Sorry, there's going to be a few days delay before our next posting. In the meantime, anyone, if you're out there, and you have some suggestions or comments, email us at jeffrey.mark.goldman@gmail.com.

你好O.J.Simpson had nothing on the Don Carlo Gesualdo “Prince of Madrigalists’, and probably the most famous murderer of the 16^th century.

In 1586 Gesualdo married his first cousin, Donna Maria d'Avalos, the daughter of the Marquis of Pescara, and survivor of two previous marriages. Two years later she began to have a love affair with Fabrizio Carafa, the Duke of Andria; and she was able to keep it secret from her husband for almost two years, even though the existence of the affair was well-known elsewhere.

Finally, on October 16, 1590, at the palazzo in Naples, when Gesualdo had allegedly gone away on a hunting trip, the two lovers had gotten careless about who knew what was going on (Gesualdo had arranged with his servants for the doors to be left unlocked), and he returned to the palace, caught them in the act and brutally murdered them both in their bed. Afterwards he left their mutilated bodies in front of the palace for all to see. Being a nobleman he was immune to prosecution, but not to revenge, so he fled to his castle at Gesualdo where he would be safe from any relatives of either his wife’s relatives or her lover’s with revenge on their minds.

The depositions of witnesses to the murders have survived in full. While they disagree on details, they agree on the main points; Gesualdo had help from his servants, who may have done most of the killing; however Gesualdo certainly stabbed Maria multiple times, shouting as he did, "she's not dead yet!" The Duke of Andria was found slaughtered by numerous deep sword wounds, as well as by a shot through the head; when he was found, he was dressed in women's clothing (specifically, Maria's night dress). His own clothing was found piled up by the bedside, unbloodied. One suggested explanation for this is that Gesualdo first murdered his wife, and after this turned his attentions to the Duke, forcing him to don his lover's clothing, most probably to humiliate him.

If that weren’t bad enough, in 1594 Gesualdo went to Ferrar, a vital music center at the time, where he studied music and arranged for another marriage, this time to Leonora d'Este, the niece of Duke Alfonso II. What she thought at the time about marrying a manic-depressive, music-obsessed murderer is not known, though she married Gesualdo and moved with him back to his estate in 1597. It was during those first few years of his second marriage that Gesualdo assembled singers and musicians and wrote most the books of madrigals that have made him famous.

In any case, the relationship between Gesualdo and his new wife was not good; she accused him of abuse, and the d’Este family tried to get her a divorce. She spent more and more time away from Gesualdo's isolated estate, and he wrote many angry letters to Modena where she often went to stay with her brother. According to Cecil Gray, "She seems to have been a very virtuous lady ... for there is no record of his having killed her."

Later in life Gesualdo suffered from severe manic-depression; whether or not it was over the guilt over his bloody multiple murders is difficult to prove, but according to the writings of one witness, he had himself beaten daily by his servants; and he kept a special servant whose duty it was to beat him "at stool"(don’t ask) and he engaged in a relentless, and vain correspondence with his uncle, Cardinal Borromeo to obtain relics, i.e. skeletal remains, of his uncle Carlo, the guy who had tipped him off about his first wife’s affair, with which he hoped to obtain healing for his mental disorder, and possibly absolution for his crimes.

What’s in our player now: Gesualdo: The Fifth Book of Madrigals – The Consort of Musicke, Anthony Rooley, cond. – L’oiseau-Lyre 410-126-2

Gesualdo was tortured by guilt for most of his life and he expressed it in his music. One of the most obvious characteristics of his compositions is the extravagant setting of words representing extreme emotional states: "love", "pain", "death", "ecstasy", "agony" and other similar words occur frequently in his madrigal texts, most of which he probably wrote himself. While this kind of thing was common among other composers of the late 16th century, nobody did it quite like Gesualdo. His wild chromatic flights of fancy were unique and isolated, without heirs or followers, a fascinating dead-end in musical history, much like his personal isolation and self-destruction by guilt.

