Also I think AfterHours turned me on to that Beethoven recording via YouTube... if you haven't had a chance check it (although I vaguely remember his having chinese characters in the name and that one doesn't... still 99% sure it's the same incredible performance).
Yep, that looks like it.
Praying that Honeck somehow finds a way to top it.
(although he is on pace for perhaps the greatest Beethoven symphony cycle ever after his 3rd, 5th, 7th, it's still probably asking too much)
I've seen you mention this before. I have yet to hear a Honeck recording...
Must do when I get the chance to really analyze recordings... but I may never get there because such a task drives me insane sometimes... (I sometimes want to splice them together because some execute certain parts better than others...) but sometimes some recordings are just garbage (trying to be nice...), and finding the "right one" so key to the enjoyment of the work.
Honeck is the best conductor today and his PSO probably the best orchestra. He is spectacular in Mahler, Dvorak and what he's done with Tchaikovsky and Bruckner too, among others. He is close to a guarantee when it comes to recordings, both idiomatic and interpretive in a brilliant way (or several ways).
With Beethoven's symphonies he has managed to infuse HIP (with today's instruments) into previous practices/tradition finding an amazing medium betweeen the two without overdoing either, thus still holding Beethoven's force/conviction/tension/emotion etc while highlighting the full color of his vision, his orchestral dimension/translucence more than most and remaining rhythmically fleet, spontaneous and volatile without losing grip on the architecture/compositional order...
(approx a combo of: Szell's technical mastery & concision + Karajan's or Wand's power/impact + Harnoncourt/Chamber Orchestra of Europe's lithe architecture and vibrant articulation)
His 3rd sounds like the very best ever recorded the last several times I revisited it.
A to the men - glad you agree. Also what's your take on Missa Solemnis' vocal arrangements at least being stylistically similar and if you've had a chance Theresienmesse from Haydn.
And yes it's probably unfair of me but my brain saw it at 13 and didn't think it's the pinnacle, but I wasn't taking context into play. When you see what you have ranked before it and then know there's thousands of works beneath it... yeah...
I guess all I was saying is I was quite blown away with it and expect everyone to have it at 13... but they don't... and there's reasons behind that I think we all know/understand already.
No problem, I was mostly poking a little fun...
I don't recall Theresienmesse offhand and it's been a long time since I really went through Haydn's works outside the main repertoire.
But there is definitely something to it looking backward as much as forward, as is common with his late period (infusing the old with the strikingly new).
As per wiki:
"Some critics have been troubled that, as Theodor W. Adorno put it, "there is something peculiar about the Missa solemnis." In many ways, it is an atypical work, even for Beethoven. Missing is the sustained exploration of themes through development that is one of Beethoven's hallmarks. The massive fugues at the end of the Gloria and Credo align it with the work of his late period—but his simultaneous interest in the theme and variations form is absent. Instead, the Missa presents a continuous musical narrative, almost without repetition, particularly in the Gloria and Credo, the two longest movements. The style, Adorno has noted, is close to treatment of themes in imitation that one finds in the Flemish masters such as Josquin des Prez and Johannes Ockeghem, but it is unclear whether Beethoven was consciously imitating their techniques to meet the peculiar demands of the Mass text. Donald Tovey has connected Beethoven to the earlier tradition in a different way:
Not even Bach or Handel can show a greater sense of space and of sonority. There is no earlier choral writing that comes so near to recovering some of the lost secrets of the style of Palestrina. There is no choral and no orchestral writing, earlier or later, that shows a more thrilling sense of the individual colour of every chord, every position, and every doubled third or discord."
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I don't know if I would quite agree with you if you meant a "lack of critical acclaim". Among its genre, it's often considered just below only Bach's Mass in B Minor, St Matthew Passion and Handel's Messiah as far as I've seen (on average). However, I WOULD agree with you if you mean something more like it's lack of popular acclaim. But it is probably his most expressively challenging work along with SQ 13 (especially w/ Grosse Fuge), SQ 14, SQ 15 ... and it's a much more massive work to take in than those, so it's lack of popular acclaim isn't surprising. Works like his 3rd, 5th, 6th, 7th symphony, earlier-to-mid-Piano Sonatas, VC, Piano Concertos, Violin Son 5 and 9, and others, are much more accessible. 9th is at least as complex as Missa Solemnis but (analogous to a work like The Sistine Chapel) in the sense that it is SO DIRECTLY EMOTIONAL AND EXPRESSIVE that it's conveyance bypasses its inner complexity/layers and grand design and the listener need not know much about it to get impacted or even overwhelmed by it ... even if such a listener would be simply scratching its surface while there is an overwhelming profundity to the work yet to be discovered _________________ Best Classical Best Films Best Paintings
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I'm not a big lieder guy, but those were quite enjoyable. Very nice interplay between the piano and the vocalist, who has a marvelous voice.
