Sunlight on the Marble, Or Viva Martinů!

A painting of Policka, from a 1910 postcard. Source: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Poli%C4%8Dka_V%C4%9B%C5%BE.jpgThe wonderful piano music of Martinů

The tourist brochure in Policka, Moravia (Bohuslav Martinů’s home town), is called “Sunlight on the Marble.” The marble being, the marble on Martinů’s tombstone.

This phrase is peculiarly apt for describing the markedly sunny (yet substantial) style of Martinů.

I’m invested in Martinu: I had a Martinů fan club in the early 80s and met my wife through Martinů.

Martinů is that oddest of phenomena: A gallic-influenced, oftentimes neoclassicist whose music radiates love and warmth to an unusual degree. Martinů’s style is informed by a kind of vigorous gentleness, and so many of Martinů’s scores rise from opacity to transluscence in an exhilerating way. I suggest putting aside the Prokofiev and Bartok piano concertos sometime, and picking up the five Martinů piano concertos, as well as the left-hand divertimento.

You’re gonna thank me, and since I live in Chicago, I’m gonna need ya to make it BLEEPIN’ golden for me.

Recommended:

Martinu: Piano Concertos Nos. 2, 3 & 4 by Firkusny, Pesek, Czech Philharmonic Orchestra

Legendary Czech pianist Rudolf Firkusny performs three piano concertos by Martinu, with the Czech Philharmonic under Libor Pesek. In addition, several piano works are included, such as Etudes and Polkas. A wonderful abum!

Martinu: Piano Concertos Supraphon

A complete recording of the five Martinu piano concertos plus the Concertino for Piano and Orchestra, performed by pianist Emil Leichner, with the Orchestr Ceská Filharmonie, conducted by Jirí Belohlávek.

Piano Concertos for the Left Hand by Martinu, Prokofiev, Nowka

Siegfried Rapp performs piano concertos for the left hand by Martinu, Prokofiev and Nowka with two different orchestras. Out of print, but available on used on Amazon.

How to Write Irrelevant Criticism, Or Another Look at Bartok's Second Piano Concerto

John GibbonsThis is what you do:

• Be angry, because a piece is too hard for you.

• Be annoyed, because a piece reminds you of Stravisnky (and you’ve decided You’re Just Not That Into Stravinsky).

• Listen to a much better piece immediately before the piece you’re going to criticize.

• Drink some fine Belgian beers, immediately before making criticisms.

• Associate the musical “isms” in the piece with political “isms” that followed in the next decade, creating the Second World War.

• Focus on irrelevant aspects of a piece’s structure.

• Be preparing equally accomplished, and more charming, Martinu piano concertos for that very week’s classes.

Which brings me to my silly and irrelevant criticism of Bartok’s Second Piano Concerto. Lucy (of the Peanuts comic strip) argues, “If you try to be polite all the time, you’ll never get anything said.” On the other hand… The piece is noisy, and we have enough noise. Better pieces in a similar structural vein are the Fourth and Fifth String Quartets. A better piece in the noisy vein is The Miraculous Mandarin.

And, after all, wouldn’t the Second Piano Concerto make a great ballet?

Musical Anniversary: A Florentine Tragedy

On this date in 1917, Alexander Zemlinsky’s Eine florentinische Tragödie (A Florentine Tragedy) was premiered in Stuttgart. It is the first of two operas that Zemlinsky (1871-1942) based upon the works of Oscar Wilde. Der Zwerk (The Dwarf) followed in 1922. Here is an excerpt featuring Diana Axentii and Chad Shelton:

Zemlinsky was right in the thick of things in Vienna in the decades before WWII. As a composer he studied with Bruckner and enjoyed the advocacy of such figures as Brahms and Mahler. As a conductor and teacher he, in turn, played a role in the careers of Viktor Ullmann (his assistant conductor), Hans Krasa and Erich Wolfgang Korngold (composition students) and Arnold Schoenberg, who married Zemlinsky’s sister Mathilde. In addition to conducting the world premiere of Schoenberg’s Erwartung, Zemlinsky holds the distinction of being the only teacher to give formal lessons (in counterpoint) to his otherwise self-taught brother-in-law.

Zemlinsky’s music evolved from a Brahmsian starting point to the kind of ravishing, post-Wagnerian style we hear in Strauss and Korngold. The “Wilde” operas are part of this mature stylistic world, at times opulent and at times brutally visceral. In the late 20s and 30s, Zemlinsky took a more objective turn, down the path taken by Hindemith and Weill despite his close personal association with the composers of the Second Viennese School.

A Florentine Tragedy (video above) is a one-act opera with only three characters: a merchant, his wife, and the aristocrat who cuckolds the husband. It features a shocking twist as this pretty routine society tragedy descends into a violent confrontation between the two men, and we learn which kind of power matters: brute strength or institutional power.

The Dwarf, based on Wilde’s story “The Birthday of the Infanta” is also a one-act, and the two works pair naturally, both musically and literarily. The Dwarf is in part a dramatization of the pain that Zemlinsky suffered when he lost Alma Schindler to Gustav Mahler. He was apparently considered unattractive, and he knew it. The Zemlinsky-Wilde Dwarf, however, doesn’t know it. He’s been led to believe, for the amusement of onlookers, that he’s a handsome prince, worthy of the love of the Infanta to whom he’s been given as a birthday gift.

Here is a video (for some reason, with piano only), of the scene in which the Dwarf sees his reflection for the first time. The eventual outcome: a new rule, whereby the Infanta is not be given any more living toys, because they break so easily.

There’s no finer advocate for Zemlinsky than James Conlon, whose recordings I recommend:

I haven’t seen the syllabus, but John may very well be discussing Zemlinsky in his upcoming spring class on Degenerate Music (Entartete Musik) — a study of composers who were affected by the Third Reich. As Jew, Zemlinsky had to leave Europe in 1938 and lived his final four years in obscurity in New York City.