Songs with orchestra worth exploring
I took my first steps into classical music in my mid teens. Slightly eccentrically, my father would record items off the radio on a Ferguson reel to reel, by placing the detachable mic in front of the radio’s speaker. That way I got to know Nielsen symphonies and Shostakovich string quartets, which were quite rare in the sixties. I frequented the local record library and got to know Mahler, Bruckner and much else. But my tastes were definitely no earlier than Bruckner – none of your Beethoven, Haydn, Mozart and the rest.
When I was at college, Elvira Madigan came out with its insistent use (abuse?) of the Mozart C major piano concerto K467. I liked the music so much I was forced to buy an album. Although it sounds odd to me now, I recognise that the following may resonate with some forum members. I played track 2 of side 1 (the bit in the film), but made sure I lifted the stylus at the end of that movement. I was quite nervous of playing the whole work, but one day I plucked up the courage and played it all the way through. I loved it. With a bit more courage, I turned over the LP and played the concerto on the other side. That was a bit harder going (but it was Mozart’s last piano concerto), but I made it to the end of the side!
So I get where one forum member is coming from when he says classical songs in foreign languages are a closed book to him. I’d like to suggest that, if you like classical orchestral music, then you are missing a lot by not embracing songs. So here are some solid recommendations which I would be amazed if you didn’t like them.
(Incidentally, one problem with songs in foreign languages is that the record companies save money by not printing the words in the booklet, and this is often not apparent unless you have it in your hand and have opened it. This is particularly true of the cheap reissues which understandably people unsure of the repertoire are going to be attracted towards.)
Wagner: Wesendoncklieder [5 songs to poems by Mathilde Wesendonck]
The first ever set of orchestral songs which kicked off the genre in the mid nineteenth century. Think Romanticism, think German, think a certain amount of pathos. So we’re talking primarily slow and reflective. Luckily these songs don’t go on all evening, like the operas do. Two of the songs are melodically related to Tristan und Isolde.
35 recordings are available from MDT, but the one I grew up with, Janet Baker’s excellent account with Barbirolli (EMI), appears to be unavailable. I’ll suggest Christa Ludwig’s performance with Klemperer on EMI ‘Great recordings of the century’, or Jessye Norman’s version on Philips.
Mahler: Lieder aus 'Des Knaben Wunderhorn' [Songs to poems from 'The youth’s magic horn'].
There is such a strong interrelation between Mahler’s first four or five symphonies and the book of folk poems, Des knaben Wunderhorn, that you really don’t get the full message of the symphonies without knowing the songs. Mahler set 12 of them under the title (Lieder aus) 'Des knaben Wunderhorn' for a male and a female voice and orchestra. One of these songs turns up in symphony 2 (fourth movement) without the singer. And the fifth movement of symphony 3, and the last of symphony 4, are also settings of poems from DKW which are only elaborated because of their standing in a symphony. However, it goes much deeper than that. As soon as you hear the opening of the first song, you’re immediately in a familiar world of military marches. As the songs unfold, all the other aspects of the symphonies reveal where they came from. It is essential to know the words here because via the songs, they tell you what the symphonies ‘mean’ (at one level).
No apologies for recommending a classic recording of these songs by Schwarzkopf and Fischer-Dieskau on EMI ‘Great recordings of the century’.
Mahler: Kindertotenlieder [Songs on the death of children]
Mahler: Rückertlieder [ Songs to poems by Friedrich Rückert]
These sets of four and five songs respectively bear the same relationship to Mahler’s symphonies 5-7 as Des Knaben Wunderhorn does to the earlier symphonies. The songs are intense, whether grieving or ecstatic, and show why any composer would write songs as well as larger works. At best they are distilled, like poems, compared to the symphonies which can be like blousy novels.
Again a lot of recordings to choose from. Janet Baker on EMI ‘Great recordings of the century’ couples both, and adds Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen [Songs of a wayfarer] which is a precursor of Symphony 1.
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