Mahler: Symphony No. 5. Bernard Haitink conducting Orchestre National de France. Naïve. $16.99.
If you are looking for a Mahler Fifth that glows, you will find it here. Bernard Haitink is one of the great Mahler conductors, and perhaps the only one whose performances of the symphonies change significantly over time. This one, recorded live in mid-2004, is stunningly lyrical and unusually relaxed: it runs nearly 80 minutes, which is quite a long time for this symphony. That means the tempos must be slow, which they are, but it does not mean the performance drags, which it does not. Instead, it has an almost Brucknerian feel to it, as Haitink emphasizes the long lines of each movement, the underlying structure that gives each one flow and prevents it from becoming episodic – as each movement and the whole symphony often do in the hands of a lesser conductor.
Because Haitink takes plenty of time with the music, he can dwell lovingly on details that other conductors overlook in their emphasis on the jagged, edgy and harsh elements of this work. Midway through the second movement, for instance, trumpet details are heard clearly and with telling effect, providing clear balance to the solo trumpet calls that began the first movement. This is balance that is all too often lacking in performances of this symphony.
Mahler did not so much write works of massed sound as chamber music for large orchestra. A Mahler symphony certainly can make plenty of noise, but it is through clarity of detail and care of balancing instrumental solos and small groups that the music really builds its effects. This is especially true in the Fifth, the first non-choral symphony of Mahler’s maturity. It is large; but as it moves from intensity and seriousness to playful, rough good humor in the finale, it should never be sonically ponderous.
Because Haitink understands this, the third movement, linchpin of the symphony and a trap for far too many conductors (and horn players), here flows beautifully, each episode naturally connected with what has gone before. The fourth movement, quiet and lovely, gently swells and ebbs, exuding serenity. And the fifth, for once, carries enough weight to balance the rest of the symphony and does not come across as a throwaway rondo.
Haitink’s approach works least well in the first two movements of the symphony (Part I, as Mahler called them, the third movement being Part II and the fourth and fifth Part III). Here the lyricism comes close to seeming out of place, especially in the near-frantic beginning of the second movement, which Haitink controls into smoothness. Yet retrospectively, as the symphony goes on and Haitink pulls listeners further into it, the handling of the first two movements makes increasing sense. It is an unconventional approach, not one that will please those seeking greater drama and less grandness; but it is a highly satisfying one that is well worth hearing – not just once, but again and again.
September 08, 2005
September 01, 2005
(++++) BONE: WONDERFUL, WONDER-FILLED
Say the name “Fone Bone” quickly and see whether it sounds like “Pogo.” Try just the first two syllables: FoBo…Pogo. The resemblance between the hero of Jeff Smith’s nine-volume comic-book saga and the hero of Walt Kelly’s famed newspaper comic strip cannot possibly be coincidental. Fone Bone actually looks a lot like Pogo – big head, big nose and soft shape. He has Pogo’s charming naiveté and unrequited (perhaps slightly requited) lovesickness. Bone is a less fully formed character than the others in this saga, and Kelly was accused of making Pogo so bland as to be dull (his response: “He’s the glue,” which is what Fone Bone is as well). Fone Bone is not a possum – a minor character in Smith’s work accurately says he looks like a kewpie doll – but there are possums here, and they play a recurring role for no apparent reason other than Smith’s fondness for them. And in Book Two of the saga, the story itself is interrupted by several pages of semi-nonsensical poetry featuring the possum characters. Poetry of that sort was a Kelly hallmark, appearing regularly in Pogo book collections.
To the extent that Bone is an unstated Kelly tribute, it is a marvelous one. To the extent that it is simply a rollicking good tale in cartoon form, it is also quite wonderful. Fone Bone is one of three Bone cousins run out of Boneville in Book One because one of them, the rich and unscrupulous Phoncible P. Bone (always called Phoney), tried one moneymaking scheme too many and got the villagers in an uproar. The third cousin, Smiley Bone, is taller and thinner than the other two, smiles constantly, and “has no brain,” as another character aptly notes.
