 The Clarinet BBoard
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Author: Tony Pay ★2017
Date: 2007-01-29 23:44
"I doubt whether The Rite can be satisfactorily performed in terms of Herr von Karajan's traditions. I do not mean to imply that he is out of his depths, however, but that he is in my shallows -- or call them simple concretions and reifications. There are simply no regions for soul-searchings in The Rite of Spring."
Post Edited (2007-01-29 23:51)
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Author: RodRubber
Date: 2007-01-30 03:24
Tony,
Thanks,
I would love to hear in further detail exactly Stravinsky's take on "Herr Karajan's tradition." What did that mean to him exactly?
Does he mean simply the german symphonic tradition? or is it personal to karajan?
P.S. nice concert OAE washington dc library of congress dec 06
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Author: charlie_star_uk
Date: 2007-01-30 07:48
Tony,
What did Karajan think of Stravinsky's music? If he was looking for soul searching which Stravinsky doesn't think is there, then did Karajan enjoy it I wonder?
Charlie
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Author: Tony Pay ★2017
Date: 2007-01-30 10:27
RodRubber wrote:
>> I would love to hear in further detail exactly Stravinsky's take on "Herr Karajan's tradition." What did that mean to him exactly? Does he mean simply the german symphonic tradition? or is it personal to karajan?>>
You can read Stravinsky's complete review of Karajan's recording of the Rite at:
http://tinyurl.com/39b2pu
...but essentially I think he does mean the German symphonic tradition, as the complete summary shows:
"The recording is generally good, the performance generally odd, though polished in its own way; in fact, too polished, a pet savage rather than a real one. The sostenuto style is a principal fault; the lengths of notes are virtually the same here as they would be in Wagner or Brahms, which dampens the energy of the music and leaves what rhythmic enunciation there is sounding laboured. But I should have begun by saying that the music is alien to the culture of its performers. Schoenberg recognized it as an assault on the Central European tradition, saying that it made him think of 'those savage black potentates who wear only a cravat and a top hat'. (When told, in 1925, that I had declared his 'twelve-tone system' to be a dead end - a Sackgasse - he replied with the pun: 'Es gibt keine sacker Gasse als 'Sacre'.') But I doubt whether The Rite can be satisfactorily performed in terms of Herr von Karajan's traditions. I do not mean to imply that he is out of his depths, however, but rather that he is in my shallows - or call them simple concretions and reifications. There are simply no regions for soul-searching in The Rite of Spring."
(c) 1964 Igor Stravinsky, Hi Fi-Stereo Magazine, New York.
Post Edited (2007-01-30 10:29)
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Author: Lelia Loban ★2017
Date: 2007-01-30 12:59
Stravinsky wrote,
>>"There are simply no regions for soul-searching in The Rite of Spring.">>
That comment sums up exactly the worst thing that can go wrong with a technically good performance of "The Rite of Spring." This is a Dionysian frenzy of a score. I think of Von Karajan as more Apollonian--if those terms aren't too navel-gazing in themselves....
The original audience at the premiere of this ballet booed, hollered insults and threw fruit. In a funny way, that reaction tells me the performance probably went well: It got people's fur up. Of course, they'd prepared in advance, in calculated, Apollonian fashion, by *bringing* the fruit to throw, but they always had the option of sitting there, clapping politely, instead of throwing it. "The Rite of Spring" is Beltane, pagan, primitive--it *should* strip away the civilized manners and get people's fur up. Not that I really want to find myself in the middle of a mob shrieking curses and making a mess, or boinking each other in the aisles--but the best performance I can imagine leaps around right on the edge between brilliant and train wreck.
My husband and I often tune in during the middle of a music broadcast on the car radio and can't resist "playing guessies." One of the easiest ones is, "Very precise; too slow; too careful; holding back the soloist; pre-digital Hi Fi recording--must be von Karajan."
Lelia
http://www.scoreexchange.com/profiles/Lelia_Loban
To hear the audio, click on the "Scorch Plug-In" box above the score.
