Recorded at the Unitarian Church in Budapest by Phoenix Studio from July 28-31, 1991
ONE-SENTENCE REVIEW:
I know very little about Boccherini and don’t listen to a lot of guitar quintets – so the following liner notes should be educational for both of us.
ORIGINAL LINER NOTES (by Keith Anderson):
The Italian cellist and composer Luigi Boccherini was born in Lucca in 1743, the son of a double-bass player.
His family was distinguished not only in music, but boasted poets and dancers among its members.
His elder brother Giovan Gastone, born in 1742, was both dancer and poet, the author of the text of Haydn’s Il ritorno di Tobia and the libretti of some earlier stage-works of the Vienna Court Composer, Antonio Salieri.
His sister Maria Ester was a dancer and married Onorato Vigano, a distinguished dancer and choreographer. Her son, Salvatore Vigano, who studied composition with Boccherini, occupies a position of considerable importance in the history of ballet.
Boccherini was giving concerts as a cellist by the age of thirteen, and in 1757 went with his father to Vienna, where they both were invited to join the orchestra of the court theatre. Boccherini returned to Italy, but there were further visits to Vienna, before he finally secured a position in his native town.
In 1766, however, he set out with his fellow-townsman, the violinist Manfredi, a pupil of Nardini, for Paris, having performed with both violinists and with Cambini in chamber music in Milan the previous year.
In France, Boccherini and Manfredi won considerable success, and the former continued his work as a composer, as well as appearing as a cello virtuoso.
In 1768, the pair left for Spain, where Boccherini seems to have lived until his death in 1805.
In Madrid, he was appointed composer and virtuoso de camera to the Infante Don Luis, younger brother of King Charles III. Part of the following period he spent in Madrid and part at the Palace of Las Arenas in the province of Avila, where the Infante retired after an unacceptable marriage.
Members of the Font family were employed by Don Luis as a string quartet and renewed their association with Boccherini at the end of the century.
After the death of the Infante in 1785, the composer entered the service of the Benavente-Osuna family. At the same time, he was appointed court composer to Friedrich Wilhelm, who in 1787 became King of Prussia, providing the cell-playing king with new compositions on the same kind of exclusive arrangement that he had earlier enjoyed with Don Luis.
There is, however, no evidence that Boccherini ever spent any time in Prussia. After the death of Friedrich Wilhelm and the departure of other patrons from Madrid, Boccherini received support from Lucien Bonaparte, French ambassador in Madrid, and remained busy until the end of his life, although visitors reported that he lived all the appearance of poverty.
Boccherini’s style is completely characteristic of the period in which he lived, the period, that is, of Haydn rather than of Mozart or Beethoven.
He enjoyed a reputation for his facility as a composer, leaving some 467 compositions. A great deal of his music is designed to exploit the technical resources of the cello, in concertos, sonatas, and, particularly, in chamber music for various numbers of instruments, including a remarkable series of quintets with two cellos.
The twelve quintets for guitar and string quartet, of which eight have survived, are arrangements by the composer of works written for pianoforte quintet in the late 1790s.
The set of six quintets here recorded (only three in volume 1) were dedicated to the Marques de Benavent, an enthusiastic amateur guitarist.
The first, the only one in a minor key, is in four movements, and establishes the mood, its Spanish elements mingling happily with the idiom of Vienna.
It is followed by a three-movement Quintet in E major, ending in a Polish dance.
The thirdof the group, in B-flat major, returns to the four-movement form, its Minuet and Trio now preceding the slow movement.
TRACK LISTING:
1-4: Quintet in D Minor, G. 445 [19:53]
5-7: Quintet in E Major, G. 446 [18:16]
8-11: Quintet in B-Flat Major, G. 447 [21:26]
FINAL THOUGHT:
OK – so Boccherini was a prolific and important dude and his family was crazy talented. I need to investigate why his nephew (Salvatore Vigano) “occupies a position of considerable importance in the history of ballet.” It’s a nice, pleasant disc – brunch music – very Haydn. (Though the guitar is barely distinguishable in this recording – maybe that’s the style or the acoustics.)
London Symphony Orchestra, Michael Tilson Thomas – Conductor
Recorded September 1993 – London, Henry Wood Hall
ONE-SENTENCE REVIEW:
I was excited to listen to this disc again – such rhythmic bravura and musical surprises from Mr. Bernstein!
ORIGINAL LINER NOTES (by MIchael Barrett):
ARIAS AND BARCAROLLES (1988)
Two of Leonard Bernstein’s last compositions, A Quiet Place (1983) and Arias and Barcarolles (1988) share the same subject: the modern American family.
Arias and Barcarolles, a concert work, gives us fleeting glimpses into a marriage (there are two duets for couples, a wedding scene and meditations on birth and death).
The opera A Quiet Place, written in collaboration with the librettist Stephen Wadsworth is the story of a broken family thrust back together at a funeral (Act 1), showing, in flashbacks, their turbulent history (Act II, which incorporates Trouble in Tahiti, Bernstein’s one-act opera from 1951), and, after the funeral, their eventual reconciliation (Act III).
But the two works have more than a theme in common.
As Michael Tilson Thomas has put it: “Quiet Place and Arias and Barcarolles both show LB as a masterful musical conjurer. He is so amazing in transforming tone rows from angry ostinatos to scat riffs, bluesy ballads or Mahlerian adagios. The music is so clever, yet engaging and satisfying to follow. He was so happy that in these… works he had really conquered serial writing and that he achieved it, not by excruciating study, but by applying his brilliant sense of gamesmanship. If Lenny had wanted to write ‘brainy,’ really difficult music he certainly could have. With his mastery of mental jotto and acrostics, he could have out-puzzled us all. But the essence of music and life for him was communication. His work poses questions and conundrums but also offers solutions.”
After playing Mozart and Gershwin at the White House in 1960, Bernstein experienced a somewhat awkward moment, President Eisenhower greeted him and said, “You know, I liked that last piece you placed; it’s got a theme. I like music with a theme, not all those arias and barcarolles.”
According to Eisenhower’s definition, Arias and Barcarolles at first would seem to be music without a theme; the musical elements are disparate and eclectic: twelve-tone writing, rhythmic improvisation, late romanticism, scat-singing and pure Coplandesque Americana.
There is, however, a theme running through the texts, which is revealed in the opening lines of the “Prelude”: “I love you, it’s easy to say it, and so easy to mean it, too.” We have entered the private and sometimes dark thoughts of a couple, and are off on a musical exploration of different aspects of love.
The “Prelude”‘s accompaniment, spiky, discordant and rhythmic, is periodically interrupted by the impassive vocal line, which seems oblivious to the musical storm brewing behind it.
This idea of turmoil masked by calm is continued in the lyrical “Love Duet,”where both characters sing a random list of everyday questions while narrowly avoiding the deeper conflicts lurking beneath their ironic detachment.
Over constant, machine-like eighth-notes (quavers) in the orchestra – the piece is in 10/8 meter – the couple is singing about the song they are singing (about their relationship!). It defies their categorization, like the music of Arias and Barcarolles itself: (Is it) “minimal music or classical or popular song? All of them wrong.”
“Little Smary” is a bedtime story the composer remembered hearing repeatedly as a child, told by his mother, Jennie Bernstein, who is credited with authorship of the text. The musical setting follows a double course, alternating the mother’s bright, animated tone with the profound emotions experienced by the child listening. There is a despairing Berg-like interlude at Smary’s loss of her little “wuddit” (rabbit), and a brilliant Straussian flourish at her triumphant recovery of it at the end of the song.
After this brief excursion into the world of children, “The Love of My Life” takes us back to the realm of adult reflection through a long, improvistory twelve-tone orchestral introduction. (The notes are indicated, but not the precise rhythms). The tone row alternates mercurially with tonal sections in a variety of moods, including a few measures of hard-driving blues. The song is edgy, obsessive, questioning and, at the end, ironic, subtly quoting the beginning of Tristan und Isolde at the words, “So that was it, huh?”
“Greeting” was written in 1955 after the birth of the composer’s son Alexander, and then revised in 1988. In its rapt, ethereal atmosphere it hovers above the key of A major without ever actually alighting on an A major triad, and ends on the dominant, E. The repose in this song is the eye of the hurricane of emotion elsewhere in the work.
