2022 Year In Review

 Our 2022 year-end post is likely the last blog post for me – at least for the foreseeable future.

As I stated in September, nearly 12 years into this experiment, I have concluded that it is time for me to take a step back. In that vein, our montage no. 400 featuring Tchaikovsky’s Sleeping Beauty will be my last in our Friday series. 

When we began this experiment in 2011, few of us could see a fundamental change in the delivery of music, with the near-dominance of subscription streaming music services and digital media purchases rather than hard media like CDs and the boutique vinyl business. This is true in popular music, as it is in classical/concert music and opera.

I began bundling music in the form of podcasts as a way of filling a gap I perceived, that was created in Canada with dependable sources of on-demand music leaving terrestrial airwaves. Little did we know that the music listening public would make the transition so easily to newfangled media.

In short, what I do isn’t really required anymore, and the time I once thought I’d have in semi-retirement  to dedicate to this venture is more scarce than I imagined it would be.

The future of “For Your Listening Pleasure”

I must remind you that our Internet Archive has the bulk of our music shares readily available to listen to (with their built-in player) or for download. As long as that service is around, that music will be there for all to enjoy.

At this time, I still have a good number of past Tuesday shares and Operas that have not yet been posted on the Podcasting Channel, and in the spirit of curating our archived content I plan to do just that – post them in slow time as I curate the archive. Don't be surprised if the odd A la Carte post pops up every now and then as part of that exercise.

As a service to all of my listeners, I will maintain past episodes currently active until the end of January, slowly reducing our footprint down to the “basic” (free of charge to me) 500 MB storage level – which amounts to 5 - 7 episodes. There will be a commensurate download limit, but if I post to the archive concurrently, that won’t be too much of an issue.

As I post newly curated material, I’ll pull out oldest montages. When I’m done with that, I’ll take stock of the activity om the podcast and decide what happens next.

Before I leave you to enjoy our annual YouTube playlist of goodies, I wanted one last time to thank you for joining me in this experiment. It was fun while it lasted!

Happy holidays and Happy 2023 to all!

Pierre

Tchaikovsky: The Sleeping Beauty

No. 400 of the ongoing ITYWLTMT series of audio montages is this week's Friday Blog and Podcast. It can be found in our archives at https://archive.org/details/pcast400

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Our 400^th and final montage for this year (and the concluding montage for our ongoing Friday series) is a crossover post from our survey of the complete Tchaikovsky ballets, which we began this part Tuesday.

The Sleeping Beauty was the second of Tchaikovsky's three ballet scores, composed and orchestrated from October 1888 to August 1889, with minor revisions during stage rehearsals in the last three months of 1889. The score consists of an Introduction and 30 individual numbers, laid out as a shoirt prologue, and three acts.

"I am planning to write a libretto on La belle au bois dormant after Perrault's fairy tale. I would like a mise en scène in the style of Louis XIV, which would be a musical fantasia written in the spirit of Lully, Bach, Rameau, etc. If this idea appeals to you, then why not undertake to write the music? In the last act there would have to be quadrilles for all Perrault's fairy-tale characters—these should include Puss-in-Boots, Hop o' My Thumb, Cinderella, Bluebeard, etc." - Ivan Vsevolozhsky, in a letter of 13/25 May 1888

In 1888, Ivan Vsevolozhsky (Director of Imperial Theatres for Saint Petersburg) commissioned a new ballet from Tchaikovsky — The Sleeping Beauty — for which he provided a detailed scenario, as well as suggestions as to how the epoch of Louis XIV was to be reproduced in the music and on the stage. This time the composer was enthusiastic about the subject and readily set to work on the assignment.

Vsevolozhsky arranged the initial meeting between Tchaikovsky and Marius Petipa (choreographer and principal dancer at the Imperial Theatres in Saint Petersburg), and throughout their fruitful collaboration on this first joint project he acted as an intermediary between them. A fine draughtsman, Vsevolozhsky also produced sketches of the costumes for the ballet's fairy-tale figures and supervised the work of the set designers, always striving for historical authenticity. The successful premiere of The Sleeping Beauty at the Mariinsky Theatre on 3/15 January 1890 vindicated his creative vision, and Yelena Fedosova has rightly emphasized that Vsevolozhsky anticipated by two decades the idea commonly attributed to Sergey Diaghilev (1872–1929) of "uniting composer, ballet master, and visual artist in the creation of a work".

Tchaikovsky acknowledged Vsevolozhsky's vital contribution and support by dedicating The Sleeping Beauty to him. Although the authorship of the libretto is normally attributed to Vsevolozhsky, it is possible that Marius Petipa also had some involvement, since in the archive of the latter there is a manuscript dated 3/15 July 1888, with a list of characters in the ballet, and descriptions of the numbers in every scene .

The performance is from the same Royal Philharmonic Orchestra anthology of the complete Tchaikovsky ballets (under Barry Wordsworth) we are surveying under the Cover2Cover series.

I think you will love this music too.

Tchaikovsky: Complete Ballets

This is my post from this week's Tuesday Blog.

This month on our podcasting channel, we are sharing many of our old Tchaikovsky montages, and this month’s Cover2Cover fits into the Tchaikovsky theme, with this mammoth Brilliant Classics YouTUbe post containing all three complete Tchaikovsky ballets.

Tchaikovsky’s ballets, Nutcracker, Sleeping Beauty and Swan Lake, are by far the most popular ballet music ever written, and count among the master’s most famous works. Tchaikovsky, tormented genius, found relief in writing these brilliant, featherweight works, conjuring up fantasy worlds of feel good fairy tales.