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Author: Ken Shaw ★2017
Date: 2007-01-30 15:22
After the premiere of the Rite of Spring, bassoonists made "Rite reeds" to make the opening less hazardous. Stravinsky is said to have remarked that if he had known this would happen, he would have written it higher, because he intended it to sound strained. However, this story has been debunked. Stravinsky marked the solo "Dudki," in imitation of the dudka, a high-pitched Russian double reed folk instrument with a gentle tone. See http://www.idrs.org/www.idrs/publications2/journal2/JNL26/Myths.pdf (This page crashes for me after about 15 seconds, but you can print it if you start the moment the page is loaded.)
I almost never enjoy Karajan recordings, except for a few of the early ones, for exactly the reasons Stravinsky, Tony and Lelia give.
Stravinsky intended for the Rite to fly by. His original tempo markings were far faster than any orchestral performance. He made an arrangement for two pianos, which he played and which I heard on the radio several hears ago (though I can't find it on CD). It was a revalation. Rather than swerving randomly back and forth, it had a larger beat that was quite regular.
Ken Shaw
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Author: Noel
Date: 2007-01-30 16:12
Yet in spite of what Stravinsky says on this occasion, I am told (and I somehow hope that the story IS true) that Stravinsky was in raptures about Reginald Kell's recorded performance of 'The 3 Pieces' . The score for that work strictly admonishes the performer to follow the stated tempos, but Reginald Kell applies liberal doses of rubato and plays it well below the stated tempo.
Noel
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Author: Gregory Smith ★2017
Date: 2007-01-30 17:00
We just performed this score last week. What was most interesting is that, in the words of CSO program annotator Phillip Huscher:
"The spectacle of the premiere has always overshadowed the fact that at the dress rehearsal, before an invited audience which included Debussy and Ravel, and at the subsequent performances, The Rite of Spring didn’t cause any commotion. And most reports of opening night fail to point out that, despite the revolutionary nature of Stravinsky’s music, it was the dancing that provoked the audience."
In fact, during most of the entire ballet, the music couldn't even be heard due to the calamity caused by all of the upper class Parisian patrons reacting to what they saw, not to what they necessarily heard.
Gregory Smith
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Author: Tony Pay ★2017
Date: 2007-01-30 22:10
Charlie wrote:
>> If he was looking for soul searching which Stravinsky doesn't think is there, then did Karajan enjoy it I wonder?>>
I think that soul-searching is nearly always inappropriate, because it's self-centered. As Rudolf Kempe, someone occupying the opposite musical pole to Karajan, said: "One must not search, one must find. Searching implies conscious manipulation. Finding is the result of devotion to a composer and his music."
I don't know what Karajan enjoyed. Power, I suspect.
Tony
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Author: DAVE
Date: 2007-01-30 22:25
Too add to Mr. Smith's comments, I was told by a music professor of mine that it was the presence of nude dancers that incited the riots, not really the music. I have never seen this anywhere before, but it seems plausible.
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Author: tictactux ★2017
Date: 2007-01-30 22:41
> I don't know what Karajan enjoyed. Power, I suspect.
I've read that it was "absolute power". (besides music, presumably, and his portrait on every record)
--
Ben
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Author: elmo lewis
Date: 2007-01-30 23:33
I find it strange that a Russian immigrant could express himself so fluently in English. To me, this sounds like Robert Craft talking, or perhaps, as Virgil Thompson calls him, that hybrid being Craft-Igor.
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Author: Gregory Smith ★2017
Date: 2007-01-31 00:04
"I find it strange that a Russian immigrant could express himself so fluently in English. To me, this sounds like Robert Craft talking, or perhaps, as Virgil Thompson calls him, that hybrid being Craft-Igor."
===============================================
That kind of thing has obviously been suspect before.
But at Sunday's CSO concert of just the Le Sacre, preceded by a 45minute exploration of the work through demonstration of the original folk instruments and recordings of the folk music of that time and location from which Stravinsky referenced in Le Sacre, recordings of Stravinsky talking about music (in particular Le Sacre) plainly showed his command of the language as he conversed with others. If he didn't have a command of the English language, you could have fooled all of us.
Karajan probably had more power than any other musician in the music "industry" during an extended period after WW II. He changed the world's classical musical landscape as far as control goes like no other performing musician in the 20th century demanding tremendous sums to appear and to fulfill many different pet projects. This is written about extensively in Norman Lebrecht's book "The Maestro Myth".
