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This week’s
Blog and Podcast re-visits a topic we first discussed on the Tuesday
Blog back in 2012 and feeds this month’s Project 366 chapter on The
Concert Experience.
Let me
shamelessly borrow from the original post, with significant updates about the
performances – and performers – I retained this time.
Off and on,
New-York has had more than one professional symphony orchestra holding
subscription concerts - Sergey Rachmaninov appeared as soloist in the
world premiere of his Third Piano Concerto on November 28, 1909, which
took place at the New Theater in New York City. Walter Damrosch was conducting
the Symphony Society of New York (From
the archives of the New-York Philharmonic)
In a
memorable evening at Carnegie Hall on 16 January 1910, Rachmaninov gives the third
performance of his Piano Concerto no.3, with the New York Philharmonic
under its new music director, Gustav Mahler.
Rachmaninov
deemed Mahler “the only conductor whom I considered worthy to be classed with
(Arthur) Nikisch. He touched my composer’s heart straight away by devoting
himself to my Concerto until the accompaniment, which is rather complicated,
had been practiced to the point of perfection, although he had already gone
through another long rehearsal. According to Mahler, every detail of the score
was important—an attitude which is unfortunately rare amongst conductors.”
The New
York Herald reported the following day:
The
impression made at the earlier performances of the essential dignity and beauty
of the music and the composer’s playing was deepened, and the audience was
quite as enthusiastic in its expression of appreciation as at the performance
at The New Theater on 28 November last and at the Carnegie Hall two days later.
[…] The work grows in impressiveness upon acquaintance and will doubtless rank
among the most interesting piano concertos of recent years, although its great
length and extreme difficulties bar it from performances by any but pianists of
exceptional technical powers.
The
Symphony and Philharmonic Societies merged under the Philharmonic banner in
1928, and remained the single main professional orchestra in the area until
1937, when David Sarnoff formed the NBC Symphony Orchestra for Arturo
Toscanini to conduct as the network’s flagship orchestra. Although its initial
home was Studio 8-H at 30 Rockefeller Plaza, the orchestra regularly held court
at Carnegie Hall, where the acoustics (and space) were better suited for public
broadcasts.
The NBC
Symphony was disbanded after Toscanini’s retirement in 1954 but continued to record
and perform for another decade or so as the Symphony of the Air notably
under Leonard Bernstein and Leopold Stokowski.
Upon his
return from winning the first International Tchaikovsky Competition in 1958,
American pianist Van Cliburn appeared in a Carnegie Hall concert with the
Symphony of the Air, conducted by Kirill Kondrashin (who had led the Moscow
Philharmonic in the prize-winning performances in Moscow). The performance of
the Rachmaninov 3rd at this concert was subsequently released by RCA Victor on
LP and is one of the four works I retained in the re-creation of the
Mahler/Rachmaninov concert of January 1910.
Keeping to
the original
Philharmonic program, the opening work was a Mahler “original”, as the
Philharmonic also premiered an orchestration by Mahler of selections of J.
S. Bach’s 2nd and 3rd Suites for Orchestra. Compared to the
hyper-romantic arrangements of Bach organ music turned out in the first few
decades of the twentieth century (by the likes of Schoenberg, Elgar, and
Stokowski) Mahler's version of music from Bach suites is surprising
forward-looking and restrained.
Wilhelm
Mengelberg was principal conductor of the Concertgebouw Orchestra of Amsterdam
forsome 50 years (1895 - 1945). Mengelberg met and befriended Gustav Mahler in
1902, and invited Mahler to conduct his Third Symphony in Amsterdam in
1903, and on 23 October 1904 Mahler led the orchestra in his Fourth Symphony twice
in one concert, with no other work on the program. Mahler edited some of
his symphonies while rehearsing them with the Orchestra, making them sound
better for the acoustics of the Concertgebouw. This is perhaps one reason that
this concert hall and its orchestra are renowned for their Mahler tradition.
The Mahler Suite after Bach is performed today by the Concertgebouw orchestra
under Riccardo Chailly.
The second
half of the concert features performances of music from operas familiar to
New-York audiences and within the Mahler repertoire; the Prelude and Liebestod
from Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde, an opera Mahler first conducted
in his earliest assignment at the Hamburg Stadttheater and at his New York
debut at the Metropolitan Opera on 1 January 1908 and Smetana’s opera The
Bartered Bride was one of the last operas Mahler conducted during his short
stint with the Metropolitan Opera - on 19 February 1909.
The “end”
of the NBC Symphony/Symphony of the Air came when in 1962 Stokowski founded a
new orchestra, the American Symphony Orchestra whose mission is to demystify
orchestral music and make it accessible and affordable for all audiences.
Stokowski was 80 years old when he founded the orchestra and served as music
director together with assistant Amos Meller until May 1972 when, at the age of
90, he returned to England. Today, Leon Botstein is the orchestra's music
director and principal conductor. They perform regularly at Carnegie Hall and
Symphony Space in New York City, and are also the resident orchestra at Bard
College, Annandale-on-Hudson. The Wagner is performed by Bolstein and the
American Symphony in today’s montage.
The
concluding piece of the montage, the overture to Smetana’s opera, is taken from
a broadcast recording by the NBC Symphony under Mahler’s long-time
collaborator, Bruno Walter.
I think you
will love this music too!
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