Though today all three ballets are much praised and performed,  this was not always so. It took time for their status to be established, and reactions to early productions were decidedly mixed during Tchaikovsky’s lifetime. Particularly saddening is the fact that the great composer died believing Swan Lake, perhaps his most celebrated ballet today, to be a failure – although this is in part due to the fact that the choreography most associated with the work today was developed after his death. The Sleeping Beauty, meanwhile, suffered the insult of a lukewarm imperial reception on its presentation to Tsar Alexander III in 1890; and Tchaikovsky himself believed The Nutcracker to be an inferior work, ‘infinitely worse than Sleeping Beauty’, in his own words.

In order to make the listening easier, I separated the three works into individual tracks in our music archive (and on the podcasting channel, with their publishing dates spread out throughout the month of December). Though all te music is performed by the Royal Philharmonic, each ballet is assigned to its own conductor.

Happy listening!

Pyotr Ilyich TCHAIKOVSKY (1840-1893)

Complete Ballets performed by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra

Swan Lake (Лебединое озеро), Op. 20 [TH 12]

Nicolae Moldoveanu, conducting

Recorded at Cadogan Hall on the 13th-15th July 2009

 

The Sleeping Beauty (Спящая красавица), Op. 66 [TH 13]

Barry Wordsworth, conducting

Recorded at Cadogan Hall on the 31st May - 2nd June 2010

 

The Nutcracker (Щелкунчик), Op. 71 [TH 14]

David Maninov, conducting

Recorded at Henry Wood Hall on the 15th and 16th April 1995

Brilliant Classics 94949

Details - https://www.brilliantclassics.com/articles/t/tchaikovsky-complete-ballets

Internet Archive - https://archive.org/details/1-01-swan-lake-op.-20

 

Ernest Ansermet A la Carte

No. 399 of the ongoing ITYWLTMT series of audio montages is this week's Friday Blog and Podcast. It can be found in our archives at https://archive.org/details/pcast399

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Original Post - TalkClassical, Blogger

Our final two Friday podcasts for 2022 (and conclusion to our long-running series) aren’t as much about new material as they are feeding ongoing curation initiatives we have undertaken for the past few years.

This penultimate montage is part of our A La Carte series that repackages old montages, in this case a 2019 odd-looking Vinyl’s Revenge post that we more aptly titles “Tape Deck’s Revenge” as it featured two old London VIVA cassette releases by Swiss conductor Ernest Ansermet. The VIVA series was a b udget re-issue platform at a time where digital releases we beginning to invade the shelves, often displacing these excellent recordings, which did merit reissue. The format of these reissues was both cassette and vinyl, not CD.

The first cassette on the original montage was packaging J.S Bach’s suites nos. 2 and 3 with a pair of filler tracks from his cantatas. Ansermet, at the time of the original release, also issued a pair of albums of Bach Cantatas, which London/Decca later packaged with this disk into a 2 CD Bach anthology by Ansermet.

The montage inserts Cantata 130 between the original A and B sides of the VIVA cassette.

I think you will (still) love this music too.

Jean Martinon (1910-1976)

No. 398 of the ongoing ITYWLTMT series of audio montages is this week's Friday Blog and Podcast. It can be found in our archives at https://archive.org/details/pcast398

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This week's Blog and Podcast picks up on a thread we started as part of Project 366 – montages featuring conductors who have more than one string up their bow. In this case, conductor and composer Jean Martinon.

Martinon entered the conservatory of Lyon, his hometown, at the age of thirteen. Three years later, he will leave to enter the National Conservatory in Paris. There he worked on the violin, composition (with Albert Roussel and Vincent d'Indy), and conducting (with Roger Désormière and Charles Munch). Quite the apprenticeship!

Working mainly as a violinist after his studies, he had the misfortune of being a prisoner of war for two years, interned in a stalag, where he composed several works for soloists, small ensembles and for choir.

It was after the war that Martinon took to the podium: first conductor of the Dublin Radio Symphony Orchestra (1947-1950), Colonne, Pasdeloup, and the Société des Concerts du Conservatoire (later the Orchestre de Paris) as substitute for Charles Munch.

From 1946 to 1948 he was associate conductor of the London Philharmonic Orchestra; it is with this orchestra that we find him as the curtain raiser of our montage, with three French operatic overtures from the 19th century.

From 1951 to 1958, he was president and conductor of the Concerts Lamoureux in Paris, then artistic director of the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra (1957-1959). In 1959, he was appointed to the post of general director of music in Düsseldorf (a prestigious post occupied in the 19th century by Schumann and Mendelssohn). His career then took him to the United States where, in 1963, he became musical director of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. Back in Paris, he became director of the National Orchestra of the ORTF, a position he held for six years. We find him with them on the montage for Bizet's bohemian dances.

Despite a busy schedule, he finds time to compose throughout his career. As an example, I have chosen one of his string quartets dating from 1966.

I think you will love this music too

David Zinman Conducts Richard Strauss

This is my post from this week's Tuesday Blog.

Other than updates to old posts, the one share I have planned for this month is a trio of selections from David Zinman’s anthology of orchestral works by Richard Strauss. His complete set (over 7 CDs) compares well to a similar set by Rudof Kempe that we sampled in these pages in the past.

