MENDELSSOHN. A Midsummer Night s Dream Die erste Walpurgisnacht. Vladimir Ashkenazy Christoph von Dohnányi

Transcription

1 Eloq uence MENDELSSOHN A Midsummer Night s Dream Die erste Walpurgisnacht Vladimir Ashkenazy Christoph von Dohnányi

2 FELIX MENDELSSOHN ( ) Ein Sommernachtstraum A MIDSUMMER NIGHT S DREAM 1 Overture, Op (Allegro di molto) Bühnenmusik (Incidental Music), Op I Scherzo: Allegro vivace II Über Täler und Höh n (Allegro vivace) 1 20 Over hill, over dale 4 III Song with Chorus: Bunte Schlangen, zweigezüngt 4 13 Ye spotted snakes with double tongues 5 V Intermezzo VII Notturno IX Wedding March Xa Prologue Xb Funeral March XI Dance of the Clowns 1 31! Finale Bei des Feuers mattern Flimmern 4 46 By this house give glimmering light Lynne Dawson, soprano Dalia Schaechter, mezzo soprano Frauenchor des Rundfunk, Berlin Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin (RSO) Vladimir Ashkenazy

3 Die erste Walpurgisnacht, Op. 60 THE FIRST WALPURGIS Overture 9 00 I Es lacht der Mai! 4 09 $ II Könnt ihr so verwegen handeln? 2 06 % III Wer Opfer heut zu bringen scheut 2 01 ^ IV Verteilt euch hier 1 35 & V, VI Diese dumpfen Pfaffenchristen Kommt mit zacken 6 40 * VII, VIII So weit gebracht Hilf, ach hilf mir 7 57 Margarita Lilowa, mezzo soprano Horst Laubenthal, tenor Tom Krause, baritone Alfred Sramek, bass Wiener Singverein Wiener Philharmoniker Christoph von Dohnányi Total timing: Mendelssohn s aristocratic horror of selfadvertisement unfitted him for triumph in a period of revolution; he died, most inopportunely, when his own powers, like Handel s at the same age, were being wasted on pseudo-classical forms; the new art was not yet ripe; and in the early Wagner-Liszt reign of terror his was the first reputation to be assassinated. Donald Tovey made these characteristically mordant observations in the years immediately preceding World War I, and they illustrate well how low in public esteem Mendelssohn was then held; it was a time when he was generally known, in Britain at least, mainly by some of the popular and weaker Songs without Words and a few of the more sanctimonious and sentimental passages from Elijah. His other music was largely neglected, and at best his reputation rested on his being the composer of a few inexplicably beautiful and original orchestral pieces. That the reputation of a composer who was feted and lauded in his lifetime should fall after his death is not surprising in itself (musical history is full of such instances Beethoven may be the exception to this general rule), but that it should plummet to the degree that Mendelssohn s did is indeed rather surprising. Fortunately a presentday assessment of Mendelssohn would give him title to a place among the great composers of the nineteenth century. Today, Joachim s statement that he regarded the continuation of a true Mendelssohn tradition as identical with his own efforts to uphold the dignity of art would not be received with the skeptical incredulity that would surely have greeted such an unfashionable pronouncement in the Britain of the early twentieth century. In 1825, the composer s father, Abraham, took his gifted and already successful young son to meet the aging Cherubini, whose advice he sought. Should Felix, be allowed to become a professional musician? Uncharacteristically, the crusty and often sarcastic Cherubini was full of praise for Mendelssohn, but his more usual ill humor would certainly have prevailed had he known that confident young Felix afterwards described him as an extinct volcano, still throwing out occasional sparks and flashes, but quite covered with ashes and stones. In the same year as Felix s meeting with Cherubini, the Mendelssohns moved to a roomy old-fashioned house in Berlin that had an excellent music room and, in the adjoining grounds, a Gartenhaus that could seat several hundred people at the family s fortnightly private Sunday concerts. It was in the Gartenhaus that the Overture to A Midsummer Night s Dream