“Oif Mayn Khas’neh” (“At My Wedding”), the setting of a Yiddish poem by Yankev-Yitskhok Segal, is a surrealistic reminiscence of a wedding. Like “The Love of My Life,” it uses a twelve-tone row as a recurring motif, while the music courses through many different tonalities. The song illustrates an essential theme of Arias and Barcarolles: passion can inspire love, but it can also unleash mayhem. At the mid-point in the song, there is a cantorial cadenza. The music then builds from a quiet, slow recapitulation of the opening, accelerating in tempo to a frenzied climax at the end of the song.
“Mr. and Mrs. Webb Say Goodnight” is an affectionate portrait of Charles Webb (Dean of the Indiana School of Music), his wife Kenda, and their sons Malcolm and Kent (in the original version, their parts are taken by the pianists; here they are performed from the orchestra).
In this little domestic drama, played out at four in the morning, the two rambunctious children are head singing together. Kenda, having scolded them into temporary silence, can’t sleep and takes the opportunity to throw a tantrum. Charles calms her with a romantic memory, they say their prayers one last time, and fall asleep as the children are heard quietly scat-singing once more.
A truculent march begins the piece, which continues in a succession of popular music styles — cool jazz for the children, a virtuosic musical theatre-style patter for Mrs. Webb’s tirade and a suggestion of swingtime for Mr. Webb’s reminiscences.
The “Nachspiel” (Postlude) is a slow waltz, with the two singers humming a descant. Headed “in memoriam,” this final song maintains an inward, elegiac tone, never rising above a hush. The piano version has also been published in a collection of “Thirteen Anniversaries.”
Arias and Barcarolles was first performed in New York in May 1988 in a version for four singers (Joyce Castle, Louise Edeiken, John Brandstetter, Mordechai Kaston) and piano duet (the composer and Michael Tilson Thomas); the version with two voices had its premiere in Tel Aviv in April 1989 (Amalia Ishak, Raphael Frieder, Irit Rub-Levy, Ariel Cohen) and its first New York performance in September 1989 (Judy Kaye, William Sharp, Michael Barrett, Steven Blier).
An arrangement by Bright Sheng for strings and percussion was first performed in New York in September 1989 (Susan Graham, Kurt Ollimann, the New York Chamber Symphony of the 92nd St. Y conducted by Gerard Schwarz).
The orchestration by Bruce Coughlin was given its first performance in London in September 1993, with the conductor, orchestra and soloists of the present recording.
A QUIET PLACE (1983)
After four productions and one major revision, A Quiet Place has still to find a foothold in the repertoire, yet it contains music which is arguably among the most powerful, affecting and lyrical Bernstein ever wrote.
Much of this has been included in the suite, which was compiled by Michael Tilson Thomas, myself and Sid Ramin, who also provided the additional orchestrations. The first performance was given in September 1991 by the London Symphony Orchestra conducted by Michael Tilson Thomas.
The suite begins with the Prologue, the musicalization of a violent car accident, accompanied in the opera by the comments of witnesses and onlookers (the chorus); in the suite these are exclaimed by an array of percussion instruments following the contour and rhythm of the original Spechstimme choral parts.
A brass chorale emerges, growing phrase by phrase to reach a dramatic climax. In the opera, it is sung to words from Dinah’s final diary entry, “Give all for love, for love is strong as death.” It is she who has been killed in the car accident, and it is her funeral with which the opera begins. Attending are her husband Sam, their grown children, who arrive late, and family friends.
Silent and aloof through most of Act 1, Sam finally, in an operatic tour de force, gives vent to his rage, guilt and frustration toward himself, his children and his deceased wife (Sam’s Aria). In the suite, Sam’s baritone is given to the trombone, propelled by brilliant, metrically shifting orchestral outbursts.
The response to Sam’s fierce Ariais the beautiful Trio, sung by his and Dinah’s daughter Dede, their son Junior, and Dede’s husband, Francois. They recall heartfelt letters they wrote as children to their fathers. Here the vocal lines of Dede (soprano), Junior (baritone) and Francois (tenor) are taken by solo viola, bassoon and english horn respectively.
The Jazz Trio (“Mornin’ Sun” ) from Trouble in Tahitidepicts the troubled marriage of Sam and Dinah 30 years earlier. The words describe, somewhat ironically, the bliss of upper-middle class suburban life in 1950s America. The light, nightclub-combo scoring of the original has been re-worked in the suite into a Big Band number, giving it symphonic weight.
The opening chorale from the Prologuereturns, this time quietly and without a climax, punctuated only by fragments of the jazz clarinet tone-row from Trouble in Tahiti.
The suite ends with the Postlude to Act 1. Junior is left alone onstage with his mother’s coffin, after one of his aggressive psychotic episodes has effectively cleared the funeral parlor of family and friends. In this wordless scene, in which he becomes aware of his disarray, the music describes his remorse, tender memories of his mother, and anguish of his grief.
WEST SIDE STORY: SYMPHONIC DANCES
Some commentators have gone so far as to call West Side Storythe great American opera that composers have supposedly been trying to write for decades.
Bernstein himself, however, reminded us that West Side Story is not an opera: the denouement is spoken, not sung. And so the work remains a child of the Broadway stage – where it opened in September 1957 and ran for nearly two years – albeit one of its most complex and sophisticated children.
It is a testimony to Bernstein’s gifts and versatility that material from a successful Broadway musical could be turned into a symphonic score which has found a secure place in the standard orchestral repertoire.
In collaboration with the choreographer and director Jerome Robbins, Bernstein created a theatrical world where dance is on an expressive par with song and dialogue. Much of West Side Storyis told through dance, and the choreography generates the essential energy of the action; writing dance music allowed Bernstein to deploy the full range of his compositional powers.
The Symphonic Dances (1960) extracted from the complete work are arranged according to an organic plan rather than in dramatic sequence. In their orchestration Bernstein had assistance from his lifelong friend, Sid Ramin, and Irwin Kostal, who together had recently revised the scoring of West Side Story for the screen version.
The first performance of the Symphonic Dances was conducted by Lukas Foss with the New York Philharmonic in February 1961.
Bernstein’s amanuensis Jack Gottlieb has outlined the action of the principal sections of the Symphonic Dancesas follows:
Prologue: The growing rivalry between two teenage gangs, the Jets and Sharks.
Somewhere: In a visionary dance sequence, the two gangs are united in friendship.
Scherzo: In the same dream, they break through the city walls, and suddenly find themselves in a world of space, air and sun.
Mambo: Reality again; competitive dance between two gangs.
Cha-Cha: The star-crossed lovers see each other for the first time and dance together.
Meeting Scene: Music accompanies their first spoken words.
“Cool” Fugue: An elaborate dance sequence in which the Jets practice controlling their hostility.
Rumble: Climactic gang battle during which the two gang leaders are killed.
Finale: Love music developing into a procession, which recalls, in tragic reality, the vision of “Somewhere.”
TRACK LISTING:
1-8: Arias and Barcarolles (1988) [33:45]
9-14: A Quiet Place: Suite (1983) [22:07]
15-23: West Side Story: Symphonic Dances (1957) [22:10]
FINAL THOUGHT:
After those notes up there, I doubt anyone has made it to the bottom of the blog. But if you did, the video above is a real treat (not from the disc featured – but the “Mambo” from West Side Story is in the Symphonic Dances. This video, conducted by the great Gustavo Dudamel is a real joy!
Recorded live at Hitomi Kinen Kodo, Tokyo, on May 28, 1993 (BBC Music)
ONE-SENTENCE REVIEW:
What to say about this version of Berlioz’s Symphonie Fantastique that I didn’t say about the last one… oh, yeah… this one is better!
ORIGINAL LINER NOTES (by Robert Cowan):
Berlioz’s semi-autobiographical Symphonie Fantastique grew out of his burning infatuation for the Irish actress Harriet Smithson. He had seen Smithson play Ophelia in 1827, and his Symphoniewas completed three years later.
Berlioz himself stated in a programme note that it was his intention in the piece to ‘treat various states in the life of an artist, insofar as they have musical quality.’
It was the first major orchestral work to follow a detailed programme, and broke new ground by introducing the concept of an idee fixe, or recurring ‘motif,’ in this instance representing Harriet Smithson.
