April 2009 - Posts
There are oiminous stories about the possibility of the New York Times selling its radio station WQXR, the flagship of American classical radio stations. If this happens, it could be a devastating blow to classical music on the radio. This great station could either cease to exist or be bought by another organization, possibly leading to dumbed-down classical programming compromising its artistic integrity.
But this is hardly surprising given the current eeconomic crisis and the difficulties the Times is having of its own, similar to newspapers across the country. Unfortunately, many classical radio stations in America have gone under, and many of those which are still around offer less than great programming, often sticking to the most familiar warhorses,and playing just isolated movements from famous works. Let's hope that WQXR will not suffer this fate.
New York without WQXR would be as unthinkable as the city without such landmarks as the Empire State building, the Statue of Liberty or the Brooklyn bridge. In addition to playing recordings of a wide,wide classical repertoire, it offers live broadcasts of concerts from around the city and elsewhere, taped concerts by great symphony orchestras of Chicago, Cleveland, Detroit, and New York's own Philharmonic, Metropolitan Opera broadcasts, and much,much more.
WQXR's announcers are the most knowledgable and enthusiastic in the business, and don''t just tell you what's playing but offer stimulating and informative commentary. You can hear everything from familiar masterpieces by Bach, Handel, Beethoven, Mozart , Schubert, Brahms and Tchaikovsky etc, to to music by leading contemporary composers such as John Adams, Philip Glass, John Corigliano, William Bolcom and others. You can hear broadcasts of complete recordings on Saturdays when the Met broadcast season is over, and taped live performaces from the opera houses of Chicago, Houston and elsewhere.
For fans of the piano, the noted pianist and teacher David Dubal has a very interesting program on in which he compares performances of the same works by many different pianists, famous and obscure. Famous pianists, violinists and singers etc sometimes come to the station to be ionterviewed. And even if you don't live in the New York area, you can listen on the internet at WQXR.com, and see their playlist every day. We can't afford to lose the jewel in the crown of classical radio.
There are oiminous stories about the possibility of the New York Times selling its radio station WQXR, the flagship of American classical radio stations. If this happens, it could be a devastating blow to classical music on the radio. This great station could either cease to exist or be bought by another organization, possibly leading to dumbed-down classical programming compromising its artistic integrity.
But this is hardly surprising given the current eeconomic crisis and the difficulties the Times is having of its own, similar to newspapers across the country. Unfortunately, many classical radio stations in America have gone under, and many of those which are still around offer less than great programming, often sticking to the most familiar warhorses,and playing just isolated movements from famous works. Let's hope that WQXR will not suffer this fate.
New York without WQXR would be as unthinkable as the city without such landmarks as the Empire State building, the Statue of Liberty or the Brooklyn bridge. In addition to playing recordings of a wide,wide classical repertoire, it offers live broadcasts of concerts from around the city and elsewhere, taped concerts by great symphony orchestras of Chicago, Cleveland, Detroit, and New York's own Philharmonic, Metropolitan Opera broadcasts, and much,much more.
WQXR's announcers are the most knowledgable and enthusiastic in the business, and don''t just tell you what's playing but offer stimulating and informative commentary. You can hear everything from familiar masterpieces by Bach, Handel, Beethoven, Mozart , Schubert, Brahms and Tchaikovsky etc, to to music by leading contemporary composers such as John Adams, Philip Glass, John Corigliano, William Bolcom and others. You can hear broadcasts of complete recordings on Saturdays when the Met broadcast season is over, and taped live performaces from the opera houses of Chicago, Houston and elsewhere.
For fans of the piano, the noted pianist and teacher David Dubal has a very interesting program on in which he compares performances of the same works by many different pianists, famous and obscure. Famous pianists, violinists and singers etc sometimes come to the station to be ionterviewed. And even if you don't live in the New York area, you can listen on the internet at WQXR.com, and see their playlist every day. We can't afford to lose the jewel in the crown of classical radio.
Stanley Drucker turned 80 this year and is one of the world's greatest clarinet virtuosos. He has been principal clarinet there for many,many years, and joined the orchestra before he was out of his teens ! After an astonishing 60 years with the orchestra, he will be retiring at the end of this season, but will continue to play and teach.
In his long and illustrious career, he has played under virtually every great conductor of the past 60 years, and under renowned New York Philharmonic music directors ranging from Dimitri Mitropoulos in the 1950s, and successively, Leonard Bernstein, Pierre Boulez, Zubin Mehta, Kurt Masur and Lorin Maazel.
