I don’t know if I can say this definitively, but as far as I know, Vftp is the oldest conductor’s blog still going, and when I first started I couldn’t find any examples of other substantial blogging projects by any other conductors.
While it’s nice to be first, we all need models and in those days, conductors didn’t tend to write about or discuss their craft- “better to be a little mysterious” was the generally accepted best practice. One early exception to this was Ivan Fischer, conductor and founder of the Budapest Festival Orchestra. His website had some very interesting and frank “conductor’s journal” entries and a few short articles exploring different aspects of the life and craft of a conductor. The website has been offline for many years now, which is a pity- there were a number of things up there I would have liked to have pointed my students towards. One such article I remembered vaguely as being very interesting was “Ninety-two Thoughts for Young Conductors.”
An archived version of the site has re-appeared on webarchive.org (a reminder that once something is online, it is there forever, whether you want it there or not), and there was one section of the “92 Thoughts” that sounded eerily like what I’ve been telling the students at the Rose City International Conductor’s Workshop the last few summers-
About beating
Don’t beat.
Don’t show anything.
Don’t anticipate.
Don’t correct.
Beating is an insult to musicians.
The orchestra sounds better without beat.
You must radiate music.
Ivan is saying what I’ve learned from hard and painful experience- I thought I’d figured it out for myself, not read it (it’s frightening how much we forget we’ve heard or read before). In fact, you can read a thing like this, but you’ve still got to figure it out for yourself or it means nothing
In any case, it’s worth taking an hour or two to explore the archive- it’s an interesting snapshot of an important conductors working life a decade ago. Maybe one day, he’ll find time to start his own blog….
A while back, I started a little series here called Urtext Myths (part I here, part II here). While preparing for my recent performance of Mahler’s 5th Symphony at the Harlech Orchestral Summer School, I came across something in the Preface that got me thinking about a new article in the “myths” series. This is possibly the biggest myth of them all-
“An Urtext edition meticulously reproduces exactly what the composer wrote, free of editorial interpretations or interpolations.”
What? I hear you say…. Isn’t that pretty much the definition of an Urtext- a clear and mistake free rendering of the text of the work as the composer wrote it, not as some performer or scholar though he or she should have written it?
I hate to burst anyone’s bubble, but we don’t live in that world.
HANS GAL’S Violin Concerto, written in 1931-32, when he was head of the conservatory in Mainz, is beautifully performed by young German soloist Annette-Barbara Vogel.
By the time Gal wrote his Concertino, in 1939, he was a refugee here from Nazi Germany. This is all lyrical, romantic music in a conservative modern idiom. Kenneth Woods conducts the Northern Sinfonia.
Olin Downes, New York Times “Which composers have influenced you most?”
Leos Janacek “None.”
Last week, I had the good fortune and privilege to conduct a workshop of Janacek’s Taras Bulba at the Harlech Orchestral Summer School in North Wales.
Since so much of Janacek’s life’s work is bound up in his operas, there isn’t a vast amount of music by him for conductors whose life is mostly centred (at the moment) in the concert hall. Even taking into account my dual life as a cellist, there still aren’t enough pieces- the magnificent Pohadka for Cello and Piano, the two extraordinary String Quartets, the Sinfonietta and Taras Bulba- those are the mainstays that don’t involve finding soloists and choirs.
Jancek is a composer I would qualify as an “ecstatic” voice. In my nomenclature, this means a composer who has a gift for creating individual musical events that are somehow supercharged. In Janacek, again and again we find chords and melodies that in other hands would simply be memorable- in his, they become iconic and awe-inspiring.
“The donkey found it pleasing, and only said
Wait! Wait! Wait! I will announce my judgement now.
Well have you sung, Nightingale!
But, Cuckoo, you sing a good chorale!”
