Sergei Taneyev was given the nickname of "The Russian Brahms" for excellent reasons. His musical style depended on the same foundations as that of Brahms: a thorough appreciation and understanding of musical structure, and a use of logical musical argument to express his emotions and ideas. At the same time his music is unmistakably Russian -- it could have been written in no other country.
Right now I'm listening to Taneyev's remarkable Piano Quintet. Unlike most chamber music, but like some of the great chamber masterpieces of Brahms, this music definitely opens up the possibility of orchestral expression. Much is true chamber music, but passages like the climactic ends of the first and last movements cry out for a broader instrumental palette and a weightier sound overall.
That first movement sounds, on initial hearing, a little rambling and discursive. Stick with it, though, listen to it several times over, and the structural landmarks will begin to declare themselves. The work opens with a slow introduction which lays out several key themes, and the ensuing allegro builds on these key ideas. Over the course of 15 minutes it gradually rises to a thunderous climax. The piano hammers out deep bass octaves in exactly the manner of the deep timpani strokes at the opening of Brahms' First Symphony, while the strings give a majestic rendition of the melody (originally meditative, then almost playful) which had opened both introduction and allegro. This leads on to a gigantic accelerating climax, the piano very much to the fore, bringing the movement to its breathtaking end.
The scherzo, placed second, is definitely playful, very light, almost Mendelssohnian, and a most necessary contrast to the huge drama of the first.
The slow third movement is a direct homage to Brahms: a passacaglia or set of variations on a bass theme, just like that found in the finale of Brahms' Fourth Symphony. The finale is more straightforward in structure, eventually bringing the work to another majestic climax.
It's a rare piece indeed, but I had the good fortune to hear it first at the Festival of the Sound where the pivotal piano part was given a magisterial performance by the famous Russian chamber pianist, Luba Edlina.
There's one recording I know of, a very fine one, by the Amsterdam Chamber Music Society, which is currently available in a super-bargain set of Treasures of Russian Chamber Music on the Brilliant Classics label. This set also contains (among others) the rare and beautiful String Quartet by Anton Arensky, and I'm sure I'll have something to say about that one in the future! Meanwhile, do seek out Taneyev's masterpiece.
Friday 27 January 2012
Friday 20 January 2012
Baroque Rarities from Sweden
I spend a lot of delightful hours listening to Galaxie radio's Baroque channel on my cable. They have a wonderful mix of Baroque music from different countries, and much of it is within the orbit of this blog -- that is, relatively little known. A fair number of the recordings come from Naxos Records, the patron saint of lovers of out-of-the-way music.
I listen, I enjoy, and sometimes the music just washes over me, one piece relatively indistinguishable from another. Sometimes, though, I hear a sound that makes me sit up and take notice, so to speak.
One day, a flow of pleasant Baroque instrumental numbers was suddenly augmented by a grand processional piece with trumpets and drums. I immediately said, "That sounds like music for a royal court", and hit the button on the TV that displays the information screen. The title was: Music for a Royal Wedding. The name of the composer was Johann Helmich Roman. In short order I went to the invaluable Naxos-owned website, www.classicsonline.com, and downloaded the recording.
Roman was the court composer for the Swedish court, hence the name of the recording and the two suites of pieces included into it. The two collections are both named after the famous old royal palace of Sweden: Drottningholm Music and Little Drottningholm Music. The suites included movements in concerto style, dance movements, processions, and more. None of them are overly long, so the frequent changes of tempo, metre, and style give pleasing variety. The total collection, lasting for 72 minutes, is all very listenable and enjoyable. Performances by the Uppsala Chamber Orchestra (from Sweden) and conducted by Anthony Halstead are neat, clean, very musical, and grand where necessary without ever becoming heavy or ponderous.
As for my favourite Baroque bugbear, too-hectic speeds, this problem is also largely avoided. The music has plenty of lift and a good sense of motion without ever degenerating into a mere frantic race to the finish line.
Many years ago, Peter Schickele said on the cover of his first P.D.Q. Bach album, that this record was an answer to the needs of record collectors who had just finished their third collection of Brandenburg Concertos and were wondering where to turn next. His response to that, of course, was a hope that you would rush out (after hearing P.D.Q.Bach's music) and buy a fourth set of Brandenburg Concertos! I think that Roman's Music for a Royal Wedding is a much more satisfying solution. Later on, I plan to share more Baroque rarities with you.
Highly recommended!
I listen, I enjoy, and sometimes the music just washes over me, one piece relatively indistinguishable from another. Sometimes, though, I hear a sound that makes me sit up and take notice, so to speak.
One day, a flow of pleasant Baroque instrumental numbers was suddenly augmented by a grand processional piece with trumpets and drums. I immediately said, "That sounds like music for a royal court", and hit the button on the TV that displays the information screen. The title was: Music for a Royal Wedding. The name of the composer was Johann Helmich Roman. In short order I went to the invaluable Naxos-owned website, www.classicsonline.com, and downloaded the recording.
