Can You Imagine What This Crisis Would Be Like If We -- Or At Least Lots Of Us -- Didn't Have Access To Today's Onilne Resources?

Plus: Since the world needs music, I'm tacking
a bit on at the end of this post. Here's a tease:





Nobody could be more surprised than your humble author to find himself a practicing Zoomer.

-by Ken

I imagine that Howie and Noah have covered this by now. Nevertheless, let me note for the record how inexpressibly grateful I am, first, for the unbelievably vast range of resources for information and occupation now available online to those of us with decent online access, which is the other thing I want to express inexpressible gratitude for: that I do have such access. I have no idea how many people don't have such access; I just have this terrible feeling that there are a scary-awful lot of them. I try to imagine sometimes what this crisis, dreadful as it is, would be like without that access. It scares and horrifies me.

That said, count me astounded at the quantity and range of stuff being made available for me to read, watch, and do -- going beyond the expanded information and content universe the Intertubes have, in just a few decades, made us take for granted, to a new world of information, instruction, and entertainment which, at least for most of us, didn't exist even a few years ago.

While I don't think of myself as a Luddite or technophobe, I'm far from what you'd call can't-get-enough-new-technology type. I'm a confident e-mailer (hey, it's just writing and reading; I can do those!), but the whole social-media thing fills me with something bordering on dread and horror. I consort with Facebook only 'cause there's stuff and folks there I really do want to keep up on, and I shudder at the thought of going onto Twitter -- the only tweets I see are those for which I've been sent links by a trusted soul.

You can imagine, then, that I would never have imagined myself as even a candidate for Zooomerdom. When, from one week to the next, the leader of my clutter-fighting Meetup group Neatniks (or, more formally, "Hoarders No More"), took us virtual, I approached the first session, not really knowing WTF this Zoom thing is exactly, with intense unease. I got through it in a daze, but was grateful for the trian run when, in short order, my WW workshops also went virtual. By now they've both become fixtures of my life, and I've begun Zooming into a wider world. Just this afternoon, after doing another WW workshop (my third this week, with three different coaches, who've all figured importantly in what I've accomplished), I "attended" a slide-illustrated talk by the associate curator of the New York Transit Museum (one of my favorite places in NYC) on the history of transit signage in the city.


WHEN THE CORONAVIRUS BEGAN ITS LOCAL ROLLOUT --

Notices began to trickle into my e-mailbox, as I expect they did yours, from organizations and businesses I've had dealings with announcing at first the postponement of events or cutback in services, then increasingly cancellations and on-site physical closures. When the trickle started flowing faster, I had the presence of mind to create a folder into which I could dump the ones I'd read and wanted available for future reference and also lots of others I didn't take precious time to read but thought I might later want to.

At first the e-mails were basically informational announcements. Almost from the start, though, the announcements were including stuff to read or watch, and links -- lots and lots, and soon more and more links to a mind-boggling range of stuff to read and watch. It wasn't long before the onetime trickle had swollen to a flood, and my bluntly named "coronavirus" folder was overflowing to the point where it will now require a project in itself to distribute the contents into separate folders by category (which I'm still working out in my head), in order to have any chance to have some control over this material, and to retrieve any of it.


IMPORTANT AS THE MEETINGS ARE . . .

. . . for their stated purposes, they're godsends for the social contact they make a possible, at a time when social contact is the very thing we can't have. Granted, virtual meetups aren't the same as the real thing. Still, It's been wonderful to (literally) be able to see all those familiar faces at my Neatniks and WW gatherings -- and to meet up with new folks too.


AND ALL OVER THE COUNTRY TERRIFIC
PEOPLE ARE GOING ONLINE TO SURVIVE

I can't claim to have more than scratched the surface of what's out there. Early on I remember logging on to an entertaining audienceless performance in a series offered free, with the hope that we'll be moved to cough up some bucks, by Caveat, the politically charged comedy club housed (when it's offering actual performances, I mean) in a basement on the Lower East Side. Now, I can't keep up. For example, Brooklyn Brainery, where I've done a slew if interesting, offbeat, modestly priced classes in recent years, has virtualized its upcoming class schedule, and looking at the list the other day I spotted a class I'd have signed up for on the spot -- if it wasn't already full!

You say you've never heard of Caveat and Brooklyn Brainery? They're among the countless invaluably enterprising organizations which are now struggling to stay viable, and the thing is, anyone anywhere with online access can now participate in what they're doing. Ditto with all the museums and cultural organizations and . . . and, well, everybody.

All these orgs, large and small, are hungry for virtual audiences, and of course support. Brooklyn Brainery's Jen Messier, for example, put up this blogpost on March 15:

We Need Your Help!

The COVID-19 wildness has come at us all in NYC fast and furious over the past week or so. Like lots of other tiny businesses here, we have really small margins and depend on a packed schedule to cover expenses. Because we also have two storefronts, we have a lot of fixed costs, and this past week has been nothing short of devastating. My ultimate goal is to have nothing change once we all bounce past this phase - hell, to have even more classes to help our teachers make up any losses - but right now we're faced with a difficult situation where revenue has dried up almost entirely while expenses remain nearly the same. We'll of course be applying for the city's small business aid when available as well!

If you're able to and would like to help us during this financially tough stretch, we have a few options. Thank you so much!

1) Purchase a gift certificate to be used on a future in-person class: https://brooklynbrainery.com/gift-certificates

2) Try out an online class (more being added each day as we navigate this new world): https://brooklynbrainery.com/courses - just look for "online class" next to the class name

3) Sign up for a class further into the future: https://brooklynbrainery.com/courses

4) Join us as a virtual member to provide critical revenue for our fixed expenses at this time: https://brooklynbrainery.com/c…/virtual-supporter-membership

5) Grab a Brainery tote bag online (this is all we have to sell you!)

6) Share these options with friends!

There's really no good reason for me to be sharing this story rather than the thousands of others. It just happens to be something I'm looking at right now.

There's so much good work being done out there, and so much of it hanging by a thread. And of course this is happening everywhere. I feel horrible that I can't afford to help much, but for all of us this is a unique chance to get acquainted with stuff happening all over the country -- my guess is that any time you Web-surf you'll stumble across a zillion such opportunities, people and organizations who have gone virtual to survive, and are offering us all these riches.


