"When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying the cross."
-- Sinclair Lewis
Friday, March 01, 2013
Van Cliburn (1934-2013)
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SCHUMANN (arr. Liszt): "Widmung" ("Dedication")
Van Cliburn plays the Liszt arrangement of Schumann's exhilarating song "Widmung" ("Dedication"), c1970.
by Ken
I want to put off doing a proper memorial to pianist Van Cliburn until I get the copy of RCA's newly released Van Cliburn: The Complete Album Collection which I ordered as soon as I saw that it exists, not realizing at the time that he had in fact just died.
The easy way to go would have been with the Tchaikovsky First Piano Concerto, the piece that became so identified with him when he rocketed to fame in 1958 (at age 23) with his grand-prize win at the International Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow. Instead I thought we'd lead with a solo piece we heard played by Arthur Rubinstein in the November 2011 Sunday Classics post "And then came 'Widmung' " -- and then the following week played by the great American Romantic Earl Wild.
I think we hear here the basic Cliburn virtues: the beautiful, clean, effortlessly full sound and the wholesome extrovert temperament.
2. "Pierrot" (Moderato) is a revolutionary work of pure instrumental music in its use of the grotesque. It is a character piece: relentless, deliberately monotonous, but with sudden jerky movements like the personage of the commedia dell'arte; it makes no pretensions to beauty or charm. The drama arises from the cumulative crescendo towards the end with a final and very original pedal effect, as the penultimate chord gradually frees itself of all the heavy pedal sonority.
3. "Arlequin" (Vivo) is also a grotestque character piece, with sudden changes of dynamics, and with a dancing charm.
Charles Rosen, piano. Nonesuch, recorded in the Netherlands, c1981
by Ken
Charles Rosen, the American pianist and cultural polymath, died on December 9, and it's been on my mind how to pay tribute. It's still on my mind. But meanwhile, as we're rummaging through the Sunday Classics archives, I thought we could at least hear a little bit of his playing and read an even littler bit of his remarkable writing.
What's new is that in September we first heard some snippets from Schumann's great piano suite with Rosen's brief annotations but with other pianists' performances. For tonight's post I've reedited the clips so we can hear his own performances -- first of the pair of commedia dell'arte caricatures we heard above, "Pierrot" and "Arlequin," and then the characterizations of the composer's own imagined dual identities, "Eusebius" and "Florestan."
Sunday Classics: Taking a closer look at Schumann's "Carnaval"
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Cézanne's "Pierrot and Harlequin" (1888)
by Ken
We began listening to Schumann's great piano suite CarnavalFriday night, listening to contrasting pairs -- the composer's dual self-portraint in "Eusebius" and "Florestan" and the "Noble Waltz" and "German Waltz" plus the rousing conclusion, the "March of the League of David Against the Philistines."
We're not going to go as far into Carnaval as I expected Friday night, for various reasons. Partly it's because I've just acquired a couple of recordings I didn't have, and have a number of others on order. But partly it's because exquisitely crafted miniatures can go by so quickly that we can scarcely taken them in, and so I want to slow these down -- sort of the way we did back in January 2011 with the exquisitely crafted miniatures that make up Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition, which spread over two previews and two main posts ("We begin our walk-through of Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition" and "Concluding our walking tour").
So today we're going to focus just on the beginning and the end of Carnaval, building on the portions we've already heard. And we're going to start with another contrasting pair, the first numbers in the suite following the "Préambule," Schumann's portraits of two stock commedia dell'arte figures.
Sunday Classics preview: Preparing for a close-up look at Schumann's "Carnaval"
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"Eusebius" and "Florestan" were Schumann's own characterizations of the two sides of his own personality -- the dreamy introvert and the passionate extrovert, respectively.
SCHUMANN: Carnaval, Op. 9: 5. Eusebius: Adagio; Più lento molto teneramente (2/4) 6. Florestan: Passionato (3/4)
Claudio Arrau, piano. Philips, recorded in Amsterdam, September 1966
by Ken
We've already done a wild swoop through the large output of that peerless romantic Robert Schumann, including a smattering of his distinguished solo-piano works in April 2010 ("In Schumann's case, obsession wasn't necessarily a bad thing"), and in November 2011 we took a close-up look at his exhilarating song "Widmung" ("Dedication"). This week we're going to home in on the best-known of his solo-piano suites, the relatively early Carnaval. As we've already heard, among its many contrasting pairs is a self-portrait in the form of Schumann's musical depiction of his introverted and extroverted sides, Eusebius and Florestan, respectively.
