Beethoven keeps on cycling

In 2006 Norman Lebrecht got it wrong when he wrote "in fact, no label had issued a (Beethoven) symphonic cycle in three years, and none was likely to do so again".

In 2008 Lebrecht is proved wrong again by Paavo Järvi's acclaimed new cycle with the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen on RCA. Hopefully the CEO of the Bremen orchestra hasn't reviewed any of Norm's books in the past.
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Swollen orchestral manner and poor taste

'A lengthy, pompous, bourgeois sort of thing; it reflects the complacency and stodginess of the era of the antimacassar and pork-pie bonnets; it is affected by the poor taste and the swollen orchestral manner of the post-romantics' - Olin Downes reviews John Barbirolli's performance of Elgar's Second Symphony with the New York Philharmonic on 23rd March, 1939.

Music critics will always differ. George Bernard Shaw thought Elgar was carrying on Beethoven's business, and leading musicians had some interesting opinions about Elgar's music.
Sorry about the sleeve. This is one of the first CD releases of Boult's last recording of Elgar's masterly E flat symphony. EMI simply took the original LP artwork and ruined it with that logo. James the joiner is prancing around in Italy so the LP sleeve didn't get scanned in. Any copyrighted material on these pages is included as "fair use", for the purpose of study, review or critical analysis only, and will be removed at the request of copyright owner(s). Report broken links, missing images and errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk

Venezuelan youth orchestrates political protest

Tens of thousands of students are expected to march through Caracas and other cities today in protest at Hugo Chávez's move to amend Venezuela's constitution, despite violence which has injured at least eight students.

Masked gunmen opened fire on a university campus in clashes between pro- and anti-Chávez groups in Caracas on Wednesday. The university said the government used thugs to intimidate protesters but Mr Chávez blamed the marchers. "They generally take the path of fascist violence and confront the laws and the people, and they are always looking to the Pentagon, high-ranking generals," he told a summit in Chile yesterday.

Campuses are the focus of opposition to Mr Chávez's referendum on December 2 to permit him to run indefinitely and accelerate what he terms a socialist revolution. Raul Isaias Baduel, a retired army commander and long-time Chávez ally, has joined the opposition to the draft constitution, saying it amounts to a coup.

Today's Guardian reports it. I wonder how many music blogs will even mention it?

Now playing - Deutsche Grammophon's great recording of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony. This is what the Gramophone Good CD Guide said - It has become utterly impossible to keep track of all recordings of Beethoven's music ... So who would predict that anything new could possibly be added to what has so often been done, and done well? Thus we might have reasoned in the mid-1970s, but then the seemingly impossible came to pass. When Carlos Kleiber's recording of Beethoven's Fifth was issued in 1975 ... the great clock of Beethovenian interpretation struck the hour.

Carlos Kleiber's father, Erich, resigned his post as director of Berlin's Staatsoper in December 1934 in protest against the policies of the Nazis. He continued to work in Europe outside Germany, but the spread of Fascism forced him to leave the continent in 1939. Ironically it was to South America that Kleiber fled. He spent the years between 1939 and 1946 conducting less than world class orchestras in Argentina, Peru and Chile, and willingly accepted this as the price of his political beliefs.

In 1951 Erich Kleiber returned to Berlin and to the Staatsoper which was now in the communist sector of the city. The opera house itself had been destroyed in the last months of the war, and performances took place in the Admiralspalast, a former dance hall. Kleiber found post-war East Berlin politically brittle, and the working conditions in the still ruined city were extremely difficult. He resigned in March 1955 on principle after a dispute with the authorities over the removal of an inscription to Frederick the Great on the newly renovated Staatsoper building.

