Ghost of Sunday Classics: "Baton Bunny" music with and without the Bunny, plus a treasure trove of overtures and, oh yes, "Gaudeamus igitur"

In which we watch part of a cartoon, then listen
to an overture, and then another overture, and then --
can you imagine? -- drift off into other, er, stuff


A nice chunk of Chuck Jones's Baton Bunny (1959) -- from the confident-looking start, things deteriorate pretty quickly.

by Ken

As I mentioned most recently Friday night, New York City's Museum of the Moving Image in Astoria, Queens, is currently hosting a grand exhibition devoted to one of the giants of animated film, Chuck Jones. And as I mentioned Friday night, this afternoon I hope to get to MoMI for this week's "Chuck Jones Matinee" (each week the same hour-long program is offered on Saturday and Sunday), to see -- in 35mm, on a large screen -- Duck Amuck, which I've already declared the greatest cartoon ever made, and What's Opera, Doc?, the famous Bugs Bunny classical-music extravaganza.

On my last weekend visit to the museum, the CJM program included a different classical-Bugs enterprise, one I didn't remember: Baton Bunny, from 1959. In it Bugs attempts to conduct Suppé's A Morning, Noon, and Night in Vienna Overture, and you can see some of it above.

We've heard our fair share of Suppé, entirely in the form of overtures. Yes, occasional efforts are made to revive some of his numerous operettas, but they don't stick. A dozen or so of his overtures do, however, for the simple reason that they're utterly wonderful, utterly gorgeous music, and among them are a couple -- I mean Poet and Peasant and Light Cavalry -- that I would listen to as happily as anything in the orchestral repertory.

When the poster of our Baton Bunny clip posted it, a rash of commenters were frantic to know what the music was. The question was answered in due course, of course, but we're going to answer it in our own way -- with three distinctly different performances.


FRANZ VON SUPPÉ: A Morning, Noon, and Night in Vienna: Overture

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Sunday Classics Preview: Marching with Berlioz' pilgrims in Italy

Violist William Primrose is our soloist tonight in all

three performances of Berlioz' Harold in Italy.

by Ken

For once, there's been no change of plan -- yet. I said last week that we might stick with Berlioz and take a peek at his symphony with viola obbligato Harold in Italy, inspired by Byron's Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, though nothing seems to have been taken directly or depicted from the long (very long; four cantos' worth) poem. Berlioz seems mostly to have responded to the idea of wandering around Italy.

Harold was a sequel of sorts to Berlioz' Symphonie fantastique, and in its four-movement form it actually behaves more like a symphony than the Fantastic Symphony -- except for that matter of the viola obbligato. It's clearly not a concerto, it's . . . well, a symphony with viola obbligato (an important solo part). And I thought tonight we would plunge right in, with three very different performances of the lovely second movement, the "March of the pilgrims singing their evening prayer." Note how much more jauntily Charles Munch's pilgrims march than Sir Thomas Beecham's (actually a fairly standard pace, but a hard one to maintain with real movement), with Arturo Toscanini's smack in between.

Different as these performances may be, they have one important thing in common: the great Scottish-born violist William Primrose, heard here over a 19-year span as soloist. In 1939, when he first played Harold with Toscanini, he was in fact a member of the NBC Symphony Orchestra, which had a host of outstanding musicians in its principal chairs.

One thing to listen for: As in the Symphonie fantastique, Berlioz used the idea of an idée fixe, a musical theme that recurs in each movement. In this second movement of Harold in Italy, which begins with some chords of taut expectation that quickly give way to a wonderful pastoral marching tune, the viola slips in with a bit of what sounds like decoration to the melodic line, and then suddenly it's singing, as a beautifully straightforward viola solo, the idée fixe -- at 1:27 of the Toscanini performance, 1:42 of the Beecham, and 1:18 of the Munch.

