Bernstein Symphony no 1

Day 120 

Bernstein Symphony no 1 Jeremiah

New York Philharmonic Orchestra

Leonard Bernstein

Leonard Bernstein was an extraordinary musician. In the right repertoire he was a superb conductor (I greatly enjoy for example his recordings of the Haydn Paris Symphonies) and he was one of the great musical educators. I think that his book  The Unanswered Question , based on lectures given at Harvard is full of real insights- though it would certainly not have been wise to admit admiration for this book at University where Schenkerian analysis reigned supreme.  But ultimately it will be as a composer that he will be remembered. West Side Story is wonderful but to me his best work for the musical theatre was Candide. I had the original cast recording at school and it was one of the records I played over and over again.

I don't know much of his 'serious' music and this symphony was new to me. It is a rather curious piece in that there is a solo voice in the third movement - I had not studied the work in advance and didn't have a score and so it was a big surprise when the voice came in. I found much to enjoy throughout the work but the highlight was the middle movement - a jazzy scherzo full of cross rhythms and syncopations. I suspect that it must have been quite a challenge for the orchestra in the first performance in 1942, conducted by the young composer aged only 22. Bernstein's later music has a reputation of being self indulgent, I don't know how true that is, but this was anything but. You can see in this early work just what a prodigious talent he had.

Rorem Symphony no 2

 Day 119

Rorem Symphony no 2

Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra 

José Serebrier

I know Ned Rorem only though his songs, particularly a lovely recital disc by Susan Graham. I don’t think that that I have heard anything else he wrote. This second symphony dates from 1956 and after a few performances was more or less forgotten until it was revived for this recording.

Like yesterday’s symphony by Barber I found this unmemorable - indeed I would describe it is almost inconsequential - there seems to be an awful lot of what seemed little more than tinkering about. The structure is curious. A longish slow first movement with a scherzando middle section, then a very short slow movement which hardly seemed to get going and a rhythmical quite interesting finale which however  seems quite quickly to turn to mere note spinning.  The language can best be described as ‘sub Copland’ and my overall impression is why would you want to listen to this when you can listen to the real thing. So I am sure that I will go back to the Rorem songs, but I have no inclination to try more of his orchestral music. 

Barber Symphony no 1

 Day 119

Barber Symphony no 1

Royal National Scottish Orchestra

Marin Alsop

There is of course more to Barber than the adagio for strings, but that remains his by far his most famous work. I don’t know much of his music - I have heard the violin and piano concerto and the dances from Medea but that is about it. This symphony, which dates from 1935-37 is in a single movement with interlinked sections using variants of the same melodic shapes. The language is tonal and to me was reminiscent of Hindemith and Vaughan Williams with a dash of Copland. The opening was certainly evocative of the ‘wide open spaces’ so characteristic of American music of this ear.

To be frank I found the music attractive but un memorable. As I write this, some hours after hearing the piece I am struggling to remember anything much of it. That rather sums it up for me. I certainly didn’t dislike the piece but equally I didn’t find anything here to suggest that I should listen to another Barber symphony. After all there are plenty of other American symphonic composers to explore. 

Beach Gaelic Symphony

 Day 117

Beach Gaelic Symphony

Nashville Symphony Orchestra

Kenneth Schermerhorn

I haven’s heard any of Amy Beach’s work before. She was a largely self-taught American composer, born in 1867 and living through to 1944.  It is said that this was the first symphony by an American woman to be performed and published. Its subtitle the Gaelic Symphony led me to expect something rather fey and whimsical but in fact this a strong, forceful work with some impressive orchestral writing. It is written in a fairly traditional late 19th century romantic idiom - I detected some signs of César Franck and Brahms but the main influence is clearly Dvořák - a reminder of the enormous impact his music had in the USA. At one point the orchestral writing even suggested Bruckner, although I suspect that Beach can have had only minimal exposure to his work.

There are some folk elements in the melodies and to me there were the less successful parts of the work. Beach doesn’t quite have the gift to make simple melodies memorable - hers to seem to start well and then rather get nowhere. But overall it was a good piece and I am glad to have made its acquaintance. I played a symphony by Florence Price last year and there are some distinct similarities in idiom though the Price was very old fashioned by the time that it was written in 1933.

Glazunov String quartet no 4

 Day 116

Glazunov String quartet no 4

This is the last in this small series of chamber music from the post-Tchaikovsky generation of Russian composers.  Glazunov is a composer that I have a little experience of. I conducted his saxophone concerto a few years ago and I recall hearing the violin concerto, but other than perhaps the odd ballet extract I don't think I have heard anything more.

I chose this quartet at random from the seven he wrote: I don't know if I was particularly lucky but I thought that this was an absolutely delightful piece. By some distance it was the most enjoyable of all of the Russian quartets I have been listening to in this sequence.  The music flowed naturally and Glazunov was in complete control of his material. All of the movements were highly attractive but perhaps the highlight was the sherzo-like third movement which had a Mendelssonian lightness of touch and an irresistible charm.

The harmonic language is relative conservative for a piece written in 1894 - there's nothing much here that Schumann couldn't have written - but from a distance now of over 130 years that hardly matters. Quality is what counts and this quartet has it in abundance.

So my exploration of Russian chamber music comes to a halt, at least for now. Next I will be listening to some American symphonies.

Taneyev String quartet no 5

 Day 115

Taneyev String quartet no 5 op 13

Carpe Diem String Quartet

Taneyev is another of those composers from the generation between Tchaikovsky and Stravinsky’s. He was a close associate of Tchaikovsky (he played the solo part in the first performance of Tchaikovsky’s first piano concerto in Moscow) but was also a merciless critic and had no hesitation in pointing out what he considered to be defects in Tchaikovsky’s music. He was a noted teacher, with Scriabin, Rachmaninov and Glière among his pupils. He also published an exhaustive 2-volume study of renaissance and baroque counterpoint.  I knew the name but I don’t recall consciously listening to any of his music before.

