Mystery Orchestra 18 - Schumann Symphony No.4 - one more

[M forever]

Is it?

SCHUMANN Symphony No.4 in D minor, Op.120 (original 1841 version)

Thomas Zehetmair (director), Northern Sinfonia

Maybe it is. Or maybe not.

What makes you think so? What do you hear that points you in that direction?

[PerfectWagnerite]

Clip B sounds like an "old school" Schumann 4th performed with a large orchestra. The sheer string sound launching the allegro is something to behold. With the large band I still hear a lot of inner wind details. I also like the weight of the E-flat at the start of the development. The climaxes are shattering. I do have a few bones to pick. In the intro there are a few crescendo then diminuendos that didn't get emphasized, like the ones in measures 7 and 8 which are very important. There are others like this in the intro and some get lost for some reason. Also the allegro sounds a big sticky to me in spots. On sustained notes it almost seems the conductor doesn't want to let go and tries to achieve a continuity of sound. For example at 6:07(don't ask me the bar number because this piano score has none)there is a fermato on a C on the violins. The next violin phrase starts on this same note and is marked piano and dolce. For some strange reason the fermata C and the next C sounds linked together which just sounds wrong. Also I don't get the feeling of a true piano anywhere. It gets softer but not soft enough.

Clip C: The best reading of the lot by a healthy margin. The crescendo from 13 to 18 and then the forte in 18, and then the diminuendo again from 19 to 22 is carefully shaped. The transition from the intro to the allegro done in a seamless fashion. The timpani has that little dryish and bright sound that really stands out. A modern recording that is not over the top, with especially prominent wind and brass details. The strings sound so athletic and so together it is indescribable. And when they play a piano marked with dolce it sounds so right (at 6:11). Here, unlike in clip B, you hear the C's separated, with the 2nd C coming in really sweet and soft that gives the next phrase a nice lilt. THis orchestra has overwhelming power in its reserve but uses it in just the right amount here. The numerous attention to details will take a page to describe but safe to say if I don't have this recording and once it is revealed by M I will jump out of my seat to buy it. I have to hear the coda of the final movement played by this ensemble/conductor. The best I know is Szell but I am sure this one will be up there as well.


Clip D: Definitely a newer, fresher take on Schumann with a much smaller complement of strings. Still doesn't sound like a HIP ensemble but rather like a chamber orchestra. The intro is much faster than B. This also sounds the orchestration has been tampered with. Where are the violins at the beginning of the allegro? You hear much more prominent wind details here and throughout. There are a lot of ornaments, a shake here, a turn there, especially in the clarinets and violins, that are not in other recodings. For example, at 2:10 in the clarinet, at 2:36 in the violin, at 5:40 in the oboe, and the flute in 5:50. Don't quite have enough bite in the climaxes. Not the most observant of conductors I guess. Those are 8th notes in measure 4, sounds like dotted eighth and then a 16th note. No attempt to even do a crescendo/diminuendo in measures 7 and 8. There is supposed to be a gradual crescendo staring in bar 13 and ending in a forte in bar 18 which completely missing. The performance, while detailed, lacks dynamics contrast to put it as a first class reading. This is most apparently in the opening note (an upbeat marked forte) which is at about the same dynamic level as in the first full bar which is marked pp. How did this happen?


Also it is good to hear clips B, C, D with the exposition repeat. How conductors choose to ignore an explicitly written repeat is beyond me.

[M forever]

I don't have the score and there doesn't seem to be one online that anyone knows of (or do you?). Could you edit your post and put in timings? It is a little too tedious to count bars along with the music to figure out which places you are referring to.

Thanks.

[PerfectWagnerite]

I don't have the score and there doesn't seem to be one online that anyone knows of (or do you?). Could you edit your post and put in timings? It is a little too tedious to count bars along with the music to figure out which places you are referring to.

Thanks.

