendor rises now
the sun, streaming:
a wondrous bridegroom,
a giant, proud and happy
to run his path.
With gentle motion and soft shimmer
the moon steals through the silent night.
Waldemar Kmentt (t), Uriel; Bavarian Radio Chorus and Symphony Orchestra, Eugen Jochum, cond. Philips, recorded July 1966
by Ken
We began this tribute to that wonderful conductor Eugen Jochum (1902-1987) Friday night with samples of his Haydn and Bruckner. Now it wouldn't be that difficult to construct a polemical argument to show how much these composers have in common, but rather obviously they're worlds apart in temperament (Haydn's urbane classicism vs. Bruckner's cosmically and yet somehow chastely sprawling romanticism), scale, and outlook.
As I mentioned Friday night, most of the performances we're hearing in this week's and next's Jochum remembrance, during the Sunday Classics hiatus, come from the Sunday Classics archives, but both this week and next we're going to be hearing some that we haven't heard before. Today it's a recording that was included in the same large Berkshire Record Outlet order that yielded our earlier tribute to those three deeply musical conductorial "K"s, Rafael Kubelik, Josef Krips, and Rudolf Kempe: the CD edition of a performance I'd had on LP for ages, Jochum's Philips recording of Franz Joseph Haydn's great oratorio The Creation. The snippets we've heard above are tastes of the selections we're going to hear shortly from the First and Fourth Days of creation.
DON'T FORGET, THE STAND-ALONE SUNDAY CLASSICS BLOG --
Sunday Classics chronicles: Remembering Eugen Jochum (1) -- Haydn and Bruckner, part 1
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Eugen Jochum conducts his longtime orchestra, the Bavarian Radio Symphony, in the first part of the opening Allegro moderato of one of his signature pieces, the Bruckner Seventh Symphony. (The conclusion of the movement is posted below.)
by Ken
During Sunday Classics's hiatus, while I ponder its future and concentrate on importing more of the Sunday Classics "legacy" into the new stand-alone "Sunday Classics with Ken" blog (at sundayclassicswithken.blogspot.com -- hey, on the long march back to 2008 we've already gotten back as far as June 2012!), I've stumbled across issues arising from the stroll through those posts, as well as issues arising from records I've acquired, first from a massive Berkshire Record Outlet order and, more recently, from a visit to my friend Richard that included helping him cull duplicates from his collection.
The BRO order already yielded a December preview-and-post devoted to "Remembering Rafael Kubelik, Josef Krips, and Rudolf Kempe," three conductors who are dear to my heart for their uneccentric deep-rooted musicianship. As it happens there was another conductor who fits well in this group -- and missed it by a single letter, being a "J" rather than a "K" -- and happens to have been intriguingly represented in both those piles of acquisitions. Like our "K" men, Eugen Jochum (1902-1987) has been well represented here in Sunday Classics, and thereupon hangs what I'm projecting to a four-part series this week and next, including both symphonic and operatic representations. (We once heard Bruno Walter talking in a 1958 radio interview about the great differences between symphonic and operatic conducting, and it happens that all four of our J-K conductors, like Maestro Walter himself, happen to have done top-quality work in both fields.)
HERE'S A GORGEOUS PERFORMANCE OF MUSIC BY
A COMPOSER JOCHUM HAD A SPECIAL AFFINITY FOR
Sunday Classics: When Haydn met London (and vice versa), neither was ever the same again
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HAYDN: The Creation, Part I:
Orchestral introduction, "The Representation of Chaos"
Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, Leonard Bernstein, cond. DG, recorded live, June 1986
by Ken
The symphony we're hearing this week, Franz Joseph Haydn's Drum Roll (No. 103), from which we heard the ingeniously alternating minor-and-major theme-and-variations movement in Friday night's preview, is from the second set of six symphonies the composer produced for his visits to London in 1791-92 and 1794-95. The 12 symphonies are known collectively as Haydn's "London" symphonies, or sometimes the "Salomon" symphonies, after the violinist-turned-impresario Johann Peter Salomon, who lured the 59-year-old composer to London in the first place, as the late conductor Georg Tintner (1917-1999) reminds us in this little commentary recorded in 1992.