In addition, he has been a regular solist with the orchestra, playing clarinet concertos by Mozart, Carl Nielsen, Aaron Copland , John Corigliano and other composers, as well as appearing as a soloist with numerous other orchestras. Drucker has taught for many years at the Juilliard school right next to the New York Philharmonic's home Avery Fisher hall for many years. His wife Naomi is also an accomplished clarinettist, and has pursued a career of her own. He has recorded a number of important works for clarinet,such as the Nielsen concerto and the world premiere recording of the clarinet concerto by American composer John Corigliano Jr.
Stanley Drucker has received virtually every award and honor a musician could ever get ,and has toured all over the world with the New York Philharmonic, recorded an enormous number of works with it as principal clarinettist, and has taught many clarinettists who have gone on to successful careers in various major American orchestras.
Following in his footsteps will be an extremely difficult job, and the clarinet world is abuzz with anticipation now that his plum position is finally open. Who knows who will win the audition, which is certain to be an arduous one,even by the difficult standards of orchestral auditions.? Will it be a clarinettist from another major US orchestra or some young rising talent from Juilliard or other top music schools? It's the opportunity of a lifeltime.
For some reason, the number nine has long been a superstitious number for many composers. It all started with Beethoven, who wrote nine symphonies, the last being the immortal "Choral" symphony with the famous "Ode To Joy". Other composers who wrote (more or less) nine symphonies include Franz Schubert, Anton Bruckner, the Englishmen Ralph Vaughan Williams, Sir Malcolm Arnold, and Antonin Dvorak.
But it isn't that simple. Schubert's ninth was famously unfinished,and the seventh remains in sketch form,but later orchestrated by others. Bruckner died before finishing his ninth, but wrote two early unnumbered symphonies,one called no 0. Mahler left his tenth in sketch form,and it was later completed by others.
Joseph Haydn worte no fewer than 107 symphonies, although the numbering goes up only to 107. There are 41 numbered Mozart symphonies, several early unnumbered ones, and no no 37. It appears that Mozart wrote only the opening of what might have been no 37, and another composer wrote the rest. The French composers Cesar Franck (actually a Belgian), Paul Dukas and Ernest Chausson wrote only one symphony each. Brahms wrote four, Tchaikovsky, Carl Nielsen, Bohuslav Martinu six, Sibelius and Prokofiev seven, Dimitri Shostakovich 15, Nikolai Myaskovsky 27, etc.
But some composers became superstitious about the number nine ,including Briuckner and Mahler, who feared dying before completing more. In our time, the noted Finnmish conductor and composer Leif Segerstam, born in 1944, has written more than 200 ! Some composers, such as Claude Debussy, Maurice Ravel, the Russian Modest Mussorgsky, and the German Max Reger (1873- 1916, ) wrote no symphonies. Debussy considered the symphony a rather academic musical form and avoided writing them, but some consider his famous orchestral work La Mer(the sea), to be somewhat of a symphony.
At the time the second world war ended, Shostakovich had written 8 symphonies. Nos 7 and 8 were inspired by the horrors of the second world war, and evoke the terrible suffering of the Russian people. duuring the war, the 7th being called the"Leningrad" symphony. Joseph Stalin, whose off and on displeasure with his music had caused Shostakovich so much mental suffering, was reportedly expecting the composer to write a huge, bombastic choral symphony celebrating the end of the devastating war. But Shostakovich wrote his brief, almost Haydnesque 9th symphony, a work full of mocking sarcasm, which displeased Stalin greatly.
But the great 10th symphony was written after Stalin died in 1953, and the finale is unusually joyous and exuberant for Shostakovich, and has been described as an expression of relief at the death of the murderous tyrant. The short and brutal second movement has been described as a poretrait of Stalin.
You can get recordings of all these symphonies, and ones by who knows how many other composers either singly or in boxed sets with all a composers symphonies with one conductor and orchestra. More than 70 different conductors have recorded sets of all 9 Beethoven symphonies, some more than once, such as Herbert von Karajan (1908-1989), who recorded no fewer than four complete Beethoven cycles in his lifetime.
Among the conductors who have recorded all nine Beethoven symphonies are such great names as Arturo Toscanini,Leonard Bernstein, George Szell. Bruno Walter, Bernard Haitink, Eugen Jocheum, Otto Klemperer, Sir Georg Solti, Karl Bohm, Nikolaus Harnoncourt, and many others. The late Hungarian conductor Antal Dorati was the first conductor to record an integral set of all of the Haydn symphonies in the 1970s, and I have seen it at Tower records, unfortunately now out of business,in a huge boxed set . On LP, it had previously been issued in installments .
For some reason, composers have not been producing as many symphonies as in the past, but notable ones have been written by composers such as Poland's Witold Lutoslawski and Krzystof Penderecki, England's Michael Tippett, Peter Maxwell Davies and Robert Simpson, Henri Dutilleaux of France, and Americans John Corigliano, Christopher Rouse, William Bolcom, and others. The symphony is far from dead !
