WOW: the joy of youth

Keep true to the dreams of your youth.

~Friedrich Schiller

When we think of Richard Strauss, we are drawn to his early operas: Salome or Elektra, or his many tone poems, Don Juan and Til Eulenspiegel, among them. But none of these were Strauss's "breakthrough" compositions. That was something much briefer and steeped in a language and tradition much different than the direction that his compositional journey would take him.

Strauss was born in Munich (1864), the son of the principal horn player in the Court Orchestra. Like the modern day Vienna Philharmonic, the ensemble performed in both the opera and subscription concerts of the Musical Academy. The Munich Court Orchestra, under the leadership of its esteemed conductor, Hans von Bulow, offered the first performances of both Tristan und Isolde and Die Meistersinger. Richard's father, Franz--possibly the finest horn player of his day--despised anything to do with Wagner. And yet, this "Joachim of the Waldhorn" (as Bulow would call him) never performed anything without his conscientiousness and artistic perfection.

The young Strauss grew up--like Mozart--surrounded by music and showed his preferences for various instruments at an early age: the horn would bring smiles to his face, while he reacted to the violin with tears (maybe it was the player?) His earliest studies included the piano (from age four) and he began learning the violin when he was eight. And yet, he maintained forever his love for dad's instrument and would eventually compose two of the finest concertos for the horn.

He would be grounded in the classics, hearing Der Freischutz and Die Zauberflote when he was only seven. Attending a large number of concerts, he was drawn to the music of Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven, while he shared his father's intense hatred for Wagner. Of Mozart's music, he would state:

...The abundance of the ideas, the harmonic richness, and yet the sense of proportion, the marvelous, lovely, tender, delightful ideas themselves, the delicate accompaniment. Yet one can't play anything like that anymore! All you get now is drivel; either twittering or brash roaring and crashing or sheer musical nonsense. With Mozart, with few means, says everything a listener could desire to be refreshed and truly entertained and edified, the others use all the means at their disposal to say absolutely nothing.

Strauss's homage to Mozart is demonstrated by his first acknowledged masterpiece, the Serenade, Op. 7. In its instrumentation, it bears distinct resemblance to Mozart's Gran Partita, K. 370a. While basset horns were no longer in fashion, Strauss includes two flutes. The rest is the same: pairs of oboes, clarinets, bassoons, four horns and a single bass instrument (string bass or contrabassoon.) While very little is known of the circumstances surrounding the composition of the Serenade, it was the first Strauss work performed in public. von Bulow, who led that premiere, stated at the time, "The Serenade, Op. 7 by Richard Strauss exhibits the virtuosity of our players in the most brilliant light. I make no qualifications regarding its acceptance." The conductor was more than willing to put his money where his mouth was, for he would perform the Serenade no fewer than seven times over the next two years.

The work is classical in its form, nearly a perfect example of sonata-allegro. Strauss demonstrates some of the orchestrational prowess that would bring him fame (and actually it did with the Serenade). But enough of my talk; here's the piece, performed by members of the Czech Philharmonic. There are lots of recordings to be found through a simple Google search, including a nice job by our own U. S. Marine Band. But for me, I like the earthy sounds of the Central and Eastern Europeans.

Need sublimity in your life? Here goes:

A belated WOW: Reveling in a "Rusty Squeezebox"

I began this post on Mozart's birthday (January 27). Once I had written way too much (my discussion had gotten extremely technical and academic), I trashed it. So here is another try.

"On the page, it looked nothing. The beginning simple, almost comic. Just a pulse. Bassoons and basset horns, like a rusty squeezebox. And then suddenly, high above it, an oboe. A single note, hanging there, unwavering. Until a clarinet took over and sweetened it into a phrase of such delight! This was no composition by a performing monkey! This was a music I'd never heard. Filled with such longing, such unfulfillable longing, it had me trembling. It seemed to me that I was hearing the voice of God."

