"When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying the cross."
-- Sinclair Lewis
Friday, July 05, 2013
Preview: It's Fantasy Week at Sunday Classics!
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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: In the piano concertos, we hear Beethoven in hard-fought sort-of-harmony with the universe
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No less than Van Cliburn introduces the piano-playing Serkins, Rudolf (1903-1991) and Peter (born 1947), playing Schubert's four-hand Military March in G, D. 733, No. 2, on the occasion of Serkin père's 85th birthday in 1988, from a 1988 concert featuring 26 pianists, issued by VAI.
"Rudolf Serkin was once asked, jokingly of course, if Beethoven had composed the Choral Fantasy for Marlboro. The piece has everything Marlboro could have wanted for its final concert: an orchestra in which everyone could play; solos within the orchestra; ensemble playing among various instruments; piano solo; and a chorus for everyone else in the Marlboro community. Rudolf Serkin responded, with his characteristic smile, 'No, Beethoven didn't compose it for Marlboro.... But he approves.'"
What Christopher Serkin, a distinguished law professor, discreetly doesn't mention here -- though his last name is certainly suggestive -- is that Rudolf Serkin, a co-founder of the Marlboro Music Festival who was for decades its presiding artistic spirit -- was his grandfather, and Peter Serkin, whom he later mentions conducts the Choral Fantasy performance included in this Marlboro anniversary issue, is his uncle. (Peter Serkin, while a dramatically different sort of musician from his father, established himself at an early age as one of the leading pianists of his generation. It's kind of weird, for me at least, to think that young Peter is now in his 60s.)
Not many serious music people take the Choral Fantasy seriously, and for a long time I didn't get either. At some point the pieces fell into place, and that was thanks mostly to Rudolf Serkin's recordings. However, I was unaccountably unaware of something Christopher Serkin points out in his comment: "For almost 40 years, the Choral Fantasy was the last piece in the last [Marlboro Festival] concert of the summer." He goes on:
Especially in recent years when Marlboro has been exclusively a chamber music festival, the Choral Fantasy was the one time during the summer when all of the chamber musicians would come together into an orchestra, and the results were invariably magical. In any given year, the orchestra would include a mixture of some of the great luminaries of the musical world playing alongside brilliant younger musicians -- soloists and chamber musicians briefly forming an orchestra. For that one moment, it could be the greatest orchestra in the world. . . .
Despite all of the remarkable Choral Fantasy performances over the years, this CD marks the first time that a Marlboro recording of the piece has been released. Whatever one's view of the work itself, it represents Marlboro to many of us who have spent summers there.
[Note: You know where Amazon asks, at the end of each "customer review," "Was this review helpful to you?" When I looked, "27 out of 28 people found the following review helpful." I made it 28 out of 29. I'm wondering what the deal is with the person who didn't find this review helpful.]
We're going to talk more about the piece later. For now, let's just plunge into Serkin's first recording, made in 1962 as the second-side LP filler for his new recording of the Beethoven Third Concerto with Leonard Bernstein and the New York Philharmonic.
BEETHOVEN: Fantasy in C for Piano, Chorus, and Orchestra, Op. 80
The most obvious observation to be made is that the Choral Fantasy of 1808 (thus at roughly the time of the Sixth Symphony, the Pastoral is a dry run for the monumental finale of the Ninth Symphony, which culminates in a setting of Schiller's Ode to Joy including four vocal soloists and chorus, composed more than a decade later. As in the finale of the Ninth, Beethoven takes us through a winding, surprise-filled landscape before we reach the unexpected choral destination. Wikipedia has German and English texts in a pleasantly sympathetic article on the Choral Fantasy, at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Choral_Fantasy. Here's Decca's translation:
Enticingly fair and lovely sound the harmonies of our life, and from a sense of beauty arise glowers that bloom forever.
Peace and joy flow hand in hand like the changing play of the waves; what was crowded together in chaos and hostility now shapes itself into exalted feeling.
When music's enchantment reigns and poetry's consecration speaks, wondrous things take shape; night and storm change to light.
Outer peace, inner bliss are the rulers of the happy man. But the spring sun of the arts causes light to flow from both.
