"When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying the cross."
-- Sinclair Lewis
Sunday, February 02, 2014
Sunday Classics: In our missing "Song of the Earth" song, Mahler's "Lonely One in Autumn" begs for "peace" and "consolation"
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Christa Ludwig, mezzo-soprano; Israel Philharmonic, Leonard Bernstein, cond. CBS-Sony, recorded live, May 18, 20, and 23, 1972
by Ken
In the above audio clip we're near the end of the second song of Das Lied von der Erde (The Song of the Earth), "Der Einsame im Herbst" ("The Lonely One in Autumn"), where Mahler pulls another of those minor-to-major switcheroos we've talked about. It occurs at 1:25 of our clip. Well, that's the lead-in; the actual moment occurs at about 1:31 -- and it's one of the stupendous moments of this extraordinary song-symphony, the first new project the composer undertook after learning that he was suffering from terminal heart disease.
From the heaven-storming conclusion of the Eighth Symphony to Das Lied represents, one of the most striking sudden changes of course in the work of any creative artist I'm aware of. We actually heard the juxtaposition in the August 2010 post "In the opening vision of Mahler's Song of the Earth: 'Dark is life, is death,'" which focused on the opening tenor song, "The Drinking Song of Earth's Sorrow," but also included the two later tenor songs.
In this week's preview I said we would be filling in the one song we still haven't covered and then hearing the six movements of Das Lied finally put together. For all sorts of reasons we're not going to manage that today. I'm going to content myself with presenting that final missing link, the second song (and the first for the alto or baritone soloist who alternates with the tenor).
THERE'S A DIFFERENCE IN CHARACTER
BETWEEN THE TENOR AND ALTO SONGS
Sunday Classics preview: One loose end we CAN tie up -- our missing movements from Mahler's "Song of the Earth"
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[Click to enlarge]
by Ken
Das Lied von der Erde (The Song of the Earth) is sort of Mahler's Symphony No. 8½. Even though it's a series of six songs with orchestra, alternating between tenor and alto (or baritone) soloists, he probably would have called is his Ninth Symphony if the already-dying composer hadn't been such a baby about that "Ninth Symphony" business -- their Ninths had been so fateful for Beethoven and Bruckner. Since he had his next symphony mapped out, he thought that by calling that his Ninth, when it was really his Tenth, he would have the jinx beaten. As we know, though, the joke was on him. He did complete the symphony he called his Ninth, but died leaving his Tenth incomplete.
Sunday Classics: Remembering Maureen Forrester, Part 2: Mahler
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A lot of Maureen Forrester's Mahler is actually available. An unfortunate exception is the RCA coupling of the Songs of a Wayfarer and Kindertotenlieder ("Songs on the Death of Children," the cycle based on poems by Friedrich Rückert) with Charles Munch conducting the Boston Symphony. Happily, they're all available on YouTube, though unfortunately in mono. Here's the final song of the Kindertotenlieder. Even if you don't know the cycle, or the song, the situation should be clear enough, and you're bound to note the devastating switch from the minor to the major for the final stanza.
"In diesem Wetter, in diesem Braus" ("In this weather, in this bluster")
In this weather, in this bluster, never would I have sent the children out. They were taken out. I had nothing to say about it.
In this weather, in this storm, never would I have sent the children out. I would have been afraid that they would catch sick. Those are now idle thoughts.
In this weather, in this horror, never would I have sent the children out. I worried they might die tomorrow. That's now not to be worried about.
In this weather, in this bluster, never would I have sent the children out. They were taken out. I had nothing to say about it.
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.
by Ken
One immediately striking feature of Mahler's writing for the female voice is a clear preference for the lower types over the soprano. Christa Ludwig has explained that Mahler's songs were a treasure bequeathed to her by her mother, also a mezzo-soprano -- a legacy that had to be guarded closely during the Third Reich, when the music of the Jewish-born Mahler was taboo. Yet a precious gift it was. Ludwig and Mahler became one of the greatest of all matches of performer and composer. But Mahler's "low voice" songs are equally accessible to a true contralto, and if I had to choose between Christa Ludwig's Mahler -- of which we've heard quite a lot in our Mahler explorations -- and Maureen Forrester's, well, I simply couldn't.
One distinction I can make, though: While there are lots of excellent mezzo performances, including some that can be said to rival Ludwig's, beyond Forrester (1930-2010) the true-contralto option is hardly represented. There's the too-little-appreciated Lili Chookasian (born 1921, retired 1986), who recorded Das Lied von der Erde with Eugene Ormandy for Columbia and later, somewhat past her prime, with Walter Susskind for Vox. There's the fine Czech contralto Véra Soukupová. And that's about it.