I used the piano reduction that Bonehelm provided in an earlier post. I assume the the dynamics markings are for the most part correct. That score doesn't have measure numbers so anything above 20 or so I didn't count. But I will edit the post with timings.

[PerfectWagnerite]

Okay M, I've edited my post. I also initially have clips C and D backwards and I fixed that also.

[M forever]

Thanks for editing and clarifying your post. I had thought there was something flipped there because the detail descriptions didn't seem to match the clips.

PerfectWagnerite at work with a score, that's a completely new side of you we haven't seen yet, I think.

You make a number of interesting detail observations. I can't quite follow you here though:

Clip B:
On sustained notes it almost seems the conductor doesn't want to let go and tries to achieve a continuity of sound. For example at 6:07(don't ask me the bar number because this piano score has none)there is a fermato on a C on the violins. The next violin phrase starts on this same note and is marked piano and dolce. For some strange reason the fermata C and the next C sounds linked together which just sounds wrong.

Clip C:
And when they play a piano marked with dolce it sounds so right (at 6:11). Here, unlike in clip B, you hear the C's separated, with the 2nd C coming in really sweet and soft that gives the next phrase a nice lilt. THis orchestra has overwhelming power in its reserve but uses it in just the right amount here.

TBH, I don't hear a big difference between B and C here. Both neither make a clear break between the two Cs (which wouldn't sound so good, I think) nor completely slur them, in both cases it appears to me that that second C is played with a little more vibrato and dolce than the held C before.

It seems to be clear that you generally prefer what you describe as a somewhat "bigger" aproach in B and C to the more "chamber orchestra" approach of D and that you prefer C to B musically. How do the orchestras in clips B and C compare (I mean to each other, you already made the comparison between both and D)?

Also it is good to hear clips B, C, D with the exposition repeat. How conductors choose to ignore an explicitly written repeat is beyond me.

That used to be fairy common, though it appears to be less so now. It was thought since you already know the standard pieces well, you don't have to repeat the exposition so people had a second chance to take it in which is more important for new pieces. I think Brahms also said that he didn't mind if the expostion repeats in his symphonies are not taken.
I personally like it much better though when all the repeats are taken, and not just in pieces where you would lose a few bars or beats of interesting transition material, there in particular, but in general as well.

[Sean]

Can I ask a question about the cadence at the end of the movement? I was amazed when I heard this first, and still find it a remarkable moment, especially when certain notes are emphasized: does it not end on chord V ?!?- it seems to be imperfect. Perhaps I should peruse Bonehelm's link to the score.

[Sean]

Brief comments on what along with the Rhenish and the Piano concerto is the most ravishingly mature Schumann orchestral creations, in a world of richest, peculiar invention and fascinating scoring. I know the piece from the intense Solti VPO on Decca, later buying the magnificently balanced, fresh and rewarding Karajan.

Clip A- a period instrument-informed effort with irritating bouncy rhythms and exaggerated tempo shifts: unlistenable historical revisionism- modern instruments but could indeed be the sparer textures of that earlier version. No idea who (unless the Zinman I have for Clip D).
Clip B- too dancy and breezy, lacking the required finness- rough guess at one of the Bav.RSO/ Kubelics
Clip C- confident, muscular, ordered and fluid, strings with the finish of a great orchestra- could well be the BPO/ Karajan
Clip D- too fast, sounds like someone wants to conduct late Mozart, but some passion rising at the right places; the sound a little contained perhaps and could just be the period-informed Zinman/ Tonhalle O

[Drasko]

B

Very powerful, I think this could be one of the big German orchestras. Awesome strings, huge, deep sounding, maybe bit more focused and firm than Vienna, meaty winds, strong brassy horns with I believe touch of vibrato. My guess here would be Dresden Staatskapelle. Interpretation on no-nonsense, forward moving but not rushed side. Conductor, if I stick with SD, could be Sinopoli (but I think not, I'd expect more transparency and some lingering from him) or Sawallisch which sounds like more probable option, and sound although excellent hints analog.