The radio broadcasts from the Metropolitan opera concluded this past Saturday with Wagner's "Twilight of the Gods", also bringing the might Ring cycle to a close. It was a fitting conclusion to an exciting season. One more Ring cycle will be performed, and the Met's last performances of the season will continue into early May.
The audience was wildly enthusiastic at the broadcast, and the loudest cheers were for the beloved conductor James Levine, who has been conducting there for nearly 40 years since his debut as a promising youngster in 1971. Performing this colossal Wagner opera is unbelievably strenuous for all, whether the singers,the orchestra and the conductor. It;s the musical equivalent of the New York marathon. But the hard-working brass section of the great Met orchestra got through with minimal blooper, which is amazing.
This season also brought the long-awaited debut of the great conductor and pianist Daniel Barenboim at the Met conducting Wagner's "Tristan and Isolde", who finally managed to fit the Met into his very busy schedule as music director of the Berlin State Opera and his appearences with other orchestras, not to mention performing as a pianist.
A number of the radio broadcasts were also broadcast in high definition in movie theaters all over the US and elsewhere,and have been seen on PBS telecasts later. These will eventually be released on DVD. Margaret Juntwait has been the host of the broadcasts, along with the renowned opera expert,voval coach and stage director Ira Siff. They always describe the action of the operas vividly and offer though-provoking commentary.
The radio broadcasts will resume this December , and next season promises to be an exceptionally interesting one, with operas never performed at the Met such as Janacek's powerful and moving"From the House of the Dead",based on Dostoyevsky, Verdi's "Atilla", about the infamous Hun and his conquest of Italy, "The Nose" by Shostakovich, perhaps the most bizarre opera of all time, and revivals of Rossini's "Armida" and "Hamlet", by French composer Abroise Thomas, both unheard at the Met for many decades.
If your local radio station does not carry the boradcasts, you can hear them at sirius.com. You can also go to operanews.com and metopera.org for more information.
Here are some good ones. Puns, courtesy of Steakhausen.com Musical food puns: Ravelioli. Beef Ellington.
Robert Schumanicotti. Chopin Suey. Nat King coleslaw. Rite of spring rolls.Creme Boulez. Puccini mushrooms.
Ives cream. Chopin fried steak. Grieg salad. BBQ pulled Porkofiev. BeethOven roasted chicken. Bachwurst. Minuet steak. Salasa Verdi.
Lohengrin salad. Bach-la-va. James Levineroasted tomatoes. mMozartishoke hearts. Tonight's Menuhin. Orange Schubert.
Bjork rinds. Bach's lunch. Carmina banana. Miscelaneous puns: Rocky-maninov.Rocky-maninov 2. Bach to the future.
Liszterine mouthwash. Gustav Molar. Get Bach. Gershwinn bikes. Baroque Obama.
What do you yell when you're about to throw a piano down a mine shaft? See sharp or be flat.
What do you call somebody who gets hit down there? A flat minor.
1rs musician: Who was that piccolo I saw you with last night? 2nd musician: That was no piccolo- that was my fife.
What's the difference between a musician and a government bond? The bond eventually matures.
What do you call a musician who just broke up with his girlfriend? Homeless.
There was a very bad amateur pianist who was playing his piano one night, very badly as usual. All of a sudden,there was a knock at the dorr, and three armed policemen were facing him. Startled and frightened,the pianist asks-" What the hell is going on?" The arresting officer says- "You're under arrest. There were reports that somebody was murdering Beethoven here".
GROAN !!!!!!
Although the regular season for most of our orchestras and opera companies is coming to an end, the Summer will be anything but off season for classical music. All over Europe and America, music festivals proliferate,offering an enormous variety of music, ranging from ancient works to contemporary , with the world's greatest orchestras, conductors, instrumentalists and opera singers. Some of these performances will be broadcast over the radio and the internet.
In New York, the Mostly Mozart festival,with its resident orchestra and numerous distinguished guest musicians will be in residence at Avery Fisher hall at Lincoln Center. The French conductor louis Langree is music director, and many famous musicians and singers will appear there,playing music by Mozart and his contemporaries, and other interesting fare..
The world-famous Tanglewood festival in western Massachussetts is the Summer home of the Boston Symphony orchestra, and music director James Leviine and eminent guest conductors will present a variety of gala performances, including concert performances of operas. There is also a student orchestra of gifted young musicians which will present concerts under maestra Levine and other conductors, and Summer classes for promising young composers and conductors.
