The other piece in last week's concert was the Strauss four last songs.
Strauss is another composer I have problems with.
There is no doubt that he is a master of the opening gesture. The opening of Don Juan for example is quite rightly famous - what a fabulous way of releasing energy. Yet I find much of the rest of the piece strangely dull - I've played it a couple of times and even conducted it at a rehearsal and each time I was struck by how "manufactured" it all seemed. Even at that early stage of his career I feel Strauss could all too easily get into autopilot mood. In a very different context the opening of Salome is wonderfully atmospheric - but I have no desire to hear much of the rest of the opera again.
At least I have heard the whole of Salome several times. I can't say that same of Heldenleben. Again the whole of the first paragraph is magnificent with a complete command of gesture and a confidence and swagger which is absolutely in character. But I must confess that after that opening I find that the music descends very quickly into bathos and I don't think that I have ever managed to sit through the piece in its entirety. The same is true of Zarathustra. The opening has become such a cliché that it is easy to overlook just how extraordinary it is. But again I can't find anything else in the piece. Incidentally the opening is a complete nightmare for a contrabassoon player. I've only played it once and I have no desire to repeat the experience. That low C is very exposed - indeed when I played it I felt completely on my own - I couldn't hear the basses or the organ. And of course they don't have the problems of breathing! Conductors like to linger on that opening pedal for an age - it is slow enough as notated without the need to need to establish "atmosphere" by sustaining it even longer.
But, almost unique in Strauss, I find that I am very drawn to the four last songs. The first two are nothing special but the third and fourth are in a very different league. Beim Schlafengehen is gorgeous - the melismatic phrase first heard in the violin and then in the voice is one of the most purely sensuous moments in all music, but what I find interesting is the harmonic control underneath. To me Strauss all too often simply shifted up and down through the keys without putting any real roots down. But the harmony hear supports the vocal line and the harmonic rhythm propels the vocal line forward towards the climactic high note at the end of the phrase. Im Abendrot is by contrast the most perfect example of pure serenity in music that I know - though again from the contra players perspective those final chords to tax the lip and the breath control to the limit and beyond.
I don't find the same reaction to the other works of Strauss' Indian summer. Indeed I find most of what I have heard boring and completely un engaging. Strange then that at the very end of what was a long composing life Strauss somehow hit the spot.
Of course it could just be my warped musical sensibilities.......
Now if it were Johann Strauss we were talking about I would be taking a very different view - he was a complete genius. But I've yet to find an orchestral colleague who agrees with me!
Tuesday, 15 March 2011
Sunday, 13 March 2011
I just don't get Mahler!
I played in a concert last night - Mahler 5 and the Strauss 4 last songs (contra doubling 3rd bassoon).
I've never quite got Mahler!
For a contra player the actual playing experience is something to relish because he uses the instrument so well, and there are lots of opportunities for some really good low notes - as well as some passages that test the technique to the limit - and in my case probably beyond! And the sound of the Mahler orchestra is always astonishing - he had a remarkable ear for sonority and just listening to the way that he uses the instruments is always fascinating - so much so that in long passages it is easy to forget that you should be counting bars rests.
But I find it difficult to get a sense of what the music is really about. Mahler's early critics complained about the scale of his symphonies and what appeared to them to be a complete lack of stylistic coherence - the most complex music side by side with fragments of popular tunes, smaltz, folk music, klezmer and landler. Although it is fashionable to laugh at these early critics' misunderstandings I have to say that I have great sympathy for how they felt. There are wonderful moments in this symphony - as there are in all of them (I have now played 1.2.4.5 and 6 so I am half way there) but so often it seems to be that Mahler then descends into cliche and bombast.
And the symphony is so long. Contra parts have lots of rests so it is very rare to have to turn pages too often within a movement - but several time during rehearsal and indeed in the concert I turn over the page confident that I was approach the end of the movement only so see that I still had pages to go.
I know that I will be condemned as a heretic by the worshipers at the cult of Mahler, but I have to say that there is probably a really good 30 minute symphony somewhere within the near 80 minutes of Mahler 5.
There - I said it!
I've never quite got Mahler!
For a contra player the actual playing experience is something to relish because he uses the instrument so well, and there are lots of opportunities for some really good low notes - as well as some passages that test the technique to the limit - and in my case probably beyond! And the sound of the Mahler orchestra is always astonishing - he had a remarkable ear for sonority and just listening to the way that he uses the instruments is always fascinating - so much so that in long passages it is easy to forget that you should be counting bars rests.
