Again a very typical Traveling Conductor´s day. After a rehearsal in Antwerp with the excellent Royal Flanders Philharmonic I went back to my hotel room in order to spend the rest of the day with the Second Chamber Symphony by Schönberg. This was the third serious try this week. Always when I open this strange score I remember what the composer wrote to his conductor Fritz Stiedry in 1939 while trying to recompose the piece he had started already in 1906: "most of the time I spend finding out what the author meant. My style has been deepened so much...". The "author" of course being Arnold himself. After the huge stylistic and geographical changes in his life he must have felt hopeless looking at the skeleton of a piece which he had been trying to compose thirty years earlier in his youthful late romantic multidimensional manner.
The result was, as he wrote himself "a perfect torso". I don´t think there are many good examples of composers successfully revisiting old material in order to create something which would better represent their new style. Actually, I can´t think of any such example. You are free to make suggestions but don´t say "Simon Boccanegra".
What I find problematic in the 2nd Chamber Symphony is the relation between the nature of the thematic material and the slightly theoretical manner in which he puts all that together: Schönberg is using romantic gestures and motives as he would use any twelve-tone row. This results a huge amount of vertical information in which all the levels are seemingly equally important. The piece becomes difficult to balance. I suddenly felt frustrated and tired with both Arnolds - young and old - and closed the score. There is still hope, the rehearsals in Lahti begin in three days and I guarantee that I´ll try to figure out something coherent by that.
Now, these are the unpleasant surprises in Traveling Conductors life: something you´ve planned to do isn´t working at all and suddenly you realise you are spending your time by counting the number of trams passing your hotel from your room window. There should always be a plan B for everything. I´m sure these are the moments when some conductors decide to start composing. Since I don´t have enough imagination for that I decided to fill this sudden gap by some web surfing. I´m going to share two findings with you.
The first one is stunning. From the Naxos Music Library I found a recording by one of my favourite conductors Jascha Horenstein which I hadn´t heard before: Mahler´s First Symphony played by the Vienna Pro Musica Orchestra and recorded probably in 1953. Only Horenstein can produce sound like that. Everything is obviously well and thoroughly rehearsed, every note balanced and measured. Everything is audible and transparent. First he does everything for the composer and THEN he makes it sound Jascha Horenstein. What a brilliant mind and great musician. Horenstein and Furwängler had the most recognisable sounds of the 20th century.
My second find was less emotional. I was told few weeks ago about the Google translator, the existence of which I had no idea. My friend was very enthusiastic about it: "It´s wonderful! Ingenious! It translates Finnish very well". "Okay...I´ll try it sometimes", I mumbled. Tonight after the devastating Mahler 1 by Horenstein I decided to check out this thing. Can it really translate more complicated sentences than "Merry Christmas"? No, it can´t. I´ve been laughing out loud in my hotel room while trying to find more and more complicated texts for this service to translate. I´m sharing with you one of these experiments: the synopsis of the Act 4 from Verdi´s Il Trovatore. The text is taken from the Finnish Wikipedia and the English translation is by Google. This surrealistic gibberish is presented by the joint effort by two giants of the web, although I have to admit that there are opera producers who are also fully capable of creating something like this:
Show IV - The execution was
1. Scene
Manrico attack failed and he is a prisoner of his men Aliaferian the castle tower. Leonora Ruiz is with the neighborhood. Leonora Manrico thoughts fly to create D'amor sull'ali rosé (pink-red wings of love). Dark in the distance belongs to the monks singing Miserere d'una alma (soul Grace). Leonora Manrico bows. Leonora declares that it will never forget Manrico and assure vedrai Tu che amore in terra (You can see that love is greater). Count the number of executed Manrico and Azucena burned. Leonora arrives and requests for mercy Manrico and offers the freedom of self-reward for Manrico Mira d'acerbe Lagrima (See the bitter tears). The county agrees to trade and Leonora secretly having a ring of poison.
2. Scene
Prisoner confinement for Manrico and Azucena look back on a life of freedom. Azucena remembers his mother rovion flames and half-alive is a piece of the mass of the mountains Ai nostri monti (We will return to mountains). Leonora Manrico arrives and asks to flee their own. Leonora Manrico suspects fleeing to have paid too high a price. Leonora calls to keep busy. Virus seems faster than expected, and Leonora recognize poisoned himself. Count di Luna sees the dying Leonora and understand they have been betrayed. Count the number of Manrico executed immediately. Count raises Azucena sleep to watch his son's death. Execution has occurred, Azucena tells Manrico the Count lost brother "Egli era brings Fratello!" (He was the brother). Azucena has been killed after his mother's death kostettua Sei vendicata, o madre! (I am a mother kostanut for you)!
29/01/2010
17/01/2010
Dear Richard Strauss...
