Glorious pieces of music

[Belle]

Tonight I'm retiring early after battling 3 days of illness and I'm listening to this, which I regard as quite wonderful and essential for the nourishment of mind and body. Oh, yes, there IS a god: and what a sublime performance! It's one of those pieces which stands between me and the abyss, and I can even play it myself!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=idbaPu1gDPg

What are you absolutely essential glorious individual pieces of music?

[John F]

Far too many to name. But if I could take only one recording to that desert island, it would be Mozart's "Marriage of Figaro." Not only is it some of the greatest music ever composed, the Act 2 finale is a wonder, but expressively its deep humanity and truthfulness are qualities I'd badly need if cut off from all else.

Also, there's so much of it! A Chopin mazurka couldn't sustain me for long.

[Belle]

It's true that one Mazurka couldn't 'sustain' for very long; I didn't mean for it to do so, but the point I was attempting to make is that there are ''little jolts of pleasure" and these can be absolutely euphoric or ineffable in the experience. This line was in the 1954 film "A Star is Born" when Norman (James Mason) first hears Esther (Judy Garland) sing with her band for the first time. These can happen in a short work for instrument or voice, an aria or a whole movement of a work. I guess you have to be in the mood but, having experienced that, you wouldn't give it up for anything!! And I did say "individual pieces" of music.

All the Mazurkas are wonderful, and it's difficult to choose, but that Rubinstein performance of Op. 17 No. 4 really hit the sweet spot - and how!! If I were to nominate a moment like that in Mozart it would be the Trio from "Cosi".

[John F]

Well, "Nozze di Figaro" is one piece of music... There are lots of little pieces that I enjoy, including lots of Chopin's mazurkas, but if we're talking about "glorious pieces of music," I want more.

Speaking of "Così fan tutte," I'd nominate the whole scene that ends with "Soave sia il vento." The two quintets that precede it are sublime. And I'd choose the recording conducted by Herbert von Karajan, which sustains a level of sensual beauty worthy of the music.

[Belle]

I've just fired off an email to a local friend about the Mazurka and on this very subject; we're both chronic insomniacs. And, John, you get it too!!! What a total pleasure. TOTAL. Even when I visit my doctor - which I did yesterday - we discuss music. He's an intelligent Polish fellow in his late 50's who has lived and worked in Austria and Germany. He paid me a compliment, "when you come in here you make me feel I'm not alone" (in sentiment and beliefs).

Recently we had a program on our music appreciation course; "Music for your Funeral". This Mazurka was one I've just nominated post-program to my friend in our graveyard-shift correspondence. The way Chopin imbues that dance rhythm (3/4) with plangent dissonances and multiple key changes - result; ecstasy, sadness, contemplation. And Rubinsteins' exquisite rubato. Those dying falls, as Bernstein might say!! I'll shut up now and return to my slumbers (4.30am AEST, post editing.)

[maestrob]

Hi, Belle! Sorry to hear about your spell under the weather.

Rubinstein is, of course, a sublime artist in anything Chopin wrote, but no artist has the last word in interpretation, and I would recommend the disc above as a desert-island piano disc. Kolesnikov is barely known, but his interpretive ideas flow directly through his heart to his fingers. Happy listening!

I agree with JohnF about his Mozart selections (I'll have to get the HVK set), but for a desert island disc I'll recommend a disc of his soprano concert arias, sung by of all people Kathleen Battle. Battle was known in her heyday as a shallow interpreter, but Andre Previn somehow found his way to inspire her to new depths in, among others, "Vorrei spiegarvi, o Dio....". Just a personal favorite, probably because I've coached so many singers in that repertoire.



Unfortunately, there are so many great performances of great music out there, that it's difficult to pick just one, so here's a third, this time with Leonard Bernstein and the strings of the Vienna Philharmonic, in an arrangement of Beethoven's Op. 131, in particular the slow movement. Exquisite!

[IcedNote]

That performance specifically.

-G

[Belle]

Thank you, maestrob; I was surprised to find Kathleen Battle in there but, as you said, the conductor found what others normally didn't, or couldn't (in her case!!). That disc of Mazurkas was not known to me and I'll investigate it further. And Beethoven? Absolutely. Always. Apposite.

[Belle]

That performance specifically.

-G

Unfortunately, I couldn't get that U-Tube link to play. Which P&F was it from WTC?

