#ClassicsaDay #PoetryMonth 2022 Week 4

What's the connection between classical music and poetry? To celebrate Poetry Month, the Classics a Day team encouraged folks to find out. For the month of April, the challenge is to post poetry used in classical music or works inspired by poetry.

Here are my posts for the final week of #PoetryMonth

4/25/22 Ralph Vaughan Williams - Three Shakespeare Songs

Vaughan Willaims completed this work in 1951. The set was originally composed as test pieces for the UK's National Competitive Festival for choirs.

 

4/26/22 Andre Previn - Three Dickinson Songs for Soprano and Piano

Previn composed this cycle in 2000 for Renée Fleming, who premiered the work. 

 

4/27/22 Amy Beach - By the Still Waters, Op. 114

Beach published this work in 1925. It's inspired by Psalm 23, which also provides the title. 

 

4/28/22 Augusta Read Thomas - Two E. E. Cummings Songs

These settings of cummings' poetry were commissioned by the San Francisco Girls Chorus. The chorus premiered the work in 2008. 

 

4/29/22 Maurice Greene: Spenser's Amoretti

Greene was master of the king's Musick beginning in 1735. "Amoretti" is a setting of 25 sonnets by Edmund Spenser, and published in 1739. 

Next Month:

#ClassicsaDay has usually marked May Day by making the May theme Soviet Composers. Not this year.

Hans Werner Henze: Nachtstücke und Arien worth exploring

Even when he was the darling of the Darmstadt avant-garde, Hans Werner Henze was his own man. In time he moved away from the aggressive modernism of that school -- literally and musically. 

Werner settled on an island in the Gulf of Naples, where he became a neighbor of William Walton. At the same time, he moved towards a more lyrical form of expression. 

But as this release shows, Henze's conception of lyricism wasn't a return to the Romantic Era. At the 1957 premier of Nachtstücke und Arien, Pierre Boulez, Luigi Nono, and Karlhenz Stockhausen stormed out after the first few minutes. They should have stuck around. Henze's music has a strange beauty to it. It's both restless and grounded, nervous yet lethargic. 

Los Caprichos, composed five years later shows Henze's development. This fantasia for orchestra was inspired by a series of nightmarish prints by Goya. Henze's use of tonality is more firmly rooted in this work. It provides a critical frame of reference for the out-of-kilter melodies. Like Goya's images, the music has a slightly disturbing quality to it. 

The final version of Englische Liebeslieder for cello and orchestra premiered in 1998. Here all the rough edges of Henze's barely tonal style are smoothed out. But that doesn't mean this is pretty music. Henze's score sublimates the dissonances. There's an emotional ambivalence here that never quite resolves. Which is sort of the point. 

Maestro Marin Alsop has a clear sense of how these works should unfold. Her direction provides structure to Henze's fever dreams. The ORF Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra responds to her direction. It makes for some thrilling moments. Soprano Juliane Banse and cellist Narek Hakhnazaryan also deliver some fine performances. 

Henze's music isn't easy to perform -- or to listen to. These artists provide a compelling reason to make the effort, though. And for the intrepid listener, the rewards are great. 

Hans Werner Henze: Nachtstücke und Arien
Los Caprichos; Englische Liebeslieder
Juliane Banse, soprano; Narek Hakhnazaryan, cello
ORF Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra; Marin Alsop,conductor
Naxos 8.574181

Pál Hermann Complete Surviving Music Vol. 2 ensures legacy

 

Volume One in this series featured Pál Hermann's orchestral works. This volume presents his surviving chamber and instrumental music. 

"Surviving" is the operative word in this series. Pál Hermann (1902-1944) was one of the foremost cellists of the 1930s. This Hungarian artist was also an innovative composer. He had studied with both  Béla Bartók and Zoltán Kodály. And like his teachers, Hermann's music drew inspiration from Hungarian folk music. 

Hermann was also a cello virtuoso. Though he was busy concertizing throughout Europe, he made very few recordings. None survived the Second World War, so we don't know what his playing sounded like. And Hermann himself didn't survive the war. 

Hermann was Jewish, and the rise of the Nazis derailed his career. As German armies swept across Europe, Hermann was trapped on the continent. He was arrested in 1944 and died en route to an Estonian concentration camp. 