4 was first performed privately, in 1826 when the composer was still only seventeen. In this overture Mendelssohn displays the highest degree of originality, freshness and technical mastery. The fact that he never actually surpassed the delightfully inspired aspects of this work in later pieces perhaps goes some way towards explaining why Wilhelm Altmann wrote in 1929 that the British and Germans could until only a short time back dispose of this composer with a shrug of compassion and consign his works to the scrapheap. However, exactly one hundred years before Altmann was to make this remark, the composer was making his first visit to England where he met with an enthusiastic reception. On 24 June 1829 the Overture to A Midsummer Night s Dream was given its first London performance at a concert in which Mendelssohn was also the soloist in the first hearing in Britain of Beethoven s Fifth Piano Concerto. Some seventeen years separate the Overture from the subsequent incidental music to A Midsummer Night s Dream, Op. 61, written in 1843 at the request of the King of Prussia, Friedrich Wilhelm IV. If any evidence is needed to refute the charge that Mendelssohn declined from genius to mediocrity then this incidental music, not to mention the Violin Concerto of 1844, is surely sufficient. All the numbers are imbued with characteristic lightness of touch, and the Scherzo is the most extended of all Mendelssohn s many elfin works of this kind. It has been pointed out by several commentators that later composers as diverse as Brahms, Strauss and Mahler show certain influences of Mendelssohn. Philip Radcliffe cites the lyrical Adagietto from Mahler s Fifth Symphony as being very Mendelssohnian. Perhaps, by the same token, one could point to the Marcia funèbre from A Midsummer Night s Dream and say that for all the restrained comedy and mock seriousness, there is here a distinct foretaste of Mahler. Zelter s earliest Lieder on poetry by Goethe had initiated a lasting correspondence and friendly relationship between poet and musician, and in 1799 Goethe sent Zelter a copy of his dramatic Ballade Die erste Walpurgisnacht (The First Walpurgis Night). Zelter s attempts at musical setting of this poem came to nothing, but his pupil, whom he had introduced to Goethe in 1821, had more success, grasping its cantata nature, and creating from it a dramatic piece for soloists, chorus and orchestra. Mendelssohn began work on the piece in Vienna, on his way to Italy in the late summer of 1830, having recently visited Goethe; almost a year later he wrote that he seized the score with a rage, and finally competed it in Milan in July Goethe had described to Zelter the inspiration for the poem: how the German heathen priests had retreated from the establishment of Christianity into the Harz Mountains and disguised themselves in devils masks, to frighten their superstitious opponents. This playful devilish element inspired Mendelssohn in the same way as the fairy world of A Midsummer Night s Dream, and Goethe s later comment to the composer on the symbolism of the struggle for freedom of religion inherent in the work similarly brought out the sonorous manner (and use of trombones) developed in his religious works such as Elijah. Die erste Walpurgisnacht remained unperformed for more than ten years, during which time Mendelssohn had composed his grand symphony-cantata Hymn of Praise, and when he returned to Die erste Walpurgisnacht at the end of 1842, he used the same term to describe this work. The death of his mother in December of that year called him back to the family home in Berlin, and it was in the weeks following this that he arrived at the final version of the piece, which then received its first performance in Leipzig in February DECCA

5 PHOTO: DECCA / IAIN MCKELL PHOTO: DECCA / TERRY O NEILL Vladimir Ashkenazy Christoph von Dohnanyi

6 Recording producers: Andrew Cornall (Midsummer Night s Dream); Christopher Raeburn (Walpurgisnacht) Recording engineers: Stanley Goodall (Midsummer Night s Dream); James Lock (Walpurgisnacht) Recording locations: Sofiensaal, Vienna, Austria, June 1976 (Walpurgisnacht); Schauspielhaus, Berlin, Germany, September 1992 (Midsummer Night s Dream) Eloquence series manager: Cyrus Meher-Homji Art direction: Chilu Tong Booklet editor: Bruce Raggatt

7