On Music
GOODMAN, JOHN
By John Goodman 'No Country for Old Men' Sir thomas beecham has been dead seven years, but his recordings of the last six Mozart symphonies are still as good as anything we have. Odyssey has...
...And it is true that the best conductors of Mozart's late symphonies have been, like Beecham, old men who have made an immense, lifelong, interpretive effort to render coherent the infinitely expressive possibilities in these works...
...Walter Gieseking once called the study of Mozart the involvement of a lifetime—an attitude much in vogue for some time now...
...Because Debussy's music occasionally reminds listeners of Ravel's structural irrelevance, this recording should open many ears...
...Indeed, the note itself is an enlightening exposition, endorsed by the stunning music on the disc...
...To the cries of the Brazilian Araponga is opposed 'the colored ecstasy' of pedal points: Sard Red—red flecked with blue?orange, gold, milky-white, emerald green, amethyst," and so on like a lunatic version of Rimbaud's "Voy-elles" sonnet...
...This is symbolist literary doctrine brought effectually to music...
...An indication of this is found in Four Sonatas for Piano and Viotin (Columbia MS 7064) where, in a rare recorded moment, he plays piano accompanied by violinist Rafael Druian, the concertmaster of the Cleveland Orchestra...
...Rhythmically, this version "swings" more than most...
...More typical of the present-day approach to Mozart, and thus less personal and with a less clearly articulated style, is the new Pablo Casals recording of the same symphonies with the Marlboro Festival Orchestra (Columbia MS 7066...
...The conductor's changes in tempo, phrasing and dynamics are marvelously rung, to accord not only with the formal requirements of the piece but with a well-calculated emotional "plot" he has designed to prepare us for the rousing comic-opera climax of the final rondo...
...In many ways this is Mozart's most perfect symphony—in its brilliantly conceived functional structure, its high-spirited and fertile content...
...expressively, the wonder and mystery that many find in the last movement seem less prominent than the astonishing emotive resolution Beecham achieves with the five fugal elements in sonata form...
...Boulez conceives of the poem as the "fertilizing source" of the total musical effect...
...41 in C Major, K. 551...
...While this disc may not be a fitting tribute to a great musician, it shows that at 92 Pablo Casals is still able to draw an energetic, well-realized response from a disparate group of musicians...
...The kind of conscious and rigorous control Szell exerts in this album seems clearly to struggle with the composer's intention much of the time...
...As in badly played Mozart, a frantic search for content only corrupts...
...frequently lack...
...Yet the two complement each other very well in the early sonatas, where Druian fills out the violin's subordinate part...
...Despite Beecham's eccentricities and the 1950-vintage sound, the set maintains a style and vivacity that the more polished performances of Otto Klemperer, Herbert von Karajan, George Szell, et al...
...His performance of the "Haffner" (No...
...This is no program superimposed from without, but a musical growth of "the poem's general mechanism . . . from its pure substance as sound to its inherent intellectual arrangement...
...by contrast, is a progressive elaboration of vigor-through-unity...
...Such a personal reading of the scores seems almost out of the question today...
...More than most conductors, he offers us "interpretations" that necessarily stress certain expressive values at the expense of others...
...Like Mozart, "he retains a power of seduction that is mysterious and spellbinding," and the architectural splendor of "La Mer" is the most mysterious and spellbinding achievement of the album...
...304), the most turbulent, interesting, and advanced of these works, Szell's cold, crisp playing takes absolute charge, while the writing clearly calls for equal structural partnership...
...Throughout he stresses the architectural strength and security in the music by building up to the intricate finale, rather than accenting the discrete elements of the first movement as he did in the "Haffner...
...His solutions are brilliantly effective for modern work and potentially unsettling for the custodians of standard repertoire...
...The first movement, the only one in Mozart based on a single thematic subject, is a technical marvel of polyphonic variations which Beecham develops almost as arias...
...35 in D Major, K. 385), for instance, emphasizes vigor-through-variety, as I hear it...
...Three cryptic, haiku-like verses by Rene Char are sung and commented upon instrumentally in nine brief movements...
...Describing his function as conductor in High Fidelity (March 1968), Boulez said: "I try to give importance not to rhetorical sentiment, but to a musical structure-especially in conducting Mozart...
