Ten composers - Ten operas. Falstaff

Falstaff was the first Verdi opera I got to know.  Looking back that is rather surprising and I can't quite remember why it was this particular opera.  It may have been the Geraint Evans masterclasses again, but it could simply have been that it was in the repertoire of the company touring Norwich at the time.


Whatever the reason it remains one of my very favourite Verdi operas.   From the first chord through to the final fugue Verdi's invention is astonishing and the action never flags.  And what a fabulous use of the orchestra - a whole essay could be written on the piccolo part.  Much as I enjoy the vigour and impact of the early Verdi operas it is almost impossible to believe that the Falstaff is by the same composer.

In an opera of some many wonderful scenes and episodes it is difficult to pick out some highlights.  The scene between Sir John and Mistress Quickly (Dalle due alle tre) is always a joy, but perhaps the single moment that always makes me smile is at the end of Ford's monologue where his pomposity is burst by the descending chromatic scales in the french horns.

I love the fact that Verdi tried to convince everybody that he was writing Falstaff for his own private pleasure and that he didn't actually want it to be performed.  As if the most famous operatic composer of his generation could keep such an opera all to himself.   It is a difficult opera to bring off in the theatre simply because there is so much detail in the score and it can easily get lost in a reverberant acoustic, particular where there is laughter going on and in many ways it is the idea opera to listen to on CD or DVD.

Favourite historic recording. Harry Plunket Green Hurdy Gurdy Man - Schubert Der Leiermann - W...

This is simply one of the most moving recordings I know.  Plunket Green was an important concert singer - most famous for taking part in the first performance of The Dream of Gerontius - and an influential teacher and writer on singing.

He was born in 1865, so he was almost 70 when he recorded this - the last song of Winterreise.  Much of the voice has gone but there is enough left to support the superb insight into the way that the words and music work as one.  Somehow the fact that this is in English (albeit with an unmistakable Irish accent) makes it all the more vivid.

Winterreise is a young man's journey, ending up in despair as he meets the hurdy gurdy man.  Plunkett Green seems here to become the hurdy gurdy man himself.

I got to know Winterreise at University and one of my guides was Richard Capel's book on Schubert's songs.  This would now be regarded as a very old fashioned book with too much description and not enough analysis, but I think that it still has valuable things to say, and certainly at the time I found it a very good companion.   The commentary on this song has stayed in my memory for what must now be the best part of 40 years.

A wonder is reserved for the last page of the ' Winterreise.' 
Given a thousand guesses, no one could have said that the 
last song would be at all like this. Miiller must be given his 
due. Der Leiermann was an inspired ending. The madman 
meets a beggar, links with him his fortune ; and the two 
disappear into the snowy landscape. Schubert must be 
given his due. He realized the beauty of the proffered subject. 
No one else would have taken it quite like this. Almost 
anyone else would have overdone it. We say that such a 
man was worthy of any gift. How this one was compensated 
in the acceptance ! The result is pure poetry. The lamenta- 
tions of seventy pages have died away. We may read any- 
thing or nothing much into the cleared scene. All that 
happens is the drone and tinkling of the hurdy-gurdy. The 
bass A and its fifth sound throughout the piece (a device 
here renewed from Schubert's use of it in the Pastoral Melody 
in ' Rosamunde '). The hurdy-gurdy's two-bar tune enters 
intermittently between the wanderer's half -numb sentences, 
which strike us strangely after all that has gone before. 
Only near the end is there a glimmer of warmth. 

An almost toneless song. But what a task to set a singer 
at the end of an hour and half ! Der Leiermann has had 
unforgettable interpreters, like George Henschel and Plunket 
Greene. The ' Winterreise ' as a whole awaits one. No 
one in our time has had quite all the qualities of heart, head, 
and voice. A fine voice is wanted to hold the attention for 
so long, but the most musical tone will pall here if it is not 
the servant of the imagination. The singer must have 
sympathy with the passionate temper. For the dry of heart, 
the ' Winterreise ' might as well not exist

That is fine writing and an ideal introduction to this recording

Elgar's unfinished...........

You probably know that the original ending of the Enigma Variations was a lot shorter.  After the first performance Elgar was persuaded to extend the final variation and today the revised ending is almost always played.   But not on Saturday!  I was playing contra in the Derby Concert Orchestra concert in Wirksworth church.  We had just started the finale when all of the lights went out.  We continued as best we could for a few moments but then it all inevitably fell apart and we had to stop.   We waited for the lights to come back on but after five minutes it was clear that there was a major power cut and we were not going to get the lights back.  So we had to abandon the concert and very carefully find our way out of a very dark church.

Never happened to me before.

The contra part in Enigma is not exactly the most extensive item in the repertoire and the only bit of sustained playing is in the finale!  So given that it took an hour to drive to the church for the concert I didn't exactly over exert myself

All aboard......

Sometime I put the IPOD onto shuffle play when I am in the car. Not only is this safer (no need to access the controls......) but I also enjoy the random juxtapositions that sometimes occur.



It has been a very busy couple of weeks and I was not feeling at my best when I drove to a rehearsal last night but I was immediately cheered up when the IPOD turned up this gorgeous piece for two pianos by Poulenc.  L'embarquement pour Cythère, was originally written for the film le Voyage en Amérique but was published as a separate piece .  Poulenc suggested that it was reserved as an encore piece.



This is a masterpiece of insouciance. It verges on the trivial but never slips into it.  The waltz theme is irresistible and the harmonic twists and changes of key keep the ear guessing.  And like so much of Poulenc there is an indefinable air of melancholy and wistfulness just under the surface.