Great things that have penetrated the heart blossom anew and beautifully on high, and the spirit that has soared up is always echoed by a chorus of spirits.
Take them, then, you noble souls, gladly, these gifts of noble art. When love and strength are wedded together mankind is rewarded with divine grace.
Rudolf Serkin, piano; Westminster Choir, New York Philharmonic, Leonard Bernstein, cond. Columbia/CBS/Sony, recorded May 1, 1962
THERE'S SOMETHING SPECIAL ABOUT BEETHOVEN'S FIVE PIANO CONCERTOS
It may be with his five piano concertos that Beethoven's link to Mozart feels most direct. They were written more than anything for the composers' own use, as exceedingly public demonstrations of what they could do. The concerto we know as Beethoven's Second could be one that Mozart never lived to write.
(Let's get the numbering straight: No, I'm not concerned about the earlier concerto or two Beethoven wrote. The "canon" is appropriately five concertos. But the first two have come down to us numbered wrong. The one we know as No. 2, which could pass for a concerto Mozart never lived to write, was composed first, and then "No. 1," the mighty C major Concerto, which recalls Mozart's grandest concerto, No. 25, also in C major, and expands it yet another step.)
The C major Concerto is thought to have been written in 1798 and revised in 1800, whereupon Beethoven seems to have set to work almost immediately on a companion piece in C minor, which also has an illustrious antecedent in Mozart's No. 24. We've already heard the finale of Beethoven's C minor Concerto. Let's listen now to the whole thing, in what I'm calling an "all-Rubinstein performance," assembled from his first three recordings of the piece. (I didn't consider using the fourth, from his third and final Beethoven concerto cycle, from 1975, with his young keyboard colleague Daniel Barenboim conducting, which I actually quite like, for all the evidence of Rubinstein's advancing age. But I don't have it on CD, which I guess says something about just how much I like it, at least relative to the earlier versions.)
BEETHOVEN: Piano Concerto No. 3 in C minor, Op. 37 ALL-RUBINSTEIN PERFORMANCE
i. Allegro con brio
Arthur Rubinstein, piano; Symphony of the Air, Josef Krips, cond. RCA/BMG, recorded April 1956 ii. Largo
Arthur Rubinstein, piano; Boston Symphony Orchestra, Erich Leinsdorf, cond. RCA/BMG, recorded Apr. 5-6, 1965 iii. Rondo: Allegro
Arthur Rubinstein, piano; NBC Symphony Orchestra, Arturo Toscanini, cond. RCA/BMG, recorded live, Oct. 29, 1944
ABOUT THE THIRD CONCERTO'S LINEAGE
You don't have to take my word -- listen for yourself. It seemed obvious to go with hour honorees Rubinstein and Serkin (and then, which of their recordings?), so I just picked one of each.
MOZART: Piano Concerto No. 24 in C minor, K. 491: i. Allegro
Arthur Rubinstein, piano; RCA Victor Symphony Orchestra, Josef Krips, cond. RCA/BMG, recorded Apr. 20, 1958
Rudolf Serkin, piano; London Symphony Orchestra, Claudio Abbado, cond. DG, recorded October 1985
BEETHOVEN: Piano Concerto No. 1 in C, Op. 15: i. Allegro con brio
Arthur Rubinstein, piano; Boston Symphony Orchestra, Erich Leinsdorf, cond. RCA/BMG, recorded Dec. 20, 1967
Rudolf Serkin, piano; Boston Symphony Orchestra, Seiji Ozawa, cond. Telarc, recorded Oct. 5, 1983
Here, then, is an "all-star" performance of the Third Concerto.
BEETHOVEN: Piano Concerto No. 3 in C minor, Op. 37 ALL-STAR PERFORMANCE
i. Allegro con brio
Murray Perahia, piano; Concertgebouw Orchestra, Bernard Haitink, cond. CBS/Sony, recorded c1985 ii. Largo
Sviatoslav Richter, piano; Vienna Symphony Orchestra, Kurt Sanderling, cond. DG, recorded Sept. 28-30, 1962 iii. Rondo: Allegro
Rudolf Firkusny, piano; Philharmonia Orchestra, Walter Süsskind, cond. EMI, recorded c1958
We've already talked about the remarkable opening of Beethoven's Fourth Concerto, in last night's preview, so why don't we just go right into it? Note that the scale of the concluding Rondo has grown conspicuously over its predecessor, but between these mammoth outer movements, Beethoven chose to go short with the slow movement, which is nevertheless a piece of considerable emotional weight. Our "all-Schnabel performance" consists of one movement from each of Since Artur Schnabel's three recordings (about which more in a moment).
