I've been listening to Mozart and Liszt a lot lately.
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I've been listening to Mozart and Liszt a lot lately.
I’ve not been listening much, but when I have it has been Beethoven’s piano sonatas and various Mozart pieces – I can see myself listening to a lot of Beethoven over the coming weeks though.
I have also started to tune the TV into radio 3 which is often quite good for music and the arts - often they play the full works, not just selections which I like the idea of. At least I have found a use for the TV aside from the odd good film or DVD.
I've been listening quite a bit to a number of absolutely gorgeous vocal collections. The first of these, in my opinion, is an absolute must-have disc... an expression of the triumph of love... even in the face of tragedy... and death:
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This recording is is an absolutely heart-wrenching experience. The composer, Peter Lieberson (born 1945), studied music and composition with Milton Babbitt and Charles Wuorinen at Columbia. In spite of the strict and rigorous Modernism of his mentors, Lieberson's own music evolved in a far more accessible, lush, and sensuous manner. Lieberson had been enamored of the love poems of Pablo Neruda after having bought the bright pink volume of 100 Love Sonnets for his wife, the mezzo-soprano, Lorraine Hunt-Lieberson. While lying in bed, Lorraine would often read the sonnets to her husband in Spanish. The Neruda Songs were co-commissioned by the Los Angeles Philharmonic and the Boston Symphony, and the world premiere was given on May 20, 2005, by the Los Angeles Philharmonic with Esa-Pekka Salonen conducting and Hunt Lieberson as soloist. The Boston Symphony performed the work in November 2005 with James Levine, a great supporter of Lieberson's music, conducting.
Lieberson and his wife selected 5 of Neruda's 100 sonnets which he then set to an absolute lush and romantic orchestral arrangement. The music is at once modern and eminently accessible. There are elements of drama, passion, exoticism, Spanish rhythms, sensuality... and ultimately sadness and loss. Each poem and its musical setting reveals a unique and distinctive facet of love as the suite as a whole moves from the most openly rapturous to inevitable and inconsolable grief at separation.
Lieberson obviously composed these works as a great expression of his love for his wife, and one cannot help but draw parallels between the emotional arc of the compositions and Hunt Lieberson's long-running bout with cancer and her pending fate. My thoughts upon first hearing this disc went immediately to the devastating recording of Der Abschied, the final song from Mahler's Song of the Earth as recorded by Bruno Walter and Kathleen Ferrier, who like Hunt-Lieberson was fully aware that she had but a short time left and put forth such emotion into her singing as to be almost unbearable.
The cycle begins with an expression of unadorned joy that clearly registers in Lorraine's voice as she sings "If your eyes were not the color of the moon", conveying the unreakable bond between composer and performer. It is the fifth poem, "My love, if I die and you don't", which truly tugs most at the heart-strings the most deeply as she sings of the eternal fate of true love in spite of... and in the face of mortality. The most sublime moment comes when she repeats the word "amor" at the end with a dream-like, faraway tone. This is magnificent, transcendent work from a singer for the ages and a composer whose enduring love for his wife has inspired his most profound work. There are some critics who have suggested that Lieberson's Neruda Songs might just rival Strauss' Four Last Songs. As much as I love Strauss, I would not be quick to challenge the assertion. This is an absolutely stunning piece of music and an unquestionably moving performance.http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2691/...387de650_o.gifhttp://farm3.static.flickr.com/2691/...387de650_o.gifhttp://farm3.static.flickr.com/2691/...387de650_o.gif
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w3n5A...eature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PgiMe...eature=related
Shostakovich is one of my favorites. Although it is a bit overwhelming at times, I find his intensity incredible and moving, even sexy. His music sounds like an existential crisis.
I'm absolutely infatuated with the Emerson String Quartet's recordings of Shostakovich's string quartets. Just bought the 5 CD set. Not only is the music gorgeous in the first place, but the recording quality is incredible and resonant. My personal favorites are the 8th and 3rd quartets.
