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!

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

Musical memories - where to start?

I have been thinking a lot since I started this blog about my musical memories, both as a performer and as a listener.

Over the coming days and weeks I will be trying to recall some of my most memorable musical experiences.

I start my list of performances in which I have been involved in a musical genre that has generally never been of much interest to me as a performer or listener - Renaissance polyphony.   But there is one exception.

In my first year at University - on 23 February 1975 to be precise - I took part in a performance of Tallis's 40 part motet Spem in Alium conducted by Professor Denis Arnold, renowned Monteverdi Scholar in his last term as Professor of Music at Nottingham University.

We performed in the distinctly secular surroundings of Cripps dining hall, where the scent was not so much of incense but more of boiled cabbage - but the room was very resonant and provided a surprisingly fitting acoustic for this extraordinary composition.

Being in the middle of the texture was something which I will never forget (I think that I was singing bass in choir seven): the effect of that intricate counterpoint was quite overwhelming.  Yet the most memorable moments were those where Tallis brings the music to a temporary stop and then brings in the voices together in block harmony.  It is an extraordinary effect and of course bring with it high tension - because if even one of those 40 parts in is the wrong place and keeps going during the silence..........

But there were no such problems in our performance and we brought it off splendidly - a great farewell present to a professor who did so much to create the character of the music department.

Tradition is not always Schlamperei

Like many people my Christmas begins at 3-00 on Christmas Eve with the solo treble singing the first verse of Once in Royal David's City from King's College.

As ever the order of service ranged across a wide range of musical styles.  I can't say that this year's new carol, by Rautavaara made much impression (it seemed rather shapeless) but I enjoyed the Judith Weir and, especially, the Pierre Villette, a composer previously only known to me by name only.

But as ever it is the traditional old favourites which made the greatest impression.  (I realise of course that old is a comparative term and that much of Christmas tradition is Victorian in origin).  There is something reassuringly about the straightforward four in a bar sturdiness of those familiar melodies which never fails to resonate.

But to me the icing on the cake - the Christmas moment is Willcocks' descant to the last verse of Hark the Herald - those soaring treble voices in that warm acoustic never fails to thrill.  And I can point to a single moment which sums up to me why this carol service means so much to me and to many others - the scrunching dissonance on the final "Hark the herald"  .  Once I have heard that - and it never cease to thrill -  I am ready for whatever Christmas might throw at me!

Happy Birthday Puccini

Today's is Puccini's birthday.

In my student days one of the most influential books on opera was Kerman's Opera as Drama, which is now chiefly famous for its description of Tosca as a "shabby little shocker"!      The passage of time has not enhanced Kerman's reputation in this matter whereas Puccini is now far more respectable in musicological circles that I would ever have imagined 30 years ago.

The charge against Puccini was that he was somehow a manipulator of emotions and that all his effects were manufactured rather than an integral part of the music.   Is that really the case.  At the end of the first act of La Boheme are we really being exploited by a cynical composer who knows just how to tear at the heartstrings.  I don't think do.  That love music is as fresh and sincere as the day it was first written.  I am a cynical old rationalist who likes to think of music in abstract terms, but that duet gets me every time.

The other thing about Puccini is his completely theatrical mastery.  I've often thought that if a young composer wanted to take an opera as a template he or she should get the score of Tosca out of the library and study the way in which Puccini crafts the drama.    The pacing works beautifully: the action develops at a good pace when it needs to and then opens out where it needs to be more reflective. The big set pieces are well placed  and the moments of high drama are all judged to perfection.  Judged purely in musico dramatic terms Tosca must be one of the most masterly operas ever written.

Happy birthday!

Endless pleasure

I was supposed to be getting ready for Christmas today but as almost always happens when I reach for the IPOD the work stops and listening takes over.  Today's choice, as it so often is, was some extracts from Semele.  

