Columbus Symphony and La belle epoque: It really IS all about sex.

(OK, it really isn't)


The Columbus Symphony concludes the 2011-2012 Classical Series this weekend with music by French composers of the late 19th-early 20th centuries. Jean-Marie Zeitouni conducts,  with Jennifer Rivera, mezzo-soprano and the Columbus Symphony Chorus.

The program on Saturday May 5 at 8 PM is broadcast live on Classical 101 FM and streamed on the web www.wosu.org/classical 101.

Pre-concert talks this Friday and Saturday at 7 pm. Just because you read this doesn't excuse you!

Debussy: Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun
Faure:     Pavane
Ravel: Daphnis et Chloe, suite 2
Chausson: Poem of Love and the Sea
Durufle: Requiem

Much of this music is all about color- what do I mean 'all about color?' Claude Debussy and Maurice Ravel were less concerned about the element of music most accessible: melody. There are tunes a- plenty, but these composers, and their contemporary Ernest Chausson, were coming of age in the era of the impressionist painters. Monet, Manet and especially Matisse used color to create what they wanted to see rather than what was literally before them. Oversimplification? Yes. But the texture and the light of many of these paintings mirrors (there's a word the impressionists loved) the sound collages you'll hear tonight.

Claude Debussy (1862-1918) followed Wagner in experimenting with tonality and rhythm. The downward chromatic figure that begins Prelude a l'apres midi d'une faune told the public in 1894 not to get too comfortable. The bar line rhythms of Mozart were giving way to an opaque texture filled with suggestion. You can hear the Faun scampering about on a hot summer afternoon, chasing nymphs-and this brief piece has an orchestral climax Wagner would have loved. Although this music flows, it doesn't 'land' where the ear expects. Debussy's music happens rather than being played.

Debussy and Maurice Ravel (1875-1937) were too good for Serge Diaghilev to resit. The Russian born impresario of the Ballets Russes, with top hat, tails and rakish mustache, with his public and hedonistic affairs with Vaclav Nijinsky Michel Fokine and Leonard Massine WAS Parisian culture just before World War I. . Debussy and Ravel were well established world celebrities by 1912 but Diaghilev gave them the best kind of notoriety, the: success de scandale. The great Nijinsky choreographed and danced the faun to Debussy's music. The performance titillated, shocked and goaded the Parisian audiences with its heat and self-love.



Ravel didn't really want to work with Diaghilev. He knew that any success would be Diaghilev's and any failure would be Ravel's. Daphnis and Chloe was danced by the Ballets Russes in 1912. The idea came from choreographer Michel Fokine-and he caused Ravel  lot of consternation:

 " I must tell you I just had an insane week: preparation of a ballet libretto for the next Russian season. Almost every night, work until 3 a.m. What complicated things is that  Fokine doesn't know a word of French, and I only know how to swear in Russian. In spite of the interpreters, you can imagine the savour of these meetings."




If the Greek legend of children raised by foster parents who fall in love and are separated and then reunited is a tad obvious, you can hear the Ravel provided music is anything but fey-indeed it has a lusciousness and sensuality primed for (splendid) dancers. Ravel's score long outlived the Ballet Russes. He later adapted  Daphnis and Chloe into three suites for orchestra,of which we'll hear Suite 2. There's a spectacular sunrise, pirate ships, an abduction and a steamy reunion. Daphis et Chloe is Ravel's longest and largest scaled work-but no miniaturist he. (Last time I heard this work the friend who joined me remarked, 'At last, a composer who can make love without slobbering!')
 

Ernest Chausson (1855-1899) died a fascinating death. He crashed his bicycle. This somewhat overshadows his life at the center of a Parisian salon attractive to Debussy, Faure, Albeniz, Turgenev and Monet. He was an attorney with a respectable profession and an attractive wife-and he had the Wagner bug as well, encouraged by Cesar Franck.

Who knows how Chausson would have developed had he lived longer? I'll bet he would have discovered jazz and gone running after Schoenberg and twelve-tone music..for a bit.

The Poeme de l'amour et de la mer for voice and orchestra took eight years to complete, 1882-1890. Chausson had already produced a terrific opera,  Le roi d'Arthus and another 'Poeme' for violin and orchestra.

The Poem of Love and the Sea sets two poems by Maurice Bouchor-and the sea imagery is made for the play on light and the chimera of the impressionists

"The wind has changed, the skies are sullen/and no more shall we run and gather/the lilac in bloom and lovely roses/the springtime is sad and cannot bloom"




Chausson doesn't tell us if the voice is more important than the orchestra or vice versa? The fabric is pretty tight. The voice rises from the orchestra (as if from the seas?)  This is music in which to wallow.

Very different is the sublime Requiem by Maurice Durufle Durufle (1902-1986). Just as sonority-how the orchestra sounded was paramount to Debussy, so generations later Durufle gave us an other sonority, based on Gregorian Chant.