On Friday, the intrepid musicians of the Harlech Orchestral Academy performed Mahler’s Fifth Symphony- a performance that was every bit as hot as the auditorium we were playing in. Although we’ve had a lot of Mahler on the blog this year, there is always more to discuss, and more to learn. One topic that came up was the use of Mahler’s Wunderhorn Song “In Praise of Lofty Intelligence” in the Finale. What is he up to, crowing such a massive and serious work with a movement based on such a silly song? Although many writers reference the presence of this song in Mahler’s Finale, I’ve come across very little material that offers any thoughtful analysis of what Mahler was up to. With this in mind, I thought we might turn to Mahler scholar Peter Davison again to share his thoughts and discoveries–
“In praise of high intellect”
Have you ever wondered why the Wunderhorn song, Lob des hohen Verstands – In praise of high intellect, provides the thematic seed for the Rondo Finale in Mahler’s fifth symphony? One school of thought views such borrowings in fairly abstract terms. It is a good, perky little tune and Mahler could see some symphonic potential in it. So, along with other random musical sources, Mahler threw it into the melting-pot of his symphony and hoped for the best. Readers of this blog will by now know that this is not a view held by Ken Woods or myself. We take the view that Mahler always did things for very good reasons and understanding his motives will often reveal dense layers of meaning in his work.
Many years ago, I first played a pops show in Columbus that was made up entirely of us playing extended excerpts of classic films scores from the golden age of film music while the originally films were shown on a giant screen behind the orchestra. It’s a great show, and went on to become one of those franchises that for years was on every orchestra’s pops series once every other year or so.
On my first encounter with the show, however, I was just wildly excited to play some of these scores that I could remember from Sunday afternoons as a child, when old movies were the only real choice on TV outside of football season. Gone With the Wind (Max Steiner) was on the list, as was Psycho with Bernard Hermann’s matchless music, and the classic Robin Hood with Korngold’s score. One of the highlights for me, though, was playing Rosza’s score to Ben Hur, which we’re playing next week in Harlech. Hearing, and playing that remarkable score really brought back a lot of happy memories watching these big epic films. When you’re a little kid, you hardly have any idea what it’s about- you just think it’s a good lazy way to spend an afternoon. Eventually, if you are musical, you can’t help but dream of playing those great scores.
Rehearsing with Ken can feel just like this
Another thing about the Rozsa that really struck me at the time was how unbelievably loud it seemed. I still think it was one of the loudest pieces I’ve ever played- it’s pretty amazing just how loud a symphony orchestra can play.
My other funny memory of that show was the end of Robin Hood- the director of the film wanted to create a supercharged atmosphere in one fight scene, so he ordered the score to be sped up electronically quite a bit. Replicating this effect live with all of Korngold’s notes is challenging to the point of being comical.
Well, as I said, this was many years ago, and soon enough, one felt like that show was everywhere you looked- I probably played it with 5 or 6 orchestras and heard it at many others, but all that seems a long time ago. I don’t know if it is still making the rounds or not (let us know with a comment- maybe you’ve played it), and it’s been a good 10 years or more since I came across it.
When I got the score of the Rozsa, I was a little disappointed that it was just printed on paper. I remember as being so loud that one would expect it to be printed on steel. However, I did track down a recording of Rozsa conducting it with the RPO, and my recollection hasn’t failed me- it is a fantastically loud piece. Rosza achieves this extraordinary sense of power and scale through a pretty modestly sized orchestra- more Tchaikovsky sized than Mahler. He just seems to know how to get a huge sound out of the band through the way he voices chords and how he doubles voices.
Believe it or not, I’ve been told more than once by orchestra musicians “I sweat more for you than for any other conductor.” I take this as high praise, but I shudder to think what might happen next week when the world’s sweat-makin-est conductor meets the world’s loudest piece.
Of course, when I hear the piece now, I’m no longer reminded of lazy Sunday afternoons watching old movies on my folks’ shag carpet. I’m reminded of playing that damn pops show- of getting out the earplugs for the Rozsa and racing like mad to catch the end of the Korngold. Being a musician is a funny mix of living out your dreams and killing them off at the same time.
