07.11.18

RUDOLF SCHOCK sings EDVARD GRIEG (English)

SONG (S) of NORWAY !

LINK>DEUTSCH
LINK>NEDERLANDS

Edvard Grieg in 1860










In my blog Rudolf Schock was many times central as a singer of art songs.
However, it can be surprising that Schock also sang songs by the Norwegian composer Edvard Grieg. But that is not so strange. The songs of Grieg, music student in Leipzig (Germany), are rooted in (late) German 'Romanticism', albeit sometimes more modern: impressionistic and liberal. He composed not only on Norwegian, but also on German texts. This makes it understandable that in the 20th century German-speaking singers like Richard Tauber and Rudolf Schock incorporated 'Songs of Norway' into their repertoire.

The musical creative talent of Edvard Grieg (1843-1907) from Bergen, Norway, was not so much in the monumental. His impressive opus 16, the early piano concerto in a-mol, is the lone exception. Because more grand piano concerts were not realized and Grieg's attempts to compose an opera and a symphony failed.
Edvard Grieg's great art lay in the small: lyrical valuables for piano (Grieg was also an excellent pianist!), atmospheric songs and effective theater music. He later transformed the music for the theater into suites for orchestra: compositions for the concert hall, which reproduce a plot instrumentally, so without stage acts, in a visual way. Especially the two Peer-Gynt-Suites, opus 46 and 55, which Grieg originally wrote for Henrik Ibsens's play 'Peer (= Peter) Gynt', became audience favorites. A second important merit of Edvard Grieg was that he succeeded in making Norwegian folk music in Europe 'acceptable'. The "scales have fallen from (his) eyes" when in 1864 he became friends with Rikard Nordraak, composer of the Norwegian national anthem and generation companion. Via Nordraak (who was to die of TB in 1866 at the early age of 23) Grieg learned to know the folk songs of the North "and (his) own identity".
Rikard Nordraak
1843-1866









From that moment on Grieg devoted himself to Scandinavian music. As ambassador of the "School of the North", Grieg traveled all over Europe, which earned him a double honorary doctorate in Cambridge and Oxford "as a by-catch".

Note: The plot of the American musical 'Song of Norway' from 1944 (Robert Wright & George Forrest wrote together the text and adapted Edward Grieg's music) is loosely about the period of friendship between Edvard Grieg, Rikard Nordraak and Grieg's later wife, the soprano Nina Hagerup.
In 1970 the filming was published, which was much more freely related to the historical facts. A year later, Anno Moffo & Rudolf Schock recorded the - English sung - duet 'Strange Music'!. Moffo sang Nina Hagerup and Schock Edvard Grieg.




RUDOLF SCHOCK sings SONGS BY EDVARD GRIEG:
 
 >  24.1.1965: 'O Mutter du, ich liebe dich' (opus 58-2). Conductor: Frank Fox.
 
'Oh Mother, ah, I love you so
There's nothing more to say
You too love me, you care for me,
since ever I've been born.
'Oh Mother, yes I love you so.
There's nothing more to say..."
 
The recording got lost on an LP with 'mother songs', a genre, the mention of which alone in many people brings the musical courage to the shoes. But on the LP the songs are mostly respectable 'entertainment songs' by respected composers such as Werner Richard Heymann, Werner Bochmann, Norbert Schultze, Gerhard Winkler, Frank Fox and the Italian Cesare Andrea Bixio, of whom, for example, Beniamino Gigli made 'Mamma' famous. Some 'mother songs' remind of the late-19th century salon songs (read also: 'RS sings Carl Bohm') and can safely be seen as a continuation of it for the living rooms of the 20th century: 'Music for the Millions', naive, sensitive but loved.By the way, why should you sing the seasons, nature, past, present and future, big loves, babies in the cradle and not your own mother, from whom you were born?

The art song (Norwegian title: 'Til Norge') is composed in 1893. The poet John Paulsen and Edvard Grieg explain their love to 'Mother Earth Norway'. The eloquence is achieved by omission. Rudolf Schock touches in the final line: 'Mehr kann ich dir nicht sagen/There's nothing more to say...'.

>  6.2.1968: Love songs 'Ich liebe dich (I Love You) and 'Ein Traum (A Dream)'. Conductor: Werner Eisbrenner.

The contents of 'Ich liebe dich' (opus 5-3) - from  one of Grieg's earliest songs (1866) - can be summarized in the following lines: 'Du mein Gedanke, du mein Sein und Werden, ich liebe dich in Zeit und Ewigkeit!/You are my thoughts, my present and my future, I love you now and for eternity!'.
The poem - translated from Danish - is from none other than the famous fairy tale-teller Hans Christian Andersen (1805-1875).

'Ein Traum' (opus 48-6) wrote Grieg around 1888 on a text by Friedrich von Bodenstedt.

