 | 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.
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