Masses in Classical Era Austria

[Gurn Blanston]

No, no, interesting reading, and apropos in the sense that the 5 symphonies that MH wrote in the early 1780's, now called Perger 19, 26, 31, 33 & 43, which all have fugato finales (a rarity at that time), are believed to have been composed as legitimate church symphonies. I was steering in that direction earlier and then a more general discussion of symphonies arose. But my whole point was to get some recommendations for those 5 works. Goritzki and Beermann have most of them, I have the one by Warchal that I ripped before offing the box (P 19 Sym. 28). As it happens, one must purchase all the Goritzki's AND the Beermann to get the 5, but what the hell, I was likely to buy them all anyway...

Thanks for all that info.

BTW, you can use Audacity to break a recorded track into movements. I do it to remove applause, for example. Piece of cake.

[Uncle Connie]

Having posted the preceding I really feel I ought to give you the other three Farberman discs:



This contains one repeat from the 2-disc, 8-symphony set noted in my last post.  But the compensation is the stunning P.20, or MH 393 in d minor, MH's only minor-key work.  Farberman gives this work all there is to give.  Yes he includes timpani; they are authentic, just rarely found (only one other conductor known to me ever used them).  Yes he embellishes the brass and drums - he was a percussionist, after all - but they are tasteful, reasonable and mesmerizing. (In this case he also gives the concertmaster some solo lines and they are embellished as well.)  The big argument however has to be with the slow movement, which Farberman plays adagio and takes 12 minutes to do it.  The movement is marked andantino and so it is a legitimate question to ask if maybe Farberman is making a more lightweight piece into Grand Tragedy or something like that.  It's a matter of taste really; I will not be without Farberman but it's also very good that I have several other versions, all of which stay with andantino, to use for comparison.  Beermann's on CPO is my favorite of the 'normal' ones.     

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Contains as noted before the very early MH 26 (unnumbered according to this disc) which is a real small gem.  Other works excellent also.

[asin]B0009A0HZE[/asin]

When I tried looking this one up on Amazon for this post, I couldn't find it at first.  I had typed "haydn farberman" as my search term, and it did not bring this to light.  Later I went hunting in other ways and found it; the problem is that Amazon has input the conductor's name as "Faberman," without the first 'r'.  Among other gems this contains the Symphony MH 302, with a posthorn in the trio of the minuet.  This is another symphony where Farberman allows embellishment, and of all those he treats that way I think it's easily the best in that particular respect.

[Gurn Blanston]

Thanks for those links. I ordered this one first, hope it comes in that neatly rustic cover;



I would quite like to hear that d minor symphony.

[Lilas Pastia]

Thanks for these extremely informative posts, Uncle Connie! Have to say, I almost believed it was an April Fools' prank though. Farberman in MH  . Goodness gracious. HB is known to me as one of my favourite Mahler imterpreters, the conductor who stretches a 75 minute work into a 90 minute behemoth of colossal proportions, all cushioned in the most comfy Simmons Beautyrest sound world. I shall certainly seek those out !

Gurn, you have been warned !

[Uncle Connie]

Thanks for these extremely informative posts, Uncle Connie! Have to say, I almost believed it was an April Fools' prank though. Farberman in MH  . Goodness gracious. HB is known to me as one of my favourite Mahler imterpreters, the conductor who stretches a 75 minute work into a 90 minute behemoth of colossal proportions, all cushioned in the most comfy Simmons Beautyrest sound world. I shall certainly seek those out !

Gurn, you have been warned !

Andre - actually I have most of Farberman's Mahler, and adore them.  So we are clearly in sync on that composer.  Too bad Farberman never managed to do them all, I wonder how long the Third would have taken him.

[Uncle Connie]

Thanks for those links. I ordered this one first, hope it comes in that neatly rustic cover;



I would quite like to hear that d minor symphony.

Never seen that particular version of a cover in my life.  Please advise which symphonies are on it.  (Assuming you know, as the picture doesn't give it away.) 

[Gurn Blanston]

Never seen that particular version of a cover in my life.  Please advise which symphonies are on it.  (Assuming you know, as the picture doesn't give it away.)

It is an alternate cover to this disk:



with these works on it;



That's just a typical Vox cover, the other is way cooler!

[Lilas Pastia]

Gurn, what do you consider Mozart's Requiem to belong to? A Mass in classical era Austria ? Or is it pointing to something else, freer in structure, more emotional in expression? It is certainly the best known, most performed and most recorded of all MCEA. And the one most subject to wild variations in interpretative stance.