HERE'S ANOTHER STRIKING CONTRAST. ALONG THE
WAY WE HEAR TWO VERY DIFFERENT WALTZES --
4. Valse noble: Un poco maestoso (3/4) 16. Valse allemande (German Waltz): Molto vivace (3/4)
Wilhelm Kempff, piano. DG, recorded in Hannover, March 1971
AND HERE'S WHERE WE WIND UP --
21. Marche des Davidsbündler contre les Philistins
(March of the League of David Against the Philistines):
Adagio; Più lento molto teneramente (2/4)
Nelson Freire, piano. Decca, recorded in Lugano, Dec. 18-22, 2002
Sunday Classics preview: Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau (1925-2012)
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SCHUMANN: "Widmung" ("Dedication"), Op. 25, No. 1
You my soul, you my heart, you my joy, o you my pain, you my world in which I live, my heaven you in which I soar, o you my grave in which I have buried my sorrows forever.
You are rest; you are peace; you were destined for me by heaven. That you love me makes me feel worthy; your glance has transfigured me; you lift me, loving, above myself -- my good spirit, my better "I"!
You my soul, you my heart, you my joy, o you my pain, you my world, in which I live, my heaven you, in which I soar -- my good spirit, my better "I"!
-- original German text by Friedrich Rückert
Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, baritone; Jörg Demus, piano. DG, recorded c1960
Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, baritone; Christoph Eschenbach, piano. DG, recorded 1974
by Ken
Baritone Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau died last Friday, ten days short of his 87th birthday. Complex as my feelings about him as a performer are (and make no mistake, at his best he was one of the greats), he hasn't exactly been an unfamiliar presence here at Sunday Classics. I did a quick and probably only approximate count of the audio clips I've made for use here and came up with some 46 as a singer plus two as a conductor -- not including those added for this week's posts. (Both numbers will be going up.)
I can't think of a better way to remember Fischer-Dieskau than by rehearing the earlier of the two "Widmung" performances reprised above from a November 2011 post called "And then came 'Widmung'," where I spoke of the "vocal suppleness and tonal radiance that for me makes this a dream performance of this great song." (In the later recording we can hear what a difference the considerably rougher condition of the voice makes in the singer's interpretive choices, though I am rather taken by the greater contrast between the faster tempo for the outer sections and the slower one for the central "Du bist die Ruh'" section.)
This week I'm not going to attempt any proper appraisal -- we'll settle for a remembrance. And in the click-through we've got two sublime leave-taking numbers we've heard before, in a March 2011 post called "Sunday, Bloody Sunday and the depths of Mozart's humanity," performed by other people, but now we'll hear them sung by ensembles that include Fischer-Dieskau.
Sunday Classics: Not a review, but some thoughts prompted by Anne-Marie McDermott's recent New York piano recital
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Even in this brief clip, I think you can hear that a (the?) distinguishing quality of Anne-Marie McDemott's piano-playing is the bracing physicality.
by Ken
Last week I laid the groundwork for some thoughts prompted by a recital that pianist Anne-Marie McDermott gave recently at New York's Rubin Museum of Art. (Of course it was a week more recently last week.) I focused last week on Liszt's solo-piano expansion of Schumann's brief but grandly expressive song "Widmung" ("Dedication"), which stands at the head of the list of songs he wrote for his new bride Clara, not to mention the vast number that were merely inspired by his passion for her, in his historic "Year of Song" (1840).
We never did get around to the recital itself. As I explained last week, that part was already written, but I just thought it would be too much for a single post. After the click-through we'll be picking up more or less where we left off last week, including hearing music by Prokofiev and Chopin which preceded the Schumann-Liszt (which we'll hear again, this time in some sort of context).
One thing we're not going to hear is the opening work, the Busoni rendering of the Bach solo-violin Chaconne, which I dislike a lot, though there'll be links to a couple of performances. To get us going, here's a performance of the violin original -- announced, you'll note, as "take one" -- by Jascha Heifetz. You might compare this with the Stokowski performance of his own orchestral version which we heard in Friday night's preview.