The Chicago Symphony orchestra resents concerts at Ravinia park outside of Chicago, plus a wide variety of other events, and the Cleveland Orchestra presents concerts at the Blossom Festival in Ohio. The Philadelphia Orchestra is in residence at the Saratoga Festival in upstate New York. In Santa Fe , New Mexico, there is the annual opera festival, offering operas familiar and unfamiliar in a spectacular theater in the New Mexico desert.
The Cabrillo festival in California offers a wide variety of music by contemporrary composers. Its festival orchestra is led by Marin Alsop, music director of the Baltimore Symphony orchestra.
In Europe, the annual Wagner Festival in Bayreuth, Germany , performs nothing but Wagner operas at the world-famous festival theater with its sunken orchestra pit where the orchestra and conductor are invisible to the audience. The is the oldest of all the music fetivals,dating back to 1876, when the first complete performance of Wagner's Ring was presented. The festival is held during July and August,and the world's leading Wagner conductors and singers apear here. But you have to wait literally years to get a ticket !
The Salburg festival in Austria , held in the picturesque town where Mozart was born,also attracts the world's greatest musicians. The great Vienna Philharmonic and orcher top orchestras present concerts here, and there are concerts and opera performances and recitals by famous musicians and singers.Naturally, the music of Mozart is a prominent part of the festival.
In rural England on an elegant estate, the Glyndebourne opera festival presents operas by Handel,Wagner, Dvorak, and Verdi in its festival theater. It's a traditional for audiences to eat picnic style on the grounds ! The Edinburgh festival in Scotalnd features a wide variety or orchestral concerts and staged opera performances as well as recitals
In Switzerland, the Lucerne Festival features the Lucerne Festival orchestra, a hand-picked orchestra with musicians from the world's greatest orchestras led by it founder, the venerable Italian maestro,Claudio Abbado, plus opther visiting orchestras
This is just the tip of the iceberg. There are numerous other festivals in Vienna, Berlin, Munich, Florence, Dresden, and other cities, small and large. You can check operanews.com for further information.
More and more bad news seems to be coming from the classicsal music world because of the economic crisis. It's not a pretty picture, but classical music will definitely survive these difficult times. And there is the possibility of greater government support from the National Endowment For the Arts.
The Metropolitan Opera has been forced to cancel its Summer concert performances of complete operas in the parks of New York and surrounding Metropolitan area which it has been offering for free for many years. There will,however, an evening of arias open to the public. I remember vivdly the Met concert performances on Long Island where I used to live, but unfortunately, local budget cuts forced cancellation of the Long Island performances. I also attended the free Summer concerts of the New York Philharmonic which have also long been cancelled.
The New York City Opera is schduled to begin its abbreviated season at the newly renovated David H Koch theater in Lincoln Center, formerly known as the New York State Theater, but unfortunately, there is the possibility of a strike firther shortening or even cancelling the season. The San Francosco and Los Angeles operas have been forced to lay off some of those working on staff in administration. The Washington National Opera in our nation's capitol has been forced to cancel its complete production of Wagner's Ring next season. The companyy has been gradually introcucung its productions of the separate operas but will not be able to present a complete Ring Cycle .
The Phoenix Symphony in Arizona is threatened by economic problems and may have to cancel auditions for opeining in the orchestra. Other orchestras with financial problems include the Virginia Symphony, Honolulu Symphony, the Shreveport Symphony in Louisiana, the Columbus Symphony in Ohio, the Minnesota Orchestra in Minneapolis, and the Cincinnati Symphony orchestra.
The Boston Symphony Orchestra has been forced to cancel an upcoming tour of Europe under its music director James Levine. But the good news is that this world-famous orchestra has started to issue live recordinngs from its concerts on its own record label. The Cleveland and Philadelphia orchestras are also having there difficulties.
Telarc records of Cleveland is no longer recording the Cincinnati and Atlanta Symphony orchestras, and virtually none of the major US orchestras has a recording contract with a major record label. But the ever enterprising Naxos label is starting to issue recordings by such orchestras as the Seattle Symphony and the Nashville Symphony of music by American composers. Yes, Nashville has been gaining more and more importance as a center for classical music in America, with its high quality orchestra and opera company !
Unfortunately, the Baltimore Opera and the Connecticut Opera have gone under. But there are still more opera companies in America then ever before. The number of opera companies in America has grown exponentially from the past, when the only important opera companies were in New York ,Chicago and San Francisco, and there are also more orchestra than ever before, and there have never been so many first-rate ones. You can't keep a great art form like classical music down.
There's an interesting discussion at the classical music blog 101cds.blogspot.com called "Why Nobody Likes Modern Classical Music" . This blog is an excellent and informative guide for classical newbies on how to go about starting a classical CD collection, and it usually discusses famous classical works with suggestions for CDs to aquire.