BONUS: WE EXPERIMENT WITH TACKING ON
A BIT OF MUSIC, JUST FOR PLEASURE

I don't want to burden DWT readers, as I often felt I was doing with the old Sunday Classics posts, with the kind of music I love. But lately, as I've been writing a little, I've also had cherished pieces of music lodge in my head which I thought might be pleasant to pass along. And I thought maybe I'd tack one on every time I write a post.

One such is the overture to Leonard Bernstein's deeply delightful, verging-on-opera 1956 Broadway musical Candide. As I've mentioned in the past, this is one of those pieces which can seize hold of me to the point of listening endlessly -- 5 times, or 10, maybe 15. Just now, at a time when I think most of us could sure use an infusion of joie de vivre in our lives, I can't imagine a more sheerly joyous four, or four and a half, minutes' worth.

BERNSTEIN: Overture to Candide


Original Broadway Cast recording, Samuel Krachmalnick, cond. CBS-Sony, recorded Dec. 9. 1956

New York Philharmonic, Leonard Bernstein, cond. Columbia-CBS-Sony, recorded 1960-63

Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra, Leonard Bernstein, cond. DG, recorded July 1982

London Symphony Orchestra, Leonard Bernstein, cond. DG, recorded December 1989

Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, David Zinman, cond. Decca, recorded Feb. 3-4, 1996

London Philharmonic Orchestra, Andrew Davis, cond. EMI, recorded live at Glyndebourne, Apr. 27, 1997

In the event that the Candide Overture has the effect on you that it so often does on me, you can of course listen to it now as often as you like, and you don't even have to listen to it the same way, at least not the first six times. We hear, in chronological order (and also, you'll note, in order of fastest to slowest):

• First, the boisterous performance (of which we sampled the final minute at the top of the post) from the Original Broadway Cast recording conducted by that crackerjack theater conductor Samuel Krachmalnick.

• Then three performances, steadily more gradual, by the composer -- with orchestras in New York, within memory of the original Broadway production; Los Angeles, two decades later, and noticeably broader; and, finally, a bit slower still, London, from the studio recording made at the time of Lenny's famous London concert performance of Candide (available on video).

• A suitably sparkling performance from Baltimore conducted by one of the more satisfying (and versatile) conductors of recent times, David Zinman.

• And a wholly international performance, recorded live, with another English orchestra but this time an English conductor, and a fine one, (not-yet-Sir) Andrew Davis (now music director of Lyric Opera of Chicago), who provides a rousing kickoff for a gala concert staged in the theater at Glyndebourne celebrating the centenary of EMI.

Sunday Classics special edition: Getting even more "Carried Away"

COMDEN, GREEN, and BERNSTEIN: On the Town: Act I opening: "I Feel Like I'm Not Out of Bed Yet"; Introduction; "New York, New York"


John Reardon, Gabey (and First Workman); Cris Alexander, Chip (and Workman); Adolph Green, Ozzie (and Workman); 1960 studio cast recording, Leonard Bernstein, cond. Columbia-CBS-Sony

Samuel Ramey, Lindsay Benson, and Stewart Collins, Workmen; Thomas Hampson, Gabey; Kurt Ollmann Chip; David Garrison, Ozzie; London Symphony Orchestra, Michael Tilson Thomas, cond. DG, recorded in concert at the Barbican Centre (London), June 1992

by Ken

A month or so ago I put together a pair of posts, "New York, New York, it's a heckuva town" and "A cluster of explosive young talents explode in On the Town," inspired by the terrific piece Adam Green wrote for Vanity Fair, "Innocents on Broadway," about the creation of the 1944 Broadway musical On the Town. The show, you'll recall, had book and lyrics by Adam's father, Adolph Green, and his eventual life-long writing partner, Betty Comden, and music by theirt good friend Leonard Bernstein, in collaboration with some other exploding young talents like choreographer Jerome Robbins, who'd had the idea for the ballet he created with Lenny B, Fancy Free, which became the germ for On the Town.

As Adam Green wrote: "On the Town was a landmark, the first show by a bunch of bright upstarts -- Bernstein, Comden and Green, and Jerome Robbins, all still in their 20s -- who would go on, together and apart, to help shape the cultural landscape of the 20th century."

In those posts I turned to the very special 1960 studio recording organzied by Columbia Records' Goddard Lieberson, which was conducted by the composer and featured a number of performers from the original cast, including Comden and Green themselves, re-creating the roles of Claire and Ozzie, which they'd actually written with themselves in mind (but in the end lhad had to auditon for!). Lieberson was a great proponent of "creators' recordings," and was largely responsible for invaluable projoects like Columbia's extensive Stravinsky-conducting-Stravinsky and Copland-conducting-Copland and, yes, Bernstein-conducting-Bernstein, and the 1960 On the Town, whether it was thought of as such or not, certainly qualified.


NATURALLY FOR THE MAIN POST I INCLUDED
THE GREAT ACT I DUET "I GET CARRIED AWAY" . . .

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A cluster of explosive young talents explode in "On the Town"

For the 1960 recording, Betty and Adolph reprised their
1944 roles, anthropologist Claire de Loon and sailor Ozzie

BERNSTEIN, COMDEN, and GREEN: On the Town:
Act I, "Carried Away"

Betty Comden, Claire; Adolph Green, Ozzie; 1960 studio cast recording, Leonard Bernstein, cond. Columbia-CBS-Sony

by Ken

On a daily basis we're assaulted by so much slop and slime that I worry about insufficient attention being paid when we're given worthwhile stuff. So it has been on my mind to call your attention, as I mentioned last night, to a really outstanding piece in the November issue of Vanity Fair called "Innocents on Broadway," in which Adam Green gives us a richly and beautifully detailed portrait of the early life and early career of his father, the great lyricist (and sometime actor) Adolph Green, which also includes similarly rich portraits of a band of remarkably talented people whose rising careers were intertwined with his -- notably his eventual writing partner of 60 years, Betty Comden; his best friend, Leonard Bernstein; and the amazing actress Judy Holiday.