In Clarence Brown's Song of Love (1947), Paul Henreid as Robert Schumann introduces the newly composed "Widmung" to Katharine Hepburn as Clara; later Henry Daniell as Liszt plays his version, and finally Clara has her turn with it. (All the piano-playing is by Arthur Rubinstein, whom we'll hear playing the Liszt version straight through in the click-through.)
by Ken
Among the great creative feats on record, I'm not sure that any surpasses what is often referred to as Robert Schumann's Year of Song, 1840, the year in which he married Clara Wieck, which we talked about back in April 2010. As Eric Sams has put it, "In the 12 months beginning 1 February 1 1840 he wrote over 160 vocal works, including at least 135 of the 246 solo songs in the complete Peters Edition."
Near the head of the list is the collection of 26 songs published as Schumann's Op. 25, Myrthen (myrtles -- "European evergreen shrubs with white or rosy flowers that are often used to make bridal wreaths"), which the composer presented to Clara as a wedding gift and of course dedicated to her. And at the head of Myrthen is "Widmung" ("Dedication"), the exhilarating song we previewed Friday night.
SCHUMANN: "Widmung" ("Dedication"), Op. 25, No. 1
Baritone Hermann Prey, with pianist Leonard Hokanson (1975)
German text by Friedrich Rückert
You my soul, you my heart,
you my joy, o you my pain,
you my world in which I live,
my heaven you in which I soar,
o you my grave in which
I have buried my sorrows forever.
You are rest; you are peace;
you were destined for me by heaven.
That you love me makes me feel worthy;
your glance has transfigured me;
you lift me, loving, above myself --
my good spirit, my better "I"!
You my soul, you my heart,
you my joy, o you my pain,
you my world, in which I live,
my heaven you, in which I soar --
my good spirit, my better "I"!
In the click-through we're going to have much more of and about "Widmung," and then, well, as I mentioned Friday night, it was a recital this past week by pianist Anne-Marie McDermott that set me to thinking about the song, in both its original form and the bravura solo-piano expansion of it created by Liszt. This is all leading up to my threatened reflections on that recital and an attempt to describe, if not explain, the effect Ms. McDermott's performance of the Liszt version had on me; more about that in the click-through.
Sunday Classics preview: The singular exhilaration of Schumann's "Dedication," and of Liszt's
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SCHUMANN: "Widmung" ("Dedication"), Op. 25, No. 1
You my soul, you my heart, you my joy, o you my pain, you my world in which I live, my heaven you in which I soar, o you my grave in which I have buried my sorrows forever.
You are rest; you are peace; you were destined for me by heaven. That you love me makes me feel worthy; your glance has transfigured me; you lift me, loving, above myself -- my good spirit, my better "I"!
You my soul, you my heart, you my joy, o you my pain, you my world, in which I live, my heaven you, in which I soar -- my good spirit, my better "I"!
-- German text by Friedrich Rückert
by Ken
This past week I attended a recital by pianist Anne-Marie McDermott with a reasonably interesting-looking program. As it turned out, the most satisfying music-making, at least for me, was the several minutes devoted to, of all things, Franz Liszt's solo-piano expansion of Robert Schumann's singularly exhilarating little song "Widmung" ("Dedication").
By "little" song I don't mean that it's in any way small-scaled emotionally. Quite the contrary, as I expect you've noticed if you watched the performance above. All I mean is that its running time in performance is normally a mere two minutes, give or take. Naturally Liszt couldn't leave well enough alone, and had to add expansions of his own after each of the song's basic sections. (The song, you'll notice, is basically in good old A-B-A format, with a cunning slip from A-flat major to E major, at the start of the B section, "You are rest; you are peace" -- at 0:29 of the song performance above, 1:41 of the Liszt solo-piano rendering below.)
IN SUNDAY'S MAIN POST, I want to talk a bit about that recital experience, but for tonight I thought we'd just hear "Widmung" both ways, in interesting performances I found online: the breathless one above of Schumann's original (with an odd truncation of the piano's opening-bar introduction) by the American soprano Jessye Norman (born 1945); and below, Liszt's solo-piano rendering-and-amplification in a 1985 recording by that wonderfully poetic Pittsburgh-born piano pyrotechnician par excellence, Earl Wild (1915-2010).
