Classical Listening

[stlukesguild]

Emil... you would get more than just a little flack on any classical music forum for proclaiming Karajan the "Greatest" anything. Personally... I would agree with you... to a given extent. he was one of the greatest conductors of the Modern era... and one of the conductors by whom I have the most recordings. His Beethoven cycle (1963) is unsurpassed. He is among the finest for the complete symphonies of Schumann, Mendelssohn, Brahms, Bruckner, and Tchaikovsky... and again a top-choice for Strauss. He has a god dozen or more opera recordings that are absolute "must-have" material to the classical music fan: Humperdinck's Hansel und Gretel, Mozart's Le Nozze di Figaro and Die Zauberflote, Wagner's Parsifal, Tristan und Isolde, Die Meistersinger... and arguably the Ring... (although there he really can't beat Solti, Knappertsbusch, Krauss, and Keilberth), Richard Strauss' Alpine Symphony and Der Rosenkavalier, Johann Strauss' Fledermaus, and a slew more.

Having said that... there are a wealth of brilliant performances by other conductors who were every bit as good as Karajan... including Georg Solti, Georg Szell, Bruno Walter, Joseph Krips, Erich and Carlos Kleiber, Leonard Bernstein. John Barbirolli, Otto Klemperer, Hans Knappertsbusch, and of course Wilhelm Furtwangler. Karajan, of course, had the advantage of being the conductor/director "for life" of the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra... arguably the greatest orchestra in existence... and certainly one of the two or three most influential institutions in the realm of classical music. And then, as noted, Karajan was involved with Deutsche Grammophon and their technological innovations in recording... including digital technology. He was also a favorite of Walter Legge for operatic recordings on EMI... which was the unmatched lable for opera. The only conductors who might have rivaled Karajan's influence would be Leonard Bernstein, Arturo Toscanini, Leopold Stokowski, and Wilhelm Furtwangler... Karajan's predecessor with the Berlin Philharmonic.

Today there are some marvelous conductors involved with the great orchestras around the world... but the most innovative seem to be those involved in exploring music outside of the old Classical/Romantic/early Modernist realm. The HIP (Historically Informed Performance) movement has shaken up the industry and many of the finest active conductors (John Eliot Gardiner, Sir Neville Marriner, Jordi Savall, René Jacobs, William Christies, Harry Christophers, Marc Minkowski, Trevor Pinnock, Masaaki Suzuki, Ton Koopman, Rinaldo Alessandrini and Fabio Biondi) and performers (Rachel Podger, John Holloway, Gidon Kremer, Andrew Manze, Elizabeth Wallfisch, Andreas Staier, Max Emanuel Cencic, Andreas Scholl, Magdalena Kozena, Philippe Jaroussky, the Sixteen, the Hilliard Ensemble, Sequentia, etc...) are greatly involved with Baroque and earlier music... as well as with stripping away the Romantic "perfume" from classical works by Mozart... and even Brahms. René Jacobs' Mozart opera recordings have become the "go-to" recordings of today.

[stlukesguild]

Recently I've been exploring the music of Mieczyslaw Weinberg (1919-1996). Weinberg was a Polish-born Russian/Soviet composer. He barely escaped the German invasion of Poland in 1939, and again in Russia in 1941. He settled in Moscow as a sort of "safe haven" where he began to develop a close circle of friends in music and the arts... including his neighbor, Dmitri Shostakovitch, who became highly supportive of Weinberg's work. Both Weinberg and Shostakovitch struggled with Soviet censors against accusations of the crime of "formalism". Like Shostakovitch, Weinberg refused to abandon traditional tonality, and maintained certain elements of Romanticism including lush orchestration, sensuality, and emotional expressiveness.

Weinberg's works have only recently begun to gain the sort of recognition they deserve. His works for cello are especially strong... far more complex... and perhaps even more expressive than the cello works by Shostakovitch:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s4xZL...eature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=01aOS...eature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b4txV...eature=related

Weinberg's chamber works as a whole are quite marvelous:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UWGqxJC4Ijo

But the composer was also a master of the symphony:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lU5ISS8ioqY

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4PxyTGmwjKY

Weinberg is proof that Romanticism in music was not made obsolete by Schoenberg... regardless of what Pierre Boulez may have had to say on the subject... and that one could continue to build upon the tradition of Romanticism... and yet produce music that was clearly "modern".

[RicMisc]

This does not relate to previous posts but to the general topic. I was just studying and decided to put on some classical music. First off, I had forgotten why I loved listening to classical music so much (I kind of neglected the genre over the last few years) and I have decided to pick up listening to it more often. It's especially well fit for studying. Secondly, one of the tracks was one of Vivaldi's Quattro Stagioni. I had of course listened to these before and probably everybody knows the beginning, but the beauty of the composition and just the entire track struck me all of a sudden. And so I decided to share this sudden insight with you guys.

[Mutatis-Mutandis]

Could someone explain to me what makes a tone poem a, well, tone poem?

