Mozart: An Undiminishing Appeal

they shall have music

BY HERBERT KUPFERBERG

Despite the absence of any occasion to account for them, new recordings of Mozart’s music continue to pour out at an astonishing rate. We are, at the moment, well between Mozart commemorations. The two-hundredth anniversary of his birth occurred in 1956 and was suitably and even piously celebrated; the two-hundredth anniversary of his death will not occur until 1991, when some of us, conceivably, will not be around to join in the festivities.

Yet a quick glance at any issue of the monthly Schwann catalogue will confirm the simple but eloquent fact that there are more recordings of works by Mozart in existence than by any other composer. Mozart, of course, wrote more than most other composers. Yet the surge of Mozart recordings represents something more than a desire to record every available work (believe it or not, there still are some gaps to be filled, such as a modern version of the opera La Clemenza di Tito). It also indicates that the challenge of Mozart’s music to both performers and audiences continues undimmed. All twenty-three Mozart piano concertos have been recorded, some many times over, yet Rudolf Serkin has cheerfully embarked upon the project of recording them all again for Columbia. A new, low-priced label, Nonesuch, which derives its product from musical ensembles in the smaller European cities, is enthusiastically mining the field of early Mozart serenades, divertimenti, and church music. Among the new releases of London Records is a thoroughly entrancing two-record collection of Mozart’s complete dances and marches, some of them hitherto unrecorded, played with zest by an ensemble of Vienna Philharmonic members headed by Willi Boskovsky (CS-6412/13, stereo; CM-9412/13, monaural). And Deutsche Grammophon has just issued a majestic new recording of that consummate operatic masterpiece The Magic Flute (138981/83, stereo; 18981/83, monaural: three records).

The DGG Magic Flute is as symptomatic as any other thing of the prevalence of Mozart on records, for it follows by only a few months a new Angel version led by Otto Klemperer. Moreover, it represents a marked improvement, if only because, unlike the Angel set, it includes the spoken dialogue along with the musical portions. The conversation in The Magic Flute is no model of literary elegance, consisting largely of the late-eighteenth-century German equivalent of vaudeville gags; but it helps further the action, and provides a point of repose between the extended musical ensembles, choruses, and arias.

The new Magic Flute has a strong cast of singers, with Roberta Peters providing an agile and brilliant Queen of the Night, Franz Grass a sonorous and expressive Sarastro, Fritz Wunderlich a sweet-voiced, supple Tamino, and Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau a cheerful, intelligent-sounding Papageno. Of the others, Evelyn Lear is a rather heavy Pamina, and Hans Hotter a wobbly Speaker; but the ensembles of the Three Youths and the Three Ladies are beautifully balanced, and the chorus of priests richly impressive. Perhaps the most notable quality of all is the marvelous playing of the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, which seems to envelop the entire opera in an aura of ravishing sound.

Yet with all these positive attributes, the DGG Magic Flute falls short of perfection. This is an opera of religious grandeur and lofty emotions, with its tale of two young initiates traversing ordeals to become members of a select company of sages and priests. But it also is shot through with fun and fancy; Tamino’s magic flute not only carries him safely through the trials of fire and water, it also sets off a pack of wild animals into a dance that is both ridiculous and charming. In Mozart’s own day, the magical stage effects and Papageno’s clowning helped turn Die Zauberflöte into a crowd-pleasing hit show, and they certainly have not harmed its popularity since.

It is ironical that while most stage performances nowadays emphasize the frolicsome side of The Magic Flute, modern recordings tend to overplay its solemnity. The Deutsche Grammophon album doesn’t exactly turn The Magic Flute into a ritual, but there is a certain hushed and reverent quality about it that seems unnecessarily restrictive. For all its beauty, it needs a touch of sparkle and wit. Karl Böhm, the conductor, brings a keen sense of style to the work, but too little imaginativeness. A conductor of flair and originality might have made this a truly great recording. The late Sir Thomas Beecham provided just such a Magic Flute some twenty-five years ago, and we may at least hope that someone will yet arise to do it for our generation. In some ways, the most striking recent contribution to the understanding of Mozart has been not a recording, but a book. Mozart: A Documentary Biography by Otto Erich Deutsch (Stanford University Press, $17.50) is a remarkable collection of memorabilia, some of them trivial, many tangential, but nearly all of them casting fascinating light not only on Mozart’s daily life but on the musical and social modes of eighteenth-century Europe.

Professor Deutsch’s method has been simplicity itself, though simplicity of a particularly exhaustive kind. He has gathered together just about every document of the day containing a reference to Mozart, from Viennese official documents to personal laundry lists. The bureaucracy of the decaying Holy Roman Empire seems to have been just about as thorough and repetitive as our own. Everything went into the archives: births, baptisms, weddings, and deaths; petitions for favors; applications for positions; pleas for pensions. The paperwork expended on behalf of Mozart’s widow in her appeals for an annual grant from the court is appalling.