The Consort of Musicke’s response to this experimental and expressive music is so seamless and so alert to the abrupt changes of tone that it’s almost like they are making it up as they go along. Their artistry is the very best kind; so natural, it’s hardly visible. It seems like nothing comes between you and the most fantastic music you’ve ever heard come out of the mouths of singers.

你好If there were a contest for the composer who has created the most Mount Everests of Western music, Beethoven would win hands down. But without a doubt the most sublime, personal music he ever wrote is in his late string quartets, written at the end of the composer’s life. It’s remarkable; the man was stone deaf, racked by illness at the end of his life and still he managed to turn out some of the most beautiful, most moving music we have. Almost two hundred years later, musicians still measure their talents by how well they manage to surmount its demands.

According to Nanette Streicher, who was friendly with Beethoven during his final years, the composer resembled "a beggar he was so dirty in his dress". The picture of the composer to which she contributed continues to dog us to this day. We see him as hopelessly unkempt in his appearance, a man who in 1825 was erroneously arrested for vagrancy and who regarded himself as "misunderstood" and as "hounded on all sides like a wild animal". It was in a state of isolation, cut off from the rest of the world, that Beethoven composed his demanding and inaccessible late string quartets.

But this picture isn’t totally accurate. In the first place, Beethoven was not simply an eccentric at the end of his life. He had astounded all who heard his Ninth Symphony. He was a major celebrity. People could simply address letters to “Beethoven” and they would be delivered to him. Which is how he received Prince Nikolas Galitzin’s request from St. Petersburg to whom these late masterpieces are dedicated.

In writing them, he no longer took any account of the spirit of his times or of his audience's receptivity (or the ability of the musicians of his time to perform them), the only thing that still counted for him was to advance the course of music Even today, Beethoven's late quartets create a stunning contemporary impression in terms of their structure and expression, yet ultimately what they express is their creator's private world of emotion. This intimate human quality is particularly clear in the magnificent slow movement of the Aminor String Quartet op. 132, headed "A Convalescent's Holy Song of Thanksgiving to the Deity, in the Lydian Mode".

There’s no doubt about who the convalescent referred to in this movement: it was none other than Beethoven himself. In the spring of 1825 he succumbed to an "inflammation of the intestines" that was treated by means of a diet that for the composer meant a large number of sacrifices and that included unseasoned soup, hot chocolate instead of coffee and eggs without any seasoning. Beethoven complained bitterly about this regimen but finally recovered his health again after a number of weeks.

The religious, otherworldly Lydian mode of the third movement stems from Beethoven’s study of liturgical music he had undertaken when he was writing his extraordinary Missa solemnis. It describes the patient's incredible relief at getting well, while at the same time its austerity expresses both distance from and an acceptance of God's will, two themes found in Beethoven's late music. Here we come upon the basic truth behind these late quartets: the outward neglect of the elderly composer is not just the sign of a lack of self-discipline but an indication of his profound belief in the transcendental and in pure musical substance. Beethoven was writing for us, for posterity.

What’s in our player now: Beethoven: The Late Quartets, Vol 2 - Quartetto Italiano - Philips 454 712-2

This is the kind of sumptuous, almost devotional, but never over-dramatized performance the late quartets deserve – by these masters of the quartet art, and for my money some of the finest playing ever recorded in analog. Of course, some of more recent, excellent digitally recorded competition, the Amadeus String Quartet (DG), or the Emerson Quartet (DG) is not to be sniffed at either.

We want to hear from you. Email us at Jeffrey.Mark.Goldman@gmail.com, slip notes under our door, leave comments or questions, approach us late at night in one of our local wateringholes with any information, suggestions or opinions on classical music. Or just to tell us how we are doing.

J.Mark Goldman

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你好It’s possible that had it not been for the Nazis, Bela Bartók, one of the greatest composers of the twentieth century might have remained little more than a Hungarian historical footnote. He was strongly opposed to the Nazis. After they came into power in Germany, he refused to give concerts there and switched away from his German publisher. His liberal views (as evident in the opera Bluebeard's Castle and the ballet The Miraculous Mandarin) caused him a great deal of trouble from right-wingers in Hungary.

