Wednesday 20 June 2012

Sorrowful Beauty Part 1

Many of the world's greatest masterpieces of art in all its forms have been created out of the impulse of personal sorrow or loss.  In music, there are innumerable examples, and many are well known.  A few, such as the Dvorak Stabat Mater which I mentioned in my Holy Week series, hover at the edge of the well-known repertory.  Others, like today's work, are all but unknown.

Correction:  "all but unknown" in North America.  In Austria, the homeland of composer Franz Schmidt, his Fourth Symphony is an admitted and admired masterpiece, and frequently played.  Yet it remains a rarity elsewhere.  It's our loss.  Fortunately, there are several good recordings.

The symphony was composed in 1933 and is subtitled "requiem for my daughter".  There's no mistaking the tone of sorrow in the music, yet in the end the composer wins through to an acceptance of that sorrow as a part of life.  Schmidt writes in a tonal musical language that appears to take no account of revolutionary developments in music.  But the structure is unique and indeed revolutionary in its own right.  The symphony consists of 4 linked sections that together form a gigantic single-movement work, and across its 45-minute span the piece is held together by its 3 main themes.  Two are heard in the opening section, effectively the "first and second groups" of the traditional sonata form, and the third comes in the slow second section.  But the third theme sounds familiar, and no wonder, since it makes use of a similar sequence of intervals as the first. 

The symphony opens with a meandering theme for solo trumpet, which is gradually joined by other instruments.  It's important as much for the use of the interval of a fourth (a key musical image throughout the symphony) as for its actual shape.  It builds to a climactic statement with the timpani beating out a funereal march tempo underneath.  This dies away, and the wide-ranging second theme appears in the strings.  The two weave together, until eventually the second theme too dies away to prepare for the radiant opening, on cellos, of the second section.

This "slow movement" is the heart of the sorrow in this work, but it is filled all the same with an unmistakable air of consolation that is most uplifting.  The theme here opens with a dropping fourth followed by a rising scale.  Before long, Schmidt inverts it into a wistful rising fourth followed by a descending scale.  The drumbeats return and the music builds to an anguished climax before slowly dying away in resignation.  A few more quiet grumbles from the timpani, and the third section begins.

This part, the symphony's "scherzo", is a quicker version of the slow third theme, on violins this time, and treated in part as a fugue.  Again, the intervals of the theme are inverted to add spice to the mix.  The first theme in slower time is superimposed on it, and the resourceful composer again builds up to a huge climax in which the rhythmic impulse of the scherzo utterly disintegrates in a massive discordant wave of sound topped by a loud scream of anguish from the trumpets.

Out of that gigantic and terrifying climax the trumpet emerges with the opening theme again, and we realize that the last section is to be a recapitulation of the opening, thus bringing the symphony full circle as surely as any traditional sonata form.  In a similar process to that followed before, the music rises to a richly-harmonized climax which carries on longer than it did before, and weaves the first two main themes together as one.  This gradually dies away and once more the drumbeats are heard as the initial trumpet melody reappears.  The other instruments drop away one by one until the last few notes of that long winding song of sadness are sung by the trumpet, alone again as at the beginning -- a full circle indeed.

I've been fortunate to hear this piece played live twice, once in Toronto and once in Philadelphia, and both times I was shocked to realize it was coming to its close.  It's a full and rich 45 minutes, and yet passes by very quickly indeed, so involving is Schmidt's musical vision.  I think that's a good test for recognizing a masterpiece!

I also have two recordings.  One dating from the early 1970s from Decca Records was made in Vienna (where the musicians have this music in their blood) by the young Zubin Mehta, and was reissued in harness with his recordings from the same time period of Mahler's Second Symphony.  The other, more recent, from Chandos Records is from the Detroit Symphony under Neeme Jarvi, part of a complete box set of the 4 symphonies of Franz Schmidt.  There's not a lot to choose between them, as both are excellent.

Saturday 16 June 2012

The Opera Mahler Never Wrote

At this week's performances of Mahler's 8th Symphony in Toronto, the program reproduced a newspaper interview with Andrew Davis (then the Toronto Symphony's music director) at the time of the first Toronto performances of the 8th in 1983.  Davis said that Part 2 of the Symphony was the closest Mahler ever came to the opera he never wrote.

I respectfully beg to differ with Maestro Davis.  Mahler got closer right at the beginning of his career, with an intensely dramatic cantata entitled Das klagende Lied.  The German verb klagen has two meanings, so the title can be translated as "The Song of Lamentation" or "The Song of Accusation" -- and both meanings are implicit in the libretto.

The story, drawn from the brothers Grimm, tells of a proud and haughty Queen who will marry the first man to bring her a certain rare flower from the forest.  Two brothers, one fair and one dark, set out to search.  The fair-haired brother finds the flower, then lies down to sleep.  The dark-haired brother kills him and takes the flower back to the Queen.  She agrees to marry him.

A minstrel finds the bones of the dead brother in the forest, and carves a bone flute for himself.  When he plays it, the flute speaks, telling how the fair-haired knight died.  The minstrel appears at the wedding feast and plays his flute.  The new king seizes it from him, and plays it himself.  The flute accuses him directly, brother to brother.  The wedding guests flee in horror, the Queen faints, the castle collapses.