"This year would have been my father’s 100th birthday," Adam G writes early on,

and it would have made him indecently proud to see it marked by productions of so many of the musicals that he and his partner, Betty Comden, wrote in their 60-year collaboration: a stage adaptation of their 1953 MGM movie, The Band Wagon, as part of the Encores! series at New York’s City Center; a live broadcast on NBC of their 1954 version of Peter Pan; the first Broadway revival of their 1978 screwball operetta, On the Twentieth Century. Most of all, though, he would have been thrilled to see the ebullient revival, also on Broadway, of On the Town, their 1944 musical, about the amorous exploits of three sailors on 24-hour shore leave in the big city, which introduced the phrase “New York, New York, a helluva town” into the American lexicon and announced the arrival of a new generation in the American musical theater.

"ON THE TOWN WAS A LANDMARK"

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"New York, New York, it's a heckuva town"

In June 1992, lyricists Betty Comden and Adolph Green narrated a famous London concert performance of On the Town at the Barbican Centre with the London Symphony Orchestra conducted by Michael Tilson Thomas. (An audio recording made at the same time is still available, but there doesn't seem to be a DVD issue of the concert.) Here Comden and Green introduce the opening number, as our three sailors, let loose for a single day on the city, sing "New York, New York," with Thomas Hampson as Gabey, Kurt Ollman as Chip, and David Garrison as Ozzie.

"On the Town was a landmark, the first show by a bunch of bright upstarts -- [Leonard] Bernstein, [Betty] Comden and [Adolph] Green, and Jerome Robbins, all still in their 20s -- who would go on, together and apart, to help shape the cultural landscape of the 20th century."

-- Adam Green, in "Innocents on Broadway,"
in the November issue of Vanity Fair

by Ken

After a six-year stint at DeWitt Clinton High School in the Bronx, he headed out into the world with this inspiring send-off from a teacher who had seen him perform in the class show he had written and directed: "I hope you've got enough talent to make a living at that, because otherwise you're in big trouble."

We have no way of knowing how many people in similar circumstances we never hear more about, either because they just weren't good enough or, more poignantly, because they just never found a way to impress their talents on a big, uncaring world. In this case, though, "he" was Adolph Green, and not only he but a tight circle of his intimates were headed for great things, which came into focus for a number of them when On the Town opened on Broadway on December 28, 1944.

Green's son, Adam, has written a really wonderful piece for Vanity Fair about the history that culminated in that historic night, with both Adolph Green and Betty Comden, who had written the lyrics and who would go on to enjoy a 60-year partnership, in the cast (in roles they had sensibly written for themselves), and with music by Adoph's best friend, Leonard Bernstein. It's such a good story that I want to offer a closer glimpse of it tomorrow, but for tonight I thought we'd hear a musical preview.




IN 1960 COLUMBIA RECORDS ASSEMBLED A STELLAR CAST --

including a number of members of the original cast, among them Betty and Adolph -- for a studio recording of On the Town with the composer conducting. I thought we'd hear the opening number from that classic recording.


Adolph Green and Leonard Bernstein at the recording session, with producer Goddard Lieberson in the background

BERNSTEIN, COMDEN, and GREEN: On the Town: Introduction (including "New York, New York")

John Reardon, Gabey; Cris Alexander, Chip; Adolph Green, Ozzie; 1960 studio cast recording, Leonard Bernstein, cond. Columbia-CBS-Sony


TOMORROW: "A cluster of explosive young talents explode in On the Town"

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Sunday Classics diary: I love this theme, especially when it's played like this

by Ken

I love this theme. It's majestic, maybe even monumental, irresistibly forward-moving, even swaggering, and at the same time tender and uplifting -- if I could put it into words, I guess I wouldn't need the music.

Now, the theme can be played kinda fast:



And it can be played kinda slow:



And it can be played the way we just heard it:




THIS LAST PERFORMANCE IS THE ONE
THAT GOT MY ATTENTION THIS WEEK

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Ghost of Sunday Classics: "Baton Bunny" music with and without the Bunny, plus a treasure trove of overtures and, oh yes, "Gaudeamus igitur"

In which we watch part of a cartoon, then listen
to an overture, and then another overture, and then --
can you imagine? -- drift off into other, er, stuff


A nice chunk of Chuck Jones's Baton Bunny (1959) -- from the confident-looking start, things deteriorate pretty quickly.

by Ken

As I mentioned most recently Friday night, New York City's Museum of the Moving Image in Astoria, Queens, is currently hosting a grand exhibition devoted to one of the giants of animated film, Chuck Jones. And as I mentioned Friday night, this afternoon I hope to get to MoMI for this week's "Chuck Jones Matinee" (each week the same hour-long program is offered on Saturday and Sunday), to see -- in 35mm, on a large screen -- Duck Amuck, which I've already declared the greatest cartoon ever made, and What's Opera, Doc?, the famous Bugs Bunny classical-music extravaganza.

On my last weekend visit to the museum, the CJM program included a different classical-Bugs enterprise, one I didn't remember: Baton Bunny, from 1959. In it Bugs attempts to conduct Suppé's A Morning, Noon, and Night in Vienna Overture, and you can see some of it above.

We've heard our fair share of Suppé, entirely in the form of overtures. Yes, occasional efforts are made to revive some of his numerous operettas, but they don't stick. A dozen or so of his overtures do, however, for the simple reason that they're utterly wonderful, utterly gorgeous music, and among them are a couple -- I mean Poet and Peasant and Light Cavalry -- that I would listen to as happily as anything in the orchestral repertory.

When the poster of our Baton Bunny clip posted it, a rash of commenters were frantic to know what the music was. The question was answered in due course, of course, but we're going to answer it in our own way -- with three distinctly different performances.