Maestro Tintner recalls the circumstances
of Haydn's summons to London
I'm not sure it's possible to overstate the explosive effect Haydn and the London musical public had on each other. Despite the composer's near-sequestration for nearly 30 years in Austrian backwaters running the musical establishment of the princes Esterházy, he knew he occupied an elite position among the composers of his day. But he had never experienced the kind of contact with the general music public that he did when he arrived in London. He seems to have been both startled and humbled to discover just how famous he was and just how much his music was loved.
Characteristically, Haydn responded, not by basking in praise or resting on his laurels, but by pushing himself further. His place in musical history would have been secure if he had written nothing from 1791 on, but the creative outpouring that was yet to come is kind of mind-boggling. He had, for example, already composed 90-plus symphonies, including dozens of masterpieces, but the dozen "London" symphonies are something else again. And as Maestro Tintner points out, it was his contact with the English oratorio tradition that planted the seed for the two great oratorios yet to come, The Creation and The Seasons. It was in fact Salomon who suggested the Creation to him as possible oratorio subject matter.
What we heard up top is the orchestral introduction to The Creation, "The Representation of Chaos," one of the most extraordinary depictions in the musical literature (when has chaos ever sounded this absorbing?)). And it sets up an amazing moment we're going to hear in the click-through by continuing just a few more minutes into the oratorio.
We've heard Haydn symphonies before: full posts devoted to the exhilarating Horn Signal (No. 31) in March 2011) and to the mystically magical No. 88 in September 2010), and we even heard the most popular of the "London" symphonies, the Surprise (No. 94, from the first set) in September 2010.
Sunday Classics preview: A "Drum Roll," please, as we prepare to ponder Haydn's amazing adventures in London
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"The second movement is a set of variations, and the most original thing about it is that the theme of the variations is in the minor mode, but every second [section] is in the major mode. So the theme is minor, the first variation is major; the second variation is minor; and so on. I daresay that Gustav Mahler was particularly fond of this movement, because his own works show influences of that kind."
-- the late conductor Georg Tintner (1917-1999), from a spoken
introduction to Haydn's Symphony No. 103 (Drum Roll)
by Ken
It's an amazing story, Franz Joseph Haydn's two trips to London, in 1791-92 and 1794-95, one of the most amazing in the annals of artistic creation, and I want to talk a little about it on Sunday. Perhaps not surprisingly, it's the subject that Georg Tintner raised at the outset of the little talk devoted to Haydn's Symphony No. 103, known as the Drum Roll (for its opening drum roll -- d'oh!) from which I've quoted the couple of sentences above about the slow movement.
As a matter of fact, it's that little talk of Georg Tintner's that prompted me to choose the Drum Roll Symphony, from the second set of six symphonies (Nos. 99-104) that Haydn composed for London, as our "sampler" of his London experience. And I thought we could start by listening to this alternating minor-and-major theme-and-variations movement, one of Haydn's great slow movements (and never mind that it's expressly designed not to sound like a slow movement). Since the movement turns out to be a showcase for the orchestra, I can't imagine a better orchestra to play it for us than the Concertgebouw.
Concertgebouw Orchestra, Colin Davis, cond. Philips, recorded November 1976
Sunday Classics: Horns, glorious horns -- Hadyn lets 'em loose in his "Horn Signal" Symphony
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With the horn section of the Minnesota Orchestra -- Michael Gast, Brian Jensen, Ellen Dinwiddie Smith, and Michael Petruconis -- joining the Minneapolis-based Kenwood Symphony Orchestra and music director Yuri Ivan, we hear the opening of the first movement of Haydn's "Horn Signal" Symphony (No. 31).
by Ken
Our listening to Handel's Royal Fireworks Music and especially his Water Music last week has lodged the wonderful sound of horns in my head, as reflected in Friday night's flashback and last night's preview.