RE: Public vs Critical Acclaim... yeah good question - I suppose I have not read that much about it... not that I've searched high and low either... just in my meanderings in my exposure throughout life or during this project... it just seemed like a lower work when I think it's amazing. Anyway, that quote is fantastic in summing up just how glorious it is. I just haven't noticed it atop the best works is all I was saying and yet is basically deserving as such, especially as a mass. Something tells me I didn't hear much about it because of the difficulty it is to perform, especially on vocalists... but hey I'm sure there's tons of great works of art I've never heard of... has very little weight in reality
RE: The Barbara Bonney / Geoffrey Parsons Lieder interpretations... yeah I was pleasantly surprised as well. I know Dietrich Fischer-Deskau is like THE interpreter of songs for Schubert, but I thought those were actually very well done and clearly some weren't written for a tenor, so makes sense.
Era: Classical (even though now we are on our way to Romantic stylistically and arguably Romantic/is Romantic - When Schubert/Beethoven die, that's it for me)
Year: 1826/5 for the stuff that's really good and why I waited till the end (last movement of the 13th is according to wikipedia the last thing he ever wrote)
Form: String Quartet
Score: 95
The string quartets are broken up into the early, middle, and late quartets. I'd rate them better as they go along - on RYM a 3.5, 4, and then 5. This 8.5 hour journey started out as a typical journey into string quartets and then ended with some of the best music ever written. It also reminded me of people I care for who taught breathing is key to a great quartet - you gotta breath together!
This is a first emotionally for me to have chronologically (more or less) listened to a good chunk of Beethoven's complete works if you will and it's been a tender and emotional journey. I think I did this for Mozart and Haydn, so I'll do this here... it's basically a representation of all the albums I listened to. If you see a work I missed (see below) that is super key, I'd love to listen to it before I wrap up the classical era.
Beethoven then turned to writing the string quartets for Golitsin. This series of quartets, known as the "Late Quartets," went far beyond what musicians or audiences were ready for at that time. Composer Louis Spohr called them "indecipherable, uncorrected horrors." Opinion has changed considerably from the time of their first bewildered reception: their forms and ideas inspired musicians and composers including Richard Wagner and Béla Bartók, and continue to do so. Of the late quartets, Beethoven's favourite was the Fourteenth Quartet, op. 131 in C♯ minor, which he rated as his most perfect single work.[95] The last musical wish of Schubert was to hear the Op. 131 quartet, which he did on 14 November 1828, five days before his death.[96]
He wrote the last quartets amidst failing health. In April 1825 he was bedridden, and remained ill for about a month. The illness—or more precisely, his recovery from it—is remembered for having given rise to the deeply felt slow movement of the Fifteenth Quartet, which he called "Holy song of thanks ('Heiliger Dankgesang') to the divinity, from one made well." He went on to complete the quartets now numbered Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Sixteenth. The last work completed by Beethoven was the substitute final movement of the Thirteenth Quartet, which replaced the difficult Große Fuge. Shortly thereafter, in December 1826, illness struck again, with episodes of vomiting and diarrhoea that nearly ended his life.