BERLIOZ: Harold in Italy, Op. 16:
ii. March of the pilgrims singing their evening prayer


William Primrose, viola; NBC Symphony Orchestra, Arturo Toscanini, cond. Music & Arts, recorded live, Jan. 2, 1939


William Primrose, viola; Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Sir Thomas Beecham, cond. Columbia/CBS/Sony, recorded Nov. 13 and 15, 1951


William Primrose, viola; Boston Symphony Orchestra, Charles Munch, cond. RCA/BMG, recorded March 31, 1958


IN TOMORROW NIGHT'S PREVIEW --

I haven't thought that far ahead. It'll be Berlioz, I'm pretty sure, though, and then Sunday we'll take in the whole of Harold in Italy.


SUNDAY CLASSICS POSTS

The current list is here.

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Sunday Classics, Christmas Day edition: "For unto us a child is born" -- the Prince of Peace

For unto us a child is born, unto us a Son is given, and the government shall be upon His shoulder, and His name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, the Mighty God, the Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace.

-- Isaiah 9:6

Musica Sacra, Richard Westenburg, cond. RCA/BMG, recorded October 1981

by Ken

I didn't always love Messiah. Like many people, I suspect, I used to think of it as a windy old bore. Gradually I came around, but a real turning point came one day when I was visiting my friend Richard, who had a large collection of 78s and a good turntable set up for playing them (if you've never heard 78s really well reproduced, you would probably be shocked at how much sound those old grooves can contain), and I got the crazy idea of listening to at least some of Malcolm Sargent's first recording of Messiah.

No sooner had we gotten through the Overture than I was stopped cold by the Northern Irish tenor James Johnston singing the first vocal number, the recitative "Comfort ye, my people." I don't know that anyone pays much attention to it. Certainly I never did. Usually you think of it as something you go through to get to the following tenor aria, "Ev'ry valley shall be exalted." Suddenly Johnson was singing, on behalf of his God, directly to me! "Comfort ye," indeed. And then he was singing to me, as Jerusalem, "that her warfare is abolished, that her iniquity is pardoned." Whoa! And I pretty well lost it.

Now anytime I have access to a decent performance of "Comfort ye," I am readily available for having my warfare abolished and my iniquity pardoned. And gradually I've found more and more of Messiah speaking directly and personally to me.

It's always pointed out, and rightly so, that Messiah is the oddball among Handel's oratorios. The others are unstaged dramatizations of highly dramatic Old Testament-based stories, which would probably have been staged if English censorship of the time didn't forbid stage representation of biblical material. Messiah not only isn't dramatic, it has no plot. It's just a collection of Bible snippets -- most uncharacteristically for Handel drawing on the New as well as the Old Testament. It has no "definitive" edition, with regard to exactly which numbers are included and which are assigned to which voice category, because Handel tinkered with both every time he performed the piece. This allows performers tremendous leeway in putting together a performing edition.

And of course the old-style performances with a massive chorus and orchestra have given way to more and more modest performing forces. That we have a better feel for how a Handelian phrase fits together is all to the good; otherwise there has been perhaps more loss than gain in the "authenticizing" of performances, which substitute book learning for musical understanding, which is especially unfortunate in the case of Messiah, which is one of the supreme musical tours through and tributes to the human spirit.

Only the first (and longest) of Messiah's three parts, which is all related to the birth of Christ, has a specific Christmas connection, but that's enough to make it inescapable Christmas fodder. Me, I listen to it all year round, and I'm not in the least religious. For me Messiah, for all its religious references, isn't particularly religious in content. When the soprano sings, "I know that my Redeemer liveth" (and we'll be hearing an especially intimate and personal performance), I understand by "Redeemer" something outside of our own selves that can give meaning -- and yes, even redemption -- to life.

But we've gotten ahead of ourselves. Back to "Comfort ye," sung not by James Johnston but -- with his trademark intensity -- by Jon Vickers, from the slightly outrageous and extremely wonderful Messiah that Sir Thomas Beecham recorded in 1959, his third.