Gregory Smith
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Author: diz
Date: 2007-01-31 03:29
For raw energy, and starkness (in my humble opinion) Gergiev's Rite with the Kirov orchestra is almost perfection.
Without music, the world would be grey, very grey.
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Author: Liquorice
Date: 2007-01-31 06:24
DAVE- I've seen a reconstruction of the original ballet, costumes, chereograpgy, etc. There are no nude dancers. The main thing that was so shocking for the ballet public was that the dancers perform "turned in" with their feet, rather than the classical "turned out" position.
Besides that, I must say that I found the original choreography very TAME! I guess it shows how our historical perspective changes our reactions to artworks of the past.
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Author: Lelia Loban ★2017
Date: 2007-01-31 12:28
>>There are no nude dancers. >>
Liquorice is right. In fact, the scandal over the costumes occured because they weren't nearly nude enough! Richard Buckle's book, "Nijinsky" (New York: Avon, 1971), includes four of the only five known photos of the original 1913 production that Vaslav Nijinksy choreographed for Sergei Diaghilev's Ballet Russe. The costumes, designed by Leon Bakst and sewn by Paquin, are in the collection of the Museum of Theatre Arts in London. They caused a scandal because they're baggy, floppy, almost parodic-looking peasant garb, concealing the dancers' bodies, against the convention of the "white ballet" with its revealing tutus and tights. Nijinksky, a determined modernist who wished to drag the ballet into his ideal of the 20th century, conceived the concept for these costumes against the romanticized, mythically angelic peasant sweetie (think Little Bo Peep) so fashionable in the late 19th century.
The Cubists influenced Nijinski's choreography. His dancers stood pigeon-toed, knock-kneed and flat-footed instead of en pointe. They leaped about flat-footed, with their feet piked at almost right-angles from their ankles, in deliberate and extremely conspicuous defiance grand ballet tradition. The set by Bakst and the painted backdrops by Valentine Gross also raised a scandal because they're beyond impressionistic, nearly abstract.
The scandal did have to do with lust in the dust, though, and owed something to a scandal in 1912 over the premiere of Nijinky's "Afternoon of A Faun" (Debussy hated it!), which ended with Nijinksy, costumed in a skin-tight catsuit to look naked with a fig-leaf or something of the kind as the pinto Faun, lying face down on a garment shed by the beautiful Nymph, and pretending it was the lady, in a fetishistic manner that some in the audience condemned, loudly, as obscene. That gesture was suppressed in later performances. The audience, hearing that the new ballet had something to do with spring fertility rites, thus came all primed for outrage to "Le Sacre de Printemps" the next year. By modern standards, this ballet is far from the grotesque orgy the original audience expected and some people thought they saw, but needless to say, a restrained and uber-dignified performance of either the dance or the music misses the point.
Lelia
http://www.scoreexchange.com/profiles/Lelia_Loban
To hear the audio, click on the "Scorch Plug-In" box above the score.
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Author: Tony Pay ★2017
Date: 2007-02-01 14:58
Noel wrote:
>> I am told (and I somehow hope that the story IS true) that Stravinsky was in raptures about Reginald Kell's recorded performance of 'The 3 Pieces'.>>
In the liner notes of 'the complete american decca recordings' Norman C Nelson writes:
"Kell had played [the Three Pieces] in a 1934 concert in which Stravinsky participated. Kell said "he had never felt such a fool" as when he performed them before the composer on that occasion. This apprehension, however, proved unfounded. Stravinsky told Kell that he had never heard them better played and Kell's score bears Stravinsky's handwritten commendation from that concert."
(The commendation reads, 'A l'excellent musicien Reginald Kell...souvenirs bien sympathiques de Igor Stravinsky...London 27 II 34.')
It would be interesting to discover the source of Norman Nelson's report of Stravinsky's opinion. (Notice that it was not an opinion of the RECORDING, which was made 17 years later in New York. Even someone like Kell might have thought twice about playing different notes in the presence of the composer of the piece, particularly the presence of a composer like Stravinsky -- see below.)