Carlos Kleiber was born in 1930 in pre-Nazi Berlin. In that year the highlights at the Staatsoper included its director, Erich Kleiber, conducting Darius Milhaud's new opera Christophe Colomb, Hans Pfitzner conducting his own Palestrina, and Richard Strauss conducting Intermezzo. So when Beethoven's Fifth finished on the CD player I switched to another DG disc, Christian Thielemann conducting the Orchester Der Deutsche Oper Berlin in three of the preludes from Palestrina and the prelude to Capriccio. Sadly the CD seems to be deleted, but recommended if you can find a copy.

Now read how the East Germans rewrote music history.
Do find a copy of Erich Kleiber, A Memoir by John Russell (Andé Deutsch 1957) if you can. Any copyrighted material on these pages is included as "fair use", for the purpose of study, review or critical analysis only, and will be removed at the request of copyright owner(s). Report broken links, missing images and other errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk

My prophets are Bach and Beethoven

Ingmar Bergman's son-in-law, Henning Mankell, writes in today's Guardian:
Even if Ingmar was a theatre director, dramatist and film-maker in his professional life, I can't stop thinking that it really was the music that meant most. He had never dreamt of becoming a musician - he said so firmly. But probably he had toyed with the thought that in another life he could have become a conductor.

The music was fundamental. He often spoke of sheet music instead of typescript. He used musical terms to describe his films and theatre. To himself and to those who participated, he talked of the works, for example, as sonatas, and he was forever searching for the distinctly musical elements in his films and productions.

The music was both beginning and end. He saw in music's most lenient moment a sort of gateway to other realities, different from those that we can immediately perceive with our senses. Perhaps it was in music that that bridge to other realities, which most of us search for, could be found.

When asked what he believed in Ingmar Bergman is reported to have replied "I believe in other worlds, other realities. But my prophets are Bach and Beethoven; they definitely show another world." For a valuable analysis of the use of Bach's music in Bergman's films by Chadwick Jenkins follow this path.

The BBC Proms may have banished Bach to bedtime, but On An Overgrown Path still retains its passion for Bach.
Image credit Swedish Television SVT. Any copyrighted material on these pages is included as "fair use", for the purpose of study, review or critical analysis only, and will be removed at the request of copyright owner(s). Report broken links, missing images and other errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk

Art born out of rebellion and dissatisfaction

Email received ~ 'Hi: I have a Xmas card from Toscanini to Ernst Krenek, sent Xmas 1946. I find this an odd connection & wonder if you know something I don't. Toscanini's handwriting is hard to read, but I am an autograph dealer & used to hard-to-write handwritings. It is in "broken" English however. The card also has a photo of Toscanini looking at a photo of Beethoven laid on. Underneath the photo there is a musical quotation from Beethoven's 9th Symphony with the words: "Seid umschlungen, Millionen! Diesen Kuss der ganzen Welt!" penned by Toscanini. There is also a note to Krenek from Toscanini thanking him for a wonderful gift & wishing him & Madame Krenek a happy New Year. So the plot thickens with the Beethoven association. Any ideas of how this connects?
Thanks,Joyce.'

Joyce, my solution is the following. Toscanini and Krenek were linked through the 1934 Salzburg declaration. In this, a young Viennese musician, Paul Csonka, started a movement which has some contemporary resonances ... "against conventional opera, conventionally produced and enslaved by the star system. Our hope was to introduce the arts of the theatre into opera from which they have been divorced, these many years, all over the world." Both Toscanini and Krenek signed the declaration, see the full story below reproduced from Time in November 1937.

The story of Paul Csonka is an extraordinary one, and deserves an article to itself. He was rumored to be the illegitimate son of Kaiser Franz Joseph, and fled from Austria after the Anschluss. He settled in Cuba, where he built the Opera Nacional de Havana and composed. After the 1958 revolution he left Cuba for Miami where he became creative director of Palm Beach Opera. Csonka also taught, and the young composers he worked with included Richard Danielpour. He once won $11,000 on a TV quiz show, his subject was opera. Paul Csonka died in 1995 in Palm Beach aged ninety.