FRANZ VON SUPPÉ: A Morning, Noon, and Night in Vienna: Overture

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Sunday Classics preview: Approaching Mahler's heartbreaking "Kindertotenlieder"

For the final stanza of "In diesem Wetter," the last of the Kindertotenlieder, Mahler switches from minor to major


Thomas Hampson, baritone; Vienna Philharmonic, Leonard Bernstein, cond. DG, recorded live, October 1988

In this weather, in this storm, in this bluster,
they're resting as if in their mother's house,
not frightened by any storm,
by God's hand protected,
they're resting as if in their mother's house.

by Ken

I'm trying to think -- among the infinity of loose ends and gaps we'll leave when the tent folds up -- which few among them we might still deal with. It seems rather hopeless, but it has occurred to me that for all the Mahler we've listened to (I always want to compile a master list, but it's a big job; would it be of interest to anyone?), we haven't done the song cycle Kindertotenlieder (Songs on the Death of Children).

However, we have done the final song, "In diesem Wetter" ("In this weather"), in a December 2011 post devoted to "The old minor-to-major switcheroo as practiced by Mahler, Schubert, and Donizetti" (preview and main post), in which we listened to the opening song of Schubert's great song cycle Winterreise (Winter Journey), "Gute Nacht" ("Good night"), and Nemorino's haunting aria "Una furtiva lagrima" ("A furtive tear") from Donizetti's Elixir of Love in addition to "In diesem Wetter."


TO APPROACH THE KINDERTOTENLIEDER,
WE'RE GOING BACK TO "IN DIESEM WETTER"

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Sunday Classics: What comes after Mozart's and Beethoven's minor-key symphonic opening movements?

What comes after the monumental, mysterious opening movement of the Beethoven Ninth Symphony, which we heard last week? At the link, Christian Thielemann conducts the Vienna Philharmonic in what seems to me a grindingly prosaic rendering of the thunderingly dramatic scherzo.

by Ken

I realize I should have been saying more about this amazing music we've been hearing, dipping into the two symphonies apiece for which Mozart and Beethoven composed opening movements in the minor mode. But really, when it comes to an incandescent movement like the opening one of Mozart's great later G minor symphony, No. 40, could I really have said anything more helpful than, say, "Wouldja listen to that?" And ditto when it comes to the opening movements of Beethoven's Fifth and Ninth Symphonies. I mean, we're talking here about two of the monuments of human civilization, and I thought talking should take distant second place to listening.

What we began pursuing in this week's preview is the question I raised last week: Where do you go from there?

My point was, if we accept that writing a minor-mode symphonic first movement is an uncommon and nervy thing to do, and is likely to happen only if a composer has been seized by some gripping musical material that requires it, where does he want to take his audience next?

Consider, for example, the most modest of the four Mozart and Beethoven symphonies we began last week: Mozart's earlier G minor symphony, No. 25. Let's add the second movement to the performances we heard last week of the first.

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Sunday Classics: The symphonic Mozart and Beethoven open in minor mode

They look so simple, these eight notes, but they form one of the most striking and readily identifiable motifs in all of music -- the opening of one of Beethoven's two minor-key symphonic first movements.

by Ken

In Friday night's preview we listened to all of the first movements among Mozart's 40 or so symphonies which are in minor keys. That's right, both of them, which happen to be in the same key, G minor.

Partly this was out of abiding affection for the masterpiece among them, the great Symphony No. 40, and partly it was as a springboard to listening to the two first movements among Beethoven's nine symphonies which are in minor keys, Nos. 5 (C minor) and 9 (D minor). It seems clear to me that these movements have something in common, something that sets them apart from all their major-key brethren -- and something that even sort of applies to the littler Mozart G minor Symphony, No. 25.

Let's listen again to the Mozart G minor opening movements.

MOZART: Symphony No. 25 in G minor, K. 183:
i. Allegro con brio

Columbia Symphony Orchestra, Bruno Walter, cond. Columbia, recorded Dec. 10, 1954 (mono)

Concertgebouw Orchestra (Amsterdam), Josef Krips, cond. Philips, recorded June 1973

MOZART: Symphony No. 40 in G minor, K. 550:
i. Molto allegro

Columbia Symphony Orchestra, Bruno Walter, cond. Columbia-CBS-Sony, recorded 1959

Concertgebouw Orchestra (Amsterdam), Josef Krips, cond. Philips, recorded June 1972


I DON'T WANT TO MAKE THIS SOUND MORE
MYSTERIOUS THAN IT ACTUALLY IS

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Sunday Classics preview: Every day is a good day for an auto-da-fé

In the course of his travels, Candide finds himself in Lisbon just in time for both an earthquake and an auto-da-fé, the "act of faith" that was the Inquisitorial Church's patented mode of festivity built around the burning of heretics. Composer Leonard Bernstein conducts the London Symphony Chorus and Orchestra in this famous July 1982 concert performance of Candide, with Clive Bayley (Bear-Keeper), Neil Jenkins (Cosmetic Merchant), Lindsay Benson (Doctor), Richard Suart (Junkman), John Treleaven (Alchemist), Adolph Green (Dr. Pangloss), and Jerry Hadley (Candide). We're going to hear the start of a less jolly theatrical auto-da-fé.

by Ken

Lately we've heard some orchestral introductions that not only set the scenes for the memorable operatic scenes they introduce, but grab the listener's imagination unforgettably. For example, in February 24's "In Boris Godunov, the Russian people do just as they're told" we heard the introductions to the two scenes of the Prologue to Mussorgsky's Boris Godunov (heard here in Rimsky-Korsakov's edition).

MUSSORGSKY: Boris Godunov (ed. Rimsky-Korsakov):
Prelude

Opening of the Coronation Scene

Alexei Maslennikov (t), Prince Shuisky; Sofia Radio Chorus, Vienna State Opera Chorus, Vienna Philharmonic, Herbert von Karajan, cond. Decca, recorded November 1970

Here are three equally vivid and equally contrasting musical introductions, to consecutive events:
[1]

[2]

[3]

Orchestra of the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, Georg Solti, cond. Decca, recorded 1965-66


No. [2] AT LEAST SHOULD SOUND FAMILIAR

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Sunday Classics: Parting, though not without a struggle -- with "an increasingly calm acceptance of fate"

A symphonic finale in search of an ending

In the first not-quite-six minutes or so of this clip, Lenny B's comments are superimposed over a rehearsal, which gives way to the actual performance at about 5:55. We first saw this clip in the January 2012 post, "At how bad a point did the cell-phone ring heard 'round the world interrupt the NY Phil's Mahler Ninth? Let's complete the symphony." (We also heard Lenny conducting the complete finale from a July 1979 Tanglewood performance with the Boston Symphony. Later we're going to hear the broadest of his recordings of the movement.)

by Ken

Well, when we attacked "Der Abschied" ("The Farewell"), the half-hour sixth and final song of the song-symphony Das Lied von der Erde (The Song of the Earth (in a July 2009 Maureen Forrester remembrance post), we pretty much just plunged in (in August 2010 we followed up with the three tenor songs), and I'm afraid that's what we're going to do as well with the other completed work composed after Mahler's diagnosis of terminal heart disease, the Ninth Symphony.