Durufle became devoted to chant as practised at the Benedictine Abbey of Solesmes. He came by this love naturally. for fifty-seven years, from 1929 until his death 1986, Maurice Durufle was organist at the Parisian church of  Ste.-Etienne-du Mont. There he prepared the first performance of his Requiem, a lament for post-occupation France, in 1947.  Durufle was one of the great church organists of Paris-a city where the king of instruments is taken very seriously to this day.  Not for Durufle the eroticism of Debussy, Chausson and Ravel. As well crafted as those scores are, Durufle is restrained, careful, dignified and emphatic. You don't mess with Durufle.

What a program for our final Columbus Symphony concerts this season! The sensuality and heavy breathing, the colors of Debussy, Ravel and Chausson, and the piety mixed with gorgeousness of Durufle's Requiem. We'll hear our splendid Columbus Symphony chorus directed by Ronald Jenkins, and a fantastic mezzo-soprano, Jennifer Rivera. .Jean-Marie Zeitouni conducts. What's not to love?

Columbus Symphony: Spotted Snakes and Summer Nights

The Columbus Symphony performs the incidental music to a A Midsummer Night's Dream, Berlioz song cycle Les Nuits d'ete and his three choruses, Tristia March 30 and 31 at 8 and Sunday, April 1 at 3-Southern Theater.

Saturday night's performance is broadcast live over Classical 101. FM, on line www.wosu.org/classical101

Jean-Marie Zeitouni conducts the Columbus Symphony Orchestra and Chorus, with Alisa Jordheim, soprano and Michele Losier, mezzo-soprano

Hector Berlioz (1803-1869)

I first heard the Berlioz six songs for voice and orchestra, Les Nuits d'ete about 175 years ago during my college years. One fast song, four slow ones and a fast finale. Complicated French poetry. One voice. no chorus, no blood, no splash and dash. I was unimpressed.

Oh to be young and stupid! Oh to be (much) older and less stupid! The Berlioz cycle has become an obsession in recent weeks. I welcome the chance to hear it live--again.

Berlioz was in his thirties when he prepared these songs for voice and piano. The orchestration followed in 1856. Jose van Dam made a fine recording of the set with pianist Jean-Phillipe Collard. I'd like to hear these sung by Bryn Terfel or Juan Diego Florez or Jonas Kaufman. But the women have truly owned the cycle. Odd, since Berlioz initially wanted at least four different singers and voice types to share the wealth.

Theophile Gautier's poetry is rich, hedonistic, suggestive and more than a little perfumed. Literally. The second song Le spectre de la rose is a narrative by the ghost of the rose "you wore last night at the ball." Said rose so rich, so glorious, good enough only to adorn "her".

Upon the alabaster where I rest
A poet has written with a kiss:
Here lies all rose
Which kings could envy




In the final song, L'Ile inconnu, The Unknown Island-she (the eternal she?) is offered a boat with sails of pure silk, to sail to Java, or the coast of Norway, or the Baltic, or the Pacific, or to the coast of love-a coast still unknown



Berlioz liked it big. He was no minimalist, not even in his many melodies. (Zaide is practically a mad scene.) The combination of Berlioz' grandeur and Gautier's sensuality is, well...let's just say its a borderline healthy obsession I'm having with these songs, and if you think Le spectre de la rose is about a flower, think again.

We have the bonus this weekend of hearing the three choruses making up Tristia (sadness is not suggested). Berlioz published this collection in 1852. The three were written separately, between 1831 and 1844. There's a wordless song inspired by the final scene of Hamlet, a setting of Gertrude's lament for the drowned Ophelia, and the opening Meditation religeuse to poetry by Tom Moore. Why don't we hear Tristia more often? Especially the Mort Ophelie with its long melodic lines and dark harmony, this music doesn't try to be grand and operatic, but simple, direct and heartfelt.




Felix Mendelssohn (1809-1847)

Mendelssohn's name was made by his Overture to A Midsummer Night's Dream written at age 17 when the young man was well into his career as a pianist, conductor and composer. Eventually the young man landed a prestigious gig as musikdirektor of the Gewandhaus Orchestra. He came to the attention of the King of Prussia, who loved music and Shakespeare. The Bard had already infiltrated the opera house with Bellini and several lesser lights-Verdi was to come, so was the young Wagner (Die Feen) and more Berlioz. His Majesty wanted music for a production of Shakespeare's Sommernachtstraum to be staged at his palace.

