CGF Newsletter 52: Rule Britannia!

Will’s listening journey across the Sceptred Isle

Name That Tune

This week’s Name That Tune is a Joey special. Here’s your hint: This composer’s middle name is Anneli. No Googling!

As always, your goal is to provide as much accurate analysis as possible. First try to get the nationality, year, and genre, then make educated guesses about the composer and — if possible— the piece. If you know the piece immediately, send us an email at classicalgabfest@gmail.com instead of commenting so the rest of us can have fun guessing. 

Last Week’s Results
CGF Newsletter 50
Joaquín Rodrigo, Concerto Serenade for Harp and Orchestra

CGF Newsletter 51
Florent Schmitt, Sonatine en Trio for Flute, Clarinet, and Piano

Well, I’ll say this: for a group of people who seem to be so enthusiastic about this feature when threatened with its absence, there sure wasn’t a whole helluva lot of guessing in the past two weeks!

But that’s ok; I get it. You like it, but more for the spectator sport. It’s fine. We can keep it.

Think you can stump your fellow Listeners? Go ahead and try!

Head to our Google Form to upload a 30-second clip of an unidentified piece of classical music for us to try to identify.

Bri’ish Concert Reports

I’m back in the saddle, back in Seattle, and I’m here to tell the story.

First, I want to thank Joseph for holding down the fort with his insightful editions of the CGF Newsletter. The “Pianism” edition was a particular favorite, though I think that, somehow, I’m still going to be unable to write pianistic piano music even having had the whole concept spelled out for me in engrossing detail.

Much news and bluster has come out of the world of classical music in the past couple weeks, but rather than playing catchup, I want to share a concert report from some of the shows I saw in London and Edinburgh.

BBC Prom No. 37

Budapest Festival Orchestra
Iván Fischer, conductor
Sir András Schiff, piano

Weber, Overture to Der Freischütz
R. Schumann, Piano Concerto
Mendelssohn, Symphony No. 3 “Scottish”

On paper, the program looks routine unto the point of boredom, but take it from me, this was one of the most inspired concerts I’ve ever attended.

I’m reviewing three orchestral concerts in today’s newsletter, and the major theme is going to be the importance of the conductor to the success of a program. That might sound totally self-serving, but it’s simply the most important takeaway from what I saw and heard.

Iván Fischer might just be the most creative, musical conductor in the business. Just look at how he seated the orchestra for a performance of Schubert’s “Great” C Major symphony with the Berlin Phil:

Woodwinds in the inner circle in front of the strings—genius! Radical seating charts are certainly something he’s known for, but what really makes him special is how much energy and freshness he gets out of well-worn masterpieces. He’s no virtuoso of the baton, he’s just the most musical guy in the world. I saw him conduct Mozart’s “Jupiter” symphony back in April with the New York Phil in April, and it was the best thing I’ve ever heard in Mozart.

In London, with his own hausgemacht orchestra, everything had an element of surprise, from the opening tuning notes (A for the winds, B-flat for the brass, G and A for the strings, all preceded by a little “incipit” prior to the first A) to the grand finale of the “Scottish” symphony when that glorious highland melody rings out in the low strings, and Fischer had the members of the orchestra stand up section by section.

That melody always brings a bit of mist to my eyes, but this time I was fully in tears.

Edinburgh International Festival: Oslo Philharmonic

Oslo Philharmonic Orchestra
Klaus Mäkelä, conductor
Johanna Wallroth, soprano

Rolf Gupta, Epilogue from Earth’s Song
Sibelius, Symphony No. 7
Mahler, Symphony No. 4

Look, as much as it kills me to say it, this kid’s the real deal. He looks like he’s 10 years old, but he really knows how to conduct. He has genuine swagger in his moves, and it would be kind of annoying if his beat weren’t so clear and his gestures weren’t so musical.

If you’ll recall, everyone was piling on young maestro Mäkelä some months ago. I wasn’t among the haters, but having only seen him conduct on video, I was slightly reserved in my judgment of his actual talents.

I’ll pause here to mention the reason for this. The thing is, video is great, and you can learn a lot about a musician, but when video featuring multiple camera angles gets edited (or switched live) you miss a lot of what the conductor is doing, and there’s no telling what sort of monkey business they might be getting up to.

