Good Friday, April 10, 1868

If you listen to a classical station regularly, chances are you already know that 141 years ago on another April 10, Good Friday, the first performance of the Brahms requiem took place in Bremen.

Starting from an unused funeral march he’d written years before, Brahms began his requiem after the death of his mother in 1865, an event that added timely weight to his longstanding desire to memorialize his friend and mentor Robert Schumann. It all tied together, at least for writers, when Brahms bumped into Clara Schumann (widow to Robert and friend to Brahms’s mother — and around when Brahms had thought up the funeral march while trying to write piano music) outside the Bremen cathedral on the way into that first performance.

Written on a personal impetus during the romantic period (virtually defined by the concept of personal narrative), the Requiem is not liturgical. Its full title translates as “A German Requiem, after words of the Holy Scriptures.” There are only two soloists: a soprano singing of consolation on behalf of Brahms’s mother, and a baritone whose “Behold, I tell you a mystery” solo anchors a movement so searching, emotional and yet historically learned that it simply must be a musical conversation with Schumann.

For YouTube junkies, how about this complete performance, gathered in a convenient playlist? It features Claudio Abbado conducting the Berlin Philharmonic with the Swedish Radio Chorus and Eric Ericson Chamber Choir, with Bryn Terfel and Barbara Bonney. And subtitles?

See the entire playlist or watch the opening:

There’s another complete performance on YouTube by Otto Klemperer. The Wikipedia entry for Ein Deutsches Requiem has all the texts in German and English.

Prokofiev, Bartok Interviews

(Via Jessica Duchen, British music writer and Korngold biographer.)

In this 1944 radio interview in English, Bela Bartok discusses the pieces in an upcoming recital by his wife. At this time, he was suffering from leukemia and had a little over a year to live. Bartok’s English is fluent, but his accent charmingly has a little Peter Lorre flavor (make that “Peter Lorre impersonator” flavor, since the real Lorre had an additional Viennese sound that Mel Blanc et al. missed.) Bartok speaks in some detail about forms and folk influences of these pieces.

And here’s a short video of Sergei Prokofiev playing the piano and talking about what he’s composing. The excerpt is from Scene 5 of his opera War and Peace, which had just had a partial concert performance in Leningrad. At that moment (the middle section of the waltz), Anatole Kuragin has been going after the engage Natasha, and he gets her alone to kiss her and hand her a love letter. The entire scene IS the waltz, except for Natasha’s interjections in her own musical style, which wane in strength as the scene goes on.

Courtesy of YouTube member bramley88: Prokofiev is asked: “Sergei Sergeevich, maybe you will tell our viewers about your work?”

He replies: “Well, right now I am working on a symphonic suite of waltzes, which will include three waltzes from Cinderella, two waltzes from the War and Peace, and one waltz from the movie score “Lermontov.” [War and Peace] has just been brilliantly produced in Leningrad, where the composer Cheshko (?) made an especially noteworthy appearance as a tenor, giving a superb performance in the role of Pierre Bezukhoff. Besides this suite, I am working on a sonata for violin and piano [no.1 in f minor], upon completion of which I will resume work on the sixth symphony, which I had started last year. I have just completed three suites from the Cinderella ballet and I am now turning the score over to copyists for writing the parts, so that most likely the suites will already be performed at the beginning of the fall season.”

The scene Prokofiev plays above is very astutely directed in this DVD by Francesca Zembello:

Prokofiev - War and Peace / Bertini, Gunn, Kit, Mamsirova, Gouriakova, Brubaker, Paris Opera starring Olga Gouriakova, Nathan Gunn, Robert Brubaker, Anatoli Kocherga, Yelena Obraztsova

New Production Boo-ed at Met; Links on Audience Etiquette

Opera director Mary Zimmerman and her creative team were recently booed by a Met audience for their new production of Bellini’s La Somnambula. The Wall Street Journal’s Terry Teachout provides an audio recording of the curtain calls, and muses on why boos are rare in New York, while common in Italy and sometimes elsewhere (google “Roberto Alagna La Scala,” or “Chereau ring brawl” for some celebrated examples). 