Wagner was to learn a great deal from Berlioz’s innovation and indeed his own ‘leitmotif’ is inconceivable without Berlioz’s inspired prompting.
A further revolutionary aspect of the symphony is its five-tier structure.
Each movement has a subtitle that refers to a specific aspect of the programme: the first, ‘Daydreams – Passions,’ reflects wavering joys, fears and frustrations in the face of amatory obsession; the second, ‘A Ball,’recalls happier times, but a chance encounter with the beloved deflates its high spirits; ‘In the Meadows’ opens to the pastoral piping of two shepherds and ends with distant thunder; the ‘March to the Scaffold’ reports the artist’s attempted suicide, his dreams of killing the woman he loved and his death by the guillotine; and ‘Sabbath Night’s Dream’ finds him among spirits, sorcerers and monster, preparing for his own funeral.
Berlioz’s original scoring included an ophicleide (an obsolete low brass instrument, commonly replaced nowadays by the tuba), bells (doubled, originally, by six pianos), an E-flat clarinet, and a pair of cornets, although the cornets aren’t always used in modern-day performances.
The Symphonie Fantastique, or five ‘episodes in the life of an artist,’ was premiered at the Paris Conservatoire on December 5, 1830, under the direction of Francois-Antoine Habeneck.
Another leading pioneer of musical Romanticism, Franz Liszt, was in the audience, and within three years he had undertaken the gargantuan task of transcribing the entire symphony for piano solo.
TRACK LISTING:
1: Daydreams – Passions [15:05]
2: A Ball [6:13]
3: In the Meadows [15:52]
4: March to the Scaffold [6:29]
5: Sabbath Night’s Dream [9:57]
—————————————-
FINAL THOUGHT:
This whole bit about Berlioz writing this piece for some Irish actress chick was news to me. And they ended up marrying in 1833 (the liner notes should have mentioned that!). The marriage fell apart by 1840 after Berlioz started having an affair. Harriet Smithson moved out, suffered a form of paralysis that left her barely able to speak and died in 1854. Just another tragic tale from the Romantic era.
(I put pictures of Harriet Smithson in throughout the notes because she is more interesting looking that Hector Berlioz– sort of like Kristen Wiig in this one.)
Boston Symphony Orchestra, Seiji Ozawa – Conductor
Recorded in 1980 (Deutsche Grammophon)
ONE-SENTENCE REVIEW:
Itzhak rules!
ORIGINAL LINER NOTES (by Volker Scherliess – translation by John Coombs):
If it is true that a recording can be not only entertaining but at the same time revealingly instructive, then that is the case here; it brings together two works of the same genre and the same period; each commissioned by a prominent violinist and composed with his particular technical accomplishments in mind – two virtuoso concertos, therefore, successors to the great bravura pieces of the 19th century, but by no means restricted to demonstrating dazzling violin playing.
Each is, indeed, a work of the highest quality, and occupies a place of importance in the oeuvre of its composer.
(Alban Berg once remarked that a concerto is the “art form in which it s not only the soloists who have an opportunity to display their virtuosity and brilliance, but also for once the composer.”)
The list of similarities could be extended further, but the remarkable fact is that these external resemblances highlight all the more clearly the fundamental contrast between the two works, and between their composers.
Stravinsky’sConcertowas written in 1931 for the young American violinist Samuel Dushkin, who (as is specifically stated in the score) gave the composer technical advice on the writing of the solo part.
Stravinsky said, jokingly, that the Concertoshould “smell of the violin,” and in the event no potential of violin technique remained unexploited.
The element of display is also fascinating in the orchestra, which despite its full scoring always creates the transparent effect of chamber music.
This work is a masterly example of neoclassicism, not reactionary and content with superficial stylistic copies, but creating something wholly new as a result of an affectionate approach to models from the past – often parodistically distorted.
The movement titles indicate a return to baroque forms: Toccataand Capriccio– two fast movements charged with motor energy – enclose Aria 1 and Aria II, both of which are dominated by a richly decorated cantabile line.
At the beginning of each movement the soloist plays the same motto-like chord D’ – E” – A”’, but otherwise the music is not concerned with thematic associations, with evolution from a germ cell or with rising to emphatic climaxes, but with assembling colorful elements in the manner of a collage.
The deliberate avoidance of subjective moods, expression and feelings, instead the creation of music which is refreshingly serene, effervescent and objective, music without a “message” or “idea” (except that of virtuosic playing) – that was Stravinsky’s intention.
It was quite otherwise with Alban Berg.
When the violinist Louis Krasner asked him for a violin concerto in February 1935, he was uncertain at first of the form which the work should take.
The death of the eighteen-year-old Manon Gropius, daughter of the brief marriage between Mahler’s widow Alma Mahler-Werfel and the architect Walter Gropius, on April 22 affected him so profoundly that he decided to create a memorial to the girl: he dedicated this Concerto“to the memory of an angel.”
Its layout encompasses several musical layers. Berg based his compositional procedure on Schoenberg’s twelve-note technique, but he used it in an unorthodox manner (his based 12-note row contains major, minor and whole-tone elements), and even combined it with purely tonal music – a Carinthian folk song and the chorale Es is genug in Bach’s harmonization.
These contrasting elements serve Alban Berg’s wish “to translate characteristics of the young girl’s nature into musical terms”: the Concertoas a whole is intended to depict life (1st movement), the struggle with death, and transfiguration (2nd movement).
When at the end a vision of the “angel” is evoked again by the reappearance of its musical motifs, the rare mastery with which Berg blended form and expression, musical logic and a poetic idea, is more than ever apparent.
TRACK LISTING:
1-2: Berg: Violin Concerto (“To the memory of an angel”)
3-6: Stravinsky: Violin Concerto
FINAL THOUGHT:
Not a great recording from a technical standpoint – it was the early days of CD production after all (either that or my CD is wearing out) – but the fantastic playing of Itzhak Perlman overcomes any technical issues and makes this a truly fantastic disk. The Stravinky almost feels like you’re listening to something as accessible as Mozart after hearing the 12-tone complexities of the Berg piece.
Beethoven is not the ideal composer for Glenn Gould (as Bach is – as illustrated hereand hereand hereand hereand here) but this is still a rousing, exciting performance throughout and, certainly, never boring.
ORIGINAL LINER NOTES (by Marc Vignal – translation by Robert Cushman):
To inaugurate at least two of the important periods of his career, Beethoven wrote a work of vast dimensions in the four traditional movements and applying Haydn’s principles of form on a scale hitherto unknown: on the one hand, the Eroica Symphony in 1804 and, on the other, the Hammerklavier Sonata (No. 29 in B-flat major, Op. 106) in 1818.
Only three piano sonatas – No. 30 in E major, Op. 109; No. 31 in A-flat major, Op. 110; and No. 32 in C minor, Op. 111– were written after the Hammerklavier. They were composed between 1819 and 1822 in parallel with the Missa Solemnis, the other major work to which Beethoven was then devoting his time.
As for the Diabelli Variations, although they were started in 1819 before the last three sonatas, they were only completed in 1823, after a long interruption. The year 1823 was also that in which Beethoven did most of the work on the Ninth Symphony. After this there remained only the last five string quartets.
Compared with the Hammerklavier, the last three sonatas appear to mark a return to a certain brevity, even to a certain simplicity. All three are about the same length with, as a common characteristic, special importance given to the finale, which in each case lasts over half the length of the entire sonata.
Nevertheless, although Opus 109 has three movements and Opus 110 four, Opus 111 has only two. In themselves these overall structures were in no way extraordinary, but it is noteworthy that, in both Opus 109 and Opus 110, the section preceding the finale tends to be reduced to the role of an introduction.
The finales of Opus 109 and Opus 111 are in the theme-and-variations form, ending almost imperceptibly in silence (and yet they do not truly seem to end), while that of Opus 110 is a complex combination of recitatif, arioso and fugue (variations and fugues especially preoccupied Beethoven at the end of his life).
By comparison with what leads up to it, the finale of Opus 111 functions as an antithesis.
That of Opus 109 returns to and somehow prolongs the first movement (with the second movement acting as a violent interlude), while the finale of Opus 110 – the only one of the three to end fortissimo – little by little frees the energy previously held more or less in check.