But the latest post asks the question"Why is new or recent classical music usually received with such hostility or indifference by audiences?" Good question. But what exactly is "modern classical music"? This is a very broad field, with an enormous number of composers in the past 50 years or so writing an enormous amount of music in a bewildering variety of styles. You have the austere serialists such as Pierre Boulez,writing music which is about as easy to listen to as a treatise on nuclear physics is easy to read for laymen. Then you have neo-romantic composers writing in a more traditional style (sort of) modeled on the music of the past.
Then you have the minimalists,such as Philip Gl;ass, Steve Reich and others who devosed a kind of music which is seductively hypnotic to some and maddeningly repetitious to others. There have also been composers such as the late American Lou Harrison, who studied and were influenced by non-western musics such the Indonesian Gamelan tradition, and other trendy non-western influences.
The fact is, that of you attend any concert by one of our symphony orchestras where a new or recent work is played, and you talk to different audience members, you'll get a variety of responses. Some may say they hated the new piece, some might really like, others may say"Well,I'm not sure.I'll have to hear it again", and others might be just plain puzzled. So it's not true that everybody hates modern classical music. It depends on the audience and what is being played.
For example, when PBS presented the the New York premiere of John Adams' recent opera "Doctor Atomic" at the Metropolitan Opera, the audience reaction was obviously very enthusiastic. When the composer took a bow before the audience, he was greeted with nothing but cheers. Elliott Carter, who turned 100 this past December, has been having amazing success in his Indian Summer, and his centennial was widely celebrated all over America and Europe. Mind you, Carter writes music that is incredibly dense and complex, and that looking for hummable melodies in his music is like looking for lush vegetation on the moon.
New American operas such as "Dead Man Walking" by Jake Heggie,based on the famous book about a nun who befriended a death row prisoner, Mark Adamo's "Little Women",based on the classic novel, Andre Previn's operatic adaption of the famous play"A Streetcar Named Desire", "The Ghosts of Versailles" by John Corigliano , and "Cold Sassy Tree" by Carlisle Floyd,are only a few of the operas that have been successfully performed recently in America and elsewhere.
Composers such as Americans Ned Rorem, William Bolcom, John Harbison, Charles Wuorinen, Christopeher Rouse, Joan Tower, Steven Stucky and others are being performed everywhere, and audiences are not always hostile to their music. So it's important to keep a historical perspective; most of the classical music written over the centuries has been forgotten anyway, so if many works written recently don't make in into the"Canon" of classical music, it's no big deal.
Last weekend I saw an interesting profile on 60 Minutes on CBS of the dangerous yet glamorous world of bullfighting in Spain. Yes, there's always the risk of death or serious injury, but the life of a bullfighter can be very exciting,to say the least. Then it struck me how similar bullfighting is to playing the horn in an orchestra, particularly if one has the hot seat of the orchestra, principal of the section.
The bullfighter has to face a massive and highly agressive animal; the horn player has to contend with with what has been described as the wild beast of the orchestra- the horn. Both are extremely difficult to handle and highly unpredicatable. You never know whether either will turn on you or not. It takes nerves of steel to enter the arena or the stage of the concert hall when you're about to play something difficult, demanding, long and tiring.
Of course, you don't risk dying at a concert, but there is always the risk of failure at a concert, or the opera pit, not to mention being the soloist in a difficult horn concerto. High notes are a horn player's worst fear. They're the hardest to hit accurately, and place the most pressure on the lip, which can take only so much. The risk of missing high notes is so great because the higher notes on the horn require more minute adjustments of lip pressure; lower notes do not,so the're much easier to hit. If you're off by only a tiny fraction of lip pressure, you momentarily hit an adjacent not above or below what you were aiming for, and you don't get a clean attack. This is what is known as a "clam". I't's very sdistracting to the audience, and when attending concerts ,I've observed people reacting with alarm to clams.
The lowest notes are difficult in a different way, and hard to play with power. Horn players usually specialize in being either high or low parts; high ones are the first and third,low players the second and fourth. But there are some works with passages for all the horns playing high notes, and some with the whole section playing low ones, so players need to be reasonably good with both.
Then, there's the question of endurance. Some symphonies, such as those of Bruckner and Mahler, can be very long, sometimes lasting over an hour. Mahler's 3rd is the longest well-known symphony, at about 90 minutes, in SIX movements ! The longer you play, and the higher the part lies, the more strain on the lips, and you endurance is challenged. After a long rehearsal or performance, your lips get tender and sore, and it takes hours for the lip to recover. That's why, in long and difficult parts in professional orchestras, the first horn has an assisatant first to take over playing at times so he or she can save strength for the solo passages, and also to double the first part in some passages to reinforce the sound of the horns.