Roman was the court composer for the Swedish court, hence the name of the recording and the two suites of pieces included into it. The two collections are both named after the famous old royal palace of Sweden: Drottningholm Music and Little Drottningholm Music. The suites included movements in concerto style, dance movements, processions, and more. None of them are overly long, so the frequent changes of tempo, metre, and style give pleasing variety. The total collection, lasting for 72 minutes, is all very listenable and enjoyable. Performances by the Uppsala Chamber Orchestra (from Sweden) and conducted by Anthony Halstead are neat, clean, very musical, and grand where necessary without ever becoming heavy or ponderous.
As for my favourite Baroque bugbear, too-hectic speeds, this problem is also largely avoided. The music has plenty of lift and a good sense of motion without ever degenerating into a mere frantic race to the finish line.
Many years ago, Peter Schickele said on the cover of his first P.D.Q. Bach album, that this record was an answer to the needs of record collectors who had just finished their third collection of Brandenburg Concertos and were wondering where to turn next. His response to that, of course, was a hope that you would rush out (after hearing P.D.Q.Bach's music) and buy a fourth set of Brandenburg Concertos! I think that Roman's Music for a Royal Wedding is a much more satisfying solution. Later on, I plan to share more Baroque rarities with you.
Highly recommended!
Saturday 14 January 2012
Salome in Paris
Just caught the tail end of a digital radio broadcast of a favourite rarity of mine, the symphonic poem La tragedie de Salome by French composer Florent Schmitt. This was a new recording by the Orchestra Metropolitain de Montreal, paired with Cesar Franck's well-known Symphonie, and conducted by Yannick Nezet-Seguin. It was released in February 2011.
This piece began life as an hour-long ballet score with chamber orchestra, and Schmitt later rewrote it for full orchestra with women's chorus and soprano solo offstage. It's also acceptable to perform it with a solo oboe substituting for the voices -- which is how the Toronto Symphony did it last season -- but the version with voices is far preferable. In rewriting, Schmitt also tightened the score up to a 2-part work that lasts about 25-28 minutes, give or take a second or three.
The first time I heard it, I was immediately captivated by the atmospheric prelude depicting night over the Dead Sea, with a solo oboe playing a plangent tune. The first part of the tone poem ends with Salome adorning herself with jewels, and dancing vigorously before the throne of Herod.
The second part begins with a fantastic vision of spectres from Sodom and Gomorrah appearing over the water. Salome demands the head of John the Baptist and dances with it, then hurls it into the sea. But the head reappears to her as a ghastly vision, and flee as she will she cannot escape. Her Dance of Terror ends the piece in a cataclysmic uproar.
Schmitt in this score revealed a mastery of orchestral colour every bit the equal of his contemporaries Debussy and Ravel. The light shimmering textures of the spectral music at the beginning of part 2 are a classic example of how to depict light in music. Not only that, but there's a lot of rhythmic life in the score as well. Salome's Dance with the Head hurtles headlong in a fast 7/8 tempo, and the Dance of Terror is in a heavy 5/4 with vicious stabbing cross-rhythms breaking up the already jagged metre.
Debussy expressed admiration for this music, a fact which (to me) makes its relative neglect all the more surprising. Jean Martinon recorded a very good stereo LP for EMI in harness with Schmitt's setting of Psalm 47 (about which more in a minute). Years later, Marek Janowski repeated the same coupling for Radio France on an Erato CD. The digital sound copes splendidly with the huge climaxes of both pieces, but the CD was transferred at a disappointingly low level -- you do have to crank up the sound more than usual. All things considered, Martinon's recording has the edge as a performance.
Now: about that version of Psalm 47. It's a cantata in the grand tradition, again about 27 minutes long, with full chorus and soprano soloist. The chorus gets the best of the work, and the full orchestra and organ make a great impact. Much of the work again is in 5/4 tempo, clearly illustrating the words "frappez les mains" ("clap your hands"), and it is this 5/4 tempo that eventually leads the energetic conclusion after the final choral cry of "Gloire au Seigneur" (Glory to the Lord). In between, the soprano has a long lyrical solo which sets one single line of the text in an extended gentle interlude that forms a central "slow movement". After that, the composer illustrates "Dieu est monte" ("God is gone up") with a long slow crescendo that rises, section by section, from the second basses to the top sopranos of the chorus before the 5/4 jubilation erupts again.
These are both spectacular works. Nezet-Seguin's recording will serve for Salome, but if you can possibly find one of the earlier ones where that piece is partnered with the Psalm, go for it!
This piece began life as an hour-long ballet score with chamber orchestra, and Schmitt later rewrote it for full orchestra with women's chorus and soprano solo offstage. It's also acceptable to perform it with a solo oboe substituting for the voices -- which is how the Toronto Symphony did it last season -- but the version with voices is far preferable. In rewriting, Schmitt also tightened the score up to a 2-part work that lasts about 25-28 minutes, give or take a second or three.
