"When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying the cross."
-- Sinclair Lewis
Sunday, July 21, 2013
Sunday Classics: Adding Schubert's mighty "Wanderer" to our roster of musical fantasies
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Clifford Curzon plays the first two sections of Schubert's Wanderer Fantasy, in a 1949 Decca recording. You'll find the rest of the performance below.
by Ken
A couple of weeks ago we celebrated "Fantasy Week at Sunday Classics" with a fantastic roundup that included the Choral Fantasy (for piano, soloists, chorus, and orchestra) of Beethoven, the Hungarian Fantasia (for piano and orchestra) of Liszt, and the Scottish Fantasy (for violin and orchestra) of Max Bruch. Of course there are lots of other musical fantasies, or fantasias (as I pointed out, we distinguish between the two words in English, but it's a distinction that doesn't exist in the standard "musical" languages -- Italian, French, and German), but it occurred to me at the time that we were missing one obviously important one.
So this week we add to our fantasy roste Schubert's C major Fantasy, D. 760, more familiarly known as the Wanderer Fantasy, for piano solo (at least until Franz Liszt got his hands on it). It's a piece whose rhythmically driven opening, once heard, seems to me unlikely to be forgotten.
SCHUBERT: Wanderer Fantasy (Fantasy in C), D. 760:
Opening, part 1
Mikhail Rudy, piano. EMI, recorded c1987
But immediately Schubert turns the same material into something very different, and then returns to the original driven mode, and then back, and then . . . .
Homero Francesch is the piano soloist in this performance of Beethoven's Choral Fantasy with Leonard Bernstein conducting the Vienna Philharmonic and Vienna Jeunesse Choir.
by Ken
We have a great musical fantasy coming up Sunday -- Max Bruch's Scottish Fantasy for violin and orchestra, so I thought tonight we would review the two wonderful fantasies we've already heard.
Sunday Classics: Perusing Van Cliburn's legacy (and yes, we'll even get to "the Tchaikovsky")
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RACHMANINOFF: Piano Concerto No. 3 in D minor, Op. 30: i. Allegro ma non tanto
Van Cliburn, piano; Symphony of the Air, Kiril Kondrashin, cond. RCA-Sony, recorded live in Carnegie Hall, May 19, 1958
by Ken
The Rachmaninoff Second Piano Concerto, as I've said, I love beyond qualification -- and we heard Van Cliburn play the first movement, with Fritz Reiner conducting, in the April 2010 post "In perfect balance -- Rachmaninoff's 2nd Piano Concerto, where everything comes together just right." As to the more ambitiously scaled Rachmaninoff Third Concerto, one of the supreme virtuoso challenges, well, I've just never come under its spell, though rehearing the first movement played live by the Cliburn-Kondrashin team (just a couple of days after the pianist's triumphant return from Moscow as winner of the first International Tchaikovsky Competition), I'm as close to being persuaded as I've ever been.
As I mentioned in Friday night's preview of this week's Cliburn remembrance, I got the copy of the Complete Van Cliburn Album Collection I mentioned having ordered in the brief post noting the pianist's passing.
Sunday Classics: Not a review, but some thoughts prompted by Anne-Marie McDermott's recent New York piano recital
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Even in this brief clip, I think you can hear that a (the?) distinguishing quality of Anne-Marie McDemott's piano-playing is the bracing physicality.
by Ken
Last week I laid the groundwork for some thoughts prompted by a recital that pianist Anne-Marie McDermott gave recently at New York's Rubin Museum of Art. (Of course it was a week more recently last week.) I focused last week on Liszt's solo-piano expansion of Schumann's brief but grandly expressive song "Widmung" ("Dedication"), which stands at the head of the list of songs he wrote for his new bride Clara, not to mention the vast number that were merely inspired by his passion for her, in his historic "Year of Song" (1840).
We never did get around to the recital itself. As I explained last week, that part was already written, but I just thought it would be too much for a single post. After the click-through we'll be picking up more or less where we left off last week, including hearing music by Prokofiev and Chopin which preceded the Schumann-Liszt (which we'll hear again, this time in some sort of context).
