Ghost of Sunday Classics: Nocturne!

MENDELSSOHN: Notturno from A Midsummer Night's Dream (incidental music), Op. 61


Concertgebouw Orchestra (Amsterdam), George Szell, cond. Decca, recorded Dec. 2-4, 1957

Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, Otto Klemperer, cond. Broadcast performance, May 23, 1969

by Ken

A much-loved little piece latched onto my brain this weeko. It was the "Nocturne" from Mendelssohn's Midsummer Night's Dream incidental music, and it really still hasn't let go. That's the sort of thing that might once have triggered a post, especially since we don't seem to have spent as much time as I remembered with the incidental music. The only traces I can find are from a November 2008 Mendelssohn post, where we heard the Szell-Concertgebouw recording of the commonly played four-movment grouping of the Overture, Scherzo, Notturno, and Wedding March. and a more expanded suite that I drew from a Klemperer-Bavarian Radio Symphony broadcast performance of a generous selection from the incidental music.

I've re-extracted just the "Notturno" from those performances, as heard above.


AS LONG AS WE'RE REHEARING THE SZELL AND
KLEMPERER "NOTTURNO" PERFORMANCES --

I thought we might as well listen again to the full selections from the MSND music we heard back in 2008.

Read more »

Sunday Classics: Young Felix Mendelssohn traveled to Italy, and when he returned home . . .

Volker Hartung conducts the Cologne Young Philharmonic in the first movement of Mendelssohn's Italian Symphony in Cologne's Philharmonie, 1999. (He keeps the movement trimmed down by skipping the exposition repeat.)

by Ken

For everything from simple warm-weather vacation destination to deep cultural repository, Europe's southernmost projections -- the Iberian, Italian, and Greek peninsulas -- have always exerted a magnetic pull on the continents more northerly inhabitants. We've already sampled the musical fascinations of Spain, but musicians have always felt a special connection to the cradle of Italy. We began listening to products of this connection in Friday night's preview, a tribute to Tchaikovsky's tribute, the Capriccio italien, and we'll be returning to Tchaikovsky's Italophilia, but today we're going to listen to Mendelssohn's Italian Symphony.


This image graced the jacket of the original Epic LP issue of George Szell and the Cleveland Orchestra's stereo recording of Mendelssohn's Italian Symphony. (We're going to hear their earlier mono version -- eventually.)


TO JOURNEY THROUGH MENDELSSOHN'S
ITALIAN SYMPHONY, CLICK HERE

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Sunday Classics: Mr. Mendelssohn explains it all for us

Sarah Chang was only 15 when some evil genie stuffed her into that hideous green dress to perform Mendelssohn's E minor Violin Concerto with the New York Philharmonic under Kurt Masur, one of the composer's longest-serving successors as music director of the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra. We hear (for a change -- ha-ha!) the Andante.

by Ken

For reasons I suggested last night, being 15 isn't necessarily an insuperable obstacle to finding the profound simplicity of this movement. We heard how hard it is even for the greatest violinists to "come off it" -- to set aside the whorish habits of wanting to please an audience and just hear and try to pass on what's happening in the music. Going by the Parsifal Principle, a "pure fool" might actually have an advantage stumbling onto the truth of this music. (I'd be very much surprised if it happened in that green dress, though.)

As I mentioned last night, by the time I had my revelation, I must have heard the Mendelssohn E minor Concerto at least a hundred times. When it suddenly "landed" on me, it really seemed as if I'd never heard the Andante. That pretty much blew my mind, but as I've revisited performances that I would have heard, I've been less surprised. I'm not sure that I ever did hear the movement.

Once I did, it occurred to me -- and the feeling has only deepened since -- that in this movement we hear all the mysteries of the universe explained and all the questions of mortal existence answered (if perhaps stopping short of such nagging but essentially local perplexities as where you left your house keys last night, or where you might find some edible corned beef or pastrami). The only catch is that those explanations and answers come in musical form, and so still need to be translated into more usable form for practical application. If nothing else, though, they make you feel that the pursuit is worth pursuing.