Unlike the Hammerklavierand each in its own way, Opus 109, Opus 110 and Opus 111are constructed in “open” form, and in them we remark a considerable simplification in style and in the working-out, as well as clearer alternations of tension and relaxation. Such alternations, however, are especially characteristic of the composer’s late works. In these sonatas Beethoven confronted time – and eternity.
Begun in 1819, Sonata No. 30 in E major, Opus 109 was finished in the autumn of 1820 but not published until November 1821, with a dedication to Maximiliane Brentano (the daughter of Antonie Brentano, whom Maynard Salomon believes the most likely candidate for the “Immortal Beloved”).
The manuscripts show that the first movement was originally planned as a separate piece, probably for inclusion in the future series of Bagatelles Op. 119. Of the last three sonatas this is the one that is most unlike the Hammerklavier, after which it offers a welcome feeling of relaxation.
The first movement presents a very free alternation of a lively theme (Vivace ma non troppo, sempre legato), of almost impressionistic sonorities, with an Adagio espressivo bearing the traits of an improvised recitatif. The Prestissimo in E minor (second movement) enters without a pause. The third movement (Andante molto cantabile ed espressivo), which returns to E major, opens with a calm, lyrical theme (a kind of sublimated sarabande) followed by six accelerating variations and closing with the repetition of the theme.
Initially sketched in 1819 and completed by December 18, 1821, Sonata No. 31 in A-flat major, Op. 110was published in August 1822, without a dedication. It begins with a Moderato cantabile molto espressivo which is undoubtedly the composer’s most beautiful lyrical movement, setting aside his slow movements. It offers resemblances with Schubert. There are many themes, but they follow one another smoothly.
Then comes a violent Allegro molto in F minor, a sort of scherzo in duple (rather than triple) time. After a normal organ point, everything forms a solid block, as Beethoven successfully performs the miracle of interlocking different opposites: arioso and fugue, profound despondency and elan vital. A solemn recitatif in B-flat minor (third movement or introduction to the finale?) marked Adagio ma non troppo opens this “universe of alternation” and culminates in an A repeated 26 times.
Then rises a song of lamentation (Arioso dolente) in A-flat minor leading to a fugue in A-flat major (Allegro ma non troppo) bringing a respite. When it falls away, the Arioso dolente comes back in G minor, more gasping, more despairing than ever. Ten increasingly powerful, obstinate G major chords try a new sally, and the fugue returns inverted and in G major (a distant key). This fugue is dropped once A-flat major reappears, thereby reinforcing the dramatic, triumphal effect of the final measures, especially since the piano writing here is particularly brilliant.
Completed in 1822 and published during the same year, with a dedication to Archduke Rudolph, Sonata No. 32 in C minor, Op. 111has only two, completely dissimilar movements: minor and major modes, sonata form and theme-and-variations form, dynamic character and static character, dramatism and contemplation, etc.
It opens with an introduction (Maestoso) largely based upon diminished seventh harmonies. Three diminished sevenths follow one another and return in the same order as chords at the end of the Allegro con brio ed appassionato and, above all, as a generalized harmonic procedure during the central development.
This development is fugal: the main theme of the movement clearly called for a fugue, but Beethoven withheld using it earlier to provide increased animation in the development.
The second movement is the famous Arietta (Adagio molto, semplice e cantabile) in C major with variations. The theme is very simple, and the working-out moves toward constantly greater simplification – not in the musical or sound fabric, quite the contrary, but as regards the very conception of the theme, which is gradually reduced to a mere skeleton.
After about a quarter hour of the purest C major, we reach a cadential trill followed by a modulation to E-flat major: this passage constitutes the only harmonic motion in the movement and also the only passage in which, from the rhythmic standpoint, everything remains completely suspended, until the return of C major in the final, accelerated variations.
As Charles Rosen points out, Beethoven’s exploration, late in his life, of the tonal universe became more and more essentially meditative.
TRACK LISTING:
1-3: Beethoven Sonata for Piano No. 30 in E Major, Opus 109
4-6: Beethoven Sonata for Piano No. 31 in A-flat Major, Opus 110
7-8: Beethoven Sonata for Piano No. 32 in C Minor, Opus Opus 111
FINAL THOUGHT:
An 85 rating almost seems too low for ANY recording by Glenn Gould (he’s Glenn freakin’ Gould for goodness sake) but this entire recording is just so over the top intense that all subtlety is lost on the first notes of the first cut. But 85 out of 88 is still way better than most. I love Glenn Gould!
Sonatas 3 and 7 Recorded Live in 1960 and Sonata 19 Recorded Live in 1965 (Reissued by Leningrad Masters – 1995)
ONE-SENTENCE REVIEW:
One of those amazing historical recordings pulled from the abundant but badly preserved Soviet vaults, Sviatoslav Richter rips into these sonatas like a great pianist in his prime – if only the recording quality were as perfect as these performances.
ORIGINAL LINER NOTES (typos included from the original horrible translation):
Born in Zhytomyr on March 20, 1915 during his life, Sviatoslav Richter has been one of the most brilliant pianists in history.
After receiving general musical tuition, the Ukrainian musical completed his training with Heinrich Neuhaus.
He worked for seven years under this great pianist and teacher, his classroom companion being the equally gifted Emil Gilels and he soon made friends with Mstislav Rostropovitch and Sergei Prokofiev.
It has been said that Richter possesses an amazing capacity for improvisation and memory, but the real secret of his success is to be found in his powerful personality, which emerges in a revealing manner in each of his passionate interpretations.
Richter is an artist totally consumed by music. He was awarded first prize at the 1935 USSR Piano Competition.
Always seen as controversial at the time, today the pianist is considered a “megastar” who keeps record companies at a distance and shies away from the concert circuit.
Each time he sits down at the piano, Richter reflects, with a sublime capacity for philosophy, on the fundamental questions and messages which surround the works he confronts in a repertoire which ranges from Bach to Shostakovich.
In this live recording, we encounter one of the cornerstones of Richter’s art: “his” Beethoven.
There are very few opportunities for the record lover to preserve Richter in the music of Beethoven and consequently this record has value as a rarity.
Richter has been captured live in his creative work – an immense, metaphysical and exclusive creation – of Piano Sonatas Nos. 3, 7 and 19 by Ludwig van Beethoven.
TRACK LISTING:
1-4: Beethoven Sonata for Piano No. 3 in C Major, Opus 2/3
5-8: Beethoven Sonata for Piano No. 7 in D Major, Opus 10/3
9-10: Beethoven Sonata for Piano No. 19 in G Minor, Opus 49/1
FINAL THOUGHT:
I remember being so excited after the fall of the Soviet Union when they opened the previously closed vaults of Soviet recordings. There was so much there. I only wish there was a company that remastered and took care of these precious moments in time. I love the great musicians from the 20th century Soviet Union. Like ballet, music composition, art and opera, they were really in a class by themselves.
London Philharmonic Orchestra (Bernard Haitink, conductor)
Beaux Arts Trio – Menahem Pressler (piano), Isidore Cohen (violin), Bernard Greenhouse (cello)
Recorded in London 1/1977 (Opus 56); La Chaux-de-Fonds, Switzerland 5/1979 (Opus 121a)
ONE-SENTENCE REVIEW:
I didn’t really have anything special to do on Valentine’s Day (don’t cry for me I’m going out tomorrow night – the restaurants in L.A. are a nightmare on Valentine’s Day) – so I finally have time to write this about this recording of the Beethoven Triple Concerto and… it is fabulous!
ORIGINAL LINER NOTES (by Lothar Hoffmann-Erbrecht – translation by Michael Talbot):
The Drive For Unity
Beethoven Concerto in C, Op. 56 (Triple Concerto)
Beethoven worked on the Triple Concerto during 1803-1804; it was not published, however, until 1807.
The first drafts appear already on the last pages of the “Eroica” sketchbook and are continued in the large “Eroica” sketchbook.
The concerto is dedicated to Prince Lobkowitz, but Beethoven’s later “right-hand man,” Anton Felix Schindler, claimed that this “Concertino,” as he called it, was intended for the Archduke Rudolph, the violinist Karl August Seiler, and the cellist Anton Krafft.
