Sunday Classics: "Brandenburg"s for the holidays, Part 1

The Freiburg Baroque Orchestra gives a now-fashionably lickety-split but still quite nice performance of the final movement (Menuetto and Polacca) of Bach's First Brandenburg Concerto. Listen particularly for the second Trio -- not the first Trio, of the Menuetto, written for, literally, a trio of two oboes and bassoon, at 1:12, but the second Trio, of the Polacca (which begins at 3:14), written for a "trio" of two horns plus a trio of oboes, at 5:17.

by Ken

I expect you're thinking, haven't we had enough music this week with our Christmas specials, Handel's Messiah for Christmas Eve and Berlioz's L'Enfance du Christ for Christmas Day? Obviously, you already have my answer.

One pleasant tradition that's developed around the holidays is performing the entire set of Bach's six Brandenburg Concertos. In a sense it's easier now that we think of the concertos as chamber rather than orchestral music, but it really tests the mettle of the presenting chamber music group. The six concertos are so different, and scored for such different instrumental combinations, that just figuring out who's to play what and then managing the logistics of having the correct players available, first for rehearsal (today's musicians racing from job to job to keep their heads above water can hardly be asked to sit through rehearsals in which they have nothing to do, but at the same time you can't rehearse a concerto if you don't have all the necessary performers on hand) and then for onstage at the right time for the right pieces -- the logistics are exhaustive and exhausting, and for obvious reasons it's not easy to get all six pieces prepared to the degree of thoroughness that most of those musicians might wish.

Nevertheless, performing the complete set of Brandenburgs can be an exhilarating experience for both performers and audiences, and the holidays just seem like a natural time to undertake it. I thought that we might join in this particular celebration, only we're not going to do it in all-in-one fashion. We'll get through the first three concertos today, and then the remaining three (probably) next week.

In the only all-Bach post I've written to date, devoted to the unusually personal world of his arias, I wrote:

If I were setting out to "sell" Bach, or even to try to sketch the Bach who most matters to me, I would start with the secular music -- with, say, the Brandenburg Concertos and the solo-cello suites. But the cantatas may be the place where one comes closest to encountering the soul of Bach.

WE COME AT LAST TO THE BRANDENBURGS

Not quite for the first time, though. Shortly after, I wrote a post built about extraordinary surprises composers may bury in larger works, offering as examples the totally unexpected and totally wonderful methodically galloping rhythmic figure that breaks out suddenly in the cello then works its way up the string-quartet membership in the theme-and-variations slow movement of Mozart's String Quartet No. 18, and the tiny bit -- a mere minute in our performance -- known innocently enough as "Trio II" in the final movement of Bach's Brandenburg Concerto No. 1.

Here's the bit we're talking about, in the best performance I've heard of it, or at any rate the one that really made me sit up and take notice. It still sounds awfully good to me. (Note: You can click to enlarge the score page, but you won't be able to hear the music at the same time. Sorry!)


CBC Vancouver Orchestra, Mario Bernardi, cond. CBC Records, recorded 1983
[I'm sorry not to be able to identify the soloists of this performance, but my copy of the CD booklet has gone missing!]


TO HEAR THE WHOLE BRANDENBURG NO. 1
(TWO WAYS!) AND NOS. 2 AND 3, CLICK HERE

#

Sunday Classics preview: Our mystery composer is surely a mystery no more

by Ken

In last night's preview we heard four mystery excerpts, or at least they're mysteries for those who chose not to click through to the "solutions" post. For those who didn't, and who haven't guessed, we're dealing with one of the operatic masters, and while last night's selections tended, with one exception, to the obscure, tonight we're back in our man's creative breadbasket, so to speak.

Same deal as last night: Feel free to click through to the answers.

[A]
[B]

[C]
[D]


THE ONLY BIT OF SINGING WE'VE HEARD SO FAR . . .

in all these operatic excerpts occurs in tonight's selection [B]. Surely everyone can identify the singer. The fact that he was in his vocal prime at the time of this recording and still finds some of this little piece seriously heavy going demonstrates, I think, just how hard it is to sing.


FOR PROPER IDENTIFICATIONS OF OUR SELECTIONS . . .

and also a certain amount of explanation and discussion, and even a video clip, click here.


IN TOMORROW'S SUNDAY CLASSICS POST

Sometimes you do a thing, not because it's such a great idea, although maybe it seemed for a while like it would be, but because, well, gosh darn it, you can do it. I'm hoping this project doesn't fall into that category, but you never know.

#

Sunday Classics Preview: "How quaint the ways of Paradox!"