The Violin Concerto was first performed in 1845, and thus comes from near the end of the career of Mendelssohn (1809-1847), who alas didn't make it to his 39th birthday. It was a career that may have had the most remarkable launch in musical history. There have been numerous "prodigies" who produced first-rate music in their teens. Mendelssohn did something more. Make up a short list of the greatest music ever written, and no matter how much you try to shorten it, you're going to have a tough time excluding the Octet for Strings Mendelssohn wrote at 16 and the Overture for Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream he wrote at 17. I just don't see how it's possible to write "better," more fully imagined music.

Let's start with the opening movement of the Octet. Oh, I don't think there's any doubt that it was written by a young person. There's an age beyond which it's just hard to sustain this degree of freshness, buoyancy, and sheer joy. But the structure is so taut and the musical materials so arresting that for me that 15 minutes pass in a trice, and a delighted trice at that. Note, by the way, the tempo marking: "moderately quick but with fire (emphasis added). I think there's plenty of fire in this 1959 recording by the veteran Smetana Quartet (though violist Milan Škampa was a relative newcomer, having been with the group a mere three years) and its younger colleagues, my much-loved Janáček Quartet.

Octet for Strings in E-flat major, Op. 20:
i. Allegro moderato ma con fuoco

Jiří Novák, Lubomír Kostecký, Jiří Trávníček, and Adolf Sýkora, violins; Milan Škampa and Jiří Kratochvíl, violas; Antonín Kohout and Karel Krafka, cellos
Westminster, recorded in Vienna, June 1959

Jeez, having come this far -- we're almost halfway through the Octet (15:01 out of 34:04 in this performance) -- how can we not hear the rest?

Octet for Strings in E-flat major, Op. 20:

ii. Andante, iii. Scherzo, Allegro leggierissimo, iv. Presto

Smetana and Janáček Quartets (Vienna, June 1959)

We might as well continue straight on with --

A Midsummer Night's Dream: Overture, Op. 21

Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, Otto Klemperer, cond.
Broadcast performance, May 23, 1969

Now I wouldn't suggest that young Felix's talents were fully developed at this point, just that they were as fully developed as he needed for the Octet and the MSND Overture. In fact, he continued expanding and heightening his resources all the way up to his intolerably early death, which genuinely seems to have been hastened by disregard for his health in the effort to create and promote such works as the great oratorio Elijah. (We're going to return for a closer look at Elijah in a separate post.) With Mendelssohn's early death in November 1847 (for what it's worth, less than six months after the death of his beloved sister Fanny, about whom more in a moment), he seems to me perhaps the composer whose fulfillment was left most tantalizingly unfulfilled.

I have no problem chalking the two supreme masterpieces of Mendelssohn's youth up as miracles. Still, we know a lot about the conditions in which the budding composer's talent was discovered and nurtured -- in a prosperous and deeply cultured household where artistic creativity and the life of the imagination were prized. Felix's skills and imagination expanded in tandem with those of his sister Fanny (a bit more than three years older than him; the relationship certainly recalls the symbiotic one between young Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and his "big" sister Nannerl), who was a bit more than three years older.

All four Mendelssohn children (there was another brother, Paul, and sister, Rebecca) seem to have been dazzlingly precocious, and Abraham and Lea Mendelssohn took their children's gifts seriously. Of course there was still a difference between the way boys' and girls' talents were treated. Although the parents clearly recognized Fanny's talent, there just wasn't any precedent or even procedure for developing a musically precocious girl's talent in the same way as a boy's. This leaves permanently open the question whether Fanny may not in fact have possessed a creative gift at least equal to Felix's.

Most of Felix's early music was written as part of communal creative explorations of Felix and his siblings, in particular Fanny. This is emphatically true of the Midsummer NIght's Dream Overture. If you're familiar with this altogether remarkable and ravishing piece, you may have noticed that I chose that decidedly unorthodox broadcast performance by Otto Klemperer and the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra.

It's an odd business, choosing a performance by the BRSO for the special intensity of its orchestral playing. Despite the blessing of the BRSO's 30-year stewardship by those splendid musicians Eugen Jochum (who founded it in 1949 and remained at the helm until 1960) and Rafael Kubelik (1961-79), we tend to think of it as a "solidly reliable" ensemble, not one you would turn to for special qualities in phrasing or tone production. However, there are a number of broadcast performances, in Bavarian Radio's excellent early broadcast stereo, that suggest some chemistry between Klemperer and this orchestra. Klemperer had made a fine studio recording of Mendelssohn's Midsummer Night's Dream incidental music with the Philharmonia Orchestra in 1961, but listen to the BRSO Overture, and for all that it may not be the last word in forward drive, or the ultimate in ensemble precision, enjoy the way it digs into the music and maximizes its magic.

