As I continue to work my way through the Warner Classics 70-CD box set of recordings made by conductor Kurt Masur, I realize that I had neglected to add Franz Schubert to what I had called my “Beethoven+Mozart” category. This may have been because Schubert’s music was limited to a single CD, one of whose tracks consisted on Franz Liszt’s transcription of the D. 760 “Wanderer” fantasy. This was one of the New York Philharmonic recordings featuring pianist Boris Berezovsky as the soloist. Masur had previously recorded this music with pianist Michel Béroff performing with the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra on an album devoted entirely to Liszt. The only other composer represented on that CD was Carl Maria von Weber, whose Polonaise brillante was also transcribed by Liszt.
This may be a lame excuse for coupling Schubert with Weber, rather than Beethoven and Mozart. However, that is how things turned out in my efforts to classify all of the content over such a large collection of CDs. The fact is that, in trying to establish the early nineteenth century as a category, both Weber and Schubert emerged. in this particular collection, as “bit players.” Setting aside the Liszt transcriptions, Weber is represented only by his two clarinet concertos, Opus 73 in F minor and Opus 74 in E-flat major; and that CD has “bonus tracks” of clarinetist Sharon Kam playing the Opus 48 Grand duo concertant with pianist Itamar Golan. (The concertos were recorded with the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra.) In addition to Berezovsky playing Liszt’s take on D. 760, the Schubert CD frames that selection with two symphonies, D. 200 in D major and D. 759 in B minor, best known as the “Unfinished.”
These are all engaging performances that deserve multiple listening experiences. However, Masur’s real attention was drawn to three composers born on three successive years: 1809 (Felix Mendelssohn), 1810 (Robert Schumann), and 1811 (Franz Liszt). Mendelssohn is represented by all five of his symphonies, his two piano concertos, the Opus 22 Capriccio brillant, and the incidental music composed for A Midsummer Night’s Dream, the Opus 21 overture and the Opus 61 collection of the rest of the music.
Where this repertoire is concerned, I had the advantage of listening to Masur conduct an all-Mendelssohn program with the San Francisco Symphony in March of 2011. This included both the Midsummer music (with chorus and vocal soloists) and the Opus 90 (“Italian”) symphony in A major. That was a memorable evening for me in Davies Symphony Hall; and, to a great extent, the Gewandhaus recordings in this collection reawakened those memories.
Schumann is given a somewhat more modest account, which is still comprehensive. The four symphonies are coupled with two of the three concertos, the Opus 54 piano concerto in A minor and the Opus 129 cello concerto, also in A minor. The soloists are Cécile Ousset and Natalia Gutman, respectively. All of the Schumann recordings were made with the London Philharmonic Orchestra. This may strike some as a rather modest share; but, taken as a whole, these six compositions give Schumann’s approach to orchestral composition a fair shake.
Wilhelm von Kaulbach’s 1856 portrait of Franz Liszt (from Wikimedia Commons, public domain)
The fact is that the lion’s share of this portion of the collection goes to Liszt. Most of that share is devoted to the thirteen symphonic poems; and they basically earn Liszt the status of one of the “founding fathers” of program music. The collection also includes the two piano concertos and a modest assortment of other compositions, most of which have narrative connotations. There is more than enough here to convince the listener of just how adventurous Liszt could be. Nevertheless, Mazur’s commitment to being comprehensive is likely to require more than the usual degree of patience where the attentive listener is concerned. This is music that is better sampled in pieces; and, even at the piece-by-piece level, some of the works go on for longer than most listeners might prefer.
Quite honestly, when confronted with this Liszt collection, I was reminded of the motto that used to be associated with the Sunday edition of The New York Times: “You don’t have to read it all, but it’s good to know it’s all there!”
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