Miss Piggy Lunchbox

The Norwegians don’t come out looking so great on this one, as the Finnish Sibelius’ pieces outshine Greg’s considerably. The Norwegians don’t really have a rivalry with Finland, as Finland’s culture, language, and history are quite distinct from the strict Scandinavia of Norway, Sweden, and Denmark. Heck, even Iceland has more in common with those countries than Finland. But due to their shared boarder and approximate shapes, people like to lump the two together. Moreover, the point is that if you put Grieg on a CD we don’t appreciate it not being the best thing on said CD.

But who knows if Sibelius’ pieces really are better than Grieg’s. I can tell you that these specific performances are, but for the first time I really feel like a classical music reviewer as I am able to have a strong preference for two different recordings of the same piece. Despite the strengths of his other two pieces and the relative shortcomings of Grieg’s, it’s Sibleius’ “The Swan of Tuonela” that fails so miserably here. I reviewed another CD with a version of the piece on it about a year ago, and though I didn’t comment much on it, it did get kept. Even without that version, I’m not sure the recording here would get kept. Despite having the same conductor and soloist, the versions are markedly different. All the weight and passion are gone, and the English horn doesn’t even sound like an English horn. I’ve always been skeptical up until now about whether all the ink that’s spilled over which version of which pieces are the best is worthwhile, but now that I can contrast these two I believe it. If the same conductor, orchestra, and soloist on the same record label, can make the same piece sound so dramatically different, it’s an entirely new game.

Sibelius’ other two pieces on here shine. “Valse Triste” is a brilliant combination of 20th century compositional techniques overlaid on an 18th century musical form, while Finlandia still rings with a bold nationalism that, for all its pitfalls, still vigorously and animatedly denounces Soviet influence in Finland, presciently summing up a culture’s passion and music’s direction decades after its 1899 date of composition.

Grieg’s macro pieces on this disc are the Peer Gynt and From Holberg’s Time suites. You know Peer Gynt, or at the very least you know “In The Hall Of The Mountain King” and probably “Morning Mood” (listen here and here). Originally written as an accompaniment to Ibsen’s five-act play of the same name, Peer Gynt is now most commonly played in the much smaller format of the two suites presented here. They’re very good, in particular the gorgeously orchestrated build and release of “Aase’s Death” and the dramatic, vivid beginning to “The Abduction Of The Bride.” However, there’s also a little bit of blandness, as in parts of “Arabian Dance” and “Peer Gynt’s Return Home,” though, to be fair, this is likely not as noticeable when performed programmatically with Ibsen’s play. “Morning Mood” is cliché by now, as I’m certain I’m watching a commercial whenever I hear it, but it’s still magnificent and overcomes its modern associations. “In The Hall Of The Mountain King,” unfortunately, does not overcome its omnipresence in modern culture. It doesn’t help that it follows “Anitra’s Dance,” which might have well come straight out of the also overplayed Nutcracker. It gets kept, though, in part to keep the suite together.

From Holberg’s Time is a suite written in 1884 to celebrate the 200th anniversary of the birth of a Danish-Norwegian playwright, and, as its title suggests, is a collection of courtly dances. Like Peer Gynt, I find it to be a mixed bag as well. There’s nothing bad in the bunch, but the “Sarabande” and “Gavotte” can’t even really sniff the jock of the magnificent “Praludium” or “Air.”

This is an enjoyable if not entirely remarkable CD pretty much all the way through. I’ll always think of it as something of a disappointment, though, since Deutsche Grammophon, von Karajan, and the Berlin Philharmonic can all do so much better, especially given the material these two composers provide.

Rating:

Mixers: Peer Gynt Suite 1: “Aase’s Death,” From Holberg’s Time: “Praludium”
Non-keepers: From Holberg’s Time: “Sarabande,” “Gavotte;” “The Swan Of Tuonela”
Filed Between: Grieg/Schumann (Grieg: Piano Concerto in A Minor / Schumann: Piano Concerto in A Minor (perf. Leif Ove Andsnes, cond. Mariss Jansons, orch. Berlin Philharmoniker))and Gruntruck (Inside Yours)

From Gregorian Chant all the way up through Mahler and Strauss at the very beginning of the 20th century, music had gradually added dissonance and stretching of harmony and melody in what amounts to a sort of evolution. As human ears became accustomed to certain tonal structures, composers were able to make things exciting by breaking a few of the old rules, ears adjusted, and so on. This isn’t earth-shattering and you can hear the same effect in comparing popular music of today to that of 50 years ago.