Having first sent his manuscripts out of the country, Bartók reluctantly moved with his second wife and former student, Ditta Pásztory. His son from his second marriage, Péter Bartók joined them in 1942.

Many musicians and composers who fled to the U.S. because of the Nazis and the outbreak of World War II, settled and flourished, but there were plenty who didn’t. Bela Bartok was one who came reluctantly and regarded it as a forced and uncomfortable exile from Hungary, the source of his creativity. As a result Bartók found it very difficult to write. He was also not very well known in America, and there was little interest in his music. He and his wife Ditta would give concerts, and for a while, they had a research grant to work on a collection of Yugoslav folk songs. However, their finances were always precarious.

Also, Bartók's health was increasingly uncertain, and his finances were in bad shape. Friends offered to help him out with money, but he always refused to take it. Finally Fritz Reiner and a group of friends secretly got together and convinced Serge Koussevitsky to donate money from his Koussevitsky foundation and commission Bartok to write an orchestral piece. The story goes that Koussevitsky donned a dramatic cape for the visit. He made Bartok the offer, Bartok refused it and at which point Kousevitsky handed the composer the check and told him that his refusal had been made in vain. Koussevitsky’s Boston Symphony needed a piece and Bartok was the man to write it. Shortly after the Concerto for Orchestra was born.

This quickly became Bartók's most popular work, and one which would ease his financial burdens. Its premiere opened everyone’s ears: as a result Bartok was commissioned by Yehudi Menuhin to write a Sonata for Solo Violin. This seemed to reawaken his interest in composing, and he went on to write his Piano Concerto No. 3, an airy and almost neo-classical work, and begin work on his Viola Concerto.

Béla Bartók died in New York from leukemia in September, 1945. He left his final composition, a viola concerto unfinished at his death; it was later completed by a pupil.

What’s in our player now: Bartok: Concerto for Orchestra, London Symphony Orchestra, Sir Georg Solti, Cond. - Decca Legends 289 467 686

This is the closest Bartok ever came to writing a full-fledged symphony, from the very first notes, you sense that this is a very special piece. All the orchestral colors are highlighted. The first moment is abstract and yet at the same time enormously powerful; the second is a playful “”Game of Pairs”, the third movement is an elegy for Bartok’s severed Hungarian roots, and the last movement is a pot-shot at Shostakovich’s Leningrad Symphony – which Bartok hated - and the finale is a joyous amalgam of Hungarian folk-like folk tunes and dances.

Solti is a uniquely authoritative Bartok conductor; he studied under Bartok at the conservatory in Hungary. His pacing is poised and unmistakably on the money, and the London Symphony Orchestra in this recording is refined and brilliant. But many feel that another of Bartok’s students and a champion of his music, Fritz Reiner’s version with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra (RCA Victor Living Stereo 09026-65104-2), is more spectacular sound-wise, if a little too steel-like. In fact, it's been said about the Chicago Symphony under Reiner that if Genghis Khan had had an orchestra, it would sound like this. But listen to it and see what you think.

你好When you think about the sheer amount of great music Sergei Diaghilev is responsible for introducing to the world, it is staggering. In addition to Stravinsky’s scores, which made him into a star overnight, there’s Ravel’s greatest and longest masterpiece, Daphnis et Chloé, ballet music or as Ravel preferred to call it, a "symphonie choréographique".

The scenario for the ballet, prepared by Fokine and then revised by Ravel, was adapted from a pastoral tale ascribed to an early Greek poet named Longus: Daphnis and Chloe, both abandoned in infancy on the island of Lesbos, have been brought up by benevolent shepherd folk. They fall in love, and Daphnis teaches Chloe to play the pipes he fashions from reeds. Chloe is abducted by priates, but is rescued by the great god Pan, and reunited with Daphnis amid general rejoicing

Ravel began work on the score in 1909 . Work on it was interrupted so many times because of stormy fights between Fokine and the composer, that Diaghilev began to have doubts about the whole deal. In the end it was premiered at the Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris by the Ballets Russes on June 8, 1912. The orchestra was conducted by Pierre Monteux, the choreography was by Michel Fokine, and Vaslav Nijinsky danced the part of Daphnis.