(I guess I should make clear that I'm not a great fan of the English-style contralto, which tends to substitute hooting for the lower-range fullness and lushness we expect in a true contralto, and I'm afraid that includes the much-loved but to me hooty and flutter-toned Kathleen Ferrier, especially in Mahler. I will say, though, that I really like what Ferrier does in a miraculously preserved -- except for the first seven bars -- 1952 broadcast performance by John Barbirolli and the Hallé Orchestra finally released in 2003,which also features tenor Richard Lewis sounding like I doubt you've ever heard him, in fact rather lovely -- I kid you not.)
JUST WHAT IS A CONTRALTO ANYWAY?
I suppose we ought to provide some definition for "contralto." It's the deepest of the female vocal ranges, anchored in those rich vocal depths. Here's a commonsense way to distinguish it from the next-upward female voice type: If you have to wonder whether a voice is a contralto or a mezzo-soprano, odds are it's a mezzo-soprano.
"DER ABSCHIED" ("THE FAREWELL")
In our numerous Mahler explorations to date (see the post listing), we've stuck mostly to the relatively early period; I don't think we've ventured beyond the Fourth Symphony (1900). This has seemed to me quite an enormous enough bite to try to chew. Now we're jumping ahead, jumping in fact right over the fullest expression of the composer's artistic self-confidence, the monumental Eighth Symphony with its philosophically triumphant conclusion drawn from Goethe's Faust.
After completing the Eighth Symphony, however, Mahler learned (in 1907) that he had a terminal heart condition, and the transformation in his artistic outlook was startling. In his new relationship to the finiteness as well as the preciousness of mortal existence, Mahler found in a copy he had been given of Hans Bethge's The Chinese Flute, translations (or more likely adaptations) of Chinese poems, both the inspiration and the actual texts for what became in all but name his ninth symphony, Das Lied von der Erde (The Song of the Earth).
The first, third, and fifth movements of Das Lied are set for tenor solo; the second, fourth, and sixth for alto (or alternatively for baritone, singing the music an octave lower -- an alternative that sounds interesting but in my experience doesn't work very well). That last movement, "Der Abschied" ("The Farewell"), is roughly equal in length to the first five movements combined, and has always been recognized as one of Mahler's supreme achievements. Even though he was by no means finished with his life or work (still to come were the whole of the sublime Ninth Symphony and the considerable work he achieved on the Tenth by his death in 1911), there's no question that this is in part Mahler's own farewell to the earth.
One of these days we'll talk more about and hear more of Das Lied, but for now, quite madly, we're just plunging into the half-hour expanse of "Der Abschied." Conveniently for our purposes, this CD issue of the Berlin tour performance by George Szell and the Cleveland Orchestra, with Forrester and Richard Lewis (who seem to have been joined at the hip in this music), has track points that enable us to commit the appalling barbarity of splitting the thing apart and separately registering its component parts, which more or less correspond to stanzas.
MAHLER: Das Lied von der Erde (The Song of the Earth): vi. "Der Abschied" ("The Farewell")
Maureen Forrester, contralto; Cleveland Orchestra, George Szell, cond. Live performance in Berlin, Apr. 21, 1967 (mono)
The sun is going down behind the mountains. In every valley evening is descending, bringing its shadows, which are full of coolness. O look! where like a silver bark afloat, the moon through the blue lake of heaven soars upwards. I sense the shivering of a delicate breeze behind the dark fir trees.
There aren't many more beautiful moments in music than the refrain "O sieh! Wie eine Silberbarke schwebt der Mond am blauen Himmelsee herauf" ("O see! Like a silver bark the moon soars over the blue heavenly lake"), at 2:48 of the Szell performance, and just about the same point in the Forrester-Reiner and Forrester-Walter below.
Let's continue now.
track 2, "Der Bach singt voller Wohllaut durch das Dunkel"
The brook sings, full of melody, through the darkness. The flowers grow pale in the twilight. The earth is breathing, full of rest and sleep; all desire now turns to dreaming. Weary mortals wend homewards, so that, in sleep, forgotten joy and youth they may learn anew. The birds huddle silent on the branches. The world is falling asleep!
track 3, "Es wehet kühl im Schatten meiner Fichten"
It blows cool in the shadow of my fir trees. I stand here and wait for my friend. I wait for him, to take the last farewell. I long, O my friend, to be by your side, to enjoy the beauty of this evening. Where are you lingering? You leave me long alone! I wander to and fro with my lute on pathways that billow with soft grass. O beauty! O eternal life- and love-intoxicated world!