F. Murray Abraham as Antonio Salieri

Thus begins the first discussion (and the appearance) of Mozart's music in the multiple Academy Award-winning film, Amadeus. The piece? Serenade, K. 371 (370a), better known as the Gran Partita. In seven glorious movements and clocking in at about 50 minutes, it is Mozart's longest purely instrumental composition.

It is part of a wind music tradition dating back centuries, from public tower concerts, known as ablassen, to the court bands maintained by many of the wealthy patrons of the Classical era. Beginning as sextets (pairs of oboes, horns, and bassoons), the introduction of the clarinet established what would become the standard wind octet. Composers would write original music for these Harmoniemusik ensembles, and scores of arrangers would take up the tunes of the popular operas of the day. The sounds of Figaro, Don Giovanni, Magic Flute, and much more filled the streets as well as the opera houses.

But Mozart took the ensemble several steps further, writing for pairs of oboes, clarinets, and basset horns, four horns, two bassoons, and contrabassoon (or contrabass). The sonic possibilities here are much more numerous, and Mozart exploits them to the fullest.

It has been surmised that Mozart wrote the Gran Partita as a wedding gift to Constanze in 1781. However, given that Emperor Joseph II founded his famous wind group in 1782, as well as other contradictory evidence, I posit that it was written sometime between 1783 and 1785. But, in terms of WOW, that is totally unimportant. 

The first movement is in true Sonata-Allegro form, within an amazing introduction. That, in itself, sets the stage for what is to come. Played by a Scottish "band" here it is:

Jumping ahead to the third movement (the "rusty squeezebox"), it is easy to become enraptured by the glorious sounds. The impact of the basset horns is beyond measure; with all of these darker-hued colors, we are awash in richness. Here we are with Sir Neville Mariner and the Academy of St. Martin-in-the-Fields.

There are many joys that await listeners with an hour to spare. And here are some selected recordings.

• The Vienna Philharmonic Players, Furtwangler (1947)
• Amadeus Winds, Hogwood
• London Winds, Michael Collins (2010)
• Netherlands Wind Ensemble, De Waart (2011)

and many, many more. Check out www.arkivmusic for details.

 

THE GREATEST SYMPHONY OF ALL TIME! (and more)

Since cat photos and videos have taken over the Internet,
I had to include a shot of Allegro.

Could it be Mozart, Tchaikovsky, Mahler? Of course not, it's Beethoven! But which one? It's not the symphony you're probably thinking about....

Read more here.

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The Pittsburgh (PA) Schools change course and DOUBLE the number of music teachers serving grades 4-8. Now EIGHT teachers will be travelling among 23 schools, once every seven days. A vast improvement, but still not good enough.

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Anthony Tomassini puts into print something I've been saying for years.

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A friend of mine is visiting the UK and I urged him to go to the Proms. As the only concert that fit into his schedule included a Brahms piano concerto, he hemmed and hawed. But then this report, "The Brahms was heavenly. Peter Serkin was the soloist. Rich, resonant orchestra along with one of the most beautiful sounding Steinways I've ever heard." Interesting that Peter was the soloist. My favorite recording of both concertos is an LP with his Papa, Rudolf, backed up by George Szell and the Cleveland Orchestra.

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COMING SOON: The 2016-17 season repertoire of the Quad City Wind Ensemble.

My favorite Mozart

Today marked the 260th anniversary of the birth of Mozart (as well as something like the fifth incarnation of my "Mozart Day Letter"). Much of the life of this eternal man-child, prodigious from almost the very beginning, remains shrouded in mystery. The myths are never-ending. I still read of the "rivalry" between Mozart and Salieri, the germ of which took root in the play by Pushkin as well as Peter Shaffer's modern-day adaptation, Amadeus. Most people's knowledge of Mozart the man is based upon that film. As beautiful (and well-acted and directed--of course, it's Milos Forman) as it is, the history is bunk. The truth is, that despite all the theories--chronic illness, bad pork, some kind of plague--we'll never know what or who killed Mozart.

