Guilty secrets - the bits you miss out

[Parry1912]

How about Elgar's Sea Pictures ? I can't be bothered with any of it except Where Corals Lie

I'm speechless!

"Sabbath Morning at Sea" is one of Elgar's greatest creations. To hear a great performance of it always brings me out in goosebumps.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

I wonder how happy Mahler would have been with this cobbled together 10th Symphony - with the very idea of someone else tinkering with his creation! It isn't his piece - it's someone else's supposition of what his piece may have ended up like. Conductors like Bernstein had enough respect for Mahler to only conduct the one finished movement.

Surely the Cooke(d) version risks leaving a far more skewed vision of how Mahler ended his creative life than the one movement that is solely a product of the composer's hand.

This is a grotesque misrepresentation of what Deryck Cooke intended and achieved, Thropple.

Mahler completed 72 pages of orchestral score plus a further 93 pages of short score (ie up to four staves of Music with melodic material written out, harmonies outlined and essential aspects of instrumentation made clear) - just under 2000 bars of what Mahler was thinking is left in his handwriting. For those of us who can read Music, there is wonderful material here, showing astonishingly beautiful new aspects of Mahler's Musical thinking. Cooke's work is "a performing version of the draft" - in other words, NOT a "completion", but a means for ordinary Music lovers - especially those who, perhaps, cannot read Music - to hear what these final thoughts sound like. "However, it did not occur to me to try and complete the Symphony, since it was obvious that no-one could do this but Mahler". This is "how Mahler ended his creative life" insofar as what he wrote down. Some conductors have subsequently attempted their own "realizations", but these entail far more speculation than Cooke's modest proposals.

And Cooke's work was the first to present "the one movement that is solely a product of the composer's hand" in a way that actually reproduced what that hand wrote: Krenek's earlier version has a great many errors - errors that were first pointed out by Berg, but which Krenek ignored. Bernstein's use of this flawed version hardly shows "enough respect" for Mahler's intentions - and it is a little odd that Lennie showed no similar "respect" for Mozart when he performed the Requiem, which contains far more Sussmayr than there is Cooke in this performing version of the Tenth!

[Thropplenoggin]

This is a grotesque misrepresentation of what Deryck Cooke intended and achieved, Thropple.

Mahler completed 72 pages of orchestral score plus a further 93 pages of short score (ie up to four staves of Music with melodic material written out, harmonies outlined and essential aspects of instrumentation made clear) - just under 2000 bars of what Mahler was thinking is left in his handwriting. For those of us who can read Music, there is wonderful material here, showing astonishingly beautiful new aspects of Mahler's Musical thinking. Cooke's work is "a performing version of the draft" - in other words, NOT a "completion", but a means for ordinary Music lovers - especially those who, perhaps, cannot read Music - to hear what these final thoughts sound like. "However, it did not occur to me to try and complete the Symphony, since it was obvious that no-one could do this but Mahler". This is "how Mahler ended his creative life" insofar as what he wrote down. Some conductors have subsequently attempted their own "realizations", but these entail far more speculation than Cooke's modest proposals.

And Cooke's work was the first to present "the one movement that is solely a product of the composer's hand" in a way that actually reproduced what that hand wrote: Krenek's earlier version has a great many errors - errors that were first pointed out by Berg, but which Krenek ignored. Bernstein's use of this flawed version hardly shows "enough respect" for Mahler's intentions - and it is a little odd that Lennie showed no similar "respect" for Mozart when he performed the Requiem, which contains far more Sussmayr than there is Cooke in this performing version of the Tenth!

Thanks for correcting my ignorance with such a detailed and factual exegesis, ferneyhoughgeliebte, and without upbraiding or insulting me, as can happen on some forums. Not only am I a wiser Mahler fan, but I shall now give Kurt Sanderling's much praised 10th a listen.

[MrGongGong]

How about Elgar's Sea Pictures ? I can't be bothered with any of it except Where Corals Lie,

That's the worst bit of it IMV
but I wouldn't voluntarily listen to the rest either
so WHY is his first Symphony so brilliant ?

[visualnickmos]

In answer to the title of this thread;

Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker - it stinks (that is purely my own very humble opinion and definitely NOT a definitive statement !). How could the same man who composed such marvellous symphonies and concertos et al end up writing this ???

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Thanks for correcting my ignorance with such a detailed and factual exegesis, ferneyhoughgeliebte, and without upbraiding or insulting me, as can happen on some forums. Not only am I a wiser Mahler fan, but I shall now give Kurt Sanderling's much praised 10th a listen.

I never wish to insult and hope try to avoid upbraids.