One of my favorite movements: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=khpm7RLFnGw
I have the Fitzwilliam recordings of the same quartets myself and they are certainly marvelous... but I must admit that I'm not enough of a quartet fan to even think about a second version of the same works. Shostakovitch is indeed a powerful composer... one that I have been exploring more recently as I have... it must be admitted... never been a great fan of Russian music (give me the Germans followed by the French and the Italians!). I was especially blown away by his audacious opera, The Nose (based on Gogol's tale) and as one obessed with Bach I was especially enamored of his Preludes and Fugues... the composer's marvelous response to Bach's Well Tempered Clavier.
I spite of the presence of our so-called "musicologist", I cannot allow today to go by without recognizing it as the birthday of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1/27/1756) although by the time I hit the "submit reply" button it will already be the 28th.:p I say I couldn't allow Mozart's birthday to pass unrecognized because it is somewhat obvious that his work has been been avoided here... (I'll admit to such myself) perhaps out of a desire to avoid encouraging more wacky conspiracy theories involving Free Masons, Illuminati, and the Flying Elvises.
Nevertheless, upon having it drawn to my attention that it was Mozart's birthday, I set about to choose some of his work as part of the evening listening. Undoubtedly Mozart's operas were among his finest achievements, and so I elected to listen to a favorite old recording of arias sung by the brilliant Elizabeth Schwarzkopf dating from the late 1940s and early 1950s:
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I wouldn't promote this as a first choice for anyone first coming to these arias as the date of the recordings truly shows in the sound quality... but Schwarzkopf is certainly one of the great singers of the century... and one whose work is worth experiencing however flawed the technology of the time may have been. Her youthful voice is so full of devotion to these works. The disc offers a nice array of arias stretching from earlier operas such as Idomeneo through the great late works. Sadly there are no selections from Cosi fan tutte. I am especially enthralled with Porgi, amor from The Mariage of Figaro:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_iUSEvp1mNU
Of course Voi che sapete and Dove sono i bei momenti (from the same opera) are not far behind:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qMAlbDeph7M
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dixJPYUJuHo
Beyond the operas, and various isolated masterpieces (such as the clarinet quintet, the clarinet concerto, the Requiem and the Mass in D) it is the piano concertos (not the symphonies) that I have long thought of as providing the greatest body of Mozart's work (and the strongest argument for his stature). I thus sat about listening to some of the great later piano concertos this evening, as well. Alfred Brendel is probably my favorite performer for these works (although I have the highly-acclaimed Murray Perahia recording of the complete piano concertos on my "wish list"). Tonight, however, it was a Russian (!!?) Vladimir Ashkenazy that I was listening to:
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The Piano Concerto no. 20 has long been one of my absolute favorite pieces of music... by anyone... and the slow middle movement... the famous Romance must be one of the most exquisite few minutes of music ever laid out. Here is a particularly nice recording... and video... with the great pianist Friederich Gulda:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-lPrap4xsyg
But then we have the great Andante from the Piano Concert 21... the so-called "Elvira Madigan" concerto... so named as a result of its use in a Swedish film of the same name. Here is the great Alfred Brendel's performance:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=45drOlTTTA8
Indeed, these concertos are just laden with some of the strongest and most memorable music in the whole realm of "classical music"... especially the slower movements. Enjoy!:thumbs_up
Yes, I just love Mozart, he was probably the one who first really pulled me into classical music along with Chopin and Liszt, magical stuff. I think it would be hard to find someone (apart from...) who doesn't appreciate it though.
