"When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying the cross."
-- Sinclair Lewis
Friday, May 04, 2012
Sunday Classics preview: Encore, encore!
>
by Ken
We've had a generous helping of encores sprinkled through the Sunday Classics programs. I always thought that one of these weeks we'd take a neatly organized, carefully rehearsed tour through the kinds of music and musicians inhabiting the world of concert "bonuses." That could still happen, but probably not this week.
No, I happened to find myself staring at the volume from Les Introuvables de János Starker -- from EMI France's often-valuable Introuvables (literally "unfindables") reissue series -- which includes the 1958 pictured above, which seems to me not so much a "recital" as a collection of fairly short pieces mostly of the type we would generally consider encore material. (I can't believe Starker would ever have given a recital made up of this material. One tip-off -- not conclusive, but a strong hint -- is the number of selections with "arranger" credits.) Including stuff like, you know, this:
DEBUSSY: Préludes, Book I: No. 8, "La Fille aux cheveux de lin" ("The Girl with the Flaxen Hair") (arr. Feuillard)
SCHUBERT: Moment musical in F minor, D. 780, No. 3 (arr. Becker)
MUSSORGSKY: The Fair at Sorochinsk: Gopak (arr. Stutchevsky)
János Starker, cello; Gerald Moore, piano. EMI, recorded in London, June 4-7, 1958
Sunday Classics: Gotta dance -- Bach the suite-maker, Part 3
>
János Starker (born 1924) plays the Prelude of the Bach Cello Suite No. 3 at a recital in Tokyo, July 29, 1988. For a markedly different approach, considerably less inclined to make songlike phrases out of the writing, watch Mstislav Rostropovich. (We'll be hearing his performance later.)
"One night in my studio it dawned on me that in the year of Orwell, 1984, I will be sixty years old. For pianists, violinists, and especially conductors, sixty denotes a possible time of maturity. For cellists it represents the outer limits of physical ability to handle the instrumental demands."
-- János Starker (February 1984), in the booklet with his 1983-84 Sefel recording of the Bach cello suites
by Ken
Before we proceed, I think we should note that when János Starker wrote his 1984 booklet account of his long relationship with the Bach cello suites, dreading the imminent arrival of his 60th birthday, he probably wasn't imagining giving the performance we saw at the top of this post (several weeks after his 64th birthday), let alone that he would make yet another complete recording of the complete Bach, the one from which we've heard a number of movements in Part 1 (Friday night) and Part 2 (last night) of this series, in 1992!
In the course of Parts 1 and 2 we took a quick look at five of the basic dance types that occur most frequently in Bach's suites (or partitas, or overtures, forms that were essentially interchangeable in his time), bearing in mind that he wrote them for orchestra, for keyboard solo (notably the six French Suites, the six English Suites, and the six keyboard partitas), and for solo cello, violin, and lute. Friday night we test-drove the sarabande and bourrée, and last night the allemande, courante, and gigue.
Of the dance movements that Bach incorporated frequently in his suites, I think the only ones we haven't touched on are the gavotte and menuet. This was partly because I think they're more likely to be familiar to listeners for their continued use in the classical era, but also because we actually didn't need them for our destination today. With the weighting of the examples toward the six cello suites, you may have guessed that that was our destination, and I even let slip a hint Friday night that it's the C major Suite, No. 3, toward which we were headed.
It's almost impossible to generalize about the format of Bach's many suites for diverse instruments (orchestra, keyboard, solo violin, solo cello, lute), but generally there's a prelude of some sort followed by a selection of dance movements, typically five. He also felt free to include a "ringer" -- an unexpected nondance movement, the most dramatic instance being the monumental Chaconne of the Violin Partita No. 2. The Cello Suite No. 3 could hardly be more expected in its formal plan, with six movements: prelude, allemande, couratne, sarabande, bourrée(s), gigue.
I suppose, though, that we should say something about those preludes, though here again it's impossible to generalize. Bach after all could do anything he damn pleased -- including, for example, starting off by dashing of a descending C major scale. (Watch János Starker's performance of the Prelude to No. 3 above.)
One thing I thought we might do is the same thing we did with a couple of the dance-type suite movements: listen first to a Stokowski orchestral arrangement alongside the Bach original. So why don't we do that?
BACH: Partita for Solo Violin No. 3 in E, BWV 1006: No. 1, Preludio
orchestral version arr. Stokowski Symphony Orchestra, Leopold Stokowski, cond. Capitol/EMI, recorded August 1957
original version for solo violin Ruggiero Ricci, violin. Westminster/MCA, recorded c1966
[6/12/2011] Gotta dance -- Bach the suite-maker, Part 3 (continued)
>
The video version of Mstislav's 1991 recording of the Bach cello suites is all available on YouTube, but isn't embeddable. The performances are fascinating but in some ways problematic. Probably the best part of the video presentation, though, is Rostropovich's commentaries, ruminations, and demonstrations filmed during the recording project.
WHY DON'T WE PROCEED BY JUST LISTENING TO SUITE NO. 3 STRAIGHT THROUGH?
In that 1984 booklet essay, János Starker has fond memories of making his famous Mercury recording of the Bach suites, his second complete traversal. (He had recorded four of the six suites for Period in 1951, and in 1984 honestly couldn't recall why Nos. 2 and 5 weren't recorded. Then in 1958, when he was recording for EMI, he did a complete cycle that, inexplicably was never released in the U.S. (We're going to hear a few excerpts from it.) Starker made a number of truly splendid recordings for Mercury, including the set of Bach suites. Here's what he had to say about the project:
IN 1965 Mercury Records, with a triumverate at its apex, Wilma Cozart, Robert Fine, and Harold Lawrence, asked me to record the definitive (?) version of the Bach Cello Suites. These three people, whose contributions to the record industry have rarely if ever been matched, guaranteed the standards I was aiming at, and I felt I was ready. Definitive Version? Nonsense. High level? Yes. I was and am satisfied with the results.