As a musician who likes to explore the rare and odd byways of the repertoire as well as play the hits, I’m often asked what has drawn me to program and perform this or that unusual piece.
Depending on the venue and the listener, threshold at which “a piece” becomes an “unusual piece” might be anything from anything less well known than Beethoven 5 (like, er, Beethoven 4) to the 2nd version of an unpublished juvenile ballet suite by Schnittke’s next-door neighbour’s dog sitter.
Next week I am conducting a piece that I think we can all agree is a rarity for most concert goers, if not all music nerds- William Walton’s Variations on a Theme of Paul Hindemith. So, I thought I would answer the question- why this piece?
The reason is profound and compelling
In about 1994 or 95 I was on a break between rehearsals of the excellent Columbus Symphony and wandered over to the local sheet music store. They had a bin of orchestral scores on sale for 50% off the last marked price. I picked up a few things, including this work. The original price had been marked in pounds (not often you see a £ sign in Ohio shops). At one point it had been going for $35 bucks, a medium price for a study-sized score. There where then about 4 sale stickers, gradually reducing the price to $5.25, so I got it for $2.12.
Although I’d always loved Walton, ever since I got to know the Cello Concerto (still my favourite piece of his), I’d never encountered this work, so as I plunked down 6 quarters, five dimes and 3 nickels and got my 3 cents change, I vowed to program the piece someday in honor of this random occasion.
There wasn’t a recording in CCM’s vast library at the time, but I was finally able to order one through a record store. It was a good piece! My resolve was strengthened!
16 years later, here we are.
In all those years, I kept an ear out for the piece- I finally heard it live last spring here in my adopted home town of Cardiff, when my friend James Judd conducted it with the BBC National Orchestra of Wales. It was a great piece of programming- pairing this masterpiece of Walton with the wonderful and rarely heard Cello Concerto by Paul Hindemith, the very work from which the theme of the Walton is taken. The orchestra and soloist were on brilliant form that afternoon, although there were only a few waifs and strays in the audience. Why is it that the better the program, the smaller the crowd? Not to complain- my joy at hearing the piece live was tempered only by my very slight disappointment that James and the band beat me to the Walton.
It’s a pretty tough piece- Walton’s orchestra writing is always extremely demanding, but this piece seems conceived almost like a concerto for orchestra. Although they were good friends (Hindemith had been the soloist in the premiere of the Walton Viola Concerto), I never really thought their music sounded similar, but it’s fascinating how Walton can blur the line between “Waltonian” and “Hindemithian” styles.
Anyway, I’m doing the piece because I bought it for 2 bucks, and that’s a damn fine reason in my book.
You can buy the critical edition of the Variations and the Partita for Orchestra in a single volume for £160 pounds if you like.
Violin Concerto, Op 39. Violin Concertino, Op 52. Triptych, Op 100
Annette-Barbara Vogel vn
Northern Sinfonia/Kenneth Woods
Avie ® AV2146 (70’ DDD)
Premiere recordings of three gloriously tuneful late-Romantic masterworks
Hard on the heels of Gil’s violin sonatas and Suite (8/10) comes this superb new disc featuring the pre-war Concerto and Concertino, separated by the invigorating late Triptych (1970) written in his 80th year. Annette-Barbara Vogel is once again the nimble-fingered and sweet-toned soloist, ably supported throughout by the Northern Sinfonia and Kenneth Woods.
Vogel’s knowledge of and sympathy for Gál’s music is manifest from her first entry in the Concerto (1931-32) following the exposition of the lovely opening theme (given to the oboe). The Concerto, scored throughout with chamber-musical clarity, is lyrical from first bar to last but no mere parade of tunes: Gál’s succession of Fantasia, Arioso and Rondo are tightly organised, no matter how relaxed or light-hearted they sound. The same attributes can be heard in the Concertino (1939), written after Gál’s protracted flight from the Nazi menace to Britain via Vienna. Scored for violin and string orchestra, its lightness of texture is a model of balance and its sense of inner calm in extreme contrast to the uncertainty of his personal circumstances at the time of its composition. While the Triptych is audibly the product of the same mind as the concertos, it does have the feel of a late work. Its spontaneity of invention was matched by its speed of composition: five weeks from sketch to full score in January-February 1970. The energetic outer movements (the concluding Comedy is a particular delight) frame a more sober central Lament in the form of a pavane and stylistically seems closer to Franz Schmidt than the Concerto. Woods directs a highly polished account but the orchestral playing throughout is most assured. Avie’s sound is excellent but it is the music that compels attention. Strongly recommended.