1. Symphonie No. 9 (Herbert von Karajan / Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra) Ludwig van Beethoven Classical 1824 100.9
1. Symphonie No. 9 (The New York Philharmonic Orchestra, Bruno Walter) Ludwig van Beethoven Classical 1824 100.1
2. Symphonie No. 5 (Carlos Kleiber / Wiener Philharmoniker) Ludwig van Beethoven Classical 1808 100.9
2. Symphonien No. 4 & 5 (George Szell / The Cleveland Orchestra) Ludwig van Beethoven Classical 1806 100.2
2. Symphonie No. 5 (Arturo Toscanini, NBC Symphony Orchestra) Ludwig van Beethoven Classical 1808 100.1
2. Symphonie No. 5 (Bruno Walter, Columbia Symphony Orchestra) Ludwig van Beethoven Classical 1808 100.1
3. Symphonie No. 6 (George Szell / The Cleveland Orchestra) Ludwig van Beethoven Classical 1808 100
4. Piano Sonatas (Daniel Barenboim) Ludwig van Beethoven Classical 1798 95
5. Symphonie No. 3 "Eroica" (Gustavo Dudamel / Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra Of Venezuela) Ludwig van Beethoven Classical 1805 95
6. Symphonies No. 7 (Riccardo Chailly / Gewandhausorchester) Ludwig van Beethoven Classical 1813 95
6. Symphony No. 7 In A Major (Bruno Walter) Ludwig van Beethoven Classical 1813 95
7. Missa Solemnis, Op. 123 (Leonard Bernstein / London Symphony Orchestra / New York Philharmonic Orchestra) Ludwig van Beethoven Classical 1824 95.9
7. Missa Solemnis, Op. 123 (Herbert Von Karajan, Philharmonia Orchestra) Ludwig van Beethoven Classical 1824 95(pending review)
8. Complete Piano Sonatas & Concertos (Alfred Brendel / London Philharmonic Orchestra / Bernard Haitink) Ludwig van Beethoven Classical 1798 90
9. Two Romances / Mendelssohn: Violin Concerto (Seiji Ozawa / Boston Symphony Orchestra / Isaac Stern) Ludwig van Beethoven Classical 1798 90
10. The Violin Sonatas (Itzhak Perlman & Vladimir Ashkenazy) Ludwig van Beethoven Classical 1801 90
11. Piano Concerto No. 5 "Emperor"; Triple Concerto (Eugene Ormandy / Philadelphia / Isaac Stern) Ludwig van Beethoven Classical 1803 90
12. Piano Concertos Nos. 3 & 4 (Mitsuko Uchida / Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra / Kurt Sanderling) Ludwig van Beethoven Classical 1804 90
13. Symphonies No. 1 (George Szell / The Cleveland Orchestra) Ludwig van Beethoven Classical 1800 89
14. Violin Concerto; Consecration Of The House Overture; Leonore Overture (Leonard Bernstein / New York Philharmonic / Isaac Stern) Ludwig van Beethoven Classical 1806 89
15. Diabelli-Variationen (Alfred Brendel) Ludwig van Beethoven Classical 1823 89
16. Symphony 2 (Gustavo Dudamel / Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra Of Venezuela) Ludwig van Beethoven Classical 1801 87
17. Symphony 4 (Gustavo Dudamel / Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra Of Venezuela) Ludwig van Beethoven Classical 1806 87
18. Piano Concerto No. 2; Piano Concerto, Woo 4; Rondo, Woo 6 (Matthias Enkemeier / Harleshäuser Kammerorchestra / Annete Töpel) Ludwig van Beethoven Classical 1793 86.5
19. The Sonatas For Piano/Klavier & Cello (Yo-Yo Ma & Emanuel Ax) Ludwig van Beethoven Classical 1796 86.5
20. Bagatelles (Alfred Brendel) Ludwig van Beethoven Classical 1821 86.5
21. Bagatelles And Dances Volume 3 (Jenő Jandó) Ludwig van Beethoven Classical 1798 86
22. Egmont; Wellington's Victory; Military Marches (Karajan) Ludwig van Beethoven Classical 1810 86
23. Symphonies No. 8 (Riccardo Chailly / Gewandhausorchester) Ludwig van Beethoven Classical 1814 86
24. Fidelio (Claudio Abbado / Mahler Chamber Orchestra) Ludwig van Beethoven Classical 1814 85
25. König Stephan, Die Ruinen Von Athen; Incidental Music; Prometheus Overture (Geza Oberfrank / András Kórodi / Orchestra Of The Hungarian Radio And Television) Ludwig van Beethoven Classical 1811 84[/list]
RE: Public vs Critical Acclaim... yeah good question - I suppose I have not read that much about it... not that I've searched high and low either... just in my meanderings in my exposure throughout life or during this project... it just seemed like a lower work when I think it's amazing. Anyway, that quote is fantastic in summing up just how glorious it is. I just haven't noticed it atop the best works is all I was saying and yet is basically deserving as such, especially as a mass. Something tells me I didn't hear much about it because of the difficulty it is to perform, especially on vocalists... but hey I'm sure there's tons of great works of art I've never heard of... has very little weight in reality
Yes, very difficult to perform and you're right that it hasn't been performed/recorded nearly as much as his most famous works and that it doesn't get nearly as much attention or discussion (generally, publicly). Like his 9th Symphony for its orchestra/vocalists, Hammerklavier for its piano soloist and his 13th w/ Grosse Fuge, 14th and 15th SQs, I'm pretty sure the Missa was considered impossible (or close) to perform to a high standard in its day.
"The writing displays Beethoven's characteristic disregard for the performer, and is in several places both technically and physically exacting, with many sudden changes of dynamic, metre and tempo."
