Tchaikovsky Lost and Found

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

New Series: Cover 2 Cover

As my personal cache of downloads from old sites slowly diminishes, I plan to “spread out” my contributions to the Once Upon the Internet Series, making them bi-monthly. To fill the void, I am launching today a new series of posts which I am calling Cover 2 Cover, where I will be sharing complete albums which I have encountered during my mining activities. The primary source for these albums is a resource we all exploit, YouTube.

I’ve shared “complete albums” from YouTube before in my Vinyl’s Revenge series, but in those instances, these are albums of a certain vintage that I have in my vinyl collection. These new finds don’t necessarily fit that mold. Though most of the ones I have been planning for this series are “vintage”, there are a few that are more recent – these have been on the “open market” for a while, so at the very least I take that as a sign that the material is viewed as “good promotion” by their rightful owners.

(I don’t exclude contributing “vintage” material to YouTube myself outside of my vinyl oldies in the future, but I haven’t lined up anything in that vein, at least not yet.)

Tchaikovsky Reconstructions

For my first post in the Cover 2 Cover series, I have assembled tracks from a 2 CD Philips set of Tchaikovsky reissues titled “Complete Tone Poems”. This compilation contains eight works, but today’s feature focuses on three works in particular, which I have packaged along with a “filler” track for the purpose of this post. In the future (later this year, maybe next), I plan to bring the remaining tracks for a second post.

Whenever I prepare posts on Tchaikovsky, my first stop is the excellent site Tchaikovsky Research, a well-constructed wiki site that covers all-things Tchaikovsky. When we read details on opp. 76, 77 and 78, we can see a definite pattern in the site’s contents. It goes something like this:

After the first performance the composer destroyed the full score, but after his death it was reconstructed from the surviving orchestral parts and published [posthumously]

Fatum was written between September and December 1868 and titled as a “Symphonic Fantasy”. Though the composer didn’t provide a “back story” or a program describing the music, the concert notes at the Moscow premiere included these verses by Konstantin Batyushkov:

Do you recall the cry
Of gray Melchizedek as he prepared to die?
Man, he exclaimed, is born a slave; a slave
He must descend into the grave
And Death will hardly tell him why
He haunts the magic vale of tears,
Suffers and weeps, endures and disappears.

After the concert, Tchaikovsky told his brother Anatoly: "This is, I think, the best thing I have written to date—at least, so others say (a significant success)". The St-Petersburg premiere, conducted by Balakirev, didn’t go so well; the surviving correspondence between Balakirev and Tchaikovsky relating to Fatum and its performance contain critiques of the work, of which the one with the most unfavourable judgement was not sent to Tchaikovsky .This may explain why the work was destroyed, and reconstructed posthumously.

The symphonic ballad The Voyevoda is based on Aleksandr Pushkin's Russian translation of the Polish poem The Ambush: A Ukrainian Ballad by Adam Mickiewicz. The work is unconnected to Tchaikovsky's first opera, also called The Voyevoda (1867-68), or the melodrama he wrote for the stage play of the same name in 1886. In a letter to Pyotr Jurgenson, Tchaikovsky reported: "I shall now orchestrate the fantasia Voyevoda (on the subject of Pushkin's ballad), and will play it for the first time in Saint Petersburg at a concert of the Musical Society. I have been invited to conduct one of their concerts there". The scoring of the ballad was completed in September/October 1891. After hearing his new work played by the orchestra, Tchaikovsky became extremely dissatisfied, and the next day he destroyed it.: "My ballad The Voyevoda turned out to be so wretched, that the other day after the concert I tore it to shreds. It exists no more".

The third posthumous work programmed today is Tchaikovsky's first significant orchestral work, the overture to Aleksandr Ostrovsky's drama The Storm. Russian music and literary critic Herman Laroche later recalled:

In the summer of 1864, Pyotr Ilyich had to write a large overture, for which he chose himself the programme of Ostrovsky's The Storm. The orchestra he employed was ‘heretical', with bass tuba, English Horn. harp, tremolo and divided strings, bass drum and cymbals. He was probably optimistic in nurturing the hope that the requirements of the programme would exempt him from any punishment for failing to follow the usual guidelines. In any event, by the start of term, or perhaps somewhat earlier, he finished his work. I cannot recall the reason now, but he asked me to stand in for him, and sent me the score by post with a message to show it to Anton Grigoryevich. A few days later, Rubinstein told me to come and listen to his judgement. Never in my life did I receive such a dressing-down for my misdemeanours as on that day (as I recall, it was a beautiful Sunday morning), listening on behalf of someone else.