He completed 9 string quartets and left two more unfinished. I chose this one at random. It is a curious work. It has much of the spirit of Haydn - indeed if you ignore the harmony much of it looks like Haydn on the page - the second subject of the first movement and the very end are two good examples of this. But harmonically I found it quite hard to follow. Some of it was straightforwardly tonal in a way that would have been familiar to Tchaikovsky or Brahms but in other places the harmony veered off in strange directions. It was never overtly dissonant let alone atonal, but it did seem directionless and ultimately quite disconcerting - the slow movement especially seemed to wander along getting nowhere. 

The scherzo worked best I think, Here the feeling of Haydn was at its strongest - indeed if the first 20 or so bars have been dropped into a late Haydn quartet I don’t think anybody would have noticed. And later in the movement we got some hints of Taneyev’s skill at counterpoint.  

So overall not a particularly satisfying experience - there was clearly a strong musical mind at work here but somehow it didn’t all jell together.  Perhaps my random choice was unfortunate but it didn’t make me want to listen to more Taneyev straight away. 

Arensky String quartet no 2

 Day 114

Arensky String quartet no 2

Spectrum concerts Berlin

Arensky is of the generation between Tchaikovsky/The Five and Stravinsky’s. This is a period in Russian musical history that I know little about - in fact I don’t think that I have heard anything by Arensky before.  This quartet is an interesting piece. First of all it is for the unusual combination of one violin, one viola and two cellos. I am not aware of any other piece using these four instruments. It does give the piece a darker hue in places although it also means that the viola part is often very high in order to give more emphasis in the treble register. I had assumed that at some point Arensky would use the two cellos together in a lyrical duet in the matter of the Schubert Quintet but that point never arrived. Indeed Arensky later restored the piece for a conventional string quartet so clearly the two cellos were not absolutely fundamental to the piece.

The other interesting feature is the use of traditional Russian melodies. It opens with a funeral chant and ends with the same folk song that is used in Beethoven’s 2nd Rasumovsky quartet and Boris Godunov. The middle movement is a set of variations on a theme of Tchaikovsky, which is sometimes performed separately as a piece for string orchestra.. Arensky was a great, if critical, admire of Tchaikovsky and taken together this features are thought to be a tribute to Tchaikovsky as the Tsar of music.

The music is lyrical and full of contrast. I enjoyed it immensely though I did wonder whether the structure worked fully. The last movement seems quite brief after the long set of variations and seems to finish almost before it has started. But that is a small shortcoming. I look forward to hearing more of his music and indeed that of his contemporaries.  

Kodály String Quartet no 2

 Day 113

Kodály String Quartet no 2

Kodály Quartet

I don’t know much about Kodály. I know the Háry János suite and the solo cello sonata but that it about it. This is the second of the composer’s two string quartets - it dates from 1916-18. It is in two movements but those movements contain more or less independent sections and therefore it has much of the effect of a full four-movement work. The best way of describing it is probably as a milder version of Bartók. It has many of the same characteristics but Kodály does not explore the extremes which his compatriot went to in his string quartets.

The most Hungarian sounding music in in the last movement where the composer introduces modal folk-like tunes over drones - this is highly effective and is the most striking part of the work. Elsewhere there is obvious control of the form and texture without, to my ear, ever quite presenting a compelling case for the work at the highest level. Early commentators were apparently divided between those who through the music too modern and those who thought it not modern enough. I can quite understand how they came to feel that way.

So I am glad that I have heard the piece but perhaps the other quartet can wait - there’s plenty of other music to go at first.

Enescu Octet

 Day 112

Enescu Octet

Casals described Enescu as the 'greatest musical phenomenon since Mozart'. Menuhin, who recorded the Bach Double Violin concerto with Enescu, described him as 'the most extraordinary human being, the greatest musician and the most formative influence he had ever experienced'. Quite a tribute.

The only music of his that I can ever recall hearing is the first of his two Romanian rhapsodies, which is a great orchestral showpiece though I don't know how typical of his work its. His masterpiece is generally reckoned to be the opera Œdipe, which is a piece that is on my list to hear one day.

This string octet is an early work, dating from 1900 when the composer was 19. It is a far heavier, more symphonic, work than the Glière I listened to yesterday. It lasts about 40 mins without a break and must put huge demands on the players: indeed the first performance and several of the available recordings were done with a conductor. Enescu recognised this and approved performances with a full string orchestra.

The opening is very compelling - a wide ranging theme in unison by seven of the players against a throbbing pedal note in the 2nd cello. That material returns in various guises throughout the piece. I don't anything else in score quite comes up to the impact of that opening but there was nevertheless much to admire, and enjoy, here. The young composer clearly wanted to try out as many different possibilities as possible with this large group and the textures are endlessly fascinating, though as we saw yesterday in the Glière sometimes the need to keep all of the instruments busy does lead to some very thick textures at times.

It is quite difficult to describe the style. Certainly some of it is in what you might call an overheated late romantic style and at times the language was not a million miles away from Verklärte Nacht, which was written at more or less the same time. But there are also echos of Richard Strauss and César Franck. No doubt Enescu was tying to work out his own idiom within the prevailing musical climate of the time.

This is an impressive piece and a quite remarkable achievement for a 19 year old. I'm not really sure why Enescu didn't go on to become one of the major composer of the first half of the 20th century. Perhaps he was but we haven't yet realised it.

