Chorus Mysticus
I have committed another YouTube Video:
Arguably, one of the most consequential symphonic concerts of the last century took place on the 20th of March, 1959, in London's Royal Albert Hall, when the legendary Jascha Horenstein led the London Symphony Orchestra (among many others) in Gustav Mahler's Eighth Symphony - the so-called "Symphony of a Thousand" (because of the number of performers required to do it justice).
It was an event that did much to kick-start the great revival of Mahler's reputation in the 1960's. You can read the whole story here.
For many years, it was believed that either the BBC had not bothered to tape the performance, or that the tape had been lost. But, recently, it turned out that they had not only taped it, but that they had done so in remarkably good stereo sound. Highly recommended.
My video covers about the last six minutes of the performance - i.e., Mahler's setting of the "Chorus Mysticus" that concludes the second part of Goethe's Faust, and the (understandably) rather overwhelming audience response.
Enjoy, if you can.
P.S.: my English paraphrase of Goethe's text (at 4:44 and following) is a deliberate travesty - so don't think I don't know. (Yes, hobbesist, I'm talking to you!)
P.P.S.: if you've got a broad-band connection, be sure to go to YouTube and click on "watch in high quality." Sight and sound both much improved.
--
e pur si muove!
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Live not by lies.
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References -
but for something more intimate that actually earns a place on my crypod check out mahler's 5th, 4th movement:
Here you can experience pain + learn about 9 chords. What's not to like?
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)try to catch a live performance of Berlioz's Requiem some day. Mere stereo wouldn't do the introduction of the Tuba mirem* justice.
*Apologies if I butchered the spelling of the Latin.
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| parent )For some reason, British conductors seem to excel as interpreters of Berlioz. Fifty years ago, it was Beecham. In our time, it's Colin Davis, who really surpasses himself here.
But even he can't overcome the inherent limitations of the work.
--Live not by lies.
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| parent )That choir must have been incredible to hear in person.
As an aside, can you imagine an American network, even PBS, ever putting together anything remotely resembling the BBC Proms? Something to remember next time someone slams the BBC as your tastes and soul die a bit at a time while watching another season of American Idol.
PS: Thanks for the spelling correction, Blaise.
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| parent )...has always been a problem, for me.
Generally speaking, I'm a Berlioz enthusiast. *Les Troyens* is, quite clearly, the greatest of all French operas. (Not the *best* - which would be *Carmen* - but definitely the *greatest*.) And his *Te Deum* knocks my socks off. But the Requiem always leaves me cold.
I wouldn't go so far as the great Romanian conductor, Sergiu Celibidache, who is supposed to have said that his idea of Hell was to be strapped to a chair and forced to listen to the Berlioz Requiem all the way through...but I might go so far as to say that there's a certain paucity of melodic, harmonic & rhythmic interest, throughout the work, and that the sheer *spectacle* of it all doesn't adequately compensate for what's missing.
--Live not by lies.
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| parent )The first time I heard it was live, with the Philadelphia Orchestra and the Saratoga-Potsdam choir. One of the few times I've ever seen an orchestra get a prolonged standing ovation that would have made a rock star envious.
I suspect that hearing it live makes up for any deficiencies in the piece.
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| parent )Hearing it live, in appropriate conditions, might well completely change my view.
Berlioz was way ahead of his time in his appreciation of the importance of *venue*.
--Live not by lies.
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| parent )The man drags out largos into funeral marches, and roars through his allegros like he's got to get off stage to take a leak.
He was a crank. A brilliant crank, but a crank nonetheless. He's in hell now, in the next fire pit over from Glenn Gould, who is humming through the Goldbergs.
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| parent )I can't listen to his music, even though I love jazz piano. It's not just that I wanted to hear the purity of the piano tone; it's that the ECM engineering idiots think atonal nasal grunts are an essential part of Jarrett's music. If, say, Bill Evans (twice the pianist that Jarrett is) had a weird tic like that, it didn't show up on his albums.
--Rust never sleeps.
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| parent )...on what is probably the silliest and most ignorant comment that [even] you have ever posted here.
(1) There are no "largos" in any of Bruckner's major works.
(2) Celibidache "roars through [Bruckner's] allegros???"
You mean, the Finale of the 3rd? The first & last movements of the 5th? The first movements of the 7th & 8th? In all of which Celibidache set new records for slowness?
Or are there other Bruckner "allegros" that I have somehow missed?
Seriously, guy - why do you do this? Why do you keep pretending to know stuff you really don't, in a public forvm, where you're so easily found out?
--Live not by lies.
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| parent )Now I realize we've moved onto touchy ground here. The arcana of western orchestral music being, of course, vastly more important than mundane issues like war or the proper way to run a democracy...
...but can we keep things a little less personal here?
--Before you criticize someone, you should walk a mile in their shoes. That way when you criticize them, you're a mile away and you have their shoes. -JH
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| parent )...but I think you're just missing it, here.
Every time BP comments on classical music, it's immediately obvious to me that he hasn't a clue what he's talking about. Again and again, he gets even the most basic points totally wrong.
I really wonder what his game is.
--Live not by lies.
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| parent )that you're violating the posting rules. You guys can argue about Berlioz without calling each other frauds and morons. It's surprisingly easy. And mandatory.
Now, evidently I missed a pungent response from BlaiseP, but whatever it was, he's asked for it to be removed in the name of letting better angels take the wheel.
So please, for the love of all that's holy and most of what isn't, kindly address the comment, not the commenter.
--Before you criticize someone, you should walk a mile in their shoes. That way when you criticize them, you're a mile away and you have their shoes. -JH
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| parent )Nothin' gets the fighting words out quicker than a good set-to about Berlioz. You should see the fur fly when the Lovely Deanna starts dissing Wagner. Brutal.