The late Beethoven quartets are absolute marvels. I'm not it's even possible to overstate the sheer magnitude of their brilliance.
I remember the first time I ever listened to #13. I picked up a quality recording at the record store and went straight home. I got in my comfy chair, put on the headphones, tuned out the world, and dedicated myself entirely to the listening experience.
To say I was floored would be putting it mildly.
I had much the same reaction to #14. To whatever degree I was less floored than listening to #13 was probably only because I had just listened to #13 and still had some associated hangover.
On a related note, I'll also never forget my first exposure to the early #2, very early in my personal classical history. I had turned on my local classical station and it had just started, so I hadn't missed but a few bars, bu had also missed the intro so I tried to figure out what I was listening to. Clearly it was a classical era string quartet. At the time, I was only familiar with Haydn and some of Mozart and Schubert's quartets. As I listened, I could only think "This sounds a lot like Haydn, but with more ooomph! More power. A touch of thunder in a chamber music form!" At the end, the announcer recapped and said it was Beethoven's second. At that time, I couldn't help but think "Duh! I should have known!' It was obvious... rooted in Haydn but with some Thunder! had to be early Beethoven. I love #2 to this day.
Era: Classical (even though now we are on our way to Romantic stylistically and arguably Romantic/is Romantic - When Schubert/Beethoven die, that's it for me)
Year: Long range, but initially came here for 1828 Impromptus/late piano sonatas
Form: Piano Sonata/Impromptu
Score: 87
I felt like I was listening to someone paint. This is the first set of piano works where I didn't feel like an egotistical maniac or "shredder" was at the helm, rather a serene artist who loved music... if that makes any sense. It felt like real beauty and art, and not forced. I'm making it sound like I hate his predecessors, but that's not the case. I'm just speaking to his flow being so natural like Bob Ross painting. I mean there were stylistically challenging things here, but it sounded so effortless and serene (I literally saw happy trees... ... ok maybe it's not Bob Ross, but I hope you get what I'm saying). I thought this for the entirety of the 10 hours while listening through these sonatas and impromptus.
It really isn't fair that such weighty compositions as the four pieces contained in Franz Schubert's Op. 90 (D. 899) were given the rather inappropriate title "Impromptus" by their publisher when the first two went to press in late 1827; it wasn't until 1857 that Op. 90, Nos. 3 and 4 appeared in print. These are not just pieces of higher-grade musical meat than the average short piano piece of the 1820s. These are pieces of considerable length, three of them even spanning more than 200 bars, each a well thought-out expression of pianism that creates no sense of improvisation. The four Impromptus, D. 899 were probably composed at least in part during the composer's stay in Dornbach in the summer of 1827; they seem all to have been put to paper by the time Schubert arrived in Graz in September.
The first piece, in C minor, is marked Allegro molto moderato and starts off with a firm double-octave utterance, the likes of which would pop up again some five decades later at the start of Johannes Brahms' C minor Piano Quartet. Instantly, however, Schubert pulls this solid rug out from under our feet and proffers a limber, pianissimo melody -- initially unaccompanied, but soon harmonized in march-like fashion -- that, in one form or another, will saturate the entire piece, most notably in the shape of a warm A flat major melody that rides on top of triplet arpeggios in first the left and then the right hand. The piece falls into two loose halves, the second of which starts off with a reworking of the opening measures of the first -- the continuous triplets now propel the music forward in dramatic fashion -- and then recasts the A flat major melody in G major.
There is something etude-like about the far-flung, continuous eighth notes in Op. 90, No. 2 in E flat major/minor. During the middle section of this "da capo" piece these eighth Schubert breaks the eighth notes up a bit to set up some powerful sforzandos. Somewhat surprisingly, the piece veers into the minor mode during its ever-faster coda and never escapes back into the major mode.
If you took the Adagio cantabile of Beethoven's Pathétique Piano Sonata and mated it with any of a dozen Chopin Nocturnes you'd probably come up with something very like the Andante in G flat major, Op. 90, No. 3. In fact, Schubert lifted the cadential gesture of this lovely melody straight from that heavenly Beethoven movement.
The last impromptu of D. 899 is an Allegretto in A flat minor/major that more or less assumes the form of a scherzo and trio (Schubert even goes so far as to call the less-frantic middle section a "trio"). At the start of the piece, all attention is fixed on the cascading sixteenth note arpeggios, but midway through the "scherzo" portion -- which is of course reprised "da capo" after the trio -- Schubert inserts a delightfully swinging melody into the upper voice of the left hand.