The matter of the recording has come up here before; I promised last year to listen to it and comment, and have only just got around to buying the disc. I'll listen in more detail, but I'll just say now to begin with that what intrigues me is that as far as I know, no-one who HAS listened to it and commented here has hitherto mentioned what I find the most surprising thing about it: namely that Kell not only plays all three pieces on the Bb -- I suppose Stravinsky does say, 'PREFERABLY' Clarinet in A -- but that he goes on to TRANSPOSE the first up an additional semitone, thus distorting the tonal relationship between the first and second pieces. (The relationship between the second and the third is already distorted by playing them on the same instrument, of course.)
I'd also make a guess that the composer wouldn't have been particularly pleased by Kell's response to Stravinsky's compression of phrase 1 to yield phrase 2 in the beginning of the second piece, 'correcting' it by adding an extra D of his own.
Tony
Post Edited (2007-02-01 18:45)
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Author: D Dow
Date: 2007-02-02 18:03
Sounds like a blast Alphie..maybe keep us posted as to how it goes.
I did this under Boulez awhile ago and it was a blast. Literally!!!
David Dow
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Author: Lelia Loban ★2017
Date: 2007-02-03 12:55
Tony Pay wrote,
>>It would be interesting to discover the source of Norman Nelson's report of Stravinsky's opinion. (Notice that it was not an opinion of the RECORDING, which was made 17 years later in New York. Even someone like Kell might have thought twice about playing different notes in the presence of the composer of the piece, particularly the presence of a composer like Stravinsky.... >>
[snip]
>>I'll listen in more detail, but I'll just say now to begin with that what intrigues me is that as far as I know, no-one who HAS listened to it and commented here has hitherto mentioned what I find the most surprising thing about it: namely that Kell not only plays all three pieces on the Bb -- I suppose Stravinsky does say, 'PREFERABLY' Clarinet in A -- but that he goes on to TRANSPOSE the first up an additional semitone, thus distorting the tonal relationship between the first and second pieces. (The relationship between the second and the third is already distorted by playing them on the same instrument, of course.)>>
Do the liner notes of the recording (which I don't have) specify that Kell used a Bb clarinet and transposed part of the music? The reason I ask is that the process of recording and then pressing the disks can bend the pitch up or down quite a lot. Some genius in the studio may have monkeyed around. I think that's more of an issue with the older recordings that have been transferred from the original formats to updated ones. I know that today, it's also possible to retrieve the original intent digitially--maybe that's been done with the recording you've heard, in which case, I shall quote Emily Latella: "Nev-ver mind."
Lelia
http://www.scoreexchange.com/profiles/Lelia_Loban
To hear the audio, click on the "Scorch Plug-In" box above the score.
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Author: Tony Pay ★2017
Date: 2007-02-03 15:00
Lelia wrote:
>> Do the liner notes of the recording (which I don't have) specify that Kell used a Bb clarinet and transposed part of the music? The reason I ask is that the process of recording and then pressing the disks can bend the pitch up or down quite a lot. Some genius in the studio may have monkeyed around.>>
I think not. It's certainly a transposition, because you can hear the distinctive tone-colours of the various clarinet notes -- so that, for example, the first phrase is Bb/C/A/D/G. (You can also pick out throat Bbs, and the lowest note played is F rather than E, a timbral difference quite obvious to a clarinet player.)
The recordings are also orginally LPs, so we're talking new technology for the 1950s.
I have some more to say about the whole collection of performances, but I'll do that in a separate thread sometime.
Tony
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Author: Lelia Loban ★2017
Date: 2007-02-04 11:51
>>It's certainly a transposition, because you can hear the distinctive tone-colours of the various clarinet notes -- so that, for example, the first phrase is Bb/C/A/D/G. (You can also pick out throat Bbs, and the lowest note played is F rather than E, a timbral difference quite obvious to a clarinet player.)
>>
Thanks for the info--yes, the timbral difference must make great detecting tool. I think the place I'd be most likely to hear it (if I had the recording) would be where the melody line goes from throat B-flat to C. I'll be interested in whatever else you write about this set later.
Lelia
http://www.scoreexchange.com/profiles/Lelia_Loban
To hear the audio, click on the "Scorch Plug-In" box above the score.
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