Prom 73: VPO/Bychkov (10.09.15)

[richardfinegold]

The Vienna Phil in Dunfermline? Whatever next?

I heard the VPO in Carnegie about 6 years ago in Brahms 1 with Muti. This was definitely a collaboration between Conductor and Orchestra, not just an Orchestra on autopilot. Absolutely thrilling but frigid New York night.

[Master Jacques]

Yes, but you could also use that argument to advocate a return to the way people used to 'enjoy' opera, with the lights up full and everyone talking and admiring each other rather than actually listening to the music. Occasionally you hear something in performance that moves the audience enough to burst into spontaneous applause at the end of a movement, but mostly it's awkward smatterings that leave everyone (performers included) a little embarrassed. I don't think there is any point applauding people if they aren't interested in acknowledging that applause - and I am sure most performers would rather use the brief pause to compose themselves again rather than waste their time on pointless bows. There may be a historical precedent for it, but I don't think that's sufficient justification today.

I suppose we are still talking about this Proms performance (just) when I say that, though my heart is with you - and indeed Conchis - on this matter, my head tells me something different. Namely, that audience manners are not, and never have been, set in stone.

Theatre/opera performances are no more some kind of unchanging "ritual" than are concert performances. My feeling during the Schmidt Symphony, for example, was that many more people felt they *wanted* to applaud than actually did so. Even I myself, conditioned as I have been by the "Stokowski Silent Temple" tradition, felt that applause after the huge, central Variations+Scherzo movement was entirely justified - it is so much like a "symphony within a symphony" that the appreciative clapping felt right. I couldn't bring myself to join in, but rather wished that I could have done!

[Once Was 4]

I haven't heard the performance yet but I daresay you are spot on here. I have been to VPO performances (particularly first halves) that have a terrible air of routine about them before picking themselves up, hopefully, after the interval. It must be hard for any conductor, however eminent, to make much of an impression on that weight of collective tradition and you have just to bite the bullet and hope for better things later on.

There used to be a story about a rich, but not talented, conductor who hired the VPO in order to be able to say on his CV that he had 'appeared with the Vienna Philharmonic'. He asked how much he needed to pay and was told "there are three rates: the optimum is our de luxe Furtwangler performance - this is the ultimate; if you cannot afford that we have our very good Kleiber performance. However, if that is also too expensive do not worry - we have our standard service - we just sit there and try to follow your beat!"

[pastoralguy]

The Vienna Phil in Dunfermline? Whatever next?

I once played at Carnegie Hall (Dunfermline!) and sat beside a very talented 14 year old from the local specialist music school. We had half an hour rehearsal for a 90 minute performance, enough time to size each other up. I suggested he led, saying 'you're such a good player' to which he replied saying 'yes, I suppose so but you can fake it so much more convincingly than I can!'

[Maclintick]

I was getting Fugues, Rondos and Chorales, too, just haven't got them organised yet !!

“Fugues, Rondos & Chorales” sums up Schmidt 2 pretty well. Having given it a couple of spins after percipient forumites have lauded its virtues, I’d qualify my initial dismissive assessment & concur with your on-the-spot review, TS. I fully sympathize with your bafflement at the first movement structure, or seeming lack thereof, where JLW recognises a clear sonata form, & which if correct might go something like this:

The folky, almost Nielsen-esque diatonicism of the Eb major flourishes of the symphony’s opening lead us to a brass chorale-fanfare (A), a statement of untrammeled optimism & ebullience leading to the first real climax. This subsides into the minor, the mood darkening through a ruhiger section whose melancholic character bears some similarity to introspective passages in the first movement of Elgar 2 ( also in Eb, & written about the same time as this symphony). Then the music veers towards lush chromaticism, morphing into an overtly Straussian second subject or group (B), shamelessly appropriated from Rosenkavalier (need I say more – nudge-nudge ! wink-wink !)

(A) returns in a different key, still brassy, but now inflected with chromatic instability & far less sure of itself, but then poor old (B) comes in for a right tonal monstering – things are obviously not going well im Schlafzimmer. After more minor-key meanderings (A) manages to dust itself off in a return to something akin to the blithe spirit of the opening. Further melancholic musings intervene, with (B) attempting to re-kindle the romance, but failing, & leading to what feels IMHO a truncated & premature re-cap in which (A) & (B) are unconvincingly mated, with (A) providing the sucker-punch at the end, mirrored in the finale’s coda, as TS observes.

If I’ve described this movement at all accurately it really doesn’t convince as a successful Late-Late Romantic embodiment of sonata, being rather too lazy in thematic development & perfunctory in whatever passes for the recap. On second hearing I was much more impressed with the variations of Movt 2, Brahmsian or Reger-ish, first with pastoral woodwinds & then building nicely towards the Viennese frolics of Var IX, replete with fanfares recalling (A).