Part I: Comfort ye, my people (tenor recitative)

Comfort ye, comfort ye, my people, saith your God; speak ye comfortably to Jerusalem; and cry unto her, that her warfare is accompllshèd, that her iniquity is pardoned. The voice of him that crieth in the wilderness: Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our God.

-- Isaiah 40:1-3

Jon Vickers, tenor; Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Sir Thomas Beecham, cond. (orch. Eugene Goossens). RCA/BMG, recorded 1959

Now we're just going to hear some favorite excerpts from Messiah.


Part II: He was despisèd (alto aria)

Thanks to its quite slow tempo, even in these days of super-hopped-up "authentic" baroque tempos, "He was despisèd" performed complete is almost surely Handel's longest aria -- it's hard to get through the thing in less than 10-12 minutes, and never mind that the entire text of the "A" section of this A-B-A aria, which accounts for most of its length, consists of 15 (count 'em) words. Handel looked at those 15 words, and something happened in the wiring of his brain.

Not surprisingly, the aria poses an enormous challenge to the singer to sustain and keep animated. As a result, many perormances wear out their welcome long before they're done. However, in a worthy performance, it's hard not to think that this is Handel's greatest aria, and one of the greatest written by anybody. Our soloist here, the Czech mezzo Marjana Lipovšek, gives a pretty darned good performance.

He was despisèd and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief.
He gave His back to the smiters, and His cheeks to them that plucked off the hair. He hid not His face from shame and spitting.

-- Isaiah 53:3, 50:6

Marjana Lipovšek, mezzo-soprano; Vienna Concentus Musicus, Nikolaus Harnoncourt, cond. Teldec, recorded live, November 1982

We're going to hear another performance of "He was despisèd," from Sir Malcolm Sargent's third Messiah, made the year before Sir Thomas's. (Sir Malcolm would go on to record yet a fourth in 1965.) It's an older style of performance, but mostly I wanted you to hear how beautifully the aria sits in a true contralto voice, with its deeper, richer sound. (Note that this performance is noticeably shorter, only six minutes! Sir Malcolm simply omitted the "B" section and the repeat of "A.")


Monica Sinclair, contralto; Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, Sir Malcolm Sargent, cond. EMI, recorded 1958


Part II, conclusion: Hallelujah (chorus)

Hallelujah, for the Lord God Omnipotent reigneth.

-- Revelation 19:6

The Kingdom of this world is become the Kingdom of our Lord and of His Christ, and He shall reign for ever and ever more.

-- Revelation 11:15

King of Kings, and Lord of Lords.

-- Revelation 19:16

Royal Choral Society, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Owain Arwel Hughes, cond. IMP, recorded February 1994


Part III: I know that my Redeemer liveth (soprano aria)

I know that my Redeemer liveth, and that He shall stand at the latter day upon the earth. And though worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God.

-- Job 19-25-26

For now is Christ risen from the dead, the first fruits of them that sleep.

-- I Corinthians 15:20

Sylvia McNair, soprano; Academy of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, Neville Marriner, cond. Philips, recorded live in Dublin, April 1992, commemorating the 250th anniversary of Messiah


Part III: The trumpet shall sound (bass aria)

The trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be rais'd incorruptible, and we shall be chang'd. For this corruptible must put on incorruption and this corruptible must put on immortality.

-- I Corinthians 15:52-53

Samuel Ramey, bass; Larry Weeks, trumpet; Toronto Symphony Orchestra, Andrew Davis, cond. EMI, recorded c 1986

Again we're going to hear a second performance, and again it's from the 1958 Sargent-EMI recording -- partly because it's such a lovely performance, by the sadly short-lived Canadian baritone James Milligan (1928-1961) -- but also, again, because it gives us a distinctly different voice, the higher-lying baritone rather than a deeper, darker bass like Ramey's. In Handel's time the baritone voice hadn't yet split off from the bass, Milligan would probably have been thought of as some sort of "high bass." But it's a distinctly different sound. (As with "He was despisèd," this "Trumpet shall sound" is significantly shorter, for the same reason: Sargent lops off the "B" section and the repeat of the "A.")


