This recently digitized recording from a Boston Symphony Chamber Players concert given on December 1, 1974 somewhere in Boston (Jordan Hall or Sanders Theater, possibly) of four of Max Bruch's eight pieces for viola, clarinet, and piano (published in 1910 as Opus 84) is incredibly beautiful. We get to hear clarinetist Harold Wright, pianist Gilbert Kalish, and violist Burton Fine (my father) play chamber music the way I remember chamber music sounding when I was growing up. In the course of adulthood I thought that I might have had an inflated nostalgic memory of how beautifully my father and his colleagues played these Bruch pieces.
Now, when I listen with the ears of an adult musician as well as with the ears of a violist, I find that their playing is even more beautiful than I remembered it to be.
I imagine that you, my blog-reading friends, will share my enthusiasm.
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The pieces seem identified as Op. 83, no. 2, 3, 6 and 7 of the eight total.
The recording, imperfect in its own technical ways, seems so far superior to the overly sanitized newer recordings and the background noises seem no problem, if not in a way an enhancement. The players are brilliant, as of course are the works.
I was irritated with myself and our current Zeitgeist as the inane questions of today's thinking rose up in my thoughts to steal from the performance on first listening. All these were men and Bruch too. Should we be thinking of them as white? Eurocentric? Occupying positions in place of women or people of color? Are not those, their instruments, artifacts from and proofs of the age of colonialism, or imperialism or a cultural hegemony excluding the oppressed? I had to suppress the echoes of today and listen again. And again.
I wish I lived in a world when this concert was recorded. Or perhaps in a culture when a Max Bruch could have conceived of these. In a world before the very silly Boulez said previous music should be destroyed, or a Stockhausen lamented his music did not gain the impact of 9-11. The extraneous and overtly political, supposedly so modern, seems now to intrude too easily into such as the glorious melodies of Bruch or the exquisite artistry of your "flame sampling" father and his fellows.
I am all the more impressed with Brush, with these players' great artistry, and all the less impressed with today. Thank you for posting and to whoever goes by the moniker of Lucia McClarinet. Your enthusiasm is warranted, fortunate daughter to artists.
"Flame sampling" is right. I found that as the performance continued the phrases seemed to ignite the air around them as they passed back and forth between viola and clarinet, with the piano fanning the flames all the while. And then in the last piece of the set there is a measure or two where the right hand sparks and glows in a way that makes it sound like something other than a piano.
I kind of knew this at the time, but one of the things that is so superb about Harold Wright's playing is the variety, quality, and timing of the beginnings of his tongued notes, and the measured energy that continues through the full length of the notes he sustains. And, inspired by the particular nuance of the moment, my father responds with the reflection of Wright's articulation, but adding, simply because he can, reflections of his own, to which Wright responds. Kalish is amused, entertained, and totally engaged in the "dance."
I got to witness this interaction through music when I was a child. I don't remember these people talking and joking as friends usually do. It was as if being in the music, and being in the music of Bruch, which is everything that anyone could ask for in chamber music, was like living in a luxury hotel in the mountains with exciting views from every window, and countless trails and paths to explore.
Zeitgeists come and go. But, thankfully, real and authentic music making (composing and playing), though relatively rare, is deeply human and deeply necessary. We should remember that Bruch was dismissed as "second rate" when compared to his better-connected contemopraries. Sure, his G-minor Violin Concerto is standard repertoire, but he did write a lot of music that another part of this Zeitgeist might start to take more seriously.
I'm guilty. I used to listen to my father practice these, and I got it into my head that they last one was a piece by Schumann. Not quite remembering the material, but remembering the textures, I used to look for it in pieces by Robert Schumann (not Clara, because she didn't write for viola, and nobody would have played anything by Clara Schumann in Boston in those days). I was also swayed by the "usual suspects."
Thanks for the exchange which comes to blog length! I recall some lively arguments centering around what may be best called the 'Ding an sich' formulation, that quality lies in and not around the product. I pray you are correct and that Warhol's assertion is true in that some people get their "fifteen minutes of fame" to fade while such works as were once obscure and almost forgotten now live on with robust health.
I had an argument with the curator of a major art museum over this concept. Given one of his favorite artists, I posited that an unknown work came to light, and asked "would he be pleased." Of course. Then changing the terms of the thought experiment, if it were a brilliant stylistic knock off by a talented other artist, "would he be pleased?" No. And thereby was demonstrated to his chagrin that the thing in itself was assigned value based on some other external condition.
That some critics might have said Bruch was "second rate" is an equivalent thought experiment. Do we remember the critics of composers we remember? Generally it seems not. If our Bach was thought the old periwig at the end of his life, and his work had to be revitalized by Mendelssohn and friends, there is a lesson in "the thing in itself." Which lives on quite independent of our short mortal coil.
You write of "real and authentic." I suspect in the long run we don't need need others to approve of what we might find real and authentic. There's another point here, for all artists serve up the good alongside the great. Some naïve student-era fugues of Beethoven come to mind, but of course not the 133 Grosse Fuge. We might recall it was not "well received" by many whose names no longer come to mind.
I had the occasion to hear the whole Schubert 667 quintet in a home concert by retired symphony players. Wonderful and not recorded except in memory of so long ago. The quintets' details are worth recalling, as it wasn't published until after Schubert died -- too young. It seems the thing in itself must decouple from the cultural anomalies and mutable Zeitgeist as proof "an sich." Perhaps even decouple from us.