Gal: Violin Concerto and Concertino, Triptych for Orchestra
Annette-Barbara Vogel, Northern Sinfonia/Kenneth Woods
Avie 2146
Add to the rhapsodic glow of Strauss or Korngold flecks of virtuosic humour and, in the case of the Concertino of 1939, darker hues, and you have Hans Gal’s music. No wonder Vogel has recorded two discs of his muisc, it is enormously rewarding for performer and listener. Finely detailed playing, particularly of the Triptych, gives overdue credit to a composer whose genial genius was obscured by Nazism, illness and the British establishment’s neglect.
You can call it the best program you’ve never heard in your life. You can call it the almost revelatory program that almost happened- what you can’t call it is the program for the final concert of the Harlech Orchestral Summer School, which I’m now preparing for.
Harlech is an intense week long program that covers an immense amount of substantial repertoire. Some is simply workshopped and read, while a few pieces are selected for extra rehearsal and the final performance. This year it has been a given that Mahler 5 is going to be on that program- in this year, how could it not be? But what to pair it with?
As it turns out, part of the equation includes a premiere of a new work by Duncan Stubbs written for the winds of the academy called “Harlech Variants.” Given the massive scale of the Mahler and the presence of the Stubbs, it would seem that all that is needed is a relatively slight work to open the program.
Of this year’s repertoire, the obvious choice is Ravel’s La Valse, although one would never call it slight! The parallels with the Mahler are obvious and fascinating- the Scherzo of the Mahler seems an obvious model for the Ravel. Both use dance, notably (but not exclusively) the Viennese waltz, to delve into the darkest corners of the human psyche.
However, as we get closer to the beginning of the festival, there is another work in the repertoire I’ve longed to program alongside the Mahler. I even went so far as to suggest to my colleagues that we ought to ditch the Ravel and do it instead- in spite of the fact that it would make for a ridiculously long program and a very exhausting week of rehearsals. My associates wisely talked me down from that particular ledge.
The piece, of course, is Shostakovich’s 6th Symphony. Why? Surely the Ravel is the obvious and perfect pairing? Is this just a case of Ken the Shostakovich nut looking for any possible chance to perform a Shostakovich symphony?
Well, I can’t rule that out, but there was more to it than that. First, the Ravel is the obvious pairing. The Shostakovich is just the more interesting pairing because it seems that putting these two great but highly unorthodox works on the same program could be much more illuminating, and could help us to hear both works with clearer ears.
Shostakovich 6 is one of those pieces that is often described as “enigmatic.” It is in 3 movements- one very long slow movement followed by two very short fast movements. It has always had its advocates (Lenny loved it and conducted it brilliantly), but many people can’t get past the fact that it doesn’t seem to do what symphonies after Beethoven are supposed to do, which is to reconcile and resolve large-scale tensions.
The Largo completely overshadows the other two movements, obviously in terms of scale, but also in terms of emotional impact. On the other hand, surely a genius like Shostakovich knew which rules he was breaking and why. Surely Beethoven taught us that what a symphony ought to do with a movement like the Largo is to balance it with a Finale of equal scale and weight? That’s what his 5th and 9th symphonies do so well, and it’s something Mahler mastered in his 2nd Symphony.
In fact, Mahler 2 might be the ultimate symphonic example of a vast, tragic opening movement (like the Largo of Shostakovich 6) which is followed by some shorter intermezzo-like movements (again like the Shostakovich), which culminates and a vaster and more dramatic triumphant Finale in which all the darkness and tension of the first movement is transcended and resolved (something conspicuously missing in the Shostakovich).
