Recordings Review: Famous Last Words?

On Sibelius, silence and the "death" of classical music.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Sage advice from your favorite blog.

As the Internet erupted in a swirl of argument following the announcement of the "Death of Classical Music" in a recent issue of Slate, things have been a little bit more subdued here at the Brooklyn apartment headquarters of Superconductor. Frankly, I've been down for the count with a persistent head cold, acquired (ironically) during Act I of last Wednesday's La Bohème.

Concert Review: Beethoven Takes Over

Opening night of Mostly Mozart, 2013.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Jean-Efflam Bavouzet ponders the future of commuter rail.
Photo by Guy Vivien © 2011 Verbier Festival

Attending the Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra's first subscription concert of the 2013 summer season, one would think that this venerable arts festival's main focus this year was on the works of Ludwig van Beethoven. Beethoven was everywhere on this program, with three major works by the thunderer from Bonn bracketing two smaller arias by Salzburg's favorite composer. This focus on Beethoven will continue throughout this year's Festival, as major artists engage with five of the symphonies over the course of the next month.

Concert Review: The Empty Podium

The Vienna Philharmonic plays Sibelius at Carnegie Hall.
by Paul Pelkonen.

The Vienna Philharmonic at a concert in Berkeley, California in 2011.
Photo by Terry Linke © University of California at Berkeley.

The Vienna Philharmonic played the first of three New York concerts on Friday night. The venerable orchestra is currently touring with conductor Lorin Maazel, who, at 82, is celebrating a 50-year association with the orchestra that started with a performance of Beethoven's Fidelio in 1962.

Friday's program was one of Mr. Maazel's specialties: three symphonies by Jean Sibelius. Mr. Maazel has been conducting the symphonies of Finland's national composer for over half a century. He's also recorded the cycle twice: once with the Vienna forces and again with the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra. So it was somewhat surprising that these interpretations were missing the qualities of fire and emotion that are needed in the performance of these great works.

The program went chronologically backward, starting with the Seventh Symphony. This was the last of the composer's completed symphonies (an Eighth may have existed, but was probably destroyed), a condensedwork that packs all the development and ideas of four movements into a concise twenty minutes. Although the Vienna players brought warm string tone, searching woodwinds and their trademark horn sound to its pages, the Seventh sounded curiously workmanlike and uninspired.

The same problems plagued the first two movements of the Fifth: gorgeous playing that suffered from uninspiring leadership. This was particularly apparent in the central Andante. Matters improved considerably in the finale, driven by a bell-like, tolling figure in the horns that alternates with a sprightly woodwind melody. The best part: an eloquent, emotional statement in the cellos that was played with sentiment and warmth.

The second half of the concert featured the First Symphony, one of Sibelius' longest and most challenging pieces. It opens with a long clarinet cadenza, where the conductor stands with his arms down, mute before bringing in the whole orchestra. Mr. Maazel stood there, at rest, waiting for the solo to wind to its end. 

Then, his arms lifted. The white baton came up. And then the weird thing happened: the orchestra made its entry, but their timing had little to do with Mr. Maazel's. The principals of the four main string sections (first and second violins, violas and cellos), were working off each other, making eye contact and giving silent cues as they played through the piece. Nobody was looking at the conductor.

The phenomenon extended to other sections of the orchestra. Eyes fixed on their sheet music, the tuxedoed Vienna players were playing on orchestral auto-pilot, making use of their experience and ability to get through the four movements of the symphony. And for the most part, this trick (if it was one) worked.  . The orchestra's sound quality was gorgeous, worthy of their stellar reputation and world-wide fame. But throughout the First Symphony, it felt like the concert was being led from the first chairs, and not by Mr. Maazel.

Contact the author: E-mail Superconductor editor Paul Pelkonen.

Recordings Review: Breakfast With Carlos

Carlos Kleiber's Beethoven Fifth and Seventh.
By Paul Pelkonen.

A rare conductor: the great Carlos Kleiber at work.

For me, 2012 began with the Vienna Philharmonic. Not at their annual concert in the Musikverein, but in my own Brooklyn living room through a nice pair of 40mm SkullCandy headphones. I've been in a long process of cleaning and organizing my CD collection, sorting through piles of discs that I hadn't had time (for whatever reason) to put back into their proper cases or envelopes.

The benefit of that admitted carelessness on my part was that I found my rarely played copy of Beethoven's Fifth and Seventh Symphonies, featuring the Vienna Philharmonic under the baton of Carlos Kleiber. This is a legendary pair of recordings, made in 1974 (the Fifth) and 1976 (the Seventh.) My copy came in a boxed set with the rest of Mr. Kleiber's Deutsche Grammophon recordings, all of which fit on only 12 discs. (For the record, the set has three complete operas, a Brahms Fourth, and two Schubert symphonies. Not exactly prolific.)