So it seems only natural, as we continue with the Midsummer Night's Dream incidental music (from which we already heard the universally known Wedding March last night), to stick with the Klemperer-BRSO performance. We're going to hear, not just the three remaining excerpts (Scherzo, Notturno, and Wedding March) that form the standard MSND "suite," but also the Intermezzo and Mendelssohn's setting of the fairy scene "Ye spotted snakes, with soprano and mezzo solos and chorus, for no better reason than that I can't bear leaving them out.

A Midsummer Night's Dream, Op. 55:

Scherzo, "Ye spotted snakes," Intermezzo,

Notturno, Wedding March

Edith Mathis (s), Brigitte Fassbaender (ms) [in "Ye spotted snakes"]; Bavarian Radio Chorus and Symphony Orchestra, Otto Klemperer, cond. (Munich, May 23, 1969)

Ye spotted snakes with double tongue,
Thorny hedgehogs, be not seen;
Newts and blind-worms, do no wrong,
Come not near our fairy queen.
Philomel, with melody
Sing in our sweet lullaby;
Lulla, lulla, lullaby, lulla, lulla, lullaby:
Never harm,
Nor spell nor charm,
Come our lovely lady nigh;
So, good night, with lullaby.
Weaving spiders, come not here;
Hence, you long-legg'd spinners, hence!
Beetles black, approach not near;
Worm nor snail, do no offence.
Philomel, with melody, & c.
Hence, away! now all is well:
One aloof stand sentinel.

I should probably have mentioned that, apart from the Overture, the MSND incidental music is not a product of Mendelssohn's youth. It was written in 1842. Did you notice any discontinuity? Your ears may be better than mine, but I'll be damned if I hear any evidence of the 16-year time gap between the Overture and the rest of this amazing music. Again, in the music of Mendelssohn's that works best, he had found a match between subject matter and his then-available technical and emotional resources.

All told there's about an hour of MSND music, though not all of it can be performed independently. At the same time, the music is rather overwhelming for practical use in performances of the play -- though RCA recording made a three-LP recording of the only-somewhat-abridged 1954 Old Vic production (directed by Michael Benthall, with a cast including Moira Shearer as Titania, Robert Helpmann as Oberon, and Stanley Holloway as Bottom), which incorporated most of Mendelssohn's music, performed by the BBC Symphony under Sir Malcolm Sargent.

Here, just for fun, is a more standard performance of the standard four-movement MSND "suite":

A Midsummer Night's Dream, Opp. 21/55:
Overture, Scherzo, Notturno, Wedding March

Concertgebouw Orchestra (Amsterdam), George Szell, cond.
Decca, recorded Dec. 2-4, 1957

Mendelssohn certainly made good use of the limited time allotted him. At 26 he became music director of Leipzig's Gewandhaus Orchestra, and beyond his own compositional activity, it's almost impossible to overstate the importance of his role he played in advancing the cause of music, especially German music, old and new. (He was a central figure in the revival of public awareness of the works of his great Leipzig predecessor J. S. Bach. Bach's music was never lost to musicians and scholars, but the idea of performing it publicly seemed somewhere between quaint and preposterous until Mendelssohn took up the cause, most famously resurrecting the St. Matthew Passion, which he performed in his own edition.

I guess we should stop now. As I mentioned, we're going to come back to Elijah, the work that occupied so much of his attention in his final years, and a work that despite its unevenness is filled with unmatched dramatic power as it chronicles the prophet's rise in God's service and then his collapse, followed by what I like to think of as the story of the one person in biblical history who commanded an apology from God.

OOPS, SHOULDN'T WE HEAR THE WHOLE VIOLIN CONCERTO?

While I was trying to get the final links sorted out among this week's classical posts, it suddenly occurred to me that we never did get to hear the whole of Mendelssohn's great E minor Violin Concerto. So here is the whole performance that contains my preferred version of the Andante:

Violin Concerto in E minor, Op. 64:

i. Allegro molto appassionato, ii. Andante,

iii. Allegretto non troppo -- Allegro molto vivace

Yehudi Menuhin, violin; Philharmonia Orchestra, Efrem Kurtz, cond.
EMI, recorded Apr. 30, 1958


OKAY, THAT'S A WRAP

I can't think of a lovelier way to end than with Mendelssohn's best-known song, "On Wings of Song," sung for us first by soprano Margaret Price and then by baritone Wolfgang Holzmair. (If Ms. Margaret -- oops, Dame Margaret -- and Herr Wolfgang were fiddlers, I think they would both have "gotten" the Andante of the E minor Concerto.)