The quotation on the Christmas card is from Schiller's Ode to Joy , and translates as 'Be embraced, you millions! This kiss for the whole world!'. It seems to reflect the sentiments of the 1934 Salzburg declaration, and would have been sent to Krenek when he was living in Cuba - he became a citizen in 1947. That's my take, other solutions to the link between Toscanini and Krenek are very welcome. Here is the 1937 Time story:

''Our company was born out of rebellion and dissatisfaction, in the summer of 1934. Our rebellion was against conventional opera, conventionally produced and enslaved by the star system. Our hope was to introduce the arts of the theatre into opera from which they have been divorced, these many years, all over the world. Toscanini, Klemperer, Stefan Zweig and Ernst Krenek listened to our declarations. A proclamation of artistic independence was drawn up and subscribed to by these men. They all signed it. and Toscanini remarked: 'Nothing is ever being done for the real opera—only words, never action. But perhaps,' he added with a smile, 'this will be the real thing.' "

Thus does a young Viennese named Paul Csonka (photo above), who assembled a troupe of young singers in 1934, explain what he set out to do. For six months in a quiet Tyrolese village his troupe rehearsed one opera, Mozart's Cosi fan tutte. After a season in Vienna, Csonka moved it to Salzburg, though it had no connection with the summer music festivals, and adopted the name, Salzburg Opera Guild. Last summer, rehearsing twelve hours a day in a rented castle at Mondsee near Salzburg, the Guild increased its repertory of operas. Last week, under the management of astute S. (for Sol) Hurok, the Guild made its Manhattan debut, first stop in a tour of 100 U. S. cities.

With Cosi fan tutte ("They all do it") as its opener, the Guild showed that, though it could not do much for the vocal side of opera, it could, theatrically, provide as agreeable a romp as anything that had been sung on a Manhattan stage in years. Viennese Theo Otto's frivolous set and gay 18th-Century costumes—worn by opera singers who for once looked perfectly at home in them—made a completely plausible background for Mozart's tale of deception which proves that all women are fickle.

The starless cast of the Salzburg Guild included: pretty Soprano Margarethe Menzel, 24, who once played the piano in a Viennese ladies' orchestra; pretty Contralto Hertha Glatz, 27, who has sung with the San Francisco Symphony; pretty Coloratura Soprano Marisa Merlo. so flip on the stage that audiences might not guess that she once nearly got herself to a nunnery; roly-poly Basso Alfred Hollander, once of the able German Theatre in Brunn, Czechoslovakia; Baritone Leo Weith, who sang the title role in the world premiere of Schwanda der Dudelsackpfeifer; Tenor Franco Perulli, onetime protege of Tenor Tito Schipa.

The Guild's repertory for its tour is balanced between the gay and the sombre: La Cambiale di Matrimonio ("The Matrimonial Market"), Rossini's first operatic work, an opera-buffa composed when he was 18; Angelique, music by contemporary Frenchman Jacques Ibert, the story of a shopkeeper's efforts to sell his shrewish wife; Le Pauvre Matelot, a "lament in one act," music by Darius Milhaud. libretto by Jean Cocteau, in which a woman kills a sailor, unaware that he is her husband who has returned after 15 years' absence. This week the Guild gives the first professional performance in the U. S. of L'Incoronazione di Poppea, an antique forerunner of modern opera, composed by Claudio Monteverdi and given its debut in Venice in 1642. The work has been reconstructed from its fragmentary original score by Ernst Krenek, best known in the U. S. for his jazz opera Jonny Spielt Anf, and as conductor of the Monteverdi work making his first visit to the U. S.

Now read the full story of Jonny Spielt Anf
Photo credit LiricoCuba. Any copyrighted material on these pages is included as "fair use", for the purpose of study, review or critical analysis only, and will be removed at the request of copyright owner(s). Report broken links, missing images and other errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk

Elgar - carrying on Beethoven's business

Edward Elgar, the figurehead of music in England, is a composer whose rank it is neither prudent nor indeed possible to determine. Either it is one so high that only time and posterity can confer it, or else he is one of the Seven Humbugs of Christendom. Contemporary judgements are sound enough on Second Bests; but when it comes to Bests, they acclaim ephemerals as immortals, and simultaneously denounce immortals as pestilent charlatans.