One thing we're not going to hear is the opening work, the Busoni rendering of the Bach solo-violin Chaconne, which I dislike a lot, though there'll be links to a couple of performances. To get us going, here's a performance of the violin original -- announced, you'll note, as "take one" -- by Jascha Heifetz. You might compare this with the Stokowski performance of his own orchestral version which we heard in Friday night's preview.
In Clarence Brown's Song of Love (1947), Paul Henreid as Robert Schumann introduces the newly composed "Widmung" to Katharine Hepburn as Clara; later Henry Daniell as Liszt plays his version, and finally Clara has her turn with it. (All the piano-playing is by Arthur Rubinstein, whom we'll hear playing the Liszt version straight through in the click-through.)
by Ken
Among the great creative feats on record, I'm not sure that any surpasses what is often referred to as Robert Schumann's Year of Song, 1840, the year in which he married Clara Wieck, which we talked about back in April 2010. As Eric Sams has put it, "In the 12 months beginning 1 February 1 1840 he wrote over 160 vocal works, including at least 135 of the 246 solo songs in the complete Peters Edition."
Near the head of the list is the collection of 26 songs published as Schumann's Op. 25, Myrthen (myrtles -- "European evergreen shrubs with white or rosy flowers that are often used to make bridal wreaths"), which the composer presented to Clara as a wedding gift and of course dedicated to her. And at the head of Myrthen is "Widmung" ("Dedication"), the exhilarating song we previewed Friday night.
SCHUMANN: "Widmung" ("Dedication"), Op. 25, No. 1
Baritone Hermann Prey, with pianist Leonard Hokanson (1975)
German text by Friedrich Rückert
You my soul, you my heart,
you my joy, o you my pain,
you my world in which I live,
my heaven you in which I soar,
o you my grave in which
I have buried my sorrows forever.
You are rest; you are peace;
you were destined for me by heaven.
That you love me makes me feel worthy;
your glance has transfigured me;
you lift me, loving, above myself --
my good spirit, my better "I"!
You my soul, you my heart,
you my joy, o you my pain,
you my world, in which I live,
my heaven you, in which I soar --
my good spirit, my better "I"!
In the click-through we're going to have much more of and about "Widmung," and then, well, as I mentioned Friday night, it was a recital this past week by pianist Anne-Marie McDermott that set me to thinking about the song, in both its original form and the bravura solo-piano expansion of it created by Liszt. This is all leading up to my threatened reflections on that recital and an attempt to describe, if not explain, the effect Ms. McDermott's performance of the Liszt version had on me; more about that in the click-through.
Sunday Classics preview: The singular exhilaration of Schumann's "Dedication," and of Liszt's
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SCHUMANN: "Widmung" ("Dedication"), Op. 25, No. 1
You my soul, you my heart, you my joy, o you my pain, you my world in which I live, my heaven you in which I soar, o you my grave in which I have buried my sorrows forever.
You are rest; you are peace; you were destined for me by heaven. That you love me makes me feel worthy; your glance has transfigured me; you lift me, loving, above myself -- my good spirit, my better "I"!
You my soul, you my heart, you my joy, o you my pain, you my world, in which I live, my heaven you, in which I soar -- my good spirit, my better "I"!
-- German text by Friedrich Rückert
by Ken
This past week I attended a recital by pianist Anne-Marie McDermott with a reasonably interesting-looking program. As it turned out, the most satisfying music-making, at least for me, was the several minutes devoted to, of all things, Franz Liszt's solo-piano expansion of Robert Schumann's singularly exhilarating little song "Widmung" ("Dedication").
By "little" song I don't mean that it's in any way small-scaled emotionally. Quite the contrary, as I expect you've noticed if you watched the performance above. All I mean is that its running time in performance is normally a mere two minutes, give or take. Naturally Liszt couldn't leave well enough alone, and had to add expansions of his own after each of the song's basic sections. (The song, you'll notice, is basically in good old A-B-A format, with a cunning slip from A-flat major to E major, at the start of the B section, "You are rest; you are peace" -- at 0:29 of the song performance above, 1:41 of the Liszt solo-piano rendering below.)