American conductor Davis Zinman trained as a violinist and conductor, with a significant apprenticeship (along with Lorin Maazel) under French-American conductor Pierre Monteux. Monteux had a strong mastery of French repertoire and was renowned for premiering many seminal works from the first two decades of the 20^th century (such as Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring) but had a soft spot for German romantics (ditto for another French conductor who made his mark in Boston, Charles Munch).

Most of Zinman’s career has been based out of Europe – early stages in the Netherlands, and in the latter stages of  his memorable tenure  with the Baltimore Symphony (1985-1998), Zinman became music director of the Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich in 1995. 

Monteux’s influence on Zinman’s approach and his great all-around ability to navigate the entire Classical Music repertoire makes him in my mind one of the finest American conductors of his generation.

The below YouTube link points to the complete anthology, but the montage I ha eprepared focuses on three works, including the large tone poem Also Sprach Zarathustra. Aus Italien (From Italy), Strauss's first tone poem, is described by the composer as a "symphonic fantasy". It was completed in 1886 when he was 22 years old. It was inspired by the composer's visit to Italy in the summer of the same year, where he travelled to Rome, Bologna, Naples, Sorrento, Salerno, and Capri. He began to sketch the work while still on the journey.

Strauss’ single movement Romanze for cello and orchestra was composed bout the same time as his cello sonata. The piece somehow came to be forgotten, but was eventually published by Schott in 1987.

Happy Listening!

Richard STRAUSS (1864-1949)

Aus Italien, Symphonic Fantasy for large orchestra in G major, TrV 147 [Op.  16]

Romanze In F Major For Violincello & Orchestra, TrV 178 [AV 75]

Cello – Thomas Grossenbacher

 Also Sprach Zarathustra , tone poem freely after Nietzsche, for orchestra, TrV 176 [Op. 30]

Violin – Primož Novšak

Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich

Conductor – David Zinman

Discogs - https://www.discogs.com/release/20611123-Richard-Strauss-Tonhalle-Orchestra-Zurich-David-Zinman-Orchestral-Works

Arte Nova Classics – 74321 98495 2

Format: 7 x CD, Reissue

YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLt_iN-ytBvZxyzGsOuVfSVkSKXpJ4YXRJ

Archive Page - https://archive.org/details/c2c-46

 

The Impostor

No. 397 of the ongoing ITYWLTMT series of audio montages is this week's Friday Blog and Podcast. It can be found in our archives at https://archive.org/details/pcast397

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This week’s podcast has a very odd theme, and one we’ve encountered before in rare instances – performances that involve, well, imposters.

There is a rather infamous story involving recordings attributed to the late great British pianist Joyce Hatto when, in her last years, more than 100 recordings falsely attributed to her appeared. The recordings were released, along with piano recordings falsely attributed to Sergio Fiorentino, by the Concert Artist Recordings label run by Hatto's husband William Barrington-Coupe, who had a long history in the record industry.

The result of such subterfuge, in a way, is mistrust by the record-buying public!

In a way, this situation was largely exacerbated by the rise of smaller record labels in the early days of digital media. Who hasn’t dug through the check-out CD bins in pharmacies and bargain retailers? One popular classical label was Point Classics, a multinational classical music label, specializing in budget releases. After the label's parent company went bankrupt in 1993, the catalog was acquired by Telos Holdings Inc which sold it to One Media iP Ltd in 2014. The record label and its catalog is still active, and distributed/sold under many different budget labels.

There is a subset of the Point Classics catalog which credits performers who have never been seen or heard in a live performance. The most prolific producer of such performances was Alfred Scholz.

According to discogs, Alfred Scholz was a prolific producer of budget recordings, who fraudulently sold recordings credited with non-existing artists and orchestras. Sometimes the names of real people were given credit for performances which were not theirs. Working as a conductor, he performed under the guise of Alberto Lizzio as well as many other names.

"Alberto Lizzio" was a pseudonym used by Scholz and attached to older recordings which he obtained and then credited to non-existing artists like Hans Swarowsky (who was a real conductor and also Scholz's teacher, but was never on any of Scholz's recording) or himself. "Hans Zanotelli" (the name of a real conductor and also Scholz's fellow student) was another name fraudulently used on Alfred Scholz's records, as are Milan Horvat and Carl Melles.

It is not clear if Alfred Scholz was a real conductor who was also a fraudster, or the perpetrator of the fraud, who was using his name as well as many others, real or imaginary as "conductors" on his recordings.

The most common orchestra used by Scholz in his falsified productions was the Süddeutsche Philharmonie or "South German Philharmonic". If the attribution is correct, this was originally a short-lived pick-up ensemble assembled by Scholz from members of the Czech Philharmonic in Prague and the Bamberg Symphony around 1968. Other non-existing orchestras conducted by non-existing conductors include Philharmonia Slavonica, London Festival Orchestra and New Philharmonic Orchestra.

Many dozens of budget labels use the recordings originally obtained from Alfred Scholz, who had a catalog of about 2000 titles. Most of these were old analogue recordings made between 1968 and 1970 for Polyband and Primaton and by the Austrian Radio prior to 1977. The recordings by the Austrian Radio were sold in 1977 to PREMIS, a company owned or controlled by Scholz. His catalog also includes a limited number of legitimate digital recordings made in England (London), Slovenia (Ljubljana), Slovakia (Bratislava), and Hungary (Budapest).

Please refer to this article for insight on the Scholz catalog and how to recognize his releases.