French Mélodies Part 1
In our repeated debates as to which nation or culture has produced the greatest body of literature (or any sub-genre such as poetry or novels) our attempts to come to any sort of consensus have ultimately been thwarted by our limitations of language and the realization that we must almost certainly rely upon translations... some of which are unreliable... some of which are lacking in aesthetic merits... and some of which are non-existent. Music... however... would seem to be a different beast altogether. There is almost no way to dispute the fact that the Germans/Austrians literally own music. No other culture (at least in the West) even comes near. We could eliminate the three immortals of music (Bach, Beethoven, and Mozart) and we should still be presented with an entire slew of the most highly regarded composers: Wagner... Brahms... Handel... Haydn... Schubert... Schumann... Mahler, Richard Strauss...etc...
Over the past year I have been greatly broadening my collection of classical music... especially within areas and genres that I felt may just have possibly been underrepresented. As such, I have made a concerted effort to explore British and American composers, Modern and Contemporary composers, Russian opera, and Medieval music. At present I am experiencing something of a love affair with French music, and as a long-time lover of vocal music I have been especially seduced by the French Mélodie.
The Mélodie generally refers to French art songs of the mid 19th century to the present, and is something of an equivalent to the German Lied. Like the German Lied, the Mélodie was commonly composed for voice and solo piano, allowing for intimate performance in private homes and salons. As with later examples of the German Lied (one thinks immediately of Mahler and Richard Strauss) there are instances in which these Mélodies were composed with various other accompaniments: flute, violin, harp, small chamber ensembles, or with entire orchestral settings.
Just as the German Lied flourished during a period in which German lyrical poetry was also blossoming (Goethe, Schiller, Novalis, Heine, Hölderlin, etc...) so the French composers of song also greatly benefited by the wealth of beautiful, lyrical poetry being written in French in the late 19th and early 20th century. Composers could not help but be inspired by the poetry of Baudelaire, Gautier, Verlaine, Rimbaud, Mallarme, Sully Prudhomme, Pierre Louÿs, and others. Indeed, the delicious merger of exquisite music and resplendent poetry cannot help but tantalize the lover of literature and song. "Where are some examples of song lyrics that stand alone as poetry?" another thread asks. Here. Here! Here is poetry in word and song:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NNs8H60vQTM
S'il est vrai, Chloris, que tu m'aimes,
Mais j'entends, que tu m'aimes bien,
Je ne crois point que les rois mêmes
Aient un bonheur pareil au mien.
Que la mort serait importune
De venir changer ma fortune
A la félicité des cieux!
Tout ce qu'on dit de l'ambroisie
Ne touche point ma fantaisie
Au prix des grâces de tes yeux.
Théophile de Viau (1590-1626)
French Mélodies have been embraced by a broad range of the finest singers active today. One of the most unique must surely be Philippe Jaroussky. One of the most delightfully decadent recordings I have come across recently is his Opium: Mélodies françaises...
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This disc presents performances of songs by Reynaldo Hahn, Jules Massenet, Gabriel Faure, Ernest Chausson, Camille Saint-Saëns, Cesar Franck, etc... the greatest composers of France of the fin de siecle. These songs represent a rare and heady bouquet... perfumed and laden with the silk and satin and velvet of the French salons. The lyrics are commonly drawn from the delicate poems of French symbolism: Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Verlaine, Mallarme, etc... while the music speaks of the sophisticated and artificial world of the French ballet... the theater... the opera... and of the sun-dappled world of Impressionism.
Jaroussky takes these songs to an even greater height of decadence with his high falsetto. Along with Andreas Scholl, Alfred Deller, and Rene Jacobs, Jaroussky is one of a recent number of highly talented countertenors who are taking their vocal range into an oeuvre previously reserved to sopranos, mezzo-sopranos, and tenors... or even baritones. The artificially high male voice almost immediately recalls the use of castrati and/or young male choir-boy vocalists in the operas and other vocal works of the baroque age (from which period the poem in the above song comes). Jaroussky brings a sense of the extreme artifice of Rameau, Lully, Couperin, and French Baroque to the 19th century Parisian salons. While I would not be without the performances of such mezzos and sopranos as Cecilia Bartoli, Janet Baker, Sandrine Piau, Veronique Gens, Anne Sofie von Otter, and Dawn Upshaw in the performance of these works, Jaroussky admittedly brings an added edge of decadence... artifice... and debaucheries to this delicate French bon-bons.