Note the composer's title: "Abendlied" ("Evening Song").

"Auf Flügeln des Gesanges" ("On Wings of Song"),

Op. 34, No. 2

Margaret Price, soprano

Graham Johnson, piano
Hyperion (CD of Mendelssohn songs)

recorded in Munich, March 1993

Wolfgang Holzmair, baritone

Anna Wagner, piano
Preiser (CD of Mendelssohn songs)

recorded in Vienna, October 1985

poem by Heinrich Heine

On wings of song,
My beloved, I'll bear you away,
Away to the pastures by the Ganges,
Where I know the loveliest spot.

There, in the quiet moonlight,
Is a garden, blossoming red;
The lotus blossoms are awaiting for
Their dear little sister.

The violets chuckle and fondly murmur
And look up at the stars;
Secretly the roses whisper
Fragrant tales to one another.

The innocent and knowing gazelles
Bound past, listening;
And in the distance murmur
The waves of the sacred steam.

There will we recline
Beneath the palm tree
And drink of love and peace
And dream a blissful dream.

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Sunday Classics preview: Mendelssohn speaks eloquently in simple declarative musical sentences

I guaranteed you last night that even if you don't know anything about classical music, you know at least one piece by the composer of the violin concerto whose slow movement we heard performed by a number of outstanding violinists. And here is that piece: yes, the world's second most famous wedding march, and Mendelssohn's, from his incidental music for Shakespeare's Midsummer Night's Dream, really is a wedding march -- unlike its even more famous rival. (The Bridal Procession at the start of Act III of Wagner's Lohengrin is exactly that, not a wedding march. Elsa and Lohengrin were already married at the end of Act II; here they're being escorted to the bridal chamber for the, er, main event.) Tomorrow we're going to be hearing more of the MSND incidental music, notably the incandescent Overture.

by Ken

Now to return to our concerto movement. This is of course the central Andante of Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto in E minor, Op. 64. Here are the performances again, in the same order, this time properly identified:

A. Johanna Martzy (1924-1979)

Philharmonia Orchestra, Wolfgang Sawallisch, cond.
EMI, recorded June 1954


B. David Oistrakh (1908-1974)

USSR State Symphony Orchestra, Kiril Kondrashin, cond.
Melodiya, recorded 1949


C. Arthur Grumiaux (1921-1986)

New Philharmonia Orchestra, Jan Krenz, cond.
Philips, recorded September 1972


D. Jascha Heifetz (1901-1987)

Boston Symphony Orchestra, Charles Munch, cond.
RCA/BMG, recorded February 1959


E. Yehudi Menuhin (1916-1999)

Philharmonia Orchestra, Efrem Kurtz, cond.
EMI, recorded Apr. 30, 1958


Despite often considerable differences among these performances, the middle three -- by violinists as great as Oistrakh, Grumiaux, and Heifetz -- like just about every other performance I've ever heard, from violinists great and not so great, begin with the assumption that the performer has to start by making this movement "expressive," via some combination of syrupy legato tone, or lush vibrato, or other violinistic devices. I don't know how many times I'd heard the piece -- 100? 200? -- when it suddenly hit me that all those violinists have basically missed the point of this music, which proceeds from its utterly confident simplicity.

As best I recall, the performance that suddenly enabled me to hear this was our E, in the form of a British LP reissue of this 1958 recording by Yehudi Menuhin. And I have to say that as I listened through the clips, a certain amount of the radiance of the music began to reach me via A, Johanna Martzy.

I think it's clear that on some level Arthur Grumiaux and Jascha Heifetz hear this. Note how they're both able, thanks to their amazing bow-arm control, to control the tension of the bow's contact with the strings so that there is no audible tension -- the sound seems simply to float. (I can't begin to tell you how hard this is.) But neither of these magicians can put aside the habit of wanting to make the music "emotional" -- you don't often hear Grumiaux's vibrato throbbing this wildly, while Heifetz injects graffiti-like little curlicues that are not only unnecessary but destructive to the music's remarkable flow.