If Mahler 2 is the grandest and most perfect example of that approach to symphonic form, it’s certainly not the only example. Bruckner deals with it in his 5th, 8th and 9th Symphonies (we can see from the fragments where he was going with the Finale of his 9th). And, even if the 2nd is the most powerful and explicit example of a cathartic Finale in his music, Mahler’s 1st 4 symphonies all treat the Finale in a similar way- as a summing up and culmination of all that precedes them.
However, in the 5th Symphony, Mahler for the first time goes in a different and more ambivalent direction. The 5th is written in 5 movements, which are grouped into 3 parts. The 1st part of the symphony is unmistakably where the center of gravity of the entire work is located- two movements of unprecedented darkness, intensity and ferocity. Part I of Mahler 5 ends in as black an abyss as anything in the repertoire I can think of (like the Largo of Shostakovich 6). Dark as the Funeral March is which opens the 2nd Symphony, there still seems to be room for the drama to continue from that point. The ending of Part I of Mahler 5 is so black and nihilistic that it seems impossible that anything could follow which would be able to balance or transcend that darkness.
Mahler follows this in Part II with an ambivalent Scherzo which you can read about here. Like the Ravel, it is in many ways a dance of death, or at the very least a dance which expresses a certain affection for oblivion. Again, Part II of the Shostakovich is similar- it is also a Scherzo, but the mood is hardly carefree.
Part III of the Mahler promises a return to life. It is now well known that in many respects, the famous Adagietto is a love song, but it is also filled with references to Mahler’s own Kindertotenlieder, or Songs on the Death of Children. Yes, it has moments of stunning tenderness and exquisite longing, but it, never mind what today’s politically correct writers tell you, includes passages of searing anguish and deep, deep pain.
In Mahler 2, the last grand and dramatic Finale is preceded like a structural upbeat by the song Urlicht. Like the Adagietto, it is intimate and tender music in which hope seems to begin to awaken, if not assert itself. However, where the Finale of the 2nd begins with a savagely dramatic outburst (obviously related to the opening of the Finale of Beethoven 9), the Finale of Mahler 5 begins with a joke. Mahler quotes one of his own songs (Lob des hohen Verstandes, or “In Praise of Lofty Intelligence”) about a singing competition between a cuckoo and a nightingale judged by an ass. It hardly promises a Finale in which the tragedy of Part I can be overcome, and it turns out to be.
The Finale of Mahler 5 is humorous, virtuosic and passionate. The humor is sometimes warm and bright, other times black and sardonic. It makes extensive reference to the music of the Adagietto, now played in a genuinely carefree, breezy style, perhaps as if to say love is as much a game as anything else. There is only one reference to Part I, but what a reference it is- just before the end, he brings back the great chorale of the 2nd Movement. This overpowering peroration had collapsed into abject crisis the first time it was heard, but here, it shines out in triumphant confidence. If the symphony ended here, he might just have pulled of the kind of transcendent ending we’d been hoping for all along, and what a feat that would have been!
But Mahler chooses not to do so. Instead, the piece continues just long enough to undermine the Chorale. Instead of ending in catharsis, the piece ends in laughter – perhaps, like love, triumph is also all just a game, or perhaps he is saying that the culmination of the chorale is the ending to yesterday’s story- life goes on! The piece ends with a torrent of whole tone scales- the most ambivalent of musical structures. Is it light or dark humor? Is there an edge of madness in that laughter? Those whole tone scales seem to signal we can’t be sure Do we all live happily after? Are all life’s problems solved? I don’t think so, but life goes on, and in Mahler’s world the primal force of life is extraordinarily powerful.