Orchestral interlude
After the magnificent orchestral interlude, when the soloist resumes her song we've actually switched to a second poem, by a different poet, which Mahler cunningly amalgamated with the first.
track 4, "Er stieg vom Pferd und reichte ihm den Trunk"
He alighted from his horse and handed him the drink of farewell. He asked him whither he was going, and also why, why it had to be. He spoke; his voice was veiled: "You, my friend -- In this world fortune was not kind to me! Whither I go? I go, I wander in the mountains, I seek rest for my lonely heart! I journey to the homeland, to my resting place; I shall never again go seeking the far distance. My heart is still and awaits its hour!
The dear earth everywhere blossoms in spring and grows green again! Everywhere and eternally the distance shines bright and blue! Eternally . . . eternally . . .
THE COMPLETE "ABSCHIED"
Having taken the movement apart, we surely need to put it back together. We're going to hear it now in two performances that are bound historically.
When Bruno Walter, who had conducted the premiere of Das Lied in November 1911, some six months after the composer's death, gave his last concert performances of the work, with the New York Philharmonic in April 1960, his soloists were Maureen Forrester and (who else?) Richard Lewis. Happily, Columbia chose to make a studio recording, but unfortunately Forrester and Lewis had just recorded Das Lied the previous November with Fritz Reiner and the Chicago Symphony. Here is the "Abschied" from that wonderful RCA recording.
Das Lied von der Erde (The Song of the Earth): vi. "Der Abschied" ("The Farewell")
Maureen Forrester, contralto; Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Fritz Reiner, cond. RCA/BMG, recorded Nov. 7 and 9, 1959
So Walter and Columbia had to find replacement soloists for their recording. They did so so successfully, with the American mezzo Mildred Miller and the Swiss tenor Ernst Häfliger, and Walter himself was in such inspired form, that the result was not just -- it seems to me (if not many other music lovers) -- one of the conductor's finest recordings but one of the most memorable recordings ever made. We do, however, have an aural record of the Forrester-Walter collaboration in Das Lied, from the radio broadcast. Here's that "Abschied."
Maureen Forrester, contralto; New York Philharmonic, Bruno Walter, cond. Music & Arts, recorded live in Carnegie Hall, Apr. 16, 1960 (mono)
MAHLER: Rückert Songs
In addition to the cycle of Kindertotenlieder poems (of which we heard the final one at the top of this post), Mahler set five other poems by Friedrich Rückert. We're going to hear the anxiety-ridden "At Midnight" and the famously valedictory "I have lost touch with the world."
v. "Um Mitternacht" ("At Midnight")
At midnight I awoke and looked up at the sky. No star in the galaxy smiled at me at midnight.
At midnight my thought went out to the barriers of darkness. No thought of light brought me comfort at midnight.
At midnight I paid attention to the beating of my heart; a single pulse of pain was roused at midnight.
At midnight I fought the battle, o Mankind, of your sorrows; I couldn't decide it with my powers at midnight.
At midnight I gave my powers into your hand. Lord! Over death and life you keep watch at midnight.
Maureen Forrester, contralto; Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra, Ferenc Fricsay, cond. DG, recorded Sept. 16, 1958
i. "Ich bin her Welt abhanden gekommen" ("I have lost touch with the world")
I have lost touch with the world, with which I formerly wasted much time. It has for so long heard nothing of me, it may well think that I have died.
And for me it doesn't matter at all if it takes me for dead. I can't even say anything against it, for really I am dead to the world.
I am dead to the worldly tumult, and rest in a quiet place. I live alone in my heaven, in my loving, in my song.
Maureen Forrester, contralto; Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra, Ferenc Fricsay, cond. DG, recorded Sept. 16, 1958
MAHLER: "Urlicht" (from Symphony No. 2)
The setting of "Urlicht" ("Primal Light"), from the collection Des Knaben Wunderhorn (The Youth's Magic Horn), which Mahler incorporated into the Resurrection Symphony as fourth-movement lead-in to the heaven-storming finale, is one of the composer's most beautiful songs, and something of a Maureen Forrester signature piece. The first Forrester recording I'm aware of of "Urlicht" is the 1957 video version with Glenn Gould conducting (yes, conducting! and conducting left-handed!) that we saw way back when (It doesn't get more eloquent than Maureen Forrester singing Mahler's "Urlicht"). Her first commercial recording followed soon thereafter, when Bruno Walter chose her for his New York Philharmonic performances and studio recording of the Resurrection Symphony.
O rosebud red! Man lies in the greatest need. Man lies in the greatest anguish. Far rather would I be in heaven.
Then I came to a broad path. Then a little angel came and wanted to send me away. But no! I didn't let myself be sent away.
I am from God, I want to return to God. Dear God will give me a little light, will light me all the way to eternal blessed life.