Of course the ultimate in beautiful tone was rarely among Menuhin's priorities. Boy, does that work in his favor here! By allowing the music to speak in relatively simple declarative musical sentences, he lifts the piece way beyond surface prettiness into the realm of the ethereal. I'll have a few more words to say about this tomorrow.


FINALLY, FOR A BIT OF RAZZLE-DAZZLE . . .

I've talked more than once about pieces of music, starting with Leonard Bernstein's Candide Overture, I can listen to over and over and over, on to -- if not beyond -- the limits of human endurance. I couldn't resist throwing in another one here: the finale of Mendelssohn's First Piano Concerto in G minor, Op. 25.

Of course to achieve the full lift of which this joyous movement is capable, the performer has to earn it, and for a job like this, there was no one better than Rudolf Serkin, another great artist who placed less than the highest premium on beautiful tone. He was more concerned with firmness and evenness of tone and finely controlled gradations of attack, and compensated in various other ways, including what I can only describe as an intuitive feeling for musical quirkiness, which is about as close as many Germans get to a sense of humor. He made this recording of the concerto with the Philadelphia Orchestra under Eugene Ormandy on Dec. 19, 1957:



Note how we can feel the principal theme trying to break through before it finally does at 0:47, and ditto with the joyous finger-rippling romp that finally erupts at 1:25 and again at 2:13. If these emergences are really earned, the whole thing can be simply exhilarating.

P.S.: MENDELSSOHN'S STRUCTURAL "INNOVATION"

You may have noticed in our clips of both the finale of the E minor Violin Concerto and the First Piano Concerto that there's some kind of introductory funny business going on. I thought I might have something to say about this in tomorrow's post, but I didn't. What happened was that Mendelssohn got this idea to "improve" the concerto form by binding all three of its movements musically.

Of course, on occasion composers have found wonderful real links between movements -- the most wonderful, surely, being the way Tchaikovsky got from the slow movement to the finale of his Violin Concerto. It was certainly an interesting thought on Mendelssohn's part, worth pursuing, but I can't say it strengthens the pieces, which stand or fall on the quality of the materials, workmanship, and compatibility of their component movements. Fortunately, the pieces turned out not to be in need of artificial strengthening.

P.P.S.: YES, WE WILL HEAR THE WHOLE VIOLIN CONCERTO

I always meant for you to hear the whole thing, and even after finishing tomorrow's "real" post somehow never got around to it. Never fear, you'll find it as a "bonus" at the end.

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[7/1/2012] Young Felix Mendelssohn traveled to Italy, and when he returned home . . . (continued)

In this master-class excerpt, Kurt Masur works with Huba Hollokoy on the ravishing slow movement of Mendelssohn's Italian Symphony (from www.masterclassfoundation.org).


I HOPED TO FIND SOME INSPIRING COMMENTARY
ON THE ITALIAN SYMPHONY TO SHARE . . .

. . . but I didn't -- or even anything sufficiently utilitarian to be worth cadging. So let's just run down the basic facts.

Over a two-year-plus period between 1830 and 1832 the 21-year-old (when he set out) Mendelssohn made a "grand trip" that included a fair amount of time spent in Italy, where he was too busy to actually compose an "Italian symphony," which he set out to do when he finally returned home, after stops in Paris (where he met Chopin) and London (where he met Paganini [UPDATE: no, wait, I think that was on a later visit to London]). In May 1833 he conducted a highly successful premiere of the new symphony in London, but he was never satisfied with it, and his resolution to "fix" it kept him from allowing it to be published -- and then time ran out on him, in November 1847, two months shy of his 38th birthday.

Much ink has been spilled, to remarkably little purpose, discussing and debating the symphony's "Italianness." The point, it seems to me, is that all of this spelled Italy for Mendelssohn. (Perhaps the farcical limit was reached in a comment on a YouTube posting of a poor-quality video clip of part of the first movement as conducted, admittedly not wildly quickly, by Kurt Masur (whom we in fact are about to hear conduct the movement.) The comment:

"it's too slow. it's not Italian at all...."

Mamma mia!


LET'S LISTEN TO THE SYMPHONY MOVEMENT BY MOVEMENT

The performances have been chosen to suggest some qualities I think are worth noting in the music.