But I find it difficult to get a sense of what the music is really about. Mahler's early critics complained about the scale of his symphonies and what appeared to them to be a complete lack of stylistic coherence - the most complex music side by side with fragments of popular tunes, smaltz, folk music, klezmer and landler. Although it is fashionable to laugh at these early critics' misunderstandings I have to say that I have great sympathy for how they felt. There are wonderful moments in this symphony - as there are in all of them (I have now played 1.2.4.5 and 6 so I am half way there) but so often it seems to be that Mahler then descends into cliche and bombast.
And the symphony is so long. Contra parts have lots of rests so it is very rare to have to turn pages too often within a movement - but several time during rehearsal and indeed in the concert I turn over the page confident that I was approach the end of the movement only so see that I still had pages to go.
I know that I will be condemned as a heretic by the worshipers at the cult of Mahler, but I have to say that there is probably a really good 30 minute symphony somewhere within the near 80 minutes of Mahler 5.
There - I said it!
Saturday, 5 March 2011
Great performances two. Menuhin Bach chaconne
I go the flu over Christmas and got out of habit of blogging - the personal tax return deadline also had an impact.
This memory is not of a live performance but of a radio broadcast.
I can't remember how long ago this was - probably 30 or so years. I had fallen asleep during the afternoon and as I awoke I gradually realised that the radio was on in another room - I suspect that it was a radio alarm that had gone off randomly. The music was the Bach Chaconne and the performance was about a third of the way through when I woke up enough to realise what was happening.
I remember listening to this quite distant sound from absolutely mesmerised. Even today I am not a great Bach enthusiast, and 30 years ago Bach was very low down on my list of musical priorities, but there was something compelling about this completely accidental encounter. I distinctly remember hoping against hope that, firstly, the radio wouldn't switch itself off and secondly that the performer would not break a string!
Neither of those happened and the performance continued to the end. It was then I learned that it was Menuhin concert - I think that it must have been an anniversary of some sort. This must have been towards the end of his career, by which time the general view was that his playing had become very unreliable, but to me the performance was mesmerising. I have never forgotten it.
I have no means of knowing whether it really was a great performance or it was my imagination, fuelled by the random way I came to hear it. I certainly have no desire to try to track down a recording. I don't want to risk destroying an enduring memory.
This memory is not of a live performance but of a radio broadcast.
I can't remember how long ago this was - probably 30 or so years. I had fallen asleep during the afternoon and as I awoke I gradually realised that the radio was on in another room - I suspect that it was a radio alarm that had gone off randomly. The music was the Bach Chaconne and the performance was about a third of the way through when I woke up enough to realise what was happening.
I remember listening to this quite distant sound from absolutely mesmerised. Even today I am not a great Bach enthusiast, and 30 years ago Bach was very low down on my list of musical priorities, but there was something compelling about this completely accidental encounter. I distinctly remember hoping against hope that, firstly, the radio wouldn't switch itself off and secondly that the performer would not break a string!
Neither of those happened and the performance continued to the end. It was then I learned that it was Menuhin concert - I think that it must have been an anniversary of some sort. This must have been towards the end of his career, by which time the general view was that his playing had become very unreliable, but to me the performance was mesmerising. I have never forgotten it.
I have no means of knowing whether it really was a great performance or it was my imagination, fuelled by the random way I came to hear it. I certainly have no desire to try to track down a recording. I don't want to risk destroying an enduring memory.
Saturday, 1 January 2011
Musical memories two. Bruckner 7
After finishing my PhD I went through several years when I didn't do much regular playing. Being out of the university environment meant that there were fewer opportunities, and in any case the demands of a young family and building a career meant that time for playing was limited.
I was surprised therefore to be rung up completely out of the blue one evening to be asked whether I would be interested in joining a local orchestra. I was a bit ambivalent, as I was not sure that I could afford the time: what persuaded me was being told that the main work on the next programme was Bruckner's 7th symphony. As soon as I heard that I had no hesitation in accepting. That was well over 20 years ago and I still play in that same orchestra. Who knows what would have happened had that first programme been an all Brahms concert! (I will explain the significance of that comment in a later post)
I'd had discovered the fourth and eighth symphonies of Bruckner at school and I got to know the seventh fairly well at university - I remember we had a lecture about the symphony and a friend and I had had great fun several times bashing through the piano duet version but this was the first time I had had a chance to play the 7th.
It was a truly memorable experience.