(Incidentally, "ferney" saves a lot of typing - or even "fhg" if you're really in a hurry!)

[jayne lee wilson]

Cheers fhg, beat me to it on Mahler 10 (takes a long time to fill 9 (there's one left permanently empty...) birdfood dispensers...)

I would only add that when the conductor Harold Byrns took the BBC/Goldschmidt 1960 recording to Alma to listen to in 1962, she "was moved to tears by the music, and confessed she had not realised how much Mahler there was in it." She asked to hear it again, then in 1963 she gave Cooke and the BBC her permission for "performances in any part of the world."

*****

While we're discussing listening choices, what about LvB's Op.130 String Quartet?
I was lucky to have an early LP of it (Busch, I think) which had both finales on it. Ultimately I preferred the second, lighter rondo movement as finale. Whilst the Great Fugue is stunningly bold as a finale and as Stravinsky said, contemporary for ever, I find it disproportionate (and too contrasted in mood) to the earlier movements in a work which has the classical dance-suite as a background. (Unlike the 9th's choral finale, which for me is exactly what's needed to balance - and to go beyond - the stupendous opener).
I love the idea of the fugue in place as finale, as it creates an astoundingly modernistic structure (cf. Op.131 too) but, in the listening, it's almost as though the musical and emotional contrast is too obvious, seeming to obliterate the earlier 5 movements. The lighter rondo is quite contrasted enough with the cavatina for me...

I've no doubt fhg will now prove that "maybe the opposite is also true..."

[Roehre]

So recordings really have taken over music? You don't have any choice at a concert.

Here in North Wales you haven't much choice either if you don't want to drive 3 hours

[Roehre]

... I wonder how happy Mahler would have been with this cobbled together 10th Symphony - with the very idea of someone else tinkering with his creation!.....

Mahler protesting would be very, very hypocritical, and that's an understatement.
1.Cooke did NOT compose ONE single bar of the Tenth, as the work is essentially complete.
That cannot be said of Mahler's completion of Weber's Die Drei Pintos, of which at least the interlude is completely Mahler, and approximately half of the score consists of other works of Weber totally and utterly unrelated to the opera.
2.Changing the instrumentation of Beethoven 9, or -for that matter- the Schumann Symphonies, cococting an own suite of unrelated movements from JSBach's orchestral suites.

Against this background it is a bit rich to expect Mahler's sketches to be left alone, with on top of that Mahler's widow requesting a couple of composers (Schönberg, Berg, Krenek, Shostakovich, Bernstein) to have a look in order to "save" the work.

[Thropplenoggin]

Mahler protesting would be very, very hypocritical, and that's an understatement.
1.Cooke did NOT compose ONE single bar of the Tenth, as the work is essentially complete.
That cannot be said of Mahler's completion of Weber's Die Drei Pintos, of which at least the interlude is completely Mahler, and approximately half of the score consists of other works of Weber totally and utterly unrelated to the opera.
2.Changing the instrumentation of Beethoven 9, or -for that matter- the Schumann Symphonies, cococting an own suite of unrelated movements from JSBach's orchestral suites.

Against this background it is a bit rich to expect Mahler's sketches to be left alone, with on top of that Mahler's widow requesting a couple of composers (Schönberg, Berg, Krenek, Shostakovich, Bernstein) to have a look in order to "save" the work.

You can read my mea culpa above, Roehre.

[Roehre]

....Mahler's 10th symphony..... It isn't his piece - . Conductors like Bernstein had enough respect for Mahler to only conduct the one finished movement..

That movement is not finished either, or -as Haitink remarked- there are a lot of blank staves, especially in the brass in that movement. But may I point to the fact that neither Symphony 9 nor Das Lied von der Erde exist in Mahler's definitive hand?
both works as we know them now were still in the state of editing, changing, adding or deleting bars.
As far as LvdE is concerned: take a look at Mahler's piano version of the work and compare it with the published orchestral score. Interesting as the latter predates the former, and shows a couple of nice differences, changed titles, and added bars e.g.

[Thropplenoggin]

Quick, Thropplenoggin, flash up the white flag emoticon!

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

so WHY is his first Symphony so brilliant ?

That's always a difficult one. I think Elgar 1 is brilliant and I could try to tell you why, but it the work doesn't do it for you, my words would be wasted, and utterly inadequate.

[MrGongGong]

Elgar 1 IS brilliant IMV
but Sea Pictures and DOG are dreadful
I find this odd ..........thassorl

[Roslynmuse]

Sea Pictures isn't a song cycle so it's perfectly in order to listen to any song in isolation. Unlike, say, Schumann's Dichterliebe and, in my view, Berlioz' Nuits d'été (to take two very different examples).