...Perhaps Beecham's success and the essence of his approach to the late symphonies lie in his perception of the youthful vigor in all of them...
...When in the later pieces the violin become more of a concertante, interdependent partner, the emotional character of the performances changes radically, as Mozart no doubt intended it should...
...The records are a grand testament to the Baronet who, in the process of becoming a musical promoter and a toothpaste magnate, never stopped being a conductor...
...The record has been extravagantly praised in England, where it first appeared, and is easily the finest performance available of "LaMer," "L'apres-midi d'un faune," and "Jeux...
...But in the E Minor Sonata (K...
...Szell's pianism is sharp and dry indeed...
...Boulez' attempt to re-think music structurally from the inside out evidently gave him the key to Debussy's development: Proceeding by dissociation and experiment, Debussy finally discovered a mobile world of functional sound, shifting in value and structure as the musical occasion demanded...
...For the "Colors," Messiaen's inflated notes tell us that "the sound colors, in their turn, are a symbol of the Celestial City and of Him who dwells there...
...He proposes that we treat Mozart, Debussy, or Berg essentially the same, attempting to understand their "structures" rigorously rather than enforcing an expressive interpretation from without...
...As the old cliche has it, you can't tell whether the stuff is happy or sad...
...The effect of Beecham's "Jupiter" (No...
...Casals-tempos are generally faster than Beecham's, he has less tendency to exert total emotional control, and the formal exigencies of each work consequently assume greater prominence...
...Long-winded repetitions and the constant Matting of the brass chorales signify nothing but the death-throes of tonality...
...Mozart's music, for me, is not a kind of pleasing salonlike gentility, or even a deeper emotional expressiveness, but, above all, especially in his later works, which I prefer, a marvelous musical structure...
...Yet we instinctively feel what Yeats wrote in another context: "That is no country for old men...
...Hardly so interesting or successful are two pieces by Boulez' mentor, Olivier Messiaen?Et Ex-specto Resurrectionem Mortuorum" and "Colors of the Celestial City"?with Boulez conducting the Domaine Musical orchestra (CBS 32 11 0048...
...Certainly those of us who, as critical listeners, try to engage with emotion and "meaning" in Mozart find ourselves overwhelmed with inexhaustible content...
...Boulez' greatest conducting triumph, and a vindication of his method, is Boulez Conducts Debussy with the New Philharmonia Orchestra (CBS 32 11 0056...
...Odyssey has reissued them in a three-record set (32 36 0009, mono only) that almost justifies the unconscionable blurbs for both Mozart and Beecham on the liners...
...The technique is largely serial (Boulez is deeply influenced by Webern), and the converging and diverging interrelationships of voice, instruments, phrase, theme, and movement are immensely complex but, somehow, formally integrated...
...Beecham brings to it superb control and energy...
...As composer, Boulez worked out a particularly stringent and involved structure in his cantata, Le Marteau sans Maitre (1954), for alto voice and six instruments, which he conducts on Turnabout (TV 3401 IS...
...In his records, perennial Wunder-kind Pierre Boulez shows himself well aware of these interpretive problems...
...Apparently many of our old conductors couldn't either, though they still feel pressed to opt for an "interpretation...
...Et Exspecto" renders musically five texts from the Bible through a heavy-handed symbolism...
...The liner note by the conductor traces Debussy's progress in freeing himself, through these works, from the strictures of 19th-century esthetic and an exhausted musical tradition...
...The pupil and the musicians give a fine performance, the recording is outstanding, but the music of the master is academically corrupt in its wholesale and meaningless borrowing...
...The "Haffner" is well played, but there are a few tasteless additions to the first movement of the "Jupiter," and, since this is a live recording, the usual complements of coughs, chair noises, and grunts from the Old Master...
...One cannot be content to 'be expressive' without knowing where the musical phrase is going...
...Boulez finds Debussy an isolated but universal composer who brought about a radical revolution...
...George Szell's approach remains very different from that of a Beecham or a Bruno Walter, although he has grown over the years to produce richer, more fully intentioned Mozart...
...Hence the emphasis is on dynamic development, great swells of sound, and formally emerging patterns throughout...
...When Boulez begins to record Mozart, we may witness still another revolution—this time in conducting...
...Druian is more full-bodied...
Vol. 51 • March 1968 • No. 6