Teachout also laments the “mandatory standing ovation” (which a WSJ reader attributes to our “everyone-gets-a-trophy” culture, but Teachout attributes to the cost of tickets). But then it gets confused. On the one hand, he imagines that an artist might rather be booed than treated with indifference, because at least booing indicates engagement. On the other hand, Teachout suggests a “silent boo” mechanism of having audience members recycle their programs in some sort of thumbs-up, thumbs-down choice of bins. (Mightn’t the most thoughtful critics want to keep their programs, skewing the results?)

Also on the topic of audience etiquette, Emanuel Ax asks “Why can we interrupt at the Met?” (or rather, why can’t we applaud between movements in an orchestral concert, just like we can after a big opera aria)?

Why, indeed? Even though I know “the rules” (and onced served as Enforcer in music camp where we used evening concerts to teach kids concert etiquett), I’ve wanted to applaud after a particularly rousing first or second movment of a beloved symphony. Who made these rules?

Actually, Alex Ross traced the history of clapping in 2005. It used to be that if you sat sedately between movements the artists’ feelings would be hurt. Hint: Alex’s sources blame Wagner for setting too reverent a tone in the hall.

Upcoming:

John has written a review of the Copenhagen Ring Cycle on DVD, and Bonnie will be “live-blogging” the DVDs one by one. If you love or hate Wagner or Eurotrash, check it out here!

ArkivMusic Creates PRINT Classical Music Magazine

LISTEN magazine’s debut cover featuring Isabe BayrakdarianAs many print publications find themselves in a business model crisis, and the blogosphere, as I write this, buzzing with the latest “Can Classical Music Be Saved?” debate, the online classical music retailer ArkivMusic (now owned by Steinway) is starting a bimonthly print magazine. (Read press release.)

LISTEN: Life with Classical Music will be published every other month for $14.85 per year plus shipping. Per the press release, the magazine will be editorially independent from the retailing business, but the retailing customer base will be used as a marketing channel for the magazine.

Can LISTEN make money?

“Millions of people across North America have an interest in, even a passion for, classical music, and yet the genre has all but disappeared from the mainstream media,” stated ArkivMusic President Eric Feidner. “Just because the large corporations that control what we are exposed to on TV, radio and in print can’t find a way to make money in the genre doesn’t mean there isn’t any interest. There is considerable demand for a publication that caters to and cultivates the interest of this significant population.”

Feidner is confident that a print magazine is viable even in today’s challenged economic marketplace. “We’ve been running online companies since 1995 and know full well how it has revolutionized our lives in countless ways. However, there is still a place for quality print publications and, in our specific circumstance, we are servicing a population that has been starved for many years.

That’s obviously a) all true and b) marketing “blah-blah-blah” that should be taken with a grain of salt.

It’s unclear how much of the magazine will be available online, since only the debut issue is available and the current website only lets you:

• Browse the promising-looking table of contents
• Subscribe to the print magazine
• Email a letter to the editor
• Buy recordings discussed in the magazine through convenient links back to the ArkiveMusic.com store.

Maybe it’s better to view this as a marketing channel for the retail store rather than an exercise in journalism business models. In terms of content, LISTEN is clearly going to be a combination of classical music, lifestyle and product promotion similar to British classical magazines like Gramaphone and BBC Music — albeit with an emphasis on the magazine’s own sister retailing channel.

New LA Ring Cycle & a Boito/Scotto Birthday

A 2-headed Wotan in LA’s Rheingold. View this Lawrence K. Ho photo at LA Times.

It’s always exciting when there’s a new Ring Cycle — especially a “directed” one (by which I mean not exactly Viking helmets).  Over the weekend, LA Opera raised the curtain on its new Ring. You can see video of LA Opera’s Das Rheingold (conducted by James Conlon) at the company’s very good website, and access podcasts, articles and other helpful information.

Even in the short video, the images come fast and furious and since I haven’t actually seen it, it would be unfair to “review” it. I did notice that the “rainbow bridge” looks something like some of the historic airplanes we’ve got hanging in Chicago’s Museum of Science and Industry, Loge has four arms, and the Nibelungs look like the Elephant Man. Read a review of Rheingold at the LA Times.