IN SUNDAY'S MAIN POST, I want to talk a bit about that recital experience, but for tonight I thought we'd just hear "Widmung" both ways, in interesting performances I found online: the breathless one above of Schumann's original (with an odd truncation of the piano's opening-bar introduction) by the American soprano Jessye Norman (born 1945); and below, Liszt's solo-piano rendering-and-amplification in a 1985 recording by that wonderfully poetic Pittsburgh-born piano pyrotechnician par excellence, Earl Wild (1915-2010).
Sunday Classics postscript: In addition to fixing the Liszt "Hungarian Fantasia" screw-up, we get some bonus goodies
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After Isabelle Cziffra, the daughter of the conductor György Cziffra Jr. (c1943-1981) and granddaughter of the Hungarian-French pianist Georges Cziffra (1921-1994), recalls her father, who died an apparent suicide, we see a clip of her grandfather playing, with her father conducting, the finger-twisting final romp of Liszt's Hungarian Fantasia during a return to their native Hungary.
by Ken
As I mentioned the other night, I was horrified to discover that in last Sunday's post on Liszt's works for piano and orchestra, the audio clip of Sviatoslav Richter's 1961 live performance in London was missing the thrilling climax I wrote about -- in terms of both a mess of dropped notes and an irresistible hurricane-like force. A corrected file is in place for the original post, but I thought the least we could do was to hear it here -- along with some bonus compensation goodies.
LISZT: Hungarian Fantasia for Piano and Orchestra
Sviatoslav Richter, piano; London Symphony Orchestra, Kiril Kondrashin, cond. Live performance, 1961
I considered mentioning on Sunday that the musical materials of the Hungarian Fantasia were recycled by Liszt into the Hungarian Rhapsody No. 14 -- which achieved yet a third incarnation when it was orchestrated (i.e., dispensing with the piano entirely). Here's the solo-piano version.
LISZT: Hungarian Rhapsody No. 14 in F minor
Georges Cziffra, piano. EMI, recorded 1958
Besides the Hungarian Fantasia, Liszt wrote another fairly frequently performed work for piano and orchestra, the Totentanz (Dance of Death), a paraphrase on the tune of the Dies irae (which we last heard underpinning the concluding "Dream of a night of witches' sabbath" of Berlioz' Symphonie fantastique). I had thought about including it too last week. Now here it is.
LISZT: Totentanz (Dance of Death) for Piano and Orchestra
Krystian Zimerman, piano; Boston Symphony Orchestra, Seiji Ozawa, cond. DG, recorded April 1987
Boris Berezovsky, piano; Philharmonia Orchestra, Hugh Wolff, cond. Teldec, recorded December 1994
Sunday Classics update: You can now hear the whole of Sviatoslav Richter's Liszt "Hungarian Fantasia"
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Maybe we ought to start paying the people who do the technical work here at DWT better -- you know, a little closer to minimum wage -- especially the lunks in the Quality Control Dept. How the hell did those clowns let performance of the Liszt Hungarian Fantasia by Sviatoslav Richter and Kiril Kondrashin go out in this week's Sunday Classics piece ("The piano-and-orchestra Liszt -- the orator meets the poet") with only the first two of its three CD tracks included, thereby omitting the final 3:28 of the piece and making nonsense of my reference to the dropped notes as well as the "hurricane force" of the final section, "when all hell breaks loose"?
I tell you, those people are lucky we're not right-wingers, or they would have to be hoping their papers are all in order when the INS inspectors show up.
It's now been corrected in the original post. And here's the complete performance. -- Ken
LISZT: Hungarian Fantasia for Piano and Orchestra
Sviatoslav Richter, piano; London Symphony Orchestra, Kiril Kondrashin, cond. Live performance, 1961
Sunday Classics: The piano-and-orchestra Liszt -- the orator meets the poet
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Here's the first part of the Second Piano Concerto played by Alfred Brendel, with Eliahu Inbal conducting the Frankfurt Radio Symphony. (The performance concludes here. There's an interesting video performance by pianist Yakov Fliere, from 1974, with Maxim Shostakovich conducting -- part 1 here, part 2 here, and part 3 here.)
by Ken
We've heard a sampling of Liszt the orchestral virtuoso (in the form of the best-known of his 13 symphonic poems, Les Préludes, Friday night) and of his virtuosic but equally poetic keyboard wizardry (performances by Sviatoslav Richter, Georges Cziffra, and Aldo Ciccolini last night, along with a video performance of the First Piano Concerto).