In addition, newspapers and journals reviewed concerts and operas; music publishers advertised their new offerings; performers printed announcements of their appearances. The written word was supreme; nearly everyone, it would seem, kept a diary, or prepared memoirs, or at the very least wrote comments and poetry in autograph albums. And since Mozart was one of the best known, if not best financed, members of the European musical community, his name turns up with remarkable frequency. It also turns up in an astonishing variety of spellings — Mozzard, Motzard, Motzart, Moszart, Mozhart, Motzhard, Motzharth, Mozardt, Mozhardt, Mozar, Mazar, Muzard, and a dozen others.

The picture that emerges from these countless references is less that of a lonely creative genius than of a bustling and ambitious musician, scurrying about Vienna (and several other cities) trying to get jobs, pursuing commissions, arranging recitals, rehearsing operas, advertising for ticket purchasers, borrowing money, signing notes, joining a Masonic lodge, attending a costume party, consulting a doctor. Mozart was the first professional musician in history to attempt to earn his living in the modern way, as a free-lance performer and composer rather than as a member of an aristocratic retinue. His experiment ended in personal disaster, probably because it was ahead of its time and also because he had what one contemporary called an “open, honest character, which would not permit him to bow and scrape.” But his daily life, with its ceaseless round of musical activities, its visits to publishers, its wheedlings of impresarios, its concern for commissions and ticket sales, its gathering of both favorable and adverse notices, seems strangely similar to the life of many musicians today, though without such modern shelters and safeguards as copyright laws, labor unions, and government benefactions.

Reading Professor Deutsch’s massive and meticulous compilation, one is tempted to wonder how Mozart would make his way if he were alive today. He was, for all his genius, a practical musician, which meant that he was not only able but eager to compose to order, shaping his work to meet the requirements of whoever was paying the bills. He could, and did, write to suit himself, but that never prevented him from writing to suit others; and when, toward the end of his short life, he was asked (and paid) to compose pieces for a newfangled automated music machine in which he was totally uninterested, he produced works of such quality that they still are played today, necessarily transcribed for the organ.

So it is hard to resist an uneasy feeling that Mozart today might have gone off in rather unexpected directions. With his melodic fertility and swift working habits, he might have turned out a succession of Broadway musicals. Or, with his musical cleverness and pithiness, he could have been a master of the television singing commercial, which actually is as sharp, concise, and effective a musical form as any our society has evolved.

So perhaps it is just as well to leave Mozart in his own century. At least ours can assert that it has set aside the nineteenth-century view of him as a composer of musical filigrees and miniatures, and begun to appreciate his greatness in its proper perspective.

Bernard Shaw, in his early days as a music critic, once wrote that his musical self-respect was based on his keen appreciation of Mozart’s works, and added: “It is still as true as it was before the Eroica Symphony existed, that there is nothing better in art than Mozart’s best.” With our own unending lists of Mozart recordings, and our constant quest for new pinnacles of performance, we would seem entitled to claim the same measure of musical self-respect. In an era not often praised for its taste and perception, that may be no small cause for pride.

Record Reviews

An Historic Return: Horowitz at Carnegie Hall (Bach-Busoni: Toccata in C; Schumann: Fantasy in C; Scriabin: Sonata No. 9, Poem in F-sharp; Chopin: Mazurka in C-sharp Minor, Étude in F, Ballade in G Minor; and other works)

Vladimir Horowitz, pianist; Columbia M2S-728 (stereo) and M2L-328: two records

This album is more than a documentation of Vladimir Horowitz’s return, after twelve years, to the concert stage; it also is, in its modest way, a monument to artistic integrity. Everyone who was at that memorable recital the afternoon of May 9, 1965, knows that Horowitz began his opening work, the BachBusoni Organ Toccata in C Major, with a prodigious gaffe. Whether from nervousness or overeagerness, the opening chord was a shambles. Horowitz could easily have demanded that the mistake be corrected before the recording was released, or indeed that it not be released at all. But no. With a magnanimity that only a grand master could afford, he has acquiesced in the publication of the concert as played, wrong notes included. The result is one of the most continuously exciting piano albums ever released, with the excitement stemming not only from the thunder of the audience applause but from the lightning of Horowitz’s playing. Horowitz has thought deeply and planned long for his return, and this record memorializes his triumph.

Berlioz: Romeo and Juliet, Opus 17

Arturo Toscanini conducting NBC Symphony Orchestra, with Gladys Swarthout, mezzo-soprano; John Garris, tenor; Nicola Moscona, bass; and chorus underthe direction of Peter Wilhousky; RCA Victor LM-7034 (monaural only): two records

This is a legendary recording. Toscanini’s complete performance of Berlioz’s “dramatic symphony” on the Romeo and Juliet story was broadcast on February 9 and 16, 1947. And yet the recording was never released, presumably because it had some minor blemishes which displeased him. Flawed or not, Toscanini’s Romeo and Juliet has at last been made available, and a magnificent recording it is. Berlioz’s work is a mélange of symphony, tone poem, and opera; few other composers could make it seem so dramatically cohesive. Toscanini brings to it both an exquisite sense of detail, as in the Queen Mab scherzo, and a romantic fervor, as in the Fête at the Capulets and the love scene. His soloists and chorus perform beautifully, too. Gladys Swarthout seems to lunge for some of the notes in the aria “Premiers transports que nul n’oublie,” and she fluffs a word in the second stanza (is this one of the blemishes that bothered Toscanini?), but for all that, she brings a rare quality of life and ardor to this lovely song. RCA Victor wisely decided to issue this eighteen-year-old recording in its original monaural sound, rather than tricking it out in electronic stereo.