Today’s podcast assembles a number of these performances, including Mozart’s Coronation piano concerto and other well-known classical favourites who may (or may not…) be performed by the referenced artists.

I think you will love this music too

Alfred Brendel & Mozart

No. 396 of the ongoing ITYWLTMT series of audio montages is this week's Friday Blog and Podcast. It can be found in our archives at https://archive.org/details/pcast396

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Our new montage this week features pianist Alfred Brendel in three works by Mozart – his piano sonata no 14, and concerti 11 and 21.As we near the end of our ongoing series of montages, I don’t believe we have shared any tracks featuring Brendel – certainly haven’t made him the central artist in any of them, unlike other pianists. Time to fix that!

Born in what is now the Czech Republic to a non-musical family, Brendel and his family moved afew times before settling in Graz, Austria, where he studied piano with Ludovica von Kaan at the Graz Conservatory and composition with Artur Michel. Towards the end of World War II, the 14-year-old Brendel was sent back to then-Yugoslavia to dig trenches. After the war, he never continued formal training as a pianist and was largely self-taught after the age of 16. In many ways, I think Brendel’s musical training missors that of Sviatoslav Richter.

At age 17 (no less!), Brendel gave his first public recital in Graz which he called at the "The Fugue in Piano Literature" featuring fugues by Johann Sebastian Bach, Johannes Brahms and Franz Liszt, as well as his own. In 1949 he won fourth prize in the Ferruccio Busoni Piano Competition in Bolzano, Italy. He then toured throughout Europe and Latin America, slowly building his career and participating in a few masterclasses of Paul Baumgartner, Eduard Steuermann and Edwin Fischer.

Some sixty-five years later, Brendel is recognized as a premier interpreter of the german piano repertoire and has played relatively few 20th century works but has performed Arnold Schoenberg's Piano Concerto. He was the first performer to record the complete solo piano works of Beethoven. He has also recorded works by Liszt, Brahms (including Brahms' concertos), Robert Schumann and particularly Franz Schubert.

Brendel's playing is sometimes described as being "cerebral", and he has said that he believes the primary job of the pianist is to respect the composer's wishes without showing off himself, or adding his own spin on the music: "I am responsible to the composer, and particularly to the piece". Brendel cites, in addition to his mentor and teacher Edwin Fischer, pianists Alfred Cortot, Wilhelm Kempff, and the conductors Bruno Walter and Wilhelm Furtwängler as particular influences on his musical development.

In November 2007 Brendel announced that he would retire from the concert platform after his concert of 18 December 2008 in Vienna. His final concert in New York was at Carnegie Hall on 20 February 2008, with works by Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert.

An important collection of Alfred Brendel is the complete Mozart piano concertos recorded with Sir Neville Marriner and the Academy of St Martin in the Fields;the two concerti featured today are from that seminal cycle.

I think you will love this music too.

Verdi: Un ballo in maschera

 

This is my post from this week's Once or Twice a Fortnight.

We haven’t done one of these (outside of the Short Story format) for awhile. I plan at least ne more of these before the end of 2023.

As we continue our survey of the lyrical / operatic alphabet, we come to the leter “U”. I reached out to the community for some suggestions, and received a few interesting ones. However, in spite of the fact I’m not very pleased with the prominence of the “U” in the title, there are a pair of Verdi operas that use the indefinite article “Un” in its title, and here we are today.

A few years back, we shared Nielsen’s comic opera Maskarade, where romance and parties are part of the narrative and where a masked ball is the setting for its third act. Ditto for Johann Strauss’ Fledermaus.

Verdi, however, has a much darker premise for his masked ball: the assassination in 1792 of King Gustav III of Sweden who was shot while attending a masked ball. The subject matter was explored almost two decades earlier by French composer Daniel François Esprit Auber in his five-act opera Gustave III subtitled “Le bal masque”.

According to Wikipedia, the original project by Verdi and his librettist Antonio Somma was called Gustavo III. Never performed as written, the libretto was later revised (or proposed to be revised) several times under two additional names – Una vendetta in dominò and Adelia degli Adimari – during which the setting was changed to vastly different locations. Eventually, it was agreed that it could be called Un ballo in maschera, the one by which it is known today, but Verdi was forced to accept that the location of the story would have to be Colonial Boston. This setting became the "standard" one until the mid-20th Century. Most productions today locate the action in Sweden, though the recording I chose specifically identifies the main character as Riccardo and not Gustavo, thus it is set in Boston.

The main strength of this performance, I think, is Abbado's pacing and the DG engineers' success in doing justice to the textures.

Interestingly, Abbado and two of the principal voices in the cast (Placido Domingo as Riccardo and Katia Ricciarelli as Amelia) were part of another production at the Royal Opera House about five years earlier – it is available on YouTube as well.

Happy listening!

Giuseppe VERDI (1813-1901)
Un Ballo in maschera (1859)
Opera in three acts, Italian libretto by Francesco Maria Piave

PRINCIPAL CAST
Plácido Domingo – Riccardo, Earl of Warwick and governor of Boston
Katia Ricciarelli – Amelia, wife of Renato
Renato Bruson – Renato, Riccardo's secretary, best friend and confidant
Edita Gruberová – Oscar, Riccardo's page
Elena Obraztsova – Ulrica, a fortune-teller
Coro e Orchestra Del Teatro Alla Scala
Chorus Master – Romano Gandolfi
Conductor – Claudio Abbado
Deutsche Grammophon – 2740 251 (Released in 1981)

Synopsis - https://www.opera-arias.com/verdi/un...hera/synopsis/
Libretto - https://www.opera-arias.com/verdi/un...hera/libretto/
Discogs - https://www.discogs.com/release/9791...Gruberova-Rugg

YouTube – https://youtube.com/playlist?list=OL...KzU_tP9PGSdAg0

Archive Page - https://archive.org/details/guiseppe...bbado-acts-1-2

Mozart, Vladimir Ashkenazy – Piano Concertos 1–6 · Concerto For Three Pianos

 

This is my post from this week's Tuesday Blog.