We've talked before about the emergence in the West of the roster of great Soviet musicians long prevented from performing here by the Stalinist and immediately post-Stalinist regimes. When Emil Gilels, by any standard one of the century's great pianists, caused the predictable furor, he told interviewers that the pianist they really needed to hear was Richter, who was still being kept under wraps. Rather amazingly, he lived up to the hype.
In 1961 in London Richter played both Liszt piano concertos and the Hungarian Fantasia for piano and orchestra with his compatriot Kiril Kondrashin and the London Symphony, and happily Philips recorded the concertos, for a disc that remains a phonographic landmark -- recorded, incidentally by the Mercury "Living Presence" team of producer Wilma Cozart Fine and engineer Robert Fine, though the tapes have for decades now rested exclusively in the hands of the sonically more conservative Philips technical people. It's a pity the two concertos made such a convenient LP, which is presumably what discouraged Philips from recording the Hungarian Fantasia, which turns out to be quite a loss when we hear the live performance. True, notes get spilled all over the place when all hell breaks loose, and this would have been fixed in a studio recording, but my goodness, is it possible not to be blown over by the hurricane force of this outburst?
LISZT: Hungarian Fantasia for Piano and Orchestra
Sviatoslav Richter, piano; London Symphony Orchestra, Kiril Kondrashin, cond. Live performance, 1961
Jorge Bolet, piano; Symphony of the Air, Robert Irving, cond. Everest, recorded c1959
Michel Béroff, piano; Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, Kurt Masur, cond. EMI, recorded June 1979
Liszt wrote his two piano concertos (and indeed most of a third, only in modern times come to light) at basically the same time, which allowed him to pursue markedly different expressive agendas; the two are so different, and yet so complementary, that they have flourished in each other's company since early LP days. The First Concerto, as you may gather from the video clip we saw last night, is in large measure the Liszt of Les Préludes: grandiose, sweeping, a robust treat. While the Second Concerto indeed builds to a wonderfully grandiloquent march finale, the wonder of this piece is the gentle songfulness of its opening theme, and the way it evolves into that finale.
The piece is basically a theme-and-variations set, in a single movement, though with significant changes of tempo -- and, more significantly, and deliciously under-conspicuously, a slide from triple meter, first to 6/8 duple meter (at the Allegro agitato assai), then briefly back to the 3/4 of the opening (Tempo del Andante) before switching to good old-fashioned square-jawed 4/4 at the Allegro moderato -- the very tempo we're going to need (even with a brief return to the still-duple-meter 6/8) for the outbreak of the Marziale. (And when the Marziale finally breaks out, you really shouldn't have any difficulty hearing in it the lovely original theme.)
We're going to hear the 1961 Richter-Kondrashin studio recording I mentioned above, and also a performance by the highly poetic Polish pianist Krystian Zimerman, whom we heard playing the Rachmaninoff Second Piano Concerto, also with Seiji Ozawa and the Boston Symphony, and finally Alfred Brendel's first recording (for Vox).
On a technical note: CD programmers naturally enough treat some (and some cases all) of the tempo changes in the Liszt A major Concerto as appropriate points for tracking; of course on a CD we don't hear those track points. Since in our format I have no way of creating seamless track switches, we're going to hear the piece somewhat broken up, and not identically broken up, so that in the Richter-Kondrashin recording we hear the buildup to and outbreak of the Marziale un poco meno allegro, whereas in the Zimerman-Ozawa the Marziale gets its own track point, and the Vox recording has a slightly different breakdown.
LISZT: Piano Concerto No. 2 in A: Adagio sostenuto assai; Allegro agitato assai Allegro moderato Allegro deciso; Marziale un poco meno allegro; Allegro animato
Sviatoslav Richter, piano; London Symphony Orchestra, Kiril Kondrashin, cond. Philips, recorded 1961
Krystian Zimerman, piano; Boston Symphony Orchestra, Seiji Ozawa, cond. DG, recorded April 1987
Alfred Brendel, piano; Vienna Symphony Orchestra, Michael Gielen, cond. Vox, recorded 1975
Sunday Classics preview: Liszt the keyboard dervish
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Actually, we're not going to hear Liszt's First Piano Concerto tomorrow, so let's listen tonight to the first part played by the titanic Martha Argerich in November 1999 with the Toho Music School Orchestra under Chikara Iwamura. (The performance concludes here.)
by Ken
Last night we heard the orchestral Liszt in full cry in that grandest of all symphonic poems, Les Préludes. Today we sample the keyboard Liszt, the composer who was the greatest pianist of his and possibly any time.
