Time for another chapter of musical performances created under the less-than-easy conditions of social distancing. The desire of the world's musicians to keep making music in these challenging times is both laudable and totally understandable. It's particularly entertaining, for me at least, when the musicians aren't afraid to cut loose and make a little fun of and for themselves in the process.
As in previous posts in this series, I've included links to all the video recordings.
Epic Sunrise
It's one of those pieces of music that everybody knows, even if they don't know the title or the composer or any other details. It was indelibly imprinted on the popular consciousness for all time when it was used by film director Stanley Kubrick to accompany the opening sunrise of his space epic, 2001: A Space Odyssey.
Yes, that one.
What many non-music-lovers may not know is that the renowned C-G-C rising trumpet theme was actually composed by Richard Strauss, at the opening of his tone poem, Also sprach Zarathustra, to represent a sunrise.
At first glance, performing this work by remote control would appear to be an impossibly tall order for a socially-distanced orchestra, since the full score requires over 100 musicians, and calls for an organ with a good deep 32-foot bass pedal stop -- itself a tall order (please pardon the pun). Nothing daunted, the gifted musicians of Opera North in Leeds, UK, have put together an ensemble of forty players and constructed a performance which adheres with remarkable fidelity to the original score. They don't stop at just the famous sunrise, carrying on for several more minutes through the first main section of the tone poem after that, the performance lasting five minutes in all.
The main instruments required are all present, even a keyboard to stand in for the organ, and the only real loss is that the total orchestral texture is thinner than it would be in a live performance with the full orchestra.
Best of all, the players indulge in some subtle but entertaining shenanigans at a few points during the performance. With so many musicians on the screen at once, you may want to watch this video two or three times in succession to make sure you catch all the comic moments.
Is that really a problem? I'm sure I'm far from being the only person who played a recording of that stunning sunrise music over and over -- and over -- back when it first came to our notice in long-ago 1968.
Fortune, Empress of the World
It sometimes seems as if sheer luck determines who does or doesn't get sick from this verdammte virus, so a choral song about luck -- or "Fortune" if you prefer -- is definitely timely. And along comes another of classical music's undoubted greatest hits, the opening (and closing) chorus of Carl Orff's Carmina Burana, to save the day.
Orff's music is actually very well suited to socially distanced performance, since so much of his texture is dominated by insistent, metronomic rhythms. This is especially true of O Fortuna, since the pulsating rhythmic accompaniment in the pianos never changes, never accelerates or slows down, throughout the three verses of the piece.
The choir of Radio France does the honours in this socially distanced recording, along with an ensemble of instrumentalists comprising at least one pianist and a battery of percussion. There may be more, but with Orff's chordal textures it's hard to be sure -- and the visuals show only the singers. As with the sunrise above, there are some cute little comic touches at some of the singers' homes -- although nothing quite so hilarious as the real-time reaction to the cymbal player in the Strauss.
Who Let the Horse In?
It's not every day that a horse makes its way into a symphony orchestra. Still less common is the sound of a horse neighing in a piece which has no part specifically laid out for the sound of a horse neighing. Well, these days, it begins to seem like anything is possible for the dauntless members of the world's musical community.
Certainly that's true of the members of the Memphis Symphony Orchestra who join together from their homes in this rollicking performance under their maestro, Robert Moody, of the famous (or infamous) March of the Swiss Soldiers which forms the final segment of a certain operatic overture by Rossini. If you haven't figured out what this piece is yet, you certainly will by the time the horse neighs.
Chamber Music in Four Chambers
Of all forms of classical music-making, chamber music seems (to me at least) the most fraught with difficulties in the social-distancing era. It's been said that chamber music is a conversation between friends, and that is certainly true. What makes it so tough, when playing from separate living rooms, is the loss of the normal ability to make eye contact and listen to each other. It's that intimacy which makes good chamber music performances cohere together and then take wing.
Nothing daunted, though, the Garth Newel Piano Quartet from the Garth Newel Music Center, in Hot Springs VA, has decided to give it a go. Wisely, the players have chosen to perform a piece which rests firmly on an all-but-continuous moto perpetuo piano part, thus giving the three string players a firm reference point at all times. The music is the second movement of Gabriel Fauré's Piano Quartet No.2 in G Minor, Op. 45. It's a delightful performance, vibrant, bubbling with energy, yet still retaining the essential polish which would go out the window if the music were overloaded with Romantic fervour or Wagnerian power.
For anyone whose knowledge of Fauré is mainly shaped by such well-known pieces as Pelleas et Melisande, or the Requiem, this performance will definitely show you another side to the composer!
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