Over the years, we’ve explored the Mozart piano concertos in several of our blog posts. In the process, we’ve featured several pianists’ recordings, and have often made use of two “cycles” – the Geza Anda cycle from the 1960’s, and the Vladimir Ashkenazy cycle from the 1980’s.

For October, on our podcasts, we are recycling many of these montages, and as part of that project, we are posting this Cover2Cover two CD partial excerpt from the Ashkenazy cycle, featuring the earliest six concerti, and the triple concerto.

Concertos Nos. 1–4 (K. 37, 39, 40 and 41) are orchestral and keyboard arrangements of sonata movements by other composers. The next three concertos (K. 107/1, 2 and 3), featured on our podcasting channel on October 4, are arrangements of piano sonatas by J.C. Bach (Op 5. Nos. 2, 3, and 4, all composed by 1766).

Concerto No. 5, K. 175 from 1773 was his first real effort in the genre, and one that proved popular at the time. Concerto No. 6, K. 238 from 1776 is the first Mozart concerto proper to introduce new thematic material in the piano's first solo section. Concerto No. 7, K. 242 for three pianos is quite well known.

London/Decca reissued the complete set by Ashkenazy and the Philharmonia in box sets several times, but today’s set was issued as a stand-alone collection. The multi-keyboard concertos (7 and 10) make use of Ashkenazy’s collaboration on another cycle issued by London/Decca by Daniel Barenboim. The YouTube link features the complete cycle, not just the first seven.

Happy Listening!

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791)

All works feature Vladimir Ashkenazy, piano

Piano Concerto No.1 in F, K.37

Piano Concerto No.2 in Bb, K.39

Piano Concerto No.3 in D, K.40

Piano Concerto No.4 in G, K.41

Piano Concerto No.5 in D, K.175

Piano Concerto No.6 in Bb, K.238

Philharmonia Otchestra

(Ashkenazy conducting from the keyboard)

 

Piano Concerto No.7 in F, for 3 pianos, K.242 ('Lodron')

Fou Ts'Ong, piano

English Chamber Orchestra

Daniel Barenboim, conducting from the keyboard

Cadenzas by Vladimir Ashkenazy except– K40 I, K175 I-II, K238 & K242: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart; K175 III: Paul Badura-Skoda

Recording locations: Kingsway Hall, London, April 1972 (K242), Walthamstow Assembly Hall, London, May 1986 (K175), October 1986 (K238), St Barnabas' Church, London, May 1987 (K37, K39-41)

London Records – 421 577-2

Format: 2 x CD, Compilation, Stereo

Released: 1988

Discogs - https://www.discogs.com/release/19590778-Mozart-ECO-Barenboim-Fou-TsOng-Philharmonia-Orchestra-Vladimir-Ashkenazy-Piano-Concertos-16-Concerto

YouTube - https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL92mHU5BB1vs9r0ztMXTll6fbJIraLYMa

Internet Archive - https://archive.org/details/c-2-c-45b-mozart-piano-concertos-5

A LA CARTE #21- Beethoven: The Seven Sonatas for Cello & Piano, Vol. 2

 

We are repurposing the music from a Once Upon the Internet post of November 18, 2014 as a new montage in our ongoing A la Carte series on For Your Listening Pleasure. Mobile followers can listen to the montage on our Pod-O-Matic Channel, and desktop users can simply use the embedded player found on this page. The following notes are an update.

As we repurpose some tracks from this 2014 Once Upon the Internet share, I have planned two A La Carte playlists that will revisit the two Beethoven cello sonatas performed by Mr. Markevitch with pianist Daniel Spiegelberg.

In 1991, the pair recorded the complete Beethoven cello sonatas for the Swiss label Gallo. These were released under two separate CDs, thus volumes 1 and 2. This week’s share is Volume 2 consisting of four sonatas – numbers 1, 2 and 5 and the op. 17 (which is an arrangement of his horn sonata)

Happy listening!

Ludwig van BEETHOVEN (1770-1827) 

Cello Sonata No.5 in D Major, Op 102 No 2

[NEW]

Sonata F Major for Cello and Piano, Op 17

[OUTI-31]

Cello Sonata No.1 in F Major, Op 5 No 1

Cello Sonata No.2 in G Major, Op 5 No 2

[NEW]

Daniel Spiegelberg, Piano

Dimitry Markevitch, Cello

GALLO CD-673

YouTube - https://youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_kUTbdN_z8Uzv8GVXKebi2rOV0JJAjafcU

Internet Archive - https://archive.org/details/alc-21-beethoven-the-seven-sonata

Mahler: Symphony No. 9 - Bruno Walter Conducts the Columbia Symphony Orchestra

 

This is my post from this week's Tuesday Blog.

On our podcasting channel, we’ve been featuring past (and new) shares of Gustav Mahler’s symphonies. Today’s Vinyl’s Revenge shares a re-issue of Mahler’s Ninth symphony, featuring Bruno Walter and the “Columbia Symphony Orchestra”.