Judged purely on their own merits it has to be said that the bassoon parts are pretty dull but of course what really counts is being part of the great unfolding of the symphonic drama. Two particular moments (of course in Bruckner moment is a relative term) stand out. The first was the coda of the slow movement. After the great climax - and we did include the cymbal clash - there is the haunting passage led by the solo wagner tubas which legend has it was inspired by the news of the death of Wagner. This works though some exquisite chromaticisms before finally ending up, after a movement of some 25 mins or more - on a profoundly satisfying C sharp major chord for the brass. That chord has to be one of the most perfectly placed harmonic resolutions in all music and in the resonant acoustic of the cathedral in which we were playing it seems to last for an eternity. Wonderful just to be able to experience it from within the middle of the orchestra.
The other moment was the very end of the symphony. I don't think that I had ever quite "got" the last movement in the way that I had the other three. Without doubt it contained some marvellous music but I hadn't really appreciated how it all hung together. That was the revelation of this performance. Everything seemed directed to that extraordinary final cadence where there is mighty clash of gears and then suddenly all the tension is released into what seems like the bright light of the purest E major. I know I am in danger of auditioning for pseuds corner as I write this, and I don't often think of music in quite such graphic terms - but I was consciously of a huge adrenaline rush during those final triumphant bars and was left feeling complete ecstatic - I don't ever recall quite feeling the same way in any music performance I have taken part in before or since. I remember the feeling lasting a very long time - well after the applause had died down and after I had packed the instrument away. In fact it probably took until I was well on the way home before I came down to earth - It was a good job there was not much traffic on the road back that night!
I was surprised therefore to be rung up completely out of the blue one evening to be asked whether I would be interested in joining a local orchestra. I was a bit ambivalent, as I was not sure that I could afford the time: what persuaded me was being told that the main work on the next programme was Bruckner's 7th symphony. As soon as I heard that I had no hesitation in accepting. That was well over 20 years ago and I still play in that same orchestra. Who knows what would have happened had that first programme been an all Brahms concert! (I will explain the significance of that comment in a later post)
I'd had discovered the fourth and eighth symphonies of Bruckner at school and I got to know the seventh fairly well at university - I remember we had a lecture about the symphony and a friend and I had had great fun several times bashing through the piano duet version but this was the first time I had had a chance to play the 7th.
It was a truly memorable experience.
Judged purely on their own merits it has to be said that the bassoon parts are pretty dull but of course what really counts is being part of the great unfolding of the symphonic drama. Two particular moments (of course in Bruckner moment is a relative term) stand out. The first was the coda of the slow movement. After the great climax - and we did include the cymbal clash - there is the haunting passage led by the solo wagner tubas which legend has it was inspired by the news of the death of Wagner. This works though some exquisite chromaticisms before finally ending up, after a movement of some 25 mins or more - on a profoundly satisfying C sharp major chord for the brass. That chord has to be one of the most perfectly placed harmonic resolutions in all music and in the resonant acoustic of the cathedral in which we were playing it seems to last for an eternity. Wonderful just to be able to experience it from within the middle of the orchestra.
The other moment was the very end of the symphony. I don't think that I had ever quite "got" the last movement in the way that I had the other three. Without doubt it contained some marvellous music but I hadn't really appreciated how it all hung together. That was the revelation of this performance. Everything seemed directed to that extraordinary final cadence where there is mighty clash of gears and then suddenly all the tension is released into what seems like the bright light of the purest E major. I know I am in danger of auditioning for pseuds corner as I write this, and I don't often think of music in quite such graphic terms - but I was consciously of a huge adrenaline rush during those final triumphant bars and was left feeling complete ecstatic - I don't ever recall quite feeling the same way in any music performance I have taken part in before or since. I remember the feeling lasting a very long time - well after the applause had died down and after I had packed the instrument away. In fact it probably took until I was well on the way home before I came down to earth - It was a good job there was not much traffic on the road back that night!
Great performances one. Janet Baker. Nuit's d'ete
Instarted this series a long time ago but haven't added to it since I restarted this blog so it is time to finish it
Janet Baker is one of the very greatest of singers. So many of her performances capture the essence of the music in a way which makes it impossible to imagine any other performances. Sea Pictures is one of them and her performance of Doppo Notte from Ariodante is another.
I was lucky enough to hear her live several times. The most memorable was a performance of les niuits d'ete at the concert hall in Nottingham. This was towards the end of her career but she was still in stunning form. For once the old cliche of being able to hear a pin drop was absolutely true. The concentration was intense and the joy at the end was shared by everybody there.
There are other singers of this repertoire who I greatly admire, but Janet Baker was in a class of her own
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