When applied to these works of Franz Schubert, the term Impromptu is doubly misleading. None of Schubert's works in the genre (there are two sets, D. 899, and D. 935, both written in the year 1827) suggest the salonesque, extemporaneous quality that the term connotes; quite to the contrary, these are tightly knit, structurally cohesive works, often of great lyric intensity. Nor should the term be taken -- again, as is often the case -- to represent any diminution of scale; the longest of Schubert's examples lasts well over ten minutes! It is not surprising then to realize that the title, "Impromptu," was assigned to these works by Schubert's Viennese Publisher, Haslinger, and not the composer himself.
Schubert may, in fact, have had something much larger in mind when he composed D. 935: Robert Schumann suggested that the key sequence of the four pieces (Nos. 1 and 4 in F minor, and Nos. 2 and 3 in A flat and B flat, respectively) formed a sonata in all but name. There is a markedly greater degree of overall unity among these Impromptus than we find in the more disparate first series, D. 899, and Schumann's observation is further strengthened by the unmistakable motivic associations between Nos. 1 and 4 -- a quality often associated with the opening and closing movements of a sonata. However, it is easy for this line of thought to become strained, and, whatever Schubert's intentions may have been, the urgent, driving rhythms and decorative melodic style found in these four pieces aligns them with the first popular examples of the Impromptu genre, written in Hungary during the 1820s.
The first of the set is composed in a kind of sonata-rondo form (or, perhaps more accurately in this case, a sonata-allegro form with no development), with a declamatory opening theme to which the gentler, pulsating thoughts of the two "B" sections act as the perfect foil.
The second Impromptu is a comely Allegretto, the first measures of which bear a striking resemblance to those of Beethoven's Piano Sonata No. 12, Op. 26 in the same key. The similarity is fleeting, however, leaving us to wonder if this ghost from the musical past was summoned by Schubert's conscious or unconscious mind. In the middle section, marked "trio" by the composer (though the movement is neither minuet nor scherzo), there is no melody per se, but rather a shapely arpeggiation in triplets.
The third impromptu of the group is a set of variations on the famous tune that Schubert had already used in both the Rosamunde music and the Quartet in A minor, D. 804. There are five variations in total, the last of which is built of sparkling virtuoso scales that finally give way to a sublime, almost chorale-like coda.
The last impromptu, Allegro scherzando, is nearly 500 measures long. A handful of rubberband-like ritardando/a tempo indications and half a dozen unexpected grand pauses help not only to make the sparkling moto perpetuo more exciting, but also to remind us of the pieces "scherzando" nature.
Improperly labeled 22, but properly labeled 959...
This is Schubert's penultimate piano sonata, written in September 1828 -- about three months before his death. It is one of three that he wrote after the death of Beethoven (March 19, 1827), whose funeral he attended with Hummel. The passing of this great master was an important event in the life of Schubert, for though mourned the loss of the musician he greatly admired, he also perhaps felt somewhat liberated from the older composer's dominance. Appropriately, each of these last three piano sonatas contain stylistic nods to Beethoven; in the case of this A major sonata, the Rondo is based on the finale (also a Rondo) of Beethoven's Sonata No. 16 in G major.
The work opens with dramatic, stately chords which yield to gentler music, using the same material. The second subject is particularly lovely in its lyrical warmth and passion. The development offers both playfulness and tension, and the coda is grand and complex.
Many take the view that the ensuing Andantino, though it is not the longest or grandest of the four panels here, is the most profound. Its mesmerizing main theme is dreamy and mysterious, but often seeming on the verge of erupting into a storm. The second subject introduces a great deal of tension, eventually leading to a dramatic climax. This movement seems to pit serenity and violence, or even reason and madness, against one another.
The Scherzo is delightful in its lightness and good spirits. Yet for all the effervescence here, there is considerable craftsmanship: the arpeggiated chords appearing at the outset are a variant of the somewhat sinister ones at the end of the Andantino. The finale, as mentioned above, pays tribute to Beethoven; yet, the only truly imitative element is Schubert's borrowing of a theme from the slow movement of his own A minor Piano Sonata, D. 537.
This is one of Schubert's most popular piano sonatas, enjoying currency on both the recital stage and in the recording studio. Ironically, the composer could not get this masterpiece published in the remaining months of his life. It would be published in 1839, though his reputation would not begin to grow appreciably until after 1856, when he was discovered and championed by English musicologist, George Grove.