Sunday Classics: In Schumann's case, obsession wasn't necessarily a bad thing
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Soprano Barbara Bonney sings the last three songs of Schumann's Dichterliebe, with Malcolm Martineau in Paris, 2001. The first and last of these songs, "Allnächtlich im Traume seh' ich dich" and "Die alten bösen Lieder," are among our selections below.
by Ken
I wasn't wildly happy when I saw the head I put on last night's preview staring at me: "A taste of Schumann the obsessive, in his piano works and songs." I don't want to take it back. There really is an obsessive quality to Schumann's prodigious output for the piano up to the point, on February 1, 1840, when he suddenly switched his attention to the art song, even more obsessively, for his famous Year of Song. And if there's a suggestion there that there may always have been an obsessive quality to Schumann which is related to the mental darkness that overtook him in the final years of a too-short life, well, I guess I meant that too.
The one thing I didn't mean, necessarily, is that obsession in the case of genius is necessarily a bad thing. I did try to stress that what's truly remarkable about the quantity of, first, piano music and, then, songs is the astonishingly high quality. I don't know that Schumann would have been capable of writing less compulsively in either form. I do know that we the beneficiaries of that compulsion would hardly have wished him to be more moderate in his creative outpouring.
BEFORE WE DO ANYTHING ELSE --
Let's finish up our business from Friday night's preview. Here is the complete Schumann Piano Quintet (1842). We've already heard the first two movements. Now let's add the Scherzo and finale.
SCHUMANN: Piano Quintet in E-flat, Op. 44
i. Allegro brillante
Arthur Rubinstein, piano; Guarneri Quartet (Arnold Steinhardt and John Dalley, violins; Michael Tree, viola; David Soyer, cello). RCA/BMG, recorded Dec. 28-30, 1966
ii. In modo d'una marcia: Un poco largamente (In the mode of a march: A little broadly)
Artur Balsam, piano; Budapest Quartet (Joseph Roisman and Jac Gorodetzky, violins; Boris Kroyt, viola; Mischa Schneider, cello). Bridge, recorded live at the Library of Congress, Dec. 18, 1953
iii. Scherzo: Molto vivace
Rudolf Serkin, piano; Budapest Quartet (Joseph Roisman and Alexander Schneider, violins; Boris Kroyt, viola; Mischa Schneider, cello). Columbia/CBS/Sony, recorded Sept. 10-11, 1963
iv. Allegro ma non troppo
Martha Argerich, piano; Dora Schwarzberg and Renaud Capuçon, violins; Nora Romanoff-Schwarzberg, viola; Mark Drobinsky, cello. EMI, recorded June 27, 2002
I guess last night I exercised an obsession of my own, with Vladimir Horowitz's seeming obsession with the lovely miniature, "Träumerei," from Schumann's piano suite Kinderszenen (Scenes from Childhood, 1838), which he loved nearly to death.
I hope one of these days perhaps we'll get a chance to hear Horowitz's own obsessive quality yielding happier results, because for all the craziness, there was genius at work in his playing. That said, we did get to hear some other sorts of performances of "Träumerei" last night. Still, even though you're probably sick of hearing it, I'd like to listen to it one last time -- for closure, let's say -- in this performance by the Brazilian pianist Nelson Freire, which distends the rhythms in the way that the Pianists Guild seems to consider obligatory, but somehow retains a feeling of childlike simplicity.
Nelson Freire, piano. Decca, recorded Dec. 18-22, 2002
"HATS OFF, GENTLEMEN, A GENIUS"
This, surely the most celebrated phrase in the canon of music criticism, was Schumann the music critic's memorable celebration of Frédéric Chopin -- who was actually several months older than Schumann (and, alas, died even younger). Of course it's a phrase that might helpfully be retired except as related to a genius of the caliber of Chopin. (The obvious exception was Peter Schickele's inspired riff when the idea of his mythical P.D.Q. Bach, the Bach son who was intentionally forgotten, was still new and fresh. When Schumann, in "Professor" Schickele's telling, happened to encounter the music of the infamous P.D.Q.B,, his reaction was: "Hats back on, gentlemen, an imbecile.")