Who was Carlos Kleiber? He was a German conductor of Austrian birth, and the son of another famous maestro, Erich Kleiber. (The elder Kleiber led the world premiere of Wozzeck. Although the second-generation conductor started strong, holding a post in Stuttgard and appearing frequently in Munich, he became a hushed, mysterious figure. After conducting at Bayreuth, the Vienna State Opera, and several times at the Met, he gradually withdrew from the spotlight. 

In 1989, Mr. Kleiber turned down the covered position of Music Director of the Berlin Philharmonic after Herbert von Karajan died. In his later years, performances were less frequent, and he made only a handful of official recordings, all for Deutsche Grammophon. 

So is this Beethoven really that good? Does it deserve that legendary status?

Yes, it is, and it does. On these recordings, the sound qualities that have made the Vienna Philharmonic one of the world's greatest orchestra leap forth with great clarity and purpose, as the players respond willingly to his baton. The unique instruments of the VPO, particularly the oboes, horns and timpani have a more eloquent, conversational quality, giving a period-performance sheen to these readings long before conductors and record companies popularized the idea of using so-called "original instruments."

These qualities are best heard in the Viennese oboes, which are wider and have a slightly different, more conversational tone quality than the more commonly used French instruments. Conversely, the Viennese horns have a narrower bore and a unique valve system that makes these instruments sound with a dark, rich sonority that is this orchestra's trademark. This horn tone is especially clear in the finale to the Fifth, when the instruments lead the composer's triumph over adversity.

The strings seem to breathe the opening of the second movement, leading up to a huge series of repeated climaxes. The third movement, with its ostinato  and funeral march, builds up to hard timpani strikes and an exuberant celebration in sound from the brass choir, answered by the low strings. The whole ensemble joins in a hymn of man overcoming fate. 

The Seventh is equally powerful, its introduction gathering momentum, taking a huge breath before the orchestra starts what Wagner called the "apotheosis of the dance." These wild celebrations shimmer and whirl in a Dionysian frenzy, releasing pent-up tension in the strings and horns. The famous slow movement, with its insistent ostinato drives forward with inexorable power, building to further celebrations in the last two movements.

Mr. Kleiber's contribution is not any special trick of rubato or tempo changes. In fact his conducting  is fairly consistent with other maestros. But what he is skilled at is building, maintaining and releasing orchestral momentum, and forging the sections of the orchestra into cohesive units of sound. This quality comes out in the woodwind-playing and the strings. The conductor brings the flute, oboes and clarinets together to create a massive sound that recalls a fine pipe-organ in its simple majesty.

If you've never heard these recordings, do yourself a favor. Their reputation is deserved.

Contact the author: E-mail Superconductor editor Paul Pelkonen.

Concert Review: Ten Years After Tragedy

John Corigliano's One Sweet Morning premieres at the Philharmonic.

Alan Gilbert leads the New York Philharmonic.
Photo by Chris Lee. © 2011 New York Philharmonic.

On Friday night, the New York Philharmonic unveiled composer John Corigliano's One Sweet Morning, a moving song cycle commissioned to mark the dark decade since the World Trade Center fell on September 11, 2001.

Now 73, Mr. Corigliano has a long history with this orchestra. His father, John Corigliano Sr., was the concert-master of the orchestra for 23 year. The ensemble has a history of championing his brand of American post-Romanticism. But when he was commissioned to compose music on the subject of September 11th, he intially refused, not wanting to provide a soundtrack to the images of that horrific day.

Instead, he turned to poetry, creating a song cycle, One Sweet Morning. (The title comes from the final poem, written by Yip Harburg, the librettist for The Wizard of Oz.) Mr. Corigliano chose four poems. A Song for the End of the World by Polish poet Czeslaw Milosz depicts the dreaded, anticipatory hush before apocalyptic events. The heat of battle itself  is portrayed with a setting of a bloody passage from Homer's Iliad. The traumatic effect of war on a loved one is shown in War South of the Great Wall, a poem by Li Po. The work ends with a new orchestration of Yip Harburg's poem "One Sweet Morning" which paints an idyllic dream of peace.

Stephanie Blythe's rich, dark mezzo plunged to astonishing depths of the contralto range in the first poem. The Homer passage mixed sung narrative and sprechstimme, the long list of fallen Trojan heroes standing for everyone killed on both sides of the U.S.'s wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. The Li Po poem was accompanied with exotic percussion, including an authentic Chinese war drum creating dread-filled, throbbing rhythms.


Suddenly, after a tremendous, atonal crescendo, the smoke and dust swirled away and Ms. Blythe began to sing the long lyric lines of One Sweet Morning. Mr. Harburg's lyrics express the idea of rebirth and peace after conflict. The rose imagery and solemn chords create an almost Mahlerian mood, but the sound is distinct. As the melody spun forth, the song rose on the final repetitions of the word "morning", bringing balm to the listener even as it questioned the events of the past decade.

The new work was preceded by Samuel Barber's Essay No. 1, an orchestral tone poem in two sections. This work, a direct cousing of the famous Adagio for Strings, served as an effective curtain-raiser for the evening. Strong brass playing and lush strings were effectively lead by music director Alan Gilbert.