Elgar has not left us any room to hedge. From the beginning, quite naturally and as a matter of course, he has played the great game and professed the Best. He has taken up the work of a great man so spontaneously that it is impossible to believe that he ever gave any consideration to the enormity of the assumption, or was even conscious of it. But there it is, unmistakeable. To the north countryman who, on hearing of Wordsworth's death, said 'I suppose his son will carry on the business' it would be plain today that Elgar is carrying on Beethoven's business. The names are up on the shop front for everyone to read. ELGAR late BEETHOVEN & CO, Classics and Italian Warehousemen. Symphonies, Overtures, Chamber Music, Oratorios, Bagatelles.

This. it will be seen, is a very different challenge from that of, say, Debussy and Stravinsky. You can rave about Stravinsky without the slightest risk of being classed as a lunatic by the next generation. Without really compromising yourself, you can declare the Aprés Midi d'un Faune the most delightful and enchanting orchestral piece ever written. But if you say that Elgar's Cockaigne overture combines every classic quality of the concert to Die Meistersinger you are either uttering a platitude as safe as a compliment to Handel on the majesty of the Hallelujah Chorus or else damning yourself to all critical posterity by a gaffe that will make your grandson blush for you.

Personally, I am prepared to take the risk. What do I care about my grandson? give me Cockaigne. But my recklessness cannot settle the question. It would be much easier if Cockaigne were genre music, with the Westminster chimes, snatches of Yip-i-addy, and a march of the costermongers to Covent Garden. Then we should know where we are: the case would be as simple as Gilbert and Sullivan. But there is nothing of the kind: the material of the overture is purely classical. You may hear all sorts of footsteps in it; and it may tell you all sorts of stories; but it is classical music as Beethoven's Les Adieux sonata is classical music: it tells you no story external to itself and yourself. Therefore who knows whether it appeals to the temporal or the eternal in us? in other words, whether it will be alive or dead in the twenty-first century?

George Bernard Shaw on Elgar in Music & Letters in 1920. Well the good news is that Sir Edward Elgar is very much alive in the twenty-first century, and we wish him a very happy one-hundred-and-fiftieth birthday today, June 2nd 2007.

Now read about Elgar - the first of the new
If the portrait of Elgar looks unfamiliar it is. It is by an unknown artist, the original hangs on my study wall and it has never been published before, copyright On An Overgrown Path. Any copyrighted material on these pages is included as "fair use", for the purpose of study, review or critical analysis only, and will be removed at the request of copyright owner(s). Report broken links, missing images and other errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk

Classical music - revolutionary, elitist, popular

Could it happen anywhere else? The four leading French presidential candidates answer questions on classical music. Here is a translation of leading rightwing candidate Nicolas Sarkozy's comment - The music we call 'classical' is the most popular since it has transcended time, fashion, and society to become contemporary. The music of Mozart and Beethoven was perhaps revolutionary, even elitist at the time, but how we can claim it's not popular?

For online translation tool click here. And that's the second appearance here by Sarkozy (photo above) in as many days, which shows untypical impartiality on my part.
With thanks to Clive Davis' blog for the heads-up. Any copyrighted material on these pages is included as "fair use", for the purpose of study, review or critical analysis only, and will be removed at the request of copyright owner(s). Report broken links, missing images and other errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk

Built on rock hard evidence

'I can say no more to protect sources, but those of you who read my weekly column should know I never speculate. What you read is built on rock-hard evidence' ~ Norman Lebrecht in Slipped Disc April 10 2007.

'... while the BBC is mending fences with the music industry which howled blue murder over Beethoven and acted as if Radio 3 was destroying its business when, in fact, no label had issued a (Beethoven) symphonic cycle in three years, and none was likely to do so again' ~ Lebrecht Weekly April 5 2006.