Maybe we need to be clearer about what I'm calling Schumann's obsessive composing. As I pointed out last night:
Robert Schumann's first 23 opus numbers, representing his entire published output up to the age of 30, are works for solo piano works, an astonishing profusion. And then in 1840 -- February 1, to be exact -- his attention (one is tempted to use the word "obsession") switched to a form he had formerly scorned, the art song.
Those first 23 opus-numbered works, most of them collections of shorter works, include some of the mostly richly imagined treasures of the piano repertory: Papillons, the Davidsbündlertänze, the Toccata, Carnaval, the Symphonic Etudes, Kinderszenen, Kreisleriana, the Fantasy, the Arabeske, the Novelletten.
As for the obsession that replaced the piano-composing one, Eric Sams has noted, "In the twelve months beginning 1 February 1840 he wrote over 160 vocal works, including at least 135 of the 246 solo songs in the complete Peters Edition" -- roughly, the composer's Opp. 24-49, 53, and 57. It's always pointed out that 1840 was the year Schumann married Clara Wieck, but to him that didn't explain the complete change of compositional focus. He offered the intriguing theory that it was direct contact with Mendelssohn that shoved him into song production, concluding his case:
Of course there may have been many other influences at work in all this which cannot now be identified. It is conceivable too that the whole thing may have been no more than coincidence. But what seems to have happened is that one winter day in Leipzig in 1840 it came about, quite by chance and unawares, that the greatest living master of the Lied appointed his successor.
I promised last night that we would hear the particular gifts of both Horowitz and the eerily Horowitz-like Martha Argerich put to much more appropriate use than in "Träumerei." So let's turn to Schumann's Kreisleriana suite, written the same year as Kinderszenen (1838), but inhabiting a different musical world. Kreisleriana is a tribute to the strange fictional genius Johannes Kreisler, the composer created by the great German Romantic writer (and also composer) E.T.A. Hoffmann. This is one of those places where Schumann allowed his imagination to run wild, to which end he expected the pianist to bring ten weaponized fingers. But as with the monstrously demanding piano writing of Chopin, it's never about technique, which these apparent keyboard wizards simply took for granted. That wizardry is always put at the service of those two unparalleled musical imaginations.
I think we can get some sense of this by hearing just the opening and closing numbers of Kreisleriana, played first by Horowitz and Argerich, and then by our friends from last night Wilhelm Kempff and Claudio Arrau. We can hear Kempff, no youngster at the time he made this recording, sorely tried by the writing, while as I pointed out, Arrau -- also no youngster at this time -- had more sheer technical command than was often remembered.
SCHUMANN: Kreisleriana, Op. 16
No. 1, Äusserst bewegt (As animated as possible) No. 8, Schnell und spielend (Fast and playful)
Vladimir Horowitz, piano. DG, recorded Sept.-Oct. 1985
Martha Argerich, piano. DG, recorded April 1983
Wilhelm Kempff, piano. DG, recorded February 1972
Claudio Arrau, piano. Philips, recorded March 1972
Next I thought we might hear the start and finish of Schumann's Symphonic Etudes, in fact a set of theme and variations. (The composer removed five variations from the original version, bringing the piece down to more manageable size. Some brave pianists restore those five pianists, including both Sviatoslav Richter and Arrau in the performances below.)
SCHUMANN: Symphonic Etudes, Op. 13
i. Theme ii. Etude I: Un poco più vivo
Sviatoslav Richter, piano. Praga, recorded live in Prague, Dec. 12, 1956
Wilhelm Kempff, piano. DG, recorded February 1972
Claudio Arrau, piano. Philips, recorded October 1970
Etude XII: Finale: Allegro brillante
Sviatoslav Richter, piano. Praga, recorded live in Prague, Dec. 12, 1956
Wilhelm Kempff, piano. DG, recorded February 1972
Claudio Arrau, piano. Philips, recorded October 1970
Finally, two lovely little Schumann pieces that were favorites of Arthur Rubinstein, the Arabeske (1839) and the little "Vogel als Prophet" ("Bird as Prophet") from the Waldszenen (Forest Scenes, 1848-49).