The music, some of the composer's most passionate, seems to surge and flow effortlessly, disguising the fact that Ravel labored long and hard over the score – in fact, it took him a year to complete the bacchanale, the last section.. Nevertheless, the music is widely regarded as some of the best Ravel ever produced.with extraordinarily lush and passionate harmonies typical of the impressionist movement in music.

The complete work is itself performed more often in concerts than it is staged. It is written for a large orchestra consisting of piccolo, 2 flutes, alto flute, 2 oboes, English horn, E-flat clarinet, 2 clarinets, bass clarinet, 3 bassoons, contrabassoon, 4 horns, 4 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, tam-tam, wind machine, triangle, bass drum, field drum, castanets, tambourine, celesta, glockenspiel, 2 harps, wordless choir and strings.

What’s in our player now: Ravel: Daphnis et Chloe, London Symphony Orchestra, Chorus of the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, Pierre Monteux, Cond. - Decca Legends D425 956-2DM

There is no such thing as a definitive recording, but if there were, this comes closest to it. After all, Monteux worked with Ravel himself for the 1912 premiere and has been closely connected with this music ever since. Even though Monteux was over 80 when he made this recording, he still brings to it an amazing finesse and sensitivity to the music’s many moods and nuances – qualities that could only be French. As advanced as his years were, his mastery misses nothing. He even gets the London Symphony to sway and surpass itself in a very “unBritish” way. That a man of his age could create a Bacchic state as frenzied as this performance, has to be heard to be believed.

你好The player piano was a pretty amazing invention for the late 1890’s. Edwin S. Vosey, an American invented a pump in a box operated by foot pedals that sucked air through perforations in a roll of paper as it ran over a tracker bar with holes. The holes represented notes and the notes created by the perforated holes activated a row of felt-covered fingers. When pushed up to the keyboard of any piano these fingers could play the instrument. The pedals controlled the dynamics and levers controlled the speed. It was an accomplishment even a Steve Jobs could be proud of.

In 1904 Edwin Welte and Karl Bockisch of Germany produced an electrically driven pneumatic version that automated the entire performance. It was called the Welte-Mignon and piano manufacturers like Steinway incorporated the device into their pianos. Of all the knock-offs that appeared soon afterwards, Duo-Art was one that survived.

Were the piano rolls better than the 78 rpm discs of the time? A difficult question, but what they could do was paint a perfectly vivid portrait of a performance. And lots of performers wanted their portraits painted.

In 1925 George Gershwin produced two Duo-Art piano rolls of his performance of the Rhapsody in Blue. In addition to the solo performance, Gershwin added a piano reduction of the passages normally played by the orchestra. Evidence suggests that when the notes exceeded what two hands could play, a second “pass” was made add more to give the piano performance added pizzazz. Although in the case of Gershwin, well-known to be a dazzling master of the piano, experts can’t be completely sure about what was actually played and what was added after the fact.

What’s in our player now: Gershwin: Rhapsody In Blue – George Gershwin, piano* (1925 Duo-Art piano roll), Columbia Jazz Band, Michael Tilson Thomas, Cond. Sony –SMK42240

Gershwin’s showpiece combines the verve of early jazz with virtuoso piano writing worthy of Rachmaninoff or Liszt. This recording has Gershwin’s famous 1925 piano roll backed with the original jazz orchestration that was done for Paul Whiteman’s jazz band. You can almost hear that it was composed on a railroad trip from New York to Boston. As Gershwin claimed at the time, “…it was on the train with its steely rhythms, it’s clickety-clack that is so stimulating to a composer. I frequently hear music in the very heart of noise. And then suddenly I heard –even saw on paper – the complete construction of the Rhapsody from beginning to end…as a sort of music kaleidoscope of America.”

