Tuesday 28 February 2012

Skip the Names!

Recently, I've been working my way through a lot of recordings in my collection of what might be called "standard repertoire" -- except that hardly anyone except specialists is familiar with it.

Consider: how many of Haydn's 104 Symphonies have you listened to?  Or Beethoven's 32 Piano Sonatas?  Or Dvořák's 14 String Quartets?  Or Mozart's 18 Piano Sonatas? 

In each case, one or more of the works have come to be identified by nicknames, and it's the named works that seem to be most often played and recorded -- and heard.

And yet, what great riches lie available to any music lover who has the courage to abandon familiar pieces and head for the great unknown!

Consider Haydn as an example.  Yes, he wrote 104 symphonies, and not all of them are equal in inspiration.  Yet there are very few that could be called weak, and there's certainly a lot more diversity among them than many people realize.  The Austro-Hungarian Haydn Orchestra under Adam Fischer are consistently convincing and enjoyable in this repertoire, and I return to them again and again.  A particular favourite of mine is the disc which includes #s 9-12 -- a wonderful variety here!

Mozart's sonatas are another case.  Almost everyone knows the Sonata semplice or the Turkish sonata, but there are many more treasures there too.  Mitsuko Uchida has a marvellous sense of Mozartean tone and scale, even though she uses a modern grand piano, yet never lets her playing become too precious or delicate.  It's a great balancing act.

Dvořák's Quartets are crammed from beginning to end with the kind of melodic beauty that the composer was so famous for.  It's intriguing to stumble across earlier versions of melodic ideas that later reached full stature in one of his symphonies.  The Prague Quartet has the full measure of the music, savouring all the beauty without ever drooping or lingering to excess.  The set of miniature pieces called Cypresses are a sizable bonus to this set.

Beethoven's sonatas are incredible.  The diversity and range of this music mirrors Beethoven's entire creative path.  There's all the sheer energy the composer is famous for (and not just in the famous Appassionata and Hammerklavier works), but there's also rustic folklike charm, tender beauty, and deep introspective music which commands silent attention.  I've heard some incredible performances of these, but always seem to wind up back with Wilhelm Kempff.  Unlike many more recent pianists, he doesn't fire off in a race to the finish line but picks speeds that allow the music to be heard.  The other huge advantage for hearing the music is that Kempff's use of sustain pedal is subtle and much more limited than many competitors.

There are multiple recordings of all these works available, but I suspect many of them gather dust on collectors' shelves rather than getting any play time.  Give yourself a treat, and explore beyond the "named" works in some of the so-called "basic repertoire".  I'm sure you'll enjoy the experience and say it was worth the effort!

Thursday 23 February 2012

Song-Symphony, Round 2

It's okay, you didn't miss something -- I didn't write about "Round 1".

The first round happened in 1908-09 when Gustav Mahler composed Das Lied von der Erde, a work which he categorized as a "symphony" but which is also and unmistakably a song cycle of symphonic style, weight and proportions.  And so the genre of the "song-symphony" was born. 

In a way, Arnold Schoenberg was an even earlier progenitor.  The first part of his Gurrelieder (originally composed 1901-03) also seems like a symphonic song cycle, although here the style veers a little closer to opera.

This post is about Alexander Zemlinsky's Lyrische-Symphonie, composed in 1922-23.  Zemlinsky publicly acknowledged his debt to Mahler, and like Mahler he adopted poems of an Asian poet (in this case, the Indian poet Rabindranath Tagore).  Stylistically the music of Zemlinsky's work owes just as much to the wide-leaping intervals common in Schoenberg's vocal lines. 

Like both of these examples, Zemlinsky used two solo voices singing alternately -- never in duet.  But his choice of voice types was different from both of his predecessors: a dramatic soprano and a heroic baritone.  Their alternating songs clearly represent a dialogue between a man and a woman.

The seven songs form seven clear movements, but are played continuously, without pause.  The introduction and the first song (baritone) set the dark, enigmatic tone which is never far absent.  As Zemlinsky himself said, "All the other pieces...must take their bearings from the mood of the first."