Likewise, the 3rd Mvt of Shostakovich 6 doesn’t try to fix what the Largo has broken. Like Mahler’s Finale, the primary emotion is humor, both dark and light. Much as I love, and much as the world needs the Finale of Mahler 2, the Finale of Maher 5 is truer to life, hard as that is to accept. My sense is that Shostakovich 6 is also a pretty profoundly true-to-life work. Perhaps he is saying that suffer as you will (remember the Largo), don’t expect the heavens to open and for God to give you all the answers. Life goes on, in all its hilarity and insanity.
Side by side, the Shostakovich looks a little less of an enigmatic failure and much more a triumph of ironic realism, and the Mahler looks less Beethovenian and more modern.
Of course, it’s possible there is an even darker truth in the Shostakovich- we know he advertised that his original intention was to make the work a portrait of Lenin, complete with choral Finale. Maybe the work was meant to look more like Mahler 2, and the 2nd and 3rd movements were kindred intermezzi to the 2nd and 3rd mvts of Mahler 2?
However, in 1939, Russia was still waiting for the happy ending to the Lenin drama. Perhaps the deafening silence that follows the 3rd mvt of the 6th is the point. Shostakovich didn’t write a Finale because life hadn’t given him one to depict?
It sounds good, but I’m not convinced. The Largo seems to introverted and personal to have anything to do with politics and history- if it’s about anything other than despair, it is about music. More on that to come, I hope.
It has always bothered commentators that the ending of Shostakovich 6 doesn’t feel like an ending worthy of its beginning. Isn’t that obviously his point? Of course the piece is unfinished- he doesn’t want you to walk away from the symphony ready go out for a drink. He wants us to be thinking about what the piece means, to be struggling to make sense of its pain and contradictions. The work of the listener is just beginning when this piece ends.
Well, as the man said, what a long, strange trip it has been.
I returned to Cardiff and Vftp International Headquarters yesterday after a full month on the road. Unusually, half of that trip was for VACATION- hence the lack of any recent posts here.
After 2 weeks of blissful sight-seeing, hiking and family time, it really struck me when I got home yesterday just how insanely busy I had been in all the weeks leading up to our get-away. I had completely forgotten that the night before we left for America, I had done a pretty big concert with the HSO (Franck D minor, Saint-Saens 3rd Violin Concerto and Berlioz Corsaire Overture), and only been home for about 3 hours between that concert our departure for Heathrow. There was still junk from that concert in the car when we got to Heathrow yesterday, but it seemed like relics of a distant epoch.
2010 has been a very, very intense and busy year so far, and there is a huge backlog of stuff I meant to write about and hope still to write about, but I’ve been humbled enough by past failings not to promise readers too much. Much as I would like to say that this week we can look forward to posts about x, y and z, all I can really say is that it is great to be back, and that I certainly have a lot of ground to cover about June concerts, the Rose City International Conductor’s Workshop, the Gal CD and projects ahead.
Meanwhile, it is time to start learning some music again. Between May 31 and July 11, I did 8 programs with 8 orchestras, with no repeated repertoire on any of those concerts, but since finishing the workshop on the 11th of July, I have not opened a score! It felt good.
Next up is the Harlech Orchestral Summer School, which is a mountain of rep, much of it new to me-
Arnold- The Inn of Sixth Happiness
Janacek- Taras Bulba
Mahler – Symphony No 5
Niccolai- Overture to the Merry Wives of Windsor
Prokofiev- Selections from Romeo and Juliet Suite No. 2
Rachmaninov – Isle of the Dead
Ravel – La valse
Shostakovich – Symphony No 6
Walton- Variations on a Theme of Paul Hindemith
I’ve done Mahler 5 quite recently, but it’s always a lot to take in. I usually do the Prokofiev R&J music in my own selection of music from the 3 suites, which I can make a little closer to the plot of the play than the suites themselves are, and so there are a couple of movements in the 2nd Suite that are new. I did the Niccolai recently on the SMP Viennafest concert back in January. Everything else is new, and the Shostakovich, Janacek, Ravel, Walton and Racnmaninoff should keep me busy for the next 2 weeks.
So, maybe I can deliver a new wealth of Vftp posts this week, and maybe I can’t! Maybe it is time for a post on how to learn scores really, really freakin’ fast.