The overture was never performed during the composer's lifetime; it was heard for the first time only in 1896 at Mitrofan Belyayev's third Russian Symphony Concert in Saint Petersburg, conducted by Aleksandr Glazunov.

It’s interesting to listen to these works in the context of Francesca da Rimini, a like-minded, programmatic Tchaikovsky repertoire mainstay.

Happy Listening

Pyotr Ilyich TCHAIKOVSKY (1840-1893)
The Storm, Op. 76 [TH 36]
Fatum, Op. 77 [TH 41]
The voyevoda, Op. 78 [TH 54]
Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra
Eliahu Inbal, conducting

Francesca da Rimini, Op. 32 [TH 46]
New Philharmonia Orchestra
Igor Markevitch, conducting

 

Internet Archive URL - https://archive.org/details/04TchaikovskyFrancescaDaRimi

Complete CD (8 tracks) - https://www.youtube.com/playlist?lis...m8jgnQg05sPU_c

Viola and Orchestra

No. 240 of the ongoing  ITYWLTMT series series series of audio montages can be found in our archives at https://archive.org/details/pcast240

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This week’s Blog and Podcast consider a trio of works intended for viola soloist and orchestra. The viola is, after all, the violin’s richer and mellower toned sibling yet its repertoire as a solo instrument is rather modest when compared to its little brother.

Some composers have written works for both instruments; Sir William Walton for example has composed concertos for both the violin and the viola. In a not-too-surprising twist of events, some well-known violiniss like Pinchas Zukerman, are established at playing either instrument as soloist, a trend that has included among others Maxim Vengerov and James Ehnes.

Sir William’s viola concerto did not make the cut this week, but we are reminded of the fact Paul Hindemith, himself a violist, premiered the work on 3 October 1929. Years later, on 19 January 1936, Hindemith travelled to London, intending to play his own viola concerto with the BBC Symphony Orchestra. However, just before midnight on 20 January, King George V died. The concert was cancelled, but event organizers still wanted Hindemith's involvement in any music that was broadcast in its place.

Unable to agree on a suitable replacement piece, Hindemith took on the challenge of writing an entirely new piece - the following day, from 11 am to 5 pm, Hindemith sat in a BBC office and wrote Trauermusik from scratch (in all fairness, the work does borrow some material from his Marthis der Maler symphony and the afore-mentioned viola concerto), in homage to the late king. It was written for viola and string orchestra and was performed that evening in a live broadcast from a BBC radio studio, with Sir Adrian Boult conducting and the composer as soloist.

The Swiss philanthropist and music patron Werner Reinhart later told Gertrud Hindemith "there was something Mozartian" about her husband’s writing Trauermusik in half a day, and premiering it the same day. "I know no one else today who could do that", he said.

The large work featured in today’s podcast was written by Hector Berlioz for another rather famous violinist who enjoyed playing the viola: Niccolò Paganini. The two first met in1833, three years after the premiere of Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique. Paganini had acquired a superb viola, a Stradivarius—"But I have no suitable music. Would you like to write a solo for viola? You are the only one I can trust for this task."

When Paganini saw early sketches of the piece - Harold in Italy after Childe Harold's Pilgrimage by Lord Byron - with all the rests in the viola part, he told Berlioz it would not do, and that he expected to be playing continuously. They then parted, with Paganini disappointed. Harold was premiered on 23 November 1834 to much acclaim. Nearly four years later; Paganini finally heard the work he had commissioned; he was so overwhelmed by it that, following the performance, he dragged Berlioz onto the stage and there knelt and kissed his hand before a wildly cheering audience and applauding musicians In the version I programmed today, the viola soloist is Mr. Zukerman.

To complete the podcast, I chose James Ehnes (playing the viola) in a “potpourri” for viola and orchestra by Johann Nepomuk Hummel.

I think you will love this music too! 

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Il Trittico, Revisited

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

For those of you who have followed this series over the last five years, you will notice that Puccini’s Trittico was the subject of a four-part series of posts in November-December 2012. Why, when there is so much material to choose from, would I revisit a past topic?