There are countless ways we could go once the subject is orchestral horns -- and I am thinking particularly of horns, plural, because while one horn is a precious gift to composers (perhaps someday we'll take a listen to memorable orchestral horn solos), a pair of horns (or, piling it on, two pairs of horns; as we learn in the video clip in the click-through, [WARNING: VIDEO-CLIP SPOILER AHEAD] there are four symphonies in which Haydn used two pairs of horns, Nos. 13, 31, 39, and 72) is a limitless treasure, a gift that keeps on giving. For the sake of sanity, we're going to focus today on one target: Franz Josef Haydn's Symphony No. 31, known as the Horn Signal for reasons that should be pretty obvious.
HAYDN: Symphony No. 31 in D (Horn Signal) i. Allegro
Austro-Hungarian Haydn Orchestra, Adam Fischer, cond. Nimbus/Brilliant, recorded Apr.-May 2001
Even in Haydn's vast and staggeringly remarkable output, this symphony is special. In the compacted CD version of his liner note for the Dorati-Decca recording of the complete Haydn symphonies, the great Haydn scholar H. C. Robbins Landon writes that "for those familiar with the rest of Haydn's oeuvre,"
there is something particularly poignant about this "Hornsignal" Symphony, whose perfect construction and gay, light-hearted language, as yet untroubled with the accents of Sturm und Drang [although there are a heap of other Haydn symphonies that could bear the designation, it's most often applied to the six numbered 44-49 -- Ed.] represent in some indefinable way Haydn's farewell to youth, for in the next decades he was never quite able to recapture the deep-seated joy and innocence of this music.
Sunday Classics: Finally we hear the Haydn slow movement we've been gearing up for, from Symphony No. 88
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UPDATE:Sorry about the misplaced tuba clip in last night's preview, which I finally discovered. For what it's worth, it's fixed now, and explained (more or less) onsite.
Leonard Bernstein conducts the Vienna Philharmonic in the finale of Haydn's Symphony No. 88, presumably from the same concerts, in November 1983, at which LB made his DG audio recording.
"Brahms is reported to have said of the rapturous slow movement in variation form, 'I want my Ninth Symphony to sound like that.'"
-- musicologist H. C. Robbins Landon,
on the Largo of Haydn's Symphony No. 88
by Ken
As I wrote in last night's preview, which featured the famous slow movement of Haydn's Surprise Symphony (after Friday night's hearing of the beautiful slow movement of his Emperor String Quartet, the slow movement of the Symphony No. 88 is unlike any piece of music I know. It's not surprising that it has attracted the attention of pretty much all the great conductors -- back to Toscanini and Furtwängler and Fritz Busch. (I've got the Furtwängler recording on CD, but damned if I can figure out where.)
No. 88 is the first symphony Haydn wrote after the stupendous set of six he wrote for Paris (Nos. 82-87), and it's a grand piece. The Boston-born musicologist H. C. Robbins Landon, who died just last November (at 83), and whose many Haydn projects included editing a modern critical edition of the 10-plus Haydn symphonies and the monumental five-volume Haydn: Chronicle and Works, stresses this symphony's combination of "popular-sounding melodies with supreme contrapuntal skill."
Robbins Landon had provided liner notes for Decca's complete recording of the Haydn symphonies by Antal Dorati and the Philharmonia Hungarica, and then did it again when he served as "musicological and artistic consultant" for the Sony Vivarte series of Haydn symphonies with Bruno Weil and the period-instrument ensemble Tafelmusik, from which we're going to hear the Largo of No. 88 below. He writes of this movement:
Brahms is reported to have said of the rapturous slow movement in variation form, "I want my Ninth Symphony to sound like that." The orchestration of this highly original Largo includes an extended obbligato violoncello part, and the announcement of the hymn-like theme (a great specialty in these late Haydn symphonies) is with solo oboe, solo bassoon, second horn (using "stopped" notes, i.e., those produced by putting the hand into the bell of the instrument and lowering the tone), viola, solo cello and double bass.
Did you get that? Solo oboe, bassoon, horn, and cello plus violas and basses. What kind of combination is this? Who thinks of such a thing? I think we need to hear it.
The "hymn-like theme"
Then this "hymn-like theme" is, well, anointed. All Haydn does is shift to the quite normal choir of strings, but -- especially after the distinctive ensemble we've heard singing our hymn -- it really does sound like a choir. It sounds to me like a halo, and it will continue to hover over the hymn-like theme.