The first time I heard it, I was immediately captivated by the atmospheric prelude depicting night over the Dead Sea, with a solo oboe playing a plangent tune. The first part of the tone poem ends with Salome adorning herself with jewels, and dancing vigorously before the throne of Herod.
The second part begins with a fantastic vision of spectres from Sodom and Gomorrah appearing over the water. Salome demands the head of John the Baptist and dances with it, then hurls it into the sea. But the head reappears to her as a ghastly vision, and flee as she will she cannot escape. Her Dance of Terror ends the piece in a cataclysmic uproar.
Schmitt in this score revealed a mastery of orchestral colour every bit the equal of his contemporaries Debussy and Ravel. The light shimmering textures of the spectral music at the beginning of part 2 are a classic example of how to depict light in music. Not only that, but there's a lot of rhythmic life in the score as well. Salome's Dance with the Head hurtles headlong in a fast 7/8 tempo, and the Dance of Terror is in a heavy 5/4 with vicious stabbing cross-rhythms breaking up the already jagged metre.
Debussy expressed admiration for this music, a fact which (to me) makes its relative neglect all the more surprising. Jean Martinon recorded a very good stereo LP for EMI in harness with Schmitt's setting of Psalm 47 (about which more in a minute). Years later, Marek Janowski repeated the same coupling for Radio France on an Erato CD. The digital sound copes splendidly with the huge climaxes of both pieces, but the CD was transferred at a disappointingly low level -- you do have to crank up the sound more than usual. All things considered, Martinon's recording has the edge as a performance.
Now: about that version of Psalm 47. It's a cantata in the grand tradition, again about 27 minutes long, with full chorus and soprano soloist. The chorus gets the best of the work, and the full orchestra and organ make a great impact. Much of the work again is in 5/4 tempo, clearly illustrating the words "frappez les mains" ("clap your hands"), and it is this 5/4 tempo that eventually leads the energetic conclusion after the final choral cry of "Gloire au Seigneur" (Glory to the Lord). In between, the soprano has a long lyrical solo which sets one single line of the text in an extended gentle interlude that forms a central "slow movement". After that, the composer illustrates "Dieu est monte" ("God is gone up") with a long slow crescendo that rises, section by section, from the second basses to the top sopranos of the chorus before the 5/4 jubilation erupts again.
These are both spectacular works. Nezet-Seguin's recording will serve for Salome, but if you can possibly find one of the earlier ones where that piece is partnered with the Psalm, go for it!
Wednesday 11 January 2012
Season's Greetings!
Even famous composers like Tchaikovsky have their less well known hidden treasures. One of my favourites for a quiet evening of gentle music is his set of piano pieces entitled "The Seasons".
Actually, "The Months" would have been a better title. Tchaikovsky composed these 12 pieces, one at a time, for publication in a musical monthly magazine. This is a bit reminiscent of the way Charles Dickens published so many of his novels and stories -- but the resemblance stops there.
Tchaikovsky actually comes in a bit like both Vivaldi (with violin concertos) and Haydn (an oratorio) in depicting not just the weather conditions but also the human activities of each month. The music is, as I said before, pleasant, not overly demanding, certainly not full of drama and anguish as are some of the composer's favourite works. But it is utterly charming.
Some pieces from this collection are familiar to ballet lovers. Scored for orchestra, they appear most effectively in the score of the ballet "Onegin", arranged by Kurt-Heinz Stolze.
The next generation of Russian composers tossed up Alexander Glazunov. His "Seasons" is unlike all the others I mentioned, an allegorical ballet in 4 scenes, full of symbolic figures like the Spirit of Corn and the Zephyr of Spring. His music follows in the line of Tchaikovsky's famous ballet scores. If it's not as dramatic as "Sleeping Beauty" or "Swan Lake", it's every bit as polished in the varied orchestration, the careful use of key contrasts, and the deployment of memorable melodies. This music was a favourite of my father's, and our whole family grew up knowing it and loving it.
Neither of these Russian treasures has brought forth very many recordings, but both are certainly worth seeking out. Both are certainly available on the ubiquitous Naxos label. See www.classicsonline.com for details.
Actually, "The Months" would have been a better title. Tchaikovsky composed these 12 pieces, one at a time, for publication in a musical monthly magazine. This is a bit reminiscent of the way Charles Dickens published so many of his novels and stories -- but the resemblance stops there.
Tchaikovsky actually comes in a bit like both Vivaldi (with violin concertos) and Haydn (an oratorio) in depicting not just the weather conditions but also the human activities of each month. The music is, as I said before, pleasant, not overly demanding, certainly not full of drama and anguish as are some of the composer's favourite works. But it is utterly charming.
Some pieces from this collection are familiar to ballet lovers. Scored for orchestra, they appear most effectively in the score of the ballet "Onegin", arranged by Kurt-Heinz Stolze.
