From the Songs without Words"

Hi jfm,

When I click on the recording then follow the little score excerpt inserted there, what's playing is definitely "Faith", Op. 102, No. 6, exactly as marked in the title of my posting.  I also double checked the piece in both the Ricordi and Schirmer editions, and the numbering I used is correct. This piece is the 48th or the very last one in the collection in the Ricordi edition.  The Schirmer includes a 49th, a posthumous "Boat Song".

"The Peasant's Song" (or in the Schirmer edtion called "The Joyous Peasant") is actually Op. 102, No. 5--which I've never played--not No. 6 which is what is posted and correctly titled.  I haven't seen this posting since 2006 and am amazed that over 400 people have visited this "song" since then!    

I certainly appreciate your listening to one of my pieces so way far back in the Piano Street archives. Thanks!  

Hi Dave,

You had good courage to listen to that old Mendelssohn "song"!  Thanks for that!  Not only was it posted in 2006, but it's an "historical recording" dating from 1991 when I was studying with my second teacher.  I got to choose all the repertoire then, as I wanted to explore composers I hadn't played--part of the well-rounded student's goal.  I just clicked on it now to listen.  Egad!  I'd play that piece much differently now!  Plus it's a close-in analog recording with its wow and flutter, and the piano sounds out of tune to boot.  I like the sound of my piano better since the rebuilding in 2007.  This is one recording that should stay in the back of the archives!  But if you like the Songs without Words, I posted a ton of them at the time.  If you go to the Index of Audition Room at the top of the list here and go Mendelssohn, you'll find my list there.  I never developed an affinity to his music, so there are probably others here who do a much better job than I in presenting them.  

I agree with your assessment of Mendelssohn.  Over the decades he's become less of a giant than Chopin, Liszt, Schumann and Brahms.  In that sense, he reminds me of Weber.  His own interest was much more slanted toward orchestral works and concertos.  When his publisher would rattle him for more piano solos (because of public demand), he'd get anxieties, because he felt it was not his best medium, but eventually composed some pieces.  The Songs without Words are one of the best collections ever offered by a composer.  There is something there for everyone, plus the grades of difficulty are varied too.  

When Anton Rubinstein would listen to a young pianist who wanted to perform a virtuosic piece for him, to judge the pianist's merits, Rubinstein would always insist on one or two Mendelssohn "Songs" instead. That simplicity, purity, and childlike quality that you mention is the major difficulty in these pieces. They leave the pianist no place to hide, and Rubinstein knew it!

David

Hi furtwaegler,

Not only did Mendelssohn get the willies when asked to compose more piano solos, but there was another vagary of performance that he complained about a lot--"preluding".  In his day a piano recital, as you probably know, was not structured the way we see and hear it today, where the program indicates perhaps a sonata, a group of character pieces, an intermission, and a book of preludes for example, and the artist plays it accordingly.  Back then it was necessary to improvise a prelude which would then modulate into the first piece, then at the end would come a transitional prelude into the next piece and so on.  Thus, what recital goers would hear would be a continuous sound of music.  An analogy today might be in a church where between works sung by the chorus, the organist improvises briefly to fill in the quiet space.  It's a similar concept for a different purpose.  Some of the artists and composers of the day were more proficient at preluding than others.  Mendelssohn was very good but didn't enjoy it and used to deride in his letters.  In Liszt's classes, if a student had the audacity to begin a piece cold turkey without preluding it, Liszt would sternly stop him immediately and insist on preluding, even if it was a simple three-chord cadence as a lead-in to the piece's key signature.  It was simply the order of the day--de rigeur--and audiences expected it.

Most of that preluding has been lost to history, as obviously it was before the time of recordings.  BUT... Mendelssohn wrote two of them down into his scores!  One is the slow, lyrical introduction to the Rondo Capriccioso in Em, and the other is the Song without Words Op. 38, No. 4, "Hope".  When I used to play "Hope", I recall being baffled by the seeming irrelevance of that little introduction of florishes.  Now musicologists strongly believe that it's preluding actually captured in the score when the piece first went to the  publisher.  So we can be grateful to Mendelssohn for those two very rare glimpses of preluding from a bygone era.  They were right under our noses for generations before anyone understood what they were.  