We start with two "concert études," from two different sets, as chosen and of course played by the amazing Sviatoslav Richter. In "Un sospiro," it's hard enough to sustain the melting beauty of the melodic line without reckoning on all the embellishment Liszt piles on -- this is a study, after all, a piece centrally concerned with technical mastery.
"Gnomenreigen" is a killer. Oh, lots of pianists can bang out all those percussively attacked notes, but then to realize them with such beauty of tone and continuity of line?
LISZT: Concert Etudes
"Un Sospiro" ("A Sigh") (No. 3 of Three Concert Etudes, S. 144)
"Gnomenreigen" ("Gnomes' Round") (No. 2 of Two Concert Etudes, S. 145)
Sviatoslav Richter, piano. Philips, recorded live, 1988
Now we have Liszt as musical landscape artist, in one of the best-loved pieces from the year devoted to Italy in his wonderful set Years of Pilgrimage (Années de pèlerinage). The Hungarian-French pianist Georges Cziffra was a maddeningly eccentric and unpredictable pianist (I don't dare say "erratic," or the Cziffra True Believers will come yelling and whooping out of the woodwork), but the tone-painting here seems to me pure magic.
LISZT: "Les Jeux d'eau dans la Villa d'Este" ("The Play of Water at the Villa d'Este") (No. 8 of the Second Year, Italy, of the Années de pèlerinage, or Years of Pilgrimage)
Georges Cziffra, piano. EMI, recorded c1960s
Finally, while we don't have the kind of morbidly bass-obsessed performance the funereal "Funérailles" can handle -- in this instance I might say that that lyrical master Aldo Ciccolini, who played Debussy so beautifully for us, is a little too tasteful -- I think we still get a good feeling for a whole other, darker dimension of LIszt's creative personality.
Arthur Rubinstein's 1953 recording isn't quite what I'm groping for either, but it's closer. And I'm throwing it in because I was so relieved to find the CD, which had turned up missing from its jewel case when I was mapping out the music for this post. (I hate when that happens.) It finally occurred to me to check in a CD player I hardly use, and sure enough there it was!
LISZT: "Funérailles" (No. 7 of Harmonies poétiques et religieuses)
Aldo Ciccolini, piano. EMI, recorded Apr. 9-10, 1990 Arthur Rubinstein, piano. RCA/BMG, recorded Oct.-Nov. 1953
Sunday Classics preview: Yes, it's Liszt's "Les Préludes," the granddaddy of symphonic poems
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And here's Les Préludes arranged for organ!
by Ken
On the schedule tonight is one of Franz Liszt's best-known works, the symphonic poem (No. 3 of his 13) Les Préludes.
WHAT IS A SYMPHONIC POEM?
OK, let's let Wikipedia have a shot at it:
"A symphonic poem or tone poem is a piece of orchestral music in a single continuous section (a movement) in which the content of a poem, a story or novel, a painting, a landscape or another (non-musical) source is illustrated or evoked. The term was first applied by Hungarian composer Franz Liszt to his 13 works in this vein. A symphonic poem is different from a concert overture (a form from which it may be regarded as an evolution), which may also be illustrative in nature, in that it aims at an enlarged musical and emotional range and scope. As musicologist Hugh Macdonald wrote of Liszt's works in this genre, the intent was "to display the traditional logic of symphonic thought"; that is, to display a comparable complexity in the interplay of musical themes and tonal "landscape" to those of the Romantic symphony. In its aesthetic objectives, the symphonic poem is in some ways related to opera; whilst it does not use a sung text, it seeks like opera a union of music and drama. . . ."
Aren't you glad you asked?
Some of the above is so, and some is kind of iffy. My suggestion is just to listen and enjoy. I assure you you'll recognize some of it.
