Virgil Thomson on Ansermet (long)
David Mendes
Thomson may be of interest
Regards,
David Mendes
PRINCE OF IMPRESSIONISM
Cries of "Bravo!" sounded in Carnegie Hall last night as Ernest
Ansermet, conducting the Philadelphia Orchestra, brought to a close
the final dazzling pages of Debussy's La Mer. The whole concert had
been dazzling, indeed, and not through any playing of tricks on
audience psychology or any of the grosser forms of tonal appeal. The
great Swiss conductor had held us all enthralled, as he had the
orchestra itself, by sheer musicianship, by knowledge, by
understanding, by a care for aural beauty and for exactitude.
In appearance a simple professor, touched up perhaps toward both
Agamemnon and the King of Clubs, he is at once a sage, a captain, and
a prince. With wisdom, firmness, and grace he rules his domain; and
that domain is the music of impressionism. For other leaders the
center of the world may be Beethoven or Brahms or Wagner. For him it
is the music of Debussy and all that borders thereon. No one living,
not even Monteux, can command him in that repertory. Smooth as a
seashell, iridescent as fine rain, bright as the taste of a peach are
the blends and balances of orchestra sound with which he renders,
remembering the lines, the backgrounds, and the tonal images of the
great tonal painters who worked in France round the turn of our
century.
Mozart he plays with love and with light, too; and he began last night
with the "Prague" Symphony, just to show us how a classical rendering
can be clean and thoroughly musical without being dry or overcrisp.
The Philadelphia players found his company on that ground a privilege
and gave of their best, which is the world's best. But it was only
royalty on a visit. With Stravinsky, Fauré, and Debussy the king was
back in his land, in his own house reigning, informed, understanding,
understood, obeyed from a glance.
Stravinsky's Song of the Nightingale, arranged from an opera score and
reorchestrated into a symphonic poem in 1919, may well represent this
composer at his highest mastery of instrumental evocation. Musically,
nevertheless, the work is weak from lack of thematic integration and
harmonic structure. It gives pleasure as sound, page by page, palls as
musical continuity in the concert room. It needs to be played from
time to time, because it is a work of the highest and most striking
fancy, but heaven preserve us from it as a repertory piece.
Fauré's Pelléas et Mélisande suite, on the other hand, is a work of
deep loveliness that could stand more usage in repertory than it gets
these days. When played with such sweet harmoniousness and such grace
of line as it was last night, one wonders why one had forgotten how
touching it can be.
Debussy's La Mer brought the wonders of the evening to a radiant
close. It is a piece this reviewer had always found a shade
disappointing; but it is a popular repertory work; and if one has to
hear it, Ansermet's reading of it is more welcome than most. Actually,
while listening to it, this unfriendly witness forgot all his
prejudices and enjoyed himself thoroughly, almost as thoroughly as
during the Mozart and the Fauré.
January 19, 1949
Virgil Thomson, "Music Reviewed 1940-1954" Vintage Books, New York
1967
DelMarva LaPoule
>
> Debussy's La Mer brought the wonders of the evening to a radiant
> close. It is a piece this reviewer had always found a shade
> disappointing;
An ironic comment, considering that Thomson's own composition "Sea Piece
with Birds" closely -- uh -- "resembles" Debussy's work.
Maybe Thomson thought he could do a better job than Debussy!
Bloom
Debussy's La Mer is a piece I've always felt I should like more. I
mean, I like it well enough, but I don't listen to it very often.
Every time I pull my Debussy discs down from the shelf to listen to La
Mer (which is fairly often -- like I said, I feel like I should like
it more, so I often force myself to listen to it), I end up fast
forwarding to the Nocturnes instead (I can listen to the Nocturnes all
day, and night, long -- I love all three of them). ;-)
Maybe I just need to get a recording of La Mer that doesn't have
Nocturnes on the same disc. ;-)
-Billy
Larry Rinkel
"Bloom" <wqm...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:b4fsbvo7jbs1i836u...@4ax.com...
> Maybe I just need to get a recording of La Mer that doesn't have
> Nocturnes on the same disc. ;-)
>
> -Billy
Or vice versa . . . .
- LR (who can listen to the three movements of La Mer all
day and night long -- I love all three of them, but the Nocturnes not so
much).