The Bones find themselves separated from each other in an unknown valley in Book One, and encounter important recurring creatures, such as the humans Thorn (a gorgeous young girl on whom Fone Bone develops a crush) and her grandmother, Gran’ma Ben. There is danger here in the form of huge rat creatures (with a hint of additional danger to Phoney), and mystery in the form of an enigmatic red dragon. Book Two features the race of the title, which becomes a hilarious mixup involving a disguised Smiley (another of Phoney’s schemes gone awry), a whole herd of cows, and a separate herd of rat creatures – two of whom are not only vicious but also rather endearingly stupid. There are jokes and mysteries and story threads aplenty, all accompanied by wonderfully atmospheric art. The occasional wordless sequences (a cart ride at night, a flashback to the dragon’s cave) are outstanding. All nine Bone books are being released by Scholastic’s Graphix imprint, in editions equally handsome in cloth and paper binding. This is a classic story with ties to another classic – great fun to read and great to look at.
(++++) ANIMAL ANTICS – FOR HUMANS, TOO
The Blue Day Book for Kids. By Bradley Trevor Greive. Andrews McMeel. $9.95.
Here are two very different but equally clever looks at the animal-human interrelationship. Whittington is the story of a barn filled with unwanted animals, and the kind old man named Bernie who keeps them there in what comfort he can provide. It’s more particularly the story of Bernie’s orphaned grandchildren, Abby and Ben, who help feed the animals. Ben is eight years old but cannot read well – so Abby gives him lessons in the barn, at the instigation of Whittington and the Lady.
And who are they? Whittington is a stray cat who shows up at the barn one day and asks entrance of the Lady, a duck with clipped wings who is nominally in charge of the animals. But this is much more than a talk-to-the-animals story. Consider that Whittington the cat has taken his name from Dick Whittington’s cat, the fabled 14th-century feline who supposedly helped Dick earn his fortune and be elected Lord Mayor of
The animals in The Blue Day Book for Kids appear in dozens of delightfully anthropomorphic photographs of the type in which Bradley Trevor Greive specializes. Greive’s original The Blue Day Book was a big hit with its simple story about feeling down and how to cheer yourself up. Simply looking at the photos and captions helped a lot. So it does here as well, but this is a somewhat larger-size book (easier for small hands to hold), with narration geared more to kids: “A blue day is a day when nothing goes right and you feel kind of lousy” (this caption appears below a photo of a bear apparently wiping a tear from its eye). Greive explains typical blue-day feelings, such as the idea that people “are picking on you” (wonderful photo of a bulldog staring intensely at a squirrel). Then Greive suggests ways to beat a blue mood, such as singing loudly (photo of three open-mouthed zebras) or being creative (a chimp painting a picture). The text is a little sappy at times (“you can change a blue day into a new day”), but the photos alone should be plenty to help most kids (and adults) beat the blues.
(+++) OUTRÉ AND INTERESTING
My Body and I. By René Crevel. Archipelago Books. $14.
Archipelago Books continues to issue handsome paperback editions of works that are emphatically not for everyone but that will be of great interest to readers seeking the unusual and the obscure. The Novices of Sais is by Friedrich von Hardenberg, who wrote under the name Novalis and died of consumption at age 29 in 1801. Some aspects of his life foreshadow the life of Edgar Allan Poe, notably his love for a 13-year-old (he was 23 when he fell for her) and her death at 15. Like John Keats, Novalis had a Romantic temperament plus a practical streak (he studied medicine to try to save his beloved’s life). The Novices of Sais combines emotional Romanticism with a love of nature and an attempt to show how Man and Nature interrelate. Ralph Manheim’s translation from the original German flows well: “Now the country became richer and more varied, the air mild and blue, the path more level, green copses lured him with comforting shade, but he did not understand their language, they seemed indeed not to speak, and yet they filled his heart with green color and a cool stillness.” But the meanderings and proto-Surrealist philosophizing of Novalis may be of less interest to the curiosity-driven modern reader than this edition’s 60 illustrations by Paul Klee. They are a world unto themselves, reflecting Novalis’ inner one into a highly detailed and fascinating exterior.