LISZT: Les Préludes (symphonic poem)
arranged by the composer for two pianos Georgia and Louise Mangos, pianos. Cedille, recorded Jan. 22-23, 1993
San Francisco Symphony Orchestra, Pierre Monteux, cond. Radio performance, Apr. 16, 1950
New Symphony Orchestra of London, Sir Adrian Boult, cond. Reader's Digest/Chesky, recorded July 12-15, 1960
Sunday Classics: Rhapsodies from Sweden and points south and east
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Now this is more like it!Unfortunately in audio only, Vladimir Horowitz plays the rhapsody of rhapsodies, Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2 (in, by the way, the composer's own version, more or less, not the pianist's famous arrangement). If you're looking for mediocre to revolting performances, there's no shortage on YouTube, as witness last night's fiasco.
by Ken
We still haven't quite finished with Norway's great composer, Edvard Grieg, even after pursuing him through Marching trolls and other lyric subjects (Lyric Pieces for piano, Lyric Suite for orchestra); "The Prophet has come!": The world of Peer Gynt (the two orchestral suites, enhanced); (more Peer Gynt and the Piano Concerto); Mastering the fine art of Edvard Grieg (the Lyric Pieces and Piano Concerto revisited, plus String Quartet No. 1). Meanwhile, we had a decent shot at Finland's Jan Sibelius, and at some point we'll come back for Denmark's Carl Nielsen.
Which leaves a gap in our Scandinavian itinerary. So today we're going to have a quick musical taste of Sweden in the form of a rhapsody, a form that composers have found well-suited to splashy musical quick portraits of their countries, dating back to the 19th-century rise of musical nationalism. And then we'll let the rhapsody transport us.
I. A QUICK TOUR OF SWEDEN AND ROMANIA: WE'LL ALWAYS HAVE THEIR RHAPSODIES
No, I don't suppose Sweden and Romania have a whole lot in common, beyond the curious phenomenon of a composer, arguably each country's best-known, who remains known principally for rhapsodies. (No, I'm not going to attempt a definition of rhapsody. Feel free to look it up if you like. By the end of this post you should be in a position to concoct your own definition if that's important to you.)
In Sweden's case, our composer is Hugo Alfvén (1872-1960). Alfvén in fact produced quite a sizable output, and there are admirers who consider his general neglect a scandal. I can't claim to be an expert on the subject, but what I've heard of his music is agreeable enough if not especially memorable (it's fair to say that worse music is played on a regular basis by most of the world's orchestras). Nevertheless, I don't see much likelihood of a change in the composer's fortunes, which have him known almost entirely for a single work that remains on the edge of the international repertory: the first of his three Swedish Rhapsodies, titled Midsummer Vigil (1903).
I got to know it through the back door, as it were. When we talked about Sibelius (see link above), I mentioned that two of my first three stereo LPs were bought for works by Sibelius, because -- outrageously! -- that's what you had to do to get Eugene Ormandy and the Philadelphia Orchestra's recordings of The Swan of Tuonela and Finlandia. This left me with quite a lot of "filler" material. Okay, I suppose technically The Swan was the filler for Sibelius's Violin Concerto played by the great David Oistrakh, but that's not the way I looked at it in those days. The Finlandia fillers included Grieg's Peer Gynt Suite No. 1 (hmm, Peer Gynt, where have we heard about that?) and, yes, Alfvén's Swedish Rhapsody No. 1. Eventually I wound up listening to this stuff quite a lot. Here is that very recording of Midsummer Vigil.
ALFVÉN: Swedish Rhapsody No. 1: Midsummer Vigil, Op. 19
Philadelphia Orchestra, Eugene Ormandy, cond. Columbia/CBS/Sony, recorded Dec. 21, 1959
I don't think there's much question that the model for the rhapsody as nationalistic vehicle was Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsodies, which were written for piano solo, but half a dozen of which were soon orchestrated and absorbed into the international repertory. Surely Romania's Georges Enesco (1881-1955) had them in his head as models for his pair of Romanian Rhapsodies (1901-2). Awhile back Enesco's opera Oedipe got a bit of attention -- not to mention a prestigiously cast major-label recording -- and others of his works have been resurrected, but not much has stuck. As with Alfvén and the Swedish Rhapsodies, he remains pretty much the composer of the two Romanian Rhapsodies. Here's the somewhat more often played First.