Terrific sound and need we say that the piano playing is like nothing you've ever heard before. Gershwin could make Liszt or Paderewski pale in comparison.

你好Castratis were the greatest singers who have ever lived. Singing female roles was certainly not their principal raison d'être. Most of the time they were used to sing male roles. Tenors and basses were useful additions to a cast (playing small roles, villains and so forth), but they were not thought of as virtuosi - whereas castrati were. Only the very best of them got to perform in opera, of course, but those who did had considerable advantages over other singers. They had been trained from a very early age, with no interruption for puberty. Their larynxes had not moved downwards, as normally happens at puberty, and their training...had concentrated on the development of the muscular system around the vocal cords so that the high, flexible, and brilliant sound of the voice could be augmented by prodigious power and almost superhuman breath control. Such a voice could produce crowd-pleasing pyrotechnics, but it was also capable of great subtlety and shades of emotion that could move listeners to tears. We may think of the castrato voice as artificial, but it was undeniably one of the most virtuosic instrument ever.

It isn't surprising that the form of opera in which the castrati shone was the most artificial and virtuosic form there has ever been - opera seria. Castrati had been a perceptible presence at the very beginning of opera, in the time of Peri and Caccini, but it was the arrival of opera seria in the last two decades of the seventeenth century that made them indispensable. The Italian castrato became an international phenomenon, and would remain one for the best part of 130 years. Siface and Pistocchi were among the first to become famous outside Italy.

High noon for the castrati, as well as for opera seria, was the first half of the eighteenth century. This was when singers like Nicolini, Bernacchi, Senesino, Farinelli, Caffarelli, and Carestini vied for supremacy with female stars like Cuzzoni and Bordoni, and generally had top billing. But the greatest of all composers at that time, Handel, wrote major roles for them in almost every opera he composed. He introduced them to London and made them the superstars of the London operatic stage, where his operas reigned supreme for over twenty years.

Of course, the barbaric operation that stopped the larynx from maturing, is no more. The only approximation we have is the modern countertenor, which is in reality just an alto voice. Still when the genius of a composer like Handel able to create totally rounded, human characters and then wring every drop of emotion from them, is combined with the countertenor voice – and we can get a sense of what drove audiences into a frenzy over two hundred years ago. It’s greater and more poignant than anything you’ll find in Verdi.

What’s in our player now: Handel: Operatic Arias – David Daniels, countertenor, Orchestra of the Age of Enlightment, Sir Roger Norrington, Cond.

There have been a number of recordings of Handel’s arias since this was released, but few have this incredible beauty of sound. Forget any resistance you may have had to the countertenor voice, this is singing as pure communication and it goes straight to the heart.

Daniels sees himself as a singer first, and a countertenor second. Listening to this glorious CD is pure pleasure. No wonder it was a best-seller!

你好 Few composers have ever presented as radically new an idea as Schoenberg did with what he called his "Method of Composing with Twelve Tones Related Only to Each Other." In it, he broke with a system of tonal organization that had developed over hundreds of years and had become a hallmark of Western music.

Schoenberg began violin lessons when he was eight and almost immediately started composing, though he had no formal training until he was in his late teens, when Zemlinsky became his teacher and friend (in 1910 he married Zemlinsky's sister). His first acknowledged works date from the turn of the century and include the string sextet Verklärte Nacht as well as some songs, all showing influences from Brahms, Wagner and Wolf.

In 1901-3 he was in Berlin as a cabaret musician and teacher, and there he wrote the symphonic poem Pelleas und Melisande, pressing the Straussian model towards denser thematic argument and contrapuntal richness. He then returned to Vienna and began taking private pupils, Berg and Webern being among the first. He also moved rapidly forwards in his musical style.