First, let’s establish the orchestra. According to data I gathered, this performance was recorded 26th Jan. 1961 at the American Legion Hall in Hollywood. Thus, this is a California-based incarnation of the Columbia Symphony – probably using the same musicians Stravinsky would use locally for his legendary 80^th birthday recordings for the same record label. I’d expect many were members of the Los Angeles Philharmonic and local movie studio contract musicians.

As we know from music history, Mahler’s Ninth is his last “complete” symphony (that is, with full orchestration) and was never performed in Mahler’s lifetime; Walter, Mahler’s longtime assistant and colleague to whom the work is dedicated, conducted its first performance on 26 June 1912, at the Vienna Festival.

Although the symphony follows the usual four-movement form, it is unusual in that the first and last are slow rather than fast. As is often the case with Mahler, one of the middle movements is a ländler. Though the work is often described as being in the key of D major, the tonal scheme of the symphony as a whole is progressive; while the opening movement is in D major, the finale is in D-flat major. As is the case with his latter symphonies, the work not only requires a large orchestra (including clarinets in A, B-Flat and E-Flat, two harps, and a large array of percussion instruments), it lasts well over an hour.

Walter’s discography features at least two recordings of the Ninth – a 1938 concert performance with the Vienna Philharmonic and this 1962 studio recording. There may well be other live recorded performances along the way too.

As a reviewer says, Mahler’s ninth is a bit like Hamlet - there is vast room for varying interpretations Bruno Walter's stereo recording is indispensable for a clear view of the non-neurotic approach to the work.

The recording has been released numerous times – the one in my own collection is part of the Odyssey “budget priced” re-issue series – and more recently on Sony's complete Walter edition. This is a superlative release that belongs in the collection of any and all Mahler enthusiasts; the sound of the original was astonishing in its day, and still is.

Happy listening!

Gustav MAHLER (1860-1911)

Symphony no. 9 in D Major (1908- 09)

Columbia Symphony Orchestra

Bruno Walter, conducting

Recorded 26th Jan. 1961; American Legion Hall, Hollywood, California

Odyssey – Y2 30308

Format: 2 x Vinyl, LP, Album, Reissue, Stereo (1971)

Discogs - https://www.discogs.com/release/3399002-Mahler-Columbia-Symphony-Orchestra-Bruno-Walter-Symphony-No-9

 

Mahler: Symphony no. 5

No. 395 of the ongoing ITYWLTMT series of audio montages is this week's Friday Blog and Podcast. It can be found in our archives at https://archive.org/details/pcast395

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In this second of a two-part set of montages featuring Hermann Scherchen conducting German repertoire, and in our continuing look at the symphonies 0of Gustav Mahler, today’s Blog and Podcast montage features Scherchen’s 1952 Westminster recording of Mahler’s Fifth symphony.

A survey of discogs suggests Scherchen recorded almost all the Mahler symphonies (in studio and as live recorded performances) – surprisingly, he did not record the Fourth, though he did record two song cycles (kindertottenlieder and Songs of the Wayfarer).

Here’s a portion of a Grammophone review of today’s featured recording:

We are often assured that great conductors of an earlier generation interpreted Mahler without the ‘lurid excesses’ of a Leonard Bernstein‚ always assuming they played him at all. But there is a starker‚ more disturbing quality in Scherchen’s conducting which has made his Mahler recordings much­prized collectors items. Having devoted his career to the promotion of contemporary music‚ Scherchen left relatively few studio recordings‚ but his scholarly reputation and restrained‚ objective conducting style are belied by the white­hot communicative power (and‚ it has to be said‚ the frequent technical lapses) of these pioneering mono LPs.

First the good news: this is […] a complete performance‚ and in many respects a very compelling one Now for the bad news: time and time again the intensity and drive of Scherchen’s conception is scuppered by the inability of his players to keep up.

The review goes on with many examples of the orchestra (which I always thought was an alias for members of the Vienna Philharmonic…) falling short of the conductor’s envisioned performance; yet the reviewer agrees with me with this sentence near the end: “Nevertheless‚ Scherchen and his Viennese forces offer us a piece of history that belongs in any serious Mahler collection.”

For more insiht on the work, I’d point you to a 2018 Tuesday Blog featuring Mahler’s Fifth.

I think you will love this music too!

A LA CARTE #19 - Beethoven: The Seven Sonatas for Cello & Piano, Vol. 1

 

We are repurposing the music from a Once Upon the Internet post of November 18, 2014 as a new montage in our ongoing A la Carte series on For Your Listening Pleasure. Mobile followers can listen to the montage on our Pod-O-Matic Channel, and desktop users can simply use the embedded player found on this page. The following notes are an update.

As we repurpose some tracks from this 2014 Once Upon the Internet share, I have planned two A La Carte playlists that will revisit the two Beethoven cello sonatas performed by Mr. Markevitch with pianist Daniel Spiegelberg.