But the most exhausting horn parts by far are the terribly long Wagner operas . I had a teacher who sometimes played with the Metropolitan opera orchestra, and he said that when you play a Wagner performance there,"Your lips are tired before the curtain goes up!". In the second act of Siegfried, the third of Wagner's great music dramas of the Ring, a solo horn player has to play a long and difficult solo,mimed by the hero Siegfried, playing his stage horn to awaken the sleeping dragon Fafner for a battle to the death.
This is one of the most dreaded passages for horn, and ends with a ringing high note. The player is all alone, playing unaccompanied, and is walking on eggs. Beethoven's single opera Fidelio, and Mozart's opera Cosi Fan Tutte(So do they all), contain parts for two or three horns accomapnying a soprano in arias; these are also extremely difficult. Perhaps the most monstrously difficult horn concerto is the one by Robert Schumann for four horns,called the Konzertstuck, or concert piece. The first horn part is so horrendously difficult it's like walking tightrope without a net over hungry lions and a pool of sharks !
The first horn is the Matador; the other horns have a subsidiary but important position, but the first horn gets all the glory, like the Matador in the end.
When the classic Stanley Kubrick Sci-Fi movie 2001-A Space Odyssey came out just over 40 years ago, it made striking use of the opening to the great tone poem "Also Sprach Zarathustra" by Richard Strauss, based on the enigmatic book by Nietzsche. Soon, the majestic opening was heard everywhere, and pbecame a part of popular culture, something which would probably have puzzled and even disgusted the composer and the eccentric philosopher. The opening has been used by Rock and pop musicians as diverse as Elvis Presley, the Dave Matthews band and Phish, and could be heard on television commercials.
Strauss was an admirer of Nietzxsche and was fascinated by the enigmatic book"Thus Spake Zarathustra, which used the histrical figure of the ancient pre-islamic Persian religious teacher Zarathustra (Zoroaster in Greek) as a figurehead for the pronunciation that"God Is Dead", and anti-christian ideas. He read the book, or poem, and was filled with enthusiasm. And in the late 1890s, he attempted to portray the unique atmosphere of the book in music. The idea was to represent the development of man from primitive beginnings to the Nietzschean concept of the "Superman"(not Clark Kent)". !
Although you no doubt have heard the majestic opening many times, you may not be familiar with the complete Strauss work, which is both rhapsodic and tightly organized in form. The opening may be said to represent the dawn of mankind. Strauss calls it sunrise. The large orchestra includes an organ. New themes are introduiced throughout the work , but the opening motif of C-G-C -sunrise, recurs constantly and is constantly varied.
This leads to the section called "Of the backworldsmen", leading to "Of the great longing" (or yearning), and then a stormy section called "Of Joys and Passions". Next comes a somber passage caled "The Grave Song". This leads to the section ,right at the middle of the work called "Of Science". Here Strauss writes an elaborate fugue, with complex counterpoint. The fugue is considered the most "scientific" musical form.
The next section is called"The convalescent", leading to a lilting waltz-like section called the dance song, with an elaborate part for solo violin. This section sounds very much like a Viennese waltz, but infinititely more complex. The waltz buiids up to an orgiastic climax with cymbals crashing and bells ringing. The last section is quiet and reflective, and bears the name "Song of the night wanderer". The ending is very quiet and highly enigmatic. But the work does not end in the original C major, with no sharps or flats, but in the directly adjacent key of B major, with five sharps in the key signature. But the lower strings quietly pluck the note C three times.
What are we to make of this strange and enigmatic work? A few years ago, I read the original Nietzsche work in English, and couldn't make much out of it. It's best just to surrender yourself to the rhapsodic beaties of the score and forget the rest. Many eminent conductors have recorded Also Sprach Zarathiustra,including the compoiser. A classic recording, which may be hard to find, is by the Indian-born Zubin Mehta with the Los Angeles Philharmonic. It so happens that Mehta is a member of the Parsi minority of India. They originally came from Iran(ancient Persia) ,and settled in India when that country became Muslim. The Paree religion is also called Zoroastrianism, and is based on the ancient teaching of Zarathustra, who lived well over 2,000 years ago !
A medieval Bart Simpson ? In a way, there was one, but he was an adult. There are centuries old legends about a prankster and rogue called Till Eulenspiegel in German, or owl's mirror in northern Germany, the Netherlands and Belgium by this name, who was every bit as irreverant and a prankster as Bart Simpson, but on a much larger scale.
Like Paul Bunyan, all manner of stories grew around the mythical figure , and the young Richard Straus used the legends to create on of his most popular and brilliant orchestral works, Till Eulenspiegel's Merry Pranks. It's only about 15 minutes, but is packed with the most vivid orchestral colors imaginable, with merry horn calls, screeching woodwinds, cymbal crashes, and other percussive noise makers such as the ratchet. Strauss wrote the work in 1894 at the age of 30, when he was on the conducting staff at the opera house of his native Munich, which is still an important operatic center.