C

I can't seem to place this one, only thing that really caught my ear are the timpani, very prominent and particular sounding ('bouncy' to my non expert ear, I think I'd surely remembered it if I heard it before) something like "hard stick on soft skin" (I'm not implying either police brutality or any naughtiness here). Orchestra does sound somewhat smaller than B but deffinitely not HIP, too fullish sounding in every section for that, but I can't pinpoint anything much more beside that.
Could be one of those modern orchestra but historically aware things. Along these lines my best guess here would be Chamber Orchestra of Europe under Harnoncourt.

D

Clipped phrasing, lean vibratoless strings, prominent winds, hard sticks I'd say this is HIP. Embarrassingly I can't seem to figure out are those natural or valve horns so I can't really say whether is it historic instruments or just historic practice on modern ones. Anyhow prominence of the winds and vigorous tempo makes pleasingly playful performance but to me lacking in some oomph. 
As for orchestra, I don't really know what is there of HIP ones. I'm relatively sure it isn't Gardiner (I have some of his Beethoven) and his interpretations sound to me usually opposite of what I just said, and ORR actually more massive than this one, also judging by his Schubert this probably ain't Goodman (this sounds much more polished).
So, I'll guess totally mainstream, could this be Tonhalle Zurich / Zinman?


I actually have only two recordings of this (been neglecting Schumann orchestral in favor of piano for years) and I'll probably go out and buy A & B out of these when they get revealed, so I'll be closely watching this one.

[PerfectWagnerite]

PerfectWagnerite at work with a score, that's a completely new side of you we haven't seen yet, I think.

You make a number of interesting detail observations. I can't quite follow you here though:

TBH, I don't hear a big difference between B and C here. Both neither make a clear break between the two Cs (which wouldn't sound so good, I think) nor completely slur them, in both cases it appears to me that that second C is played with a little more vibrato and dolce than the held C before.

I listen with a pair of headphones at work(Sennheiser 5 something) through the headphone jack in the computer so I am not sure if that is doing the clips justice but in B it certainly sounds like the C (two octaves above middle C) in the violins carried over from the fermata into the next phrase. Whereas in clip C that same note is released, then attacked again but really softly. But I am probably nitpicking here.

It seems to be clear that you generally prefer what you describe as a somewhat "bigger" aproach in B and C to the more "chamber orchestra" approach of D and that you prefer C to B musically. How do the orchestras in clips B and C compare (I mean to each other, you already made the comparison between both and D)?

I would say the orchestra in C is a bit more flexible than B. B has that Karajan sort of approach of extreme dynamic contrast, string heavy, generally thick kind of texture. In C I get more of a chamber music kind of feel. I feel the orchestra has been reined in a bit but has a lot in the reserve. I'd compare it to Barenboim's reading with the Staatskapelle Berlin although it has been a while since I have listened to THAT recording and we all know how our memories sometimes play tricks on us. The wind details are much more prominent in C and I feel the musicians in general listen to each other more.
[/quote]

That used to be fairy common, though it appears to be less so now. It was thought since you already know the standard pieces well, you don't have to repeat the exposition so people had a second chance to take it in which is more important for new pieces.

The problem with that is you never know in the audience who is familiar with the piece and who isn't. Let's be real here, in Schumann and Brahms' time this was all new music and I doubt anyone is truly familiar with it. So probably you heard all the repeats back then if you were in the audience. The one exception is probably Beethoven's 9th whose exposition is so vast and the work is so long so mercifully Beethoven didn't ask for it to be repeated.

I try to read with a score but most time due to kids occupying my time, or listening at work or in the car I can't have a score in front of me. Piano score also help a little. I see the chords better and don't have to transpose.

[Larry Rinkel]

Can I ask a question about the cadence at the end of the movement? I was amazed when I heard this first, and still find it a remarkable moment, especially when certain notes are emphasized: does it not end on chord V ?!?- it seems to be imperfect. Perhaps I should peruse Bonehelm's link to the score.