Maureen Forrester, contralto; New York Philharmonic, Bruno Walter, cond. Columbia/CBS/Sony, recorded Feb. 17-21, 1958
We heard Forrester's next-to-last recording of "Urlicht" (again as far as I'm aware) in our Forrester pre-preview last week. Now we're going to hear the last, made some 30 years after the TV performance with Gould, when rich-guy Resurrection aficionado Gilbert Kaplan made his second recording of the symphony. Note how much broader the pacing is than Walter's -- much harder for both the conductor and the soloist to sustain. It's tantalizing to imagine how the young Forrester would have risen to this challenge. Still, for a 57-year-old singer this seems to me a pretty astonishing piece of singing.
Maureen Forrester, contralto; Vienna Philharmonic, Gilbert Kaplan, cond. DG, recorded July 1987
SONGS FROM DES KNABEN WUNDERHORN
Finally, we return to the world of the folk-poetry anthology Des Knaben Wunderhorn, which provided Mahler with so much inspiration, of such varied sorts, in the early part of his career. First is a song we've heard a great deal of (and a performance we've heard too), "Anthony of Padua's Fish Sermon." Then, finally, we hear one we haven't heard, a haunting specimen from Mahler's "military" group, "Where the Beautiful Trumpets Blow," a mournfully appropriate parting glimpse of this special singer.
"Des Antonius von Padua Fischpredigt" ("Anthony of Padua's Fish Sermon")
Antonius, arriving for his sermon, finds the church empty. He goes to the rivers and preaches to the fishes;
They slap their tails, glistening in the sunshine.
The carp with roe have all come here, have their mouths wide open, listening attentively.
No sermon ever pleased the carp so.
Sharp-mouthed pike that always fight have hurriedly swum here to hear the pious one;
No sermon ever pleased the pike so.
Also those fantastic creatures that are always fast, the stockfish, I mean, appear for the sermon;
No sermon ever pleased the stockfish so.
Good eels and sturgens that banquet so elegantly even they took the trouble to hear the sermon:
No sermon ever pleased the eels so.
Crabs too, and turtles, usually such slowpokes, rise quickly from the bottom, to hear this voice.
No sermon ever pleased the crabs so.
Big fish, little fish, noble fish, common fish, all lift their heads like sentient creatures:
At God's behest they listen to the sermon.
The sermon having ended, each turns himself around; the pikes remain thieves, the eels, great lovers.
The sermon has pleased them, but they remain the same as before.
The crabs still walk backwards, the stockfish stay rotund, the carps still stuff themselves, the sermon is forgotten!
The sermon pleased. They remain as always.
Maureen Forrester, contralto; Vienna Festival Orchestra, Felix Prohaska, cond. Vanguard, recorded May 27-June 1, 1963
"Wo die schönen Trompeten blasen" ("Where the beautiful trumpets blow")
"Who then is outside and who is knocking, waking me so gently?"
"It is your heart's beloved, and let me in with you! Why should I stand here longer?
"I see daybreak rising, daybreak, two bright stars. I surely wish I were with my sweetheart! With my sweetheart!"
The girl got up and let him in. She also bids him welcome.
"Welcome, my dear boy! You've been standing so long!" And she gives him her snow-white hand. In the distance the nightingale sang. The girl began to weep.
"O do not weep, my beloved! By year's end you will be my own. My own you will certainly be, as no other is on earth! O love, on the green earth. I go off to war on the green heath; the green heath, it's so far!
"There where the beautiful trumpets blow, there is my house of green turf."
Maureen Forrester, contralto; Vienna Festival Orchestra, Felix Prohaska, cond. Vanguard, recorded May 27-June 1, 1963
[Note: I have to say, I'm not thrilled with what I hear coming out of these audio tracks of the Forrester-Prohaska performances, which sound metallic and fake-echoey, certainly not what I recall from my exceedingly well-played LP. I'd like to think that this is a quirk of the processing chain I've subjected them to rather than (admittedly more likely) a lousy CD transfer -- not what you'd hope for one of the all-time great recordings.]
Sunday Classics: Remembering Maureen Forrester, Part 1: A bulwark of the baroque revival
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As the poster notes, YouTube's 10-minute-plus time limit doesn't accommodate the whole of "He was despised," the great alto aria from Handel's Messiah (which we talked about and heard in this past Christmas's Messiah post). The poster can't recall what CD it's from; I assume it's a reissue of the Vanguard Bach-Handel recital, with Antonio Janigro conducting I Solisti di Zagreb (which I don't have), presumably also the original source of the aria below from Handel's Samson.
by Ken
In last night's preview I described contralto Maureen Forrester (1930-2010) as "one of the least replaceable singers" I've heard, and looking back, I'm a little surprised how casually her presence was taken on the musical scene. (For the record, we also had a non-preview "down payment" pre-preview week before last.) She wasn't quite taken for granted, but the vocal completeness of her performances of whatever repertory she was plunked into was such that she came perilously close, and she seemed so unfailingly just to be there, when and where she was needed, that I don't think many music lovers gave much thought to what it would be like when that presence was no longer present, with no replacement available.