The name of this outrageous prankster literally means an owl's mirror. The saying goes in northern Germany and the low countries that man recognizes his folly and hypocrisy no better than an owl recognizes its image in a mirror. Till does all manner of outrageous things in the musical story Strauss depicts; he oversturns the fruit and vegetable tables at markets, pokes fun of the clergy and engages in pesudo intellectual gibberish with learned professors at universities , plays tricks on landlords, shopkeepers, and flirts shamelessly with pretty girls.
According to Wikipedia, Till is constantly exposing the "vices, greed, folly, hypocrisy and follishness of those around him." If the Simpsons ever does a show on the mature Bart, he would be something like this. In the Strauss version of the story, Till's outrages escapades eventually get so out of hand that he is accused of blasphemy by the church,and hanged.
The tone poem is in the form of a Rondo, that is a piece with a main theme with contrasting melodies in which the main theme constantly recurs. It begins with a quiet"once upon a time " opening, and then a solo French horn plays Till's jaunty theme, highly syncopated and not easy to play at all. The theme is constantly transformed in the most clever way throughout the piece.
Strauss uses such unusual instruments as the small and shrill E flat clarinet to make screeching noises, and the whole rambuctious piece reaches a climax where the brass menacingly announces that Till has finally been caught , and the death sentence is announced. Till is hanged, and the once upon a time uopening returns. But the work still ends uproariously , with mocking, thumb nosing and raspberries. Despite his ignominious end, Till's merry, irreverent spirit will never die.
There a a wealth of different recordings of Till available on CD , and such great conductors and Strauss specialists as Karl Bohm, Clemens Krauss (both disciples of the composer, Rudolf Kempe, Herbert von Karajan, Fritz Reiner and many others have recorded this delightful piece. Most recordings are coupled with other Strauss symphonic peoms, and I even have a very old recording with the composer himself conducting.!
Many of the most famous conductors have lived to ripe old ages, and have remained active conducting travelling and recording at an age when most people have been long retired. Why is this so ? Well, conducting can be very strenuous physically, and provides a kind of aerobic excercize. However, some conductors are more vigorous and choreographic on the podium than others. Leonard Bernstein was famous,or possibly notorious for his flamboyant ,dancing podium manner,and the way he often seemed to literally jump around on the podium, seemingly defying gravity.
But his teacher and total opposite Friitz Reiner (1888- 1963) was famous for his minimalist gestures, tiny beat and near motionlessness on the podium. Yes, conducting can be very strenuous excercize. And conductors are sometimes prone to ailments such as bursitis from constantly moving their arms. Conducting the enormously long and demanding Wagner operas in the theater may be the most physically demanding effort of all. James Levine of the Metropolitan opera now conducts from a chair because of his problems with sciatica and back trouble, but on the basis of hearing his current performances of Wagner's monumental Ring cycle at the Met over the radio, he seems to doing quite well.
The legendary Leopold Stokowski (1882- 1977) had what was probably the longest career of any conductor. Born in England but of Polish descent, he moved to America as a young organist and embarked on a career conducting all over the world and gave his last public concert at the age of 90 ! And he continued to make recordings until his death five years later. Many of his countless recordings are still available on CD.
Another legendary podium figure , the Italian Arturo Toscanini (1867-1957) started out as a cellist and conducted his legendary first performance in Brazil at 19 as a member of the orchestra of a travelling Italian opera company when the scheduled conductor was unable to conduct, and went on to an illustrious career which lasted over 60 years. He gave his last concert at the age of 87 with the famous NBC Symphony orchestra which had been founded for him to conduct in the 1930s, and which disbanded soon after his death.
Unfortunately, at this final concert,which was broadcast by NBC radio, he seemed to have faltered while conducting an overture by Wagner, became disoriented and the performance momentarily fell apart. He lived in retirement at his home in upper Manhattan until his death in 1957, shortly before his 90th birthday.
Other conductors who have had remarkably long careers are Otto Klemperer (1885-1973), whom I discussed in an earlier post, and gave his last concert in 1972, frail but still authoritative, the eminent Englishman Sir Adrian Boult (1889-1983), the Germans Bruno Walter (1876-1962), Eugen Jochum (1902-1887), the Austrian Karl Bohm (1894-1981), the Russian Yevgeny Mravinsky ( 1903-1987), and the Frenchman Pierre Monteux( 1875-1964).