The next generation of Russian composers tossed up Alexander Glazunov. His "Seasons" is unlike all the others I mentioned, an allegorical ballet in 4 scenes, full of symbolic figures like the Spirit of Corn and the Zephyr of Spring. His music follows in the line of Tchaikovsky's famous ballet scores. If it's not as dramatic as "Sleeping Beauty" or "Swan Lake", it's every bit as polished in the varied orchestration, the careful use of key contrasts, and the deployment of memorable melodies. This music was a favourite of my father's, and our whole family grew up knowing it and loving it.
Neither of these Russian treasures has brought forth very many recordings, but both are certainly worth seeking out. Both are certainly available on the ubiquitous Naxos label. See www.classicsonline.com for details.
Sunday 8 January 2012
Four Wives
Shakespeare has provided a lot of inspiration to all kinds of creative artists through the centuries, and composers are no exception. It would be easy to write an entire book about all the music inspired by, or based on Shakespeare's plays and sonnets.
One of my favourite Shakespeare plays is The Merry Wives of Windsor. In some respects, it is much more "modern" than many of the Bard's works. For one thing, royalty and nobility play a very minor role indeed, with the ascendant English middle class dominating the proceedings. As well, the structure of the plot is set in such a way that most of the action is initiated by, and controlled by, the women -- a very rare situation in a predominantly paternalistic society! Indeed, both men and parents get their comeuppance before the play is over. Although the Great Experts would have you believe that The Merry Wives is one of Shakespeare's weaker plays, the world's composers obviously disagree. At least three that I know of have converted this riotous, middle-class domestic comedy into opera.
The sad thing is that although all three produced fine operatic scores with great stage potential, only one has become well known. So, setting aside Verdi's well-known and justly admired comic masterpiece, Falstaff, it's time to give the other two their due.
Otto Nicolai's Die lustigen Weiber von Windsor includes dialogue, which brings it into the German tradition of the singspiel. To die-hard opera fans, this makes it no opera at all. All I can say to that is, "It's your loss!" I believe it still gets staged at times in Germany and Austria, but it's a rare bird indeed anywhere else -- and certainly so in recordings. Nicolai's score is packed full of melodious beauty, with so many highlights I couldn't possibly mention them all. The text is skilfully adapted and compressed in the translation to German, and the music never outstays its welcome. One of my favourite moments is the love aria of Fenton. The tenor sings in duet with a trilling lark represented by the flutes. The effect is so similar to the lark's song in the last of Richard Strauss' Four Last Songs that Strauss, the lifelong opera conductor, must have consciously imitated it -- and with good reason. The aria is magical. But equally fine are the robust comic moments -- such as the scene where Falstaff, dressed as an old lady, gets beaten and chased out of the house by Ford. The Decca recording conducted by Rafael Kubelik gets pulled out and listened to a good deal by yours truly.
The real hidden treasure among Falstaff operas is Sir John in Love by the English composer Ralph Vaughan Williams. I could rhapsodize about this wonderful score for hours on end, and probably will if you ever ask me in person! What makes this opera work so well, I think, is that Vaughan Williams arose out of the same social class in the same country as Shakespeare, and therefore also shared that class and country (if not the era) with most of the characters. Vaughan Williams composed Sir John in Love in the 1920s, when he was still very much in love with the treasures of English folk music that he had uncovered in preceding decades. Although the score uses only a smattering of genuine folk tunes, the rhythms and inflections of the folk style are thoroughly absorbed into the musical material.
The result is one splendid tune after another, all beautifully orchestrated. This is an opera to love, and to set you humming the melodies over to yourself long after you hear it. The composer's gorgeous orchestral treatment of the traditional tune Greensleeves originates here, but in this context it doesn't particularly stand out, being only one of many similar lyrical glores in the entire score. Vaughan Williams created the libretto himself, and again the varied incidents and dialogues of the play are skilfully compressed without being ripped apart. The composer also selected lyrics by various Elizabethan poets to provide arias and choral numbers, and these are all most apt to their purpose. It's in these numbers that he created some of the most beautiful music of the twentieth century -- yes, I know those are fighting words, and I say them fully realizing that fact!
Meredith Davies gave this opera its first full recording in the 1970s, on EMI, and copies of this one in CD reissue may still be floating around. More recently, Richard Hickox on Chandos came through with an equally fine version in a typically splendid Chandos digital soundscape, and this is readily available for downloading.
Either of these operas will give much pleasure, as much for you (I hope) as they do for me. Sir John in Love stands as one of my all-time favourite operatic works. I hope it will become one of yours as well.