These recordings certainly display that. What is also worth mentioning -- your first imagery in your response is quite beyond prose, towards poetry -- aside from then being a mere compliment to you, it suggests additionally that such a heightened aesthetic response is that "rising tide" on which all of us a further uplifted by such artistry, be it of the composer or the players -- or the appreciative listeners, which are an infrangible part of the greater whole.
I've had a lovely time this day with your father and his friends. This is how the unbreakable is forged, it seems. Best wishes.
Thank you for making available this splendid performance of music that somehow escaped my attention until now. I wish I had known of these four pieces earlier. Better late than never! Thank you as well to you and Anonymous for the ensuing “zeitgeist” discussion. It touches on questions whose answers have long eluded me.
Perhaps the roots of the perplexity as to how to go about forming my own music appreciation zeitgeist started in the previous century (1965 to be exact) when I was an impressionable lad. With my mother, I religiously watched Pete Seeger’s TV show “Rainbow Quest.” She was a leftist, a skeptic, and staunch secularist. To her that show fit in well with her own particular musical “zeitgeist”; an approach to musicking that shares one important similarity with a current zeitgeist mentioned in this thread by the perspicacious and provocative Anonymous.
Seeger’s show celebrated and presented music of the “folk”…songs and tunes of workers and poor people. That he himself came from a background completely the opposite of the music he was promoting, did not turn her away from Seeger. That paradoxical twist made him even more heroic to her; a musician who, given his genteel background , very well could have taken a place in a comfortable academic chair or the string section of a professional orchestra, but chose the banjo instead. Here was an artist who, for my mother, journeyed to music that really “mattered.” Conversely, my father sat in a different landscape. He would play for her a movement from a Galuppi Sonata performed by prodigiously lyrical Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli in an attempt to seduce her to the beauty of the early 18th century Italian keyboard music. It didn’t work.
Of Mr. Seeger, my father was not a fan.
“Yes…it is beautiful…but that is all it is. You can’t live on scenery,” my formidable mum would say in response to the Galuppi. For her it was Odetta over Roberta Peters…Sonny Terry over...(more on the way...)
.... E. Power Biggs. My father’s music (the usual Germanic fellows) was to be enjoyed by her in very small doses, if at all, *not* because it locked out people of color and women as current critics would have it, but because it was too much intertwined with a third reality of those critics: privilege…specifically economic privilege. In short, it locked out people who couldn't afford to buy tickets. To her, this musical-economic unfairness was intolerable. She did not deny the aesthetic greatness of a Brahms Symphony, but she made sure I knew that a finished performance of it was made possible by wealth (ill-gotten was inferred) and enjoyed by people who could afford tickets. In her mind, everyone should be able to hear Brahms. That that wasn’t possible was to her a shanda. Certainly studying the score of a Brahms Symphony was in her eyes a worthy exercise. She did not deny his genius. Such academic work was edifying; it improved the intellect of the student. Hearing the music in the plush confines of a downtown hall was a different matter altogether. She wanted me to always be aware of the “baggage” the surrounded such a performance. To hear only “the thing itself” in the concert hall without considering the obligato of injustice that was adumbrated by the performance was to create a lacuna in one’s ethical framework. She wanted none of it.
A few years ago, before our recent virus troubles, I played, perhaps for the 20th time in my life, Schubert’s incomparable Cello Quintet with a group of fine amateur players. The location was a majestic 19th century lake house that had been built and and handed down through generations by the several-times great grandfather to one of the musicians in the ensemble. When we reached that sublime second subject in the first movement, I prepared myself (as I always do at that particular musical moment) to get swept away to the radiance that is the inevitable destination. A familiar voice suddenly joined the ensemble. It was my recently deceased mother. After my initial surprise at the visitation, my next reaction was to be a bit annoyed at the interruption, just as the perspicacious Anonymous was irritated by some intrusive thoughts in listening to that magisterial performance of Bruch's "Four Pieces."
I listened to her. I had no choice. “Yes…it is beautiful. But you can’t live on scenery.” And then an added an extra word: “You can’t live a *good* life on scenery.” And then some more…”You can’t live a good life with music until you travel to and play the music of the workers who built the house you are playing Schubert in.”
By the time we all reached the development section, I concluded that my persistent mother had a point.
Then a revelation came to me. I was sitting in this wonderful musical circle playing this wonderful music not only because I was fortunate to study viola early on with Mr. Hans Bodendorfer, but also because my parents were able to pay for the lessons.
I don’t know, and I will never know if it is a noble quest or a fools errand to possess as much of my mother’s approach as I do. All I can say is that it came to me with my mother’s milk and it will be with me until the end, That I carry such baggage, that it clunks against my left foot (for some reason always the left one) while playing the opus 18s can be distracting. Yet I’ve arrived to the point where such distractions are more welcome than they used to be. Sometimes it is beneficial to be distracted from mere beauty; it is good not only enjoy the beauty that music gives, but also to reflect on how much that beauty cost.
In such distractions and reflections are the makings of mitzvahs.
Jonathan Brodie
Thank you for this lovely "mother's milk" comment! We raised our kids on Pete Seeger tapes of records, and our son has become quite the banjo player as a result. We have also watch every bit of "Rainbow Quest" that Youtube has to offer, so I know what your mother was talking about. You might find it interesting to poke around in the life and work of Pete's stepmother Ruth Crawford Seeger, and delve into the folkloric explorations of Pete's father Charles. Such interesting and complicated family dynamics there, and in his family life as an adult too.
How nice of your mother's ghost to visit you while playing Schubert!
Thank you for your gracious response to my reminisces....and, needless to say, you raised your kids right!
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