>  9.6.1973: 'Im Kahne (In the Boat/Norsk: Mens jeg venter = On the Water)'. Opus 60-3. Conductor: Werner Eisbrenner.

The song from 1894 goes back to an old national anthem. The Norwegian text is from Vilhelm Krag. The ever-repeated 'Wo-wo-wille' does not exist as word or phrase. 'Wo-wo-wille' only imitates the rocking of the boat in sounds.


> October 1976: epic choral work 'Landerkennung (Land Recognition). Opus 31 (1872).

Is written for male choir, baritone solo (!) and orchestra. Rudolf Schock sings his verses about 2/3 of the piece, when King Olav Trygva(e)son raises a heroic prayer.

Content is based on true events at the end of the 11th century. The Norwegian king Olav Trygvason (964-1000), banished at a very young age, sails back to his homeland after 30 years to bring Christianity there.
When he looms the inaccessible, dark coast of Norway, he threatens to lose all courage. But suddenly, on the instruction of "one of the people",  he recognizes snow-white domes and gray temple walls, which rise above everything else, and he oversees regions that unfold themselves with waterfalls and forests in spring. He hears bells and organ play, and as if by magic a deep desire takes over from him. He praises the Supreme Being, of whom he is completely fulfilled and prays for a lasting, strong faith. His troops repeat the prayer of their king.
 
Krijn de Lege, 18.6.2013 / 26.7.2015 / 26.11. 2018/23.7.2021                    

10.10.18

RUDOLF SCHOCK sings WILHELM KIENZL (English)

LINK ZU DEUTSCH  &   LINK NAAR NEDERLANDS


The young Wilhelm Kienzl (1857 - 1941)
 
 










The Austrian Wilhelm Kienzl was a greatly respected opera composer and conductor until the 1930s. 
Now he is completely unknown to many opera lovers.
In German-speaking Europe, his name is linked to 'Der Evangelimann (The Evangelist)', an opera held for 'oversentimental', for which most music critics no longer have any interest.

The reason for this must be the
tenoraria on biblical text with accompanying children's choir -scene: 'Selig sind die Verfolgung leiden... (Blessed are the persecuted for righteousness, for of them is the Kingdom of Heaven)'. 
This song has become part of the religious ideas of believers over the years and as such extremely popular. Thanks to the tenors Tauber, Völker, Patzak, Schock, Wunderlich, Gedda, Domingo etc., who kept on singing it - often surrounded by a devoted swarm of children - enthusiastically .


After the 2nd World War, Rudolf Schock again made the song popular. On gramophone record for the first time in 1952:











In 1953 the song sounded from the white screen in the Tauber/Schock film 'Du bist die Welt für mich (You are the World for Me)' and after that Rudolf Schock sang the aria many times on the record and in countless (choir) concerts.
In 1972 it even came to complete opera performances on the Viennese 'Volksoper' with Rudolf Schock in the role of "Evangelimann Mathias".













Another tenor scene from an opera by Kienzl also reached the 21st century: the 'finale of the first act' from the opera 'Der Kuhreigen'.
Richard Tauber sang the first finale before World War II (1931), Rudolf Schock did so after World War II (1955). Later Fritz Wunderlich followed.
The Dutch, internationally known opera critic Leo Riemens (1910-1985) wrote in 1955, when Rudolf Schock's 'Kuhreigen' recording came out, that he did not understand the "neglect" of that special opera ( Elsevier's Great Opera Book).
In the Dutch monthly 'Luister(Listen!)' he applauded Schock's performance of the 'Kuhreigen' finale. But his expectation, that the record would be a second Kienzl bestseller, did not come true. Only now - on YouTube - the interest increases:
 












Der Evangelimann/ The Evangelist (1895)
is in fact a veristic opera about people who are left with skin and hair to the merciless reality of life. 'Verismo' ( from Italian) means 'realism' and stands for the literary mainstream in the second half of the 19th century. Novels from those years are about people who are exposed to an unmoved reality.  Especially Italian opera composers were inspired by the verismo . In German-speaking countries, that movement seemed to be limited to an opera such as 'Tiefland (The Lowlands)': Link Eugen d'Alberts 'Tiefland' (German & Dutch). 
In the meantime, however, there are other voices in the serious musical world that conclude that Kienzl's operas surprisingly tie in with the verismo operas of a Giordano, Mascagni, Leoncavallo and Puccini!

 
 Short content of 'The Evangelist':
 
Wilhelm Kienzl bases the textbook - written by himself - on historically transmitted events:

'Mathias, office clerk in an Austrian monastery, and his older brother, the teacher Johannes are both in love with Martha, niece and foster daughter of their superior.
The girl answers Mathias' love, to which the jealous Johannes informs her father.

Mathias is fired and says goodbye to Martha emotionally. Johannes listens to this togetherness and in blind hatred he starts fire:  











...Mathias is accused of the deed. His dismissal must have been the motive. He is sentenced to 20 years in prison.
After his release, Mathias hears that Martha found a final resting place in the Danube. He decides to go through the country as an evangelist...'