Just thinking about that Mazurka I posted; amazing how much of the baroque Chopin has used here; sequences, mordants, grace notes. It's like his Polish dance is a homage to baroque music, which itself was based on the dance!! Also very strongly evident in this one:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2JrFB5tOQbc

[IcedNote]

Richter, 853, Eb Minor

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xFTvjRpaU38

-G

[Belle]

Thank you! How did HE do it? I mean Bach. And how did he do it? I mean Richter. These works are not well known to me because I don't have a recording of excellence as the one here played by Richter.

I always love the tierce at the ends of these Preludes and Fugues. This is profound, moving, glorious, transcendent music for the ages.

Opinion sought: why do you think Chopin started Mazurka Op. 17 No. 4 (from my first posting) on the 2nd and 3rd beats of the 3/4 bar? Effectively anacrusis on paper, but not necessarily with the hearing of it. Did that have something to do with playing rubato; that it set the piece up for rubato treatment? He also did this with many of the Mazurkas, including this one:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zbxmca163Nc

[John F]

I agree with JohnF about his Mozart selections (I'll have to get the HVK set)

Not everybody agrees about Karajan's "Così," which I think is irresistable. Among its features are Léopold Simoneau in the tenor role and Dennis Brain playing the horn obbligato in Fiordiligi's "Per pieta, ben mio."

By the way, have you noticed that Beethoven, while disapproving of "Così" on moral grounds, modeled Leonore's heroic aria "Komm, Hoffnung" on that aria of Fiordiligi's? Including the horns. Some irony in that, as Leonore is heroically faithful to her husband while Fiordiligi betrays her fiancé. And since French horns were the musical symbol of cuckoldry, from Figaro to Verdi's Ford, their prominent use in Leonore's aria has a hidden musical irony, though of course Beethoven didn't intend it and I suppose may not even have been aware of it.

[John F]

why do you think Chopin started Mazurka Op. 17 No. 4 (from my first posting) on the 2nd and 3rd beats of the 3/4 bar? Effectively anacrusis on paper, but not necessarily with the hearing of it. Did that have something to do with playing rubato; that it set the piece up for rubato treatment? He also did this with many of the Mazurkas...

And with many other pieces as well, such as the openings of the first movements of his first piano concerto and third sonata. And many of the mazurkas start on the first beat. So I don't think it has particularly to do with rubato.

With or without the composed upbeat, rubato seems to be idiomatic in Chopin's mazurkas. Have you heard any of the recordings of Ignaz Friedman, considered in his day the premier interpreter of the mazurkas? You may not have heard rubato like this - in the trio the music often seems to be in 4 rather than 3:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Byo56ferpuk

No other pianist I've heard suggests the folk origin of the dance as strongly as Friedman. Certainly not Rubinstein, that supremely urban and urbane musician.

[maestrob]

JohnF,

I think Simoneau is reason enough to own that "Cosi," while Dennis Brain is decidedly a bonus. I checked on amazon, and it's issued now as a "Great recording of the Century," and is rated at five stars. Simoneau was certainly a great voice, so I'll have to have this one. The reviews say that Schwarzkopf's mannerisms are minimal, so that encourages me further. Thanks for bringing up this recording that I should have owned long before now.

[John F]

Enjoy!

This recording was early enough that Schwarzkopf's over-interpreting, encouraged by her producer husband and Svengali Walter Legge, wasn't yet so obvious. And she learned the role for this recording, never having sung it in the theatre. When I saw her in "Così" in 1961, I wasn't annoyed by her style, but I was pretty much dazzled by it all and only 20. Or maybe her singing was less studied in live theatrical performance than in the recording studio with Legge constantly over her shoulder. I haven't done the listening to find out whether that is so.

By the way, I've read that Simoneau wasn't Karajan's first choice for this recording. That was Nicolai Gedda, who counts as a Karajan discovery and had sung a variety of roles for him including "Oedipus Rex" on Italian radio. But even at a young age Gedda was very careful of his voice and choosy about his repertoire, and when he thought Karajan was asking too much of him, he had the self-confidence to refuse, and with Karajan any refusal however reasonable was fatal. I don't remember just what he refused - it certainly wasn't "Così."

[Belle]

I can't quite forgive Horowitz for this version of Chopin's Mazurka, Op. 17 No. 4: the base line, where the dance-rhythm is forged, is almost indistinct.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vmLvpJySb50

About this time he recorded some pieces on a CD, in 1985. One Scarlatti Sonata (number forgotten) sounds like super-romantic Debussy with huge servings of pedal, and his Kreisleriana is bang, bang, thump, thump.