The music Mahler composed for this gruesome legend stretches across a huge emotional gamut, from gentle quiet forest sounds to the roaring turmoil of the end of the wedding feast.  The poetic libretto, which he wrote himself, does not include speaking parts for any of the characters except the bone flute, but the main characters are so clearly drawn in the narration that the net effect is as much of an opera as a concert work.  There are extensive parts for four vocal soloists and choir, and the standard late Romantic orchestra is used.  This sounds pretty conventional, but the elements of psychodrama found in this material by Mahler are so effectively expressed in music that you can come away with your hair standing on end after listening to it.  An excellent example is the depiction in music of the King's rage when the minstrel plays the bone flute -- and the contrasting eerie stillness right before the King begins playing the flute..

The alto voice provides the song of the flute when the minstrel plays.  However, when the King seizes the flute the voice instead becomes a soprano, singing a more extended and florid version of the song, the literal "song of accusation" indicated by the title.  Motifs from throughout the cantata come thick and fast as the story rushes to its climax.

Another memorable moment, and a clear foretaste of the mature Mahler, comes at the beginning of the wedding scene where an offstage brass band provides celebratory music in alternation with the onstage orchestra.  Many times in his symphonies Mahler would use the element of distance and space in his music, separating instruments, placing them offstage or "at a distance".

After a first performance,  Mahler suppressed the first part of the cantata (which depicts the murder) for reasons which remain unclear.  Thus, Das klagende Lied was published as a two-part work and played that way for years.  The manuscript of the original first part was finally published in the 1960s, and I would not recommend any performance that does not include it.

I have a CD copy of the first recording to include Part 1.  That was made for Columbia (now Sony) Records in London by Pierre Boulez.  Curiously, it has a different soloist in Part 1 because he got permission to record that after the other 2 parts had already been set down.  On LP it was always a bit fuzzy, but the CD remaster has been all benefit, the sound now clear and firm throughout.  A more recent EMI digital recording was made in Birmingham by Simon Rattle, also good, but I give Boulez the edge on 2 counts.  First, his performance seems to me more raw-edged in its emotions, a most necessary condition.  And second, the EMI engineers placed the offstage band in part 3  too far away from the microphones, making it hard to hear unless you turn the volume up -- in which case, the next entry of the full orchestra will just about blow through your eardrums.

I hope the Toronto Symphony management will soon be persuaded to stage a complete performance of Das klagende Lied -- I've been waiting a long time to hear this rarity live.  In the meantime, I am now going to go and listen to the Boulez recording again!

Tuesday 12 June 2012

Opera as Song Cycle

That's the insightful comment in the program notes of my favourite recording of one of my all-time favourite operas, and a shamefully neglected one at that:  Daphne by Richard Strauss.  It's actually a spot-on description of a rather undramatic piece that specializes in rapturous lyrical melodies and warm, rich orchestration -- indeed, a work that is almost better suited for the concert stage than the opera house.  That is precisely how I first made Daphne's acquaintance, at the Toronto Symphony under then-music director Andrew Davis.  It was love at first hearing!

The libretto is not a strong one (relatively speaking) but the music Strauss built on this foundation is among his finest achievements.  The more you come to know this late work (first performed in 1938), the more you realize what a masterpiece Strauss created.  The opera builds steadily from scene to scene through its 100-minute span; there is no act break and rarely even a pause in the musical flow.  All leads to the culminating moment where the nymph Daphne is magically transformed into a laurel tree.  The composer depicted this transformation in a flow of lyricism unsurpassed in his entire output, five minutes of soaring melody and lush orchestral sound -- until the final moments when the voice of Daphne sounds, distantly, wordlessly, with one of her characteristic motifs used throughout the score.  Her voice is surrounded by gently twittering woodwinds, and the musical portrait of the breeze stirring the leaves of the laurel tree couldn't possibly be any clearer.

In that Toronto Symphony semi-staged concert, the lights gradually assumed a dappled pattern across the front of the stage while soprano Catherine Malfitano took the entire 5 minutes to slowly turn her back to the audience, and just as slowly draw off her hooded white dress, revealing a green gown underneath with a mottled leaf-like pattern.  That simple but effective change, combined with the flowering of the music, was enough to bring tears to my eyes.

The shame is that, as far as I know, Daphne has only ever been recorded in full twice.  As well, there is a live performance recording from Vienna, made in the early 1960s, and conducted by Karl Böhm, to whom the opera was dedicated.  Curiously, this performance produces no special advantage such as one might associate with a live staging.  I think perhaps it is because Gundula Janowitz in the title role is too cool and precise, not involving enough.  As well there are stage noises at a few moments to distract from the music.

However, EMI has recently reissued Bernard Haitink's studio recording from the 1980s, which stars the incomparable Lucia Popp, who was surely born to sing this role.  The slightly girlish quality in her voice is admirable for the opening scenes, and she rises most effectively to the tragedy of her last great aria.  Then, her voice is floated gently across those mystical final bars, with no sense of strain at all.  Along with her, tenors Peter Schreier (as Daphne's mortal friend Leukippos) and Reiner Goldberg (as Apollo) both create their characters effectively, Schreier clearly drawing the frustration of Leukippos while Goldberg's voice rises to the heldentenor challenge of the god's confidence and power.  Bass Kurt Moll and contralto Ortrun Wenkel are strong in the smaller roles of Daphne's parents, Peneios and Gaea.  And the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra is in magnificent form throughout.  The 1982 digital recording comes up clearer than ever, and the set includes a bonus 3rd disc with a detailed synopsis and the full libretto in a computer file -- an ideal cost-effective solution as opposed to printing a massive libretto booklet which would then require an outer cardboard sleeve to contain it beside the CD jewel box.