Sunday Classics "loose ends": A previously "missing" performance of Telemann's Viola Concerto -- one to LOVE! -- resurfaces

by Ken

It happens sometimes that a record I have in mind for use for Sunday Classics turns up unavailable. Sometimes I can't figure out where I've filed it (like a CD we're going to be hearing from tomorrow, featuring works for voice and orchestra by Mozart and Richard Strauss, and could plausibly be filed under "Mozart" or "Strauss" or the singer, Christine Schäfer). Sometimes I've already plucked it off the shelf and set it . . . well, somewhere. Sometimes the damned thing is just nowhere to be found! And then, until recently, LPs were disqualified because of their LP-ness.

This, then, is our week for such "loose ends": some records I contemplated incorporating into previous posts but wasn't able to by reason of . . . well, see above. (I think we've got examples of all the above categories.) Or at least some records that have subsequently become availab.e

Tonight's featured selection falls into the category of the "mysteriously missing." When we heard the Telemann G major Viola Concerto, you may recall that I was unable to offer the recording I said had made me fall in love with the piece in the first place. That fine old Musical Heritage Society LP (licensed from Erato) of four Telemann concertos conducted by Kurt Redel just wasn't on the shelf, though by some odd chance another MHS LP (also licensed from Erato!) featuring the Viola Concerto was there. Eventually one day it just turned up, lying around -- off the shelf, from which I still have no recollection of removing it.


GEORG SCHMID AND KURT REDEL PLAY TELEMANN

The Erato/MHS performance we heard before, with Philipp Naegele as soloist, is OK, and so is the other recording I offered, which I happened to have an a cheap CD I picked up somewhere. But really, I don't think there's any comparison with this one. Both the soloist, Georg Schmid, and conductor Redel (seen here looking very distinguished, some 40 years after recording our Telemann LP) have imagined the piece in terms of actual phrasing, where lines are shaped not just with remarkable beauty but as an expression of real human communicative impulses.

TELEMANN: Viola Concerto in G
[0:00] i. Largo
[3:35] ii. Allegro
[6:17] iii. Andante
[10:15] iv. Presto
Georg Schmid, viola; Munich Pro Arte Chamber Orchestra, Kurt Redel, cond. Erato/Musical Heritage Society, recorded c1961


NOW WE HAVE A TELEMANN CONCERTO BONUS

It seems the least I can do for you. Obviously, this is from the same Erato/MHS LP. This Flute Concerto doesn't seem to me to have the compulsive listenability of the Viola Concerto, but it's a pleasant enough piece. What's more, here our conductor gets to show off his virtuoso-soloist side.

TELEMANN: Flute Concerto in D
[0:00] i. Andante
[4:30] ii. Allegro
[8:40] iii. Largo
[13:17] iv. Allegro assai
Munich Pro Arte Chamber Orchestra, Kurt Redel, flute and cond. Erato/Musical Heritage Society, recorded c1961
[UPDATE: Sorry about the glitch with the original audio file, which lopped off the end of the concerto. And then while I was fixing it, there was a brief period when there was no audio file attached to this. Should be good now, though!]


AND TOMORROW NIGHT, ANOTHER "LOOSE END"

As noted above we have Christine Schäfer singing, yes, Mozart and Richard Strauss -- with Claudio Abbado conducting. The key work is Mozart's irresistible motet "Exsultate, jubilate," but we've also got Mozart and Strauss bonuses. Sunday's "loose ends" I'm calling "From Russia with love": unrelated works by Rachmaninoff (six preludes played by Sviatoslav Richter) and what I'm calling "A Sort-Of West Coast Firebird," another hybrid performance of the complete Stravinsky ballet.

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Sunday Classics: As the names remind us, the concerto and the sonata (and the sinfonia and the opera) came out of Italy

This is the YouTube poster's quite nice off-the-air VHS recording of the fine Korean violinist Kyung-Wha Chung playing the Largo of Bach's E major Violin Concerto in 1982.

"What can one say of the C-sharp minor Adagio [of Bach's E major Violin Concerto]? Is there not, far beyond the depth and profundity of this psalm, in which all grief and all bliss are united, everything that we are able to comprehend? Does there not wake in us a presentiment, an awe of the most holy mysteries, upon which no human word can touch?"

-- the uncredited annotator of Epic's U.S. issue of I Musici's
Philips recording of the Bach violin concertos

by Ken

Why don't we start with the performance of that Largo under annotation? It's from the same I Musici LP from which we heard first just the Largo (in Friday night's preview) and then the whole (in last night's preview) of Bach's D minor "Double" Violin Concerto, with then-violinist-members of the heart chamber ensemble Roberto Michelucci and Felix Ayo. Each violinist was assigned one of the two solo-violin concertos, and while Michelucci seems to me the more interesting violinist, he got the A minor Concerto. Still, Ayo isn't violinistic chopped liver.

BACH: Violin Concerto No. 2 in E, BWV 1042:
ii. Largo

Felix Ayo, violin; I Musici. Philips, recorded c1960

As long as we're here, we might as well hear the whole Bach E major Concerto. Which we'll do in the click-through.