In 1991, the pair recorded the complete Beethoven cello sonatas for the Swiss label Gallo. These were released under two separate CDs, thus volumes 1 and 2. This week’s share is Volume 1 consisting of three sonatas – numbers 3 and 4 and the op. 64 (which is an arrangement of his trio for vioin, viola and cello, op. 3)

Ludwig van BEETHOVEN (1770-1827)

Sonata for cello and piano No. 3 in A major, Op. 69 [NEW]

Sonata for cello and piano in G Major, op. 64 (after Trio, Op. 3) [OUTI-xx]

Sonata for cello and piano No. 4 in C major, Op. 102, No. 1 [NEW]

DImitry Markevitch, cello

Daniel Spiegelberg, piano

GALLO CD-672

YouTube – https://youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_lBuyJynp05jLPMrbIIvscR3Ehba3JoeCg

Internet Archive - https://archive.org/details/alc-19

Vivaldi - Camerata Romana, Eugen Duvier – L'estro Armonico

 

This is my post from this week's Tuesday Blog.

For our first Tuesday Blog after our Summer break, I have prepared a Cover2Cover post of Vivaldi’s complete L’estro armónico.

L'estro armonico (The Harmonic Inspiration) is a set of 12 concertos for stringed instruments first published in Amsterdam in 1711. L'estro armonico was his first collection of Vivaldi  concertos appearing in print.

Each concerto was printed in eight parts: four violins, two violas, cello and continuo. The continuo part was printed as a figured bass for violone and harpsichord. The concertos belong to the concerto a 7 format, that is: for each concerto there are seven independent parts.

In each consecutive group of three concertos, the first is a concerto for four violins, the second for two violins, and the third a solo violin concerto. The cello gets solistic passages in several of the concertos for four and two violins, so that a few of the concertos conform to the traditional Roman concerto grosso format where a concertino of two violins and cello plays in contrast to a string orchestra.

The performances are from the early days of digital recording, when the Point Classics label issued a good number of decent performances at budget price – more on that and conductor Alfred Schotz in a montage in October.

The recordings have been oft reissued, either as two separate CDs or as a 2 CD set. The senond CD (concerti 8-12) adds a concerto from La Stravaganza (op. 4, no. 2) as filler.

Happy Listening!

Antonio VIVALDI (1678-1741)

L'estro armonico, 12 concertos for 1-4 solo instruments, strings and continuo, Op. 3 (1711)

(DISK 1)

No.1 in D for 4 Violins and Cello (in 1st movement only), RV549

No.2 in G- for 2 Violins and Cello, RV578

No.3 in G for Violin, RV310

No.4 in E- for 4 Violins, RV550

No.5 in A, Double Violin Concerto, RV519

No.6 in A- for Violin, RV356

No.7 in F for 4 Violins and Cello, RV567

 

Classical Gallery – CLG 7108

Discogs - https://www.discogs.com/release/18646786-Camerata-Romana-Eugen-Duvier-Antonio-Vivaldi-LEstro-Armonico-Op3-Nos-1-7

YouTube - https://youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_nnvJN5KUYtqRKnnRyX0xwSR8NTXCVT4CI

(DISK 2)

No.8 in A-, Double Concerto, RV522,

No.9 in D for Violin, RV230

No.10 in B- for 4 Violins and Cello, RV580

No.11 in D- for 2 Violins and Cello, RV565

No.12 in E for Violin Concerto, RV265

 

BONUS - "La Stravaganza" ( Op. 4 No. 2 )  Concerto in E-Flat RV 279

 

Classical Gallery – CLG 7109

Discogs - https://www.discogs.com/release/14942358-Camerata-Romana-Eugen-Duvier-Antonio-Vivaldi-LEstro-Armonico-Op3-Nos-8-12-Violin-Concertos-Op42-

YouTube - https://youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_kVNkzK_g39b8hdhVr0N73VbFQO3kdeDzw

Camarata Romana

Eugen Driver, conducting

Internet Archive - https://archive.org/details/01-c-2-c-44a-vivaldi-concertos-op.

Herrmann Scherchen (1891-1966)

No.394 of the ongoing ITYWLTMT series of audio montages is this week's Friday Blog and Podcast. It can be found in our archives at https://archive.org/details/pcast394

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This week’s montage is the first of a pair that feature conductor Hermann Scherchen, who made several interesting recordings for the Westminster label in the late 1950’s and early 1960’s. His recorded repertoire was extremely wide, ranging from Vivaldi to Reinhold Glière.

Originally a violist, Scherchen played among the violas of the Bluthner Orchestra of Berlin while still in his teens. He conducted in Riga from 1914 to 1916 and in Königsberg from 1928 to 1933, after which he left Germany in protest of the new Nazi regime and worked in Switzerland.

Scherchen played a leading role in shaping the musical life of Winterthur (n the canton of Zürich) for many years, with numerous premiere performances, the emphasis being placed on contemporary music. From 1922 to 1950, he was the principal conductor of the city orchestra of Winterthur (today known as Orchester Musikkollegium Winterthur).

Making his debut with Arnold Schoenberg's Pierrot Lunaire, he was a champion of 20th-century composers such as Richard Strauss, Anton Webern, Alban Berg and Edgard Varèse, and actively promoted the work of younger contemporary composers including Iannis Xenakis, Luigi Nono and Leon Schidlowsky.

Scherchen recorded an unusually wide range of repertoire, from the baroque to the contemporary. His Mahler recordings, made before Mahler became a part of the standard repertoire, were especially influential; so too were his recordings of Bach and Handel, which helped pave the way for the period-performance practice movement. Included as well were significant recordings of music by Haydn, Beethoven, Berlioz, Tchaikovsky, Glière, Bartók, Schoenberg and many others.

We featured many of his Westminster recordings of the Haydn London symphonies as part of Once Upon the Internet and more recently in a few A la Carte podcasts. I programmed his recording of the symphony no. 102 here today.