BEETHOVEN: Piano Concerto No. 4 in G major, Op. 58 ALL-SCHNABEL PERFORMANCE
i. Allegro moderato
Artur Schnabel, piano; London Philharmonic Orchestra, Malcolm Sargent, cond. HMV/EMI, recorded Feb. 16, 1933 ii. Andante con moto
Artur Schnabel, piano; Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Frederick Stock, cond. RCA/BMG, recorded 1942 iii. Rondo: Vivace
Artur Schnabel, piano; Philharmonia Orchestra, Issay Dobrowen, cond. HMV/EMI, recorded June 5-7, 1946
Schnabel's 1932-35 Beethoven concerto cycle remains a recording landmark, not just historically but musically, and again -- as with the Pearl transfers of the equally legendary Beethoven sonata recordings -- my piano maven Leo tipped me off to one transfer from the 78s that's so far superior to any other he's heard as to make it an all-or-nothing proposition. This one, however, is readily available: It's Naxos's, done by Mark Obert-Thorn.
THE LATER SCHNABEL BEETHOVEN CONCERTOS
In 1946-47 EMI had the excellent idea of rerecording Schnabel in the Beethoven concertos, taking advantage of all the improvements in recording technology, and two concertos were recorded each year. (In 1942, as we know, Schnabel had rerecorded No. 4 with the Chicago Symphony under Frederick Stock. They also recorded No. 5, the Emperor. Schnabel never did rerecord No. 1.)
Even though Schnabel was still Schnabel -- and it should be said that, while he put up with it, he hated the recording process -- and two very good conductors, Issay Dobrowen and Alceo Galliera, were engaged (though Galliera, who was brought in for the 1947 Emperor, was only 37, and possibly more influenceable if anyone had wished to influence him), not many music lovers have ever been wildly enthusiastic about the remakes, which objectively seem like Schnabel performances but just don't seem to have the inner life of the real thing. (This sounds horribly pat coming so soon after my vicious attack on Walter Legge for systematically draining outstanding musicians' recorded performances of the connective tissue that made their real performances sound so different, but the symptoms do seem to fit. Do I have to tell you who produced those 1946-47 recordings?
With that, let's have one final go at the Fourth Concerto:
BEETHOVEN: Piano Concerto No. 4 in G major, Op. 58 ALL-STAR PERFORMANCE
i. Allegro moderato
Leon Fleisher, piano; Cleveland Orchestra, George Szell, cond. Epic/CBS/Sony, recorded Jan. 10, 1959 ii. Andante con moto
Wilhelm Kempff, piano; Berlin Philharmonic, Ferdinand Leitner, cond. DG, recorded July 1961 iii. Rondo: Vivace
Emil Gilels, piano; Philharmonia Orchestra, Leopold Ludwig, cond. EMI, recorded Apr. 26-May 1, 1957
THE LINE ENDS WITH THE EMPEROR
After the Fourth Concerto, Beethoven did return to the piano concerto once more, to produce the grandest and most majestic of the series, the Emperor. It's possible that this is as far as he could have taken the concerto form, but we'll never know, because although his voluminous musical sketchbooks do contain sketches for a sixth concerto, it was never written, and apparently for the simplest of reasons: The composer's hearing had deteriorated to the point where public performance with an orchestra was no longer a realistic possibility.
His most remarkable music was yet to be written, and in a quantity that seems astonishing under the circumstances. But it was increasingly music that he heard only in his head, and not surprisingly his gaze turned increasingly inward. He also had increasingly less need of a form that enabled him to express harmony, however hard-fought, with the universe.