TO HEAR THE WHOLE BACH E MAJOR CONCERTO, AND
CONCERTOS BY TELEMANN AND HANDEL, CLICK HERE

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Sunday Classics preview: Baroque composers, like musicians before and since, had it bad for Italy, Part 2

"Under the stars of Italy, in that warm air without breezes": the image conjured by the mezzo-soprano soloist in her "strophes" evoking the "first declarations, first vows of two lovers" in Berlioz's Roméo et Juliette

by Ken

After a look back at my earlier Vivaldi Four Seasons post, in last night's preview we refreshed our aural recollection of the music coming out of Italy in the Baroque period, music that enflamed the musical imagination of the rest of Europe, with what seemed to me an appropriate nod to J. S. Bach, a known admirer of Italian music in general and Vivaldi's music in particular.

A concerto by another composer pops immediately to mind, but unfortunatley I can't offer you the recording I would have liked to, the one that made me fall in love with the piece via the first LP I owned devoted to the composer. It was an early Musical Heritage Society LP, and I don't know what happened to my copy. However, by some curious (if not actually perverse) chance, after it went missing, I found another MHS LP -- probably in a dollar record bin somewhere -- devoted to this same composer, which included my beloved concerto (if memory serves, the only work duplicated between the two discs), in a performance I don't like as well as "mine" (we'll hear it tomorrow anyway -- sometimes you just have to go with what you've got).

Ironically, though, this "replacement" LP contains a tiny concerto for four violins -- that's four violins and nothing else) -- that I quite love too.

[0:00] i. Grave
[1:09] ii. Allegro
[2:57] iii. Largo e staccato
[4:48] iv. Allegro

This little concerto is presented again, with proper identifications, in the click-through. Before going there, though, I thought we would throw in another mystery concerto, this one for organ.

i. Andante allegro

[0:00] ii. Larghetto
[4:27] iii. Allegro moderato

TO LEARN THE IDENTITY OF OUR MYSTERY COMPOSERS AND CONCERTOS, AND HEAR SOME MORE MUSIC, CLICK HERE

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[11/21/2010] Sunday Classics: As the names remind us, the concerto and the sonata (and the sinfonia and the opera) came out of Italy (continued)

Simon Preston plays the first two movements of Handel's The Cuckoo and the Nightingale Concerto with Trevor Pinnock conducting the English Concert. The "cuckoo and nightingale" movement begins at 2:50. (The rest of the concerto can be found here.)

Let's proceed with this basketful of concertos by our "adoptively Italian" masters.

JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH (1685-1750)

For anyone who's heard tell of a major triad, Bach launches this concerto with, pure and simple, the E major version of this most basic building block of Western classical harmony. And yes, it really is possible to generate memorable melodic material from the E major triad! At the other end of the glorious Largo is a rollicking chase-finale.

BACH: Violin Concerto No. 2 in E, BWV 1042

i. Allegro, ii. Adagio, iii. Allegro assai
Vienna Symphony Orchestra, David Oistrakh, violin and cond. DG, recorded June 1962

And here it is in a more "authentically Baroque" setting.

i. Allegro, ii. Adagio, iii. Allegro assai
Christoph Poppen, violin; Bach-Collegium Stuttgart, Helmuth Rilling, cond. Hänssler Classic, recorded May 1999

GEORG PHILIPP TELEMANN (1681-1767)

Last night, when we heard that magical little concerto for four violins by Telemann, I promised you a Telemann concerto that I fell in love with on an old Musical Heritage Society LP of assorted concertos by the composer. That disc featured the excellent Baroque conductor Kurt Redel and his Munich Pro Arte Chamber Orchestra, with Georg Schmid playing the G major Viola Concerto. As I noted, somehow I got separated from that record acquired the Viola Concerto on a later MHS Telemann LP built around violist Philipp Naegele (who switched to violin for the four-violin concerto).

I see that the Telemann G major Viola Concerto is now all over the place, and it's not hard to understand why. Each of its four movements (in the slow-fast-slow-fast configuration that comes out of the Italian sonata da chiesa, or church sonata) is a compact gem, melodically and rhythmically irresistible and memory-implanting. We had a video clip of the lovely opening movement; here's the Naegele recording of the whole piece.

TELEMANN: Viola Concerto in G

[0:00] i. Largo, [3:11] ii. Allegro, [6:11] iii. Andante,
[9:52] iv. Presto
Philipp Naegele, viola; Heidelberg Chamber Orchestra. Musical Heritage Society

For a change of pace, here's a pretty decent recording of the concerto I've got on a cheap CD called Pachelbel Canon and Other Baroque Masterpieces.

i. Largo, ii. Allegro, iii. Andante, iv. Presto
Gubert Adomaitis, viola; Baltic Festival Orchestra, Michael George, cond. Madacy Entertainment

GEORGE FRIDERIC HANDEL (1685-1759)

Handel appears to have composed 12 organ concertos in all, published in two sets of six (Opp. 4 and 7) with a catch-all volume of the remaining four. The concertos are obviously popular with organists, who have nothing else quite like them to play, but also among music-lovers who relish the enormous personality -- witty and engaging but also, when called for, searingly songful -- that comes through them.