Case in point: perhaps the best-known tune Handel left us, known as "Handel's Largo" -- in context, as sung by the Persian emperor Xerxes at curtain rise, a love song to a tree.
HANDEL: Serse: Act I, "Frondi tenere . . . Ombra mai fù"
RECITATIVE Tender and fair leaves of my beloved plane tree, may Fate shine on you. May thunder, lightning and storms never disturb your dear peace or any other predator manage to despoil you.
ARIA: Serse Never was shade of vegetation more dear and endearingly comforting.
Maureen Forrester, contralto; Vienna Radio Orchestra, Brian Priestman, cond. Westminster/CBC, recorded June 1965
This "Ombra mai fù" is from a complete recording of Serse undertaken by Westminster as a follow-up to its recording the year before of Handel's Rodelinda (with Teresa Stich-Randall in the title role). Not surprisingly, Forrester was in the cast of both. Although by present-day Handel performance standards those recordings sound like unalloyed treasures, response to them at the time was understandably mixed, making Westminster unable to continue the series. (A recording of the English-language "musical drama" Hercules, again with Stich-Randall and Forrester, was released by RCA, and even less well-received.) Similarly, when Vanguard launched a series of Handel oratorios with the shockingly neglected late masterpieces Theodora and Jephtha, Forrester was in the casts. It was an obvious "ask" for the record companies.
Sadly, for an artist who recorded as much as Forrester, hardly anything remains in print, and we have to be grateful for a two-CD set put together by CBC Records, A Legendary Voice: Maureen Forrester (pay no attention to the unfortunate French album title, La Voix du Siècle, "The Voice of the Century") -- a CD of Handel compiled from assorted Westminster and Vanguard originals attached to a CD reissuing CBC's own March 1968 coupling of Brahms's Four Serious Songs and Wagner's Wesendonck-Lieder (once released by Decca), filled out with song material from a January 1981 Toronto recital. (The performance we heard two weeks ago of Brahms's "Lullaby" was, as noted, an encore from the 1981 recital.)
From the CBC anthology, here's Micah's great aria from the oratorio Samson.
HANDEL: Samson: Act II, "Return, o God of hosts"
Return, o God of hosts! Behold thy servant in distress! His mighty griefs redress, nor by the heathen be it told.
Maureen Forrester, contralto; I Solisti di Zagreb, Antonio Janigro, cond. Vanguard/CBC, recorded c1964
Among the Handel projects of her time for which Forrester was an obvious choice was the now-legendary New York City Opera production of Julius Caesar in a version prepared by the company's general director Julius Rudel, who also conducted the production. The role of Cleopatra made an "overnight" star of the (in reality) long-toiling Beverly Sills, with an equally gripping performance by bass-baritone Norman Treigle in the title role. Thank goodness RCA chose to make a recording based on the production.
Last night we heard Forrester singing one of Cleopatra's arias, "Piangerò la mia sorte," rightfully a soprano or mezzo-soprano role. For the City Opera production Rudel had the good sense to ask her to sing the important role of Cornelia.
HANDEL: Julius Caesar, Act I, recitative and aria, "Priva son d'ogni conforto" ("I am deprived of every consolation")
RECITATIVE [It has been a great military triumph for Caesar in Egypt, with the defeat of his former ally but now rival, Pompei. To his horror, though, he has been presented by his Egyptian hosts with the great general's severed head -- this in the presence of Pompei's wife, suddenly widow, Cornelia and their son Sextus. Cornelia promptly fainted, and following the exit of the enraged Caesar, his aide de camp Curio picks this curious, not to mention wildly inappropriate, time to go a-courting the new widow.] CURIO: She's coming to now. SEXTUS: Mother! CURIO: Cornelia! CORNELIA: O stars! And I'm still alive? [She tries to wrest Sextus' sword away from him.] CURIO [restraining CORNELIA]: Stop! In vain you seek to stain your weapon with blood in that breast. Curio, who still adores you, and wants you as his wife, if only you'll accept, will know how to avenge you with his sword. CORNELIA: Your wife? CURIO: Yes. CORNELIA: Silence yourself! SEXTUS: Mother! CORNELIA: My flesh! SEXTUS: What shall we do now?
ARIA: Cornelia I am deprived of every consolation, and yet there is no hope for death for me, wretched one. My heart, engulfed with pain, is already weary of suffering, and death denies itself to me.