I noted when we listened to Mahler's "most characteristic" and "least loved" symphony, the Seventh (in November -- first the three middle movements, then the outer movements), that the composer would use this basic plan again. In the Seventh it's a pair of enormous outer movements bracketing a core of "other" musics: the two "Night Music"s wrapped around a scherzo. This is very much the plan of the unfinished Tenth Symphony, with a core consisting of a pair of scherzos bracketing the little "Purgatorio" movement (we heard this core of the Tenth later in November) -- with the crucial difference that those gigantic outer movements are now slow rather than normal symphonic fast ones.

That switch, of course, had already been made in the Ninth Symphony (which, as I noted in Friday night's preview, should properly have been the Tenth, if Mahler had had the courage to tempt fate and give Das Lied the dangerous-for-symphony-composers number nine). It's hard to think of words to convey the scale and dimension of the opening Andante commodo and concluding Adago of the Ninth.


AS I MENTIONED IN FRIDAY NIGHT'S PREVIEW . . .

Most listeners are likely to agree that the prevailing subject matter of the Mahler Ninth is farewell, the final parting -- as we can surely divine from the clip we've seen again up top, with Leonard Bernstein providing voice-over commentary over the final 10½ minutes of the finale. But even in those majestic outer movements the tone is hardly singlemindedly elegiac, and in those "otherish" middle movements the parting journey covers some very different ground.

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Sunday Classics: Encores, part 1 -- Three legendary pianists

It makes a nifty encore too! Leonard Bernstein conducts his Overture to Candide, kicking off this December 1989 concert performance of the complete musical with the London Symphony Orchestra.

by Ken

As you may have guessed from Friday's preview ("Encore, encore!"), when we heard the great cellist János Starker play three prime encore pieces -- all, as it happened, arranged for cello and piano from other instrumental configurations. I didn't have a very clear idea Friday where exactly this post was headed, except that it would be all encores.

Okay, we're stretching a little with the above video clip, in which Leonard Bernstein conducts his Candide Overture at the start of a concert performance of the piece. But for easily understandable reasons, countless conductors -- including Lenny himself, as memory serves -- used the Candide Overture as a peerlessly rousing encore.

The thing about encores is that they often represent the artist at his/her most personal, whether they're designed to rouse, seduce, charm, or just plain ravish. It's such a large subject, however, that after initially deciding that we would deal only with instrumental encores, leaving the vast subject of vocal ones for another time, I decided to narrow it down even further, to piano encores, at least once we get to the click-through, where we're going to hear sets of encores from three of the 20th's century's greatest pianists-- two of them actual sets of encores from actual concerts, the third a selection of favorite encores of his made by the artist to fill out an LP side.

Before we go there, though, I though we might hear another encore-suitable piece, an arrangement of a traditional Catalan carol for cello and orchestra, which aims to stir listeners in a very different way.

CASALS (arr.): El Cant dels ocells (The Song of the Birds)


Prades Festival Orchestra, Pablo Casals, cello and cond. Columbia/CBS/Sony, recorded 1950


TO HEAR TODAY'S SELECTION OF ENCORES FROM
OUR THREE LEGENDARY PIANISTS, CLICK HERE

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At how bad a point did the cell-phone ring heard 'round the world interrupt the NY Phil's Mahler Ninth? Let's complete the symphony

No, our performance of the sublime final Adagio of the Mahler Ninth Symphony isn't by Alan Gilbert and the New York Philharmonic (pictured here). It's by Otto Klemperer and the New Philharmonia Orchestra, recorded by EMI in February 1967. You'll note, though, that our performance -- unlike the Philharmonic's Tuesday night at Avery Fisher Hall -- isn't interrupted by a ringing cell phone.

"It was so shocking what happened. You're in this very far away spiritual place in the piece. It's like being rudely awakened. All of us were stunned on the stage."

-- New York Philharmonic music director Alan Gilbert,
in a phone interview with the NYT's Daniel Wakin

by Ken

You couldn't write a script like this. Here's Daniel Wakin's NYT account:

The end of Mahler's Ninth Symphony contains some of the most spiritual and peaceful music ever written. So when a cellphone began ringing -- and ringing, ringing, ringing without cease -- during a performance by the New York Philharmonic on Tuesday evening, Alan Gilbert did something conductors virtually never do. He stopped the performance.

And then things really got bizarre.

Mr. Gilbert, the orchestra's music director, said he turned to the area of Avery Fisher Hall where the sound was coming from, in one of the front rows, and asked the unknown miscreant to turn off the phone. (It was an individual who apparently failed to heed the recorded announcement from the actor Alec Baldwin to silence cellphones that is played before the Philharmonic's performances.)

"Nothing happened," Mr. Gilbert said in a telephone interview on Wednesday. "Nobody was owning up to it. It was surreal." The phone kept ringing -- the iPhone's marimba ring-tone, according to the music blogger Paul Pelkonen, who wrote about the incident.

Mr. Gilbert said audience members pointed out two people sitting where the sound was coming from. "They were staring at me resolutely," he said of the couple. Eventually, the man put his hand in his pocket and the ringing stopped. "It was so weird," Mr. Gilbert said. "Did he think he could just bite his lip and soldier through?"

The conductor said he asked the man if he was sure the device was quieted. "Then he nodded his head," Mr. Gilbert said. Guilty!