Glière String Octet

 Day 111

Glière String Octet

Berlin Philharmonic String Octet

After several, very pleasant, days of the Strauss family time to change direction. So for the next few days I am going to be exploring more chamber music, this time from Russian and Eastern Europe. I know a few of the more famous pieces in this repertory but generally this is not an area which I have explored very much.  This Octet, my starting point, was suggested by our splendid principal cellist Anthony Desbrulais. My knowledge of Glière is very slight. I did one of his shorter piano pieces for a grade exam at school and I knew the Russian Sailor's Dance. I think that as one time I heard the concerto for Coloratura soprano and orchestra but that's about it.

I was expecting a piece of brightly coloured Soviet style propaganda but this was very different. It is an early piece (written as a student and completed in 1902 when he was in his mid twenties) and is in what was for the time a rather conservative idiom. Heard cold one might have attributed it to Borodin but with occasional overtones of Dvořák and Tchaikovsky - it is certainly in the romantic tradition. I enjoyed it immensely and was very impressed with the melodic freshness and the attractive part writing. Glière handles the 8 instruments well and there are only a few passages where one feels he was thickening out the texture to give everybody something to play. Perhaps the second movement is the highlight - a scherzando movement (though not a particularly fast one) with folk song overtones and some unexpected rhythmic twist.

Glière lived on to the age of 80, well into the Soviet era but seems to have escaped the attentions of the Russian authorities , unlike Shostakovich and others, and was left alone to write increasingly anachronistic colourful pieces celebrating Russian life.  But this piece shows that there is more to him that the conformist hack that I had taken him to be.

Strauss (Josef) Waltzes

 Day 110

Strauss Josef waltzes

Dynamiden

Robert Stolz

Aquarellen

Seji Ozawa

Friedenspalmen

Daniel Barenboim

Hesperusbahnen

Frank Welser-Möst

Schwert und Leier

Clemens Krauss

Johann Strauss II said that although he was the more popular composer his brother Josef was in fact the better composer. On the strength of these five waltzes he might not have been wrong - these are certainly the equal of many of the waltzes of his more famous brother. They are all extended works with introductions and codas - the family has travelled far from the very simple Waltzes of their father. There is an air of nostalgia throughout these pieces, which forms a good contrast with the exuberance of the brighter moments. Indeed Hesperusbahnen, which is the composer’s last composition has a real sense of melancholy.

The first of these waltzes Dynamiden was referenced in the waltz sequence in Der Rosenkavalier - a neat tribute from Richard Strauss to the dynasty which shares his name - but to whom he was not related. 

That ends the exploration of the Strauss family in this project. Eduard Strauss’ son Johann III did compose but he seems not have inherited the family talent and was mainly known as a conductor - he lived long enough to makes recordings of several of the Strauss family compositions.These was an Isaac Strauss, who was an unrelated French composer - though he seems to have deliberately published works just with his surname in an attempt to link him in people’s minds with the famous family. Also an Oscar Straus with only one S, who wrote operettas including the Chocolate Soldier. 

Strauss (Eduard) Dances

 Day 109

Strauss (Eduard)

Helenen Quadrille op 14

Daniel Barenboim

 Mit Chic

Zubin Mehta

Gruss An Prague

Riccardo Muti

Elektrisch

Maazel, Lorin

Mit Damph

Zubin Mehta

Vienna Philharmonic

Eduard  Strauss was the son of Johann I and brother of Johann II and Joseph. He was mainly known as a conductor and administrator of the family orchestra but was also a composer. For reasons which are not clear he destroyed a large part of the family archive in a fire.

Most of his output is of very short pieces like quadrilles and polkas rather than the extended waltz sequences of his brothers. The first of my five pieces today is just a rehash of tunes from Offenbach’s Le Belle Hélène but the others are (as far as I can see) wholly original.  I found them charming with just enough individual touches to lift them about the commonplace. Elektrisch was particularly enjoyable

Strauss (Johann II) Polkas

 Day 108

Strauss (Johann II) Polkas

Patronesses Polka op 286

Ricardo Muti

Klipp-Klapp Polka Op 466

Lorin Maazel

Freikugein Polka Op 326

Claudio Abbado

Im Krapfenwald Polka Op336

Carlos Kleiber

Diplomaten Polka Op 448

Mariss Jansons

Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra

These recordings were all made at the New Year’s concerts given by the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra. I always try to catch each broadcast and they attract a huge world-wide television audience. Over the years a star roster of conductors have featured. They really are curious events. You have this very well dressed audience, many of whom look as if they would rather be somewhere else, listening to this music very solemnly and then clapping to order in the Radedsky March at the end - indeed I suspect some of them come to the event just to join in the clapping. The TV cuts away from time to time to show ballet - often quite incredibly kitsch. The whole thing is quite bizarre.  But I watch because of the endless stream of good music.

Johann Strauss II takes pride of place, and rightly so. He was a master of this sort of music and was admired by many composers, including Brahms and Schoenberg. Orchestral players generally hate playing Strauss Waltzes - particularly 2 violins who get endless bars playing on the 2nd and 3rd beats - and the complex patterns of repeats and da capos can be very tricky navigate. But the music is wonderful = the Blue Danubue alone has at least half a dozen melodies that any composer would have been proud to write.

For this project I chose not Waltzes but 5 of the many of Strauss’s Polkas. There are two types of- Fast and Slow - the second group generally being called French Polkas. All of them were great fun but more than that they show evidence of musical craftsmanship of the highest order. Everywhere there are little melodic or harmonic twist and turns which take you by surprise, the orchestration is subtle and the melodic invention inexhaustible. And Strauss is certainly the master of the coda.  So a really enjoyable 20 mins or so of music to brighten the day.  

 

Strauss (Johann I) Waltzes

 Day 107

Strauss (Johann I) Waltzes

Täuberin Waltz op 1

Vienna Carnival Waltz op 3

Paris Waltz op 101

Vienna Symphony Orchestra

Robert Stoltz

Light music doesn’t exactly begin and end with the Strauss family but without them the repertoire would be severely diminished. So over the next few days I want to explore several members of the family, staring with the patriarch - Johann Strauss I.