I agree on your on the larger works you mention in your message.  They are beautiful indeed and will always stand the tests of time and universality.

Hi furtwaengler,

   Not being much of an improviser, I'd find playing a really clever "preluding" daunting.  I think I could probably do a very short mundane one by starting it on the dominant and winding it down over a couple of measures to the tonic key of the piece (assuming that the piece even starts on the tonic) to launch it.  I'm afraid that would be the limit of my creativity in preluding at best.  We should all try it though to better appreciate why Mendelssohn found it so irksome.  I don't discount the possibility that his criticism of the practice could have hastened the advent of the recital program format as we now experience it.

On Liszt, everything is relative, of course.  We continue to think of Liszt as the greatest pianist of all time, although all we can base that on are the commentaries of artists, students, critics, and other observers of the time, but not on recordings unfortunately.  And when we do hear performances of artists at the very inception of recording technologies, we're startled sometimes by the idiosyncracies and liberties that would never pass muster with modern auditors.  We do know that Liszt tended toward playing the piano mostly with his fingers with a quiet hand with less visible use of the arm and body than we use today.  If we could hear him now, we might come to believe that he wouldn't survive the first round of a competition!  But then again... we might be amazed!  But to bring it into perspective, think of Rubinstein, Serkin, Horowitz and Richter.  When I was young, they were "The Big Four".  But today we have young artists who could easily play circles around them.  Maybe they could do the same with Liszt too.

Hi furtwaegler,

The Big Four were my piano heroes for sure when I was growing up and later in life too, so I can't be too critical.  And I didn't mean to demean Richter in any way.  I do think that in his last years he was no longer at peak performance, but who is?  I remember being in a dorm room at university when his live performance of Pictures at an Exhibition came out on LP.  There were four of us listening intently.  There are some big risks taken there and some wrong notes, but nonetheless, we were all left speechless!  So, yeah, he was a great.  Horowitz had his oddities, but when everything broke just right for him, he was an incredible virtuoso.  Who could not love Rubinstein?  When he'd come to Symphony Hall in Boston, every last seat was sold out, and all the conservatory students had stage seats near the piano.  When the stage door would fly open and he'd come out, there was electricity in the air and the the applause was thunderous!  In looking at the Big Four for role models, for me it was always Rubinstein.  Serkin in recital was nervous as a witch.  He'd sit on the piano bench and polish his glasses so vigorously, it looked like he was regrinding the lenses!  Then he'd figet some more and wipe his brow.  But once he played the first note, all of that disappeared, he was transfixed and his playing of the Viennese Classics was magic.  I remember being at a performance of a Mozart Concerto at the Tanglewood Music Festival featuring Serkin and Boston Symphony with Leinsdorf conducting.  The ovation was so huge and prolonged, they had to replay the last movement! Now how often in your lifetime do you witness that? Maybe they should be called "The Fantastic Four", as they truly were.  As I think about it, they all played with character--not the antiseptic playing we hear all too often now.

I say amen to your prejudice about competitions.  There is nothing wrong with them except for these small details:

1. They say they want the pianists' individuality to infuse their playing, but then promptly disqualify anyone who does so during the first round.

2. The same adjudicators appear at all the competitions and the same axes are ground.  

3. Because the semifinalists are all playing plain vanilla style, it's hard to differentiate them.

4. The finalists who play it safe, deliver standard renditions, and do not drop notes under the piano win.

5. If you add up all the winners in all the competitions, there is no possible way for impressarios and the "classical music business" to absorb and promote them all.  There are simply not enough opportunities.

6. The really big competitions like the Tchaikovsky, Leeds, Van Cliburn, Chopin, Queen Elizabeth, etc. have cache and are meaningful, but the lesser ones do far less to create or advance careers.  A medal there is more like a merit badge.

7. Some young winners who should be continuing studies and building repertoire, instead accept management and guaranteed appearances, take their six programs on tour and are soon ruined and forgotten.

If I left anything out, feel free to add to it.