My knowledge of Poulenc is pretty limited and I don't really know much of the more serious music but this little trifle is always one of my favourites. If you ever need cheering up I thoroughly recommend it.

Favourite historic recordings: Adelina Patti Ah Non Credea Mirarti

With my first two postings in this category no special pleading was required. On any level the performances spring to life out of the loudspeaker and no further explanation is needed.

Is that also the case for this posting - the famous recording of Bellini's Ah Non Credea from La Sonnambula.  Would a listener coming to this cold with no background immediately see the greatness of this performance or would they dismiss it as the sad and uncontrolled warblings of an old lady?


I think it is wonderful, but have known this for so long that I can no longer quite tell whether I am responding objectively to the sound or am influenced by the face that this is a recording of the most famous singer of the latter half of the 19th century, admired by Rossini and Verdi among others, and therefore a tantalising link back to the distant operatic past?   So am I projecting my own thoughts as to what I want this to sound like on top of what I am actually hearing?

I can' rule this out, but I really do think that this is remarkable singing.  The tone itself is not particularly attractive and this is clearly the voice of somebody at the end of her career, but what sets its part is the style.  The way that the legato line is floated over the accompaniment with subtle rubato reminds me of nothing as much as a performance of a Chopin Nocturne played by a really fine pianist.  It is all so effortless and she seems to have all of the time in the world to fit in the decorations in the vocal line.  And the technique itself is still in good shape - the trills are famous and the chromatically inflected runs are beautifully poised.

The cadenza towards the end is a bit rough - I suspect that she got too close to the recording horn in her enthusiasm, but you can can forgive this.


If you have never heard this before try it - do you hear the magic?


I love the story - which may be apocryphal but which deserves to be true - that when Patti didn't want to go to a rehearsal she sent her maid to stand in for her!  Those were the days.

Mendelssohn

Without really planning to I have heard quite a lot of Mendelssohn in the last couple of weeks.    I caught a performance of the overture Der Schonen Melusine on the radio on the way to work - I don't recall ever hearing it before and I was particularly taken by the delicacy of the opening.  And yesterday I listened to the whole of the incidental music to A Midsummer Night's Dream.

Elijah is my mother's favourite choral work and I grew up with the Malcolm Sargent recording as an ever present background.  Yet somehow Mendelssohn is always an overlooked figure when it comes to evaluating the great masters.   He is in many ways the least "flashy" of the great 19th century composers and doesn't have that sense of excitement and daring of many of his contemporaries.  And somehow the comfortable circumstances of his personal life and his association with Queen Victoria don't fit with what we expect of a romantic composer.

Yet he produced at least half a dozen masterpieces which are worthy of comparison with anything else in the repertory.   A good case can be made for saying that the violin concerto is the greatest of all concertos for the instrument and the Octet is one of the masterpieces of the repertoire.   Add to these the Italian symphony, Fingals Cave and the music to A Midsummer Night's Dream (not just the overture) and Mendelssohn's place in the pantheon of the musical gods is secure.

The one piece I have problems with is the Scottish Symphony.  I've played it several time but have never really got to understand it - it always seems a bit heavy and turgid in comparison with the Italian.  And I am afraid that I regard the end - where a wholly new theme is introduced - as one of the two great miscalculation in the symphonic repertory (I"ll leave you guessing what the other one might be until a later post!).  I have a recording of the symphony by Klemperer and he obviously had the same thought because he scrapped Mendelssohn's ending in favour of a new ending of his own composition!  Outrageous of course and the musicologist in me could't possibly approve! - but I think that it works very well.


I remember at University discussing with my tutor which composers were the best orchestrators.  I remember coming up with the obvious names - Berlioz, Wagner, Strauss - and was very surprised when he suggested that I should add Mendelssohn to the list.  But of course he was right.   Being  a great orchestrator is not the same as being the most outrageous or eccentric in the use of the orchestra.  Mendelssohn gives another perspective - the command of the orchestra is so complete that the orchestration does not draw attention to itself - is simply fits the music like a glove.

There is still a  lot of Mendelssohn for me to get my teeth into - I'm gradually discovering the string quartets but I hardly know the other chamber music , the songs or the choral works beyond Elijah.

Favourite historic recordings; Sir Charles Santley The Vicar of Bray

This takes us almost as far back into operatic history as possible.   Charles Santley was a pillar of the British musical establishment for most of the second half of the 19th century.  He took part in the first staged performance of a Wagner opera in England and Gounod was so impressed by his performance as Valentin in Faust that he wrote an additional aria for him.  



Santley gave up the operatic stage relatively early in his career and concentrated on oratorio and ballad singing - in those days it was perfectly possible for a "serious" singer to perform ballads - indeed the ballad concert was a very important past of Victorian music life.



Santley made a number of recordings at the end of his career, mostly of the ballad repertory.  This is my favourite - the Vicar of Bray, recorded in1904.  Santley was born in 1834 so he was 70 when he recorded this.

Clearly this is the voice on an old man and you can hear the wear and tear in the voice. But what I love is the way that he projects the words so vividly.  The relish with which he delivers the last line of each verse "I'll be the vicar of Bray sir!" always makes me smile.

We really are linked a long way back through this recording.  In his memoirs Santley recalls a performance of Elijah in his youth (he was singing in the chorus) and talks about the difficulties of rehearsal because "this was a comparatively recent work"  .   Santley was a Garcia pupil, and Garcia's father was the creator of important tenor roles, most notably the count in Rossini's Barber of Seville.

The past is not as far away as we sometimes think!