Paul Goldstein
says...
>
>In light of recent discussions, perhaps the following review by Virgil
>Thomson may be of interest
How interesting it would be to hear Ansermet in front of an orchestra like the
Philadelphia.
Paul Goldstein
Matthew B. Tepper (posts from uswest.net are forged)
following letters to be typed in news:DPsva.94522$AG6.14957401
@news4.srv.hcvlny.cv.net:
Really? I think "Nuages" is one of the best things Debussy ever wrote.
--
Matthew B. Tepper: WWW, science fiction, classical music, ducks!
My personal home page -- http://home.earthlink.net/~oy/index.html
My main music page --- http://home.earthlink.net/~oy/berlioz.html
To write to me, do for my address what Androcles did for the lion
Mark Coy tossed off eBay? http://makeashorterlink.com/?M2B734C02
RMCR's most pointless, dumb and laughable chowderhead: Mark Coy.
Larry Rinkel
wrote in message news:Xns93786C53F5C...@129.250.170.81...
> "Larry Rinkel" <LRi...@optunderline.net> appears to have caused the
> following letters to be typed in news:DPsva.94522$AG6.14957401
> @news4.srv.hcvlny.cv.net:
>
> > "Bloom" <wqm...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
> > news:b4fsbvo7jbs1i836u...@4ax.com...
> >
> >> Maybe I just need to get a recording of La Mer that doesn't have
> >> Nocturnes on the same disc. ;-)
> >>
> >> -Billy
> >
> > Or vice versa . . . .
> >
> > - LR (who can listen to the three movements of La Mer all day and night
> > long -- I love all three of them, but the Nocturnes not so much).
>
> Really? I think "Nuages" is one of the best things Debussy ever wrote.
>
familiar to me than some other Debussy pieces. I could of course take it
down from the shelf this evening and change my mind tomorrow.
Alan Watkins
quotes about music. I do not know Sea Pieces but I have played The
Plow (??) That Broke the Plains.....we gave it our best shot but not a
lot happened for Old Chap. Possibly there are better pieces I do not
know or that we just failed to understand him.
I love Ansermet but I don't think you can ever be so definitive about
anyone, either composer or interpreter. Anyway, I wish Mr T had been
more definitive on the occasion that I played him.
Kind regards,
Alan M. Watkins
Raymond Hall
news:DPsva.94522$AG6.14...@news4.srv.hcvlny.cv.net...
There are times where one can almost smell the salt, feel the wind and see
the huge waves listening to La Mer. A true masterpiece of orchestral
writing. Strangely it might be called Impressionism, but Literalism (a la
Richard Strauss) is very close. The Debussy piece I never seem to really
*get* or enjoy much is Jeux. The piece quite eludes me.
Regards,
# http://www.users.bigpond.com/hallraylily/index.html
See You Tamara (Ozzy Osbourne)
Ray, Taree, NSW
David7Gable
>day and night long -- I love all three of them, but the Nocturnes not so
>much).
I can listen to the Nocturnes or La mer, although I like Nuages better than
Fêtes and Fêtes better than Sirènes. La mer is a miracle.
-david gable
David7Gable
So do I.
-david gable
sch...@gefen.cc.biu.ac.il
: I can listen to the Nocturnes or La mer, although I like Nuages better than
: Fetes and Fetes better than Sirenes. La mer is a miracle.
:
I've never been a particular fan of Debussy, but I've always found La Mer
tolerable if played well. I like Fetes and Nuages in that order (possibly
for sentimental reasons), but I've never been able to stand Sirenes. It
leaves me feeling badly in need of an insulin shot or something.
-----
Richard Schultz sch...@mail.biu.ac.il
Department of Chemistry, Bar-Ilan University, Ramat-Gan, Israel
Opinions expressed are mine alone, and not those of Bar-Ilan University
-----
It's a bird, it's a plane -- no, it's Mozart. . .
Matthew B. Tepper (posts from uswest.net are forged)
to be typed in news:b9n9qm$t9q$9...@news.iucc.ac.il:
> In article <20030511213722...@mb-m19.aol.com>, David7Gable
> <david...@aol.com> wrote:
>
>: I can listen to the Nocturnes or La mer, although I like Nuages better
>: than Fetes and Fetes better than Sirenes. La mer is a miracle.