People in the hall had been shouting for the sound to stop. Mr. Pelkonen reported that they yelled: "Thousand-dollar fine!" "Kick him out!" "Get out!" Another blogger, who was present, Max Kinchen, wrote, "They wanted blood!"

No, you couldn't write a script like this. In what DNAinfo.com's Leslie Albrecht describes in her account as "the quite final strains" of the Mahler Ninth! Paul Pelkonen, the blogger cited by Daniel Wakin, notes: "A post by Michael Jo on the classical music blog thousandfoldecho.com specifies that the interruption happened just 13 bars before the last page of the score. In other words, in the final moments of a 25-minute movement that ends a 90-minute symphony."

NOTE: "13 bars before the last page of the score" would be at approximately 18:41 of the Klemperer recording at the top of this post.

HERE'S THE LAST 4-PLUS MINS. (aka "THE FINAL PAGE")
WITH COMMENTARY FROM LEONARD BERNSTEIN

What did Mahler himself go through to bring his Ninth Symphony, the last he actually finished, to a close? Lenny has a particular East vs. West view of the piece, which I think it's easy to tell he felt perhaps more deeply than any other. His comments are superimposed here over his 1975 Vienna Philharmonic video recording of the symphony. (We've got a fuller, though still incomplete, version below.) Our pickup point corresponds to 20:42 of the Klemperer recording at the top of this post.

DNAinfo.com's Albrecht, by the way, notes that in the up-front area where the cell phone went off, "tickets sell for up to $118." "Ringing cellphones are a common scourge of live performances," Daniel Wakin notes, "and indeed, most musicians soldier on."

"Usually it's not Mahler Nine you're playing," Mr. Gilbert said, "and usually it's not the most emotionally wrought part of Mahler Nine, and usually people deal with it."

The way people "usually deal with it" at Avery Fisher Hall, according to Philharmonic spokesman Eric Latzky, is for an usher to approach the phone owner and discreetly ask the person to shut it off. "In this incident, unfortunately the policy was not followed." There seems to be some suggestion that, this close to the end of the performance, the hall's original complement of 22 ushers was at less than full strength. Daniel Wakin, noting that the orchestra is merely a tenant at Lincoln Center, and that Lincoln Center spokeswoman Betsy Vorce said, "We're investigating it. We'll take corrective action if necessary," concludes his report:

The ushers do not answer directly to orchestra management, and Mr. Gilbert said no ushers were in sight at the time of the ringing. "I heard this morning that ushers in the hall claimed they didn't hear it, which sounds ridiculous to me," he said. "Everybody could hear it."

DNAinfo's Leslie Albrecht reports that "the audience member was not punished or officially reprimanded," according to a Philharmonic spokeswoman. (We have more, um, "information" about this audience member below, and for all I know it could be true.)

Once conductor Gilbert was satisfied that the phone was silenced, he spoke briefly to the audience and then, according to the account by Michael at thousandfoldecho.com, "turned to the orchestra, said 'Number 118,' and started up again, at the point where the trombones enter fortissimo for the last big climax," and "Mahler's Ninth finally found its way home." Michael, by the way, "clarifies" in an update "that aside from the three shouts I quoted above, the audience was relatively restrained in its reaction; you could sense that people were upset, but they kept themselves under control, and actually shushed the few shouters so that Gilbert could deal effectively with the situation."

Michael also directs attention to the blog of Norman Lebrecht, whom I consider a pompous and generally loathsome toad who overflows with inside information that is sometimes actually true. Slimy Norman reports:

The man was quickly identified by New York Philharmonic officials as a long-term subscriber, and they are being very careful not to disclose his name because, they say, it wasn't his fault and they don't want to lose his business. Already, there are philistine tabloids baying for his blood.

Here's the story (and you read it here first): they guy had just bought himself an i-phone. No longer in the first flush of youth, he was not quite sure how the darned thing worked but he knew his etiquette well enough to shut it off before the concert started.

What he did not shut off was a preset alarm. When it gave a marimba ring, he thought it must be someone else and looked around in irritation. Then he found it was him, and the conductor was glaring at him like a schoolboy who'd let off a stinkbomb. Mortified? Our guy didn't know where to look.

He's gone to ground, maybe Florida, and will never live down the shame.

I'm not going to be the one to disclose his name.

But it does make a case for concertgoers, especially the over-50s, to be asked to check in their phones with their coats. Right?

Since Slimytoad's account isn't sourced exactly (he does this a lot, making it harder to guess whether his frequent misinformation is made up in his head or is the result of actual "sources" having him on), we're left to presume that it came from those unnamed "New York Philharmonic officials" (two officials? three? 117, all speaking in unison?), though it sure doesn't sound like official-supplied detail. Anyway, Norman can be counted on to come up with a peculiar conclusion, which seems to be serious, not a joke. Huh, Normie? The problem here wasn't that this apparently irreplaceable orchestra patron was over 50, but that he took his new i-Phone to a concert without knowing how the damned thing works -- and then when the alarm went off just sat there like an ageless lump.


HERE, AS PROMISED, IS A FULLER VERSION OF LENNY'S
COMMENTS, OVER THE LAST 10½ MINUTES OF THE NINTH


In the first not-quite-six minutes or so of this clip, Lenny's comments are superimposed over a rehearsal, which gives way to the actual performance at about 5:55, just a bit before "the final page" of the score, the point where our earlier clip began, at about 6:15 of this clip. The trombones' entrance at 3:18 of this clip would be roughly the point at which Alan Gilbert restarted the New York Philharmonic to conclude Tuesday night's paused performance.


AND HERE'S A BERNSTEIN PERFORMANCE OF
THE WHOLE FINALE OF THE MAHLER NINTH

Instead of one of Lenny's four commercial recordings (at least four that I know of, including the video one), I thought we would hear a live performance with the Boston Symphony from the Tanglewood Festival, July 1979.