SCHUMANN: Arabeske, Op. 18
Arthur Rubinstein, piano. RCA/BMG, recorded live at Carnegie Hall, Nov. 19 1961
Nelson Freire, piano. Decca, recorded Dec. 18-22, 2002
SCHUMANN: "Vogel als Prophet" ("Bird as Prophet"), No. 7 of Waldszenen (Forest Scenes), Op. 82
Arthur Rubinstein, piano. RCA/BMG, recorded March 29, 1946
Jörg Demus, piano. Nuova Era, recorded in the early 1970s
NOW, FOR JUST THE TINIEST SAMPLING OF THE SONG RICHES OF "THE YEAR"
Last night we heard Lotte Lehmann telling us (allowing for the 68-year time gap) how much she loves the songs of Schumann. We also heard Madame Lehmann sing the opening song of Schumann's wonderful Eichendorfff Liederkreis, the first "In der Fremde" (there's actually a second song of the same name within the cycle).
For starters, I've picked three additional songs from the Eichendorff Liederkreis ("the Eichendorff Liederkreis" to distinguish it from Schumann's Liederkreis, Op. 24, to poems of Heine -- the Heine Liederkreis). They happen to be consecutive, but there's really nothing sacrosanct about the published order of these songs.
"Waldesgespräch" ("Forest Conversation") tells of a forest encounter with "the witch Lorelei." It is, in other words, a Romantic ghosts-and-goblins tale in the tradition of Goethe's and Schubert's "Erlkönig." "Die Stille" is that anomaly here, a happy song (albeit very, very secretly happy), and "Mondnacht" a dreamily romantic gem.
SCHUMANN: Liederkreis (Song Cycle, poems by Eichendorff), Op. 39
3. "Waldesgespräch" ("Forest Conversation")
It's already late, it's already cold. Why are you riding alone through the forest? The forest is long, you're alone, you lovely maiden! I'll lead you home!"
"Great is man's deceit and cunning. My heart is broken with grief. The hunter's horn roves here and there. O fly! You don't know who I am."
"So richly adorned are horse and woman, so wondrously beautiful the young form, Now I know you -- God stay by me -- You're the witch Lorelei."
"You know me truly -- in lofty stone my castle gazes down on the Rhine. It's already late, it's already cold. You'll never again leave this forest."
4. "Die Stille" ("The Quiet")
There's no one who knows or can guess how happy I am, how happy! Ah, if only one other knew it, only one, no other person would know it.
It's not so quiet outside in the snow, so speechless and secret are not the stars on high, as my thoughts are.
I wish I were a little bird, and passed over the sea, right over the sea and beyond until I were in heaven.
5. "Mondnacht" ("Moonlit Night")
It was as if the sky had gently kissed the earth. so that she, in a glimmer of blossoms, must now dream of him.
The breeze passed through the fields, the ears of corn waved gently. The woods rustled softly. So starry clear was the night.
And my soul stretched its wings out wide, flew through the quiet landscape as it flew toward home.
Felicity Lott, soprano; Graham Johnson, piano. IMP, recorded c1990
Ian Partridge, tenor; Jennifer Partridge, piano. BBC, recorded Aug. 2, 1971
Hakan Hagegard, baritone; Thomas Schuback, piano. RCA, recorded No. 11-13, 1985
Now we have some selections -- first and last songs, and a couple of in-betweeners -- from yet another 1840 product, the cycle Dichterliebe (Poet's Love), in two rather spectacular performances, by tenor Fritz Wunderlich and by baritone Deitrich Fischer-Dieskau in his finest youthful voice. For curiosity I've thrown in a Fischer-Dieskau recording from 28 years later, where the canny veteran manages surprisingly well through careful handling and craft, to make, well, not the same effect, but still some sort of effect.