Right now listening to a live Salzburg bicentenary year performance under Bruno Walter with the WP, Wiener Staatsopern Chor, soloists Lisa della Casa, Ira Malaniuk, Anton Dermota and Cesare Siepi. Talk about luxury casting: 3 of these soloists were in the famed bicentenary year Decca Krips Don Giovanni. Two (soprano and bass) in the same company's even more famous Kleiber Nozze di Figaro. Recordings that obviously aimed to pay their respect and live up to their famous native son's fame. I have another such bicentenary year effort on my shelves (Jochum on DG).

Remember Hansel and Gretel ? I have no idea what the salzburgers or austrians would have made of the Requiem in 1792, but it seems that by 1956 their descendants had somehow lost their way from home and by 1956 had developed their own idea how the piece should go.

But I digress. Well, maybe not. From Vienna 1792 to Vienna 1956 things seem to have changed considerably. And from that bicentenary (the year of my birth 0:)) to today too ! Next on the listening schedule is a recent version by a revolutionary siberian group and their iconoclastic greek conductor that promises to be anything but tradition-bound. I read a blog entry about the Thielemann Munich version, in which the reviewer duly notes the oleaginous string textures, ritardando-ridden phrase ends, and other artefacts from a bygone era.

So, what are we to make of current day MCEA ? Is the Mozart Requeim a problem child?

[Gurn Blanston]

André,
This is a piece that is hard to put into a box and declare the truth about. Musicologists are still divided about what's what there. But as you probably recall, I am in the camp that says that Classical & Romantic have little division, rather they are a continuum of the same style, ranging from a stricter form early times to a more wide-ranging one later on, but all of a piece when it comes down to it.

It seems to me that you have hit the nail on the head though when you say that it is the performance that makes the work vary from one end of the spectrum to the other. I believe that stylistically, it is very much in the mold of Michael Haydn's c minor Requiem of 1773. And if you hear it performed by the same group, one after the other, you would agree. Then, if you heard both performed by a modern instrument/modern (post-Romantic) style group, you would also see them as being of a piece. Only if you heard one performed in one style and the other in the opposite would you say they were essentially different, and that really is the crux of it, isn't it?

I don't know what MCEA means, so I can't comment. But big, lush performances of any High Classical piece are just not my cup of tea. I know that's not the popular view, but I can't stick with any other.

[kishnevi]

I don't know what MCEA means, so I can't comment.

You're the one who came up with the name for this thread!

As for the Requiem--wasn't it initially performed in a sort of domestic chapel or domestic concert?  Or at least intended for such by Baron Whoever who commissioned it?   Which suggests the smallest possible forces in a relatively intimate setting.

Solti's recording includes some of the Latin texts used in a Requiem chanted by cathedral clergy,  since it's a live performance of the Requiem being sung in the context of a Requiem for Mozart on the anniversary of his death--but it's definitely not a small scale, intimate performance. 

[Lilas Pastia]

MCEA = Masses in Classical Era Austria. Just trading the quote-unfriendly title for a trendy acronym, generation Y style

[Gurn Blanston]

You're the one who came up with the name for this thread!

As for the Requiem--wasn't it initially performed in a sort of domestic chapel or domestic concert?  Or at least intended for such by Baron Whoever who commissioned it?   Which suggests the smallest possible forces in a relatively intimate setting.

Solti's recording includes some of the Latin texts used in a Requiem chanted by cathedral clergy,  since it's a live performance of the Requiem being sung in the context of a Requiem for Mozart on the anniversary of his death--but it's definitely not a small scale, intimate performance.

Yes, Walsegg-Stupach. And it was, just as you say. It isn't only for authenticity purposes that it pleases me more aesthetically, it just overall sounds better to me. Potential authenticity is just a bonus.   0:)

MCEA = Masses in Classical Era Austria. Just trading the quote-unfriendly title for a trendy acronym, generation Y style

OK, so I took my dumbass pill this morning. Sue me.

[Leo K.]

I got a hold of this recently (I love the cover, because I love the 18th century portrait)!




Georg Grün and the Kammerphilharmonie Mannheim present Michael Haydn's Missa pro defunctis, for soloists, chorus & orchestra in B flat major, MH 838.

A late unfinished work, and a new work to my ears, I'll see how it sounds soon 

A review on the web:

Of Johann Michael Haydn's two requiem settings, his incomplete late work, the Requiem in B flat major, has remained in the shadow of his so-called "Schrattenbach Requiem" in C minor, composed in 1771. Haydn, almost 70 at the time, who wrote his second "solemn requiem" on commission from the Empress Maria Theresa, could only complete the setting through the beginning of the "Dies irae." Quite similar to Mozart's requiem fragment, Haydn's torso was completed by a musician of a "kindred spirit," since an incomplete Mass for the dead had scarcely a liturgical use. In 1839 Father Gunther Kronecker, choirmaster of the Benedictine monastery, Kremsmünster, took on this weighty task, and thus he was the "Süßmayr to Michael Haydn." Stylistically, his completion of the work - borne on lyrical-cantabile melody displaying at times a folk song character - creates a bridge to the music of Franz Schubert and the Viennese Biedermeier. World premiere recording of this work, as completed by P. Kronecker.