Where Zemlinsky's work differs most strongly from both Mahler and Schoenberg is in a lack of long melodic lines.  Instead, there is a continous flow of music in which the tone colours may be consistent for long periods, but only small snippets of melody recur from time to time to anchor the structure.  This makes the Lyrische Symphonie a bit of a tough nut to crack for first-time listeners, but if you persevere and give it your close attention through two or three hearings then it will begin to gel as the single coherent work which it undoubtedly is.

In the late days of LP there was a wonderful performance from DGG featuring the husband-and-wife team of Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau and Julia Varady, and conducted by Lorin Maazel.

A more recent, and equally commendable, DGG recording was issued on CD in 1996.  It preserves a live 1995 concert performance in the Musikverein in Vienna with Deborah Voigt and Bryn Terfel, and conducted by Giuseppe Sinopoli. 

Well worth your time to get acquainted with this unusual and beautiful song-symphony.

Monday 20 February 2012

In Memoriam

One of the most sombrely beautiful pieces of music I know is the rare String Quartet # 2 by Anton Arensky.  This Russian composer was an admirer of Tchaikovsky, and it shows in his music.  Indeed, one of the very few pieces he wrote to achieve any circulation was his set of Variations on Tchaikovsky's song Legend.  Arensky had a real gift for melody, but his style never really ventured beyond that of his teacher. 

This Quartet was written as a memorial to Tchaikovsky soon after the older composer died.  It has a rich, dark tone colour that is wholly Russian, thanks to the unusual instrumentation of violin-viola-2 cellos.  My guess would be that this is the feature which has doomed this piece to be a rarity.

The Quartet opens with a solemn intonation of a Russian Orthodox chant or hymn, accompanied by luminous harmonies.  Out of this grows the basic theme material of the first movement, in which the repeated notes of the chant recur from time to time.  The hymn tune is recalled at the end as the movement sinks to end in an atmosphere of darkness and grief.

The second movement is the set of variations I mentioned a minute ago.  Most people who have heard this piece have encountered Arensky's transcription for full string orchestra, but it works just as well in its original chamber format.  The variations range through a wide variety of moods: exultant, meditative, vehement, and wistful by turns.  The last variation, slow and tragic, leads into another recall of the chant from the first movement, before a brief coda brings the variations to a quiet close.

The final movement, after another slow and sombre passage by way of introduction, leaves behind the grief-laden atmosphere heard until now.   The main theme is another hymn tune, one you may recognize from Beethoven's Razumovsky Quartets or from the Coronation Scene of Boris Godunov by Mussorgsky.  But this one is played at an upbeat tempo and immediately subjected to fugal treatment.  One more short, slow interlude recalls the introduction, and then the music launches out into an impassioned coda, still using the main theme, which continues to accelerate to a more joyful conclusion.

Recordings of this solemn yet heartfelt music are very rare, but there is one currently available.  It comes in a 6-CD set from the super-bargain Brilliant Classics label.  The set includes also Arensky's Piano Trio (a better known piece), two major works by Taneyev (I already discussed the Piano Quintet last month), and works by Shostakovich and Catoire.  Exemplary performances of this diverse repertoire by the artists of the Amsterdam Chamber Music Society.  All in all, it's a highly recommendable reissue!

Saturday 18 February 2012

Who is Sylvia?

Sylvia:  nymph of the woods.  In Leo Delibes' ballet she is a huntress, having vowed her virginity to the service of Diana, the virgin goddess.  She mocks Eros, he zaps her with an arrow, she falls head over heels in love with the shepherd Aminta, and then she gets kidnapped by the dark hunter Orion.  And all that is just in Act I!

Well, of course it's a classical ballet so it all comes out right in the end.  The music is another story: overshadowed for years by the more popular and more often staged Coppelia by the same composer, a true masterpiece of comedy in music and dance.  It's often said that, by comparison, Sylvia is relatively weak and watered down.

But tell that to Tchaikovsky.  After seeing Sylvia performed in Vienna in 1872, the year after its world premiere in Paris, Tchaikovsky said that if he knew one could write ballet music like this, he never would have composed Swan Lake!  I agree with his assessment of Sylvia's quality (although not with the rocket he fired at his own work).