I selected three waltzes more or less at random. All three were very pleasant but seemed rather under developed compared to the well-known waltzes of his son Johnan II. They are more like the dances of Schubert or Beethoven - not much by way of introduction, all rather rigid in form and ending fairly abruptly. One can well imagine people dancing to this music - whereas some of the later waltzes by his son, though they could be danced to, are more like concert pieces.

There were a couple of curiosities here. I was very surprised to hear the big tune from the overture to Weber’s  Oberon suddenly emerge in the second waltz - that’s another example of what I discussed yesterday of the light music composer freely adapting popular opera fragments into their dances. The same sort of thing happen in the last piece, where toward the end we hear La Marseilles.

Johann Junior eclipsed his father - the two had a famously uneasy reputation - and it must have been difficult for the father to realise the greater talent of his son. But taken on their own these pieces, which could never be called masterpieces, have a charm which does make them worth listening to.

Waldteufel Waltzes and Polkas

 Day 106

Waldteufel Waltzes and Polkas

Grand Vitessse

Valse de Patineurs

Bella Bocca

Les Siècles

François-Xavier Roth

España nach Chabrier

Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra

Marris Jansons

The last few weeks have included some very heavyweight works and so, particularly as I am going to be busy over the next week, I will be looking at some lighter, and shorter, music.  I’ve always enjoyed the lighter music within the classical repertoire and there is a huge amount of it to go at. I’m starting today with Waldteufel, who owns his immortality to the Skaters’ Waltz, or more to the point the first dozen or so bars of the main theme. Quite why it is this one piece which has stuck is a bit of mystery - it is certainly attractive but nothing particular to write home about - so it is probably just a matter of luck or perhaps pushing by the publisher. On the other hand hearing the whole piece in context does give it a bit more shape - the introduction works very nicely and the contrasting sections are full of interest. 

All of these piece were enjoyable but didn’t strike me as at quite the level of the best of the Strauss family, of whom more this week. The most fascinating was the waltz based on Chabrier’s España. There was a tradition of writing (or perhaps better so say arranging) waltzes and quadrilles on popular pieces of the day - mainly operatic selections but also orchestral and vocal pieces. The Strausses did a lot of this. I suppose that it served a function at its time, allowing people to hear digested fragments of pieces in popular form. This waltz is very curious - it takes the main themes of the piece but neatens them into regular 4 bar phrases - thus eliminating all of the verve and excitement of the original. A riotous piece becomes a respectable dance!  I can’t imagine anybody wanting to hear it now, other than as a curiosity, when recordings of the original are so easily available. But the fact that this arrangement was written in 1886, only three years after the first performance of the original, does show just how popular España had become in only a few years.

Charpentier Louise

 Day 105

Charpentier Louise

Soloists

Orchestra and chorus of the Belgian Opera

Silvain Cambreling

I knew very little about Charpentier or this opera. He lived to the age of 96 but his output is small and his fame rests almost entirely on this opera, which I have seen described as the first 20th century opera - it was first produced in 1900. The aria Depuis le Jour has a life of its own outside the opera and was a favourite of many of the singers who recorded on 78s. Charpentier collaborated on an abridged film version of the opera in the 1930s.

Louise is generally described as an early attempt at French verismo opera and one can see why. It has all the features one would expect - a naturalistic setting, raw emotion and plenty of real-life colour. The second act in particularly teems with life and has a huge cast of minor characters who give character to the  working class life of Paris - what other opera has a part for a street sweeper or a carrot seller. But elsewhere the drama is much more personal  - essentially there are four characters Louise, who is in love with Julian, and her mother and father who disapprove of the match. The mother and father are most unpleasant characters - indeed the father comes across as extremely creepy in the way that he won’t give up his love for his daughter  - and some of their music is rather hard going. The lyrical music for the lovers on the other hand is full of passion and energy. The spirit of the waltz permeates much of the score, but not in a sugary way. Indeed I wonder whether memories of this score were in the back of Ravel’s mind when he came to write la waltz.  Louise’s final scene where she defies her father has a real impact which almost took my breath away. 

This must be a very difficult piece to stage with all of the naturalistic settings of the Paris market and controlling the large forces with complex choral forces, lots of small solo roles and several off stage effects. It is a long opera (this recording was spread over 3 full CDs and even then had cuts) and even in France it is now only on the fringes of the repertory. But at its best it had an elegant lyricism which we have seen so often in French opera and moments of extremely passion and drama where Charpentier certainly pulls out all of the stops.  I’m glad I have heard it and there are certainly parts of it which I would very much like to hear again.

Chabrier Une Education Manquée

 Day 104

HChabrier Une Education Manquée

Soloists 

Collegium Musicum de Strasbourg

Roger Delage

Like most people I came to Chabrier via España, which in my view vies with L’apprenti sorcier, for the prize as the best single movement short orchestral work. I first played it in youth orchestra and have always loved its sheer verve and wit. But there is more to Chabrier than this one piece and over the years I have got to know a fair amount of his music. Without exception I have found it hugely enjoyable , elegant and sophisticated yet with a sense of fun tinged with melancholy. Indeed one of the recordings I play more than almost anything else is that astonishing recording of Reynaldo Haydn singing (to his own accompaniment) Chabrier’s I’sle Heureuse.

Chabrier did not have  much luck as an opera composer - one theatre went bankrupt soon after the premiere of one of his operas and another burned down three days after another premiere. He was so ill at the first performance of Gwendoline that he didn’t recognise his own music and he left his last opera Briséïs unfinished. The first act of that was completed - it is a work on a grand scale with a quite breathtaking opening scene. What a tragedy is was that it was never complete.