Maureen Forrester (c), Cornelia; Beverly Wolff (ms), Sextus; William Beck (b), Curio; New York City Opera Orchestra, Julius Rudel, cond. RCA/BMG, recorded April-May 1967
Given the sparse representation of Forrester on current records, the ample contributions of the YouTubers are indispensable. At the top of this post we have that amazing performance of "He was despised," or most of it, thanks to the YouTube time limitation. And for a representation of Forrester's important Bach repertory we have to turn to YouTube. Here is the great alto aria "Bereite dich, Zion" ("Prepare thyself, Zion") from the Christmas Oratorio.
BACH: Christmas Oratorio: Part I, No. 4, "Bereite dich, Zion" ("Prepare thyself, Zion")
Prepare thyself, Zion, with tender desire the fairest and dearest to behold with thee soon.
Thy cheeks today must much lovelier shine! Hasten most ardently the Bridegroom to love.
Maureen Forrester, contralto; I Solisti di Zagreb, Antonio Janigro, cond. Vanguard/CBC, recorded c1964
In 1965 Forrester became the alto soloist of the Bach Aria Group, whose pioneering resurrection of Bach's vast aria repertory we talked about here. The idea of the group's founder, William H. Scheide, you'll recall, is that Bach's arias, while vocal solos, are in fact generally duets -- in the case of this performance (taken from a retrospective series devoted to the great oboist Robert Bloom, a member of the Bach Aria Group throughout its 34-year run, 1946-1980), a duet for alto and oboe.
BACH: Cantata No. 79: No. 2, "Gott is unsre Sonn' und Schild" ("God is our sun and shield")
God is our sun and shield! Therefore our thankful heart praises His goodness, which he reserves for His little band. For He will protect us further, though the enemies sharpen their arrows and a blaspheming dog howls.
Bach Aria Group: Maureen Forrester, contralto; Robert Bloom, oboe; Bernard Greenhouse, cello; Paul Ulanowsky, piano. Boston Records, recorded live in Town Hall, New York, Dec. 7, 1966
ENCORE: A BIT MORE BRAHMS
Don't ask me how this fits in with our chapter on "the baroque Forrester." It doesn't. It just happens that I made an audio file of this last of the Brahms Four Serious Songs which I wound up not using in last night's preview, and I think it would be a shame to waste it.
BRAHMS: Four Serious Songs: No. 4, "Wenn ich mit Menschen- und mit Engelszungen redete" ("Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels")
Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal.
And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries, and all knowledge; and though I have all faith, so that I could move mountains, and have not charity, I am nothing.
And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, and have not charity, it profiteth me nothing.
For now we see through a glass darkly, but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.
And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity.
-- I Corinthians, XIII:1-3,12-13
Maureen Forrester, contralto; John Newmark, piano. CBC, recorded March 1-9, 1968
(Also in the realm of the baroque, last night we heard Forrester in one of her select operatic roles, Gluck's Orfeo, singing "Che farò senza Euridice." One of these days -- like when I acquire the technical competence to digitize LPs -- we'll hear some of her complete Vanguard recording conducted by Charles Mackerras, and maybe a bunch of other stuff as well.)
Finally, Mahler. As noted last night, we'll hear Forrester in the great culmating movement of Mahler's Das Lied von der Erde (The Song of the Earth), "Der Abschied" ("The Farewell"), in performances conducted by George Szell, Fritz Reiner, and Bruno Walter. And we'll sample some of the rest of this unique Mahlerian's repertory.
Sunday Classics preview: Maureen Forrester -- one of the least replaceable singers of my time
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Maureen Forrester sings Orfeo's great aria "Che farò senza Euridice" from Orfeo ed Euridice (which we've heard before), in a 1966 Italian Radio performance with the RAI Turin Symphony Orchestra conducted by Mario Rossi.
by Ken
I can't explain it, and I'm not going to try. Not too much anyhow.
On my watch here some notable singers have passed on. Beverly Sills and Luciano Pavarotti come to mind. And I didn't feel anywhere near as bad as with the passing of the great Canadian contralto Maureen Forrester, who as I noted last week died June 16, at 79, after a lost battle with Alzheimer's.
She wasn't the most text-penetratingly brilliant of performers, but in compensation there was that almost unfailing expressivity of her voice, that rarest of modern birds a true contralto, deep and full and plush. It was a voice that, given the precise control its owner exercised over it, was supremely well-suited to baroque music, where she toiled extensively and ever so beautifully. But of course that uniquely rich sound was ideally suited to romantic repertory as well.
Tonight we hear samples of both, and then a sample of one of her -- and music lovers' -- later career pleasures.
HANDEL: Julius Caesar: "Piangerò la sorte mia"
CLEOPATRA: I shall weep for my fate, so cruel and so evil, as long as I have life in my breast.
But then in death, from every side, my death will prod the tyrant night and day.