Erich Leinsdorf conducted with his hands, no baton, and would often gaze up at the heavens (or rafters at least).  Leinsdorf knew his music though and could take the orchestra to great heights, no doubt about it.  Unfortunately he had a fairly chilly relationship with the BSO players.  There was an elderly french horn player back then too who was quite deaf and created some artistic problems during performances.  I think Leinsdorf was only there for five or six years.  Then William Steinberg arrived.  I saw him conduct too, and what a wonderful conductor he was, and the comradie with the players was greatly improved.  Unfortunately Steinberg died having had only a tenure of a few years like Leinsdorf.  Once Ozawa was appointed as a young man, he was there until his hair turned gray .  He eschewed tails and in the beginning preferred to conduct in frock coats while wearing beads.  During his tenure he did a lot for the orchestra including foreign tours and widened the repertoire enormously including the symphonies of Mahler.  I had a lot of respect for him.  When we moved to Maine, I lost track of it all once James Levine took over.  But yes, I certainly do recall Charles Munch when I was very young (even Arthur Fiedler was much younger then  .)  And when Earl Wild used to play Rhapsody in Blue with the POPS back then, he was a young guy too.  Down in my basement I believe I have a Munch recording with the BSO doing Ravel.  

Back at Tanglewood, one time my wife and I were there, sometime in the 70s.  We had a box and directly next to us was Madame Koussevitzky!  She was widowed and very elderly, but still attended the concerts there.  (I was too young though to be aware of Serge Koussevitzky when he was conductor in the 40s.)  Anyway, this time the guest conductor was James dePriest of the National Symphony.  I can't recall now what they were playing, but all of a sudden the baton flew out of dePriest's hand and hit the first desk cellist in the chest!  He wasn't injured and retained his aplomb.

Van Cliburn--when he won in Moscow he wasn't all that older than me.  So I always looked up to him and loved his performances of the Rach 3rd and Prokofiev 3rd Concerto.  It's a wonder I didn't wear out the record.  His performance of "The Maid and the Nightingale" is very poetic too.

To answer your question, I can't remember the date of that Serkin appearance at Tanglewood and didn't save the program at the time.  I was taking some summer classes at UMass at Amherst where I did my undergraduate degree, and a group of us got into a couple of cars and headed to the Berkshires.  Being destitute students, we camped out on the the lawn in front of the music shed.  I do know it had to be 1963 or 1964.  Sometimes Serkin in the excitement of his performances was known to slip off the damper pedal and it would snap up with the sound of a rifle going off, and that happened in that performance too.  It didn't detract at all though as proven by the ovation he got and having to repeat the third movement to quiet the audience.  

I agree with you on what the Big Four represented.  They had direct links to the Golden Age of Piano.  Richter had studied with Neuhaus, Rubinstein with Barth, Horowitz with Blumenfeld, and Serkin with Schnabel.  AND, they knew well the even older generation of pianists and attended their recitals frequently.  AND, they knew all the great music patrons and impressarios of the time.  When Arrau died, it seemed like the last few threads were being cut.  Unfortunatley, we'll soon be at the mercy of the antiseptic pianists.  The great news though is that we were exposed to that heritage and will continue to play with character in spite of it all.

Hi emill,

Glad you got a charge out of reading this stuff.  I must be getting old to recall all those experiences that still seem like yesterday.  But more importantly, our chat here diverts attention from this really bad Mendelssohn recording of mine from years ago.   If you have a moment, please listen to my new Catoire recording instead.  My playing there is far more refined than what you find in this post. 

Hi Dave,

I believe you're right.  In his time Steinberg did not receive the attention and accolades of a Bernstein, Solti, or Ormandy.  He was a quieter personality, not a prima donna in any sense.  But on the podium he was so very effective--a conductor's conductor. 

Gee, I didn't know about Ozawa's illness.  Back in the 80s I worked for a few years at Wang Laboratories, Inc. where the founder and president was Dr. An Wang.  Years later he had esophageal cancer.  He had infinite personal resources and the very best and most sophisticated care in Boston but did not make it.  That's a difficult cancer to overcome.  I hope for the best for Ozawa.

Looking back, it was good to see those great artists perform, as you point out.  I'm much richer for that experience.

David