The "halo"
Now Haydn, much the way we heard him do Friday night in the theme-and-variations slow movement of the Emperor Quartet, more or less repeats the theme but with the addition of adding off-the-beat pizzicatos from the violins, when then join in, with bows, for the distinctly varied restatement of the last phrase-bit.
The "hymn-like theme" with surprising additions
Of course this is crowned with the string halo, which dissolves -- via the now-paired horns -- into a variation of . . . the halo (!), for the first time almost surreptitiously bringing in the full ensemble (with a couple of exceptions, about which Professor Robbins Landon will have more to say below).
The "halo" again -- and (surprise!) again
Now Haydn continues with his varying, until we encounter the outburst that so excites Professor Robbins Landon, when we hear the truly full orchestra with the addition of trumpets and timpani. But what interests me more is the seemingly casual bit of punctuation provided first by the two oboes and then by the single flute, which you'll note heretofore hasn't had a solo voice, but now watch out! The flute soars upward, leading an ethereal trio with the two oboes.
Whap! All hell breaks loose, and then . . .
What would you expect Haydn to do at this point? If you guessed "turn this material over to the strings," you got it, and even if not, you've learned a singularly Haydnesque lesson: He like to surprise us, and sometimes surprises us by not surprising us.
The performance we've been hearing chopped up is from a sweetheart of a recording that Eugen Jochum made with the Berlin Philharmonic In October 1961. At this point I think we need to hear the whole thing.
HAYDN: Symphony No. 88 in G: ii. Largo Berlin Philharmonic, Eugen Jochum, cond. DG, recorded October 1961
Now we're going to hear two very different performances. First is a more leisurely, very Viennese, and very lovely one by Karl Böhm and the Vienna Philharmonic: Vienna Philharmonic, Karl Böhm, cond. DG, recorded c1972
Now we hear the performance using period instruments, in more "authentic" period style, from the Sony Vivarte series I mentioned above. (You'll notice that this and the other period-instrument performances we're going to hear are pitched lower than the modern-orchestra ones. Pitch really was lower in pre-A=440 olden times.) Tafelmusik (on period instruments), Bruno Weil, cond. Sony, recorded May 16-18, 1994
THE COMPLETE SYMPHONY NO. 88
Of course you want to hear the complete symphony. Here's some of what Professor Robbins Landon has to say about each of the movements of the symphony in the Sony Vivarte liner note from which I've already quoted, accompanied by a period-instrument performance and a modern-orchestra one.
i. Adagio; Allegro
"The slow introduction to No. 88 serves a specific purpose: the opening theme of the Allegro proper is so wispy and unsubstantial that it could not have begun such a grand symphony "unprotected," as it were. This Allegro has a number of themes and they were socomplosed that they can be used with each other in double counterpoint at the octave. As a whole this movement is one of Haydn's most towering intellectual achievements and might be taken as a classical case for combining popular tunes with a formidable contrapuntal development."
La Petite Bande (on period instruments), Sigiswald Kuijken, cond. Virgin Veritas, recorded February 1991 Columbia Symphony Orchestra, Bruno Walter, cond. Columbia/CBS/Sony, recorded March 1961
ii. Largo
We've already seen H.C.R.L. 's basic note on this movement, but before that he makes an issue of the doubly unexpected use of trumpets and timpani here.
"One of [the symphony's] extraordinary features is the fact that the trumpets and timpani enter only in the course of the slow movement. Added to the fact that G-major symphonies at this period almost never had trumpets and timpani at all, their sudden appearance in the D-major Largo must have created a real sensation. The sensation was doubly effective because it was also not the custom for trumpets and timpani to be used in slow movements. . . . "
La Petite Bande (on period instruments), Sigiswald Kuijken, cond. Virgin Veritas, recorded February 1991 Columbia Symphony Orchestra, Bruno Walter, cond. Columbia/CBS.Sony, recorded March 1961
iii. Menuetto: Allegro
"The Minuet is like some great peasant harvest scene, and the Trio has weird syncopated accents and a bagpipes drone, all of which underline the genuine folk-like character of this astoundingly original music."