The same source informs us that the first performance of the concerto took place in May 1808 in the Augarten, Vienna; the concert that featured it belonged to the series that Mozart had inaugurated in 1782.
The audience’s reception was frosty; according to Schindler, the unnamed artists who performed it (and thus indirectly also Beethoven) “earned no applause at all, for they had taken the affair too lightly.” Schindler goes on: “It (the concerto) remained undisturbed until 1830.”
When, at the beginning of the present century, Hugo Riemann revised the third edition of Thayer’s five-volume biography of Beethoven, he identified the Triple Concerto as a descendant of the sinfonia concertante, widely cultivated between 1770 and 1790, in which one or more instruments from the orchestra are treated in a solo fashion.
Even without considering the fact that the piano was never thrust into the foreground at that time, Beethoven’sOp. 56seems to find a more natural home among the new concertante literature in “chamber music” style of the early nineteenth century, where in addition to the principal instrument – in our case the piano – the other instruments are all given rewarding solos to perform.
The genre constituted by compositions identified simple as “concertante” enjoyed universal popularity in Beethoven’s time and was rarely absent from the many public concerts given by travelling virtuosi.
After 1800 Beethoven inclined, in his instrumental compositions, towards share thematic and dynamic contrasts; but on the other hand he also favored a unitary approach to cyclical works, which ultimately, as in the Triple Concerto, leads to the presence of strong motivic links between all the movements.
The opening motive in characteristic rhythm, which rises up in the bass instruments and is repeated one scale degree higher, is the kernel from which all the subsequent musical thoughts of the work grow, sometimes so directly that they become hard to distinguish.
For instance, the second theme of the opening Allegro is more notable for the contrast introduced by its dynamic, compulsively modulating development than for its outline. Its structure allows the three instruments to play about with it in manifold ways and even to anticipate the “alla Polacca” finale in the minor-key transformations, which one might well described as “all’Ungherese.”
In the Largo second movement Beethoven transposes the germinal theme to A flat major. Here a broad, freely developed cantilena again eschews contrasts and leads directly into the last movement.
This Rondo alla Polacca in the traditional triple metre harks back to the opening both motivically and formally. As in the first movement we are treated to a minor-key episode, which gradually unfolds dynamically.
Beethoven – Piano Trio No. 11 in G, Op. 121a
Although by 1811 Beethoven had already almost “wrapped up” his creative legacy in the genre of the large-scale piano trio in several movements with Op. 70 and the B flat trioOp. 97, he returned once more to the fount of his artistic strivings in 1816 with the variations on “Ich bin der Schneider Kakadu” (Op. 121a).
Like the variations for piano trio on themes by Mozart from his early period, the “Kakadu” Variations are based on a simple, trifling song-theme, which he took from Wenzel Muller’s then very successful opera “The Sisters of Prague.”
Nonetheless, the differences from the early compositions are unmistakable: the structure has been loosened, and the freely flowing counterpoints and urgent, intense musical language used in the gradually expanding forms betray the proximity of the last piano sonatas and the “Diabelli” Variationsfrom the same year.
The set of variations opens with an Adagio assai in G minor, an introduction that, despite being thematically related through its concentrated, shifting harmony, still conceals its aim. Only then do we hear from the trio the merry, trilling theme in the style of a Singspiel.
The first variations initially proceed along traditional paths, allowing the instruments to come into prominence in turn and slowly building up to a climax with changing figurations.
The music grows ever more complex, develops into fugato (variation 5) and fugue (variation 7) and introduces strong contradictions which develop in broad forms (variation 9: Adagio espressivo).
The tenth and last variation begins as a gigue, then recalls its G minor middle section the harmony of the introduction, and finally, in a viruoso coda, dissolves the outline of the restated opening Allegretto theme in a whirl.
The course of this work once again demonstrates in a nutshell how Beethoven found an individual way forward from the mechanical type of variation of the eighteenth century to the character variation on which he set his stamp.
TRACK LISTING:
1: Beethoven Concerto in C (Triple Concerto) – Allegro [18:03]
2: Beethoven Concerto in C (Triple Concerto) – Largo, Rondo alla Polacca [18:24]
3: Beethoven Piano Trio No. 11 in G, Op. 121a [19:01]
https://youtu.be/dS8CkxkQ-YE
https://youtu.be/RfocptSpsYA
FINAL THOUGHT:
So the audience hated the first performance of the Triple Concerto so much that it wasn’t played again for 23 years. Man, have our standards become so low that this bum Beethoven somehow became a genius over the years – or is our knowledge of classical music so limited that anything by anyone from a couple of hundred years ago is considered great because we’re afraid any criticism would show our ignorance? My vote goes to Beethoven is a genius and that opening night audience in 1808 were a bunch of idiots.
Recorded at Haberdashers’ Aske’s School, Elstree, Herts in January 1994
ONE-SENTENCE REVIEW:
I’m back after a couple of months of intense real work and so are Beethoven and Schubert!
ORIGINAL LINER NOTES (by Ruth Waterman):
Beethoven String Trios – Opus 9/1 & 3
Beethoven write five works for string trio, all composed before any of his quartets.
The three trios of Opus 9 were dedicated to Count Browne, a wealthy patron of Irish descent.
As in Beethoven’s first set of three piano trios, (Opus 1), the third is in the key of C minor and it expresses the turbulence that seemed to emerge whenever Beethoven wrote in that key.
There is tremendous verve in the two trios on this disc, as each player is treated as a virtuoso and subjected to equal demands.
Both trios open with a statement in unison, but the show of unity quickly disintegrates in the quest for individuality; and both slow movements reveal Beethoven’s supreme lyricism.
Schubert Trio Movement, D471
A first movement and forty bars of a second are all that Schubert completed before abandoning his trio.
Shortly afterwards, he wrote another trio, also in B-flat (D581), that stands as his one complete magnificent contribution to this genre.
However, the Allegro heard here is a gem in its own right; a shining example of his gentle lyricism, his playfulness, and his fondness for veiling his melodies in wistfulness.
Written in September 1816, it was most likely included for performance at one of his popular house-concerts, in which he would have played the viola part.
TRACK LISTING:
1-4: Beethoven Trio in G, Opus 9/1 [30:12]
5-8: Beethoven Trio in C-minor, Opus 9/3 [26:05]
9: Schubert Trio Movement in B-flat, D471 [5:58]
FINAL THOUGHT:
Solid works but not all that exciting in the playing (not like the clip above!) This is another of the free discs that came with my BBC Music Magazine subscription in the 1990s. But I’m just so happy to be back doing this and not my real job that I’m giving it a higher rating than it deserves.
Live recording at Queen Elizabeth Hall, London on October 20, 1982 (Opus 78) and February 2, 1983 (Opus 106)
ONE-SENTENCE REVIEW:
Beethoven + Alfred Brendel = MAGIC!
ORIGINAL LINER NOTES (by Alfred Brendel):
Live recordings remind the listener of the fact that concerts involve risks. Whereas in the recording studio musical continuity is more often achieved as a result of careful scrutiny and painstaking labor, it has to come about on stage in one single breath and without a safety net. It has to work on the spot, and the public is part of its success or failure.
Beethoven’sSonata Opus 106 has remained one of the supreme challenges of the pianist.
Even today, it shows up the outer limits of what a composer of sonatas can accomplish, a performer can control, or a listener can take in. In a magnificent exertion of will, the work combines grandeur and filigree, openness and density of detail.
The player should muster endurance as well as boldness, fierce intensity as well as the cool grasp of a panoramic overview.
Czerny, who had played the sonata for Beethoven, describes the tempo of the first movement as “uncommonly fast and fiery.”
The initial theme relates to the rhythm of the words “vivat, vivat, Rudolphus” (it was the Archduke Rudolph to whom the sonata is dedicated).
Two elements, the tension between the keys of B-flat major and B minor, and the interval of the third, are decisive in the unfolding of the vast design. The intrusion of B minor (the “black key,” according to Beethoven) into the recapitulation of the first movement has grave consequences: not before the final fugue is this conflict resolved.
In the code of the scherzo, eerie juxtapositions of B-flat and B natural present the problem bared to its bones. We encounter the “black key” once more at a declamatory climax of the Adagio(“con grand’ espressione”) and, finally, in the cancrizans of the fugue.