This is a true symphonic ballet, as effective musically as it is on stage.  The music includes wonderful writing for horns in a number of places, a delightful Dance of Ethiopians in Act II that follows the lead of Berlioz' Nubian Slave Dance in Les Troyens but does so with utter originality, and a very dramatic final scene and closing tableau at the end of Act III.  Every second of this score is worth hearing!

Sadly, it has not received many complete recordings.  In LP days, there was a beautiful version on Mercury records with (I believe) Anatole Fistoulari conducting.  Later on, Jean-Baptiste Mari led a really fine complete version with the Paris Opera Orchestra.  On CD, both of these were (I think) briefly reissued.  And the ever-reliable Naxos coupled their version with an even rarer bird, the Ballet Music from Henry VIII by Camille Saint-Saens.  Any of these recordings will give you the measure of this wonderful composition.

Even better, if you are a ballet fan, is the Opus Arte video of the 2005 Royal Ballet production from the Royal Opera House in London.  Starring the formidable team of Darcey Bussell and Roberto Bolle, this version features Sir Frederick Ashton's memorable choreography amid lush settings.  I defy you not to laugh at his version of the Pas des ethiopiens!  Almost as significant is the commentary before Act III which describes how the choreography (originally done in the 1950s) was lost for many years, and had to be painstakingly reconstructed from some notes and an old soundless black and white film.

All I can say is: thank goodness they put in the effort!  And for the performance, the marvellous camera and sound work, and the ineffable musical genius of Leo Delibes above all, "let the Lord be thankit."

PS  Check the time on the video and see just how long Martin Harvey as Eros can stand still! 

Wednesday 8 February 2012

Rare Early Baroque

The recording I'm listening to now is another rare treasure, first heard on Galaxie Baroque radio and then downloaded from Naxos.

The album is simply titled Das Partiturbuch.  All the music in it comes from a volume known as the Partiturbuch Ludwig after Jacob Ludwig, who compiled it.  The music in this collection was first performed at various minor and major courts in Germany and Austria in the mid 1600s.  Almost half of the pieces recorded here are identified with the Italian term ciaccona, meaning a piece composed over a short repeating bass pattern (in French it's "chaconne", and the term passacaglia is widely used with the same meaning).  The repetition of the bass invites a treatment as a series of variations, but a couple of these pieces instead become an exercise in the endless extension of a melody over the bass.

This is the Baroque era long before the arrival of Bach and Handel on the scene, and the music reflects a style still in transition.  Textures are very light, really chamber music rather than orchestral, and gentle-toned instruments like the bass lute known as a theorbo are very much to the fore.  Indeed, most of the pieces use the theorbo rather than a keyboard instrument for the bass.

The result is a collection of Baroque music like nothing else I have ever heard before.  Solemn it certainly is not!  This was courtly music, and its lightness becomes positively playful at times.  When I listen to it, I picture sunny palace rooms with tall windows overlooking formal gardens.   

Five stars to Ensemble Echo du Danube for these beguiling performances of absolutely delightful music that never deserved to be forgotten!

Monday 6 February 2012

Modern Energy III

For my third post on this theme, I've saved a large-scale modern work that is entirely driven by its rhythmic structure.  Indeed, the entire length of this 45-minute symphony is written around a single metic pulse.  If that sounds boring, though, prepare to be surprised.  The 9th Symphony of Robert Simpson is anything but that!

The one and only recording of the premiere performance (on Hyperion CD) comes with some valuable spoken and written notes by the composer.  So we have his authority from these notes that he planned the symphony from the outset around the single rhythmic pulse.

It's a large continuous structure, written for a conventional orchestra, which amply proves that there's more than enough room for new and different music using the standard instruments.  Simpson's work here is unique -- although one is sometimes reminded of this or that other composer, there is really nothing else in all of music like it (as far as I know).

The use of rhythm as the driving force of the score brings to mind the comparison with Beethoven, since so much of his music was written that way.  Simpson himself has cited Bruckner and Sibelius as key influences on him, and the sounds may reflect that, but the sheer titanic energy of this symphony is like no other music so much as the Beethoven of the Seventh and Ninth Symphonies.