SCHUMANN: Dichterliebe (Poet's Love), Op. 48 [Song synopses borrowed from Wikipedia.] 1. "Im wunderschönen Monat Mai" ("In the wonderfully beautiful month of May") [In beautiful May, when the buds sprang, love sprang up in my heart: in beautiful May, when the birds all sang, I told you my suffering and longing.] 11. "Ein Jüngling liebt ein Mädchen" ("A youth loves a maiden") [A youth loved a maiden who chose another: the other loved another girl, and married her. The maiden married, from spite, the first and best man that she met with: the youth was sickened at it. It's the old story, and it's always new: and the one whom she turns aside, she breaks his heart in two.] 14. "Allnächtlich im Traume seh' ich dich" ("Every night I see you in my dream") [I see you every night in dreams, and see you greet me friendly, and crying out loudly I throw myself at your sweet feet. You look at me sorrowfully and shake your fair head: from your eyes trickle the pearly tear-drops. You say a gentle word to me and give me a sprig of cypress: I awake, and there is no sprig, and I have forgotten what the word was.] 16. "Die alten bösen Lieder" ("The old, unpleasant songs") [The old bad songs, and the angry, bitter dreams, let us now bury them, bring a large coffin. I shall put very much therein, I shall not yet say what: the coffin must be bigger than the 'Tun' at Heidelberg. And bring a bier of stout, thick planks, they must be longer than the Bridge at Mainz. And bring me too twelve giants, who must be mightier than the Saint Christopher in the cathedral at Cologne. They must carry the coffin and throw it in the sea, because a coffin that large needs a large grave to put it in. Do you know why the coffin must be so big and heavy? I will also put my love and my suffering into it.]
Fritz Wunderlich, tenor; Hubert Giesen, piano. DG, recorded November 1965
Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, baritone; Jörg Demus, piano. DG, recorded Feb. 7-8, 1957
Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, baritone; Alfred Brendel, piano. Philips, recorded July 1985
Finally, let's listen to an old-time recital favorite, "The Two Grenadiers" -- if only for the excuse to hear the Chaliapin recording. Note how Andreas Schmidt and, even more, Olaf Bär in his interesting performance, try to take what they apparently think of as the artistic "high road," eschewing the song's overt barn-burning theatricality. Luckily, Chaliapin had no such concerns.
SCHUMANN: "Die beiden Grenadiere" ("The Two Grenadiers"), Op. 49, No. 1
Toward France headed two grenadiers, who had been captured in Russia. And when they came into the German quarter, they let their heads hang.
Then they both heard the sad tale: that France had been lost, beaten and smashed, the valiant army -- and the emperor, the emperor captured!
Then the grenadiers wept together, because of these woeful tidings. The first one spoke: "How painful it is for me, how my old wound burns!"
The other one spoke: "The song is over. I too would like to die with you. But I have a wife and child at home, who without me will die."
"What do I care about a wife, a child? I have far greater concerns. Let them go beg if they're hungry -- my emperor, my emperor captured!
"Grant me, brother, a favor: If I am now to die, then take my body with you to France; bury me in French soil.
"The cross of honor on its red ribbon you are to lay on my heart; give me my musket in my hand, and buckle my saber on me.
"Thus will I lie and listen, silent, like a sentinel, in my grave, until I hear the roar of cannons and the trotting of whinnying horses.
"Then will my emperor ride over my grave, many swords will clash and flash. Then will I rise armed from my grave, my emperor, my emperor to guard."
Andreas Schmidt, baritone; Rudolf Jansen, piano. Hänssler, recorded September 1997
Olaf Bär, baritone; Helmut Deutsch, piano. EMI, recorded February 1996
[in Russian] Feodor Chaliapin, bass. Melodiya, recorded Oct. 11, 1921
Sunday Classics preview: A taste of Schumann the obsessive, in his piano works and songs
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Horowitz in Moscow, April 1986: A wayward "Träumerei," but not the totally nutty performance he was accustomed to giving, as in the 1975 Carnegie Hall one below
by Ken
Robert Schumann's first 23 opus numbers, representing his entire published output up to the age of 30, are works for solo piano, an astonishing profusion. And then in 1840 -- February 1, to be exact -- his attention (one is tempted to use the word "obsession") switched to a form he had formerly scorned, the art song.
We're going to sample both of these remarkable bodes of work in tomorrow's Schumann post. Tonight I thought we'd sample one of each.
Our piano selection is hardly "representative" (whatever that might mean) of Schumann's piano writing. It's from the hard-not-to-love Kinderszenen (Scenes from Childhood) suite of 1838, in which Schumann attempts to look at the world through a child's eyes. And our designated excerpt, "Träumerei" ("Dreaming"), however unrepresentative it may be, is surely Schumann's best-known creation. It's one of the first "real" pieces of music any early piano student slogs through.