[stlukesguild]

There has been a long history of what might be defined as "programmatic music": music which is not purely abstract, but rather serves to "illustrate" or suggest an extra-musical narrative. Some of the most famous would include Vivaldi's Four Seasons in which the composer used the forms of the concerto to suggest the changing seasons:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aFHPRi0ZeXE

Spring, for example, suggests the joyful coming of Spring... the chirping of birds, etc... The slow movement suggests a quiet day in the warm weather of Italy, while the rhythm of the third movement suggests a jaunty stroll through the Spring landscape.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OLP1p...eature=related

In the second concerto, Summer, we move from a sense of the slow, lazy summer days... in an almost oppressive heat... to the oncoming storm and rain. You hear the coming thunder around 6:50... and then the storm erupts at 7:30

Beethoven's Symphony no. 6 ("The Pastoral") has a similar program. This video quite well outlines the various programmatic aspects of the work:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GHT7J01YacY

Franz Liszt is generally credited with having composed the first "tone poems" or "symphonic poems". In these what Liszt did was compose an orchestra work that abandons the traditional formal structures of a symphony... and instead loosely structured the work based upon an external narrative. Liszt's Les préludes, for example, was based upon an Ode of Alphonse de Lamartine's Nouvelles méditations poétiques.

Mussorgsky famously composed Pictures at an Exhibition, in which the music is intended to convey his response to a collection of paintings by a friend, the artist/architect Viktor Hartmann following his sudden death:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JSc6y4nLTyE

The Wiki entry outlines the program and shows some of the paintings... although clearly Mussorgsky's response is more emotional... responding more to the sudden loss of his friend and compatriot... than to the paintings themselves... that are rather mundane:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pictures_at_an_Exhibition

Mussorgsky also composed Night on Bald Mountain... in which he illustrates (musically) the Witches Sabbath. Disney's Fantasia marvelously illustrated the narrative upon which Mussorgsky's work was based... and Stokowsky's addition of Schubert's Ave Maria at the coming of day is quite keeping with Mussorgsky's intentions:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nYSbxRiUgOo

Probably the greatest exponent of the "tone poem" was Richard Strauss. Strauss, as a composer, was of a particularly literary mind-set. He was a master of opera and musical drama. He worked closely with his librettists, including the great Hugo von Hoffmansthal, and as a result his librettos are among the finest in to the whole of opera. prior to his great operas, however, Strauss made a name for himself with his tone poems. Probably the most famous was Also Sprach Zarathustra... based on Nietzsche's book:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IFPwm0e_K98

The YouTube video gives a general outline of the parts of the orchestral poem...

The Alpine Symphony... which is essentially a tone poem... not employing symphonic abstract forms... is perhaps Strauss' greatest symphonic work:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bHLW9FQbBzw

The Wiki entry spells out the program to the work quite well:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/An_Alpine_Symphony

Of course, as the listener, you may have extra-musical interpretations of a purely abstract work of music. I believe it was the great conductor Wilhelm Furtwangler who outlined what he felt was the "program"... or rather his interpretations of the how the music made him feel... with regard to Beethoven's 9th Symphony... which was in no way a programmatic work. At the same time, you may listen to Strauss Alpine Symphony and enjoy it as wholly abstract music... without any thought or idea of the intended program.

[Charles Darnay]

Korsekov's Scheherazade is also a good example, I think.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s_pkRH2DZuw

[namenlose]

Coincidentally, I was just listening to Scheherazade this morning.

[Emil Miller]

Scheherazade reflects Rimsky's fascination with the Orient but this is, without doubt, firmly rooted in Russia.

http://youtu.be/0lAV4I5-Fpc

[stlukesguild]

I have been listening a good deal to a number of recent purchases of the music of Richard Strauss. It is interesting to discover that Strauss, the greatest acolyte of the music of Richard Wagner, seemingly inherited little of Wagner's megalomania. Strauss himself declared... toward the end of his life... with characteristic self-deprecation, "I may not be a first-rate composer, but I am a first-class second-rate composer." Contrary to Strauss underestimation of his own achievements, the great Canadian pianist, Glenn Gould, described Strauss in 1962 as "the greatest musical figure who has lived in this century." The more I have listened to Strauss... and the music of the other leading composers of the 20th century... the more I am convinced that Gould was right. In my opinion, Strauss was the greatest single composer of the last 100+ years. Schoenberg and Stravinsky may have been more innovative... but ultimately little of Schoenberg really resonates with me on a truly deep level (and I do not seem alone in feeling this way), while Stravinsky's reputation... at least to the larger classical audience... seems based upon a few major works... the Rite of Spring first and foremost. Among the more avant-garde strains of Modernist music, Bartok may actually be equal to Stravinsky in terms of the amount of music (and the inventiveness thereof) that has entered into the "core repertoire".