Another way this symphony recalls Beethoven is the way the music builds up a huge structure beginning with a small rhythmic or melodic unit.  The first long section is constructed entirely from a melodic figure given out in the opening bars, and then developed at length.  As the music progresses, it gradually grows -- bigger, longer, louder, more emphatic -- until at a maximum point of tension it suddenly explodes into a powerful scherzo (without escaping that basic rhythmic pulse).  This scherzo too builds to a strong climax before gradually evaporating and paving the way for the symphony's final part.

The last section begins with a long, meandering melody in high violins which is treated as a fugue subject.  Like the opening, this gradually builds up in complexity until it triggers a rhythmic climax of power and terror that can only be compared -- distantly if at all -- to the extraordinary climaxes of Bruckner's 9th Symphony.  A pounding rhythmic figure drops down a fifth, leaving a sustained note behind.  This process is repeated until all 12 notes of the octave are sounding simultaneously and the resulting discord is repeated while the timpani hammer out the omnipresent rhythm.

Finally it fades into quiet.  The concluding 5 minutes are a series of gently rising scale figures whose quietness soothes after the violence of that enormous climax, and the work ends quietly on a chord which sounds like nothing so much as a question mark.

I bought this recording after reading the review it got in the Penguin Guide, the bible of recorded music collectors.  It gripped me right from the first hearing, but I've given it a lot of playing since then -- and learned more about it on every occasion.  It also led me to try some of Simpson's other symphonies, but none of them (for me) have the sheer grip of the Ninth.  If you are at all open to music after Brahms, you must give this symphony a listen!

Thursday 2 February 2012

Modern Energy II

Okay, continuing with my take on twentieth-century classical or concert music that has a clear emphasis on rhythm.  For my first (but certainly not last) venture into the music of Poland, I have to bring in Krzysztof Penderecki.  Here's an unusual composer of our times: one who began as a cutting-edge iconoclast, and then decided that communicative music performed for large audiences in concert halls or churches did indeed have a future.  If, in the process, he adopted a kind of neo-romantic style he certainly did not abandon everything he learned in his earlier, more experimental phase. Even his most recent works clearly belong to the latter half of the 20th century, and not to any earlier time.

Much of Penderecki's earlier music suffers from the problem I outlined in my first post on Modern Energy: the sounds just hit your ears and then lie there, with little or no sense of motion.  This was certainly not true of everything he wrote, far from it.  But it's been in more recent years that rhythm has been allowed to take a more prominent role in some of his music.

To find out what I mean, just put on a recording (there are three already, I think) of his Seventh Symphony, titled The Seven Gates of Jerusalem.   It's an hour-long work for choir, soloists, and large orchestra, a true choral symphony.  Like many of Penderecki's major works, this depends on a religious inspiration, but this time the inspiration is not exclusively Roman Catholic.  Indeed the sixth of seven movements is dominated by a lengthy recitation, in Hebrew, of the story of the valley of dry bones from the Book of Ezekiel in the Bible, where the rhythm of the recitation invokes an atmosphere of ritual chanting.

Actually, the first movement opens right away with a slow, majestic, but definitely metric choral utterance of the words "Magnus dominus", in a tempo that continues to dominate the movement.  The same passage, incidentally, returns at the end of the final seventh movement to bring a sense of structural completion and finality to the whole work.

It's the fifth movement, though, that really speaks to the point of this post.  It's quite clearly in a fast tempo, a tempo driven throughout by a rapidly-moving bass line.  This sort of thing may be anathema to many cutting edge modern "soundscape" composers, but let me tell you, it definitely grabbed this listener's attention!  In the centre of the movement, there's a contrasting slow, peaceful section but the powerful drum and bass rhythms soon return with a strong sense of demonic powers unleashed.  The movement ends with huge choral cries and a gigantic gong stroke that stops the fast music in its tracks and incidentally sets the stage for the beginning of that recitation to follow.

There are many beautiful and intriguing passages in The Seven Gates of Jerusalem but it's that motor-driven scherzo that always stays with me after listening to the whole work.  On Wergo CD, conducted by the composer, in rich full sound, you get as close to a definitive performance as you are ever likely to hear.