>:
> I've never been a particular fan of Debussy, but I've always found La
> Mer tolerable if played well. I like Fetes and Nuages in that order
> (possibly for sentimental reasons), but I've never been able to stand
> Sirenes. It leaves me feeling badly in need of an insulin shot or
> something.
The first "ah-ah-ah!" puts me immediately in mind of hootchy-kootchy music
for grade B films, and I can't recover the mood of the first two Images.
Ansermetniac
show. I asked him about Ansermet. He said that he was a great conductor and
the orchestra had nothing but respect for him.
An regarding the nocturnes, Nuages is great but I like the parade in Fetes
and the wrong note for the trumpet who would probably play a wrong note
anyway.
Abbedd
"Paul Goldstein" <pgol...@newsguy.com> wrote in message
news:b9lnd...@drn.newsguy.com...
Larry Rinkel
> <sch...@gefen.cc.biu.ac.il> appears to have caused the following letters
> to be typed in news:b9n9qm$t9q$9...@news.iucc.ac.il:
>
> > In article <20030511213722...@mb-m19.aol.com>, David7Gable
> > <david...@aol.com> wrote:
> >
> >: I can listen to the Nocturnes or La mer, although I like Nuages better
> >: than Fetes and Fetes better than Sirenes. La mer is a miracle.
> >:
> > I've never been a particular fan of Debussy, but I've always found La
> > Mer tolerable if played well. I like Fetes and Nuages in that order
> > (possibly for sentimental reasons), but I've never been able to stand
> > Sirenes. It leaves me feeling badly in need of an insulin shot or
> > something.
>
> The first "ah-ah-ah!" puts me immediately in mind of hootchy-kootchy music
> for grade B films, and I can't recover the mood of the first two Images.
>
being a whole other animal, and one I love as much as La Mer). After playing
the Nocturnes again twice yesterday evening, I'm sure that a lot of my
lukewarm reaction stems from that female chorus. All the same, La Mer seems
to me overall a more imaginative and complex organism than the Nocturnes.
Very much a miracle.
Bloom
I don't mind the female chorus nearly as much as everyone else seems
to. Sure, maybe it's a bit over the top and rots our teeth just a bit
every time we listen to it, but I still think it's awfully pretty.
;-)
However, having said that, I much prefer Nuages and Fetes over
Sirenes. Also, I listened to La Mer again last night, and I do like
it a lot; for some reason, though, I always find my mind wandering
during it. I can't quite identify why this is (there are moments in
it that I absolutely adore), but whatever the reason, I simply don't
find it as riveting as Nocturnes, Images pour orchestra or Jeux (which
are the three Debussy pieces I usually listen to when I listen to
Debussy).
-Billy
Matthew B. Tepper (posts from uswest.net are forged)
following letters to be typed in
> I'm assuming you mean the first two Nocturnes (the Images for orchestra
> being a whole other animal, and one I love as much as La Mer). After
> playing the Nocturnes again twice yesterday evening, I'm sure that a lot
> of my lukewarm reaction stems from that female chorus. All the same, La
> Mer seems to me overall a more imaginative and complex organism than the
> Nocturnes. Very much a miracle.
Nocturnes, not Images, yes. Must get to sleep earlier....
Marcus Maroney
Weekend Classics series) - is it that good? I have and like Boulez
(Sony & DG), Geoffrey Simon (Cala), Szell, Mitropoulos, MTT, Karajan.
Thanks,
Marcus Maroney
marcus dot maroney at yale dot edu
TansalQ
> There are times where one can almost smell the salt, feel the wind and see
> the huge waves listening to La Mer. A true masterpiece of orchestral
> writing. Strangely it might be called Impressionism, but Literalism (a la
> Richard Strauss) is very close. The Debussy piece I never seem to really
> *get* or enjoy much is Jeux. The piece quite eludes me.
I enjoyed La Mer quite a bit when I was first getting into classical music.
But since then I've come to prefer Ravel quite a bit to Debussy and don't
find myself listening to Debussy very often.
A friend of mine recommended Jeux to me as Debussy's masterpiece, and I must
say I've never quite understood it, either.
Tansal