This opera by contrast is tiny in scale - it requires three singers a small orchestra (though the first performances were piano accompanied) and it last no more than 40 mins with dialogue. But it is a gem. Full of lyricism and humour it has a lightness of touch which is reminiscent of the best of Offenbach but also looks forward to the refined operettas of Messager and his contemporaries. One duet, where the character is showing off all of his knowledge of the categories of the arts and philosophies Hebrew, Hindu, algebra, chemistry, Greek, trigonometry, metaphysics, therapeutics, mechanics, dialectics, aesthetics, statistics, mythology, metallurgy, brings to mind the Major General from the Pirates of Penzance and, even more, Abdul Hassan, Barber of Baghdad. All three of these pieces were written more of less at the same time so they are probably all reflecting an opera buffa tradition.

This was a delightful piece and confirms to me yet again what a fabulous composer Chabrier was. He was revered by several generations of French composers and you can see why. Graham Johnson starts his notes to the Hyperion edition of Chabrier’s songs with these words There is no one like him, this adorable man, and nothing in French song, indeed in all music, which is quite like his music.  I completely agree. 

Chausson Le Roi Arthus

 Day 103

Chausson Le Roi Arthus

Soloists

Radio France orchestra and choir

Armin Jordan

Chausson’s tends to be a footnote in musical history in lists of composers who died in unusual circumstances. In Chausson’s case this was in a cycling accident when aged 44 he lost control on a hill  and crashed into a brick wall, though there are some theories that this might have been suicide.

I knew a few of his songs and his Poème for violin and orchestra but this was my first encounter with this opera. It is a big piece in three long acts using large orchestral forces and a choir which at times is divided into a dozen or so parts. The leafing roles are highly demanding and sit very high in the register. It is perhaps not surprising that it has never entered the repertory - indeed it wasn’t performed at all until several years after the composer’s death.

Though is it still obviously a French work the spirit of Wagner permeates the whole score - indeed it has been described as simply a reworking of Tristan und Isolde using characters from the tales of King Arthur. The orchestral sonority is very dark and Wagnerian with the sound of the bass clarinet and cor anglais again bringing echos of Tristan, though the operatic use of the bass clarinet really became established in Les Huguenots. There is even a part for contrabass clarinet in the score though it was hard to see quite why Chausson had included it as it was very difficult to hear it.

Chausson brings real intensity to the dramatic scenes - the central love duet is white hot and the call to arms at the end of act I was truly frightening. Yet the more reflective music is in its way equally impressive - none more so that then beautiful end as King Arthus is taken to eternity. The use of five wordless solo voice in conjunction with a divided chorus gave a quite wonderful texture.

For all the Wagnerian elements this was still recognisably a French opera. The mellifluous vocal lines and the sense of colour was certainly evidence of that. It sits well with Pelleas and Ariane which I have already featured in this blog as a masterpiece of  symbolist opera. Perhaps it is not quite consistent on the same level as those two pieces but it was still a hugely impressive achievement. One wonders what Chausson would have gone on to write had he had better brakes on his bicycle! 

Hérold Le Pré aux clercs

 Day 102

Hérold Le Pré aux clercs

Soloists

Coro e Orquestra Gulbenkian

Paul McCreesh

Hérold’s name is familiar for two reasons. First of all for the overture to his opera Zampa, which was once standard fare at concerts at the local bandstand and the like. Secondly because of the music to the ballet La Fille mal gardée, - although it must be said that the version of the ballet that is usual formed has a complex history - not all of the music is actually by Hérold and in many cases his original score has been re-orchestrated. The famous clog dance , the most instantly familiar music from the ballet turns out not to be by Hérold alone.

Le Pré aux clercs (The clerks meadow, though I never seen the title in anything other than French) was a hugely successful pieces in its day and remained in the repertory in France until the 1950s - more than 1,500 performances are recorded as having been given). It was the composer’s last work - and he died only  few weeks after the first performance.  

It is a typical opéra comique with some very light music and some much more intense and dramatic. The contrast is sometimes quite hard to take - not least the end where after some very impressive tragic music accompanying news of death the music suddenly turns into ‘happy ever after’ mode with a really jolly tune. What it does show is that there was no real division in musical styles between light and serious opera  in France - one sees this even as far into the 19th century in Carmen, where the quintet does sometime seem to come from a different world. Similarly parts of les Huguenots do now sound to us very ‘rum-ti-tum’ and rather frivolous.

But taken on its own merits there is a huge amount to enjoy in this score. The sound world is that of Auber  and Rossini - particularly Le Comte Ory, but I was also reminded of La Dame Blanche. There was one delectable clarinet moment in the first act finale which was utterly Schubertian and a section in the second finale with the main characters singing in 6ths which sounded all the work like something from Donizetti. Hérold’s score was much admired by composers of his time and later - Offenbach surely learned a lot from it and so did Bizet.

There are some cliched moments - particularly the ends of some of the ensembles where the composer goes into what I call ‘painting by numbers’ more and simply turns out music by the yard but generally the invention is fresh and shows some real characters. There is a marvellous comic trio in act 3 which is probably the highlight of the score but the were plenty of other notable examples to show why this opera was so admired in its day and why it held its place in the repertory for so long.

The recording comes from the Bru Zane series, which I have mentioned several times in this blog. The presentation is superb and the notes are highly informative. I hadn’t realised before the close relationship this piece had with Les Huguenots - they are both based on the same source and there is some overlap of characters. Indeed act 3 of Meyerbeer opera actually takes place at the clerk’s meadow. 

A thoroughly enjoyable listening experience.  More French opera tomorrow.

Satie Socrate

 Day 101

Satie Socrate

Barbara Hannigan

Reinbert de Leeuw

It seems appropriate to follow up my exploration of Les Six with the composer who, while not being a member of the group, was in many ways their spiritual father. Satie can only be reckoned to be a minor composer but he was influential to a surprisingly large group of composer and therefore has a place in musical history which is more important than his actual output might deserve.