He is probably best known for his orchestral arrangement (and recording) of Bach's The Art of Fugue, however, the main work today is another set of keyboard variations, his Musical Offering.

All of the ditties that constitute this opus are based on a single musical theme given to Bach by Frederick the Great (King Frederick II of Prussia), to whom they are dedicated. They were published in September 1747. The Ricercar a 6, a six-voice fugue which is regarded as the high point of the entire work, is also occasionally called the Prussian Fugue, a name used by Bach himself.

The "Ricercar a 6" has been arranged on its own on a number of occasions, the most prominent arranger being Anton Webern, who in 1935 made a version for small orchestra, noted for its Klangfarbenmelodie style (i.e. melody lines are passed on from one instrument to another after every few notes, every note receiving the "tone color" of the instrument it is played on).

According to Discogs, Schechen made two recordings of this work, both based on an arrangement for small orchestra in 1937 by Swiss composer Roger Vuataz – one for Westminster from 1951 and this one (which I uploaded from LiberMusica) from 1949 featuring the first chairs of the Berlin RSO.

I think you will love this music too.

All Good Things…

At this time, I usually issue a quarterly programming update and teaer for the remainder of the year, but this one will be a little different.

After much thinking over the summer months, and considering the load this activity has taken, I have decided that my 400^th montage will be my last one, and that we will be putting an end to our regular activities at year end. Not an easy decision for me…

When we began this a little over 10 years ago, classical music accessibility landscape was under immense transformation – terrestrial radio services have been transformed by the advent of podcasting and streaming services, and access to classical music “on demand” is more accessible and prevalent. The need for my modest contribution has passed, I think.

When I looked forward to retirement, I thought I would have more time to dedicate to this activity but as it turns out, I feel I’m busier now than when I was working full time! Maybe it’s a temporary thing (with selling the house and moving into a new one being a chief preoccupation over the last few months) but I feel behind the eight ball all the time, and unable to get ahead of things like I used to.

I haven’t quite decided if this is going to be a long pause, s full stop, or something in between – I have a few months to figure that out. More to follow then in December…

September-December Programming

As I ave done since June, we will have regular (rather than daily) podcasts, following grand arcs:

For September, we will be revisiting the Mahler symphonies (with one montage and one Vinyl’s Revenge feeding the arc);

For October, we will be revisiting the Mozart Piano Concertos (with one Cover2Cover and one montage feeding that arc);

November is open right now, likely used to bring back some “In Memoriam” material (including one mintage dedicated to Jean Martinon whose death anniversary was overlooked last year)

Forr December, back to Tchaikovsky with a special crossover Cover2Cover post that will be our 400^th montage).

We have still several weeks of Lundi avec Ludwig, and our Opera Alphabet with two planned “new” large works for the letters U and X.

Happy listening!

Saint-Saëns Showcase (2 of 2)

No. 393 of the ongoing ITYWLTMT series of audio montages is this week's Friday Blog and Podcast. It can be found in our archives at https://archive.org/details/pcast393

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For the second of two Fridays, I have prepared an all- Saint-Saëns program, this time featuring two piano concertos, a symphony and a short orchestral piece.

The corpus that composes his five piano concerti provides a chronological tour through much of his career: the period of composition spans from 1858 to 1896. 

A highlight of No.3 is the second movement Nocturne, with its tender melody, while No.4 features hymn-like melodies and dazzling brass fanfares. These performances are taken from the Pascal Rogé cycle with Dutoit conducting. Dutoit also conducts the Marche Heroïque, used as an entr’acte between the two concerti.

The Second Symphony written some seven years after the First,  displays more imagination, ingenuity and elegance in, for example, the use of a fugue as a basis of the opening movement. The new Symphony was not performed until 1862, under the baton of Jules Pasdeloup to whom the work is dedicated. It is more sparingly scored than the First Symphony. After much assertive material, the brief second movement is hesitant and delicate in character and treads daintily. There is much to recall eighteenth century gentility. The following scherzo third movement with interesting springy cross-rhythms skips confidently and the work concludes with a sunny tarantella reminiscent of Mendelssohn.

I think you will love this music too

Saint-Saëns Showcase (1 of 2)

No. 392 of the ongoing ITYWLTMT series of audio montages is this week's Friday Blog and Podcast. It can be found in our archives at https://archive.org/details/pcast392

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For the next two Fridays, I have prepared a pair of all- Saint-Saëns programs. The scheme I adopted for both is to complete the cycle of piano concertos (building on concertos 2 and 5 shared earlier on our podcasting channel) by featuring one here (and two on the next program), a symphony and a short orchestral piece.

In addition to the First concerto (taken, as are the two next week from the Pascal Rogé cycle with Dutoit conducting), today’s post includes a pair of short pieces for wind instrument, one with orchestra accompaniment the other with harp accompaniment.

The opening piece, Phaeton, is a short tone poem inspitrd by the Greek myth about the son of the Oceanid Clymene and the sun-god Helios. Out of desire to have his parentage confirmed, he travels to the sun-god's palace in the east. There he is recognised by his father, and asks him for the privilege to drive his chariot for a single day. This joy ride does not end well…

Prodigiously gifted, Saint-Saëns entered the Paris Conservatoire in 1848, at the age of 13. There he discovered the symphonies of the great German and Austrian composers and soon began to try his own hand at the genre. The Symphony in A major stems from this period and although it was most likely never performed in his lifetime it demonstrates his exceptional talent to the full. 

I think you will love this music too