--"How is the world ruled, and how do wars start? Diplomats tell lies to journalists and then believe what they read." -- Karl Kraus, 1909
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| parent )I have no truck with people who make it rhyme with Vaggoner.
--Rust never sleeps.
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| parent )And it would never even occur to me to call BlaiseP a "moron."
--Live not by lies.
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| parent )[edited at BlaiseP's request]
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| parent )I picked a bad night to run out of vodka.
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| parent )precisely because the stakes are so small. What exactly is it with you, Vinteuil? You have Problems with Berlioz? My gosh, we all have problems. Your problem, right now, seems to be me, and there's nothing you won't refrain from saying. It's obvious nobody's going to do anything about you, and I'll get banned for saying this, but I'll just get it out of my system now, while the getting is good.
I deserve more respect than I'm getting from you. Your unadulterated nastiness to me has gone beyond any rational opposition you might have to anything I have to say. I put up good copy here, a lot of work goes into what I have to say here, and most of it goes to the front page. If this place is to mean anything, it's going to be on the basis of live and let live. But maybe that business about Occasional Bloodletting only goes one way safely: you cut, I bleed.
I fully expect to be banned tomorrow for a personal attack in public. Acta est fabula, aplaude. But maybe not. Maybe the mods will tell you to cut this crap out. I've steered clear of offending you where I can since I got back here, but it didn't save me from your nastiness. The mods didn't act on it then, but they'll act now. Here's the deal: you be civil to me, and I'll be civil to you. I don't expect to be your friend, it's obvious you hate me. I can live with that. But I'm all through with your nastiness, and if you can't be contained, I'm through with Forvm. Lots of bright people here, I loved writing here, and I'd like to continue. That said, there's no excuse for the way you treat me.
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| parent )The point where you totally gave yourself away was when you wrote that Celibidache "roars through [Bruckner's] allegros like he's got to get off stage to take a leak."
I mean, anybody who has ever actually heard Celibidache conduct Bruckner, either in the flesh or on disc, should have no problem coming up with all sorts of plausible objections to his approach. But that simply isn't one of them. You really should have spent a little more time Googling, before you posted.
Consider, for example, the Allegro Moderato that begins Bruckner's 7th Symphony. The obvious reference recordings would be those by Walter, Klemperer & Karajan. Here are their timings:
Bruno Walter: 20:46
Otto Klemperer: 19:49
Herbert von Karajan: 19:47
And here are Sergiu Celibidache's:
Tokyo, 1990, on SONY (videotape): 24:19
Munich, 1994, on EMI (cd): 24:17
This is roaring through???
And I can make exactly the same point about every other "allegro" that Bruckner ever wrote & that Celibidache ever recorded. Because all of the most important recordings of Bruckner's symphonies made in the last fifty years are sitting on a shelf about three feet to my right.
Just be a little more careful, next time.
--Live not by lies.
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| parent )I blame it all on the Internet
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| parent )I'm having what might be described as a meltdown.
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| parent )I don't take kindly to these communistic make-work projects. Symphony of a Thousand? Whatever happened to overdubbing?
--Nothing resembles virtue more than a great crime. Saint-Just
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)I reach for my revolver...
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)the classical music. (Am I the only one here who never liked The Beatles?)
--Rust never sleeps.
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| parent )That's like never liking guitars. Like despising seventh chords. It's like hating free money, or being a royalist in 1860. It's like standing on Liberty Island and going "Not bad, but she could stand to lose a few pounds."
Heh, just kidding. Beatlemania obviously wasn't for everyone, and the music is brilliant but sometimes a little cold. They brought surrealism to pop music, and surrealism's also brilliant but sometimes cold. Uncanny, powerful, but more heady than soulful. I can only listen to them in certain moods.
--Before you criticize someone, you should walk a mile in their shoes. That way when you criticize them, you're a mile away and you have their shoes. -JH
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| parent )But people can get pretty pissy if you mention it.
--“I serve as a blank screen on which people of vastly different political stripes project their own views.”
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| parent )Manish Ghosh
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| parent )http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ma6nCkAzN7w
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| parent )I mean,
she
never.
--drops.
a stitch.
Excess on occasion is exhilarating. It prevents moderation from acquiring the deadening effect of a habit. - W. Somerset Maugham
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| parent )They're pretty much my favorite people on the planet right now
That kid must've pranced around their tiny apt. 1000s of times practicing his routines.
All kinds of awesome.
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| parent ).
--Before you criticize someone, you should walk a mile in their shoes. That way when you criticize them, you're a mile away and you have their shoes. -JH
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| parent )a YouTube? I'm temporarily on dialup but have reserved this for a future watching.
--Manish Ghosh
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)... that it was a little bit of self-deprecation on our humble poster's part.
--Brevis esse laboro, obscurus fio.
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| parent )...is Mahler himself, rehearsing for the premiere, in Munich, in 1910.
He's kind of hard to see.
--Live not by lies.
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)...your modern music.
--“I serve as a blank screen on which people of vastly different political stripes project their own views.”
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).
--Before you criticize someone, you should walk a mile in their shoes. That way when you criticize them, you're a mile away and you have their shoes. -JH
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)I don't have time for non-controversial art!
--Brevis esse laboro, obscurus fio.
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)Heh. Not bad.
--Live not by lies.
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| parent )... upon reading it.
Also, I enjoyed your youtube tremendously (though I'm sticking by "feminine itself!"); I may be a philistine, but I'm a philistine who loves me some Mahler.
--Brevis esse laboro, obscurus fio.
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| parent )