Another gorgeous song from this disc is Jules Massenet's Elégie. Massenet has himself been long underrated among music critics... in spite of the fact that he is one of the most exquisite masters of melody, and has been credited by many with the revival of the French language in song:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i9X3H6mZcDY
Rêve d'un bonheur effacé,
Mon coeur lassé t'appelle en vain dans la nuit
Tendres serments échangés,
Soirs enivrés, vous reposez dans l'oubli...
C'est la fin des beaux jours, ô souvenir de nos brèves amours !
La nuit descend lentement sur nos coeurs
L'automne effeuille les fleurs,
La paix du soir vient adoucir nos douleurs
Tout nous trahit, tout nous fuit sans retour
Tout nous trahit sans retour ........
Pierre Louÿs (1870 - 1925)
French Mélodies Part 2: Gérard Souzay
My preference has long been for female singers... at least when dealing with the repertoire of the French Mélodies. The music and the poems both have such a degree of sensuality that they seem to call out for the female voice. Obviously with Philippe Jaroussky I have made an exception... then again, his artful and artificial countertenor is almost a perversely decadent exception.
Recently, however, I discovered Gérard Souzay. This great baritone was once touted as the French answer to the German Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau. For anyone who loves classical vocalists and especially German lieder, Fischer-Dieskau is the inimitable pinnacle of song. As such, I took the comparisons with a large grain of salt. A single disc, however, changed my opinion:
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Where Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau was often contracted out to Deutsche Grammophon and EMI... two of the finest classical recording labels with the greatest sound engineers... Souzay, unfortunately, does not seem to have developed such a relationship with a major label. This particular disc of Mélodies by Claude Debussy is his sole recording for DG... but what a marvelous disc it is. The collection includes songs that set poems of Verlaine, Charles d'Orleans, Baudelaire, and even original poems by Debussy himself. Souzay's voice is absolutely marvelous... never gruff... but always polished... warm... enveloping... and expressive.
Unfortunately, there are no examples of Souzay's performances from this disc available on YouTube. On the other hand, there are any number of marvelous performances available on-line:
Chanson triste by Henri Duparc:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mms29...eature=related
Gabriel Fauré's classic song, Après un rêve:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qRrdW...eature=related
Duparc's Phidyle:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3DQdHTwCjo8
and Fauré's magical setting of Paul Verlaine's most famous poem, Clair de lune:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZGf0w...eature=related
French Mélodies Part 3
I was looking over my CD shelves today and found myself somewhat (OK... not really) surprised that I own far more music by Russian composers than I do by French composers... in spite of my expressed preference (and in spite of the fact that my collection of the greatest Russian composer, Tchaikovsky, is woefully malnourished). What I have come to recognize is that there is a huge gaping void in French music and that void is the symphony. There are few (if any) French composers who are truly masterful symphonic composers. Even the British do a better job at this. But perhaps that brings us back to the French Mélodies for certainly it seems (with the exception of opera... at which the French excel to a certain extent) that the strength in French music lies with the miniature... the cameo... the lyrical musical poem: chamber works, works for solo piano, shimmering concertos for flute and harp (instruments all but ignored in other musical traditions), and of course the mélodies... chanson.
While I have long loved French music, I have never been overly impressed with French performers, orchestras, of conductors... with a few exceptions:
Pierre Boulez, André Cluytens, René Jacobs (who's actually Belgian) and Charles Dutoit (who's actually Swiss). The English, Germans, Americans, and Russians have seemed to lead the field in classical musical performance. Nevertheless, reacting to several stellar reviews in Gramophone and other classical music periodicals I recently decided to check out two French singers: Sandrine Piau...
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and Véronique Gens...