One of my favourite Shakespeare plays is The Merry Wives of Windsor. In some respects, it is much more "modern" than many of the Bard's works. For one thing, royalty and nobility play a very minor role indeed, with the ascendant English middle class dominating the proceedings. As well, the structure of the plot is set in such a way that most of the action is initiated by, and controlled by, the women -- a very rare situation in a predominantly paternalistic society! Indeed, both men and parents get their comeuppance before the play is over. Although the Great Experts would have you believe that The Merry Wives is one of Shakespeare's weaker plays, the world's composers obviously disagree. At least three that I know of have converted this riotous, middle-class domestic comedy into opera.
The sad thing is that although all three produced fine operatic scores with great stage potential, only one has become well known. So, setting aside Verdi's well-known and justly admired comic masterpiece, Falstaff, it's time to give the other two their due.
Otto Nicolai's Die lustigen Weiber von Windsor includes dialogue, which brings it into the German tradition of the singspiel. To die-hard opera fans, this makes it no opera at all. All I can say to that is, "It's your loss!" I believe it still gets staged at times in Germany and Austria, but it's a rare bird indeed anywhere else -- and certainly so in recordings. Nicolai's score is packed full of melodious beauty, with so many highlights I couldn't possibly mention them all. The text is skilfully adapted and compressed in the translation to German, and the music never outstays its welcome. One of my favourite moments is the love aria of Fenton. The tenor sings in duet with a trilling lark represented by the flutes. The effect is so similar to the lark's song in the last of Richard Strauss' Four Last Songs that Strauss, the lifelong opera conductor, must have consciously imitated it -- and with good reason. The aria is magical. But equally fine are the robust comic moments -- such as the scene where Falstaff, dressed as an old lady, gets beaten and chased out of the house by Ford. The Decca recording conducted by Rafael Kubelik gets pulled out and listened to a good deal by yours truly.
The real hidden treasure among Falstaff operas is Sir John in Love by the English composer Ralph Vaughan Williams. I could rhapsodize about this wonderful score for hours on end, and probably will if you ever ask me in person! What makes this opera work so well, I think, is that Vaughan Williams arose out of the same social class in the same country as Shakespeare, and therefore also shared that class and country (if not the era) with most of the characters. Vaughan Williams composed Sir John in Love in the 1920s, when he was still very much in love with the treasures of English folk music that he had uncovered in preceding decades. Although the score uses only a smattering of genuine folk tunes, the rhythms and inflections of the folk style are thoroughly absorbed into the musical material.
The result is one splendid tune after another, all beautifully orchestrated. This is an opera to love, and to set you humming the melodies over to yourself long after you hear it. The composer's gorgeous orchestral treatment of the traditional tune Greensleeves originates here, but in this context it doesn't particularly stand out, being only one of many similar lyrical glores in the entire score. Vaughan Williams created the libretto himself, and again the varied incidents and dialogues of the play are skilfully compressed without being ripped apart. The composer also selected lyrics by various Elizabethan poets to provide arias and choral numbers, and these are all most apt to their purpose. It's in these numbers that he created some of the most beautiful music of the twentieth century -- yes, I know those are fighting words, and I say them fully realizing that fact!
Meredith Davies gave this opera its first full recording in the 1970s, on EMI, and copies of this one in CD reissue may still be floating around. More recently, Richard Hickox on Chandos came through with an equally fine version in a typically splendid Chandos digital soundscape, and this is readily available for downloading.
Either of these operas will give much pleasure, as much for you (I hope) as they do for me. Sir John in Love stands as one of my all-time favourite operatic works. I hope it will become one of yours as well.
Friday 6 January 2012
George Dyson
Stick with me and this blog for any length of time and you will quickly realize that I have a really intense fondness for British music.
Starting in the late 1800s, England and Scotland in particular began an extraordinary flowering of composition after a long period easily (and perhaps unfairly) dismissed as "nothing much". Three key figures in that flowering were Edward Elgar, Gustav Holst, and Ralph Vaughan Williams. I dearly love the music of all three, but for today I want to talk about someone else.
Like the three composers I just named, George Dyson had the misfortune to become popular in his lifetime, only to have his music go through a period of neglect following his death. It's unfortunate, because he really was something much better than merely a competent craftsman.
Fortunately, there are now quite a few recordings of his pieces that are worth investigating. In his own day, he was famous for his "choral suite", The Canterbury Pilgrims. This cantata (for lack of a better word) covers the Prologue of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales in a modern English adaptation made by the composer himself, and his wife. The music for choir, soloists and orchestra paints very deft character portraits of the pilgrims. My own favourite is the riotous waltz for the Wife of Bath, but there are many other fine moments as well. It comes on a 2-CD Chandos set harnessed with In Honour of the City of London, Dyson's first big success, and a concert overture which he wrote years later based on the themes of The Canterbury Pilgrims. Listen and be amazed at how deftly he recomposes the sometimes 4-square phrases of the original melodies into smoothly-flowing triple time!
A fine disc on the sadly-defunct Unicorn Kanchana label contained The Blacksmiths, another work set to Dyson's modern version of a mediaeval poem. Here he perfectly captured the monochromatic sights and hammering sounds of the blacksmiths' forge by using only two pianos and percussion to accompany the chorus. Other pieces included here add up to a memorable collection.