Die Walkure is next months, followed by Conlon’s latest Recovered Voices effort, which will be The Birds by Walter Braunfels, based on the play by Aristophanes. This series celebrates composers who were silenced during the Third Reich — Braunfels was half Jewish and fortunately survived but was unable to participate publicly in musical life between 1933 and 1945. This opera is available on CD, conducted by Lothar Zagrosek:

Braunfels - Die Vogel

by Walter Braunfels, Lothar Zagrosek, Hellen Kwon, Matthias Görne, Deutsche Sinfonie-Orchester Berlin, Hans Braun, Siegfried Hausmann, Dirk Schmidt Thomas Kober, Iris Vermillion, Endrik Wodrich, Wolfgang Holzmair, Martin Petzold Michael Kraus

Musical Birthdays

Today happens to be the birthday of both Arrigo Boito and Renata Scotto, so I dug up a YouTube clip of Scotto singing “L`altra notte in fondo al mare” from Act 3 of Boito’s Mefistofele.

John Cage "As Slow As Possible" - 7th Note Reached

On the church organ in Halberstadt, Germany, a performance of John Cage’s As Slow As Possible has been underway since 2001. BBC’s Steven Rosenberg was there for a rare chord change. He probably won’t make the conclusion of the work, in 2640 A.D. (Thanks to Jacque Harper of the Chicago Bass Ensemble for the tip!)

In other news, take a look at this very candid interview with John Adams on the role of government in the arts.

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?

The First Two Bartok Piano Concertos

The measurably superior First Concerto is an astounding amalgam of Liszt, Stravinsky, Richard Strauss and Slavic and most probably quasi-Slavic folk motifs. The wholly original second movement stands with Stravinsky’s “Les Noces” as a uniquely extended timbral mosaic. The mediation between percussion and string sonority in the piano writing reveals a profound understanding of the piano’s unique multiple role as a rhythmic, melodic and percussion instrument. Bartok’s piano is a virtuoso piano, inherited from Liszt but informed by modernity. Stravinsky’s pianos in “Les Noces” are blunt conveyors of essentially un-aesthetic folk myopia. “Les Noces” is a fundamentally inhumane work, but Bartok’s great concerto admirably bridges space between the rustic and the urban, between the primitive and the sophisticated; in fact, between pre-industrial and modern modes of being.

Oddly, the first movement is a painfully correct sonata form according to all the didactic, Germanic formulae; Bartok had a new idiom; but he did not have a new form. In fact, the appalling symmetry of Bartok’s formal devices indicates an obsession wholly foreign to the miraculous and almost improvisatory designs of the classical masters, albeit predicated at least on a partial misunderstanding of these masters whose works provide models perhaps, but never blueprints.

Virtuosity is ancillary in the First Concerto, but absolutely is the raison d’etrein the Second Concerto. The Second Concerto was written in 1930. It’s a piano concerto, but why isn’t it a ballet? Its obvious antecedent is Stravinsky’s Petroushka, composed in 1911. The Second Concerto is a strangely constricted — even constipated — work. The pianist is an acrobat but is not given anything like aesthetic responsibility; he needs to be a dexterity machine. As is distressingly common in Bartok, the formal designs of the movements are not sufficiently malleable… This work is essentially virtuosity plus neoclassicism, plus primitivism- as such, it is painfully representative of the so-called “dark valley” that informed European culture in the 1930s. Neoclassicism without charm, virtuosity without heart, violence without reason; this work is a finger in the wind, identifying the awful world to come in the next decade. Of course, Bartok was intensely antipathetic to fascistic causes. It would be absurd to suggest that the second concerto espouses any such fascistic predilections.

I see no reason to admire this work, except for its astounding expansion of the pianists physical resources. But one ought to be sympathetic to Bartok’s plight in this era; we think our world is crashing and burning, but his really was.

Two definitive recordings are available:

Bartók: Piano Concertos Nos. 1 & 2; Stravinsky: 3 Movements from Petrushka

Deutsche Grammophon

Maurizio Pollini, pianist. Claudio Abbado conducting the Chicago Symphony. The Anda recording is rightly renowned, but John finds this Pollini recording especially brilliant.

Bartok: The Piano Concertos

Anda, Fricsay, Radio Symphony Orchestra Berlin Deutsche Grammophon

And here’s a sample from YouTube: The first movement of the First Concerto, performed by Vladimr Ashkenazy and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra under Georg Solti.

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.