And that doesn't matter, because we're left with the music. His works remain among the most widely played in concert around the globe (it's usually Beethoven and then Mozart with an occasional outlier in an anniversary year. In fact, in 2015 Mozart overtook Beethoven as the most performed, according to Bachtrack.

Mozart the composer was not truly groundbreaking, inventing (or at least perfecting) genres like Haydn with the string quartet and the symphony. But his strides in his bread and butter work--opera (that's where composers could strike it relatively rich if they had no patron)--he remains (in my opinion) unequaled. And opera houses seemed to agree in 2015 as well; three of his greatest hits: Figaro, Don Giovanni, and Magic Flute all hit the opera top ten.

The heck with statistics. I want to talk about my favorite Mozart and get away, at least for a day, from the dull roar of collective bargaining agreements. Of course, with Mozart having written in every genre, I'd have to insist that it's impossible to name one favorite piece; of course it's my blog and I can pick and choose as I wish.

The piano concertos remain the genre in which Mozart made the most contributions. Of course, he did write the first of them at the age of 11! By the end of his career (the final concerto was completed in 1791) he had fully integrated the classical form as well as undertaken great strides in his orchestration. No longer were the winds and brass simple filler at cadence points, but a true part of the compositional fabric. My favorite? This one is actually quite easy: No. 20 in D-minor, K. 466. I seem to be drawn to Mozart's minor key works, probably because I feel he is at his the peak of his harmonic inventiveness in them.

Other concertos. Mozart's four concertos for horn are among the early masterworks for the instrument, but the best of the others has to be the sublime Concerto for Clarinet, K. 622 (another work from his last year). Many players insist--and I agree--that it remains today the finest concerto for the instrument.

Chamber music. This remains tricky as one has to answer the question, How many in a chamber? That said, the most influential work (and my favorite) for smaller forces is the Serenade No. 10, K. 361, also known as the Gran Partita, a truly monumental work for 13 players. Composers as diverse as Dvorak, Richard Strauss, Alban Berg, and others have modeled works on Mozart's original. I keep struggling to find a favorite performance; rumor has it that there is either a Klemperer or Furtwangler (I can't recall which) out there...That said, I know that I need to get to know the chamber music much better. I guess that's why I own Mozart's complete works.

Symphonies. Easy peasy. No. 40, G-minor, K. 550. Part of three consecutive symphonies written in less than three months in summer, 1788.

Opera. This one is up for grabs in the minds of many. Some say Don Giovanni; others, including me, insist on Le Nozze di Figaro. I've probably seen DG more than any opera, period, even having attended a performance in the theater where it premiered in Prague (talk about flirting with history!). But, if only for the second act finale, Figaro is number one. All of that cascading music, which flows from one section to another (and with obvious tempo choices) is just a miracle. But of course, it is difficult to knock off the penultimate scene in DG with the trombones whisking the evil Don into the bowels of hell.

Vocal music. One has to remember that, besides opera, Mozart's contributions to vocal music are wide-ranging. He was even able to write masterful church music for his Salzburg employer's "brief" masses. But Ave Verum Corpus, K. 618, is--in all of its simplicity--among the most beautiful works composed for mixed voices. And one cannot forget the "Et Incarnatus Est" movement from the uncompleted C-minor mass, K. 427. This was allegedly written for performance by Mozart's wife and if so, she was one hell of a singer!

Of course there is the Requiem, K. 626, that work that "killed him." This much is known: there was a black-cloaked stranger, but it wasn't Salieri, who had nothing to do with the commission or the writing of the music. What we have in Mozart's hand remain sketchy at best--I've seen the facsimile of the manuscript. We don't really know who wrote what and many other attempts have been made to complete it "as Mozart would have." But we don't know that answer and we never will. So for me, I'll stay close to the original....

Catch a listen to my own recording sometime. Oops, it was never distributed. Guess you'll have to visit and share a glass or two with me. Mozart and Riesling a good pairing? Only if the latter is dry.