MENDELSSOHN: Symphony No. 4 in A, Op. 90 (Italian):
i. Allegro vivace

An Amazon commenter notes disparagingly that there are "more thrilling" recordings of the Mendelssohn symphonies than Kurt Masur's, and this is probably true, and is likely important to people who believe that thrills are what life is about, or possibly what art is supposed to supply in order to fill the thrill gap in life, much in the manner of modern-day amusement parks, where rides seem to have no other function. A lot of conductors indeed believe that the correct way to play the zestful opening movement of the Italian Symphony is to rev up the thrill quotient, and I can enjoy performances like Leonard Bernstein's New York recording. Pretty exciting, no? (When LB rerecorded the symphony, as was so often the case he slowed it down, but in this case really not that much.)

By contrast, Kurt Masur's performance, with Mendelssohn's own Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, seems to me to communicate a good deal more in the music -- fluidity, elegance, sophisticated exhilaration. It doesn't betray that speedy-sounding Allegro vivace tempo marking, but it has more dimension, more shapeliness, in the end more fun.

New York Philharmonic, Leonard Bernstein, cond. Columbia/CBS/Sony, recorded Jan. 13, 1958

Gewandhaus Orchestra (Leipzig), Kurt Masur, cond. Eurodisc/Deutsche Schallplatten/BMG, recorded c1971

ii. Andante con moto

I've heard lots of performances of this slow movement that make it sound prosaic and dull. Here we have two performances that in terms of tempo could hardly be more different but surprisingly achieve, for me at least, similar results: near-rapturous songfulness. Not many conductors could achieve this at either the velocity of Solti or the leisurely pace of Casals. There's so much liquid beauty in the latter that I would hate to give it up, but I really don't feel much sacrifice with Solti's performance -- it doesn't sound fast, does it?

Vienna Philharmonic, Sir Georg Solti, cond. Decca, recorded live, February 1993

Marlboro Festival Orchestra, Pablo Casals, cond. Columbia/CBS/Sony, recorded 1963

iii. Con moto moderato

In the scherzo we again have a startling contrast in pacing. This time there's no question that Ashkenazy and Karajan are hearing the music very differently -- Ashkenazy focusing on the "movement" in con moto, Karajan really feeling the moderating influence of that moderato qualifier. It's a really big chance Karajan takes here -- and I think brings it off.

Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, Vladimir Ashkenazy, cond. Decca, recorded May 1996

Berlin Philharmonic, Herbert von Karajan, cond. DG, recorded January 1971

iv. Saltarello: Presto

As in the first movement, conductors commonly want to take this obviously quick-moving movement quickly. (And the Presto tempo marking certainly justifies it.) Not many of them, however, can maintain the kind of poise that Tennstedt does in what seems to me a quite terrific performance. At the same time, as with so many pieces of music where quickness is built into the fabric, it's hardly necessary, and can be counterproductive, to overemphasize that quickness, as so many conductors do. By contrast, Klemperer's performance (actually not all that much slower) certainly moves breezily while allowing room to incorporate dimensions of shape, color, and temperament.

Berlin Philharmonic, Klaus Tennstedt, cond. EMI, recorded 1980

Philharmonia Orchestra, Otto Klemperer, cond. EMI, recorded February 1960


NOW LET'S LISTEN TO THE WHOLE SYMPHONY . . .

. . . in a performance of the quicker-is-better variety ("Mamma mia, that's Italian!"), but a pretty decent one.

MENDELSSOHN: Symphony No. 4 in A, Op. 90 (Italian):
i. Allegro vivace
ii Andante con moto
iii. Con moto moderato
iv. Saltarello: Presto


Cleveland Orchestra, George Szell, cond. Columbia, recorded Nov. 26, 1947 (digital transfer by F. Reeder)

THE WHOLE ITALIAN SYMPHONY FOR $1.59!

Yes, for $1.59 you can download this fine Vox recording by the Rochester Philharmonic under David Zinman, who for some decades now has been for me about as reliable a conductor as there is out there. (We're going to be hearing from him again next week when we return to Tchaikovsky's remembrances of Italy.)

NEXT WEEK IN SUNDAY CLASSICS:

We hear Tchaikovsky's sextet for strings Souvenir de Florence.


RETURN TO THE BEGINNING OF THE POST

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