Schoenberg's early music was clearly marked by the style of the late nineteenth century, and influences of Brahms, Wagner, Mahler, and others can be seen in pieces such as his Verklärte Nacht. But as his compositional style developed, it became more concise and contrapuntally intricate. At the same time, Schoenberg's chromaticism intensified to the point that any strong tonal focus disappeared. The music of this period is also marked by a style that is referred to as expressionist, and Schoenberg had contact with, and a great deal of admiration for, the expressionist painters and writers (Schoenberg himself painted in an Expressionist style). These ideals can be seen in the piece’s dark and dreamlike atmosphere. The kinds of internal conflicts we associate with Freud and his school of psychoanalysis are played out in exquisite musical detail.

To understand why Schoenberg composed the music that he did, it is useful to begin with his own statement: "Had times been 'normal' (before and after World War I) then the music of our time would have been very different."

Schoenberg, as a intellectual, was passionately committed to the concept of unshaken adherence to an "Idea" and the pursuance of Truth. He saw the development of music accelerating through the works of Wagner, Strauss and Mahler to a state of total exhaustion. If music was to get a needed shot in the arm, regain a genuine and valid simplicity of expression, as in the music of his beloved Mozart and Schubert, the language must be renewed.

Much of his work, however, was not well received. In 1907 his Chamber Symphony No. 1 was premiered. The audience was small, and the reaction to the work lukewarm. When it was played again, however, in a 1913 concert which also included works by Alban Berg, Anton Webern and Alexander von Zemlinsky, some of the audience began to shout out abuse. Later in the concert, during a performance of some songs by Berg, fighting broke out, and the police had to be called in. Schoenberg's music had made a break from tonality, which greatly polarized responses to it: his followers and students saw him as one of the most important figures in music, while critics hated his work, on the whole.

In 1933 he was forced, as a Jew, to leave Berlin. Ironically, he had converted to Lutheranism in 1898, but after fleeing to Paris he renounced the Christian faith and returned to Judaism. In 1934 he emigrated to the United States and in 1936 began teaching at UCLA. In Brentwood, Los Angeles, where he lived until his death in 1951.he wrote several works in which he returned to keyed harmony, but in a very distinctive way, not simply re-using classical harmony. This was in accordance with his belief that his music evolved naturally out of the past. One of his sayings was "my music is not really modern, just badly played."

What’s in our player now: Schoenberg: Trasnfigured Night (Verklarte Nacht) - Berlin Philharmic, Herbert von Karajan, cond.

Originally written for a sextet of two viiolins, two violas and two cellos, Verklärte Nacht was arranged by the composer for string orchestra in l943. It is a highly chromatic but still tonal work created before Schoenberg developed his 12-tone system of composition. A translation of the Richard Dehmel poem on which the instrumental work is based appears in the note booklet in three languages. It concerns a young couple in love walking in the moonlite woods. The woman confesses to the man that she is pregnant but not by him. The man then speaks and tells her not to let that burden her soul - that he accepts her regardless. This point is marked in the score with a glorious transition from minor to major as though the moon comes out from behind a cloud.

This masterpiece is tonal but stretches the tonal system about as far as it (and Romanticism) can go. Written for only 15 instruments, it was composed by Schoenberg at the same time Mahler was working on his Symphony of a Thousand - his Eighth. Schoenberg wanted to divorce himself from ornamentation, and he kept his symphony to the bare essentials. The work is under 22 minutes length. Excellent playing on both selections; the strings on the Transfigured Night are silky natural-sounding even on peaks.

This is the kind of music, you either hate or you love. I love it.

One of the glories of Baroque music and the greatest music ever written for the solo cello, the unaccompanied cello suites were thought to be academic exercises and had never been played in all their entirety before Pablo Casals did it in the late 1930’s. When he was 13 and supporting his music lessons by playing for cash at a suburban bistro, he discovered a dusty copy of the suites in a second-hand music shop. He studied and worked on them for 12 years before playing them before the public, and it was many years later that he agreed to record them.

Who Bach wrote them for is a mystery. The earliest manuscript we have was done by Bach’s second wife, Anna Magdalena in 1730, but the suites are from an earlier time, probably in the early 1720’s when Bach was composer at the court of Prince Leopold Anhalt-Cothen, who was himself an accomplished player on the viola de gamba, an ancestor of the modern cello. But could the prince been enough of a virtuoso to play these? Doubtful. They could have been composed for members of the prince’s orchestra. Nobody knows, and as far as we know, no one at the time made any mention of it in writing.