Three concertos for strings make up another memorable Chandos CD. One in particular, titled Concerto da Chiesa (Church Concerto) makes memorable use of the Advent plainsong tune Veni Emmanuel (O Come, O Come, Emmanuel), harmonizing it with mournful minor chords to turn it into a "frozen lament", as one writer aptly called it. A succeeding movement makes equally deft use of Divinum mysterium (Of the Father's Love Begotten), another plainsong tune.
Of all Dyson's music that I've heard, the choral cycle Quo Vadis is the most memorable and the one I return to most often. It's about 100 minutes long, in 2 parts, and sets excerpts from a dozen poems by various poets addressing the themes of immortality and the great beyond. Some of the poetry seems a little lame, but Dyson performs the miraculous feat of redeeming it by his music. There are beautiful melodies in plenty for soloists and choir, and the orchestra plays a very significant role -- much more than simple accompaniment. At the end of Henry Vaughan's poem The Country Beyond the Stars, Dyson delays resolving his suspended chord for several bars, repeating the suspension in the choir as the orchestra strings slowly climb a rising arpeggio until at last the orchestra paradoxically falls onto the resolved triad by rising into it's next highest position -- a magical moment indeed. I could talk for hours about the beauties of this sadly neglected work, but get the 2-CD Chandos set and hear for yourself.
Must mention a huge vote of thanks to such musicians as Christopher Palmer and especially to conductor Richard Hickox for all they have done to revive Dyson's music for our times.
Starting in the late 1800s, England and Scotland in particular began an extraordinary flowering of composition after a long period easily (and perhaps unfairly) dismissed as "nothing much". Three key figures in that flowering were Edward Elgar, Gustav Holst, and Ralph Vaughan Williams. I dearly love the music of all three, but for today I want to talk about someone else.
Like the three composers I just named, George Dyson had the misfortune to become popular in his lifetime, only to have his music go through a period of neglect following his death. It's unfortunate, because he really was something much better than merely a competent craftsman.
Fortunately, there are now quite a few recordings of his pieces that are worth investigating. In his own day, he was famous for his "choral suite", The Canterbury Pilgrims. This cantata (for lack of a better word) covers the Prologue of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales in a modern English adaptation made by the composer himself, and his wife. The music for choir, soloists and orchestra paints very deft character portraits of the pilgrims. My own favourite is the riotous waltz for the Wife of Bath, but there are many other fine moments as well. It comes on a 2-CD Chandos set harnessed with In Honour of the City of London, Dyson's first big success, and a concert overture which he wrote years later based on the themes of The Canterbury Pilgrims. Listen and be amazed at how deftly he recomposes the sometimes 4-square phrases of the original melodies into smoothly-flowing triple time!
A fine disc on the sadly-defunct Unicorn Kanchana label contained The Blacksmiths, another work set to Dyson's modern version of a mediaeval poem. Here he perfectly captured the monochromatic sights and hammering sounds of the blacksmiths' forge by using only two pianos and percussion to accompany the chorus. Other pieces included here add up to a memorable collection.
Three concertos for strings make up another memorable Chandos CD. One in particular, titled Concerto da Chiesa (Church Concerto) makes memorable use of the Advent plainsong tune Veni Emmanuel (O Come, O Come, Emmanuel), harmonizing it with mournful minor chords to turn it into a "frozen lament", as one writer aptly called it. A succeeding movement makes equally deft use of Divinum mysterium (Of the Father's Love Begotten), another plainsong tune.
Of all Dyson's music that I've heard, the choral cycle Quo Vadis is the most memorable and the one I return to most often. It's about 100 minutes long, in 2 parts, and sets excerpts from a dozen poems by various poets addressing the themes of immortality and the great beyond. Some of the poetry seems a little lame, but Dyson performs the miraculous feat of redeeming it by his music. There are beautiful melodies in plenty for soloists and choir, and the orchestra plays a very significant role -- much more than simple accompaniment. At the end of Henry Vaughan's poem The Country Beyond the Stars, Dyson delays resolving his suspended chord for several bars, repeating the suspension in the choir as the orchestra strings slowly climb a rising arpeggio until at last the orchestra paradoxically falls onto the resolved triad by rising into it's next highest position -- a magical moment indeed. I could talk for hours about the beauties of this sadly neglected work, but get the 2-CD Chandos set and hear for yourself.
Must mention a huge vote of thanks to such musicians as Christopher Palmer and especially to conductor Richard Hickox for all they have done to revive Dyson's music for our times.
Monday 2 January 2012
Ever Seen an Arpeggione?
Q: What the heck is an arpeggione, anyway?
A [1]: "Look that up in your Funk & Wagnalls!"
A [2]: "According to the Encyclopedia Britannica, out of which I may say I get all my material,..."
