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Swapping from William Schuman to Robert Schumann in recent posts has presented a spelling challenge, and, quite rightly, a reader corrected me a while back when I fused the American composer's Christian name with the German composer's surname.
So I was reassured to read the following in David Revill's book The Roaring Silence - John Cage: A Life - 'Cage continued to spend many hours preparing letters seeking support for a center for experimental music. On the back of his inventory of percussion instruments he scribbled one night, "Composers interested in electrical: Jacob Weinberg, Henry Brant, Paul Bowles, William Schumann (sic)"'.
John Cage Christmas gift suggestion here.
Cage collage taken at Les Gargoris, France (c) On An Overgrown Path 2007. Report broken links, missing images and errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk
Who said that the art of sleeve design died with the LP? - well actually I did. So, to prove myself wrong here is the sleeve for the recording of Stockhausen's Gruppen that I will be playing in my Future Radio programme this Sunday Dec 16 at 5.00pm UK time.
The CD was released by Budapest Music Center Records in 2006, and the Gruppen was recorded in 1997 in the same hall as the work was first performed in, the Messe Reinlandsaal in Cologne. The three orchestras are drawn from the ranks of the WDR Sinfonieorchester Köln and the conductors are the Spaniard Arturo Tamayo, the Hungarian Peter Eötvös and the Frenchman Jacques Mercier.
The coupling is Stockhausen's Punkte, and the excellent sleeve notes are by Richard Toop. As well as recording worthwhile composers BMC Records is one of the few companies committed to keeping good design alive in the digital era. More power to them for that.
Look at these images again. Now do you understand why I wrote Stockhausen - part of a dream?
Now playing - Robert Schumann's Symphony No. 3 'Rhenish'. Schumann and Stockhausen may seem to have little in common other than the letter 'S', but there are links. Both explored new technologies. While Stockhausen pioneered electronic music Schumann was a little less ambitious with his advocacy of the pedal piano which extended the register of the instrument using an organ style pedal action. Schumann's works for pedal piano played by Martis Schmeding are available on the Ars record label, although the nasty close and dry sound of the recording makes it of little interest other than as an academic document.
There are also geographic links between the two composers. Stockhausen was born in Mödrath near Cologne in 1928, and grew up in the Rhineland area where his father was a teacher. Although Schumann was born in Zwickau in the east of Germany he moved west to Düsseldorf in 1850, and later that year wrote his 'Rhenish' Symphony which celebrates the Rhineland and Cologne.
I visited Cologne frequently on business in the 1970s, and was mesmerised by the city's magnificent 13th century Catholic cathedral as well as attending trade fairs at the more prosaic Koelmesse where Gruppen was first performed. The fourth of the five movements of the 'Rhenish' is thought to have been inspired by the ordination of a Cardinal in the Cathedral.
I grew to love the 'Rhenish' through repeated playings of my 1972 LP of Herbert von Karajan's performance with the Berlin Philharmonic (DG 2530 447), and I still retain a great fondness for his interpretation. The Deutsche Grammophon sleeve shown below is wonderfully evocative of the Indian summer of the LP of which it was part. The stark contrast in graphic styles between the Stockhausen and Schumann sleeves also reflects the marked difference between the mellow analogue sound of the 1970s, and the analytical digital sound that was soon to replace it.
When CDs arrived I bought Kubelik's cycle with the Bayerischen Rundfunks Orchestra. These have served well, but never quite generated the frisson of Karajan's performances. More recently I have found David Zinman's cycle for the BMG's budget priced Arte Nova Classics label to be very rewarding. The orchestra is the Tonhalle Zurich who use natural trumpets, baroque trombones and other period instruments. The resulting crispness and bite provides a welcome antidote to Schumman's sometimes thick orchestration. Zinman's CD set is recommended. However, unlike BMC's Stockhausen and DG's Schumann, the CD artwork isn't worth reproducing here. But for some more striking images go to Robert Schumann's Zwickau.
Hear Karlheinz Stockhausen's Gruppen on my Future Radio programme on Sunday December 16 at 5.00pm UK time (convert to local time zones here) I will also be playing Lou Harrison's 1985 Piano Concerto. Listen by launching the Radeo internet player from the right side-bar, or via the audio stream. Convert time to your local time zone using this link. Windows Media Player doesn't like the audio stream very much and takes ages to buffer. WinAmp or iTunes handle it best. Unfortunately the royalty license doesn't permit on-demand replay, so you have to listen in real time. If you are in the Norwich, UK area tune to 96.9FM.
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
In a thoughtful comment on my post about Bernstein's Mass a reader suggests exploring some other 'flawed masterpeices' from the same genre. And here is my own contribution to the hunt for hidden gems.
Robert Schumann is one of my favourite composers. But I have to confess to never having heard a live performance, or owning a CD (although there are several in the catalogue), of either of his Requiems. So when we were in Avignon recently, and found that not just one, but both these works were being programmed in a single concert we leapt at the opportunity to hear them.
Schumann's Requiem Opus 148, scored for SATB, choir and orchestra, was composed in 1852, and follows the conventional liturgical format. The Requiem for Mignon Opus 98b of 1849 is a less conventional work celebrating Mignon from Goethe's Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahre. These works were programmed with Schumann's Nachtlied Opus 108 for choir and orchestra with its pre-echoes of Brahms' Requiem (Brahms dedicated his Requiem to Schumann).
The venue for the concert was the 15th Century Eglise St Pierre in Avignon. The interior is so exquisite that it would have been a pleasure to hear a chorus of frogs croaking in it. But there were no concerns about the performance quality by L'Orchestre Lyrique de Region Avignon-Provence, L'Ensemble Vocal D'Avignon, and the six soloists under the dynamic, and highly musical, direction of Vincent Barthe (this young conductor is a name to look out for based on this performance).
So what of the two Requiem's? Great works from a master, but not masterpieces would be my judgement. They reminded me of Richard Strauss' comment "I am not a first rate composer, but rather a first rate second rate composer." But the two Schumann Requiems really deserve to be programmed instead of the all too frequent repeats of the more popular 'war horses' such as the Verdi. So why aren't they heard more often? There may be a contributory commercial reason. The Requiem Opus 148 requires four soloists but is really a work for chorus and orchestra. More fundamentally, like his Violin Concerto, these works were denounced by Schumann's friends after his death as second rate works composed while the master's mind was disintegrating; and it was also suggested that he had little sympathy for sacred subjects. The Opus 148 was not performed until eight years after the composer's death. The Violin Concerto's time came in the 1930's, perhaps the first decade of the 21st Century will be the time for these other deserving works?
Requiems are a recurring destination on an overgrown path, and the wealth of information on the web never ceases to amaze me.. A very useful resource is the Requiem Survey. It has 2247 classical, vocal requiems in its database from 1550 composers, and includes fragments and unfinished works.
The database contains some good programme notes, and lists recordings. For instance the Messa per Rossini mentioned in my Wiki brings collabarative music full circle post is well documented - worth visiting.
This post is dedicated to Brother Roger Schutz, founder of the Taizé community. Born May 12th 1915, died August 16th 2005