As well he should have been. Here's the Third Suite from that set.
BACH: Suite for Solo Cello No. 3 in C, BWV 1009 i. Praeludium [0:00] ii. Allemande [4:10] iii. Courante [7:04] iv. Sarabande [9:14] v. Bourrée I-II [12:31] vi. Gigue [15:42]
János Starker, cello. Mercury, recorded 1965
NOW THERE'S ANOTHER SCHOOL OF THOUGHT . . .
In 1991, after ducking the challenge for decades, decades in which he was clearly the world's dominant cellist, at a time when the competition was a lot stiffer than it is now, Mstislav Rostropovich (1927-2007) finally recorded the Bach cello suites, for video as well as audio. In the absorbing video presentation that accompanies the video version, virtually a musical autobiography and testament (really, no music lover can afford not to see it), he voices disapproval of the common cellist habit of making melodies out of the note and chord progressions with which Bach constructed the suites' preludes in particular.
It's not so much the heaving and hauling, the pushing and pulling, the stretching and squeezing, or even the rhetorical exaggerations and flourishes that he objects to. It's his conviction that the this sing-songy format misses the point of the music, which is a (for him) mesmerizing pattern of building and releasing and otherwise playing with harmonic tension. This sounds abstract but is much less so as he demonstrates -- not with his cello, but at the piano.
I think the point will be made by listening to Rostropovich's Prelude to the Third Suite alongside the performance from the 1992 Starker-BMG recording, from which we've heard a number of the dance movements from the cello suites. They had become if anything more vivid and zestful in the 1992 recording, but there's no question that once you've been alerted to the Rostropovich objection, you can't help noticing that the 1992 Prelude is even more extreme than Starker's earlier recordings.
BACH: Suite for Solo Cello No. 3 in C, BWV 1009: No. 1, Preludio
Mstislav Rostropovich, cello. EMI, recorded March 1991 János Starker, cello. BMG, recorded June 1992
"Very French" is how I recall Rostropovich describing (not fondly) this way of playing the Bach suites. I'm sure it didn't carry much weight with him that the dance-based suite is by origin French. It did occur to me that some of my favorrite recordings of the suites are by a storied line of great French cellists: Pierre Fournier (1906-1985, DG Archiv), Paul Tortelier (1914-1990, EMI), and Maurice Gendron (1920-1990, Philips). They do all do what Rostropovich complains about, they nevertheless give quite lovely -- and quite different -- performances, which I thought it might be fun to hear.
BACH: Suite for Solo Cello No. 3 in C, BWV 1009: No. 1, Preludio
Pierre Fournier, cello. DG Archiv, recorded Dec. 21-22, 1960 Paul Tortelier, cello. EMI, recorded Apr. 14-26, 1982 Maurice Gendron, cello. Philips, recorded 1964
Before we move on to the other movements, here's something different: the Prelude played an octave higher on the viola. Violists have so little repertory they can call their own, and the Bach suites adapt readily enough to their instrument that they frequently appropriate them, and a number of violists have recorded them. This is a version I happen to have on CD.
BACH: Suite for Solo Cello No. 3 in C, BWV 1009: No. 1, Preludio
Barbara Westphal, viola. Bridge, recorded c1998
THE REST OF THE SUITE
A REMINDER OF WHERE TO FIND OUR SUITE MOVEMENT PREVIEW SAMPLES
Sarabande, bourrée: Part 1 Allemande, courante, gigue: Part 2
ii. ALLEMANDE
Mstislav Rostropovich, cello. EMI, recorded March 1991 János Starker, cello. EMI, recorded May 22-23, 1958
iii. COURANTE
Gaspar Cassado, cello. Vox, recorded 1957 Mstislav Rostropovich, cello. EMI, recorded March 1991
iv. SARABANDE
Gaspar Cassado, cello. Vox, recorded 1957 Mstislav Rostropovich, cello. EMI, recorded March 1991
v. BOURÉE I-II
Yuli Turovsky, cello. Chandos, recorded Aug. 19-22, 1991 János Starker, cello. EMI, recorded May 22-23, 1958
vi. GIGUE
Gaspar Cassado, cello. Vox, recorded 1957 Yuli Turovsky, cello. Chandos, recorded Aug. 19-22, 1991
FINALLY, I THOUGHT WE'D HEAR THAT RECORDING STARKER MADE WITH HIS 60TH BIRTHDAY LOOMING
The recording was produced, by the way, by Harold Lawrence, one of the members of that old Mercury "triumvirate" Starker wrote about with such respect and affection in his booklet essay.
BACH: Suite for Solo Cello No. 3 in C, BWV 1009 i. Praeludium [0:00] ii. Allemande [4:04] iii. Courante [8:03] iv. Sarabande [11"06] v. Bourrée I-II [15:29] vi. Gigue [18:51]
János Starker, cello. Sefel, recorded in Bloomington, Indiana, 1983-84
AND MORE-THAN-FINALLY, HERE'S A SPECIAL BONUS: THE THIRD SUITE ON THE GUITAR
Not just on the guitar, but a guitar in the hands of the great Andrés Segovia.
BACH-SEGOVIA: Suite for Solo Cello No. 3, BWV 1009, transposed from C major to A major i. Praeludium ii. Allemande iii. Courante iv. Sarabande v. Bourrée I-II vi. Gigue
Andrés Segovia, guitar. American Decca/DG, recorded in New York, April 1961