Contrary to the passionate claims of hard-core Modernists... especially dogmatic theorists such as Pierre Boulez... the Romantic/Post-Romantic strain of 20th century music has had far more impact (one need only look to the music of film) and the works of the major Romantic/Post-Romantic composers of the century has been far more accepted within the core repertoire of classical music. Popularity... at least initially... is of course no measure of artistic merit. But then again... this holds true whether speaking for or against. Contrary to many Modernist arguments, composers like Puccini, Mahler, Rachmaninoff, Copland, Strauss, and even Shostakovitch cannot be dismissed merely because they remain popular with the classical music audience any more than Bartok's string quartets or Schoenberg's violin concerto can be dismissed outright because they present a real degree of difficulty to many listeners.

But back to Richard Strauss. As I stated above, the more I have listened to Strauss... indeed, the more I have delved into his oeuvre... the more I am convinced of his brilliance... and ultimately centrality to the musical achievements of the 20th century. I suspect most listeners to Strauss begin with his orchestral works... especially his great tone poems. This works, including Don Juan, Tod und Verklärung, Macbeth, Till Eulenspiegels lustige Streiche, Don Quixote, Ein Heldenleben, and of course Also sprach Zarathustra...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uSC4w...eature=related

...were ironically all composed in the late 19th century. But in no way do they represent the whole... or even the best of Strauss' achievements, in spite of their continued popularity. His operas Salome and Elektra are as outrageous, audacious, and innovative as any other Modernist work... but Strauss major operatic achievements are not limited to these two works. Der Rosenkavalier, Ariadne auf Naxos, Die Frau ohne Schatten, Intermezzo, Arabella, Daphne, and Capriccio are all major works... and serve to place Strauss above even Benjamen Britten and Puccini as the major operatic composer of the century. Even Die ägyptische Helena with it's absolutely absurd libretto contains some of Strauss' most marvelous music.

And then there's the lieder. Strauss deservedly iconic Four Last Songs stand alongside Mahler's Song of the Earth as one of the two finest song cycles of the 20th century. But Strauss' achievement in the genre was not limited to this masterful cycle:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u0JpGp4-wSE

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ycQquES2vvA

Lately I've been listening to a slew of Fritz Reiner's classic recordings of Strauss (Emil is no doubt familiar with these):









These RCA "Living Streo" recordings have stunning sound... even more-so when one considers their age... and Reiner was one of the greatest of Strauss conductors... along with Karajan. RCA has recently been releasing a number of classic recordings such as these in bargain-priced box sets:



One loses out on all the liner notes... but there's always Google... and beside which I already have other recordings of nearly all of the included works.

Beyond these classic recordings, I've also been exploring the less-well-known works by Strauss... works which in most instances deserve to be better known by the classical audience.

Take, for example, this marvelous violin sonata, played here by the great Jascha Heifitz:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H5NPwbQps-Y

Or what of the lovely Duet Concertino for clarinet and bassoon:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MqBaEvhkvIA

The Violin Concerto:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Og3mX8dB2YU

Or the marvelous Oboe Concerto... written near the end of his life, at the request of an American GI who in civilian life was the principal oboist of the Pittsburgh Symphony:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M00dn1fXPgY

and then there are the almost wholly ignored chamber works:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s9SFbDQ7bCE

Hell... Strauss even composed some marvelous choral works... here performed by the group Accentus:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GSVbiPqXqtc

[Anton Hermes]

Strauss himself declared... toward the end of his life... with characteristic self-deprecation, "I may not be a first-rate composer, but I am a first-class second-rate composer." Contrary to Strauss underestimation of his own achievements, the great Canadian pianist, Glenn Gould, described Strauss in 1962 as "the greatest musical figure who has lived in this century."

From Wikipedia:

Strauss himself declared in 1947 with characteristic self-deprecation, "I may not be a first-rate composer, but I am a first-class second-rate composer." The Canadian pianist Glenn Gould described Strauss in 1962 as "the greatest musical figure who has lived in this century."

You might not be able to work the quote function, but your use of the copy-and-paste function is pretty accomplished...indeed...nearly unrivalled.

[stlukesguild]

And your point is....?

Oh yeah... there is no point to your comment... per usual.

[Emil Miller]

This may not be the best peformance of the Tchaikovsky No1., because it's in competition with innumerable others, including the Van Cliburn legendary and unbeatable recording, but I doubt that there will be a sexier performance than this. Every single note of the concerto is ingrained in my being and the music does eventually takes over from those golden thighs in its glorious finale: but only just.

http://youtu.be/PmaGcQyAKcM












http://youtu.be/PmaGcQyAKcM

[LitNetIsGreat]

Currently listening (and trying to de-stress) to some Glenn Gould Beethoven:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jHku-o_8eak

It's good stuff, it is.

[Mutatis-Mutandis]

Thanks for the explanation of tone poems, btw. Much appreciated.

[Charles Darnay]

I do love me some Glenn Gould. The Goldberg Variations are never far from the top of my list of music. Then there's this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YP4BRPqHE5Y