For both B-flat major and B minor, the related thirds are G and D; these are the only tones the two keys have in common. In G major, there is the second thematic group of the first movement, and the inversion of the fugue. The “religious” D major sphere is given to secondary themes of the Adagio and the fugue.
Beethoven’s special contribution as a fugal composer is the turbulent and frenzied fugue that nearly, but only nearly, defies the strictures of contrapuntal writing. Boundless energy and intellectual rigor have never been coupled on a higher pitch of excitement.
The slow introduction of the fugue resembles in its psychological situation the final movement of Beethoven’sOpus 110: after its “exhausted lament,” vital forces gradually reappear.
The Adagio itself a “mausoleum of collective suffering” (W.v. Lenz), is the depressive counterpart to the manic agitation of the fast movements. Its alternating sections of una corda and tre corde turn out to be different regions of sound and grief.
On Beethoven’s pianos, the quality of sound produced by the soft pedal was more shadowy and fragile than it is today, a sphere of whispering and subdued (mezza voce) singing.
There is an immense distance between the F-sharp minor of this enormous slow movement and the idyllic and cheerful F-sharp major of Beethoven’sSonata Opus 78. Hardly less unusual than its key is the succession of two Allegros, one amiable, the other high-spirited and pianistically daring.
There are, however, four adagio bars that open the piece; and what would the sonata be without this brief declaration of love? It may have been aimed, not at Therese von Brunsvik, to whom the work is dedicated, but at her sister Josefine for whom Beethoven had a special affection.
TRACK LISTING:
1-4: Beethoven Piano Sonata No. 29 in B-flat, Opus 106
5-6: Beethoven Piano Sonata No. 24 in F-sharp, Opus 78
FINAL THOUGHT:
I realize my initial scale ratings are pretty generous – but this one is a well-deserved 86. I’ll try to grade future performances based on the fact that this is pure genius and anything close to an 86 better rank up there with the great Alfred Brendel playing Beethoven.
Recorded October & November, 1957 – Kingsway Hall, London
ONE-SENTENCE REVIEW:
So, apparently, Otto Klemperer knows a little something about Beethoven – and he really knows how to conduct the Hell out the Ninth Symphony(though I wonder if this is the slowest recording of it ever made – a whopping 72 minutes!).
ORIGINAL LINER NOTES:
KLEMPERER AND BEETHOVEN (written by John Lucas – 1998):
Although Otto Klemperer had conducted complete cycles of Beethoven’s symphonies in the United States, Italy, France and the Netherlands, it was not until the late autumn of 1957 that he had an opportunity to conduct all nine symphonies in London, in a series of 10 concerts with the Philharmonia Orchestra.
The piano concertos were also included, with Claudio Arrau as soloist.
Herbert von Karajan came to London especially to hear the Eroica. After the performance he went to see Klemperer in the conductor’s room at the Royal Festival Hall. ‘I have come only to thank you,’ said Karajan, ‘and to say that I hope I shall live to conduct the Funeral March as well as you have done it. Good night.’
Walter Legge, founder of the Philharmonia and Klemperer’s record producer at EMI, was cock-a-hoop about the success of the concerts with both audience and critics.
He reported to Angel Records, the company’s subsidiary in the United States: ‘Klemperer goes from strength to strength. When we have completed the NinthI shall have given you a Beethoven cycle on records that will be prized as long as records are collected.’
The cycle at the Festival Hall concluded with two performances of the Ninth Symphony, in which the Philharmonia Chorus, trained by Wilhelm Pitz, the Bayreuth chorus-master, made its debut.
The finale, reported The Times on November 13, ‘exceeded in grandeur and brilliance and human exhilaration all that the foregoing movements had implied.’
Six of the Beethoven symphonies in the Klemperer Legacy series were recorded by EMI at the time of the 1957 cycles: the Secondand Sixth Symphonies during the week before it began, the First, Fourth, Eighthand Ninthwhile it was still in progress. The Seventhcomes from 1955, the Eroicaand Fifthfrom 1959.
SYMPHONY NO. 9 ‘CHORAL’ etc. (written by Robin Golding – 1998):
In the summer of 1817, nearly three years after the completion of his Eighth Symphony, Beethoven was approached by the Philharmonic Society in London (founded in 1813) with a request for two new symphonies, to be performed during the 1818 season.
The invitation was conveyed to him by his former pupil, secretary and copyist, Ferdinand Ries, who was then living in London, and Beethoven wrote to Ries on July 9th, promising that they would be ready by January 1818 and that he would himself bring them to London.
But he would not accept the terms offered by the Society, and the project came to nothing, although he did make substantial sketches for the first two movements of what was to become the Ninth Symphony.
It was not until the autumn of 1822, with the bulk of the Missa Solemnis behind him, that he turned his attention to the symphony in earnest, and most of the must was written between then and the end of 1824.
The idea of setting Schiller’s ode An die Freude (‘To Joy’), of 1785, had occurred to him at least as early as 1793, but it was not until 1822 that it became associated in his mind with the symphony.
He originally intended to end No. 9 with an instrumental finale (he later used the music he designed for this movement in the String Quartet in A minor, Opus 132), and even after the first performance of the symphony expressed some doubt as to whether he had made the right decision.
In November 1822 the Philharmonic Society offered Beethoven fifty pounds for eighteen months’ exclusive possession of a new symphony, and the composer accepted, though grudgingly.
In April 1824 (having received his fifty pounds) he sent the Society a manuscript copy of the score, with a dedication, in his own hand, ‘For the Philharmonic Society in London,’ but he evidently thought that ‘exclusive possession’ only referred to England, since he allowed the symphony to be performed on May 7th, 1824 at the Karntnerthor-Theater in Vienna.
The conductor was Michael Umlauf, and at the end one of the soloists had to turn Beethoven round to face the audience because he could not hear the tumultuous applause.
Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony – Original Manuscript Sample
The score and parts were published in August 1826 by Schott in Mainz, with a dedication to King Friedrich Wilhelm III of Prussia.
The first English performance was given on March 21st, 1825 at the New Argyll Rooms in London (with the last movement sung in Italian!) under Sir George Smart, a founder-member of the Philharmonic Society.
The three purely instrumental movements of the Ninth Symphony are on a scale whose only parallel among Beethoven’s earlier symphonies is offered by No. 3 (theEroica) of 1802-4: an immensely grand, dignified and impassioned sonata form Allegro; possibly the greatest scherzo ever written, with a crucial part for the timpani, tuned in octaves, as in the finale of No. 8; and an expansive theme and variations interspersed with episodes, in B flat major.
The colossal finale, set to about a third of Schiller’s poem celebrating the brotherhood of Man, and for four (SATB) soloists and chorus in addition to the orchestra, is itself as long as, and fuller of incident than, most classical symphonies.
The ballet Die Geschopfe des Prometheus (‘The Creatures of Prometheus’)to a (lost) scenario by Salvatore Vigano, was produced at the Hofburgtheater in Vienna on March 28th, 1801, with music composed by Beethoven during the preceding year and consisting of an introduction and sixteen numbers, prefaced by the exuberant Overturerecorded here.
TRACK LISTING – BEETHOVEN SYMPHONY NO. 9 ‘CHORAL’
1: Allegro ma non troppo un poco maestoso [17:03]
2: Molto vivace – Presto [15:38]
3: Adagio molto e cantabile [15:02]
4: Presto [24:27]
5: Prometheus Overture, Opus 43 [5:35]
FINAL THOUGHT:
So the Philharmonic Society of London got the exclusive rights to Beethoven’s 9th Symphony for 50 Pounds? Best 50 Pounds ever spent! (Though, I know, in today’s dollars that’s not too terrible – but still!) And it’s definitely a better rate than what Mozart was getting.)
The Cleveland Orchestra (Christoph Von Dohnanyi, conductor)
Recorded in Masonic Auditorium, Cleveland on October 18 & 19, 1985
ONE-SENTENCE REVIEW:
This CD will receive my highest rating (88 Points!) for nostalgia reasons alone – this was the first CD I ever had (most kids my age were listening to Madonna) and I listened to it over and over and over again – simply amazed at the clarity and “awesomeness” of the new CD technology.