My Body and I actually is a Surrealist work, written in 1925 by René Crevel. It is an explicit attempt to explore the relationship between body and spirit -- a subject that The Novices of Sais handles more implicitly and obliquely. Crevel’s work, as translated from the French by Robert Bononno, seems in some ways more clichéd and dated than Novalis’ much earlier one: “Your expression is not one of sincere humanity. But rest assured, it’s no better anywhere else.” Or: “I am in front of my paper, subdued by my pen’s arabesques. In a few moments I will have lost even the memory of a fear of reassuring purity. I will no longer be in danger.” Or a chapter title, complete with ellipsis: “Alone, a long obscene membrane…” Style aside, My Body and I has a variety of memorable moments, some of them confessional, some witty, some thoughtful. There is dialogue as well as narrative here, mostly handled adroitly. Although an odor of self-indulgence permeates the whole book, some readers will surely consider if a rarefied and enjoyable scent.
(++) DEATH AND THE DEADLY MAIDEN
Morituri salutamus, said the gladiators of ancient
The underlying premise of Russ’ novel is sound: if a spaceship should someday crash on a distant planet, the odds of a small group of survivors founding a colony would be so infinitesimal as to approach zero. This is a far cry from the typical SF situation, in which hardy survivors somehow build a subsistence civilization that survives against long odds until they or their descendants are rescued or rediscovered. In this book, there are eight crash survivors, including the unnamed narrator, and Russ makes sure that every one is a cardboard character of a most unpleasant type: the ultra-rich woman; the husband she has bought after he groomed himself to be purchased through extensive prostitution; the seriously ill daughter she bought to keep the husband occupied; the would-be government agent who will never get her training; the dull, slightly overweight waitress; the athlete with few brains; and the professor with many of them but no practical skills. There is not a single character for the reader to care about, and it is doubtful that these mismatched creatures could get along on a vacation on Earth, much less survive on an unknown world.
But Russ does not choose to show the group’s deterioration. She wants the narrator to be the agent of everyone’s death, including her own. Why? That is never really clear – the narrator is fatalistic, cynical and uninterested in sex, which would of course be necessary for any colony to survive (Russ herself is a outspoken lesbian). Like Greta Garbo, who famously said “I want to be left alone,” Russ’ narrator wants everyone else to go away so she can die on her own terms, whatever those terms might be. They turn out to involve one natural death, two suicides and five murders – all done by the narrator or instigated by her. To what end? To no end; it all just happened, Russ seems to say. In the 17th century, Thomas Hobbes said that giving power to the individual would start “a war of every man against every man” that would make life “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.” In Russ’ work, that is how life turns out – and probably had to turn out, given the circumstances. But watching the solitary narrator wage war on the other survivors makes for a nasty, brutish, short book.
(++++) UNDERAPPRECIATED MUSICAL OVERACHIEVER
Although Franz Berwald’s four symphonies occasionally find a place in concert halls nowadays, the rest of his music continues to languish, much as it did during his lifetime (1796-1868). Berwald himself made the best of the neglect of his work, working as a violinist, founding an orthopedic institute and, in later years, becoming manager of a glassworks and then a sawmill, in addition to giving lessons. Happily, thanks to adventurous recordings like this one, music listeners can hear more of Berwald at home nowadays than either he or today’s audiences can hear in public.
There is a unique style to Berwald’s music that makes it easy to identify after hearing only a little of it. Scurrying strings, abrupt forte intrusions into softer passages, unusual harmonies, offbeat orchestrations and fondness for abrupt endings are among his works’ characteristics. The four tone poems and opera overture here are all vintage Berwald, though the sixth work – his Konzertstück for Bassoon and Orchestra – is less typical. This is a fairly youthful work, first performed in 1828, with an attractive Mozartean sound but fairly derivative treatment of the material (some of which comes from a then-popular opera called Clari).