Of course the music's very simplicity conceals a remarkable feat of creativity. Now I suppose I'm imposing a preoccupation of mine on you, but I've long been fascinated by the preoccupation with Kinderszenen generally and "Träumerei" in particular of that mad titan of virtuosity, Vladimir Horowitz (1903-1989). It was his favorite encore piece, and just watching him play "Träumerei" above, I don't think it's possible to doubt his love for it.
It's a strange sort of love, though. As you can see, except for the "held" notes, basically all the "moving" notes are equal-value eighth notes. Now, no pianist plays them metronomically equally -- though it might not be such a bad thing if some of them were to start by exploring the notated note values before assuming they're wrong, and pushing and pulling them out of recognition. But what Horowitz does in his most extreme moods amounts to recomposition.
SCHUMANN: Kinderszenen (Scenes from Childhood), Op. 15
No. 7, "Träumerei" ("Dreaming")
Vladimir Horowitz, piano. RCA/BMG, recorded live, encore from the Carnegie Hall concert of Nov. 16, 1975
Vladimir Horowitz, piano. Sony, recorded live, final encore from Horowitz's Carnegie Hall "Return" concert of November 9, 1965
Vladimir Horowitz, piano. Columbia/CBS/Sony, studio recording, Nov.-Dec. 1962
I can't resist throwing in this studio recording by Martha Argerich (born 1941), the Argentinian-born firebrand who is probably the closest thing we've had to a second Horowitz, a fearless technician with enough imagination to make the technique serve musical purposes.
Martha Argerich, piano. DG, recorded April 1983
There are musicians, I guess, who just don't have much talent for simplicity. Tomorrow we're going to hear both Horowitz and Argerich doing what they were born to do -- and we'll also hear Argerich in a more surprising role. Meanwhile, just to regain our bearings, here are some more "normal" performances, by two solidly expressive pianists well schooled in the German tradition, Wilhelm Kempff (1895-1991) and the Chilean-born Claudio Arrau (1903-1991, and thus a close contemporary of Horowitz; Arrau's own technical prowess was in fact considerable, as we'll hear tomorrow).
Wilhelm Kempff, piano. DG, recorded February 1973
Claudio Arrau, piano. Philips, recorded March 1974
MOVING ON TO THE SONGS (AND WE HEAR LOTTE LEHMANN SPEAK!)
In the year beginning February 1, 1840, Schumann composed something like 135 songs (that's a baseline figure; perhaps we should say "at least 135 songs"), and as with those early years of piano-only composing, what's more remarkable than the quantity of the output is the quality.
Surely, if there was an Official Song Cycle of the Romantic Era, it would be Schumann's magical Op. 39 Liederkreis (which means nothing more than "song cycle"), settings of poems by Joseph von Eichendorff. (We have to be careful here, because there's also a Liederkreis, Op. 24, with settings of poems by Heine.)
Partly I chose the opening song of Op. 39 because we have it introduced here by none other than Lotte Lehmann, from a series of weekly 15-minute Lieder "recitals" she did for American radio in October-December 1941, when she was 52. I'm not the world's greatest Lehmann fan, especially with the voice in this stage of decline, but there's something irresistibly charming about these little radio recitals, perhaps her eagerness to share these songs she loved with her American listeners.
After Madame Lehmann we hear an admirable English tenor and Swedish baritone, both with quite lovely piano accompaniments. One obvious feature of Schumann's songs is accompaniments written by one of the great masters of writing for the piano.
SCHUMANN: Liederkreis (Song Cycle, poems by Eichendorff), Op. 39
No. 1, "In der Fremde"
In a Strange Land
From my homeland, behind the red lightning flashes, from there come the clouds. But Father and Mother are long dead; no one there knows me anymore.
How soon, oh how soon will come the silent time, when I too will rest, and over me will rustle lovely forest solitude. And no one will know me anymore here.
Introduced and sung by Lotte Lehmann, soprano; Paul Ulanowsky, piano. From her radio broadcast of Nov. 5, 1941
Ian Partridge, tenor; Jennifer Partridge, piano. BBC, recorded Aug. 2, 1971
Hakan Hagegard, baritone; Thomas Schuback, piano. RCA, recorded Nov. 11-13, 1985
Whew, just scratching the surface is going to require a lot of work. We'll return to last night's preview piece, the great Piano Quintet, and hear the whole thing. Then as promised we'll sample the piano works and the songs, and if we have any energy left, maybe even sample one of the symphonies.