It ends on a D major chord.

[Bonehelm]

Wow clip B is indeed very powerful and huge-sounding. It's my favorite out of all of them now.

[PerfectWagnerite]

Can I ask a question about the cadence at the end of the movement? I was amazed when I heard this first, and still find it a remarkable moment, especially when certain notes are emphasized: does it not end on chord V ?!?- it seems to be imperfect. Perhaps I should peruse Bonehelm's link to the score.

As Larry said, the last chord is a D-major chord and the next movement is played "attaca" or attached, no pause between movements. For what it is worth the final cadence goes like I-6/3, IV-6/4, I, IV, I-6/4, I, in D major, which is a bit usual I guess since the starting key is D-minor.

[Larry Rinkel]

Wow clip B is indeed very powerful and huge-sounding. It's my favorite out of all of them now.

B is more flexible in tempo, more rhetorical and dramatic than the others. The big fermatas in the development are held the longest; the trombones are the most powerful. It is also the least transparent in texture - the timpani tend to blend in rather than stand out; the horns with their eighth-2 sixteenths motiv in the development are barely audible. On the other hand the articulations (staccato dots within a slur) that Schumann carefully marked in the introduction are hardly observed and are played more or less legato, whereas they emerge very clearly in A. (See pic 1.) Given its dramatic power, this could be Bernstein from the later years, or maybe Barenboim.

C is a very good mainstream reading. I feel a nice sense of balance and firmness, with well-articulated, muscular phrasing. Although in actual time it is as long as B, there is much less tempo fluctuation or rubato. This could be Szell or Dohnanyi.

A is more transparent in texture than either of the above, especially B. There is much more precise attention to the hairpin crescendos and decrescendos, the staccatos within slurs from the introduction. The main section of the movement is quite fast, and the performance quite exciting. The exposition is omitted in this sonata-form movement that doesn't have an orthodox recapitulation; instead the development leads directly to the coda (a similarly individual approach to sonata form is found in the finale of Schumann's 2nd symphony). I prefer the repeat, and had it been included the timing would have been around 9:48, almost identical to

D, which I'm going to guess is the 1841 version. I don't have a score to thiis version, and so I don't know if the ornamentation in some of the lyric passages is original or the conductor's choice. But a distinguishing characteristic of this performance is that the horn figures, 8th-2 sixteenths in 1853, are here played as dotted 8th-2 32nds. This makes them motivically related to what I always call the "wild" passage for the upper winds circled in my pic (and which sounds most wild, with the most pronounced crescendo, in B). As for the performance, it sounds fast, slick, and superficial. The phrasing (such as the slurs at measure 4) is followed very carefully, and this is the only of the four to observe the fermata rest following the 2nd exposition. But it just doesn't have any sense of drama or rhetoric, which B does so well. All the details are right, but the overall structure seems to elude the conductor. As these are characteristics I often find in JE Gardiner, I'll guess it's him.

[Larry Rinkel]

M: That used to be fairy common, though it appears to be less so now. It was thought since you already know the standard pieces well, you don't have to repeat the exposition so people had a second chance to take it in which is more important for new pieces.

PW: The problem with that is you never know in the audience who is familiar with the piece and who isn't. Let's be real here, in Schumann and Brahms' time this was all new music and I doubt anyone is truly familiar with it. So probably you heard all the repeats back then if you were in the audience. The one exception is probably Beethoven's 9th whose exposition is so vast and the work is so long so mercifully Beethoven didn't ask for it to be repeated.

I would agree with PW here as to why the "second chance" theory is not really convincing. It doesn't answer either why, in Beethoven's works, he omitted the exposition repeat as early as the Appassionata sonata and 1st Rasumofsky quartet, but kept writing exposition repeats through the late period - examples:

No exposition repeat: quartets opp. 95, 127, 131 (finale), 132, 135, symphony 9, piano sonatas opp. 90, 101, 109, 110.