ORIGINAL LINER NOTES (written by Steven Ledbetter):
Scarcely had Friedrich Schiller’s ode An die Freude (To Joy) reached print in 1785 before composers started setting it to music, so strongly did its theme of world brotherhood and Enlightenment ideals speak to the young and idealistic.
Soon there were dozens of versions, mostly for voice and piano, so the poet can hardly have been surprised to learn through a friend in Bonn that yet another young composer was about to set his text to music. But this one was different; the friend noted: “I expect something perfect, for as far as I know him he is wholly devoted to the great and sublime.”
The composer was Ludwig van Beethoven, then in his early twenties. Three decades elapsed before Beethoven was satisfied that he had found the way to deal with Schiller’s text, but certainly the resulting work – his final symphony – was “great and sublime.”
After completing his Seventhand Eighth Symphonies in 1812, Beethoven had turned away from the genre for five years, and only began thinking about symphonies again when he received an invitation to come to London in the winter of 1817-18 and to bring two new symphonies with him. The invitation must have been attractive – it was just such a trip to England that had made Haydn a wealthy man – but in the end nothing came of it except a few sketches for two symphonies.
Several more years passed, Beethoven returned to his sketches in the summer of 1822, still planning to compose a pair of symphonies. But by the following year he had settled on a single work in the key of D Minor.
For a long time he was torn between two possible endings – one purely instrumental, the other a choral setting of Schiller’s ode. The problem, as he saw it, was how to motivate the sudden appearance of a chorus after three lengthy instrumental movements. Even after he had invented the familiar hymnlike tune and drafted the instrumental variations that mark its first appearance, he could not find a solution.
One day he was struck by the idea of having a soloist simply sing the announcement, “Let us sing the song of the immortal Schiller,” before starting the ode itself.
In the end he settled on slightly different wording, but the point was the same: to disavow the past and turn with a conscious welcome to something new and liberating. Once he actually started setting Schiller’s words, he treated them very freely, taking the passages that particularly stimulated his muse, making cuts and repetitions as the musical development required. In the end, he actually set something less than half of Schiller’s entire text and freely rearranged the rest.
The planning of the first performance was complicated by the fact that Beethoven wanted to conduct the entire concert, an embarrassment on account of his deafness.
In the end he stood on stage next to Michael Umlauf, ostensibly to set the tempi, and, though he kept beating through the work, the players had been instructed to pay attention only to Umlauf’s beat.
The remainder of the all-Beethoven program included the overture Consecration of the House and three movements of the Missa Solemnis. The plan to perform part of the Mass ran into legal entanglements when Church authorities refused permission for liturgical music to be heard in the unsanctified precincts of a theater. In the end, that music was billed (in a mild subterfuge) as “Three Grand Hymns with Solo and Choral Voices.”
Though the music was of unprecedented difficulty, the crowds in the Kartnertor Theatre on May 7, 1824 responded with enthusiasm, cheering and applauding energetically, though the deaf composer, still turning the pages of the score and hearing the music in his mind, was unaware of it until one of the soloists pulled him by the sleeve to get his attention and pointed to the audience.
Like the Fifth Symphony, Beethoven’sNinthmoves from tragedy to triumph symbolized by the beginning in D minor and the close in D major. But the Fifthseems to be the triumph of an individual hero, while the Ninth, with a chorus singing Schiller’s text, becomes a universal triumph for human aspiration.
Though the text makes explicit the message of the symphony, Beethoven’s musical architecture reinforces and projects that message with unusual force. He planned the entire symphony in such a way that for the first three movements it remains locked in the realm of D minor and the closely related keys F and B-flat (they are part of the scale of D minor).
Late in the final movement F and B-flat are ousted in favor of F-sharp and B natural, notes that characterize the scale of D major. On paper this sounds like purely theoretical change, but in performance it achieves unparalleled force. Rarely in the history of music has simple harmonic relationship between major and minor modes generated greater power or feeling.
The symphony opens with its first theme gradually appearing out of a mysterious introduction hinting at indescribable vastness. No orchestral beginning was more influential throughout the nineteenth century, though no composer has ever surpassed Beethoven in the suggestive power of this opening. And throughout the lengthy first movement, Beethoven never allows us to stray for long from powerful reminders that his symphony is in a minor key.
The demonic scherzo of the second movement, too, fiercely reiterates the fearing of the first movement. For a moment in the middle section, Beethoven projects pure human joy in the first extensive passage in D major, but it is cancelled by the return of the scherzo.
The richly evocative lyricism of the third movement sings a pensive song in B-flat, alternating with a second, slightly faster theme in D major. But on every occasion the second theme ends up slipping helplessly back to the first key, though the variations become ever more lush and sweetly consoling.
The first sound of the finale is a “fanfare of terror” introducing Beethoven’s public search for a way to turn the minor key darkness of the opening into a firm major key conclusion. Cellos and double basses sing an operatic-style recitative (for which Beethoven originally wrote words) calling up and summarily rejecting themes from each of the earlier movements.
Finally a new idea appears, simple, singable, hymnlike, emphatically in D major (since its melody circles around F-sharp, the characteristic third step of the D major scale). The orchestra welcomes it with a set of variations. Real progress seems to be underway when this theme, too, is swept away by a renewed “fanfare of terror,” brutal and consciously ugly, containing almost every note of the D minor scale!
Here, at last, the baritone intervenes with Beethoven’s introduction to Schiller’s poem. The soloist, echoed by the chorus, sings confidently in D major, and all seems well through three stanzas of Schiller’s poem. But one more crisis remains.
At the end of the third stanza (on the words “von Gott” – “before God”), Beethoven undercuts his modulation to the expected dominant key and throws the following passage into B-flat – once again threatening that the minor mode may prevail.
The “Turkish” march of the tenor’s solo is a melodic variant of the main theme turned into a heroic aria. An extended orchestral development follows with major and minor engaged in a last dramatic opposition.
Finally the orchestra settles on a dotted rhythm repeating the note F-sharp through three octaves – the single note that most strikingly emphasizes the main theme and its major mode harmony. After two tentative beginnings in the “wrong” key, the composer changes a single note in the bass part and suddenly “realizes” that this music is, emphatically, in D major.
The chorus returns in one of the most thrilling moments in all of music, asserting through the rest of the symphony Beethoven’s sturdy, confident answer to the questions posed by the opening.
TRACK LISTING – BEETHOVEN SYMPHONY NO. 9 ‘CHORAL’
1: Allegro ma non troppo un poco maestoso [15:05]
2: Molto vivace – Presto [11:27]
3: Adagio molto e cantabile [14:57]
4: Presto [24:32]
Here’s a video treat! Note: This is not the performance being reviewed.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IInG5nY_wrU
FINAL THOUGHT:
I firmly believe it was this recording of Beethoven’s 9th by the Cleveland Orchestra conducted by Christoph Von Dohnanyi that got me hooked on classical music. I was 10 years old when I first heard this. By giving this disc to me, my parents created a classical music monster as I started to collect and listen to almost anything I could get my hands on. (I wasn’t a total freak – I also listened to Madonna and Culture Club – though maybe THAT makes me a total freak.)
Recorded live on September 3, 1981 at the Royal Albert Hall, London
ONE-SENTENCE REVIEW (BEETHOVEN):
OK – so unlike my last review of Beethoven’s 6th Symphony (which was awful), this one is a terrific live recording from 1972 – conducted by Sir Adrian Boult – and that’s pretty much all you need to know.
ONE-SENTENCE REVIEW (BRAHMS):
Though the Brahms Symphony No. 2is not a personal favorite (I’m afraid if I would have been present during the performance you might have heard me yawn on the recording), but this is still a great live performance of (in my opinion) a boring symphony and a must listen for any fan of Brahms.
ORIGINAL LINER NOTES:
No liner notes – it’s just another one of those cheap discs (cheaply made – not cheap performances by any means) that came with my paid subscription to BBC Music Magazine in the early 1990s. That magazine is long gone and it was sad when it went away. I used to love to get those surprise discs every month in the mail. Ah, well…
TRACK LISTING:
1-5: Beethoven – Symphony No. 6 in F, Opus 68 (Pastoral)
6-9: Brahms: Symphony No. 2 in D, Opus 73
Note: These bottom videos are meant to be a really good live recording that I can share and not just the sound recordings of the CDs being reviewed (those are meant to be the links at the top).