James Milligan, baritone; Alan Stringer, trumpet; Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, Sir Malcolm Sargent, cond. EMI, recorded 1958


ENCORE: HALLELUJAH, SIR THOMAS!

For those 1958-59 Messiah remakes, both Sir Malcolm Sargent and Sir Thomas Beecham provided extremely interesting essays built around their long and deep acquaintance with the piece, which luckily have been carried over to CD (at least the editions I have). Both were acutely aware that the rising winds of baroque-era scholarship were changing the perception of how Handel's music should be played.

Sir Malcolm began his essay: "I have known, loved, rehearsed and performed the Messiah for nearly forty years -- a photographic facsimile of the original manuscript has been my musical bible. I am still conscious that the very best of me is not worthy of this masterpiece." Sir Thomas, meanwhile, was able to write as late as 1959:

In view of the comparative neglect of Handel's music today, it might seem difficult to substantiate a valid claim for him to be numbered among the few supremely great Masters of music. In my memoirs, A Mingled Chime, I wrote, "Since his time mankind has heard no music written for voices which can even feebly rival his for grandeur of build and tone, nobility and tenderness of melody, scholastic skill and ingenuity and inexhaustible variety of effect." The justice of this opinion can easily be confirmed by an honest comparison between his choral writing and that of any other composer from Palestrina down to the present day. In this domain he has no serious rival.

It seems only appropriate to give Sir Thomas the last musical word:

Messiah: Part II, conclusion: Hallelujah (chorus)


Royal Philharmonic Chorus and Orchestra, Sir Thomas Beecham, cond. (orch. Eugene Goossens). RCA/BMG, recorded 1959

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[1/16/2011] Born to tell stories, Rimsky-Korsakov spins music's best yarns in "Scheherazade" (continued)

In Scene 4 of Rimsky-Korsakov's opera Sadko, the hero asks three merchant guests -- one Varangian (bass), one Hindu (tenor), and one Venetian (baritone) -- to sing about their homelands. (One of these weeks we'll come back to the Songs of the Varangian [Viking], Hindu, and Venetian Guests.) The Song of the Hindu (or Indian) Guest in time morphed, for better or worse, into the "Song of India."


ONCE WE HEAR OUR MALAYSIAN PERFORMANCE
OF THE CAPRICCIO, IT'S ON TO SCHEHERAZADE

RIMSKY-KORSAKOV: Capriccio espagnol, Op. 34

i. Alborada: Vivo e strepitoso
ii. Variations: Andante con moto
iii. Alborada: Vivo e strepitoso
iv. Scene and Gypsy Song: Allegretto
v. Asturian Fandango: Vivace assai; and Coda: Presto

Malaysian Philharmonic Orchestra, Kees Bakels, cond. Bis, recorded November 2003

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SCHEHERAZADE: THE LEGEND

IMPORTANT NOTE TO READERS: Please don't feel obliged to study, or even read, all of the following background and commentary -- or even any of it. You're not responsible for any of this material on the midterm. It's only the listening that matters.

But the better we listen, the more we hear, and the richer the experience that's available to us. So I feel I ought to provide some possibly useful information. And as I wrote last night, I'm sure that the reams of comment on these pieces I've taken in over the years have in various fashions filtered into my relationships with the pieces. However, all of this has value only insofar as it feeds into the listening experience, directly or indirectly. Often, in fact, it's the indirect ways in which this stuff filters into our consciousness that matters most. It's a maddeningly imprecise, disorderly, and generally uncontrollable process, but what're you gonna do? This is the way the mind works.

What's more, as we're going to find out below, Rimsky-Korsakov was adamant that his symphonic suite Scheherazade doesn't attempt to tell actual stories, but rather paints sound pictures evocative of the Arabian Nights tales. Musical story-telling often plugs directly into the imagination rather than attempting to trace neat narrative lines.