The second half of the concert featured the Seventh Symphony of 19th century romantic Antonín Dvořák . This is one of the Czech composer's more serious works, and one of the staples of the orchestral repertory. It's not the orchestra or the conductor's fault that the Seventh seemed a little lightweight after the emotional searing of Mr. Corigliano's piece. That said, the Seventh featured a spectacular slow movement, never taken too slowly, and gorgeous contributions from the Philharmonic horns and woodwinds.

Comparative Listening: The Bruckner Seventh

"There is the same slow, broad introduction, the drawn-out climaxes that grow, pull back and then grow some more--a sort of musical coitus interruptus"--Bernard Holland, reviewing a Bruckner symphony.

The survey comparing recordings of classic symphonies continues. (Maybe I should call this Battle of the Box Sets?) This week, the subject of analysis is Anton Bruckner's roof-raising Seventh Symphony, sometimes known as the "Lyric."

Bruckner

Bruckner worked on a big scale, writing four-movement symphonies that have been described by numerous other writers as "cathedrals of sound": slow arpeggios of ever-ascending strings and brass reaching heavenward. It has also been said that Bruckner wrote the same symphony nine times, an unkindness that misses the point. The little organist from Linz wasn't repeating himself: he was refining and reworking his central idea, creating new and different stairways to heaven.

With the Seventh, written in 1883 (and revised in 1885), Bruckner expanded his orchestral palette even further with the addition of four Wagner tubas, the brass horn/tuba hybrids invented by Richard Wagner for the first performance of the Ring. This choice was not accidental. Wagner died while Bruckner worked on the Seventh, and the work contains numerous allusions to the other composer.

The Contenders:
Berlin Philharmonic cond. Eugen Jochum (DG, 1965)
Berlin Philharmonic cond. Herbert von Karajan
Royal Scottish National Orchestra cond. George Tintner
Radio-Symphonie-Orchester Berlin cond. Riccardo Chailly
SWR Stuttgart Radio Symphony Orchestra cond. Sergiu Celibdache
Berlin Philharmonic cond. Daniel Barenboim (Teldec/Warner Brothers Classics, 1994)

I. Allegro Moderato
Like every other Bruckner symphony, the Seventh opens with a hushed figure for strings, meant to evoke the opening of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. Bruckner works methodically, building bricks of sound. The sonic wall rises slowly to a climax, played by a brass chorale. Then the brass stop, and the building resumes with strings, rising to another climax, and so forth. The first movement ends when the brasses start to play descending figures against the rising strings, an effect that reminds the listener of the rushing Rhine from Wagner's Das Rheingold.

Performances of this movement average out at 20-22 minutes, with Chailly being the slowest. All three Berlin Philharmonic recordings have those brass chorales breaking in a sonic wave over the listener. Celibidache's radio broadcast has a mystic quality to it, shared with many of that conductor's performances.


II. Adagio: Sehr Feierlich und Sehr Langsam
The second movement is a molten, shifting Adagio that allows the most Romantic conductors full rein as Bruckner pours out his grief for the passing of Wagner. The relationship between the two composers is at the heart of this movement, and its slow three-note figure recalls the preludes to Act I and III of Parsifal, Wagner's last opera.

Surprisingly, Sergiu Celibidache is not the slowest Adagio out of the box. That honor goes to Eugen Jochum's first commercial recording of the symphony at a solid 25'. Tintner is the fastest here, although still relatively sedate, given the flowing nature of the music.

III: Scherzo: Ser schnell
This lumbering movement is in the form of a Ländler, the Austrian peasant dance beloved of Beethoven, Bruckner and Mahler to show cheerful rustics galumphing through the countryside. Serious brass blowing here, followed by a relaxed trio and a final galumph. Every conductor gets to the trio 3'30" into the movement. Barenboim doesn't reach that point until 3'45".

Listen for yourself: Sergiu Celibidache conducts Bruckner's Seventh.

IV: Finale: Bewegt: Docht nicht schnell

Bruckner closes this symphony with a Rondo, but on a gigantic (in other words, typically Brucknerian) scale. The movement built from a five-note melody that recalls the first movement of his Sixth--as if the theme from that darker symphony had finally been resolved. This merry tune is played over a bed of shimmering strings in the cellos, woodwinds, and finally, of course the brass. This joyous shout brings Bruckner's most uplifting symphony to a thunderous close, as the ecstatic chorale of instruments soars up to final, uplifting series of chords that once more evokes Wagner's Das Rheingold.

The massive Rondo allows the most variance of interpretations between the six recordings considered. Celibidache is surprisingly sprightly here, a shade under 12 minutes. Daniel Barenboim's second recording with the Berlin forces opts for more weight, clocking in at 13'29".

For more on Bruckner's symphonies and these recordings, check out our Bruckner Buyer's Guide from 2010.