Hands up if you are old enough to recognize the source of either of those quotes!
Okay, so, the arpeggione: a kind of guitar-like instrument with 6 strings, but with a vaguely cello-shaped body, and played like a cello with a bow.
Signs of the times: look it up online, and you'll find websites devoted to it, and even a musician by the name of Nicolas Deletaille who has had an arpeggione built to his order, and now urges composers to write music for him to play on it.
He has to ask for pieces to be written for him to play because of the basic problem: there is only one piece commonly heard that was composed during the arpeggione's brief heyday in the 1820s: a sonata for arpeggione and piano by Franz Schubert commonly called -- you guessed it -- the "Arpeggione Sonata". And it's most usually played on the cello.
But, since the arpeggione has been hovering on the verge of extinction for so long, many musicians have taken that as a licence to adapt the piece for __________ (fill in name of instrument of your choice). Many years ago, James Galway created a transcription for flute and piano which was delightful -- wish I still had a copy of that RCA recording. More recently, James Campbell recorded, with the Allegri String Quartet, Brian Newbould's arrangement as a clarinet quintet, also a delight.
My current favourite, though, sticks to the tried and true expedient of the cello and piano, and adds in several more charming and relatively little-known pieces by Robert Schumann: the Five Pieces in Folk Style (Op. 102), Fantasy Pieces (Op. 73), and Adagio and Allegro (Op. 70). It's all beautifully played by Maria Kliegel, with Kristin Merscher at the piano, in a 1991 recording by Naxos records. You could find a CD copy without too much trouble, or download it from the Naxos website, www.classicsonline.com.
A [1]: "Look that up in your Funk & Wagnalls!"
A [2]: "According to the Encyclopedia Britannica, out of which I may say I get all my material,..."
Hands up if you are old enough to recognize the source of either of those quotes!
Okay, so, the arpeggione: a kind of guitar-like instrument with 6 strings, but with a vaguely cello-shaped body, and played like a cello with a bow.
Signs of the times: look it up online, and you'll find websites devoted to it, and even a musician by the name of Nicolas Deletaille who has had an arpeggione built to his order, and now urges composers to write music for him to play on it.
He has to ask for pieces to be written for him to play because of the basic problem: there is only one piece commonly heard that was composed during the arpeggione's brief heyday in the 1820s: a sonata for arpeggione and piano by Franz Schubert commonly called -- you guessed it -- the "Arpeggione Sonata". And it's most usually played on the cello.
But, since the arpeggione has been hovering on the verge of extinction for so long, many musicians have taken that as a licence to adapt the piece for __________ (fill in name of instrument of your choice). Many years ago, James Galway created a transcription for flute and piano which was delightful -- wish I still had a copy of that RCA recording. More recently, James Campbell recorded, with the Allegri String Quartet, Brian Newbould's arrangement as a clarinet quintet, also a delight.
My current favourite, though, sticks to the tried and true expedient of the cello and piano, and adds in several more charming and relatively little-known pieces by Robert Schumann: the Five Pieces in Folk Style (Op. 102), Fantasy Pieces (Op. 73), and Adagio and Allegro (Op. 70). It's all beautifully played by Maria Kliegel, with Kristin Merscher at the piano, in a 1991 recording by Naxos records. You could find a CD copy without too much trouble, or download it from the Naxos website, www.classicsonline.com.
Sunday 1 January 2012
Superb DVD of Schoenberg's Gurrelieder
Right away, the name of Arnold Schoenberg scares the daylights out of a lot of music lovers. Let me reassure you quickly: Gurrelieder is not atonal and it is not twelve-tonal music. Think "late Wagner, with a slight dash of early modern" and you won't be too far wrong. It's a huge cantata-oratorio which tells a Tristanesque love story. It lasts almost 2 hours, and requires so many instruments that it makes Mahler's famous "Symphony of a Thousand" look restrained! The music makes immense demands on the solo singers, and has some incredibly complex singing for the male chorus in the third part. The full choir is reserved for the 5-minute "sunrise" chorus at the end, as glorious a culmination as you can find anywhere in music.
Many audio recordings are available, almost all of live performances, but this is the first video I've ever encountered -- a 2009 production from the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra and choruses, conducted by Mariss Jansons. I've known and loved this music ever since I was about 15 or so, through recordings, and attended the only live performance ever given in Toronto (at the Toronto Symphony in -- was it 2004?). This DVD of a live concert trumps them all. Jansons has a very firm grasp of this work's sprawling structure and the tremendous subtleties of the orchestration. All sections seem to proceed at just the right tempo, and the orchestra sounds terrific throughout.