I've said before that I came late to baroque music but I've made up for in since and if I was forced at gunpoint to chose only one composer whose music I could listen to for the rest of my life it would be a toss up between Handel and Mozart, with Rameau and Stravinsky coming not far behind.

I'd been aware of the famous bits and pieces of Handel from an early age but I'd never really taken any time to explore his music.  Handel almost passed me by at university.  I remember one lecture on Handel's opera and that was about it - though interesting one of the illustrations which was used - Cleopatra's final aria from Giulo Cesare Da Tempeste - lodged in my mind and was immediately familiar when I first heard music from the opera again after something like 20 years.

I performed very little Handel at University.  In fact I have a very strong memory of one of my lecturers saying that one of his ambitions was to conduct a performance of Saul.  I am ashamed to admit that at the time I found this almost incomprehensible as an ambition when there was so much good music out there.  But the story had a happy ending because years later he did indeed put on a performance and I was invited to play.  By then I knew exactly why he he wanted to conduct it and it was a great pleasure to be able to take part,

 The starting point for my Handelian discovery was a performance of Tamerlano in Leeds.  While I was doing my training with the Inland Revenue I had to stay overnight in Leeds fairly regularly so took to going to see as much of Opera North as I could.  Tamerlano was hugely enjoyable and started to  open my eyes to the sheer range of Handel's invention.  Since then some of my most memorable musical experiences have been with Handel's operas.   Agrippina and Partenope at ENO were two of the very best nights I have spend in the theatre recently (now you see where the title of this blog comes from).  I didn't know anything from Partenope at the time so to hear Io ti levo l'impero dell'armi for the first time was quite overwhelming.  I vividly that feeling that time had almost stood still.

Today however it was Semele.  That one work alone encompasses almost all of Handel's range, from the gravity of the overture, the energy of the final chorus, the energy of the interludes and the mystery of the music for Somnus.   But most of all there is the irresistible Semele herself.  Of all her arias I think I would have to pick Endless Pleasure , which to me is pure joy.  But there is another reason for picking this aria: the chorus which follows it.  You start thinking that it will simply be a choral repetition of what has gone before but Handel develops the music in new directions.  The sheer pleasure in the sound - notice the horns added to the texture - makes it is easy to overlook the craftsmanship, but Handel knew precisely what he was doing with every note.

There was a musicological tradition at one time to denigrate Handel because he didn't write "proper" counterpoint - unlike of course Bach.  There was still a distinct hangover of this view when I was starting my studying.  Now I think that this has gone forever and that, in his own terms, Handel is simply one of the very greatest of all composers.

There is a wonderful performance of Endless Pleasure (apart from one misjudged interpolated high note towards the end) from Carolyn Sampson at the Proms a couple of years ago .  I can't embed it into this post but you can find it at the following link

Endless pleasure

It is an odd though that had I not trained as a tax inspector Handel might have passed me by for another 20 years!  

Keep it simple

In my previous post I mentioned that I was slightly inclined as a student to look down on the Magic Flute because it seemed so much simpler than the Da Ponte operas. It was only with the wisdom (?) of age that I have come to see that simplicity is no bar to musical greatness.

As I was thinking about this another , even better, example came to mind,

I still remember my first encounter with Schubert's Schwanengesang, especially the late Heine songs.  They made a tremendous impression on me.  But I also remember the sense of anticlimax after the end of Der Doppelgänger -  and surely the C major chord 5 bars from the end is the most chilling moment in all music - when I heard the opening "rum-ti-tum" chords of Taubenpost.   It seemed if not a move from the sublime to the ridiculous at one from profundity to triviality.

Now I see things very differently.  Taubenpost is a truly wonderful song - different in character and mood of course but still at an exalted level of inspiration.  I appreciate now as I didn't then that it takes genius to achieve a true level of simplicity.  

Here is Gerhard Husch showing how it should be done. I chose his performance not only because of its excellence but also as a memento of the fact that he came to talk to us in my first year at University (1974).