Many of Schubert's greatest works belong to his last year, a veritable Annus Mirabilis which saw the creation of the "Great" C major Symphony, the String Quintet, D. 956, the piano trios D. 929 and D. 898, the Mass in E flat, D. 950, and the Fantasy in F minor for piano duet, D. 940. On September 26, 1828, Schubert's Piano Sonata in B flat major, D. 960, his last instrumental work, was finished. The composer's last three sonatas debate limitation and leavetaking; Alfred Brendel suggests that they "lead us into romantic regions of wonderment, terror and awe." Perhaps the B flat sonata probes human mortality even more deeply than its fellows.
As Claudio Arrau once remarked, "this is a work written in the proximity of death...one feels it from the very first theme...the breaking off, and the silence after a long, mysterious trill in the bass." What Tovey described as "a sublime theme of utmost calmness and breadth" ends mysteriously with the same distant trill, returning intermittently to impart deeper anguish to music of sinister beauty. The exposition contains two other subsidiary themes, both in remote keys, and what follows also includes a remarkable self-quotation -- the links between the B flat sonata's first-movement development and an insistent six-note theme taken from a setting of the cathedral scene from Goethe's Faust, composed in December 1814, are often overlooked. However, as John Reed suggests in Schubert: The Final Years, "many a recognisable variation strays much farther from its theme!"
The C sharp minor Andante sostenuto ranks alongside Schubert's finest slow movements. Sustained gravitas and sublimity of expression take us to the brink of the abyss: that remote, solitary place which T.S. Eliot knew as "the still point of the turning world." The music is dominated by a recurring figure in the accompaniment, spanning four octaves and enclosing a melody of effusive beauty. The distinctive rhythmic accompaniment recalls an Austrian folk song whose silent second beat would have enabled hammer-wielding artisans to synchronize their sledgehammer blows to maximum effect. Popular tradition maintains that Schubert observed a gang of laborers and noted down several of their work songs while on holiday at Gmunden during the summer months of 1815. The characteristic dotted-rhythm figure was used later in the Notturno in E flat for Piano Trio (D. 897).
A mercurial B flat major Scherzo follows, to be played "con delicatezza." But tension and incident are never absent from an overcast trio and an uneasy return to the Scherzo material via an improbable, albeit adjacent, A major. This trilogy of sonatas ends much as it began; Beethoven's influence emerges in a rondo finale whose main idea bears comparison with that of the movement written to replace the so-called Grosse Fuge, the original finale of Beethoven's Quartet in B flat, Op. 130. The rondo theme begins repeatedly in the false tonality of C minor, an ambiguity resolved as the theme appears for the last time, when, following extensive debate and development, the octave G which precedes it descends into the dominant key of F, in preparation for a brilliant final coda. "Thus Schubert ends both gaily and cheerfully," wrote Robert Schumann, "as though fully able to face another day's work." But history records otherwise: Schubert played his last three sonatas at a party held by Dr. Ignaz Menz on Saturday September 27, 1828, having finished the B flat work only the previous day. He died less than two months afterwards.
Era: Classical (even though now we are on our way to Romantic stylistically and arguably Romantic/is Romantic - When Schubert/Beethoven die, that's it for me)
Year: 1828
Form: String Quartet
Score: 90
Wow - this was nearly a symphony in depth and length. Very dense for "just a string quartet". It travels through so many different styles/emotions. It also has that beautiful feeling that I'm watching someone paint. This recording is fantastic.
Quintet for 2 violins, viola & 2 cellos in C major, D. 956 (Op. posth. 163)
Quote:
Benjamin Britten once suggested that "the richest and most productive eighteen months in music history" were "the period in which Franz Schubert wrote Winterreise, the C major symphony, his last three piano sonatas, the C Major String Quintet, as well as a dozen other glorious pieces." The String Quintet, D. 956 is certainly one of the pinnacles of the chamber music canon, and is often cited as a significant example of the composer's legacy.
Certainly in the period between the death of his idol, Beethoven, and his own passing, the 31-year-old Schubert achieved a breakthrough in large-scale forms the likes of which has not been seen since. But the Quintet strikes one more as young man's music than as a summary statement; there is a youthful ambition that is not unlike that of Beethoven's first string quartets.
For his scoring, Schubert went against the model of Mozart and Beethoven, who each added a second viola to the conventional string quartet for their quintets; Boccherini provided the only precedent for using two cellos. Schubert uses the second cello to create dense and varied textures: sometimes the cello serves as a second bass instrument under a full quartet, sometimes it's a bass-rich quartet sans violin, and sometimes there is a rich interplay between instrumental sections.