TO RETURN FINALLY TO THE CHORAL FANTASY
Though its opus number is higher, the Choral Fantasy was written shortly before the Emperor, and while it can seem like a wild hodgepodge, to its admirers its wildness is one of its glories.
I'm not going to attempt a detailed analysis. Wikipedia's article, as I noted earlier, does a surprisingly effective job of it. I'm just going to suggest a way of listening to it, focusing on the hysterically overwrought piano solo that occupies roughly the first four minutes.
I think it's important to recognize that it is overwrought. I've just been listening to Vladimir Ashkenazy's self-conducted recording, which rounds out the Beethoven concerto cycle from which we heard the first movement of the Fourth Concerto last night. Ashkenazy plays the music with the utmost beauty; I'm quite sure I've never heard it played with this roundness and finish of tone. He makes it all sound quite logical, quite reasonable, and really rather unintersting, even pointless. Not surprisingly, his performance really has nowhere to go from there.
I don't want to suggest anything quite as extreme as "parody," but there is definitely the sense of a grand orator, a rhetorician trying desperately to express matters too grand and important to be readily within reach, at least at this particular moment, and coming off as maybe slightly hysterical. I'm not sure I would go so far as to suggest that it's even "humorous," but surely there is something going on in the innards of this solo, which doesn't seem able to figure out where it's trying to get let alone how to get there. The word "ironic" comes to mind, or maybe better "laconic."
And here we're in terrain where Rudolf Serkin ruled. I know I'm risking accusations of gross ethnic stereotyping, but I don't think of Germans as being an especially humorous people. Oh sure, there are funny Germans, but by and large it doesn't seem to be a trait that comes quite naturally. But irony, laconic-ness (laconicity?), a sense of the wry -- this is something that is far from uncommon among cultured Germans, and this I sense Serkin had a large supply of. Attitudinally, in other words, I think he was born to champion the Choral Fantasy.
BEETHOVEN: Fantasy in C for Piano, Chorus, and Orchestra, Op. 80
Rudolf Serkin, piano; Nan Nall (s), Beverly Morgan (ms), Shirley Close (ms), Gene Tucker (t), Sanford Sylvan (b), David Evitts (b), Marlboro Festival Chorus and Orchestra, Peter Serkin, cond. Sony, recorded live, Aug. 9, 1981
When the orchestra finally makes its relatively inconspicuous entrance, there's a sort of sense that it's extending a hand, trying to guide the piano gently back from the precipice. And sure enough, with a little working out the piano is able to get it together enough to announce, now with some confidence, the simple, charming little ditty that will eventually provide the grand vocal finale in the way that the dittylike "Ode to Joy" tune later would in the finale of the Ninth Symphony. Whereupon the orchestra takes up the tune for a set of quite charming variations, at first with minimal contribution from the piano, which eventually rallies to make its own contribution.
As I mentioned last night, there is now a fourth commercially issued Serkin recording of the Choral Fantasy, with Orfeo's release of the Beethoven concerto cycle he did in 1977 with Rafael Kubelik and the Bavarian Radio Symphony, which included the Choral Fantasy. Now that I know it exists, I'll be watching for a copy that falls within my "cheapskate" price range, but for the moment you're spared.
We do have one last recording, though, and this one has the best singers and chorus.
BEETHOVEN: Fantasy in C for Piano, Chorus, and Orchestra, Op. 80
Rudolf Serkin, piano; Faye Robinson (s), Mary Burgess (s), Lili Chookasian (c), Kenneth Riegel (t), David Gordon (b), Julien Robbins (bs); Tanglewood Festival Chorus, Boston Symphony Orchestra, Seiji Ozawa, cond. Telarc, recorded Oct. 2 and 4, 1982
REVIEWING THIS WEEK'S PREVIEWS
Friday:Beethoven and the "heart of the piano concerto" Rondo from Piano Concerto No. 3 played by Arthur Rubinstein, with the Symphony of the Air under Josef Krips); also by Krystian Zimerman (video, with the Vienna Philharmonic under Leonard Bernstein) and by Evgeny Kissin (with the London Symphony under Sir Colin Davis). Plus Rubinstein "Beethoven bonus": Moonlight Sonata.
