Rufinatscha from Chandos

[Alan Howe]

Don't worry, Chandos are planning two more CDs of orchestral music, including the PC.

[thalbergmad]

I look forward to this. His music did not move me initially, but now after a couple of sessions it does. Maybe he is not an instant gratification composer, but an acquired taste.

I long for a top notch recording of the PC. Now that I have played through it, I love it a lot more.

Thal

[Alan Howe]

You are absolutely spot-on. Rufinatscha's music takes time to sink in - but when it does, I just won't leave you alone. That's why snap judgments based on initial hearings are nearly always to be avoided.

[JimL]

It only took me a couple of hearings, but like all the truly great composers, his music sounds like it had already been in my head and only needed hearing it to let it out.

[Alan Howe]

The BBC announcer who introduced the radio broadcast of the Bride of Messina overture last Friday afternoon confirmed that the Chandos CD will be coming out in April.

[petershott@btinternet.com]

Splendid! Not too long to wait. Although in line with other Chandos release dates I guess 'April' actually means the very last day of April. Drat!

Almost perhaps deserving of a thread in itself, but I've now spent a week wrestling with the previous observation by JimL, viz "like all the truly great composers, his music sounds like it had already been in my head and only needed hearing it to let it out."

Seems to me that this comment is actually profoundly true, and if you dwell on it then it is puzzling.

Why is it that great music is always music that, the first time you hear it, you know (without much analysing it) that the music is spot on right, couldn't be any other way, that the progression of musical ideas is somehow both 'obvious', and yet, quite miraculously, is unpredictable given that no other than a great composer could have written it?

Maybe I'm creating puzzles where none are to be found. The puzzle came to me again last night when revisiting Brahms 1 (surely one of the greatest symphonies ever written?) Let me put the puzzle this way. Suppose a rather mediocre composer happened, rather like the proverbial monkey tapping away at a keyboard and by chance arriving at the first two acts of Hamlet, to have composed the first three movements of the symphony (OK, rather improbable, but stay with it).

Question: what are the chances of him going on to produce the final movement of Brahms 1? Absolutely zero, I'd say. And just as unpredictable as the monkey producing Hamlet Act III. And yet, puzzlingly, all the hints, all the ingredients of that glorious, heart-lifting, majestic 'big tune' that starts with the shift to C major after the extended introduction are already there or implicit in the first three movements. So in that sense the final movement is perfectly 'obvious' - and yet no-one other than Brahms and his genius could have done it. Once you've heard it you grasp that the movement and progression of ideas in it have an inevitability and just couldn't be any other way. And despite its 'obviousness' you're still enthralled many years later when you hear it for the 67th time. By that time you 'know' perfectly well what's going to happen in the crowning coda to the work, but it still knocks the socks off.

Isn't it something like this (hopelessly and clumsily expressed) that accounts for that feeling of the music already being in the head, already being familiar, and just needing the experience of hearing it to trigger off one's response to it?

It is surely that 'already being in the head' that also accounts for the 'indestructibility' of great music. Great music always survives a performance. Hear Brahms 1 performed by the Great Yarmouth Symphony Orchestra, or even in a piano reduction, and it still strikes you as great music.

What do others think of this idea that's struggling to get out here? Are there, for example, great pieces of music that are not likewise 'already in the head', not likewise with that 'obviousness' coupled with an unpredictability that only a great composer could think up? If so, I am refuted!

Apologies for rather wittering on!

Peter

[eschiss1]

Great music always survives a performance- can't agree... unless of course counterexamples are turned on their head. I'm very strongly of the conviction, anyhow, that at least some Liszt and Schoenberg is great and not just quite good, but can be ruined by a taffy-pulling or even mediocre performance. (This is related to something Schoenberg is known to have said or written fairly often- his music wasn't modern, just badly performed. He had a point, I think.) (And Mahler 5 was almost ruined for me, I think, when I first heard it- live, that time- by a performance that was only ok or even very good but not good enough - at Tanglewood, conducted I suspect - this was back in 1987, my memory's not that good- by Ozawa?)
Eric

[jerfilm]

Have you ever had this happen to you.  You buy a recording of some work that you've not heard (and my collection does not contain many things where I have multiple performances), you love what you hear and then you finally get to attend a real, live performance and the dynamics and the tempos and the emphasis for particular instrumental parts is different and it's "not right" and you leave thinking what a dreadful performance it was?  And the audience loved it......

Or the opposite - I recall a performance of Sibelius 2 - it must have been in the '70s - by the Minnesota under then new Maestro Skrowaczewski, which just seemed the perfect combination of the above and one which I've never forgotten and never found a recorded performance that came close.

I do think we become conditioned but I seem to have mellowed with age - and perhaps it's because I hear so much new music and so seldom go back and revisit the beloved war horses  that continue to be cranked out each year during the concert season.

[Alan Howe]

OK, we're getting seriously off-topic here! Where I will agree, though, is that there is a sense in which great music just seems to be somehow effortless, inevitable. That was the experience I had with R6, even when I heard it in its piano 4-hands version before the work was first recorded in its orchestral version. And then, when the recording of the orchestral version itself came along, well, for me it was a 'Brahms 1 moment', as it were. The music was now clothed in its rightful colours - it was an incredibly powerful moment. I'm not talking here about the quality of the performance or whether it was recorded live or not: it was the experience (described by Peter) of a piece of music that was simply right, spot-on, inevitable.   

[petershott@btinternet.com]

I agree we're seriously off-topic - and I am responsible for that. It was sparked off by an observation of JimL that seemed to be both seriously right and very puzzling. I now shut up!

Gosh if Alan's experience on hearing Rufinatscha 6 was indeed a Brahms 1 moment, well I'm liable to end up in jail for burgling the Chandos factory in the middle of the night! I've never heard a recorded performance of this symphony, and am mightily looking forward to it.

Peter

[JimL]

Gosh if Alan's experience on hearing Rufinatscha 6 was indeed a Brahms 1 moment, well I'm liable to end up in jail for burgling the Chandos factory in the middle of the night! I've never heard a recorded performance of this symphony, and am mightily looking forward to it.

Peter

Well, unless you were at the studio performance, if you haven't heard the recording this will be a completely new work for you.  Tell us afterwards if you do or don't have a "Brahms 1" experience with it.

[FBerwald]

My interest in Rufinatscha  stems from the almost rabid discussions of this obscure composer and the fact that I cant find even a tiny soundclip (not even on youtube) of his music; So I am very curious as to how his music sounds. Anyone care to explain (or try to) to what composer he sounds closest to, or is it an amalgamation of various influences or is it a completely new sound world!

[eschiss1]

if not blocked (as it is for possibly valid, possibly not, copyright reasons, in some countries), go to this Google Books link for the 1871-2 AMZ, specifically pages 31 and on of the 10 January 1872 issue, to see about 14? music examples in small score from the four movements of the 6th symphony- a review of a 4-hand arrangement of the score, not of a performance.  Reviews of opp.14 and 15 and of a chamber work, I think, are elsewhere in the volume. (Search for Rufinatscha in the Google books search bar on the left side to find these.) From the index I think the reviewer was Selmar Bagge, a familiar name; but I'm not positive.
Don't know where to find music samples just now, no...
Eric

[Mark Thomas]

Restricted view only if you live outside the USA I'm afraid.

[eschiss1]

Restricted view only if you live outside the USA I'm afraid.

hrm, even Canada? ow.