The first two movements have an expansive and deliberate buildup that seems to anticipate the sprawling structures of Anton Bruckner. But in most ways the piece remains quite conventional; it retains the standard four-movement format, and has an energetic scherzo (though a more wistful trio) and a zestful, almost Hungarian finale. Despite the bleak spaces of the slow movement, these movements suggest a youth's first steps into maturity, and the work as a whole serves as a tantalizing reminder of what might have been, had Schubert been granted more time to create and innovate.
Era: Classical (even though now we are on our way to Romantic stylistically and arguably Romantic/is Romantic - When Schubert/Beethoven die, that's it for me)
Year: 1827
Form: Song Cycle (Lieder)
Score: 90
Such a somber journey of lost love. And such a beautiful representation of the essence of Romanticism. The leaves painted on the windows by ice and the hope for them to turn green - this rationalism vs empiricism melts into romanticism -one of the most hopeful elements of the work. Emotionally bleak and honest and somber and beautiful. Images in the mind turn to reality. Reality is the image we perceive.
Winterreise, song cycle for voice & piano, D. 911 (Op. 89)
Quote:
The breadth of scholarly approaches to Franz Schubert's song cycle Die Winterreise testifies to the structural and dramatic complexity of the work; assessments range from complicated graphs, complete with interlocking axes and cryptic semantic labels, to outright sighs of resignation over the work's intractability. Perhaps this intrigue is what attracts performers and academics alike to the work; singer and scholar Michael Besack traces the ambiguous dramatic trajectory of Schubert's cycle back to antiquity. "Epic poetry and the tragic theater never produced a story with a moral," he pointed out.
A central question concerning the cycle is whether it really is one. The two dozen poems by Wilhelm Müller that Schubert took as his texts appeared piecemeal in three separate publications between 1822 and the completion of Schubert's setting in 1827; Müller's third publication, finally bearing the title Schubert would adopt, featured the newest poems along with the ones previously published (though the latter were reordered). The chronology of Schubert's setting also calls the idea of a continuous cyclical narrative into question: he set Müller's initial 12 songs early in 1827, then completed the other dozen later that year. Still, while some of the individual songs are frequently performed alone, one can easily read a composite story into the cycle. Literary scholar Cecilia Baumann describes the work as "a simple story of a rejected lover who leaves the town where his love resides and sets out in winter on an aimless journey." Schubert biographer Jacques Chailley reads a different kind of journey: "not simply that of a scorned lover -- he is only a phantom -- but an image behind which one can discern at each moment the journey of man toward the tomb: Die Winterreise is the sinister voyage of life." Such existential ideas gain support from the bleakness of Auf dem Flusse (At the River), in which the lover's description of the frozen stream seems to shade into one of a physical corpse, and of the melancholy hurdy-gurdy-man's lament that ends the cycle.
The songs ruminate on, rather than depict, events that have befallen the rejected lover; as the first two lines of the first song indicate ("A stranger I came hither, a stranger hence I go"), the journey has already taken place: the famous fifth song, Der Lindenbaum, likewise centers on symbols of remembrance. Schubert's introduction establishes a tranquil major mode with an airy, fluttering accompaniment; it becomes apparent that this figure represents the rustling of the eponymous lime tree. "Upon its bark when musing, fond words of love I made," the wanderer tells listeners, "and joy alike and sorrow still drew me to its shade." Only briefly do the mode and mood of the music change to minor, in direct correlation to the image of passing the tree in darkness. These pictorial elements lie only on the surface, however. Certain musical elements create a sense of geographical and chronological remove: the rustling figure is constantly interrupted by a leap up to a quaint stepwise descent; the echo of a "hunting horn" figure suggests distance -- spatial and temporal; the wind blows off the wanderer's hat, but he trudges forward without even turning around. The cold wind listeners that it is winter; the presence of leaves is unlikely. The rustling sound is not a real, but an imagined, phenomenon: "Now many leagues I'm far from/The dear old linden tree/[But still] I ever hear it murmur/'Peace thou wouldst find with me.'" Schubert's song does not evoke images; it evokes the act of remembering images.
Era: Classical (even though now we are on our way to Romantic stylistically and arguably Romantic/is Romantic - When Schubert/Beethoven die, that's it for me)
Year: 1825-1828; 1822
Form: Symphony
Score: 90
In the 8th, I hear a mixture of what I love about Mozart and Beethoven mixed in with these, but again I'm hearing this recurring theme of watching a painter stroke out his masterpiece. The soaring winds over a rushing string reminds me of Mozart - the passion of Beethoven. Schubert's melodies are on par. What's unique here is the unbridled landscape - it follows his heart, not a predefined form. In the 9th is great indeed - incredibly dense, it's almost like each movement is it's own symphony with each movement deeply immersed in it's own world.