I have know Parade since I was at school - it is the sort of piece - using a typewriter and featuring gunshots - that would appeal to a youngster and I have played quite a few of the piano pieces but l although I had known about Socrate for a long time had never heard it before.

It is a very unexpected piece coming from a composer who was known for his eccentricities. It is a setting of words from Plato about Socrates, ending with a long passage about his death. It exists in two versions - one with piano accompaniment and one with small orchestra. The voice part does represent different characters but it is usually sung, as here, by one singer. The three movements together last just under half an hour. It is austere and restrained. The text is set more or less continuously in an arioso style which moves rather at the pace of ordinary speech - there is nothing ornamental in the vocal part and little which could be described as pure melody. The accompaniment is similarly restrained with very little music marked much above mf. The harmonic style is reminiscent of Fauré in places but elsewhere is rather freer: Satie had a predilection for writing chains of consecutive fourths which is very distinctive.

I’ve seen this piece described as boring. Certainly it doesn’t have many highs or lows or passages of great contrast, but I did find its rather austere beauty rather hypnotic and I enjoyed the experience. I read somewhere that the original audience were expecting something with Sadie’s usual jokiness and found it difficult to take the piece seriously. But approached with an open mind it certainly has much to offer. 

Auric 5 Bagatelles

 Day 100

Auric 5 Bagatelles 

Corre Exerjan duo

This is the 100th day of this blog - so far I have managed to listen to something new every day. I hadn’t anticipated when I started this that I would also pick a different composer every day but I’ve got this far without duplication so I will see how far I can get - I am sure that I could find a new composer for every day.

I could have gone for something spectacular today to celebrate the milestone but it has been a busy day with a lot of train travel so no real opportunity to listen property to a long piece. So instead I have completed my exploration of Les Six by listening to some Auric.

I do remember hearing his overture (a freestanding piece) years about but I don’t think that I have listened anything else of his, though I will have heard some his of his film music.  This 5 bagatelles are a real contrast with the Milhaud I heard yesterday. That was almost indigestible at time because of the thick textures - this is as light as a feather and very delicate. Indeed almost all of it could be played by a single player with very little adjustment. The style is very much in that lighthearted slightly tongue in cheek mode that we know from Poulenc.  The pieces are all very short and the whole set is over in less than 10 minutes.  It was the perfect antidote to the Milhaud. Difficult to believe that they are forever locked together as members of Les Six.

Milhaud String quartets no 14 and 15

 Day 99

Milhaud String quartets no 14 and 15

Parisii quartet Manfred quartet

I know the famous Milhaud pieces but there a huge amount more to go at - his opus numbers go up to 443.  There are 18 string quartets alone. Most famous among them are no 14 and 15 which are separate pieces but which can be played together as a string octet. I’ve been intrigued by what this/they might be like but I have never listened to them until now.

I quite enjoyed the first movement of the 14th quartet - it reminded me of early Tippett in its harmonic language and melodic shape though it doesn’t have Tippett’s rhythmic flare. But it was rather downhill from there - the more I listened the more it did seem rather like fairly aimless note spinning. The textures are quite clogged and although there is (perhaps mercifully) little of Michaud’s propensity for polytonality there is no real sense of harmonic roots. The 15th quartet had many of the same characteristics , including some very high lines for the first violin which got rather painful at time.

But of course the real interest is what the two quartets sound like played together as an octet. Pretty awful is the answer. if the textures in each separate quartet are clogged then putting the two together resulted in what was little more than an aural mess. It became quite painful at time. One had the mental image of eight players each struggling to be heard and holding on for dear life against seven colleagues who often seemed to be ploughing their own furrow 

I had assumed that Milhaud would have used the contrasting quartets to create interesting textures and antiphonal effects but such moments are quite rare - there were perhaps some in the slow movement where Milhaud did seem to take advantage of the unusual format he had devised. But generally I couldn’t see that this was anything more than an interesting experiment than anything of real musical value. A review in Gramophone magazine described the piece as a ‘real stinker’: I’m inclined to agree with him.

 So I doubt that I will be exploring any more Milhaud.Auric is the only one of Les Six left to complete the collection.

Tailleferre String Quartet

 Day 98

Tailleferre String quartet

This continues my exploration of string quartets by moving across to France. The difference in style is immediate. The melodic shape is generally much simpler, the textures are more inventive and the harmonic language is more piquant. The work itself is curiously unbalanced. The first two movement are quite brief and as light as air. But the third movement is as long as the previous two movement put together and much more serious in tone - it is more dissonant and experiments with bitonality in places. I sense that this was not her natural style and that her real voice is to be heard in the first two movements, but the only other piece of hers I have heard is the harp concerto, so perhaps that is to oversimplify matters.

Tailleferre was of course one of Les Six. I’ve already covered Poulenc, Honneger and Durey in this series so it is just Milhaud and Auric to go. I will try to pick a piece by each of them over the next couple of days. There is a huge amount of Milhaud to go at, but Auric’s concert music is quite limited. Still there are some songs and perhaps I will explore them.

Gade String quartet no 1

Day 97

Gade String Quartet no 1 in D major op 63

Copenhagen string quartet

This was a lovely piece. Quite short and understated but a real pleasure to listen to. Gade was Danish but I can't say I detected any Nordic influences. This was a very much characteristic of the Leipzig school with Mendelssohn and Schumann the obvious influences. This is hardly surprising as Gade conducted the first performances of both the Mendelssohn violin concerto and the Schumann piano concerto.