As Op. 7, No. 4 -- again, in the four-movement slow-fast-slow-fast form -- begins, maybe it's just a brief illusion, but the opening Adagio places me in, of all places, the world of Boris Godunov! And yet, without relenting on the grief, Handel works us round to the major for a jolly Allegro. After a brooding organ solo (a typical format for these concertos, which were generally written for use during before and between acts of Handel's oratorios, labeled "Aria," we finish with a fast movement in the minor.

HANDEL: Organ Concerto No. 10, Op. 7, No. 4

A word about the performances. The wonderful Biggs series of the 16 concertos with Sir Adrian Boult conducting was made for the bicentennial of Handel's death in 1959, on an organ that Biggs tracked down in Warwickshire on which Handel was known to have played. Marie-Claire Alain's Erato recordings with Jean-François Paillard represent a lither, spritelier approach, while the performances by Franz Haselböck and Pál Nemeth are stylistically more "authentic" in approach.

With regard to the slight differences in pitch among our performances, remember that the accompanying instruments have to be tuned to the pitch of the organ -- you can't change its pitch!

i. Adagio, ii. Allegro, iii. Organo ad libitum: Aria, iv. Allegro
E. Power Biggs, organ; London Philharmonic Orchestra, Sir Adrian Boult, cond. Columbia/CBS/Sony, recorded 1959

[0:00] i. Adagio, [5:44] ii. Allegro, [10:27] iii. Organo ad libitum: Aria, [13:37] iv. Allegro
Marie-Claire Alain, organ of the Église des Maronites (Paris), Jean-François Paillard Chamber Orchestra, Jean-François Paillard, cond. Erato, recorded c1960

i. Adagio, ii. Allegro, iii. Organo ad libitum: Aria, iv. Allegro
Franz Haselböck, organ; Capella Savaria, Pál Nemeth, cond. Hänssler Classic, recorded April 1993

ENCORE: THE NIGHTINGALE AND THE CUCKOO

I can't resist throwing in -- call it an encore -- at least the "cuckoo and nightingale" movement, with its lovely echo and bird-song effects, of the F major Organ Concerto known as (what else?) The Cuckoo and the Nightingale.

HANDEL: Organ Concerto No. 13 in F (The Cuckoo and the Nightingale): ii. Allegro

E. Power Biggs, organ; London Philharmonic Orchestra, Sir Adrian Boult, cond. Columbia/CBS/Sony, recorded 1959
Marie-Claire Alain, organ of the Église des Maronites (Paris), Jean-François Paillard Chamber Orchestra, Jean-François Paillard, cond. Erato, recorded c1960
Franz Haselböck, organ; Capella Savaria, Pál Nemeth, cond. Hänssler Classic, recorded April 1993

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[11/20/2010] Sunday Classics preview: Baroque composers, like musicians before and since, had it bad for Italy, Part 2 (continued)

David Lloyd plays the opening Largo of Georg Philipp Telemann's G major Viola Concerto, with the Orquestra Raizes Ibericas (Lisbon) conducted by Richard Tomes, March 31, 2007. (The remaining three movements are also posted.)

by Ken

Yes, our first mystery composer is Georg Philipp Telemann.

TELEMANN: Concerto in C for Four Violins

[0:00] i. Grave
[1:09] ii. Allegro
[2:57] iii. Largo e staccato
[4:48] iv. Allegro
Philipp Naegele, Gerhard Ohnheiser, Masafumi Hori, and Ottavia Kortner, violins. Musical Heritage Society, recorded c1972

Tomorrow we're going to be hearing the whole of the Telemann G major Viola Concerto. Oh, did you somehow get the idea that it was an Italian composer we were hearing? Sorry about that. Meanwhile, I'm afraid I may have somehow misled you into thinking our second composer is also Italian. Here's our music properly identified.

HANDEL: Organ Concerto No. 6 in B-flat, Op. 4, No. 6

i. Andante allegro
Simon Preston, organ of the Queen Elizabeth Hall (London); Menuhin Festival Orchestra, Yehudi Menuhin, cond. EMI, recorded c1969
[0:00] ii. Larghetto
[4:27] iii. Allegro moderato
Marie-Claire Alain, Haerpfer-Ermann organ of the Église des Maronites (Paris); Jean-François Paillard Chamber Orchestra, Jean-François Paillard, cond. Erato, recorded c1960

COMPLETING THE BACH "DOUBLE" CONCERTO

In last night's preview we heard the haunting Largo of Bach's D minor Concerto for Two Violins and Strings. Since we have more Bach on the menu for tomorrow, I thought we best hear the whole of the much-played "Double" Concerto tonight, from the same recording by I Musici.

BACH: Concerto in D minor for Two Violins and Strings, BWV 1043

i. Vivace

ii. Largo

iii. Allegro

Roberto Michelucci and Felix Ayo, violins; I Musici. Philips, recorded c 1960

IN TOMORROW'S SUNDAY CLASSICS POST

More "Italian" concertos -- by Bach, Handel, and Telemann.


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