Maureen Forrester, contralto; Vienna State Opera Orchestra, Robert Zeller, cond. Westminster/CBC, recorded May 1964
And then in Sunday's post we'll hear more of Forrester's special glory, Mahler, including the nonpareil final movement, the half-hour "Farewell," of The Song of the Earth, in performances conducted by George Szell, Fritz Reiner, and Bruno Walter.
No music preview tonight, just a down payment on a remembrance of Maureen Forrester
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by Ken
A bit slow on the uptake, I'm tinkering at a tribute to the great Canadian contralto Maureen Forrester, who died June 16 at 79 after an evidently grim last decade or so, in which the descent into Alzheimer's seems to have been even rougher than the landing. Somehow Fourth of July doesn't seem the right time to deal with that, so it's penciled in for next week, or possibly the week after -- I've got some material coming that may not arrive in time. (In the NYT, Tony Tommasini managed a surprisingly decent obit; the mistake that she recorded Das Lied von der Erde with Bruno Walter is one of those slips any of us could make.)
For now, here's Forrester's next-to-last recording of Mahler's "Urlicht," from the Second (Resurrection) Symphony. (Some of you will recall that we saw the very first of her recordings of the song that I'm aware of, the 1957 CBC performance with Glenn Gould conducting -- yes, conducting!)
MAHLER: Symphony No. 2 in C minor (Resurrection): iv. "Urlicht"
Maureen Forrester, contralto; St. Louis Symphony Orchestra, Leonard Slatkin, cond. Telarc, recorded Oct. 10 and 12, 1982
Okay, maybe just one more selection: an encore from a 1981 Toronto recital, Brahms's "Lullaby."
BRAHMS: "Wiegenlied," Op. 49, No. 4
Maureen Forrester, contralto; John Newmark, piano. Recorded live, 1981
TOMORROW, SUNDAY, and MONDAY --
We have our first-ever Sunday Classics "encore presentation," as the Car Talk guys might call it: an all-American rerun, though with some new material added, in honor of Fourth of July.
It doesn't get more eloquent than Maureen Forrester singing Mahler's "Urlicht"
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The great Canadian contralto Maureen Forrester sings "Urlicht" with Glenn Gould conducting (left-handed!), from a 1957 Gould CBC telecast.
"Urlicht" ("Primal Light")
O rosebud red! Man lies in the greatest need. Man lies in the greatest anguish. Far rather would I be in heaven.
Then I came to a broad path. Then a little angel came and wanted to send me away. But no! I didn't let myself be sent away.
I am from God, I want to return to God. Dear God will give me a little light, will light me all the way to eternal blessed life.
-- text from the collection of German folk poetry Des Knaben Wunderhorn ("The Youth's Magic Horn")
by Ken
At some point we'll continue with Tchaikovsky, and come back to the comment left by our friend Balakirev in response to last week's music piece. I don't agree with much in it, except for the rather lengthy list of works by Tchaikovsky he gives a thumbs-up. The one thing that distresses me is that he so readily associates himself with the ranks of what I called "'serious' music critics," which leads me to believe that I wasn't sarcastic enough in dismissing such charlatans, whose "seriousness" resides only in their tiny brains. And yet here's someone proudly claiming membership in their ranks.
What distresses me is this evidence that I wasn't sarcastic enough. One charge I thought I would never have to face is being insufficiently sarcastic.
As I say, we can come back to Tchaikovsky. One point that might have arisen, which I thought might be interesting to talk about, is the way commentators' aesthetic dislikes may be less interesting than their likes, if they can make a useful case. Tchaikovsky himself, for example, wasn't the greatest fan of Beethoven, especially the later Beethoven, and that really doesn't tell us much, except about Tchaikovsky's own musical makeup.
Glenn Gould's eloquent case for early Beethoven
Which sent me back to thinking about the late Glenn Gould (1932-1982), the eccentric (to put it mildly) Canadian pianist, who had something close to unmitigated contempt for later Beethoven. Unlike most of us, who see the composer's artistic development as a process of unparalleled broadening and deepening, Gould thought Beethoven became ponderous, pompous, and tedious -- generally unbearable.
Again, this doesn't tell us nearly as much about Beethoven as it does about Gould, but that's still much less interesting than the case Gould made on behalf of the earlier Beethoven works, both in his writings and, in the case of the piano works, in his performances. To the works he believed in, he brought to bear the full resources of his singular imagination, and as a result, many of the earlier sonatas -- works too often thought of as way stations on the path to the composer's "greater" later sonatas -- achieve an emotional stature we rarely encounter.