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Both women are brilliant sopranos. Neither currently may lay claim to the sort of star status of a singer like Anna Netrebko or Renee Fleming... but from the example of their recent recordings both are every bit worthy of, and quite likely well on their way to such recognition.
Sandrine Piau trained as a harpist and studied voice at the Collège Lamartine and the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique du Paris. She is best known for her performances in Baroque opera, having worked with many of the leading European conductors of the Baroque revival, including William Christie, Marc Minkowski, Philippe Herreweghe, Christophe Rousset, and René Jacobs. She collaborated with Ton Koopman and the Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra & Choir to record the complete vocal works of Johann Sebastian Bach. Piau's recording of Handel arias...
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was greeted with glowing praise by all the major music critics and periodicals.
It is her recording of Debussy mélodies, recorded for Naïve records with Jos van Immerseel on piano that I am concerned with here...
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as well as her disc, évocation, which includes further performances of Debussy, as well as Ernest Chausson, Charles Koechlin, Richard Strauss, Alexander Zemlinsky, and Arnold Schoenberg...
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Among the marvelous works and performances to be found on these two discs I especially admire Debussy's Les papillons in which the poem of Théophile Gautier is interwoven with shimmering and glittering piano trills which suggest the fluttering of the wings of the butterfly:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zX19e...eature=related
Another exquisite song by Debussy (from évocation ) is the wistful L'âme évaporée... taken from Debussy's last song cycle, Deux Romances... his farewell to the genre:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7PqmQ3KIb4s
Both of these discs are exquisite and I cannot recommend them highly enough. I have been playing them repeatedly since they first arrived... in spite of having some 1200 other discs to chose from.
Having made such claims for Sandrine Piau, I should note that if anything the collection, Nuit d'étoiles (Mélodies française)...
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performed by Véronique Gens, is even more delicious! Gens studied at the Conservatoire de Paris and won first prize of the school. Her debut in 1986 was with William Christie and his Les Arts Florissants, and like Piau, she has spent much of her career recording and performing Baroque music, collaborating with conductors such as the already mentioned Christie, Marc Minkowski, René Jacobs, Christophe Rousset, Philippe Herreweghe, and Jean-Claude Malgoire. While she began as a Baroque specialist, she has become in demand for roles in Mozart operas, and an interpreter of songs by Berlioz, Debussy, Fauré as well as Joseph Canteloube's Chants d'Auvergne.
Nuit d'étoiles (Mélodies française) contains performances of mélodies by Gabriel Faure, Debussy, and Poulenc. For me the most telling moment of this disc comes during shift from Fauré to Debussy. Gens rounds out her selection of Fauré's songs with Clair de lune and Les berceaux. Les berceaux is a marvelous setting of the poem by Sully Prudhomme... (unfortunately YouTube doesn't have a recording of Gens performance, but they do have a version by the inimitable, Janet Baker):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HxdIr0gu9rQ
These final two songs are among the greatest ever written by Fauré, and both stand along with the strongest works in the entire genre of "art song"... including the lieder of Schubert. They also offer a perfect contrast to Debussy's sensuous setting of Pierre Louÿs erotic Chansons de Bilitis. From the very opening notes of the piano we are aware that this music is something new... more languorous... Impressionistic (once again I am unable to find a recording by Gens of this piece, but I can certainly recommend Victoria de los Angeles' version in order to give one a taste):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=biNql1cHh7c
For an even greater sense of the contrast between the earlier Fauré and Debussy Gens offers both composer's interpretations of Clair de lune:
Fauré's version is lilting... wistful... but as brilliant as it is (and it is unquestionably that)...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Mjy3Fw5GJY
it is almost nearer in style to the lieder of Schubert and Schumann than it is to the Impressionism of Debussy...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7cuaXqpsmoM
Once again... I cannot recommend either singer highly enough.