ENESCO: Romanian Rhapsody No. 1 in A, Op. 11, No. 1
RCA Victor Symphony Orchestra, Leopold Stokowski, cond. RCA/BMG, recorded February 1960
Philadelphia Orchestra, Eugene Ormandy, cond. Columbia/CBS/Sony, recorded Nov. 10, 1957
As long as we're at it, we might as well hear the Second Romanian Rhapsody, don't you think?
ENESCO: Romanian Rhapsody No. 2 in D, Op. 11, No. 2
Philadelphia Orchestra, Eugene Ormandy, cond. Columbia/CBS/Sony, recorded Nov. 10, 1957
II. LISZT AND THE RHAPSODY: THE HUNGARIAN RHAPSODY NO. 2
As I mentioned, Liszt wrote his Hungarian Rhapsodies for piano solo, and grand display pieces they are. Not surprisingly, half a dozen were quickly orchestrated, and approved by the composer for publication, though legions of conductors and arrangers have had a shot at these pieces since. In the case of No. 2 (about which Wikipedia incidentally has a quite extensive entry), the key has generally wound up dropping to C minor from C sharp minor. The piece itself follows the general form of the Hungarian Rhapsodies in having a soulful slow section and then an exhilarating fast one, though this hardly does justice to the piece's finely crafted structure.
Given the standing of the orchestral rhapsody as a vehicle for orchestral display, it's not surprising that we frequently encounter two names here: Leopold Stokowski (1882-1977) and his successor as music director of the Philadelphia Orchestra, Eugene Ormandy (1899-1985). Stokowski actually recorded an LP called Rhapsody, though even in expanded CD (now hybrid SACD) formit contains only two actual rhapsodies, the Enesco we just heard and the Liszt we're about to hear. Ormandy didn't record many rhapsodies en bloc, but Sony has assembled a splendid Famous Rhapsodies CDthat includes a lot of the music we're hearing today.
Stoky was famously willing to use any expressive device he thought he could make work, though he seems in pretty good behavior in the Enesco performance above -- that is one heckuva performance. The Liszt, however, strikes me as kind of weird. I suppose I've lived with the Ormandy too long to be totally objective about it, but I think it's sensational.
LISZT: Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2
RCA Victor Symphony Orchestra, Leopold Stokowski, cond. RCA/BMG, recorded February 1960
Philadelphia Orchestra, Eugene Ormandy, cond. Columbia/CBS/Sony, recorded February 1958
Now to return to the Liszt rhapsody's piano origins. The Horowitz recording of No. 2 that we heard at the top of this post finds that musical bad boy too on pretty good musical behavior, which is a good thing and a bad thing. With both Stokowski and Horowitz, even when we question their musical decisions, when they're on form, those decisions are at the service of a real musical vision. In this Horowitz rhapsody performance, fine as it is in many ways, I think we hear VH pulling his punches -- and so the performance is often more about what he chooses not to do than what he does.
I suppose people think it's a slapdown when they refer to this music as "rhetorical," but rhetoric, like most everything else, can be good or bad, effective or not. Most of what's passed off as musical rhetoric is mere self-indulgence or plain fakery, pathetically obvious lying bullshit. This is generally true of what is often passed off, by self-appointed guardians of the "Grand Romantic Style," as the Grand Romantic Style, which tends to be neither grand nor romantic nor really even a style, but just a pose. When you hear a great orator, you find out what real rhetoric is, and the same is true in music.
Let's listen to this performance of the Liszt "No. 2," which the International Piano Archive included in an ingenious compendiumof historical recordings of all 19 Hungarian Rhapsodies.
Benno Moiseiwitsch, piano. HMV/IPA/VAI, recorded Oct. 9, 1940
It's certainly not a bad performance, but has Moiseiwitsch (1890-1963, and therefore already 50 here; unfortunately he's known today mostly for later, and sometimes much later, and less good, recordings) really risen to the challenge of this grand showpiece?
How about this performance then?