Der Kuhreigen (1911)
(is a song with which, for centuries, farmers in the Swiss Alps called their cows to be milked).
Wilhelm Kienzl wrote the opera libretto too. Again his plot is based on historical facts and the content may also perceived as "veristic".
The story plays during the French Revolution of 1792 (In the finale of the 1st act, Swiss mercenary soldiers from the French king hang around in the courtyard of a barracks near Paris).

Non-commissioned officer Primus Thaller (tenor part) puts his arm around the shoulders of fellow soldier Dursel in a melancholy mood and makes him aware of the beautiful evening sky: "Lug, Dursel, lug, der Abend bricht herein.../Look, Dursel, look, the evening dawns ...". In (vocal) rapture, Primus - later also Dursel - is overwhelmed by homesickness to the Swiss "homeland". Suddenly he starts to sing the forbidden (!) melody of the 'Kuhreigen': 'Zu Straßburg auf der Schanz/At Strassbourg on the battlement'. The other men sing with him emotionally.
Alarmed French soldiers storm the courtyard to arrest the "rebellious" mercenaries. Primus, who confesses that he has started singing, is beaten in chains. He sings a final prayer verse.
The 2nd and 3rd Act revolve around the love between Primus and Blanchefleur. He, a trapped foreign mercenary and she, the wife of a French marquis. Blanchefleur pleads successfully with the king for the life of Primus.Then the revolution causes an extreme change of roles. Blanchefleur gets the chance to choose between a life on the side of Primus and the scaffold. She chooses the scaffold.  

HOMESICKNESS or the problem of the "Swiss disease"

Swiss disease (homesickness)
 











Swiss men were wanted as a mercenary in French and Dutch government. But a problem was that when they heard patriotic songs like the 'Kuhreigen' song,
they became ill of homesickness and headfirst deserted. That's why singing that kind of songs led to death penalty. Elsewhere in Europe, the Scottish bagpipe had the same effect.

Against Kienzl's music were and are persistent prejudices! Critics knew that the young Kienzl had assisted Richard Wagner in Bayreuth. Promptly they discovered Wagner in Kienzl's music. 
It was difficult in Kienzl's time to come out under the shadow of Wagner. But Kienzl succeeded in moving down his own appealing path.
 An important and influential colleague composer, such as Erich Wolfgang von Korngold (1897-1957), praised the simplicity and singing ability of Kienzl's melodies. Others condemned that for exactly the same reason. 
 The older Wilhelm Kienzl















Kienzl reacted in his biography (1926) with modesty to the criticism he received:
"In art you have to stimulate the senses, or hit the heart, there is nothing in the middle. I chose the latter"/"I would benefit from the operation that the theater scene has on the spectator? That's not a cunning calculation, but fair art".

Wilhelm Kienzl had an admirable talent for writing theater music, which the people knew how to hit: the so-called 'Volkston (folk song style)', which is straightforward and direct, but seems simple.
He endorsed - consciously or not - the starting point of the song composer Johann Abraham Peter Schulz (1747-1800).
According to Schulz, the secret of the "Volkston" lies in the "appearance of the well known". A composer achieves that if he consistently subordinates the progressive melody to the course of the text. Schulz shows that e.g. in his famous musical version of the Matthias Claudius poem 'Der Mond ist aufgegangen (The moon has risen)'.
 
YouTube recordings of the first finale from 'Kuhreigen' 
The voices of Fritz Wunderlich and "his" male choir sound beautiful polished and the (first) stereo recording is transparent. The orchestra accompaniment seems to avoid possible associations with Wagner as much as possible.

From Richard Tauber in 1931 the 2 parts of the finale were recorded separately. What stands out is Tauber's almost nonchalant vocal ease and the self-confident accents that he places here and there in the text. The sentences of the baritone (Dursel) in 'Lug, Dursel, lug' sings Tauber himself. 
Richard Kraus






Conductor of the mono-recording with Rudolf Schock is Richard Kraus (1902-1978), son of Ernst Kraus (Wagner-tenor celebrated a century ago and good friend of Enrico Caruso! ).
Richard Kraus & the Deutsche Oper Berlin orchestra do not shy away from Wagner's shadow and create a powerful sound. A sensitive Rudolf Schock and a Primus Thaller, who feels connected with nature and God, coincide nicely.

Schock, the heroic baritone Alfons Herwig (Dursel), the other 'Swiss' and the orchestra make the radio play a compelling spectacle.
Baritone Alfons Herwig


Note the ominous commitment of the orchestra after Primus ' firm 'Das klag 'ich an/I accuse that'... You see the French rushing into the courtyard!
    



Krijn de Lege, 9 oktober 2018

! Link to Schock's filmbiography: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OgnTZlOtIeE