(Among the Beethoven string quartets, you shouldn't be surprised to learn that Gould had no sympathy for the late ones, reckoned by most of us the composer's most searching and visionary imaginings, and not much more for the daring middle ones. But the Early Quartets, the six quartets of Op. 18 -- ah, these he loved! What a shame it is that we can't hear performances of them lit up with the kind of passion, not a word we often associate with the severely repressed Gould, and insight that abound in Gould's performances of the early sonatas.)
So who's your favorite composer?
One day we'll get around to that piece too, but so far it won't write itself. (And I need to be able to present appropriate musical selections in audio and/or video form.) That set me to thinking, how about tackling the question I'm asked so often and have never been able to answer in a way that satisfies or even means much to the questioner: Who's your favorite composer?
Because I have at least a dozen "favorite" composers, maybe more, depending on the particular kind of favoring in play. I thought it might be fun to play with that. I still think it may be, but not for now. With the weekend slipping away, I thought, well, what about offering just a glimpse one of my "favorite" composers? Then I thought perhaps I could communicate something about one of the composers whose way of looking at the world resonates most personally with me. That list would be (in provisional form):
Berlioz Mahler maybe Shostakovich
I went shopping on YouTube. If I could find just one decent clip, why, there we would be! Because I'm still fumbling with computer audio and video technology. In order to enable you to hear at least a sampling of the music I'm writing about -- and what's the point of writing about it if I can't? -- I'm still mostly dependent on "found" clips.
We hit paydirt!
Imagine my surprise to stumble across a clip I've looked for a number of times online -- the one at the top of this column, which was included in the first volume of Sony Classical's early-'90s Glenn Gould video series, drawn from the extensive work of various sorts he did for Canadian television throughout his career. This is a rare example of GG conducting -- and yes, conducting left-handed. (Normally left-handed conductors conduct just the way right-handed conductors do, for the simple reason that that's what every orchestra is accustomed to seeing. I guess GG figured that since he had no intention of presenting himself before the world's orchestras, he could conduct however he damned pleased, as long as it was "readable" by the little studio orchestra scraped together out of his modest CBC budget.)
It's a 1957 performance of the little Mahler song "Urlicht" ("Primal Light"), which serves as the fourth movement of the composer's monumental Second Symphony, the Resurrection. The soloist is one of the great Mahler singers, the Canadian contralto Maureen Forrester (born 1930), and the 1957 date would make this her first recording of "Urlicht," since she didn't take part in her first recording of the Resurrection Symphony until the following February, with Bruno Walter and the New York Philharmonic. (Unless I've missed one, she made her last Resurrection recording in October 1982 -- not a bad time span, 25 years. I'm alarmed to note that Forrester seems barely remembered today. How could that have happened?)
This haunting, childishly innocent little song sets the stage for the monumental half-hour finale of the symphony, where a soprano soloist, the alto, and a chorus join in for a setting of Klopstock's "Resurrection Ode." (The composer took pains to specifiy that these two movements should proceed without pause, but an appalling number of LP versions inserted a side break between them, and even on CD it's far from unheard-of to have a disc change here.)
The text of "Urlicht" comes from a remarkable collection of German folk or folklike poems called Des Knaben Wunderhorn (The Youth's Magic Horn), "edited" by Achim von Arnim and Clemens Brentano and published near the start of the 19th century. The anthology, which covers quite a wide range of subject matter, from idyllic flirtations to military horror stories, was an important source of inspiration for the budding German Romantic movement, and was invaluable to Mahler in the earlier stages of his career.
Not only "Urlicht" but the immediately preceding movement of the Resurrection Symphony, a nonvocal scherzo based on Mahler's wise and witty setting of "Antony of Padua's Fish Sermon," is Wunderhorn-based. (One of these days we will definitely get around to talking about that wonderful song, in which Saint Anthony gathers a large and surprisingly attentive crowd of fish species to listen to his harsh sermon about their behavior, after which the audience members, richly edified, all go back to doing exactly what they were doing before.)
To perform "Urlicht" successfully, you have to strip all artifice and manipulativeness from your performing arsenal. The singer is totally exposed, both vocally and emotionally. Sometimes the result can be surprising. Maybe the most moving performance I ever heard from Marilyn Horne was a live "Urlicht"; I wish I'd heard more performances from her with that degree of lack of artifice.
For a song of such cosmic implications, it plays above all on simplicity and directness. Enjoy!
which also features tenor Richard Lewis sounding like I doubt you've ever heard him, in fact rather lovely -- I kid you not.)
(pay no attention to the unfortunate French album title, La Voix du Siècle, "The Voice of the Century") -- a CD of Handel compiled from assorted Westminster and Vanguard originals attached to a CD reissuing CBC's own March 1968 coupling of Brahms's Four Serious Songs and Wagner's Wesendonck-Lieder (once released by Decca), filled out with song material from a January 1981 Toronto recital. (The performance we heard two weeks ago of 