The finale. A stately woodwind fugue yearns for religious certainties & happier times when life was simpler. Strings muse on these recollections & pave the way for a noble procession of wind & brass which closes in the major, & is then seized on by the rest of the orchestra in an increasingly ecstatic fugal augmentation of the chorale. Here what Master Jacques describes as Schmidt’s humane optimism, an admirable quality he shares with Nielsen, comes to the fore, but often threatens to degenerate into panglossian overkill, almost-but-not-quite redeemed by the frankly Mahlerian tonal hammer-blow in the coda.

[teamsaint]

thanks for that in depth post, Mac.

I'll go back to the first movement again with your thoughts in mind.

[Master Jacques]

Schmidt's 2nd Symphony will repay each subsequent hearing with interest. I agree with Maclintick about the likeness of some of the thematic material to Nielsen, though of course the Dane's approach to the business of building a symphony is very different. I don't know about "shameless appropriations from Rosenkavalier", though. I don't hear those, personally - and it's worth bearing in mind that Strauss's opera (premiered early in 1911) wasn't heard in Vienna until later that year, after Schmidt had started his draft of the 1st movement.

I'm always very sceptical about these sorts of coincidence, especially where we're dealing with the lingua franca of a given time or place - what's "in the air", if you like. I'm also curious about why we're apt to hear "what we know" in works we don't know so well: probably it's the brain's way of "fixing" mental beacons in unfamiliar music we're still getting to know. (I still hear "My funny Valentine" in Honegger's Prélude, arioso et fughette sur le nom de BACH, but I don't suppose M. Honegger did!!)

The more I hear this beautiful Symphony, the more cogent, full of light and spiritual uplift it seems to me. It's tough but fair. I love his 3rd and 4th even more, though: neither of those are "cheap novels" either, that's for sure!

Anyone interested in downloading a good PDF of the Austrian National Library holograph manuscript, to follow the score (very clear and readable, by the way, in the composer's impeccable hand), can do so here:

http://imslp.org/wiki/Symphony_No.2_%28Schmidt,_Franz%29

[jayne lee wilson]

Following Maclintick's reference to my description of the Schmidt 2 1st movement as a sonata-structure, some flesh on the bones...
(different lettering to Mac's!).

Against a swiftly flowing orchestral current, a soft chorale appears in the horns: this is the symphony's motto (A) from which all its ideas are drawn. It develops a dotted rhythm, which leads to a grandly joyful climax (B - including the dotted figure); but the chorale-motto is heard again immediately after the climax, winding down mysteriously before the next idea, the very Straussian, Romantic melody appears ((C) - another variant of the motto of course).

After 4-5 minutes, with a soft harmonic change on a drum-roll, an exposition repeat seems to begin - or at least, a varied repeat: the three ideas appear in the same order. But then, led by (B), the music dives into a thrilling, very eventful development where all 3 ideas and the "flowing" figures from the very opening, are combined contrapuntally. First, the brassy, climactic (B) dominates; then the Straussian melody takes over. This leads to the movement's crux: a huge climax, after which the development closes mysteriously with winds and brass musing gloomily upon (C) with hints of the dotted rhythm. (One can only admire, and thrill to, Schmidt's ingenuity and inventiveness through this development - the three ideas constantly reappearing in new variants).

The recap (ca. 9-10 minutes in) is structurally straightforward, though not without harmonic and melodic invention and interest. At around 14'00, the coda begins tensely in the minor, then brings all three ideas to a thrilling contrapuntal climax, the dotted brass figure concluding joyfully.

A melodically inspired, ingeniously developed and emotionally fulfilling piece!

***

Comparing across three different cycles has only increased my admiration for Sinaisky's Malmo recording of the 2nd - it's "objective" in the best sense, texturally open and very well recorded. But I would still choose L'udovit (sic!) Rajter as the conductor who gets closest to Schmidt's Czech-Viennese-Magyar inspiration, with the Radio Bratislava SO utterly inside the idiom, passionately committed to "their" composer, born in Bratislava himself.
The wonderful relaxed lilt they bring to the 3rd Symphony's scherzo, (13'06!), really puts Jarvi to shame, who rushes through it in 8'58, flattening the rhythmic life. Similar remarks could be made across the cycles - so try to find Rajter if you can (on the Czech GZ label). The recorded sound has attracted some criticism, but I found it pleasingly natural, spacious, a mid-hall perspective - detailed well enough, if not the last word in spectacular dynamic range or transparency.

[Maclintick]

A melodically inspired, ingeniously developed and emotionally fulfilling piece!