"Dear Doktor Strauss, I`m always hanging midair after a performance of Don Quixote. I know this reveals my literary brutality but I have to confess that I find the Cervantes book quite boring. I´ve never understood why he needed so many words when his contemporary colleague Shakespeare was able to characterise the complexity of soul in such a precise and economical manner. As a matter of fact You made Cervantes a favor: it´s much easier for the people of our time to get emotional by 176 pages (and 35 minutes) of musical score than 477 pages of words (anything between two weeks and two years). In the modern world we are unwillingly used to the fact that everything around us consists of short episodes. It´s amazing that You created a piece for the Disney generations as early as 1897!"
The power of Strauss´s Don derives from the composers deep understanding of the human being. This feature is present in many of his works: think about Marschallin, Till Eulenspiegel, Salome or Elektra. Strauss feels sympathy even for his most surreal and ridiculous characters. I´m sure Cervantes did too but Strauss makes this antihero more approachable for us who are used to the fact that all the important theatrical scenes are made emotionally more understandable by music. The final scene of E.T. without music by John Williams would be only comical.
Strauss is able to show perfectly the contradiction between "Sein und Schein" and "Wollen und Können" . The personal message by him is that everybody has a right to keep his or her own dreams. This hasn´t got anything to do with the actual "dream come true", in many cases that is impossible and even dangerous. But dreams are most personal things and taking them away from someone might have deathly consequences.
The cellist Li Wei is one of those extraordinary artists who can always create something unexpected in the concert. This is of course how it should be. In the rehearsals we build a frame and in the concert we fill that frame with life. This reminds me on something I read during the holidays. Before Christmas I found a collection of short stories, "The Midnight Love feast" (La médianoche amoureux) by Michel Tournier, a writer whom I deeply love and respect. On the last pages of this book there is a story called "A Tale about Fine Arts" in which The Caliph of Bagdad wants to get the walls of his great new reception hall painted by the best and most famous artists of the known world. There are two equal walls opposite each other and after a careful selection he declares a competition between a Chinese and a Greek artist. The walls are covered by curtains and no one is allowed to enter the room before the competitors have finished.
Before closing the doors the Caliph asks the painters how long it will take to paint the walls. "I need three months" says Chinese. "I´m ready when my Chinese colleague is ready", says the Greek artist. After three months the Caliph invites the court to assemble the hall and the curtains are removed. The painting on the Chinese´s wall is unveiled first and people are struck by the beauty of the work: he has painted a most beautiful exotic garden one can imagine. Then the curtain covering the Greek´s wall is removed and the guests are even more stunned: he has put a huge mirror on the wall. The mirror reflects the masterful painting on the opposite wall but at the same time shows the people looking at the mirror. He has made the competitor´s painting perfect and thus wins the competition.
While Tournier´s point is that in the arts world distribution is as important for the artist as the work itself, the musicians should learn that a graphic realisation of the score is not enough. It has to be filled with life. in our case the Chinese cellist became a Greek painter...
The power of Strauss´s Don derives from the composers deep understanding of the human being. This feature is present in many of his works: think about Marschallin, Till Eulenspiegel, Salome or Elektra. Strauss feels sympathy even for his most surreal and ridiculous characters. I´m sure Cervantes did too but Strauss makes this antihero more approachable for us who are used to the fact that all the important theatrical scenes are made emotionally more understandable by music. The final scene of E.T. without music by John Williams would be only comical.
Strauss is able to show perfectly the contradiction between "Sein und Schein" and "Wollen und Können" . The personal message by him is that everybody has a right to keep his or her own dreams. This hasn´t got anything to do with the actual "dream come true", in many cases that is impossible and even dangerous. But dreams are most personal things and taking them away from someone might have deathly consequences.
The cellist Li Wei is one of those extraordinary artists who can always create something unexpected in the concert. This is of course how it should be. In the rehearsals we build a frame and in the concert we fill that frame with life. This reminds me on something I read during the holidays. Before Christmas I found a collection of short stories, "The Midnight Love feast" (La médianoche amoureux) by Michel Tournier, a writer whom I deeply love and respect. On the last pages of this book there is a story called "A Tale about Fine Arts" in which The Caliph of Bagdad wants to get the walls of his great new reception hall painted by the best and most famous artists of the known world. There are two equal walls opposite each other and after a careful selection he declares a competition between a Chinese and a Greek artist. The walls are covered by curtains and no one is allowed to enter the room before the competitors have finished.
Before closing the doors the Caliph asks the painters how long it will take to paint the walls. "I need three months" says Chinese. "I´m ready when my Chinese colleague is ready", says the Greek artist. After three months the Caliph invites the court to assemble the hall and the curtains are removed. The painting on the Chinese´s wall is unveiled first and people are struck by the beauty of the work: he has painted a most beautiful exotic garden one can imagine. Then the curtain covering the Greek´s wall is removed and the guests are even more stunned: he has put a huge mirror on the wall. The mirror reflects the masterful painting on the opposite wall but at the same time shows the people looking at the mirror. He has made the competitor´s painting perfect and thus wins the competition.
While Tournier´s point is that in the arts world distribution is as important for the artist as the work itself, the musicians should learn that a graphic realisation of the score is not enough. It has to be filled with life. in our case the Chinese cellist became a Greek painter...
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