Saturday:Down in the basement with Beethoven 1st movement of Concerto No. 4, played by Artur Schnabel, with the Chicago Symphony under Frederick Stock (1942); also by Claudio Arrau (video, with the Philadelphia Orchestra under Riccardo Muti), by Arthur Rubinstein (with the Symphony of the Air under Krips), and by Vladimir Ashkenazy (also conducting the Cleveland Orchestra). Plus Schnabel "Beethoven bonuses": Sonata No. 27 in E minor, Op. 90; Bagatelle, Für Elise.
Sunday Classics: It wasn't easy being Brahms -- but for the rest of us it was sure worth it
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The haunting slow movement of Brahms's Double Concerto is played by the young brothers Capuçon, Renaud (violin, born 1976) and Gautier (cello, born 1981), with the Gustav Mahler Youth Orchestra conducted by Myung-Whun Chung.
by Ken
I thought we could ease our way back into these weekly classical music posts, with a sort of "tease," a down payment toward some discussion-to-follow (next week?) of one of the best-know and yet most persistently misunderstood and misrepresented of all composers.
What's more, I thought I had the perfect choice: the gorgeous, positively haunting slow movement of Brahms's Double Concerto -- or, more properly, the Concerto for Violin, Cello, and Orchestra in A minor, Op. 102. [Thanks to commenterpolderboyfor catching my dumb typo on the opus number!] The Double Concerto, the last of Brahms's four brawny and beautiful concertos (there are, of course, two masterpieces for piano and one for violin, all among the most-performed works in the classical repertory), is a late work, and an intensely beautiful one, and also one that the composer would never have had to worry about being mistaken for anybody else's work. It really doesn't bear the hallmark of any other composer.
There would be the additional virtue that a certain number of readers would recognize the haunting main theme.
So I went shopping on YouTube, and ran smack into one of the things I wanted to discuss in the planned "follow-up" piece. Performers seem to feel the need to show that they know how big and important and serious Brahms's music is. So they make it elephantine and sweaty and heaving and generally rather repulsive. It's a tribute to the greatness of the music that its greatness shines through this persistent abuse. This borders on the miraculous.
There's no doubt that Brahms was a hard worker, and that he labored mightily over his work, not least with that unshakable awareness of the genius of Beethoven haunting him. (Beethoven was a hard worker too, but that doesn't seem to have been of much comfort to poor Brahms, or lessened his sense of struggle any.) The thing is, though, that when he finished, he'd done all the heavy lifting. You don't need to make the music important; the composer already took care of that, if you'll just find what makes the music happen and allow that to take place.
Part of the problem is that a lot of posters have passed over the Double Concerto's middle movement, or tacked it onto the end of the too-long-for-YouTube first movement. What I was able to find of just the gentle Andante was discouraging, and often you know you're in trouble from the very start -- that seemingly simple pair of rising-two-note motifs, the first by paired horns, the second by paired flutes. For those "perfect" intervals of the fourth, you really need pretty darned perfect tuning from the performers, without showing off the effort required to get it so.
Oh, I did find a clip of the 1982 video performance by Leonard Bernstein and the Vienna Philharmonic with violinist Gidon Kremer and cellist Mischa Maisky, but the clip wasn't of good technical qualty, and the performance -- in common with Lenny's later Brahms, and indeed most of the later Lenny -- stretches the music to the breaking point. I've come to think that he generally stayed just this side of that breaking point, and in the process did indeed discover beauties and depths that more casual renderings miss, but for such a performance to succeed I think it needs all elements working, and to me that means the sound has to be as good as the (quite decent) source material. I'm watching my laser-disk copy right now (coupled, like the DVD) with the Kremer-Bernstein video recording of the Brahms Violin Concerto), and I don't have much hesitation in recommending the performance, just not in mediocre-video-clip form.
Back I went to renew the search, and found a (barely) bearable clip, with a couple of adequate soloists and that pompous Brit-twit Sir Simon Rattle conducting the Berlin Philharmonic. Hot dog, I thought, good enough! Hallelujah! (Sir Simon isn't untalented, but for the most part he's so infatuated with his media persona -- he was invented as that rarity, a child conducting prodigy, and has been given a free ride by the British-centered musical press ever since -- that I don't expect much from his performances. I've gotten surprised a few times, but not often enough to cause me to reverse my lack-of-benefit of the doubt.)