La Petite Bande (on period instruments), Sigiswald Kuijken, cond. Virgin Veritas, recorded February 1991 Columbia Symphony Orchestra, Bruno Walter, cond. Columbia/CBS/Sony, recorded March 1961
iv. Finale: Allegro con spirito
"The finale is perhaps the culmination of this successful attempt to wed a popular tune to contrapuntal feats -- at one point there is a long canon on the subject between upper and lower strings, all fortissimo, which leads us in sly fashion to the recapitulation."
La Petite Bande (on period instruments), Sigiswald Kuijken, cond. Virgin Veritas, recorded February 1991 Columbia Symphony Orchestra, Bruno Walter, cond. Columbia/CBS/Sony, recorded March 1961
NOW LET'S HEAR IT ALL TOGETHER
Again, we're going to hear both period- and modern-orchestra performances.
As I believe I've mentioned, I have a lot of skepticism about the "authentic performance" movement. However, among musicians drawn to it, the Dutch conductor Frans Brüggen -- who first made his reputation as a flute and recorder player -- has always struck me as one of the most musical, getting that the point is producing music, not "authenticity." I quite like his No. 88.
HAYDN: Symphony No. 88 in G: i. Adagio; Allegro ii. Largo iii. Menuetto: Allegro iv. Finale: Allegro con spirito
Orchestra of the 18th Century (on period instruments), Frans Brüggen, cond. Philips, recorded November 1988
For a standard "symphonic" performance, we're going to hear a more streamlined one than the Böhm and Walter, from a set of Haydn's Symphonies Nos. 88-92 plus the virtually symphonic Sinfonia Concertante for oboe, bassoon, violin, and cello by Simon Rattle, one of the nicer things I've heard from him. (Let's just say I'm not normally a big fan.) These are the symphonies that fall between the great "Paris" and "London" symphonies (a set of six, Nos. 82-87, and two sets of six, Nos. 93-104). We know how strongly attached Haydn was to the old baroque idea of writing sets of six works. I suppose it's just a coincidence that if we add the wonderful Sinfonia Concertante -- and doesn't the curious concertante quartet remind us of the "hymn" ensemble of our Largo from No. 88? -- to the "Between Paris and London" group, the total is . . . six!
Berlin Philharmonic, Sir Simon Rattle, cond. EMI, recorded live, February 2007
A HAYDN SYMPHONIC BONUS
Remember that October 1961 Jochum recording of the Largo of Symphony No. 88 we started out with today? The following May Jochum and the Berlin Philharmonic recorded the Symphony No. 98 (the final symphony in the first "London" set) for the other side of a lovely DG LP, no doubt one of the springboards to a project DG entrusted to him in 1972: recording all 12 "London" symphonies with the London Philharmonic (yes, including a remake of No. 98).
I'm not sure there's a movement in any of Haydn's symphonies that doesn't bear some uniquely personal touch, but among those I treasure particularly is the finale of No. 98, which most of the way is a characteristically ebullient Haydn rondo. And then it scales down to an envoi of ineffable wistfulness and charm.
The sudden appearance of the harpsichord provides a delicious jolt to modern ears, and would have been to Haydn's audiences too, even though performances in his time would have continued the baroque tradition of employing a "continuo" keyboard player. But by Haydn's time there was no need for the continuo, which in the baroque era had had the important function of filling in missing harmonies. In writing of the classical era, however, composers filled those harmonies in in the designated instrumental parts, leaving nothing for the continuo player to add, until Haydn provided this little solo, which can hardly help but draw a smile of delight from the listener.
What we're hearing is the finale from the 1962 Jochum-Berlin recording.
HAYDN: Symphony No. 98 in B-flat: iv. Finale: Presto Wolfgang Meyer, harpsichord; Berlin Philharmonic, Eugen Jochum, cond. DG, recorded May 1962
You say you've always wanted to hear the familiar theme of the slow movement of Haydn's Surprise Symphony played on the tuba? That's OK, no need to thank us.