The music flows freely and without any obvious effort - the scherzo second movement was particularly enjoyable with fast semi-quaver interchanges between pairs of instruments - it must be fun to play. The coda was very neat and raised a smile. Perhaps only the last movement was a slight let down. It was the most symphonic of the four movement and there was perhaps a feeling that Gade thought that he should 'up his game' and show how serious a musician he was. I don't think that there was any need for that and at times the music did seem a bit strained.  But all in all a work I was very happy to have heard.  I don't think that I have heard any Gade before. His music does turn up in second-hand bookshops occasionally as his oratorio The Earl King's Daughter did have quite a vogue in Victorian England. His overture based on Ossian is supposed to be worth hearing so perhaps I will dig that out.

Sorabji Opus Clavicembalisticum

 Day 96

Sorabji Opus Clavicembalisticum

John Ogdon

As part of this project I want to explore some of the more outré and buzzard repertoire - listening to music which otherwise I would never have had the inclination or time to discovery. And pieces don’t come much more outré than this.

I first came across Sorabji at university: I remember one of our lecturers being surprised to find that the term’s recital programme would include some of his music. Sorabji had banned public performances of his music decades earlier and had only just lifted it to allow Yonty Solomon to play some of the shorter pieces in concert.

Opus Clavicembalisticum is certainly not a short piece! This performance by John Ogdon lasts 4 hrs and 46 mins. I listened to the whole thing in one day - not all in one sitting I have to say but spread throughout the day. It is not an experience that I am likely to repeat. It was extremely hard work and offered very little reward for the investment of time. The music is vaguely tonal but with no real key centres and no rhythmic structure. The bar lines are just there to show the broad phrasing. The result is that there is no real sense of shape or structure to the music - it just meanders along seemingly aimlessly for minutes on end. In particularly the fugues just go on and on with no sense of direction. In all of the 4+ hours there were only a few moments when I really found something to enjoy - the only one which comes to mind is a few moments of psudo Spanish music about 3 hours in. 

Was Sorabji a hidden genius or a Charlatan?  It is difficult to say. Clearly there was a real music brain behind this music - to have devised all of those extraordinary piano textures shows that - but at the same could he seriously believe that a piece over 4 hours long was viable - and of course some of his other pieces - nearly all unperformed - are much longer. The image that came to mind was a virtuoso pianist lock in a darkened room all on his own getting gradually drunker and improvising to save his life with the hope of ultimately destroying the piano!  Unfair perhaps but that’s what it felt like.

I don’t think that I will be going anywhere near Sorabji for a very long time. 

Brahms string quartet no 3

 Day 95

Brahms String quartet no 3 in B flat major op 67

Artemis Quartet

Brahms has always been a complete mystery to me. I simply do not understand why he is ranked among the great composers. I've never found a way to make any sense of his music. Over the years I have played almost all of the orchestral works and while they are highly enjoyable as pieces to perform - he really knows how to to use the Contrabassoon - I don't find being in the middle of the music brings any greater appreciation. There are some beautiful moment of course, but to me nothing really fits together. Melodies start well but peter out and to me all to often the music drifts without any real sense of purpose. I know that these are heretical views and that for many Brahms is revered for his melodic gifts and sense of form. Perhaps one day all will become clear - though I played the 2nd symphony only a couple of weeks ago and I still felt very much the same.  Still I am not entirely alone in feeling this about Brahms - Tchaikovsky and Britten, to name only two composers, were very scathing indeed in what they said about his music.

I think at some stage years ago I might have heard this string quartet, when I was making an effort to get to know Brahms, but if I did I don't remember any of it.  Listening to it today brought back all of my feelings about the composer. Some attractive parts but nothing seemed to hang together and all too often the sense of line was interrupted. One of my biggest bugbears about Brahms is the constant interaction between 3/4 and 6/8 - he seems unable to stick to one or the other for any extended length of time. That was certainly true here and it continued to irritate me!  The last movement is in variation form - so at least it was possible to follow what he was trying to do. But towards the end there is a sudden intrusion of the opening material of the first movement.  I can see on paper that he was trying to show that there was some commonality in the shape of that material and his variation theme, but as a purely aural experience it just jarred.

So this was not the moment when I had a revelation from on high and the greatness of Brahms revealed itself to me - perhaps it will happen one day. After all, as I have mentioned here, it did with Handel and Rameau. But time is running out..........

Bruch String quartet no 1

 Day 94

Bruch String quartet no 1 in C minor op 9

Mannheim String Quartet

Bruch is almost, but not quite, a ‘one work’ composer. I suppose I have known his first violin concerto all my life as it was a favourite work of my parents and their LP of the concerto was often playing. It is a lovely piece and I was glad to hear it live a few days ago in concert. I have played a couple of other Bruch pieces - Kol Nidrei and the Scottish Fantasy and neither of them have anything like the same attractiveness, indeed the latter is one of the most boring pieces I have played for some time!

This quartet is a relatively early work (1859) - I had heard part of the slow movement before but this was the first time I had heard the whole piece. It is very much in the Schumann Mendelssohn tradition and is extrovert in character, quite symphonic in style and obvious designed for public performance. 

The first movement I found rather ordinary - the material was not particularly memorable and it did seem rather over extended, but the other three movement were more successful. The slow movement is beautifully lyrical and one can sense that this is by the same composer as the violin concerto, though it has to be said that it comes perilously close to plagiarising the slow movement of the Mendelssohn octet at times! The third movement has a Schumannesque rhythm and the finale is a lively 6/8 vivace rondo which builds to an impressive climax. 

There is a lot more Bruch to discover - he lived a long life, dying in 1920. Tovey said that his finest pieces were those for chorus and orchestra so perhaps that is the area to explore.