Soloists are the key to a successful Gurrelieder. As King Waldemar, tenor Stig Andersen has by far the toughest assignment of all, and succeeds magnificently, still sounding completely fresh and clear even when he reaches his ninth (!) major solo of the evening. Soprano Deborah Voight as his young lover, Tove, is entirely beautiful and youthful in tone. Mezzo-soprano Mihoko Fujimura completely steals the show as the menacing messenger of death, the Voice of the Wood Dove, at the end of Part One. Her 12-minute song ranges from the lowest depths of the alto voice to a searing high B-flat, every note brilliantly accurate, and the text sung with immaculate diction. Herwig Pecoraro also sings brilliantly and accurately in the scherzando song of Klaus the Fool, his tenor voice a perfect contrast in tone colour from Andersen. Michael Volle is splendid as the bass Peasant, and even more memorable as the Speaker in the penultimate Wild Hunt of the Sun.
The recorded sound throughout is clear, present, very real. This score can easily sound muddy and confused in live performance, but the sound engineers here get a very believable sound picture where every instrument part is clearly audible. The video direction is also wonderful, adding important new dimensions to your understanding and appreciation of the music, and the performance. Watch especially for the rapid-fire moment in Part III where the men's choir quickly jumps up to shout "Holla!" and the camera as quickly flash-cuts from the choir to the percussion section, ratchet madly whirling and iron chains rattling and clanking (no, I'm not joking, there is a part for a set of heavy iron chains in the score!).
If you're not familiar with Gurrelieder, I'd recommend this video in preference to any of the fine audio recordings I've heard. Even if you know this work well, this video is a must-add to any collection.
It comes from BR Klassik, and is currently available. Definitely 5 stars out of 5!
Many audio recordings are available, almost all of live performances, but this is the first video I've ever encountered -- a 2009 production from the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra and choruses, conducted by Mariss Jansons. I've known and loved this music ever since I was about 15 or so, through recordings, and attended the only live performance ever given in Toronto (at the Toronto Symphony in -- was it 2004?). This DVD of a live concert trumps them all. Jansons has a very firm grasp of this work's sprawling structure and the tremendous subtleties of the orchestration. All sections seem to proceed at just the right tempo, and the orchestra sounds terrific throughout.
Soloists are the key to a successful Gurrelieder. As King Waldemar, tenor Stig Andersen has by far the toughest assignment of all, and succeeds magnificently, still sounding completely fresh and clear even when he reaches his ninth (!) major solo of the evening. Soprano Deborah Voight as his young lover, Tove, is entirely beautiful and youthful in tone. Mezzo-soprano Mihoko Fujimura completely steals the show as the menacing messenger of death, the Voice of the Wood Dove, at the end of Part One. Her 12-minute song ranges from the lowest depths of the alto voice to a searing high B-flat, every note brilliantly accurate, and the text sung with immaculate diction. Herwig Pecoraro also sings brilliantly and accurately in the scherzando song of Klaus the Fool, his tenor voice a perfect contrast in tone colour from Andersen. Michael Volle is splendid as the bass Peasant, and even more memorable as the Speaker in the penultimate Wild Hunt of the Sun.
The recorded sound throughout is clear, present, very real. This score can easily sound muddy and confused in live performance, but the sound engineers here get a very believable sound picture where every instrument part is clearly audible. The video direction is also wonderful, adding important new dimensions to your understanding and appreciation of the music, and the performance. Watch especially for the rapid-fire moment in Part III where the men's choir quickly jumps up to shout "Holla!" and the camera as quickly flash-cuts from the choir to the percussion section, ratchet madly whirling and iron chains rattling and clanking (no, I'm not joking, there is a part for a set of heavy iron chains in the score!).
If you're not familiar with Gurrelieder, I'd recommend this video in preference to any of the fine audio recordings I've heard. Even if you know this work well, this video is a must-add to any collection.
It comes from BR Klassik, and is currently available. Definitely 5 stars out of 5!
Welcome to My Music Blog!
Happy New Year, and glad to have you aboard! After a lifetime (57 years and counting) of living with wonderful classical music, I've decided that 2012 is my year to start sharing my musical loves with the wider world.
Don't get me wrong, I love many of the great classics of the "standard repertoire" (now, there's a loaded term!). But this blog, as its title suggests, is to get away from the standards and share some of my favourites from the less-well-known works of the famous great composers, as well as introducing you to some of the less-well-known composers I've gotten to know.
I'll be getting into a mix of different pieces: orchestral, chamber, choral, solo vocal, solo instrumental, operatic -- be ready for a little of everything.
I don't expect to post here every day, but will try to get in at least once or twice a week.
Let the adventures begin!
Don't get me wrong, I love many of the great classics of the "standard repertoire" (now, there's a loaded term!). But this blog, as its title suggests, is to get away from the standards and share some of my favourites from the less-well-known works of the famous great composers, as well as introducing you to some of the less-well-known composers I've gotten to know.
I'll be getting into a mix of different pieces: orchestral, chamber, choral, solo vocal, solo instrumental, operatic -- be ready for a little of everything.
I don't expect to post here every day, but will try to get in at least once or twice a week.
Let the adventures begin!
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