Each of Bach's cello suites is in six dance-like movements. Except for the first, a Prelude, a free improvisational piece based on a small motif or pattern. It sets the mood for the suite, and is often thematically related to the other movements..

Then follows an Allemande, a stately French or German dance (Allemande is the French word for 'German'), with a prominent beat. Next comes a Courante (literally 'running'), a lively dance in 3-time. Bach's cello suites contain examples of the both the Italian and French styles. The Italian style is with semiquavers and quite vigorous, while the French style tends to quavers and is a little more refined.

The fourth movement is a Sarabande, a slow dance originally from Spain (or possibly of Oriental origin and developed in Spain). This is in 3-time, with a strong emphasis on the second beat. This movement frequently contains the emotional heart of the suite, and the remaining movements to an extent relax away from it.

The final movements are a pair of contrasting Minuets, Bourrées or Gavottes (depending on the suite), followed by a big, bouncing Gigue. This dance in compound time is not a dance of the court like the others, and would have been familiar to ordinary people (its English equivalent is the jig).

I don’t want to give you the idea that the suites are repetitive and monotonous, because this isn’t so. Each dance movement is explored so fully by Bach that, by the end, he has used these structures to express deep and profound emotion. My linguistic ability isn’t up to explaining the whys and hows. You’ll have to listen to the suites yourself!

In my player now: J.S. Bach: 6 Suites Sonatas for Cello,BWV1007-12. - Yo-Yo Ma , cello, Sony Classical S2K63203

Although I practically teethed on the famous Casals’ recordings (EMI CHS5 66215-2), Yo-Yo Ma’s is probably the finest modern rendition going. His tone, articulation and clear objectivity are without peer. His talent and total dedication to the music is beyond question. From the first drawing of the bow, Ma’s technique is awesome.

Any dummy can perform a big romantic cello concerto, but not many musicians have this combination of intelligence and finesse, not to mention blood, sweat and tears to reach Ma’s level of performance in these pieces.

你好It’s lucky for the world that Jeanette Thurber, a rich New Yorker, decided to lure Dvorak to head up her academy of music before the turn of the 20^th century. What she wanted from the celebrated composer, then at the peak of his powers, wasn’t so much a symphony, as she wanted to encourage American musicians to recreate an American classical music using native elements. According to Dvorak, he couldn’t think of a better way of showing his students how to go about this than writing his own symphony, using some American ingredients.

Musicologists have been arguing ever since about how these so-called US ingredients differed from the Bohemian ones that Dvorak had used before. The difference seems to center on the use of black spiritual motifs in the second and third movements, none of which were considered within the range of cultural ingredients at the time.

According to Mrs. Thurber, Dvorak missed home so deeply that he was often in tears, when Mrs. Thurber suggested he write something about his feelings and experiences in America. I can’t help wondering how much of the vernacular America the composer could absorb in Manhattan. This was before the advent of jazz and even ragtime. Slavery had been banned in New York State since early in the century, so presumably the singing of black spirituals was not common in New York City, which again brings into question exactly how American was Dvorak’s material.

But there can be no question that Dvorak’s masterpiece succeeded in imbedding in the music’s DNA close to the heart: a feeling of nostalgia for old loves, lost possibilities and vanished landscapes – a world view that the ninth symphony shares with Dvorak’s masterful Cello Concerto in B minor.

In my player now: Dvorak: Symphonies 8 & 9 (From the New World) - Budapest Festival Orchestra, Ivan Fischer, cond. Philips 464 648-2

I admit impressions can be highly subjective, tempered by the digestion, by the weather, whatever. However, I’d got to say I’ve enjoyed this version more than almost any other I‘ve heard in the past. It has a kind of freshness and power that remind me of what it must be like to have heard Symphony No. 9 for the very first time. The atmosphere feels authentic as does the playing. And the level of anticipation stays throughout the piece, even though on a conscious level, if you know the piece, you know what’s to come.