The tone poems date mostly from the 1840s. Reminiscence of the Norwegian Mountains is an effective work with moments of grandeur and a puzzling conclusion. Elfenspiel is rapid and rather Mendelssohnian in its scurrying sections, though the dissonant brass at its climax has Berwald’s unique sound. The other tone poems sound a great deal like Berwald’s symphonic scherzos. Wettlauf (Foot-Race) could actually be a Berwaldian symphonic scherzo, with its constant scurrying and abrupt conclusion. Ernste und heitere Grillen (Serious and Joyful Fancies) somewhat resembles Mendelssohn’s Calm Sea and Prosperous Voyage in its contrasting sections, and the first part, in particular, seems Mendelssohnian; but the second, like Wettlauf, would fit a Berwald symphony very well indeed.
The final work here is the overture to Drottningen av
(++++) GLITTERING OPERETTA, SPARKLING STAGING
Lehár: Die Lustige Witwe (The Merry Widow). Franz Welser-Möst conducting soloists, chorus and orchestra of the Zurich Opera House. Arthaus Musik DVD. $29.99.
Playful and seductive, as much an ensemble play as a singers’ operetta, the 2004 Zurich Opera production of Franz Lehár’s greatest triumph is a major triumph itself, as this live recording makes clear. The stage production by Helmuth Lohner and design by Rolf Langenfass are impeccable, the singing and acting are marvelous, the cast seems genuinely to have fun with the story, and the elaborately seductive tale unfolds with genuine wit as well as sentimentality.
You might not think the production would work so well if you simply looked at the cast list. Dagmar Schellenberger, who for years has been highly accomplished in operetta, might be thought a touch old for the part of Hanna; Rodney Gilfry tends mostly toward serious roles and might not seem to have the comic touch needed for Danilo; Ute Gfrerer (Valencienne) and Piotr Beczala (Camille de Rosillon) are comparative unknowns. The one person who would seem, on the face of it, to be perfect for his part is Herbert Prikopa as Njegus – a speaking role.
Well, Prikopa is in fact marvelous, but so, by and large, are all the principals (also including Rudolf A. Hartmann, who makes Baron Mirko Zeta a fine mixture of diplomacy and buffoonery). Schellenberger’s voice remains top-notch (despite a slight wobble at the end of the Vilja song), and her interactions with Gilfry fairly crackle with intensity. Gilfry more than holds his own in a production that makes clear the relationship of the principals before Hanna’s marriage: she recognizes Danilo’s snores and he, too drunk to look up at her, knows who she is when he feels her leg. The back-and-forth repartee, both spoken and sung, is highly effective (though cutting Danilo’s kluge, kluge Reitersmann rejoinder to Hanna’s dummer verse is unfortunate). Schellenberger and Gilfry make the underlying yearning of the characters for each other abundantly clear in Act I; the audience, even knowing the story, cannot help but root for them to abandon their pride and declare themselves.
Before they do that in Act III, there are of course all sorts of complications, set to much marvelous music. The extent of the relationship between Valencienne and Camille is not as clear here as it could be made, with the result that Camille’s Wie eine Rosenknospe does not pack quite the emotional wallop that it can; and Beczala seems a touch uncomfortable signing it. Gfrerer and Beczala seem a bit ill-matched: Valencienne and Camille can easily be played as soul mates kept apart by societal convention, but in this case a surface-level flirtation seems more likely. The music, in any case, carries it off.
The dialogue sections are rather long at times, but the updates and additions to the libretto mostly play rather well: Njegus has no lenses in his glasses because the insurance company won’t pay for them, and at one point the characters proudly display and toast with Lowenbrau, “brewed in
Franz Welser-Möst keeps the action moving smartly along, and his pacing gives the singers and dancers quite a workout in an extended dance sequence introduced into Act III. But he also lets the tender sections, of which there are many, flow slowly. It is an admirable conducting job that gives the company plenty of time to fill out and wander around the wonderful sets, while still being pointed and intense when necessary (Danilo’s bitter Es waren zwei Königskinder, starting as melodrama and turning into an aria, is particularly well done – with Gilfry using his experience in serious roles to good effect). If you want a Merry Widow DVD to live with – to return to again and again for beauty of staging as well as music – you can scarcely go wrong with this one.
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