Rex Smith as Frederic, Kevin Kline as the Pirate King, and Angela Lansbury as Ruth seem amazingly unembarrassed in the "Paradox" trio from the film version of the New York Shakespeare Festival production of The Pirates of Penzance. (Yes, that was the one with Linda Ronstadt as Mabel.) I'm not endorsing, just embedding.

by Ken

In case you're just coming in: Our hero, young Frederic (the slave of duty of the title The Pirates of Penzance; or, The Slave of Duty), has manfully honored, all the way up to the day of his 21st birthday, the unfortunate error of his hard-of-hearing nurserymaid Ruth in apprenticing him, not to a ship's "pilot," but to a "pirate," but now has put his unfortunate apprenticeship behind him and found true love with the most beautiful of Major General Stanley's many beautiful daughters, Mabel, and is sworn to destroy his onetime mates, the infamous -- and more than a little goofy -- Pirates of Penzance.

At this point fate intervenes, in the form of what Mr. Gilbert (the word guy) may already have known, at this relatively early stage in their collaboration, that Mr. Sullivan (the music guy) did better than most anything, and better than most anybody: a trio.

GILBERT AND SULLIVAN: The Pirates of Penzance: Act II,
[1] Recit., Now for the pirates' lair . . . [2] Young Frederic . . .
[3] Trio, When you had left our pirate fold

RECITATIVE: FREDERIC.
[1]
Now for the pirates' lair! Oh, joy unbounded!
Oh, sweet relief! Oh, rapture unexampled!
At last I may atone, in some slight measure,
For the repeated acts of theft and pillage
Which, at a sense of duty's stern dictation,
I, circumstance's victim, have been guilty!

[2] PIRATE KING and RUTH appear, armed.

KING. Young Frederic! (Covering him with pistol.)
FRED. Who calls?
KING. Your late commander!
RUTH. And I, your little Ruth! (Covering him with pistol.)
FRED. Oh, mad intruders,
How dare ye face me? Know ye not, oh rash ones,
That I have doomed you to extermination?

KING and RUTH hold a pistol to each ear.

KING. Have mercy on us! hear us, ere you slaughter!
FRED. I do not think I ought to listen to you.
Yet, mercy should alloy our stern resentment,
And so I will be merciful. Say on!

TRIO: RUTH, KING, and FREDERIC.
[3]
RUTH. When you had left our pirate fold,
We tried to raise our spirits faint,
According to our custom old,
With quip and quibble quaint.
But all in vain the quips we heard,
We lay and sobbed upon the rocks,
Until to somebody occurred
A startling paradox.
FRED. A paradox?
RUTH. [laughing] A paradox!
A most ingenious paradox!
We've quips and quibbles heard in flocks,
But none to beat this paradox!
ALL. A paradox, a paradox, etc.

KING. We knew your taste for curious quips,
For cranks and contradictions queer;
And with the laughter on our lips,
We wished you there to hear.
We said, "If we could tell it him,
How Frederic would the joke enjoy!"
And so we've risked both life and limb
To tell it to our boy.
FRED. [interested] That paradox?
KING. [laughing] That most ingenious paradox!
We've quips and quibbles heard in flocks,
But none to beat that paradox!
ALL. A paradox, a paradox, etc.

CHANT: KING.

For some ridiculous reason, to which, however, I've no desire to be disloyal,
Some person in authority, I don't know who, very likely the Astronomer Royal,
Has decided that, although for such a beastly month as February, twenty-eight days as a rule are plenty,
One year in every four his days shall be reckoned as nine and twenty.
Through some singular coincidence -- I shouldn't be surprised if it were owing to the agency of an ill-natured fairy --
You are the victim of this clumsy arrangement, having been born in leap-year, on the twenty-ninth of February;
And so, by a simple arithmetical process, you'll easily discover,
That though you've lived twenty-one years, yet, if we go by birthdays, you're only five and a little bit over!
RUTH. and KING. Ha! ha! ha! ha!
Ho! ho! ho! ho!
FRED. Dear me!
Let's see! [counting on fingers]
Yes, yes; with yours my figures do agree!
ALL. Ha! ha! ha! ho! ho! ho! ho!
FRED. [more amused than any] How quaint the ways of Paradox!
At common sense she gaily mocks!
Though counting in the usual way,
Years twenty-one I've been alive,
Yet, reckoning by my natal day,
I am a little boy of five!
RUTH and KING. He is a little boy of five! Ha! ha! ha!
ALL. A paradox, a paradox,
A most ingenious paradox!
Ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha!, etc.

RUTH and KING throw themselves back on seats, exhausted with laughter.

[1-3] Jon Mark Ainsley (t), Frederic; Donald Adams (bs), Pirate King; Gillian Knight (ms), Ruth; Welsh National Opera Orchestra, Charles Mackerras, cond. Telarc, recorded May 4-6, 1993


[2-3] James Milligan (bs-b), Pirate King; Monica Sinclair (c), Ruth; Richard Lewis (t), Frederic; Pro Arte Orchestra, Sir Malcolm Sargent, cond. EMI, recorded Dec. 30, 1958-Jan. 2, 1959


GILBERT AND SULLIVAN: The Pirates of Penzance: Overture

This isn't the first time at Sunday Classics that we've gone backward instead of forward. I thought this would be a good time to go back to the Overture to Pirates, as usual an artful (in this case, we might say, an especially artful) medley of tunes from the operetta. Listen for a familiar one at 5:46 of the Godfrey recording, 5:25 of the Sargent.

Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Isidore Godfrey, cond. Decca, recorded Dec. 4-8, 1967


Pro Arte Orchestra, Sir Malcolm Sargent, cond. EMI, recorded Feb. 6, 1958

IN TOMORROW'S PREVIEW --

We revisit our old friends the Bad Baronets of Ruddigore -- and hear another trio.


REMINDER: YOU CAN NOW ACTUALLY HEAR
THOSE CHOPIN PRELUDES (I HOPE)

A reminder that the March 21-23 posts focusing on the first two of Chopin's preludes, with performances of them by (count 'em) seven distinguished pianists, have been upgraded to include (I hope) actually playable audio clips! (What'll they think of next?)


SUNDAY CLASSICS POSTS: NEW AND IMPROVED

No, it's not the posts that are new and improved. They are, for better or worse, what they are, or rather were. However, the new and boldly improved version of the list is here.

#

[Nov. 13, 2010] Sunday Classics preview solution: A sneak peek at perhaps Strauss's best-loved operas, "Rosenkavalier" and "Ariadne"

The opening of the 1988 Met telecast performance of Ariadne auf Naxos, with Franz Ferdinand Nentwig as the Music Master and Nico Castel as the Major-Domo (and, at the end of the clip, James Courtney as the Lackey and Charles Anthony as the Officer) -- staged by Bodo Igesz and conducted by James Levine

by Ken

The grouping of our four excerpts into two pairs, A-B and C-D, wasn't accidental, of course. We have here music from what I think we can safely call the most-loved operas of Richard Strauss (1864-1949), Der Rosenkavalier and Ariadne auf Naxos, the first two operas he composed to original librettos by the distinguished young playwright Hugo von Hofmannsthal (1874-1929). (Their previous collaboration, Elektra, was an operatic adaptation of Hofmannsthal's non-operatic adaptation of the Sophocles play.)

We're hearing the openings of both operas, and in the case of Ariadne, we're hearing both openings. The alternately sober and zany "opera seria" Ariadne auf Naxos was originally conceived to be performed as an intermezzo in an abridged version of Molière's Le bourgeois gentilhomme -- a version prepared, naturally, by Hofmannsthal -- but was subsequently retooled for self-sufficiency, newly equipped with a Prologue to show us how the wacky mélange that follows comes to happen.

Then for balance, and 'cause I love it, as a bonus I've thrown in a unique nugget from Rosenkavalier.

R. STRAUSS: Der Rosenkavalier, Op. 59 (1910)

There are a number of ways to approach the literally orgasmic orchestral introduction to Der Rosenkavalier, but for this go-through I couldn't resist the combination of molten energy and (after the act) sweetness Georg Solti summons from Strauss's beloved Vienna Philharmonic. And I couldn't resist throwing in the Italian Singer's treacherous aria from the Marschallin's levée in Act I. It's a showpiece, of course, but a showpiece with a characteristically Straussian ironic twist: The composer clearly wanted the tenor to be able to show off his stuff, but to preserve the effect of a home salon performance, he made it so fiercely difficult that even Pavarotti in his prime is left struggling to survive its upper reaches.

[A] Act I: Orchestral introduction

[B] Act I; the Italian Singer's aria, "Di rigori armati"

Luciano Pavarotti (t), the Italian Singer (in [B]); Vienna Philarmonic, Georg Solti, cond. Decca, recorded November 1968

R. STRAUSS: Ariadne auf Naxos, Op. 60 (1911, 1916)

Perhaps it had to do with the extremely difficult process by which the final opera was created, but Ariadne auf Naxos held a special place in Strauss's heart. While it's probably Die Frau ohne Schatten among Strauss's operas that's most closely associated with Karl Böhm (and for obvious reason), I think it's clear from his performances of it all over the operatic world that the Strauss opera closest to his heart as well as the composer's was Ariadne. (One cherishable document is the complete recording of the performance he conducted at the Vienna State Opera to celebrate Strauss's 80th birthday on June 11, 1944, one of the last performances in the original Staatsoper building that was largely destroyed by Allied bombers on March 12, 1945.)

Although the sound of these excerpts is humble broadcast mono, it would be hard to imagine them endowed with more affection, wit, or radiant warmth. I don't mean to disparage James Levine's surfacey, utilitarian conducting in the video clip . . . oh wait, maybe I do.

[C] Prologue: Orchestral introduction

[D] Overture to the opera-within-the-opera

Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, Karl Böhm, cond. Live performance, Mar. 28, 1970

RETURN TO THE POST BEGINNING

#