In a live concert, I can watch the conductor like a hawk, and with Mäkelä, I couldn’t take my eyes off of him. He conducted the Sibelius symphony from memory, and while I wouldn’t say it was a “perfect” conducting performance it was superb. 

[What do I mean by not perfect? Well, there were some tiny orchestral entrances where he could have felt the cue inside his beat. This is a minor thing, but it is the difference—in my eyes—between excellent conducting and perfect conducting.]

The Oslo Phil is a world-class orchestra with the most luscious string section I’ve ever heard. I was supposed to go back the following night to their Ravel & Shostakovich concert, but I got Covid and stayed in my hotel room. That was quite the bummer!

BBC Prom Nos. 52 & 55

Boston Symphony Orchestra
Andris Nelsons, conductor
Jean-Yves Thibaudet, piano

Julia Adolphe, Makeshift Castle
R. Strauss, Death and Transfiguration
Prokofiev, Symphony No. 5

Carlos Simon, Four Black American Dances
Stravinsky, Petrushka
Gershwin, Piano Concerto in F
Ravel, La Valse

I’m grouping these two concerts—played on back-to-back nights—as one set because what I have to say about them doesn’t pertain so much to the individual programs as it does to the individual performers.

These were the last concerts I saw in Britain this summer, and they were a bit of a let down. The Boston Symphony is one of the world’s great orchestras; Andris Nelsons is not one of the world’s great conductors.

Everything about his performance as a conductor in these concerts was lackluster. He seemed only to half-know his scores (the telltale sign being that he held on for dear life to each page as he turned it), his beat was brittle, and he generally seemed less than fully engaged in everything he did. His tempi in the fast movements of the Prokofiev symphony were all a click or two too fast, such that he couldn’t even keep up with the tempo he had set. He was always a step behind the musical impulse of the scores. There was a fair amount of rough and tumble in the orchestra’s ensemble, in spite of the individual talents of the musicians, which are substantial.

Here’s a great example of where a friendly video editor could have made it seem like he was competent. With enough well-timed cutaways, it would be possible to give the impression that Nelsons was at least minimally competent in what he was doing. But I was there; I saw everything. I was someone in a tree.

I will give credit where credit is due and say that overall, the trajectory from Death and Transfiguration to La Valse was a positive one. Nelsons’ beat was particularly ill-suited to the rich textures of Richard Strauss, and it seemed like the Ravel had been rehearsed within an inch of his life, and performed recently enough that Nelsons remembered how it was supposed to go.

Classical Mixtape

Herbert Howells, “Collegium Regale” Magnificat

The ostensible purpose of my visit to Great Britain this year was to sing a series of church services with Seattle’s Epiphany choir. One of our repertoire staples is this piece by Herbert Howells, the composer I’m always proselytizing for, though my entreaties fall upon deaf ears (just listen back the CGF archive—I brought him up multiple times to the utter befuddlement of Tiff and Kensho.)

Look, I get it: most classical musicians don’t care about church music, and rightfully so, because most of it is really boring. And even Howells, whom I consider the supreme master of the Anglican tradition, wrote music that does not carry its full effect and affect on recording; it must be heard in a resonant cathedral space with a live organ and chorus.

That is Howell’s major talent: he writes for the cathedral acoustic. He was a master in creating lines that would bounce off each other in their eternal resonance in the most satisfying way possible. I don’t know how he did it. And where did he come by the bluesiness that is an ever-present feature of his scores? I couldn't tell you.

One funny thing: I stopped in a little sheet music & book store in Glasgow and found a book called A Short History of English Church Music by Erik Routley. Here’s what he had to say about Howells (I believe this was in 1970):

Herbert Howells is a far more controversial composer than any of these—who, however surprising they were in their time, now sound demure enough. I was soundly rebuked by at least one eminent authority for writing kindly of him in Twentieth Century Church Music, and there are many who cannot write or speak of his work otherwise than in anger. 

Personally I remain unrepentant abou this, but one can see why this is. More than any of those so far mentioned, Howells is an individualist in music. His music is so characteristic that you need hear only three bars of any of it to know that it is his.

The Classical Gabfest Newsletter is a spin-off of the now-defunct Classical Gabfest Podcast. It is a co-production of William White, Joseph Vaz, and the Listeners (i.e. you.)