[Gurn Blanston]

I very recently acquired this disk;



which is actually quite brilliant. I've been sure all along that the idea of playing out an entire mass with the correct adjunct music could not possibly have been entirely my own (despite that it was original TO me ), and this disk proves it out.

It is a Viennese mass from the Ordinary part of the Church year. It purports to be from circa 1750, although the Mass itself claims 1758. Nonetheless it is a beautiful e minor mass that proves once again that there were plenty of composers out there of great skill who were unheard of, basically because they wrote little besides church music. Here is the lineup:



Tuma's Sonata da Chiesa is particularly nice, as is the Offertorium aria by Zechner.

Like a lot of Ars musici disks, this one is very hard to get in the USA. AMP have one for $50! But AMP/UK have several, for as little as £2.99. Strongly recommended. If you already have the disk, I would love to chat about it with you. For example, as an inveterate nit-picker, I can say that things like the organ concerto would not have been played all at once like that, but the movements would have been broken up and spread out across the mass. But if you are a ripper and know what you are doing with tags, fixing this is child's play. Actually having the music to fix is the main thing. Check it out! 

[Opus106]

Thanks for the rec., Gurn. What can one expect in the form of notes?

[The new erato]

Thanks for the rec., Gurn. What can one expect in the form of notes?

If you must have it in notes; £2.99 = £3.

[Gurn Blanston]

Thanks for the rec., Gurn. What can one expect in the form of notes?

You're welcome, Navneeth.

Well, it's mainly in e minor, so you can expect 1 sharp, I guess, and the organ concerto is in F so 1 flat too.


    0:)


No, but seriously, the notes are good. I learned a lot from them, or at least they consolidated a lot of info that I learned over a long period in widely disparate places, so that was handy. It's definitely a Viennese mass, so the lines of progression are drawn out from that POV, which is the main place to be. All'round, if you can get it for only a little, you will have got a lot.

[Opus106]

If you must have it in notes; £2.99 = £3.

You're welcome, Navneeth.

Well, it's mainly in e minor, so you can expect 1 sharp, I guess, and the organ concerto is in F so 1 flat too.


    0:)

Ugh... That teaches me not to fight the idea of including the words 'sleeve' or 'liner' ever again.

No, but seriously, the notes are good. I learned a lot from them, or at least they consolidated a lot of info that I learned over a long period in widely disparate places, so that was handy. It's definitely a Viennese mass, so the lines of progression are drawn out from that POV, which is the main place to be. All'round, if you can get it for only a little, you will have got a lot.

That's great to hear! Thanks, again.

[Gurn Blanston]

Ugh... That teaches me not to fight the idea of including the words 'sleeve' or 'liner' ever again.

That's great to hear! Thanks, again.

You are most welcome. If you decide to get it, I would enjoy chatting about it. 

[Que]

Ohhh, oooohh, eternal shame on me for passing this thread by before!

Only now, when I accidentaly stumbled upon Johann Michael Haydn's Requiem in C minor (not the unfinished one in B flat) I arrived at this sacred place...

I've only sampled online, but I think what anyone would strike immediately is the fact that this work must have been a major inspiration for Mozart when writing his Requiem.
Anyway, I'm looking for a good recording! And I could use some help...

Robert King's recording has been mentioned before here and it does sound like a primary recommendation: beautifully performed and recorded in the best HIP tradition, excellent singing too. But, not surprisingly from those quarters, I feel the overall sound is - probably partly due to the English choral singing - pretty smooth and lacks some grit and I would have a bit more drive.

Other options are: Zacharias (MDG), which got some positive comments but is non-HIP and to my ears rather old-fashioned and off the mark, despite some superb singing. Next is Guy Jannssen and the Laudantes consort (Cypres): I like his approach, some wonderful things going on in the orchestra but the singing is not so great, plus he is too slow - as is the same in the oddly coupled Campra Requiem, which also suffers from mediocre/bad singing... And then there is the wild horse: Ivor Bolton in a live recording with the Mozarteum Orchester (Oehms Classics - samples at jpc and HERE, which to my knowledge does not play on period instruments, but I must say it does not sound bad at al...quite good, actually.

Any comments and - hopefully - additional recommendations are most welcome! If I had to choose now, I might take my chances on Ivor Bolton, and/or for the time being go for the safe & "nice" King's Consort, which has an good coupling too, and wait for a German or mid-European ensemble to come along some day - because this music deserves much more exposure!

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Q