'The third disc in Osmo Vänskä and the Minnesota Orchestra’s Beethoven symphonies cycle features one of the greatest of all symphonies: Beethoven’s Ninth ... the new album is part of a five-year, five-disc plan designed to record the complete Beethoven symphonies. In January 2007 Vänskä and the Orchestra recorded the First and Sixth Symphonies for a fourth album' ~ Minnesota Orchestra website

'The Complete Orchestral Works of Ludwig van Beethoven - This series follows the recently published Bärenreiter Urtext Edition of Beethoven's Symphonies, supervised by Jonathan del Mar, the first new edition of this music for more than 130 years ... This CD-series (by the Swedish Chamber Orchestra) also include the complete stage music, overtures and concertos' ~ Simax website

Now read how a lot of other music critics also looked foolish
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Recycling Shostakovich and Beethoven

In Avignon last week I was fortunate enough to catch two of the concerts in a cycle of the Shostakovich Quartets by the young French Debussy Quartet.

Any cycle of these magnificent works is an important event. But there are two particular reasons why the Avignon cycle is worth commenting on, quite apart from the excellent performances by these talented young players. First, the cycle was played on three consecutive evenings in three different venues. Like my local city of Norwich, Avignon is blessed with a surfeit of historic buildings which can be used for concerts. The organisers of the cycle, the enterprising L'Opéra-théâtre d'Avignon, took full advantage of his by combining wonderful music-making with privileged visits to architecturally important buildings in this wonderful and civilized city, which in the 14th century was the capital of the Christian world, and home to the Popes.

The first evening's performances were in the Galerie Vernet of the Musée Calvet among the art treasures. The next night's the cycle visited the Chapelle des Pénitents blancs with its 17th century facade, which is now a permanent Avignon Festival venue. The final venue was the 18th century Chapelle de l'Oratoire, an extraordinary performing space with vertical dimensions exceeding the horizontal, and really excellent acoustics apart from the occasional traffic noise. I was fortunate to attend concerts in both the Chapelle des Pénitents blancs and the Chapelle de l'Oratoire.

The second unusual feature of this peripatetic Shostakovich cycle was that the three evenings were each divided into 'mini concerts', with separate tickets (and often a different audience) for each. The first two evenings each consisted of two 'mini concerts', with the first starting at 7.00pm. The last evening was a marathon of three concerts, starting with Quartet No 6 at 7.00, and ending with the final quartet at 10.45! I was in the Chapelle de l'Oratoire for Quartets No 2 and 15 in that late evening finale. The final quartet, with its six linked Adagio movements, held the audience spellbound as the Epilogue simply faded away into the dark and distance recesses of the 18th century Chapelle. Just unforgettable.......

The Debussy Quartet's (photo below) innovative programmming started me thinking about the different options for scheduling quartet cycles. The two usual options are to play them chronologically, for convenience, or play them mixed by different periods to give variety - which is what the Debussy Quartet chose. The order for the quartets is usually the call of the performers. But not if you are lucky enough to be invited to play in the famous Slee Beethoven Cycle in Buffalo.

Frederick Caldecott Slee was a prominent corporate lawyer in that city, and together with his wife was a great supporter of chamber music. An endowment was established for an annual cycle of the Beethoven Quartets at Buffalo University. Within the terms of the endowment Mr Slee prescribed the order in which the quartets are to be played, together with the number of concerts (6) - and no variation is allowed. And that is exactly how they have been performed annually for the last 50 years, with many famous quartets including the Tokyo, Guarneri and Muir performing the cycle in the prescribed order. In fact the Guarneri were so taken with the programme of the Slee cycle that they use it in all their complete Beethoven Quartet performances.