Alfred Brendel, piano. Vanguard, recorded 1967
Alfred Brendel (born 1931), only recently retired from keyboard performance but still active as a lecturer, was an eminently tasteful pianist, and this is an eminently tasteful performance. The pieces fit together quite naturally, it seems to me. But the piece as a whole seems to me to have been shrunk to even smaller stature than with Moiseiwitsch. When a truly mesmerizing orator grabs hold of you, you don't come away praising his excellent "taste," or bemoaning his lapses in same.
Here's something I think you'll agree is different:
Georges Cziffra, piano. EMI, recorded in Budapest, 1956
I think we're really on to something. Cziffra, although a maddeningly erratic performer, at his best could make the piano truly sing. Unfortunately, the four rhapsodies, including No. 2, that Cziffra recorded in mono in Budapest in 1956 were done with what appears to be a dull piano without much beauty of sound in it, in two-dimensional recorded sound. Later, in Paris in 1958, these four rhapsodies were expanded into a set of 15 Hungarian Rhapsodies. The later recordings used a much better instrument, and benefited from much better recorded sound. (We'll hear a sample below.)
III. WHAT HAPPENS WHEN IT'S SOMEBODY ELSE'S COUNTRY YOU'RE RHAPSODIZING ABOUT?
The EMI "twofer" set that gathered Georges Cziffra's 1956/58 Liszt Hungarian Rhapsodies was filled out with Liszt's Spanish Rhapsody. Up till now we've been dealing with the rhapsody as a "national" form in which composers tried to represent their own countries. But what's to stop a composer from attempting to characterize another country?
Somehow, often as not, that meant foreigners trying to imagine themselves as Spaniards. Certainly French composers had a thing about their southern neighbor. And limiting ourselves just to the rhapsody form, we have two specimens that rank with the more popular works in the orchestral literature.
First we hear España, rapsodie pour orchestre (1883) by Emanuel Chabrier (1841-1894), a wonderfully tuneful farrago, some of whose tunes I'm pretty sure you'll recognize.
CHABRIER: España
London Symphony Orchestra, Ataulfo Argenta, cond. Decca, recorded January 1957
Detroit Symphony Orchestra, Paul Paray, cond. Mercury, recorded Nov. 18, 1959
Philadelphia Orchestra, Eugene Ormandy, cond. Columbia/CBS/Sony, recorded Feb. 24, 1963
And then we hear what is surely the greatest rhapsody of them all, the Spanish Rhapsody of Maurice Ravel (1875-1937). We're going to hear a really wonderful, wonderfully idiomatic performance by Jean Martinon, from his series of the complete Ravel orchestral works with the Orchestre de Paris. But then, because this is still a rhapsody, and Ravel was among other things a master orchestrator (remember that it's his orchestration of Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition that is still most often played), we have to hear our pal Stoky have a go at it -- first at the age of 92 (a live performance, note!), and then as a youngster of a mere 75. This is a significantly sultrier image of Spain, wouldn't you say?
RAVEL: Rapsodie espagnole
i. Prélude à la nuit (Prelude to the Night) ii. Malagueña iii. Habañera iv. Feria
Orchestre de Paris, Jean Martinon, cond. EMI, recorded 1974
New Philharmonia Orchestra, Leopold Stokowski, cond. BBC Classics, recorded live in the Royal Albert Hall, London, May 4, 1974
London Symphony Orchestra, Leopold Stokowski, cond. EMI, recorded June 27-28, 1957
ONE LAST SPANISH RHAPSODY
As long as we've wound up listening to all these foreign-imagined Spanish rhapsodies, maybe you're wondering what the Liszt Spanish Rhapsody I mentioned sounds like. Here is that Cziffra recording. Note how much more seductive piano sound Cziffra coaxes out of this piano in Paris, in markedly better recorded sound, than he and the Budapest engineers were able to manage for the 1956 recording of the Second Hungarian Rhapsody.
Georges Cziffra, piano. EMI, recorded in Paris, 1958
it contains only two actual rhapsodies, the Enesco we just heard and the Liszt we're about to hear. Ormandy didn't record many rhapsodies en bloc, but Sony has assembled 
that includes a lot of the music we're hearing today.
of historical recordings of all 19 Hungarian Rhapsodies.