The orchestral playing is rich and lyrical with just enough of an edge of sincerity, to occasionally bring you up short, allowing you to hear things you never heard before. Although the catalog is full of renderings of these two symphonies, this one deserves a very special place in your collection.

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你好When it comes to hard luck stories, Gustave Mahler’s must be one of the hardest to beat. In 1907 he’d been forced out of his position as head of the Vienna Court Opera due for political reasons, chief among which was the fact that Mahler had been born Jewish. Around the same time his favorite and eldest daughter died (at age four), and doctors discovered that he had a serious heart condition. A few weeks later a friend gave him The Chinese Flute, a translation or rather a re-working of the poems of Li-Tai Po, the famous Tang dynasty poet-wanderer and those of Mong-Kai-Yen and Wang-Wei. Mahler appreciated their terse elegance and felt expressed how he felt, not wishing to die, but accepting the inevitability of death. Their theme is that nature renews itself as it goes through the seasons; man enjoys them briefly and then passes away, leaving the earth to go on renewing itself.

At one time it was thought that Mahler was in love with death, but in fact, he was so superstitious about calling this his ninth symphony. Beethoven’s ninth symphony had turned out to be that composer’s last and Mahler feared that in the same way his ninth symphony would kill him. So not to tempt fate, Mahler called his symphonic song cycle The Song of the Earth. (Das Lied von der Erde) and left it without a number. Whatever…the six movement Das Lied is simply the first and greatest work of its kind. (My apologies to Shostakovitch and Zemlinsky).

What’s in my player: Mahler: Das Lied von der Erde (Song of the Earth) - Kathleen Ferrier, Contralto, Julius Patzak, Tenor, Vienna Philharmonic, Bruno Walter, Cond., Decca Legends 289 466 576-2

It’s almost impossible to listen to this performance without taking into account that Bruno Walter was Mahler’s close friend and protégé, and probably assisted in the premiere. Kathleen Ferrier, the contralto knew that this performance was to be one of her last, that like the final movement, "Der Abschied" (The Farewell), that she would only see the earth turn green only one more time.

The famous last movement is nearly as long as the previous five movements altogether. Its text is drawn from two different poems, both involving the theme of leave-taking. With the first notes on the tam-tam all hope seems to have vanished with the setting sun. The length and heaviness of this movement make the previous ones seem like phantasms, unreal flickers of light flashing across a background of unending darkness. The orchestra sounds as if broken into pieces. The instruments fall in small clusters or play by themselves, each voice piercing the emptiness for a moment before breaking off, as if choked by what does not bear saying.

In the instrumental funeral march at the center of the movement, these voices become more and more discordant, like a crowd of lost souls crying out in misery. They paint a picture of universal loneliness. This is the life-world whose harsh essence becomes clear to the one leaving it; yet Mahler seems to hold onto this world with the last of his strength.

The last movement is very difficult to conduct, because of its cadenza writing for voice and solo instruments. Bruno Walter said that Mahler showed him the score of this movement and asked, "Do you know how to conduct this? Because I certainly don't." Mahler also hesitated to put the piece before the public because of its relentless negativity, unusual even for him. "Won't people go home and shoot themselves?" He asked. But the last farewell is fundamentally ambiguous: through the eyes of leave-taking, the wounded earth at last shines out in all its beauty. Hope seems to hide in the tissues of the music, beneath its uncompromising bleakness. Kafka's phrase, "There is hope, but not for us." may capture the message.

The dear earth everywhere

Blossoms in spring, and grows green anew.

Everywhere and forever, forever

Blue lights the horizon.

Forever... forever...

The singer sings the last line over and over like a mantra, accompanied by a blend of strings, mandolin, tam-tam, and celesta, until the music fades into silence Resignation and hope are one and the same.

Full of anger, love and longing, Mahler pulled off a perfect synthesis of the lyrical and philosophical aspects of his music in this work. A piece that, from such a personal perspective, can speak so deeply of universal human issues, is truly brilliant.