Fuchs String Quartet no 1

 Day 93

Fuchs String quartet no 1 in E major op 58

Minguet Quartet

Robert Fuchs' name appears in the literature fairly frequently because of his long career as a teacher in Vienna. Among his pupils are Enescu, Korngold, Mahler, Schreker, Sibelius, Wolf and Zemlinsky. The sources differ as to who exactly were his pupils and I suspect that some of these may have attended composition classes as junior students rather than had one-to-one personal study session. That list gives a good indication of Fuchs' time and place. He was born in 1847 and lived on until 1927, by which time he must have seen a relic of another age.

One of my tutors at university, the late Robert Pascall, was an expert on Fuchs and wrote the article on him in Grove. So we were exposed to some of his music during our time at university but I hadn't heard this string quartet.

It is the first of four and dates from 1897. I thoroughly enjoyed listening to it. It is a late-romantic style as one would imagine but is generally quite gentle and not as overblown as much chamber music of the period: you can easily imagine four talented friends sitting down in a large drawing room in a house in Vienna and playing this music for their own enjoyment - it doesn't make bold statements and never puts too much strain on the medium.

There is certainly a Brahmsian feel to some of the music - Brahms was a great admirer of Fuchs - but the textures are generally less dense that those of Brahms - to me that is a real plus. I also sense the presence of Bruckner from time to time, particularly in the rustic second movement where the trio section could fairly easily have fitted into an early Bruckner symphony. Perhaps the slow third movement was rather unmemorable but the lively finale brought the piece to a spirited conclusion.

By all accounts Fuchs was self-effacing and didn't go out of his way to drawn attention to his own music. But I would certainly be happy to encounter the other string quartets and perhaps the serenades, which seem to have been the most popular of his pieces during his lifetime. 

 

Raff String quartet no 3

 Day 92

Raff String quartet no 3 in e minor

After a series of British symphonies it is time to explore a different repertory so I will spend the next few days of this project looking at the string quartet repertory. Also, given that I have spend a lot of time with French and Russian music recently as well, I’ll look at pieces in the Austro-German tradition.

Raff is one of those composers who gets a mention now and then for his programmatic symphonies and also because of his assistance with the orchestration of some of Liszt’s symphonic poems, though the extent of that ‘assistance’ is open to debate. He was quite highly regarded in his day (1822-1882) but the only piece of his that retains any place in the repertory is his Cavatina, which occasionally gets played as an encore piece in violin recitals.  I have a vague memory that I did listen to one of the symphonies years ago but nothing has stuck in my memory.

This quartet, the third of 8, dates from 1866. I found it a curiously uneven work. The first movement was a well mannered piece typical of a Leipzig schooled disciple of Mendelssohn or Schumann - the melodic material was attractive but I got the sense that Raff didn’t really have much of a sense of how to develop that material and the piece rather meandered along. The second, scherzo-like, movement was much more interesting - it started out as pure Mendelssohn but developed into quite unexpected harmonic areas and had some interesting textures which pointed to much later music. The third was a complete mystery. It is a theme and variations on a very simple theme. The variations themselves were rather like the simple variations which you find in the early Mozart piano music - each variation has a single idea which persists throughout. It all seemed very stiff and must have seen old-fashioned even at the time it was written - though the coda was rather lovely. The last movement had some attractive ideas but again I didn’t get a sense that Raff quite knew where he was going with the music and the incessant dotted rhythms rather began to pall. It ended quite perfunctorily.

Raff has his supporters and there were certainly glimpses here of a strong musical personality - particularly in the second movement - but I rarely felt totally engaged by this music or got a sense that Raff is an unjustly neglected master. Perhaps the evidence of one piece is not enough to make that sort of judgement but in this case I don’t think musical history has got Raff wrong.

Brian Gothic Symphony

 Day 91

Brian Gothic Symphony 

Soloists

Various choirs

BBC National Orchestra of Wales

BBC Concert Orchestra

Martyn Brabbins

This short series of British Symphonies ends with perhaps one of the most famous - perhaps notorious - of all of them. The Gothic symphony has the reputation of being both the longest and biggest of all symphonies. Whether that is true depends on how you define a symphony and whether or not you count unperformed pieces but under any definition this is a monster of a piece. The score is almost unreadable simply because there are so many staves so how anybody conducts from it is a complete mystery. There is a famous picture of Sir Adrian Boult, who conducted the professional premiere, addressing the distant choir at a rehearsal though a megaphone.

I’d heard a couple of the shorter Brian symphonies before but this was my first exposure to the Gothic. It is certainly an extraordinary piece and hearing it live in the Albert Hall must have been a thrilling experience But in the cold light of day how does it rate as a piece of music?  Pretty well in my opinion. There was some very impressive music here as well as some music which seemed, at least on first hearing, completely bizarre and impenetrable. There is a multiplicity of music styles here: the Russian influence is strong but it is still demonstrably English in character - Holst and Vaughan Williams were clearly part of the same tradition though they never ventured into the extremes of the idiom in the way that Brian does. But there are all sorts of other resonances in the music as well as foretastes of things to come. There were hints of Ives, Stravinsky and Britten among others.

The choral writing is extraordinary and places almost impossible demands on the singers - I noticed that some discrete organ support for some of the most difficult passages which was not included in the score. It is a reminder of the virtuosity that composers could expect from English choirs in the early 20th century - the choral symphonies of Granville Bantock are another example.  

I must confess that I didn’t listen to the symphony in one continuous sitting but spaced it out over the day - so perhaps I didn’t get the full cumulative effect of the piece but still it made a big impact. There is an endless fascination in what Brian does with the massive forces at his disposal. Not everything works and in many ways he doesn’t exploit some of the more unusual instruments in the way that I had expected. But his writing for the percussion is phenomenal - and the xylophone solo in the third section is one of the maddest things I have ever heard in a major symphonic work - I hope the player got a special bow at the end of the performance.

This ends this phase of my exploration of British symphonies. There are still many more of them to listen to and perhaps I will return to the subject later in the project.