To answer this question, let me begin by pointing to Project 366, a long-term project on my blog that explores the Western Repertoire. In gathering material for this project, I have been reviewing a lot of my past posts – here and elsewhere – as well as my music archive, ensuring that there are musical artifacts available to illustrate all of the topics covered in that project.

It should come as no surprise to those of us who leverage YouTube as a music library that material comes and goes without much notice, and in that sense my music archive plays a pivotal role in my endeavours, ensuring a dependable source of musical material. (In short, if the Internet Archive were to shut down, I would be in deep doo-doo!)

The March installment of my project will be entitled The Trifecta, where I will propose materials that “comes in threes”, and Puccini’s opera is an obvious “fit”. After reviewing my past posts on OTF discussing the triptych, I made the decision to future-proof the performances, as my YouTube links have come and gone. Thankfully, one of the three one-act operas, Gianni Schicchi, already was in my music archive, and over the years I managed to acquire the remaining two segments from the same overall performance, the Decca Trittico featuring soprano Renata Tebaldi (More on that later).

About the Opera

A triptych is a work of art (usually a panel painting) that is divided into three sections, or three carved panels that are hinged together and can be folded shut or displayed open. (I wonder if the old Mad Magazine back-page fold-in qualifies as a triptych…)

The middle panel is typically the largest and it is flanked by two smaller related works, although there are triptychs of equal-sized panels.

The Garden of Earthly Delights - Hieronymus Bosch (ca. 1500)

Puccini’s triptych isn’t necessarily an exploration of that art form in the rigid sense, though it did start off that way – Puccini wanted to write a trio of one-act operas that each reflected one of the parts of Dante's Divine Comedy. Ultimately, the opera deviated from that premise, though its final act, Schicchi, is based on Dante’s epic poem.

I think of Il Trittico more as an intense study of the Verismo style. The key ingredients of Verismo involve believable situations with often tragic twists of fate and Puccini’s trio of subjects fit the mold to a “T”. In Il tabarro, set in contemporary Paris, the Deus ex machina moment comes when Michele opens his opulent overcoat to Giorgetta’s horror; in Suor Angelica, it is both her terrorized realization that suicide will prevent a heavenly reunion with her child, followed by an 11^th-hour intervention from a divine source that will ensure that ultimate reunion. Finally, Schicchi turns the tables on greedy relatives, making himself the sole heir of Donati’s fortune, and his “eyes wide open” affirmation that he knows he will be condemned to Hell for his dirty trick but was there a better way of making sure that wealth would be well spent?

Originally released in 1962, our musical shares come from the complete Trittico overseen by the Swedish conductor of Italian birth, Lamberto Gardelli conducting the Orchestra and Chorus of the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino. The operas feature Italian singers in all the roles – notably Miss Tebaldi in all three acts. The exception is Robert Merrill who sings Michele in Il tabarro. Fernando Corena, who sings the all-important title role in Gianni Schicchi, was born in Geneva to an Italian mother and a Turkish father - thus he was at least half-Italian

From a recording technology perspective, only Schicchi was recorded in stereo. They still sound excellent. As is often the case in our musical shares of opera, I snapped these from Capital Public Radio podcasts, and I included Sean Bianco’s spoken introductions to all three acts.

Giacomo PUCCINI (1858-1924)
Il trittico (The Triptych, 1918)
A collection of three one-act operas
Orchestra e coro del Maggio Musicale Fiorentino
Lamberto Gardelli, conducting
Discogs URL - https://www.discogs.com/Tebaldi-Simi...elease/5209162

Act One: Il Tabarro [Original OTF Post]
Italian libretto by Giuseppe Adami

Synopsis and Libretto – http://www.opera-arias.com/puccini/il-tabarro/


Act Two – Suor Angelica [Original OTF Post]
Italian libretto by Giovacchino Forzano

Synopsis and Libretto – http://www.opera-arias.com/puccini/suor-angelica/


Act Three – Gianni Schcchi [Original OTF Post]
Italian libretto by Giovacchino Forzano

Synopsis and Libretto – http://www.opera-arias.com/puccini/gianni-schicchi/


(These performances were edited from Capital Public Radio podcasts, available on the Internet Archive. All performances include a spoken introduction from commentator Sean Bianco.)