MAHLER: Symphony No. 9 in D:
iv. Adagio

Boston Symphony Orchestra, Leonard Bernstein, cond. Broadcast performance from the Tanglewood Festival, July 19, 1979

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Sunday Classics preview: In Mahler's "Song of the Earth" we meet a springtime drunk

The elegant Swiss tenor Ernst Häfliger is our first

soloist in Mahler's song "The Drunk in Spring."

by Ken

Bruno Walter's 1960 Columbia recording of Mahler's song symphony Song of the Earth (Das Lied von der Erde), the composition that fell between his Eighth and Ninth Symphonies and would have been No. 9 if he hadn't been so superstitious about allotting that fateful number to a symphony, was originally released on three LP sides. Surprisingly quickly, though, it was compressed onto two very well-filled sides, and that was my first recording of Das Lied, whose texts are German adaptations by Hans Bethge (from the collection The Chinese Flute) of Chinese originals.

Even as I was getting to know the piece, it was obvious that the emotional center of gravity was the concluding sixth movement, the half-hour song "The Farewell" ("Der Abschied," which we blundered our way into in our Maureen Forrester remembrance), about equal in length to its five predecessors put together, so that was where I usually headed, and since it was preceded on Side 2 by the last of the tenor songs, that meant I listened just as often to the contrastingly very brief song "The Drunk in Spring" ("Der Trunkene im Frühling"), as sung by the elegant Swiss tenor Ernst Häfliger -- a studio replacement, you'll recall, for the English tenor Richard Lewis, who sang in Walter's live New York performances that April but had only months earlier recorded Das Lied with Fritz Reiner and the Chicago Symphony for RCA. (We're going to hear some of that performance tomorrow night.)

Inevitably, the attention of the Das Lied listener gravitates to the generally weightier alto songs, Nos. 2, 4, and 6. The alto has the two longest (No. 2, "On Beauty," in addition to "The Farewell") and the tenor the two shortest (No. 3, "On Youth," in addition to "The Drunk in Spring"). As I've lived with this music, however, I've found myself gravitating to the more laconic, even engimatic tenor songs.

I thought this week we would listen just to the three tenor songs, and naturally, the way we do things here at Sunday Classics, we're going to approach them backwards, starting with "Der Trunkene im Frühling," and starting with my trusty old Häfliger-Walter-Columbia recording (in which the American mezzo Mildred Miller gives a smashing performance of the alto songs). Then we hear the performance by René Kollo (pictured here) and Leonard Bernstein, from the same concerts -- featuring a glowing performance of the alto songs by Christa Ludwig -- at which Bernstein's video recording was made.

MAHLER: Das Lied von der Erde (The Song of the Earth):
v. "Der Trunkene im Frühling" ("The Drunk in Spring")

[English translation by Deryck Cooke.]

If life is but a dream,
why then toil and fret?
I drink till I can drink no longer,
the whole livelong day!

And when I can drink no longer,
since gullet and soul are full,
then I stagger to my door
and sleep stupendously!

What do I hear on awakening? Hark!
A bird sings in the tree.
I ask him if the spring is here;
I feel as if it were a dream.

The bird twitters, "Yes!
Spring is here -- came overnight!"
In deepest wonder I listen.
The bird sings and laughs.

I feel my glass again,
and drain it to the dregs,
and sing, until the moon shines bright
in the black firmament.

And when I can sing no longer,
then I go back to sleep;
for what does spring matter to me?
Let me be drunk!

Ernst Häfliger, tenor; New York Philharmonic, Bruno Walter, cond. Columbia/CBS/Sony, recorded April 1960

René Kollo, tenor; Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, Leonard Bernstein, cond. CBS/Sony, recorded live, May 1972

IN TOMORROW NIGHT'S PREVIEW --

Logically enough, as we move backwards through the tenor songs of Das Lied, en route to the opening "Drinking Song of the Sorrow of the Earth," tomorrow night we'll hear the third movement, "Von der Jugend" ("On Youth"), and I'll tell you the special personal identification that opened this song up for me -- or perhaps opened me up for this song.

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Sunday Classics: Can we brand a composer "great" based on a handful of overtures? Consider the case of Franz von Suppé

I couldn't resist bringing back this lovely 1955 CinemaScope-and-stereo film of Suppé's Poet and Peasant overture with that fine conductor Alfred Wallenstein leading the MGM Symphony Orchestra, which we first saw in the July 2009 "comfort music" post.

by Ken

In that "comfort music" post, I recalled an LP of overtures by Leonard Bernstein and the New York Philharmonic officially titled William Tell And Other Favorite Overtures.

Now, the younger Lenny was nothing if not a drama freak, and I listened to that rock 'em, sock 'em performance of Rossini's William Tell Overture easily a zillion times. Quietly as it too begins, and achingly beautiful as its earlier sections are, I wouldn't describe this as "comfort music," though. This is almost the opposite: music designed to send the blood racing.

However, placed before it on that side of the LP was another of my comfort treasures, Franz von Suppé's Poet and Peasant Overture. While Suppé was in fact a composer of operettas, and most of his overtures were written to introduce those (mostly forgotten) operettas, Poet and Peasant was written as part of some incidental music composed for a now-forgotten play.

Poet and Peasant has another of those slow-and-soft introductions that have the power to drain nasty stress out of my brain. Soon enough it leads into a lovely cello solo. Well, listen --

SUPPÉ: Dichter und Bauer (Poet and Peasant)

Carl Stern, cello; New York Philharmonic, Leonard Bernstein, cond. Columbia/CBS/Sony, recorded Jan. 21, 1963

The other side of the Bernstein William Tell LP contained three lovely French overtures: Louis Joseph Hérold's Zampa and Ambroise Thomas's Mignon and Raymond. I'm sure I listened to that side too, but not nearly as often as the Poet and Peasant-plus-William Tell side. Not long afterward, incidentally, Lenny and the New York Phil recorded an overture LP that included Suppé's other blockbuster overture, The Light Cavalry (and also his Beautiful Galathea), and, yes, Nicolai's Merry Wives of Windsor [another of our "comfort music" pieces]. I'm sure that LP got its share of hearings too.