Montuex was a close friend of the great Igor Stravinsky, and conducted the scandalous world premiere performance Stravinsky's "Rite of Spring" and other famous works. He was appointed music director of the London Symphony orchestra at the age of 80 ! In opur time, Andre Previn just celebrated his 80th birthday,and is still active as a conductor,composer and pianist , and French composer/conductor Pierre Boulez has just celebrated his 84th birthday, and is still pursuing an active career on the podium, although he has given up conducting opera.
Other outstanding conductors were not so fortunate and died in tragically premature circumstances. The Italian Guido Cantelli (1920-1956),was a protege of Toscanini and his rise to success was meteroic, but unfortunately he died in a plane crash at age 36. The Hungarian conductor Istvan Kertesz (1929- 1973), served as music director of the London Symphony and Cologne opera in Germany, and was in demand everywhere, but unfortunately, during a conducting stint with the Israel Philharmonic, died in a swimming accident in the Mediterranean. The young African -American conductor Calvin Simmons (1950-1982) was conductor of the Oalkland symphony orchestra and was one one of the fastest -rising young conductors of his day, but died in a boating accident while vacationing in upstate New York.
Lorin Maazel (1930-), is soon to conduct his last concerts as music director of the New York Philharmonic, and was the world's first,and so far only,child prodigy conductor, having begun at around the age of ten ! Today, he has more vigor than many people half his age, and shows no signs of retiring. Being a major conductor is hardly an easy life, but it has its rewards !
I'ts not uncommon for certain classical works to exist in more than one form. Many composers have transcribed some of their works for different perfomers, such as making orchestral versions of chamber music, or vice versa, orchestrations of piano works, or versions of orchestral works for piano. In other cases, composers or others have transcribed the works of other composers.
One reason for these transcriptions by composers has been as a good source of extra income from publishers by having works available in more than one form. For example,Beethoven transcribed his famous violin concerto for oiano, turning it into another piano concerto. I don't recall any live performances of it, but several well-known pianists have recorded it, such as Daniel Barenboim. In past centuries,, before the age of recordings, transcriptions enabled amateur musicians who liked to have home music sessions with family and friends to play certain orchestral works they would have little or no chance of ever hearing live.
Yes, in the past, many people played the piano, violin or other instruments for their own enjoyment, even though they were not professional musicians. This has not died out altogether, but was much more common in the past before recordings and the internet.
Bach made transcriptions of some of his violin or piano concertos in interchangable versions. The legendary Hungarian piano virtuoso and composer Franz Liszt ( 1811-1886), made a transcription of all nine Beethoven symphonies for piano, and there have been several recordings of these in recent years. And the once famous Austrian composer and conductor Felix Weingartner (1863 -1942), made of transcription of Beethoven's longest and most complex piano sonata , the so-called "Hammerklavier" sonata, for orchestra, and recorded it. WEingartner was the first conductor to record all nine symphonies of Beethoven, and Brahms,of course in the original orchestral versions.
A number of the hundreds of songs for voice and piano by Franz Schubert have had the piano parts turned into orchestral ones, and some leading composers have done this, such as HUgo Wolf and Max Reger. Concert bands in America often play transcriptions of famous orchestral works for band, that is,without parts for strings. These can be very effective and I played these at countles band concerts in the past.
Some of the orchestral works of Maurice Ravel (1875-1937) , exist in both orchestral and piano versions, and several of Debussy's many piano works have been orchestrated also. Descri[ptive piano works such as"L'Isle Joyeuse" (the joyous island", and La Cathedrale Engloute" (the sunken cathedral) sound wonderful when skillfully orchestrated.
Whether done for simple profit or the curiousity of hearing alternate versions, transcriptions can make life more interesting for both musicians and listeners.
Ah memories ! This month, Joseph Patelson's legendary music store is closing. It's been there for so many years on W 56th street,directly behind Carnegie hall, and has sold all kinds of classical sheet music,books and magazines . Here, classical musicians and any one who love classical music could find orchestral scores, music for all instruments, books on music theory and history and magazines. Famous classical musicians went there all the time to shop for sheet music. It was a New York institution.
I myself always went there when I would take the Long Island railroad from Levittown where I used to live. It was THE place for any one involved with classical music to be. There I couod always find concertos, sonatas and other works for horn, plus the books of orchestral excerpts every aspiring classical musician studies, as well as the full scores of orchestral works and operas. The clerks there were often classical musicians themselves, and were very knowledgable and opinionated.
But economic conditions and the sales of classical sheet music over the internet have forced the current owner, who is the daughter-in-law of the original owner Joseph Patelson, who died in 1992 to close the store for good. There are still other classical music stores in New York, such as the Juilliard bookstore at Lincoln center,which is open to the public and which I'm told has a great selection of classical sheet music and books, but every one will miss Patelson's. It's like a death in the family.
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