Still, we really ought to know who Scheherazade is, oughtn't we? For what it's worth, here is some Wikipedia-supplied background on the legend:

Scheherazade (pronounced /ʃəˌhɛrəˈzɑːdᵊ/), sometimes Scheherazadea, Persian transliteration Shahrazad or Shahrzād (Persian: شهرزاد Šahrzād, Arabic Šahrazād), is a legendary Persian queen and the storyteller of One Thousand and One Nights.

The frame tale goes that every day Shahryar (Persian: شهريار or "king") would marry a new virgin, and every day he would send yesterday's wife to be beheaded. This was done in anger, having found out that his first wife was betraying him. He had killed one thousand such women by the time he was introduced to Scheherazade, the vizier's daughter.

In Sir Richard F. Burton's translation of The Nights, Shahrazad was described in this way:

"[Shahrazad] had perused the books, annals and legends of preceding Kings, and the stories, examples and instances of by gone men and things; indeed it was said that she had collected a thousand books of histories relating to antique races and departed rulers. She had perused the works of the poets and knew them by heart; she had studied philosophy and the sciences, arts and accomplishments; and she was pleasant and polite, wise and witty, well read and well bred."

Against her father's protestations, Scheherazade volunteered to spend one night with the King. Once in the King's chambers, Scheherazade asked if she might bid one last farewell to her beloved sister, Dinazade, who had secretly been prepared to ask Scheherazade to tell a story during the long night. The King lay awake and listened with awe as Scheherazade told her first story. The night passed by, and Scheherazade stopped in the middle of the story. The King asked her to finish, but Scheherazade said there was not time, as dawn was breaking. So, the King spared her life for one day to finish the story the next night. So the next night, Scheherazade finished the story, and then began a second, even more exciting tale which she again stopped halfway through, at dawn. So the King again spared her life for one day to finish the second story.

And so the King kept Scheherazade alive day by day, as he eagerly anticipated the finishing of last night's story. At the end of one thousand and one nights, and one thousand stories, Scheherazade told the King that she had no more tales to tell him. During these one thousand and one nights, the King had fallen in love with Scheherazade, and had three sons with her. So, having been made a wiser and kinder man by Scheherazade and her tales, he spared her life, and made her his Queen. Scheherazade is one of literatere's greatest female grifters in history.

RIMSKY-KORSAKOV: Scheherazade, symphonic
suite after the Thousand and One Nights, Op. 35

From the Wikipedia article on Rimsky's Scheherazade (individual movement comments below are from the same source):

Initially, Rimsky-Korsakov intended to name the respective movements in Scheherazade: Prelude, Ballade, Adagio and Finale. However, after weighing the opinions of Anatoly Lyadov and others, as well as his own aversion to a too-definitive program, he settled upon thematic headings, based upon the tales from The Arabian Nights.

The composer deliberately made the titles vague, so that they are not associated with specific tales or voyages of Sinbad. However, in the epigraph to the finale, he does make reference to the adventure of Prince Ajib. In a later edition, he did away with titles altogether, desiring instead that the listener should hear his work only as an Oriental-themed symphonic music that evokes a sense of the fairy-tale adventure. He stated "All I desired was that the hearer, if he liked my piece as symphonic music, should carry away the impression that it is beyond a doubt an Oriental narrative of some numerous and varied fairy-tale wonders and not merely four pieces played one after the other and composed on the basis of themes common to all the four movements.” Rimsky-Korsakov went on to say that he kept the name Sheherazada because it brought to everyone’s mind the fairy-tale wonders of Arabian Nights and the East in general.

i. The Sea and Sinbad's Ship

This movement is composed of various melodies and contains a general A B C A1 B C1 form. Although each section is highly distinctive, aspects of melodic figures carry through and unite them into a movement. Although similar in form to the classical symphony, the movement is more similar to the variety of motives used in one of his previous works Antar. Antar however, used genuine Arabic melodies as opposed to Rimsky-Korsakov’s ideas of an oriental flavor.