Wednesday 1 February 2012

Modern Energy I

If I have a bone to pick with much of the music composed in the latter half of the twentieth century, it's the lack of a sense of rhythm and motion.  What makes the great classics of the last ten centuries so compelling (to me at least) is that they are all going somewhere, and doing so at a speed and in a way that can clearly be followed by the listener.  So, to me, when I hear a piece of contemporary music that just juxtaposes sounds, and the sounds just lie there on your ear, I feel profoundly unsatisfied.

Fortunately, combining modern sound idioms with a more traditional sense of movement can still create gripping and eminently listenable music.  This is going to be a multi-part posting, as I chart several of my favourite twentieth-century works which share that characteristic of energetic movement.

Today, it's the Turangalîla-Symphonie by Olivier Messiaen.  This extraordinary piece was created in the late 1940s to a commission by the Boston Symphony Orchestra.  It's first recording outside of Europe came in 1967 from the Toronto Symphony, conducted by Seiji Ozawa.  I recently had a chance to listen to the digital remastering of that early RCA version, and the sound came up very well indeed.  Good quality sound is a prerequisite for Turangalîla, with its massive orchestra and unique sound world.  The TSO has performed the piece at least twice (maybe three times?) since then.  There have also been at least a dozen fine recordings in recent years.  Yet it remains unknown to many people, scared off by its reputation, or by its sheer size.

This 10-movement symphony (that's right, ten movements) sprawls over about 75-80 minutes in a recorded performance, easily contained in a single compact disc.  The composer wrote very detailed descriptions of the relationships among the movements, but perhaps it's better at first encounter to just listen and absorb. 

Very quickly you will notice that the score includes a terrific amount of percussion, as well as a piano solo part of concerto proportions.  Just as quickly you will detect a weird electronic sound emanating from the orchestra.  That's the ondes Martenot, an electronic instrument invented by Maurice Martenot in the 1920s.  Although a number of composers have written music for the ondes, Messiaen's Turangalîla remains its highest-profile appearance.  The ondes can produce uncanny, eerie glissando and vibrato effects unlike any other instrument of the pre-synthesizer era, and Messiaen exploits its capabilities to great effect.

Now, about that rhythmic component.  Messiaen explained very carefully that he was using different groups of time durations simultaneously, one group expanding and slowing, another contracting and accelerating, while "the third, immobile, observes."  Make what you will of this, but rhythm and the energy of movement is present right from Turangalîla's opening notes.  Sometimes it's fast and frenetic, sometimes slow and sensuous, but this piece never, ever lies down and dies on you.

The rhythmic element is most to the fore in the jazzy fifth-movement scherzo, Joie du sang des etoiles ("Joy of the blood of the stars").  Don't let the strange title put you off, just enjoy the music as a kind of wild rhythmic dance scarcely heard since the time of Beethoven.  I firmly believe that Beethoven, however much the harmonic idiom baffled him, would have admired the sheer energy of this music.

The succeeding Jardin du sommeil de l'amour ("Slumber Garden of Love") is a beautiful, seductive slow movement, with a prominent wide-ranging love melody given to the ondes Martenot.  For sheer lyricism there's almost nothing else in contemporary music to touch it.  These two movements together represent in some ways the most traditional part of the symphony.

The conflicting time elements are most notable in the ninth movement, Turangalîla III, in which a set of rhythmic percussion variations (set against a slow melodic line in the clarinets) grow steadily more complex and contorted until the music suddenly stops dead.

The final movement returns to the sound world of the fifth movement in another jazzy, jagged fast movement whose energetic ostinati surge onwards until they culminate in a final, full-orchestral statement of the love theme from movement six, and a short vigorous coda which amply confirms Messaien's description: "glory and joy are without end".

If you have an adventurous ear, you really have to give Turangalîla a whirl -- and be prepared to be taken for a whirling, joyful ride yourself.  My own favourite recordings were by Andre Previn on EMI in LP days, (1977) and by Riccardo Chailly with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra on Decca CD (1992).