Symphony No. 8 in B minor ("Unfinished"), D. 759
Quote:
Early in 1822, Schubert was at the zenith of his career and he began writing a monumental Symphony in B minor. By the end of that year, he had scored the first two movements and sketched a third. He contracted syphilis late in that year and for a time was completely incapacitated, which was when he stopped work on the symphony and set it aside. By spring, he had recovered some of his strength. He was accepted for honorary membership in the Styrian Music Society at Graz in Austria. As part of his acceptance, he sent the two completed movements of the B minor Symphony to its director, Anselm Hüttenbrenner, who promptly stuffed them into a drawer and forgot them. It languished there until 1860, when Hüttenbrenner's younger brother Joseph came upon it, and recognizing it as a lost treasure, began badgering Viennese conductor Johann Herbeck to perform the piece. The work was finally performed December 17, 1865.
The symphony itself is both large and understated. From the first, ominous opening bars, it is evident this is not the youthful Schubert who earlier crafted six lightweight symphonies. Confident and audacious, Schubert begins the 14 minute first movement by laying down a cornerstone in the basses, upon which is layered a gentle, wafting melody which gradually accumulates mass and power to a quick conclusion. This all turns out to be an introduction, and one of the composer's most brilliant melodies ensues. This, too, quickly becomes larger and more dramatic and an effective bridge leads back to the beginning. An intense, soaring center section, almost triumphant in its great chords, leads to a final reprise of the opening and the great movement ends solemnly.
The 11 minute Andante con moto movement begins with a marvelous melody, presented straightforwardly with no ornamentation, and this leads seamlessly to another marvelous woodwind melody. Great, broad shouldered strides carry the music to a new key where the themes are repeated. Tranquillity returns with the first themes and after a summation of what has passed, the movement -- and the work -- marches quietly to its end.
This work wasn't performed in its entirety until March 21, 1839, at Leipzig, with Mendelssohn conducting. After composing six complete symphonies between 1813 and 1818 in the manner of Haydn and Mozart, Schubert completed only one more in the remaining decade of his brief life. This was The Great C major, written during 1825-1826 (rather than 1828 as was supposed until quite recently), and thus is the allegedly lost "Gastein" Symphony. Although he dated a copy of the score "March 1828," it really is No. 9, despite an army of scholars that variously tagged it No. 7, 8, and even 10.
By 1818 the Viennese had typecast Schubert as a vocal composer, and the label stuck. His keyboard, chamber, and orchestral works were hardly known despite their excellences. Older brother Ferdinand hoarded the manuscript of No. 9, which Robert Schumann finally saw in 1838, and took to Leipzig. Orchestras in Vienna and Paris flatly refused to play it, however, and London musicians laughed derisively during rehearsals in 1844, when Mendelssohn tried without success to perform it there as he had in Leipzig ("with cuts" -- big ones). Strings in particular hated playing its endlessly repetitive patterns: their pre-Wagner and pre-Bruckner bow arms were not ready for Schubert's "heavenly lengths." When all repeats are observed, the Ninth lasts over an hour, with almost no let-up in momentum. Three of Schubert's four movements employ sonata form -- the first, the finale, and the song sections in an ABA scherzo. Only the slow movement is written in expanded song form (ABABA).
A soft but accented horn theme in the slow introduction foreshadows others to come in the exposition; it returns triumphantly in a long coda. The main body of the movement, marked "not too fast," is rhythmically so powerful and relentless that an unmodified Allegro tempo would have risked destroying it (and us).
Dotted rhythms characterize the A minor Andante, whose con moto qualification keeps it from dragging or sounding sentimentally sorrowful. Schubert's subsequent transition to A major is breathtaking, and his quiet writing for horns magical. As the movement began, it ends in A minor.
Beethoven-like, the Song parts of the Allegro vivace scherzo feature a miniature exposition-development-reprise (maybe Schubert knew the elder master's Ninth after all), full of dance melodies. C major yields to A major in the trio, with its broader tune for winds, before the song-sonata repeats.
Allegro vivace, again in C, this finale begins with a churning subject in triplet rhythm that stubbornly fights resolution (it is the grandest and most famous compositional trap in all music). Schubert finally must stop before he can introduce a new theme on clarinets and horns. Development and recapitulation follow on a titanic scale, capped by a coda in kind -- a movement, altogether, just short of 1,200 measures!
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... ok maybe it's not Bob Ross, but I hope you get what I'm saying). I thought this for the entirety of the 10 hours while listening through these sonatas and impromptus.