English Harpsichord Music

Igor Kipnis, harpsichordist; Epic BC1298 (stereo) and LC-3898

The art of playing the harpsichord was revived — for our time, at least — by Wanda Landowska, but fortunately, it did not perish with her. Igor Kipnis, son of the famous basso Alexander Kipnis, has put together a thoroughly unusual and ingratiating program of pieces by such worthies as William Byrd, Giles Farnaby, and John Bull, all of whom flourished in the Elizabethan era, and he plays them with vigor and grace as well as a high degree of skill. Even at first hearing most of these works exercise a compelling charm. But it is surprising how many old friends turn up here in unexpected guises. Among these are Jeremiah Clarke’s “Prince of Denmark’s March,” which was long mistakenly known as Purcell’s “Trumpet Voluntary,” and the source melodies for Brahms’s Variations and Fugue on a Theme of Handel, and Britten’s Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra, which is based on a tune by Purcell. Aside from bringing both finesse and feeling to his performances, Mr. Kipnis takes full advantage of the rich tone of his harpsichord, which was built in New York in 1961 by Rutkowski and Robinette. It is an extraordinary instrument, particularly in its resonant guitarlike low register.

Invitation to Spanish Poetry

Selected and translated by Eugenio Florit; read by Eugenio Florit and Amelia Agostini de del Rio; Dover IP-9894 (monaural)

A few years ago Dover Publications put out a combined book and record set of German poetry, beautifully read by Lotte Lenya. Now the same procedure has been extended to Spanish verse, with Eugenio Florit, a professor at Barnard College, responsible for the selection and most of the reading. The poems range from part of the twelfth-century “Cantar de Mio Cid” to “El tren de los heridos” (“The Train of the Wounded”) by Miguel Hernández, who died in a Franco prison in 1942. Much of the record is given over to such moderns as Unamuno, Jiménez, and García Lorca, but there is a fine selection of the older lyrics. Among the more piquant is a paean to a nose by Francisco de Quevedo y Villegas which might have popped straight out of Cyrano de Bergerac:

The poems are read, in pure Castilian accents and with just the right touch of expression, by Professor Florit. Miss del Rio, who reads several of the poems, is somewhat less flexible of voice, but speaks with perfect clarity. The record is accompanied by a handsome 143-page soft-bound book containing the texts of the poems, excellent literal translations (such as that above), pictures of the poets, and an introduction and notes by Professor Florit.

Kipling: Gunga Din, Barrack Room Ballads, Recessional, and Other Poems

Read by Boris Karloff, Edward Woodward, Nigel Davenport, Ronald Fraser, and Murray Melvin; Caedmon TC-1193 (monaural)

Although Kipling’s Just So Stories and Jungle Book are well represented on records, his verse has been neglected. This situation is now remedied by a rousing Caedmon release which brings together Kipling’s most popular poems in readings that capture their swing, rhythm, and narrative power, not to mention their Cockney flavor. Boris Karloff is an old Kipling hand, having recorded much of his prose for Caedmon. On this record he even makes that old poetic chestnut “If— ” seem fresh and forceful. But the prize of the record surely is Nigel Davenport’s reading of “Mandalay,” with its fine middle verses included, and with more music in the reader’s voice than Oley Speaks ever put into his famous song. Considering that Kipling’s collected verse runs to more than eight hundred pages, there would seem to be material here for a recorded encore.

Rodgers and Hammerstein: Carousel

Franz Allers conducting orchestra and chorus, with John Raitt, Eileen Christy, Susan Watson, Katherine Hilgenberg, Reid Shelton, Jerry Orbach, and others; RCA Victor LSO-1114 (stereo) and LOC-1114

This isn’t the first recording ever made of this irresistible score by Richard Rodgers, but it may very well be the best. The combination of an excellent cast (gathered for last summer’s Lincoln Center Music Theater production) and excellent sound quality is largely responsible. But another important factor is the close attention to musical details provided by Mr. Rodgers, who was very much in charge of the stage production and the recording. An example is provided by the song “If I Loved You.” Most singers shape the opening phrase into an unbroken rising curve. But Eileen Jordan puts in a slight hesitation after the “If”; thus, “If—I loved you.” Suddenly both the musical line and the dramatic meaning become fresh and vivid. Moreover, the pause is there by Mr. Rodgers’ wish (even though, through some strange oversight, it isn’t indicated in the printed score). The entire recording is embellished with such little niceties, as well as fine performances from all concerned. John Raitt, who also sang the part of Billy Bigelow in the original 1945 production, isa holdover from the old days. The rest of the cast is youthful and bright-voiced, demonstrating at every turn that a new generation has taken Carousel to its heart.