Hermann Krebbers, violin; Concertgebouw Orchestra, Kirill Kondrashin, cond. Philips, recorded June 27-28, 1979


ii. The Tale of the Kalendar Prince

This movement follows a type of ternary theme and variation and is described as a fantastic narrative. The variations only change by virtue of the accompaniment, highlighting the Rimsky-ness in the sense of simple musical lines allowing for greater appreciation of the orchestral clarity and brightness. Inside the general melodic line, a fast section highlights changes within both tonality and structure of the fanfare motif, played by trombone and muted trumpet.

Anshel Brusilow, violin; Philadelphia Orchestra, Eugene Ormandy, cond. Columbia/CBS/Sony, recorded Feb. 11, 1962


iii. The Young Prince and the Young Princess

This movement is also ternary, and is considered the simplest movement in form and melodic content. The inner section is said to be based on the theme from Tamara, while the outer sections have song-like melodic content. The outer themes are related to the inner by tempo and common motif, and the whole movement is finished by a quick coda return to the inner motif, balancing it out nicely.

Hugh Maguire, violin; London Symphony Orchestra, Sir Eugene Goossens, cond. Everest, recorded 1959


iv. Festival at Baghdad; The Sea; Shipwreck (The ship goes to pieces against a rock surmounted by a bronze warrior); Conclusion

This movement ties in aspects of all the proceeding movements as well as adding some new ideas Including but not limited to: an introduction of both the beginning of the movement and the Vivace section based on Sultan Shakhriar’s theme, a repeat of the main Sheherazade violin theme, and a reiteration of the fanfare motif to portray the shipwreck. Coherence is maintained by the ordered repetition of melodies, and continues the impression of a symphonic suite, rather than separate movements. A final conflicting relationship of the subdominant minor Shakhriar theme to the tonic major cadence of the Scheherazade theme resolves in a fantastic, lyrical, and finally peaceful conclusion.

Sidney Harth, violin; Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Fritz Reiner, cond. RCA/BMG, recorded Feb. 8, 1960


NOW FOR THE WHOLE THING --

Now I'm sure you want to hear the whole thing put together, and for that I thought we would go with perhaps the most famous of all Scheherazade recordings, Sir Thomas Beecham's.

RIMSKY-KORSAKOV: Scheherazade, Op. 35

i. The Sea and Sinbad's Ship
ii. The Tale of the Kalendar Prince
iii. The Young Prince and the Young Princess
iv. Festival at Baghdad; The Sea; Shipwreck (The ship goes to pieces against a rock surmounted by a bronze warrior); Conclusion

Steven Staryk, violin; Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Sir Thomas Beecham, cond. EMI, recorded 1957


SHH! DON'T TELL ANYONE, BUT WE'VE GOT
A BONUS PERFORMANCE OF SCHEHERAZADE

I voiced regret above that all our Scheherazade performance slots were filled, leaving no room for the Malaysian Philharmonic, whose four-CD set of Rimsky-Korsakov orchestral works was instead represented by their Capriccio espagnol, meaning that we've got a Dutch conductor leading a Malaysian orchestra in a Russian composer's evocation of Spain. On consideration, I thought we might just sneak their Scheherazade in. Is it my imagination that it really does have a distinct flavor of the East? I'm thinking of a relaxed, sinuously singing quality. (It's well to remember that Russian cultural sensibilities have long included, voluntarily or otherwise, resonances from the East.)

RIMSKY-KORSAKOV: Scheherazade, Op. 35

i. The Sea and Sinbad's Ship
ii. The Tale of the Kalendar Prince
iii. The Young Prince and the Young Princess
iv. Festival at Baghdad; The Sea; Shipwreck (The ship goes to pieces against a rock surmounted by a bronze warrior); Conclusion

Markus Gundermann, violin; Malaysian Philharmonic Orchestra, Kees Bakels, cond. Bis, recorded November 2002


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