[UPDATE: Sorry about the wrong clip. It never occurred to me to check it because I had seen the tuba clip in place! Only then, I recall now, something went kerplooey with the HTML coding in the post, and the whole thing was in jeopardy, and the simple solution was just to reimport the embed coding, and . . . well, I had this other clip I was working with, and . . . -- Ken]
by Ken
As I noted in last night's preview, in which we heard the gorgeous theme and variations of Haydn's Emperor Quartet in C, Op. 76, No. 3, we're listening this week to a few Haydn slow movements. Tonight it's what I'm wagering is the best-known of his symphonic slow movements, that of his Surprise Symphony, the second symphony of the first set of six he composed for London -- the one known in German as the symphony "mit dem Paukenschlage, "with the timpani blow." Both nicknames are trace back to this very movement.
HAYDN: Symphony No. 94 in G (Surprise): ii. Andante
One of the electrifying surprises of Leonard Bernstein's New York years was the discovery of his uniquely zestful flair for Haydn. After the fact, it's easy enough to connect the almost uncontrollable playfulness of Haydn's musical imagination, to which I referred last night, with the insatiably joyful restlessness of Lenny's musical mind.
New York Philharmonic, Leonard Bernstein, cond. Columbia/CBS/Sony, recorded Dec. 14 and 16, 1971
"Playfulness" isn't necessarily a quality we think of automatically in connection with Eugen Jochum, but beneath that perhaps staid exterior, there was a quietly lusty sense of fun. Explain it however you like, he too seems to have had an inborn affinity for Haydn.
Berlin Philharmonic, Eugen Jochum, cond. DG, recorded April 1972
AGAIN, WE REALLY SHOULD HEAR THE WHOLE SYMPHONY
A lively sense of play? An imagination that instinctively dug below the surface of a piece of music? Add matchless elegance and finesse to the list, and you must be talking about Pierre Monteux. In 1959, at the age of 84, he recorded a luscious coupling of Haydn's Surprise and Clock Symphonies with the Vienna Philharmonic.
HAYDN: Symphony No. 94 in G (Surprise): i. Adagio cantabile; Vivace assai ii. Andante iii. Menuetto e trio, Allegro molto iv. Finale, Allegro di molto
Vienna Philharmonic, Pierre Monteux, cond. RCA/Decca, recorded April 1959
The Jugend Quartet (Fernando Vizcayno and Alejando Serna, violins; Tonatliúh Álvarez, viola; Pablo Reyes, cello) plays the second movement of Haydn's Emperor Quartet, Mexico City, February 2009.
by Ken
Nothing fancy this week, and nothing the least bit obscure. We're listening to Haydn slow movements, and in our preview, we're going to hear what are surely the two best-known, starting with that of the Emperor Quartet, a set of theme and variations of which I think it's safe to say everyone will recognize the theme.
This is maybe the strangest darned theme and variations movement I know, in that Haydn hardly varies that theme, whose gorgeousness survives even the unfortunate associations modern listeners will have for it -- except in terms of the instrument to which (and sometimes the register in which) the theme is assigned. The variation comes in the kinds of musical materials -- one hesitates to call them "accompaniments" with which he surrounds the theme.
This is, by the way, a most Haydnesque procedure, which must have required superhuman restraint on the composer's part. He was normally such a compulsive varier usually it seems as if he's begun playing with a tune before he's even finished giving it its initial statement.
HAYDN: String Quartet in C, Op. 76, No. 3 (Emperor): ii. Poco adagio: cantabile: Theme and Variations Amadeus Quartet (Norbert Brainin and Siegmund Nissel, violins; Peter Schidlof, viola; Martin Lovett, cello). DG, recorded September 1963
NOW, JUST BECAUSE WE CAN, LET'S BREAK THE MOVEMENT DOWN
Theme
Variation I
Variation II
Variation III
Variation IV
Alban Berg Quartet (Günter Pichler and Gerhard Schulz, violins; Thomas Kakuska, viola; Valentin Erben, cello). EMI, recorded June 1994
AS LONG AS WE'RE AT IT, WE MIGHT AS WELL HEAR THE WHOLE QUARTET
i. Allegro ii. Poco adagio: cantabile: Theme and Variations iii. Menuett: Allegro iv. Finale: Presto Tátrai Quartet (Vilmos Tátrai and Milhály Szücs, violins; György Konrád, viola; Ede Banda, cello). Hungaroton, recorded 1964