Felix Mendelssohn obliged with music that almost-I said almost-eclipses Shakespeare in its humor and seductiveness. Mendelssohn added the overture he had written fifteen years earlier and his success was complete. The strings and high winds prance for Puck and his cohorts-and we all know the sumptuous march at the heart of the score:




Jean-Marie Zeitouni conducts these concerts, with the Columbus Symphony Orchestra and Chorus (Ronald Jenkins, conductor)

MAHLER MAHLER MAHLER

THE COLUMBUS SYMPHONY PERFORMS MAHLER'S SYMPHONY no. 6 FRI/SAT FEBRUARY 11 and 12 in the OHIO THEATER. THE SATURDAY NIGHT PERFORMANCE IS BROADCAST LIVE ON CLASSICAL 101 AND MAY BE HEARD ON THE WEB: www.wosu.org. JOIN ME EACH NIGHT AT 7 IN THE OHIO THEATER FOR PRE- CONCERT TALKS.

I repeat the composer's name, having laughed for years at those for whom Mahler is an obsession, now having joined their ranks. At present I'm immersed in the Symphony no. 6. Karajan called this "the bleakest of all music". Norman Lebrecht called the finale of this symphony "irredeemably grim" and Wilhelm Furtwangler called in "nihilistic". Nobody but nobody claims that Mahler's Symphony 6 is a barrel of laughs.



This to me is a symphony of high drama and-in the Andante-almost unbearable beauty. The opening march is described as "menacing", "frightening" "horrible". I wonder what the audience in 1907 thought-a few years before WWI and 25 years prior to the Third Reich. Did they find this relentless tramping horrifying, predicting the future in a militaristic society, or merely irritating.

There's also the question of movement order. Nobody knows for certain if its Scherzo-Andante or the other way around. Most recordings I know do Scherzo-Andante which some think at odds with the composer's last word. I don't know and neither do you. Do I care? Not a lot.
(Jean Marie Zeitouni and the Columbus Symphony will play Andante-Scherzo)

If you read Mahler's letters to his wife Alma, you find that a composer writing "bleak" music is often cute, corny, endearing and wildly in love. As work on the 6th progressed Mahler was finessing the Kindertotenlieder-the collecting of five songs on the death of children. Alma was terrified and not a little angry. They had two young daughters: Maria (Putzi) and Anna (Gucki). What a bad omen to bring such music into the house. And then Anna died, aged five in 1907. Mahler loses his long time position as boss of the Vienna Opera-the world's most prestigious. He is diagnosed with the heart condition that leads to his death at 51.

Alma was right. Did she ever forgive her husband? It was around this time that Alma began affairs, notably with Walter Gropius who she would later marry. Gustav went to New York, first to conduct at the Metropolitan Opera, then the New York Phiharmonic. Mahler's tenure at the Met ended with a clash with Toscanini. But the New York critics were quick to get on the Mahler bus:

"The score was revealed in all its complex beauty and allurement, of grave
dignity, with its strands of interwoven melody always clearly disposed and united with exquisite sense of proportion and an unerring sense of the larger values. Delicacy and clearness where the characteristics of many passages, yet the climaxes were superbly effectual. Through it all went the sense of dramatic passion and sensual beauty...The audience was very large. It greeted Mr. Mahler upon his entrance into the orchestra with several rounds of applause...After the first act he was called out again and again, and received a token of approval that this audience is slow to bestow on any newcomer..." (New York Globe, Jan. 2, 1908)

Calling Mahler, the dominant musician of Europe a "newcomer" was a bit much, but clearly his Met debut, conducting Tristan und Isolde on New Year's Day, 1908 was a triumph. He stayed two seasons, directed the New York Philharmonic and sailed home to Vienna, thin and ill in the spring of 1911 where he shortly died.

The sixth symphony begins and ends in a minor ("the key of resignation") I'd say battle more than resignation and in this music he is either trying to keep Alma or get her back.
Indeed the huge theme a few minutes into the first movement, after the first menacing tramping, is called 'Alma'. The composer reportedly said to his wife, "This is for you, you may as well get used to it". Not a smooth talker he, but Mahler's love for Alma must have been passionate and overwhelming.

Don't miss the irony in Mahler's music. It's all over the place. The sixth is filled with a military type drama and foreboding-but 'Alma' is gorgeous and the Andante movement is of unspeakable beauty. Wherever its played.



Yet through all this angst you also hear distant cowbells, and Mahler's love, no, need for the countryside is evident.

The long fourth movement is famous for the three hammer blows-crushing, destroying -life ending (as for me the adagio is life affirming) It was suggested that these three blows also predicted the trio of blows later to attack the composer: the death of his daughter, the loss of position and the diagnosis of a fatal heart condition. But it it significant that Mahler later deleted the final hammer blow.

Don't think this a minor symphony ends in triumph-as some of them do-or a sigh of a minor "resignation". The 6th packs up at the very end. It just runs out of steam and goes away. Leaving you to think what is the future? Military marches, chaos, war or passion?




There's Bernstein near the end of his own life. I think what makes the 6th bleak to many is the lack of recovery from the hammer blows. They aren't followed by any rollicking or soaring major key triumph. It's the end.

Until the 7th symphony.
But that's another story.