If you recall that post, or have used the link, you're aware that back then I wasn't able to play the Bernstein recording of Poet and Peasant on cue. That's where I inserted the MGM Wallenstein film, so you could hear the music, quite ably performed fortunately, but not by Lenny B. I felt even more seriously hamstrung back then by not being able to enable you to hear another record:

Lenny B's Poet and Peasant is of course obtainable on the above-noted Sony "Great Performances" CD, but here I've got something really special to suggest: an indispensable Mercury CD(I wish I knew what the hell happened to my copy!) on which three overtures by Daniel-François Auber have been added to the six by Suppé that were recorded for a magical LP by Paul Paray (1886-1979) and the Detroit Symphony in 1959. I actually didn't know the LP; I fell in love with the Paray Suppé overtures later in the form of a budget cassette edition. Listen to the effortless and serene playfulness of the woodwind figurations in Pique Dame, and I think you'll be hooked. (As much as I try not to pay too much attention to the reviews on Amazon.com, I think it's noteworthy that one reviewer after another goes wild over this CD.)

* * *

SUPPÉ: Pique Dame

We've overcome that technical limitation, so I think now we ought to listen to the Paray performance of Pique Dame. For me his performances have everything I could think of to ask: a really bold and beautiful sound in the massed passages, effortless rhythmic buoyancy, propulsion, and precision, and an amazing cherishing -- and, where called for, delicacy -- of individual and group instrumental textures. And in case it isn't obvious from the foregoing: a sense of purpose and bubbling life that doesn't flag from start to finish.

The magical moment for me is the entry of the subject sounded by paired flutes, at 4:55. Even now that I lie in wait for it, it makes me melt every time I hear it. Which is not to suggest that Paray is marking time till he gets to the "good parts." As in all of these performances, he doesn't let a bar go to waste.

Detroit Symphony Orchestra, Paul Paray, cond. Mercury, recorded November 1959

I've chosen another performance of Pique Dame that has many qualities similar to Paray's, notably the unforced sense of forward movement and the sensitive appreciation of instrumental detail. (Barbirolli coaxes an even more languorous flute duet, at 4:46.) By coincidence, the Pye recording was in fact made by the Mercury team (producers Wilma Cozart and Harold Lawrence, engineer Robert Fine) visiting Manchester.

Hallé Orchestra, Sir John Barbirolli, cond. Pye/EMI, recorded June 28-29, 1957

* * *

SUPPÉ: Die leichte Kavallerie (Light Cavalry)

Next to Poet and Peasant, surely the most played of the Suppé overtures is Light Cavalry, which has seeped into the pop culture. Let's hear Maestro Paray have a go at it.

Detroit Symphony Orchestra, Paul Paray, cond. Mercury, recorded November 1959

It doesn't sound like much of a compliment to say that a disc of Suppé overtures is one of the loveliest things a conductor has done, and this is indeed the case of a conductor about whom I have seriously mixed feelings, but I don't mean at all to minimize the accomplishment of Zubin Mehta's Suppé. Mehta's formative musical training happened in Vienna, and his adoptive Vienneseness pops out in certain repertory, especially with the Vienna Philharmonic -- his Decca recordings of the Bruckner Ninth and Mahler Resurrection Symphonies, for example, and also these CBS Suppé overtures. Here's Light Cavalry.

Vienna Philharmonic, Zubin Mehta, cond. CBS/Sony, recorded 1989

* * *

SUPPÉ: Ein Morgen, ein Mittag und ein Abend in Wien (A Morning, Noon, and Night in Vienna)

Morning, Noon, and Night is written on something like the grand scale of Poet and Peasant -- and I'm not thinking just of the cello solo. For that reason I thought this would be a good occasion to bring in Charles Dutoit's Montreal recording. I've always found something, well, (to be harsh but blunt) empty at the core of Dutoit's performances, but he certainly has a winning fondness for the full richness of the symphony orchestra, and in collaboration with the Decca recording team, he and the Montreal Symphony produced an extensive series of recordings that are rightly valued for their sonic splendor.

Detroit Symphony Orchestra, Paul Paray, cond. Mercury, recorded November 1959
Guy Fouquet, cello; Orchestre symphonique de Montréal, Charles Dutoit, cond. Decca, recorded c1984

* * *

SUPPÉ: Die schöne Galathée (Beautiful Galatea)

I don't know that you'll hear the same thing, but after complaining about the hollow core of Charles Dutoit's performances, I can report almost the exact opposite with regard to Gustav Kuhn's, and this carries over even to their performances of such humble music as Suppé:'s. Note, for example, how Kuhn not only brings such life to the delicacy of the first main section of Beautiful Galatea (at 1:36) while conveying such a feeling of grounded substance.

Meanwhile, Paray just goes on getting everything right -- and making it sound as if there was no trick to it at all.

Detroit Symphony Orchestra, Paul Paray, cond. Mercury, recorded November 1959
Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Gustav Kuhn, cond. BMG, recorded Dec. 13-15, 1988

* * *

SUPPÉ: Boccaccio

Boccaccio isn't one of the handful of Suppé overtures that are deemed "most do"s for any collection. Nevertheless, Paray makes it sound like the equal of any of them, and all you have to do is compare the rich and soulful horn call of his opening with the perfectly correct but comparatively ordinary opening of Sir Adrian Boult's in fact quite fine performance. Has Paray performed a magic trick in making the music sound better than it is, or is he simply better tuned in than most any other conductor to the music's possibilities?

Detroit Symphony Orchestra, Paul Paray, cond. Mercury, recorded November 1959
London Philharmonic Orchestra, Sir Adrian Boult, cond. EMI, recorded Apr. 27, 1955

* * *

You know what we never did hear? The Paray performance of Poet and Peasant. That seems as good a way to close as any.

SUPPÉ: Dichter und Bauer (Poet and Peasant)

Detroit Symphony Orchestra, Paul Paray, cond. Mercury, recorded November 1959


THE GREAT CD GIVEAWAY

As I mentioned in the previews (Friday night's featuring music from Johann Strauss II's Gypsy Baron and Saturday night's featuring music from Strauss's Fledermaus) I am in possession of an extra copy of the Mercury CD reissue of the Paray Suppé overtures, with three Auber overtures thrown in to fill out the CD. (I guess while my original copy was missing, as noted above, I must have bought a replacement, and eventually the missing copy turned up.) All somebody has to do is offer some sort of contribution to somehow earn it.


SUNDAY CLASSICS POSTS

The current list is here.

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