In any case, I hope readers are all having a good summer. Thanks for your comments, and please keep in touch!!
Ambitious programme draws Surrey Mozart Players’ season to a close.
The Surrey Mozart Players concluded their 2009/10 season and their run of Schumann’s orchestrals works with a most ambitious programme in the Electric Theatre.
Under their charismatic conductor Kenneth Woods, they gave an inspired performance of one of Schumann’s fines works for orchestra, his Manfred Overture. The composer, mentally disturbed himself, was ideally placed to portray Byron’s tragic hero.
The performance was deliberately nervy and fevered, with plenty of dramatic tension, and the frenetic string playing contrasted sharply with the chorale-like wind chords towards the end.
Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto, written in the wake of his disastrous marriage, is so difficult that Leopold Auer pronounced it unplayable, even if it has now become very popular.
Its difficulties were exquisitely surmounted by the young Russian-born violinist Alexander Sitkovetsky, who throughout produced a wonderful, warm tone from his eighteenth-century instrument.
If the long first movement and its astonishing cadenza were technically proficient, the central Canzonetta, with its touching main theme, took off emotionally, with some lovely duetting between soloist and the wind instruments.
The Finale, full of Russian folk-like themes, was driven forward with a thrilling sense of momentum.
The soloist galvanized the orchestra into their best playing of the evening, while his own part reached to the very top registers of the violin, and he drew a tremendous ovation from the audience.
Notwithstanding the dry and “toppy” acoustic of the Electric Theatre, the orchestra exuded warmth in their rendering of Brahms’ Fourth Symphony.
Described by Kenneth Woods as one of the few “tragic” symphonies in the repertoire, it is full of good tunes and fascinating harmonies, particularly in the modally inflected Andante. The descending motives of the opening, echoed near the end of the great passacaglia Finale were beautifully shaped. The bumptious Scherzo movement, with its jolly interjections from the triangle was fluent, yet exciting.
The Finale itself was imbued with some lovely phrasing, a careful pointing out of the contrapuntal niceties, and, after some effective tension and release in dynamics, concluded with a great climax.
Gál Violin Concerto op 39, Vioin Concertino op 52, Triptych op 100
Annette Barbara Vogel, violin
Northern Sinfonia/Kenneth Woods
Here’s a real treat: a pair of long-list violin concertos from that most fecund decade for the medium, the 1930’s.
Hans Gál (1890-1987) was a Viennese-Jewish composer who managed to flee his homeland for the UK at the time of the Anschluss and spent the rest of his life as a musicologist in Edinburgh. The songful Violin Concerto was written in 1932 when he was at the height of his fame as a composer in Austro-Germany and musically falls very much within the central European tradition with hints of Bartok, Mahler and neo-Classical Strauss. The Concertino (with string orchestra) was written in London in 1939, but its lyrical ease belies the times and his precarious circumstances. German violinist, Annette-Barbara Vogel, who has already recorded Gál’s chamber music for Avie gives committed performances of both pieces and revels in the honesty of this music. She brings a winning presence to her tone and delivery, and maintains a perceptively fluid relationship with the accompanying forces of the Northern Sinfonia.
The symphonic-scale Triptych for orchestra dates from 1970, but is written in a style that seems unchanged from the time of Mahler and Korngold, whose music the pieces resemble at times. The Sage Gateshead recording is warm and supportive.
….Gál’s aesthetic is inherited directly from the tail-end of the Austro-German Romantic tradition. His musicbears many similarities with that of Franz Schmidt, although not the long, lyrical melodic lines that characterise so much of Schmidt’s orchestral music. Franz Schreker is another similar Viennese voice, although Gál (thankfully) avoids the excesses of Schreker’s neurotic Expressionism. In fact, it is difficult to deduce much about Gál’s personality or temperament from this music. He was presumably a very calm, centred man, for whom music came from within, rather than through conscious reactions to external stimuli. How else to explain the stylistic similarities of these three works, the Concerto written before his flight from the Nazi’s, the Concertino written in London during the war, and the Triptych written towards the end of his life, in Edinburgh in 1970….