FINAL THOUGHT:
Very competent, solid recording. It’s Beethoven as Beethoven should be played and Brahms as Brahms should be played – nothing wrong with that.
So – this is another one of those ridiculous 1990s CD-ROM discs where you could, supposedly, follow along with the score while it played in your computer – but mostly it just jammed and the performances of these discs were always pretty terrible.
ORIGINAL LINER NOTES:
No liner notes but lots of instructions on how to get it to work in your computer. All very complicated and it never really worked. I tried a few of these discs and they were always pretty frustrating but I still bought them because the concept of being able to follow along with the score while a piece of music played was very new and very exciting.
I just wished it would have worked.
TRACK LISTING:
1: CD+ROM Data Track
2: Mvt. I: Allegro ma non troppo
3: Mvt II: Andante molto mosso
4: Mvt III: Allegro; Mvt. IV Allegro; Mvt V: Allegretto
But I give you a really good performance below:
FINAL THOUGHT:
It was a novelty and would have been really cool had it worked and had the performances chosen actually been decent. But, alas, these were pretty terrible discs from the Laserlight division of Delta Music Inc. (whatever that is).
New York Philharmonic (Leonard Bernstein, conductor)
ONE-SENTENCE REVIEW:
Back from vacation – oh, yeah – and starting with one powerhouse symphony that everyone in the world can hum and one forgotten symphony that gets no respect – and, in fact, is actually hated (which is which – do you think?)… regardless, this is a classic recording not to be missed.
ORIGINAL LINER NOTES (written by Michael Danner):
Symphony No. 4 in B-flat Major, Opus 60
This symphony lies like some sunlit valley between the cragged “Eroica”and the mountainous Fifth Symphony. Beethoven composed this work in 1806 during the summer months, it is generally believed, that he spent with his friends the von Brunswicks at their estate in Hungary.
Some musicologists – notably, Sir. George Grove – hold that the Fourth Symphony is an expression of the composer’s feelings for Countess Therese von Brunswick, to whom he was reputed to have become engaged.
“When writing the symphony,” said Sir George, “his heart must have been swelling with his new happiness. It is, in fact, the paean which he sings over his first conquest.
But the Fourth Symphonywas not well received at its first performance, in Vienna, during the winter of 1807. One critic, admitting “wealth of ideas, bold originality and fullness of strength,” still complained of “neglect of noble simplicity” and “excessive amassing of thoughts.”
Carl Maria von Weber, then an aspiring twenty-year old musician, write a derisive article in which he had a violin claim, after a performance of the work, that it had been forced “to caper about like a wild goat” so that it could “execute the no-ideas of Mr. Composer.”
A more illuminating and sympathetic interpretation of the Symphonyis left to us by Sir George Grove, who write that “a more consistent and attractive whole cannot be… The movements fit in their places like the limbs and features of a lovely statue; and, full of fire and invention as they are, all is subordinated to conciseness, grace and beauty.”
Symphony No. 5 in C Minor, Opus 67
In Berlioz’s opinion, the Symphony No. 5 was the first of Beethoven’s symphonies in which the composer “gave the reins of his vast imagination, without taking for guide or aid a foreign thought.”
It seems to come, wrote Berlioz, “directly and solely from the genius of Beethoven; he develops in it his own intimate thought, his secret sorrows, his concentrated rage, his reveries charged with a dejection, oh, so sad, his visions at night, his bursts of enthusiasm.”
The date of the Fifthhas not been definitely determined. The Symphonywas begun in 1805, shortly after the completion of the “Eroica,”but it was laid aside almost at once, and Beethoven presumably did not resume work on it until 1807.
It is supposed that he completed it in that year, though it remained unplayed for another twelve months. The first performance took place in Vienna, at the Theater an der Wien, on December 22, 1808.
Concerts were concerts in those days, and the audience that heard the premiere of the Fifthalso heard the Sixth Symphony and the Choral Fantasy, the Piano Concerto in G, two numbers from the Mass in C, the aria “Ah, Perfido”and an improvisation by the the composer.
Apparently the performances were deplorable, and perhaps for this reason the new works on the program were indifferently received. But the subsequent history of the Fifthwas one of repeated triumphs.
The first movementof this great work is possessed of a wild and demonic energy – “a frenetic delirium that explodes in frightful cries,” as Berlioz expressed it.
The second movement is a noble and melancholy contemplation; in form, variations on two themes.
The scherzoestablished a mood of mystery and terror that remind Berlioz of a sinister scene in Goethe’sFaust.
Suddenly, at the close of this movement, comes one of the greatest strokes in Beethoven, the mysterious bridge passage leading into the exultant shout that begins the finale, a glorious ascent from the darker recesses of the soul to the light of courageous, challenging life.
Note: Mr. Bernstein’s is a complete performance of the Fifth Symphony, with all repeats observed, exactly as Beethoven indicated.
TRACK LISTING:
1-4: Symphony No. 4 in B-flat Major, Opus 60
5-8: Symphony No. 5 in C Minor, Opus 67
FINAL THOUGHT:
Because Symphony No. 4 isn’t famous and we haven’t heard it a thousand times, it comes off as a little flat and boring while the Symphony No. 5, of course, does not disappoint, especially under Mr. Bernstein’s fiery baton! Classic. Classic. Classic.
Now this is a double-pack to be appreciated – live performances, BBC Philharmonic – unbelievable music.
ORIGINAL LINER NOTES (written by Richard Wigmore):
BEETHOVEN SYMPHONY NO. 3 IN E-FLAT MAJOR, OPUS 55 – ‘EROICA’
As Joseph Kerman has observed, the ‘Eroica’ marks a turning point in the history of modern music.
In it the dimensions and reach of the Classical symphony are startlingly expanded.
The music’s gargantuan energy and unprecedented expressive range are contained within a mighty architectural span whose proportions Beethoven was not to exceed until the Ninth Symphony.
He worked on the symphony during 1803, the year after the crisis engendered by his encroaching deafness, movingly expressed in the Heiligenstadt Testament.
The work was dedicated to Napoleon Bonaparte. But Beethoven furiously tore out the dedication on hearing that the First Consul had proclaimed himself Emperor.
The hero became anonymous; and on the symphony’s publication in 1806 the title page ran: ‘Sinfonia Eroica: composed to celebrate the memory of a great man.’
SCHUBERT SYMPHONY NO. 8 IN B MINOR – ‘UNFINISHED’
The circumstances surrounding Schubert’sB minor Symphony have provoked reams of speculation.
We know for certain that in autumn 1822 he composed the first two movements and bean a scherzo, breaking off after 20 bars.
He gave the torso to his friend Anselm Huttenbrenner, and apparently forgot about it. the work’s incomplete state may just be linked to the onset of Schubert’s serious illness (syphilis)late in 1822.
But his reasons for abandoning the symphony were more likely due to a creative crisis during the years 1818-22. Virtually all of his other instrumental works from this period were likewise left as fragments.
And, as with the symphony, Schubert’s failure to complete them testifies to his struggles to evolve a new conception of the four-movement sonata ideal that reconciled the powerful impact of Beethoven’s middle-period works with an increasingly subjective melodic and harmonic vision.
TRACK LISTING:
1-2:Schubert Symphony No. 8 in B Minor – ‘Unfinished’
3-6:Beethoven Symphony No. 3 in E-flat, Opus 55 – ‘Eroica’
FINAL THOUGHT:
If I had a choice between my current creative state and Schubert’s ‘creative crisis of 1818-1822’ – I’ll take Schubert’s any day. We should all have such writer’s block!
Luigi Boccherini (1743-1805)
The Italian cellist and composer Luigi Boccherini was born in Lucca in 1743, the son of a double-bass player.
In France, Boccherini and Manfredi won considerable success, and the former continued his work as a composer, as well as appearing as a cello virtuoso.
He enjoyed a reputation for his facility as a composer, leaving some 467 compositions. A great deal of his music is designed to exploit the technical resources of the cello, in concertos, sonatas, and, particularly, in chamber music for various numbers of instruments, including a remarkable series of quintets with two cellos.
Emily Sachs – President – Manka Music Group (A division of Manka Bros. Studios – The World’s Largest Media Company)