Can someone explain the appeal of opera to me? I keep listening to it. Every once in awhile I'll hear something I like, but most of the time it just sounds like a bunch of high-pitched women and low-bellowing men singing relatively the same song over and over again in a language I can't understand.
I feel like I'm missing something important to the appreciation of opera.
Of course France doesn't compare with the symphonic heritage of Germany, Austria or Russia but listening to Berlioz's Symphony fantastique, Cesar Franck's Symphony in D minor, or the youthful Bizet's symphony in C we must consider that perhaps the symphonic form's structure is not entirly condusive to the more flexible requirements of the latin temperament. However, as an antidote to the idea that the French are symphonically inferior, here is the finale to one of the greatest symphonies ever composed. It simply blows the listener away.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TCKiZRWyv20
Drkshadow03... to an extent all art forms involve a language or vocabulary that must be learned. The average man-on-the street who rarely reads would undoubtedly have just as negative a perception of our passion for reading... of poetry, certainly... almost assuredly of Shakespeare, and unquestionably of James Joyce. To appreciate opera involves putting forth the effort needed to understand operatic form, classical vocals, etc... The voice in classical music is employed as a solo instrument... vocal lines are just as virtuosic and complex as one might expect of the violin in a violin concert. For this reason it sounds far different from popular music in which the voice is tied to a simple song structure. Of course there are classical song forms that are closer to the simple song structure... such as is used in many chorus works (ie. Handel's Hallelujah). Beyond thinking of the voice in classical music... and certainly in opera... as a solo instrument, you need to recognize that opera is a merger of theater, song, and symphonic music. The combination creates a whole greater than the sum of its parts. The best way for anyone serious about first coming to appreciate opera to do so is to attend an actual opera performance in real life. The more accessible (not to say less complex or profound) operas would include those of Mozart (especially Don Giovanni, The Marriage of Figaro, and The Magic Flute), Rossini's Barber of Seville, Puccini's Madame Butterfly and La Boheme, Verdi's Aida and La Traviata, and Bizet's Carmen. All of them are laden with beautiful, singable melodies. Wagner should almost certainly be avoided until you first have a grasp on traditional opera as he represents a huge rift and innovation upon this tradition leading to Richard Strauss, Alban Berg, Claude Debussy, and the whole of the thornier Modernist approaches to opera.
Hmm, I've been listening to a lot of Wagner lately. So I wonder if that might be the problem. Thanks for the reply.Quote:
Originally Posted by stlukesguild
Wagner completely reinvented the opera. The traditional opera alternates between arias (solos) or duets/trios, etc... which are essentially song-like in form, choruses, and recitatives and/or spoken dialog. One might think of the format as not far removed from the classic musical. The woman/love interest sings a song of longing and loss, then there's a bit of dialog between the woman and her maid, the man (her love interest) enters and sings a joyful song about his impending marriage, all his friends join in for a rousing chorus, he leaves and she, heart-broken, speaks a few lines and then heads into a tragic love aria... etc... The orchestra reinforces the drama, but in the traditional opera it is the voice which drives the drama... in song, recitative, and spoken word. With Wagner the drama is driven by the orchestra in tangent with the voice. The music never stops... there is no break into dialog followed by a song. The entire opera is structured in a symphonic pattern employing the repetition and variation of motifs. Wagner's operas are the most magnificent constructions. There are many who have argued that the "Ring Cycle" may just be the greatest work of art the West has ever produced. He is generally ranked within the top 10 composers of all time... quite often just behind the "3 Immortals": Bach, Beethoven, and Mozart. His impact upon music... and upon art in general cannot be overstated. His fans are quite often fanatics... willing to pay hundreds of dollars to sit though 4 very long nights of performances of his Ring at Bayreuth... the great theater and temple built specifically for the staging of his work. In spite of all of this, he is not someone easy to jump into... especially for those new to opera. A greater appreciation of his achievements is almost certainly dependent upon having developed a good understanding and appreciation of earlier operatic form.