And here is the Slee sequence used in Buffalo, which unusually does not end with a late Quartet:

Concert I:
Quartet in E-flat Major, Op. 127
Quartet in F Major, Op. 18, No. 1
Quartet in C Major, Op. 59, No. 3

Concert II:
Quartet in E-flat Major, Op. 74 ("The Harp")
Quartet in G Major, Op. 18, No. 2
Quartet in C-sharp minor, Op. 131

Concert III:
Quartet in D Major, Op. 18, No. 3
"Grosse Fugue", Op. 133
Quartet in F Major, Op. 59, No. 1

Concert IV:
Quartet in F minor, Op. 95 ("Serioso")
Quartet in B-flat Major, Op. 18, No. 6
Quartet in A minor, Op. 132

Concert V:
Quartet in A Major, Op. 18, No. 5
Quartet in B-flat Major, Op. 130

Concert VI:
Quartet in C minor, Op. 18, No. 4
Quartet in F Major, Op. 135
Quartet in E minor, Op. 59, No. 2

And now for something completely different. Visit the really cool website of Le Fruitier de Saint Agricol, the little delicatessen just round the corner from the Chapelle de l'Oratoire - they ship their olive oil and other goodies all over the world, and the photo below is their wonderful shop.

Image credits:
Debussy Quartet - Wentworth Associates
Avignon - Avignon Culture
Le Fruitier de Saint Agricol - Le Fruitier
If you enjoyed this post take an overgrown path to Rare Romantic Requiems in Avignon

BBC launches free classical MP3 downloads

An important new development for BBC Radio 3 is their move into online MP3 file downloads, as opposed to audio streaming. MP3 files of the Beethoven Symphonies played by the BBC Philharmonic under Gianandrea Noseda are available from their web site for two days after broadcast as part of their Beethoven fest.

Open this link to access the downloads, but hurry as the downloads are available for a limited period.

These downloads are free. There is a fair amount of small print on the site about the files only being available for personal, non-commercial use. Radio 3 controller Roger Wright has said in a press release "We hope it will encourage audiences to explore online classical music."

The motive of trying to reach more listeners for classical music is very laudable, and has taxed music bloggers for some time. But since the Beethoven MP3 files became available in early June the BBC has said that more than 700,000 listeners downloaded files of the first five symphonies. I repeat that figure. Almost three quarters of a million downloads, or 140,000 per symphony.

I can't help but find a certain irony that these statistics are published in the same week as the music industry driven US Supreme Court ruling on file-sharing which ruled that distribution platforms such as Grokster can be held legally responsible if used for copyright infringement. Now I know that the BBC iniative is totally copyright friendly. But doesn't it send a clear mesage to those very listeners that Roger Wright is trying to reach that online classical music is free? And doesn't it also materially lower the price expectation for concert tickets among those same new listeners?

I'm well aware of the study by Harvard Business School associate professor Felix Oberholzer and University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill associate professor Koleman Strumpf:

"We find that file sharing has only had a limited effect on record sales," the study's authors wrote. "While downloads occur on a vast scale, most users are likely individuals who would not have bought the album even in the absence of file sharing."

But the fact remains that a record company, or concert promoter, would give their right arm to have got just a tiny fraction of those 700,000 listeners as customers. (The figure must surely reach a million before the symphony cycle is complete?). Similarly the hard working musicians of the wonderful BBC Philharmonic who play on these downloads would surely appreciate remuneration at more than the pitiful rate received by LSO musicians on LSO Live recordings of a measly £400 - US$728 - each annual profit share? This move also undermines the smart work being done by sites such as Peter Maxwell Davies' MaxOpus to create a 'pay to use' business model for classical MP3 downloads.

Despite high minded talk from senior BBC executives it is hard to see who the winners in this exercise are. Except, of course, the audio file downloaders. And these are the very same people that the music industry is currently trying to teach in the US Supreme Court at vast expense, and with much bad PR, that the creators of intellectual property need to be properly rewarded.

If you enjoyed this post follow an overgrown path to Is recorded classical music too cheap?