Anyway, the performance wasn't a total botch, and I thought the basic quality of the piece would come through, so I hastened to copy the embed code, and naturally it's "embedding disabled by request"! I got news for these chillun: Their performance ain't anywhere near good enough to be fretting about people stealing it.
By now I was starting to think "backup plan." Maybe the opening movement of the Horn Trio? (As you'll have noticed from the opening of the concerto movement, Brahms loved the French horn.) Then I stumbled on the genuinely adequate audio-only performance of the Andante of the Double Concerto A up top. If anything, it goes in the opposite direction from the one I'm complaining about: perhaps too relaxed, leaving the music a bit too much to its own devices, not quite finding its inner momentum, by which I don't mean speed, I mean the irresistible need for forward movement, what makes the music go, regardless of how fast or slow the tempo. (This performance is available on CD, but I should say that I haven't heard the outer movements of the concerto or the coupled performance of the Brahms Clarinet Quintet.)
Next week: more on what makes Brahms such a special case, even as measured among the very greatest composers. (That's kind of a trick actually. Isn't it obvious that all of the greatest composers are special cases?)
POSTSCRIPT: "PLAN B" REVISITED -- THE BRAHMS HORN TRIO
Out of curiosity, I went back to the YT well to see what I might have turned up for the Horn Trio (or again, more formally, the Trio for Violin, Horn, and Piano in E flat major, Op. 40), and after some discouraging shots found this rendering of the classic 1933 recording by Aubrey Brain, the horn-playing father of the most famous of all French-horn players, the tragically short-lived Dennis Brain; the great German violinist Adolf Busch; and the then-30-ish pianist Rudolf Serkin, a lifelong first-quality Brahmsian.
AND ON RECORDS . . .
There are lots of good recordings of the Double Concerto, but also, for the reasons suggested above, a fair number of mediocre ones. For starters, for a mere $8.97 plus shipping and tax Amazon will sell youthe EMI version by the great violinist and cellist David Oistrakh and Mstislav Rostropovich, with George Szell conducting the Cleveland Orchestra, coupled with the famous recording of the Beethoven Triple Concerto that Oistrakh and Rostropovich made with their equally celebrated countryman the legendary pianist Sviatoslav Richter, with Herbert von Karajan conducting the Berlin Philharmonic.
Even cheaper is a SONY Masterworks CD couplingof performances by a singularly notable Brahms performer, the late Isaac Stern (we'll be talking about this more) of both the Violin Concerto and the Double Concerto, with his frequent collaborator Leonard Rose, both ably backed by Eugene Ormandy and the Philadelphia Orchestra.
There's also a fine Philips Trio setof all four Brahms concertos -- the two piano concertos played by Alfred Brendel (not my favorite recordings, but eminently respectable ones), the Violin Concerto and the Double Concerto played by the great violinist Henryk Szeryng (with the lovely cellist Janos Starker) -- plus Brahms's Tragic and Academic Festival Overturesand the Haydn Variations, all played by the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra under Bernard Haitink. With brand-new copies listed on Amazon.com for under $14, this three-CD set is a steal.
As for the Horn Trio, I just now noticed while perusing the "availabilities" that there's a Chandos recording, coupled with the Brahms Clarinet Trio, by the great Borodin Trio and friends, which I've somehow previously missed. I promptly ordered myself a copy. The Borodin Trio's sets of Brahms's three piano trios and three piano quartets (not to mention much of the rest of the piano trio repertory) are among the all-time great chamber music recordings. I'll report on the disc when I get it.
Meanwhile, we have another great bargain: an attractive Philips Duoof the Horn Trio performed by the great violinist Arthur Grumiaux, hornist Gyorgy Sebok, and pianist Francis Orval, along with the three piano trios by the Beaux Arts Trio (the fine early version with violinst Daniel Guilet), and the Clarinet Trio with clarinetist George Pieterson and Beaux Arts pianist and cellist Menahem Pressler and Bernard Greenhouse.