Exposition repeat: quartet op. 130, symphonies 6-8, piano sonatas opp. 81a, 106, 111

Double repeat (both exposition and devel/recap): quartet op. 59/2, sonata op. 78, quartet op. 135 finale, though here B. specifies the second repeat as optional.

Devel/recap repeat but not exposition repeat: Appassionata finale.

So with repeats, I think the real question is, what do they do for the work? And here we can get into questions of transitions, of how material in the tonic key is heard again when the exposition has modulated to another tonality, of an approach to sonata form that is more "flowingly narrative" in style (Appassionata) vs. one that is more "binary" or "balanced" (op. 59/2 quartet) - I know these terms are vague), etc.

Sometimes the music provides the answer quite obviously. I think the answer to the double repeat in the F# major sonata, op. 78, is pretty clear, but I'd have to get into some technical aspects of harmony. Or take the first Rasumofsky, where there seems to be a repeat but then you realize B. is faking and instead veers off into the development. This approach was imitated by Brahms in the first movement of the 4th symphony, the only first movement of his symphonies without a repeat indication.

[Larry Rinkel]

As Larry said, the last chord is a D-major chord and the next movement is played "attaca" or attached, no pause between movements. For what it is worth the final cadence goes like I-6/3, IV-6/4, I, IV, I-6/4, I, in D major, which is a bit usual I guess since the starting key is D-minor.

Sorry, but you don't have this quite right. The ending chords for the last 10 measures simply oscillate between I and IV (with a tonic pedal) in D major. Although the cellos and contrabasses have rests at several points, the true bass D is still maintained in the trombones and timpani. The E's and C#'s in the basses are just neighbor tones that have no effect on the harmony.

[PerfectWagnerite]

Sorry, but you don't have this quite right. The ending chords for the last 10 measures simply oscillate between I and IV (with a tonic pedal) in D major. Although the cellos and contrabasses have rests at several points, the true bass D is still maintained in the trombones and timpani. The E's and C#'s in the basses are just neighbor tones that have no effect on the harmony.

Oh, now I see. I was reading the piano score and was just eyeballing the right hand. Thanks for the correction.

[Bonehelm]

B is more flexible in tempo, more rhetorical and dramatic than the others. The big fermatas in the development are held the longest; the trombones are the most powerful.....

I noticed that, I'm a trombonist at a local wind ensemble

[M forever]

Wow, what's going on here? I am away from my computer for a few hours, and then all these musicological discussions start. Is this still GMG? You are supposed to post totally inflated nonsense and insult each other, not make musically relevant points and admit you may have been wrong when somebody corrects a point! Or maybe not.


I hope everyone noted the smiley here. Obviously it's great that we get all these detailed and interesting analyses here. Special thanks to Mr Rinkel for his detailed and score-illustrated points.

I will also say that generally, you are all getting closer and closer to the "truth", it looks like with each round of MO, the guesses get closer and the descriptions more and more precise. Some of you gussed very, very closely and some in some cases also more or less "correctly". I don't think I am giving away too much when I say that since some of you guessed differently for the same clips, and I am not saying or giving hints *who* guessed right or close and who didn't 

But guessing is only part of the game and the discussions are really interesting and what matters most, so let me throw some more wood into the fire:

MO17 E
http://preview.tinyurl.com/2eeuzc

MO17 F
http://preview.tinyurl.com/ynjqc9

[Sean]

E is another well played account, a full blooded romantic conception, though becoming a bit wandering as things progress and gets to sound rather like reflective moments in the Pastoral symphony: the reins are held too loosely and I got fed up with it eventually- the orchestra's better than the conductor. I'll go for Bernstein/ VPO.

F is an older recording, opening slowly and weightily but with some highlighting of inner string parts- maybe Monteux/ BBCSO, or the onward drive of Boehm/ VPO. However the bass's heaviness suggests neither.