The point at which the wheels came off the gradual-and-natural-evolution train, however, was with Arnold Schoenberg, who examined this gradualness and decided that he might as well be a millennium ahead of his time and just throw off tonality altogether. Of course, it doesn’t really work like that…things happen gradually for a reason and you can’t, for the most part, jump all of the musical world forward several hundred years.

Curiously, though, Schoenberg was quite celebrated in his time. While his giant leap forward in harmony might have been a bit much, he enables the listener to come with him by emphasizing beautiful static sounds and graspable melodies throughout his 5 Pieces For Orchestra from 1909. When you listen to it now, in fact, you realize how much modern music owes to Schoenberg.

Without this piece, composed well before Schoenberg’s conception and articulation of “12-tone music,” film music wouldn’t sound the same, nor would the music of cartoons. Consider Bugs Bunny walking along while Elmer Fudd shoots at him, anvils fall from the sky, and animals run off cliffs only to be suspended in mid-air for several seconds. The music accompanying these scenes, with its quick and quickly-changing motifs is straight out of this work. He eventually leads you down into the same deep, dark hole that Berg does to open the disc, but he’s at least holding his hand as he gradually takes you further and further from the life you once knew and might never see again.

Schoenberg’s students in what was dubbed the Second Viennese School (the first being loosely comprised of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven), Alban Berg and Anton Webern, on the other hand…well, they’re a little harder to get your head around. Berg’s contribution here, his 3 Pieces For Orchestra, originally composed in 1914 but revised in 1929 (which is the version on this disc), is particularly abstruse. It is grandly symphonic, a sonic maelstrom with no life presevers in the form of melodies or static beauty to guide you through. If you want to listen to this, it’s put your head down, lean into the wind, and push through. Its final part is militant both in its sometimes, but not for long, march feel and in the unpredictable explosions and cacophony, the sonic equivalent of what the middle of a World War I cannon bombardment must have felt like…and it was written around the time of Germany’s march through Europe in 1914. I like it more and more with each listen, as its ominous flower of darkness is slowly opening itself up to me, but it’s still tough.

If you know anything about Webern, it’s that he was a miniaturist, composing very short works, some only a few seconds long, that laid out his musical thought quickly with little to no development. As with Schoenberg’s 12-tone system, though, throw that notion away for this CD because Webern’s composition, 6 Pieces For Orchestra, was written before then, though all but one of the Pieces are still quite short, ranging from 0:55 to 2:33. They all stem from the death of his mother, and you can hear the seeds of his later work here as he wastes no time in explicating each emotion succinctly. There’s nothing traditionally beautiful here, but a wide range of sounds is produced, from a bubbling, percolating muck (II), to a gargantuan sounding funeral march whose climax is nearly deafening (IV), to chords upon chords layered in such a way that they simply refuse to resolve, bringing to mind a sumptuous but unsatisfying infinity. It is equal parts mystifying and palpably close to something familiar. Here, Webern lies nearly halfway between the now-everywhere sounds of Schoenberg and the total mindf**k of Berg.

One of the comparisons that leads off Alex Ross’ history of 20th Century classical music is that modern music is the analogue to modern film, dance, and visual art…not just in that it’s new, but in that the 20th century has seemingly produced art that has been so violently opposed to what came before it. I agree. This is absolutely the analogue to Kandinsky, Pollock, and David Lynch: there are parts that excite you, but it’s more about color, maybe a little about form, and less about some cohesive representativeness…and since music was always the least representative of all art forms (save possibly dance), the revolt against the structures that were there seem even more revolutionary.

One final note that I can’t fit in anywhere else. I love that James Levine conducted these pieces. Not because I think his interpreations are fine (I have no point of comparison) or that he’s one of my favorite conductors (I just don’t have enough data to really form an opinion on that), but just because I heard him speak when I lived in Boston (where he is now Music Director of the BSO), and found him to be intelligent, articulate, and quite likeable despite (or maybe because of) disagreeing with certain musical opinions of his. It was an intellectually challenging, enlightening, and mildly disturbing experience…much like this album.

Rating:

Mixers: ha, yeah right
Non-keepers: 3 Pieces For Orchestra III; 6 Pieces For Orchestra V, VI; 5 Pieces For Orchestra IV, V
Filed Between: Ben Folds Five (Whatever And Ever Amen) and The Best of Both Worlds – The Rykodisc and Hannibal World Music Sampler