Thanks, JLW. I don’t think we’ll agree entirely on Schmidt 2. There’s no doubting his mastery of orchestral resources, but if I you’re correct that the work is truly monothematic, then perhaps this may account for my finding the 1^st movt a tad monotonous, with that brass chorale bursting through the door like a scoutmaster in lederhosen at every available opportunity.

Master Jacques -- even if the chronology makes it unlikely that Schmidt couldn’t have been directly influenced by “Rosenkavalier” in the B major passage succeeding the first statement of the chorale-fanfare, I’m sure he was very well acquainted with similarly rich seams of Straussian eroticism in the early tone poems, Heldenleben, Symphonia Domestica et al.

But hey ! This is only FS’s second stab at a symphony -- & those second movement variations are a delight. As Roehre has commented, Schmidt did go on to produce a distinguished addition to the genre with his 4^th. I'll now dig out my 40-odd year old vinyl Decca SXL 6544 VPO/Mehta, & investigate some of JLW’s recommendations on Spotify for no.3

[Roehre]

T... I'll now dig out my 40-odd year old vinyl Decca SXL 6544 VPO/Mehta, ..

I've got that same LP with that portrait of the already ill composer on its sleeve.
Btw: That recording was released on CD coupled with Schönberg's Kammersymphonie no.1, a great coupling

[Master Jacques]

Master Jacques -- even if the chronology makes it unlikely that Schmidt couldn’t have been directly influenced by “Rosenkavalier” in the B major passage succeeding the first statement of the chorale-fanfare, I’m sure he was very well acquainted with similarly rich seams of Straussian eroticism in the early tone poems, Heldenleben, Symphonia Domestica et al.

But hey ! This is only FS’s second stab at a symphony -- & those second movement variations are a delight. As Roehre has commented, Schmidt did go on to produce a distinguished addition to the genre with his 4^th. I'll now dig out my 40-odd year old vinyl Decca SXL 6544 VPO/Mehta, & investigate some of JLW’s recommendations on Spotify for no.3

Yes, Maclintick, that's what I mean by the lingua franca of the time - of course the Straussian sound-palette was "in the air", though it all goes back to Wagner really - and here, more crucially, Bruckner.

For me, all four of Schmidt's Symphonies are superb additions to the canon. They are all very different (the 3rd being by some way my personal favourite, if less "obviously" great than the 4th.) Fabio Luisi's MDR SO set is, again for me, the rival to Sinaisky's excellent Malmo set: it's swings and roundabouts, with perhaps Luisi coming out best in the 1st and 4th, the Naxos in the middle pair. Rajter's Bratislava players sound a bit rough by comparison, though as JLW says, the "accent" is spot on.

For anyone interested, I heartily recommend Harold Truscott's superb book on the composer, as a detailed guide to the architecture of these four Symphonies, and Schmidt's other orchestral works.

[Master Jacques]

Thanks, JLW. I don’t think we’ll agree entirely on Schmidt 2. There’s no doubting his mastery of orchestral resources, but if I you’re correct that the work is truly monothematic, then perhaps this may account for my finding the 1^st movt a tad monotonous, with that brass chorale bursting through the door like a scoutmaster in lederhosen at every available opportunity.

Truscott holds (convincingly, for me) that it's only with the return of the 1st movement thematic material in the Finale, that we realise that the symphony *is* monothematic - but stemming, not from the 1st movement, but from the Theme of the variations movement - for which now, we finally see, that 1st movement is only a preparation. Brilliant thinking, superb architecture.

[Maclintick]

For anyone interested, I heartily recommend Harold Truscott's superb book on the composer, as a detailed guide to the architecture of these four Symphonies, and Schmidt's other orchestral works.

Thanks for the recommendation, MJ. Now I come to think of it, it may well have been Truscott's analyses of the Schmidt Symphonies in Bob Simpson's symposium that encouraged this then-impecunious student to shell out 38/- for the VPO/Mehta 4th....I still have those much-thumbed Penguins on a shelf somewhere....

[Master Jacques]

Thanks for the recommendation, MJ. Now I come to think of it, it may well have been Truscott's analyses of the Schmidt Symphonies in Bob Simpson's symposium that encouraged this then-impecunious student to shell out 38/- for the VPO/Mehta 4th....I still have those much-thumbed Penguins on a shelf somewhere....

Yes Maclintick, it had the same effect on me! What marvellously ear-opening books those two Penguin Books of the Symphony were. It was re-reading his short chapter in Vol 2. that made me decide to buy Truscott's full-length study of Schmidt, and I'd say it was in the Robert Simpson class when it comes to analysis, and good writing. A pity that Truscott died before he could add an intended companion volume on the Chamber and Choral music. The book also contains an entertaining memoir by Hans Keller, who knew Schmidt; and a gentle, modest autobiographical sketch by the composer.