….the lightness of the composer’s touch combines yet again with a rock-solid compositional technique, with very listenable results. The performances and the recording are of a consistently high standard. The Northern Sinfonia …… are probably better than anything he ever heard in this country. But most importantly, both orchestra and conductor Kenneth Woods are sensitive to the lightness of the textures and always elegantly balance the soloist. Annette-Barbara Vogel is about the most ideal exponent a composer could hope to have. She, too, maintains that delicate balance between thematic rigour and lightness of touch, often through very gradual changes of tone colour and a coherent approach to phrasing. Her low register is particularly impressive, a rich, immediate sound, but never overpowering or unduly woody. These works all border on the textures of chamber music at times, and the intimacy that Vogel achieves brings those quiet textures up close. This is her second Hans Gál project; her first was a disc of Violin Sonatas, also on Avie (AV2182). If you’ve heard that and were impressed, and I understand most were, then buy this. You won’t be disappointed.
As we celebrate the release of the new Gal CD, I’m hoping to use this blog to give readers a chance to get to know a little bit more about this fascinating musician and figure. I thought we might make a nice bridge from recent topics by starting with Mahler. Here are two wonderful and telling anecdotes from an article by Martin Anderson. The first is from an interview recorded by Anderson and Gal in 1986, when the composer was 96.
I believe you heard Mahler conduct in Vienna .
Yes, it was always an extraordinary experience. In attended one of his earliest performances at the Yie Opera. It was Auber’s Fra Diavolo, curiously.
But that was in 1897!
Yes, that is correct. I was only a small boy, but in those days it was the custom for children to go to the opera with their parents, and so we went to see Fra Diavolo. We heard Mahler conduct quite often at the opera house, where he remained until 1907. It is extraordinary how these things stick in the memory. But it was the most marvellous conducting – in all these years I’ve never heard anything to equal it.
In the appendix to this article, Anderson relays a story Gal told to Malcom Smith at Boosey and Hawkes
When I was a school-lad, I lived in Vienna [he did tell me what Gasse it was, but I can’t now remember]. It was on the first floor, above a confectioner’s. I was taught by my mother to play the piano, and after a time, of course, when I was nine or ten, she couldn’t teach me any more, so I had a gentleman in from the Conservatoire there. He used to come in on a Saturday morning and leave me a couple of pieces to learn by the next Saturday.
One particular Saturday he said: ‘Hansi, you’ve done very well today – here’s a pfennig for you: go and buy some sweeties downstairs’. After he’d gone, my mother said: ‘Alright, you can go down’. So I went downstairs. I knew the people in the shop very well: a couple of daughters and an old dear, who was about 80-odd and sat behind the door and took the money; the daughters made the sweets and cakes and they served.
When I came in with my pfennig [it might have been a groschen – it was the equivalent of about a ha’penny], one of the girls said: ‘Oh, Hansi, you played very well today, we enjoyed it very much. What can we do for you?’ So I said I had a pfennig and I’d like some sweeties. They said: ‘Well, as you know, you can have ten of your choice for a pfennig’. So they made a cardboard cornet for me out of paper and I put various selections in. Then they said: ‘As you played so well, you can have two more’. So I thanked them very much and went to pay my money to the old dear.
She said: ‘You played very well. It reminds me that, when I was a young girl, I used to live in such-and-such a Gasse. We lived on the second floor, and there was a flat above us, and there was a musician there who caused us terrible trouble. I slept in one room and my parents in another, and he used to bang on the piano all through the night, and my parents had to stand on the bed with a broomstick and bang on the ceiling and shout at him to stop. Of course, I saw this chap as I went to school in the morning – he’d be coming done the spiral staircase and I used to follow him down the road. He used to wear a long black coat and a top hat, and all the children used to shout and throw things at him. After a time he moved because he didn’t pay his rent’.
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