Most of Hermann's works were unpublished. It's not clear what may have been lost during the chaos of the war. 

The compositions presented here show some Bartokian influence. Hermann's string-writing incorporates some of the techniques Bartok developed. Hermann's melodies are more lyrical than Bartok's though. 

The Grand Duos for violin and cello, for example, harken back to late post-Romanticism. The remarkable Suite for Solo Violin pushes the limits of technique. But even here Hermann's natural lyrism wins out. 

The music here is intimate and beautifully crafted. The performers play with masterful precision -- and with musicality. They let Hermann's music sing. 

So little of this artist's legacy survived. But I'm grateful some of it did. And especially grateful to Toccata Classics for presenting it to the world. 

Pál Hermann: Complete Surviving Music, Volume Two
Chamber and Instrumental Music
Marko Komonko, violin; Thodore Kuchar, viola; Denys Lytvynenko, cello; Myroslav Drahan, piano
Toccata Classics TOCC 0443

Poul Ruders Dream Catcher - An Accordion Showpiece

In America, most people don't consider the accordion a symphonic instrument. In northern Europe, though, it's a different matter. Danish Poul Ruders isn't the only classical composer to write for the instrument. He's definitely one of the more talented, though. 

Sound and Simplicity is fairly new work, completed in 2018. Ruders subtitled it "Seven Pillars of Music for Accordion and Symphony Orchestras. Each of the pillars represents a very simple and fundamental musical idea. In one movement, it's simply a sustained chord.

Ruders uses these ideas as foundations to build upon. Ruders avoided naming this work a concerto -- and rightly so. The accordion is the primary voice in the ensemble. But it's not a showcase for the instrument. Rather, the accordion adds zest to the orchestral sound. 

Also on this release presents two related works. Bjarke Morgensen's arrangement of "Dream Catcher." This was a movement from Ruder's "Serenade on the Shores of the Cosmic Ocean" for accordion and string quartet. This arrangement for solo accordion is quite effective. To me, it sounded true to the source material. At the same time,  it gave a different perspective to the underlying construction of the work. 

Symphony No. 3 "Dreamcatcher" is based on that same movement from Serenade. But what a difference. Ruders transforms the music into something bigger, more emotional, and -- well -- symphonic. Hearing Morgsen's arrangement followed by Ruder's reimagining of the same material was revelatory. 

I'd recommend this not only to those who like classical accordion music. And I recommend it to those who don't think they like it. These performances -- and this music -- may well change your mind.

Poul Ruders: Dream Catcher
Bjarke Mogensen, accordion
Odense Symfoniorkester; Sebastian Lang-Lessing, Scott Yoo, conductors
Bridge Records 9553

#ClassicsaDay #PoetryMonth 2022 Week 3

What's the connection between classical music and poetry? To celebrate Poetry Month, the Classics a Day team encouraged folks to find out. For the month of April, the challenge is to post poetry used in classical music or works inspired by poetry.

Here are my posts for the third week of #PoetryMonth

4/18/22 Igor Stravinsky - Three Songs from William Shakespeare

Stravinsky set three Shakespeare poems in 1953 using a serial technique. The music cycles through a set of notes in order. The first song only uses four notes.

4/19/22 Arthur Sullivan - Incidental Music to Shakespeare's Henry VIII

Gilbert and Sullivan may have been the rage, but Arthur Sullivan wrote music for "serious" theater and operas. His music for this Shakespearean play was first published in 1877.

4/20/22 Zdenek Fibich - Othello, Symphonic Poem after Shakespeare, Op. 6

Bedřich Smetana conducted the premiere of this work in 1873. The tone poem focuses on the play's three main characters -- Othello, Desdemona, and Iago.

4/21/22 Alexander Lokshin - Symphony No. 5, "Shakespeare's Sonnets"

Lokshin composed his "symphony with a voice" in 1969. The sonnets were translated into Russion by Boris Pasternak, author of "Doctor Zhivago."

4/22/22 Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco - Shakespeare Sonnets, Op. 125

Castelnuovo-Tedesco considered Shakespeare's poetry "perfectly musical: it unites the spiritual subtlety of English with the sonorous splendour of Italian."