BaL 22.01.11 - Strauss: Eine Alpensinfonie

[Pianorak]

. . . liberation through work . . .

Arbeit macht frei! by any chance?

[Il Grande Inquisitor]

I've found it, but the prices...!

There was one sitting there at a tad over £2 at the time of broadcast...

A pity that it wasn't illustrated, nonetheless, as William Mival rated it so highly.

I did chuckle at his comment over Haitink's LSO recording sounding more like a walk up the Cotswolds!

[mathias broucek]

I found myself agreeing with the reviewer. The Karajan was the one with the heighest "goosebumps" quota* and I will dig out my LP of it today or tomorrow.

Shame they don't play "unavailable stuff" since you can normally get it 2nd hand or for download. The Bavarians for Solti sound terrific as does the RCO for Haitink (BTW, surely the Cotswolds are positively mountainous but Dutch standards!).

* goose-steps if Strauss had kept the Nietzsche reference....

[Nick Armstrong]

Arbeit macht frei! by any chance?

Quite

(Of nietzschean origin, I guess? )

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

Shame they don't play "unavailable stuff" since you can normally get it 2nd hand or for download. The Bavarians for Solti sound terrific ....

Solti's version is still available on a "Double Decca" along with other tone poems.

[Pianorak]

(Of nietzschean origin, I guess? )

It seems not. First used as the title of a 1873 novel by Lorenz Diefenbach; next by Swiss psychiatrist Auguste Forel as "le travail rend libre!" in his 1920 "Fourmis de la Suisse". Then the phrase was adopted in 1928 by the Weimar government. And only then did the NSDAP began using it in 1933. (Wikipedia)
Indeed, starting as early as 1763, according to Kloberdanz (1975, p. 212), Volga Germans commonly said, "Arbeit macht das Leben süss" (work makes life sweet). (Ray Woodcock's Latest blog)
Perhaps German Protestant work ethic?

[mercia]

I don't know whether it was mentioned in the programme this morning, but I seem to remember hearing or reading somewhere that Karajan "doctored" the score of Alpensinfonie for dramatic effect e.g. adding extra notes to the organ part, not, I guess, that anyone here would disapprove.

[Ferretfancy]

Eine Alpensinfonie,

You asked earlier how did the Cumbrian Schools manage in the work? They really were quite remarkable, especially in the winds and brass. The hall wasn't too kind to the strings, but then youth orchestras are often a little weak in that department. It was quite an evening, the first item was Don Quixote!
I thought it was a good review, though as others have said it was odd to omit the storm, I usually find myself unhappy with the sound balance between the reviewer and the musical examples, but there was no problem today. I have never heard the Karajan, perhaps I should add it to my list. I do have the earlier Concertgebouw / Haitink version and the excellent LAPO / Mehta which is presumably not available.

So, Strauss was thinking of the Zugspitze! In the days before the EU it was fun to go up the mountain to the small hotel and cafe on top. The Zugspitze straddles the border between Germany and Austria , and had a customs post on the summit so that you could walk one yard, cross the border and get your passport stamped.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

... the first item was Don Quixote!

A nice easy concert for them then?

....................and the excellent LAPO / Mehta which is presumably not available.

That's one of my 11. Mehta is generally good with Strauss.

So, Strauss was thinking of the Zugspitze! In the days before the EU it was fun to go up the mountain to the small hotel and cafe on top. The Zugspitze straddles the border between Germany and Austria , and had a customs post on the summit so that you could walk one yard, cross the border and get your passport stamped.

Knowing that there's a railway going up it takes away the wonderful magic of this previously mythical mountain. Suddenly, it's in the same league as Snaefell, Snowdon and La Rhune. However, I understand that the cog railway only goes part way; you then have to transfer to a cable car to reach the summit (and turn your LP over).

[mathias broucek]

"What, coming week Liszt's Bergsinfonie/Ce qu'on entend sur la montagne?"

And the week after D'Indy's "Jour d'Été à La Montagne"?

[makropulos]

Alpine Symphony completists may like to know that there's a complete live performance on the National Public Radio (NPR) website: recorded in the Meyerhoff Hall, Baltimore, with the Baltimore SO and members of the Peabody Conservatory, conducted by Marin Alsop in 2007. The page including a link to the whole thing (in quite good sound) is here:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=15937551

Mehta's LAPO recording is still available on Australian Eloquence (480 0408), so I'm not sure why it didn't get a mention especially as it's one of his better records.

[gradus]

There's a very fine photograph of the Zugspitze on the original DG LP cover for the Karajan version.

[LeMartinPecheur]

I'll put my Alpensinfonie Members' Club credentials straight down and declare that I discovered the work when I bought the first Dresden/Kempe EMI LP box set when it came out, and immediately fell in love with the work even though I 'knew' from reading the current critical orthodoxy that it was a rubbish cinema-soundtrack work with no soul or decent musical content at all Since then I've only bought the same Kempe recording on CD in the big Strauss-completist box set, plus the Wit on Naxos.

Listening this morning my main impression was how the instant impact of each new sound-clip was dominated by its acoustic and recording balance, and the contrast - generally huge - with what the reviewer had last played. It took too long refocus onto the players' and conductor's art for the clip fully to disclose the strengths and weaknesses of the performance itself. Does this match anyone else's experience?

The worst example for me was the Bohm: it may have been a fine performance but the sound! - all fizz, treble distortion and no matching bass weight - big pity. If I do indulge in another version I think it'll be Karajan, Kempe RPO (those double basses in the first clip!) or the VPO (Thielmann? - sp?).

Cracking work though, Gromit! And IMO a good review by Mival, particularly in his grasp of the existential themes in the work, something that those 1970s critics seemed to neglect. Or even suppress?

[Curalach]

I well remember driving with my wife on the Alpenstrasse between Bavaria and Austria in 1974 in my Triumph Dolomite with the Alpensinfonie blasting out from the speakers of my 8 track stereo. Cool or what??!! Unfortunately, my memory doesn't extend to which recording!!

The only other "travel related" musical moment which sticks in my mind was the first time I transited the Crinan Canal in my boat. As the sea lock opened at Crinan my wife switched on the cassette player to play VW Sea Symphony - Behold the Sea!

Interesting, in a way, that both of these memories pre-date CDs.

[Nick Armstrong]

The only other "travel related" musical moment which sticks in my mind was the first time I transited the Crinan Canal in my boat. As the sea lock opened at Crinan my wife switched on the cassette player to play VW Sea Symphony - Behold the Sea!

Curalach we coincide with a Sea Symphony related travel moment! Different bit in my case though... and it was a CD (the Haitink).

I was lucky enough to spend some time on Bora Bora in French Polynesia... For a while, we were staying in a beach hut right by the water, quite remote; one night, it was too warm to sleep. So I crept out with the portable CD player, to sit cross-legged on the beach, surveying the Southern Cross and a billion other stars... listening of course to "On the beach at night alone"... It must have been about 4 in the morning, still pitch dark... and I heard footsteps on the beach... It was a local fisherman, coming home or about to go out... He nodded and smiled and just sat silently down cross-legged beside me, a bare knee touching mine, and listened as well... to words that turned the whole thing into an epiphany:

"A vast similitude interlocks all,
All spheres, grown, ungrown, small, large, suns, moons, planets,
All distances of place however wide,
All distances of time, all inanimate forms,
All souls, all living bodies though they be ever so different, or in
different worlds...."

One of the great meetings of my life, even though neither said a word... When the movement finished, he got up, shook my hand with a smile and pottered off down the beach.