Schubert's Unfinished Symphony.
Posted by: u5227470736789439 on 18 July 2006
Dear Friends,
This symphony was my second classical symphony, and discovered it for myself as a nine year old about the same time as the Great c Major. I would not want to be forced to choose between them!
Today I picked up a new disc of a live Prom concert of Boult leading it. The splendid orchestra is the Philharmonia, and it obviously went reather well. The performances is splendidly sane and expressive all at once. The audience applause is rather indicative of the effect in the Hall. At first is almost politely quiet and grows in intensity and obviously was going to go on for some time when it is faded out. No shouting, thank goodness, after this of all symphonies!
Also on the disc from tha same concert is Bizet's Suite "Jeux d'enfants," which is incredibly finely played if, perhaps, slighter music and then comes The The Second Orchestral Suite from Daphnis and Cloe by Ravel. This has real fire, just like Monteux's contemporary Decca recording with the LSO and Covent Garden Choir on Decca, but here we only have the Orchestral version. These things show a side to Boult's music making that have almost entirely been forgotten. He was a Universal Conductor of a very big repertoire, and one can see why he was the ideal first conductor of the BBC SO.
To end comes the finest performance of Sibelius' Seventh Symphony I have yet encountered on disc, but from a different concert, and it makes a most pleasing end to a lovely programme. [RPO this time].
Of the Unfinished Symphony this is now my fourth live recording, and I have one studio set with the VPO under Kubelik.
Really I must recomend this disc, which was released a few months ago on BBC Legends, issued on IMP Classics.
But I will try to make a brief survey of the other performances, shortly. The other live ones are Klemperer with VPO in the late sixties, and two from Furtwangler with the BPO from the early fifties. The Boult does not fail to live up the possibility of the comparison!
All the best from Fredrik
Posted on: 03 August 2006 by Big Brother
quote:
actually. I part with things with a merciless determination that some I know find shocking! You can have too many records!
Dear Fredrik, Agreed on this one!!
quote:
The most overtly emotional music I know is from Handel!
To which I would add Bach and Verdi!!..regards ..Big Brother
Posted on: 03 August 2006 by u5227470736789439
Dear Big Brother,
I love Bach's music above all except Haydn, but I think that Handel was the master of raw emotion in music in Bach's time - far more so than Bach, actually.
There is no doubting the strength of emotional purpose in old Bach's music, but Handel can hit you for six, almost out of the blue! So can Haydn in reality. It is not always so jolly, but mostly with Haydn what you find is life enhancing joy and strength, hedged with a few hints that everything is not always so easy.... [He had a quite a sad life in some ways].
Really what makes Haydn such a joy is that the moments of darkness and sadness in it are always the context for the sheer exhuberance and joy that surounds it and which resolves the emotional response in a positive way - a noble and brave response. I am not so sure that joy is what always wins in Mozart, at least in the later music, where the shadows are everywhere! Like ghosts of the conscience, not quite faced off. It can be deeply disquieting.
In Bach the emotion is sublimated, and though reduced in its surface content, it seems to me that it is invariably intensified by his relatively less direct means than say Handel for example. In that way I would say that Handel is (even though of the Baroque time) actually a fore-runner of the Romantics!
The real Romantics were Tragedians, and I am less convinced this works for me in music. If I leave a piece feeling worse than before, then I wonder why I should want to revisit it so very soon. Life can be tough enough without taking the High Art of Music and letting it lower my level of contentment!
One exception is the Pathetique of Tchaikowsky, where the plain brutal honesty of the Pessimism is, for me, life enhancing....
All the best from Fredrik
Posted on: 04 August 2006 by Big Brother
quote:
One exception is the Pathetique of Tchaikowsky, where the plain brutal honesty of the Pessimism is, for me, life enhancing....
Dear Fredrik, ..For many people this is the essence of American Blues music, by confronting the reality of our situation we are able to experience emotional pain and this has a cathartic effect, so the Blues is in effect "happy" music. Your thoughts on Tchaikowsy are very interesting, he is a composer I didn't think much of in my callow youth but am now begining to appreciate more, have you heard Bernstein's record of the fourth? He makes more of this music than I had previously thought possible...regards Big Brother..
Posted on: 04 August 2006 by Big Brother
quote:
Really what makes Haydn such a joy is that the moments of darkness and sadness in it are always the context for the sheer exhuberance and joy that surounds it and which resolves the emotional response in a positive way - a noble and brave response.
P.S. The most immediate example of this that comes to my mind are the shadows that begin Haydn's "Clock" Symphony which are followed by the the joy and exuberance of the body of the first movement.. Regards..Big Brother
Posted on: 08 August 2006 by u5227470736789439
Dear Big Brother,
One of the darkest shadows I know in the London Symphonies is in the very London Symphony itself. It skuds past, berely noticed, all too often. It is the place in the slow movment - marked Largo in the score, and this marking is all too oftem ignored! - where the flute takes a snatch of the tune and makes a short succession of arpeggios from it, each increasingly sad till it ends in mid-air, and the violins enter almost embarrassed to break the spell.
At this point Edwin Fischer in his 1938 recordind show exactly how tragedy could be achieved without false emphasis, (like in the Mozart concertos, the subject of another of my Threads current on this page) which shows something no number of words could ever express, but one comes close: heartbreak.
I liken it to the departure of a loved one; somethig that destroys me every time, and one day will finish me. There is no more moving music for me, actually...
Fredrik
Posted on: 12 September 2006 by u5227470736789439
Dear Friends,
As often happens in a move things that seemed to have vanished years ago reappear! Not least is Rafal Kubelik's performances of the Unfinished, with Schubert's Tragic, and Barbirolli's estimable reading of the Great C Major with the Halle Orchestra.
What surprised me was that Kubelik, like Boult and Klemperer (live 1969 in Vienna with the Phil) takes the first movement repeat, but there is a fatal flaw I had not spotted before. In the Second movement in the almost static music relying entirely on harmonic shifts, just before the end, EMI have ruined it by editing it together in the wrong order! I wondered what was going on and goodness it comes as a surprise that this is wrong.
There was a parallel with Boult's recording of the Pastoral, where the very opening was wrongly edited, and Boult was most startled that the first issues contained music in the wrong order! Apparently there was no reason to edit it, but engineers are a law unto themselves sometimes. [The issue is covered in Micheal Kennedy's biography of Boult].
As thing settle down, I will attempt a nice survey of these various live performances. Kubelik will naturally not figure as the record is flawed and studio. His reading is still very special though.
ATB from Fredrik
Posted on: 14 September 2006 by Tam
Dear Fredrik,
Wonderful to see you back (you have been missed).
Incidentaly, only slighly off topic, I recently spotted Colin Davis's Dresden cycle of the symphonies very cheaply and wondered if you (or anyone else) had hear any of them - since it would plug a number of gaps, as I only have recordings of 5, 8 and 9.
regards, Tam
Posted on: 14 September 2006 by Michael_B.
A couple of almost random comments. I hope to read this thread properly tomorrow.
I am also fond of the clock - have been for years.
I also like Bohms unfinished.
I don't however agree that the Romantics are tragedians. I believe they were looking for transcendance, as were all the Romantics, but recognised that a vision of what is new from a sould nurtured in teh old is deeply problematic. I believe those are also the shadows in late Mozart.
Mike
Posted on: 14 September 2006 by Tam
Thanks for mentioning the Clock Mike (I must read the thread again as I'd quite forgotten all that discussion) - quite by coincidence I have just been listening to Davis's wonderful reading of it with the Concertgebouw - I must say, though that I didn't especially notice the counterpoint (mustn't have been listening carefully enough).
regards, Tam
