ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON AND ROBERT SCHUMANN?

Who knew that one of the favorite composers of novelist/ poet Robert Louis Stevenson was Robert Schumann? This was news to me, until recently. But when you think about it, one of the literary world’s pre-eminent writers of childhood and swashbuckling adventure would inevitably turn to a composer with the same fine predilections. Stevenson learned the flageolet in his mid-thirties and adapted several of Schumann’s piano pieces to it.

Stevenson talks about this in letters dated December 22, 1872 and February 14, 1887.

BELOW IS INFORMATION GLEANED FROM THE INTERNET:

Evidently a solo for flageolet, this is an arrangement of a piano work from Schumann's collection of 43 pieces called Für die Jugend (For the Young). Schumann used three asterisks as the title, and this is presumed by some to refer to Schumann's relationship with his wife Clara. RLS also made arrangements of six other pieces by Schumann; Erinnerung, Ländliches Lied, Matrosenlied, Slow Movement, Stückchen, and the famous Träumerei. Except for the last, all these appear in Für die Jugend and so it is likely that the packet he received referred to in the letter to Anne Jenkin included Schumann's collection, especially since it had been recently published by Breitkopf in 1887.

Stevenson made many changes to this piece to accommodate his instrument. To bring it within range of the D flageolet he transposed it from F to D, and most of measures 2, 6-7 are raised an octave. The final note in measure 3 is transcribed two notes too high. When Schumann puts the theme far out of range in the lower end of the piano, RLS leaves this out entirely and repeats the first section. Schumann's second section is copied exactly, but here RLS discards the repetition and the short coda.The performance instructions at the beginning of the piece were altered from "nicht schnell, hübsch vorzutragen" to "nicht schnell, hübsch vorgetragen."

It is evident that RLS copied from the Breitkopf edition of 1887 because the slurs are exactly the same, the expression marks over the last note in the third measure are the same, and the dotted notes with a slur at the end are the same. These markings do not all occur in the Schumann volume of Lenz's Classics for the Young, which Stevenson also owned and could have used instead.

HORROR MUSIC REVISITED

Music can’t be trusted. While listening to even the most sweetly beautiful strains of music, be afraid. Be very afraid.

I have already written at some length about the use of classical music in horror films (see my earlier blog, “Horror Music”). It’s a rich subject, inasmuch as those classical standbys by the likes of Franz Liszt, Hector Berlioz, and Bach, for example—respectively, Liszt’s “Mephisto Waltz,” Berlioz’s “Symphonie Fantastique,” and Bach’s “Toccata and Fugue in D Minor”— are spooky enough even without their cinematic applications. But recent viewings of two Hollywood films noir, the 1946 UNDERCURRENT, with Katharine Hepburn and Robert Taylor, and the 1947 POSSESSED, with Joan Crawford and Van Heflin, prove a very different point. In these two examples, it is remarkable that the music chosen to literally underscore sinister doings is itself relatively benign when heard in its original contexts.

Take UNDERCURRENT, wherein newlywed Katharine Hepburn finds herself yoked to a pathological killer. Running throughout the dark proceedings is the theme from the Andante from Johannes Brahms’s Third Symphony. This lovely, pastoral theme from what is perhaps Brahms’s most beautiful and lyric symphony, is given a real workout, repeatedly played diegetically on a piano and everywhere omnipresent on the soundtrack of musical arranger Herbert Stothart. Who knew, as it passes in and out of minor modes and collapses into distorted fragments, how disturbing this music really can be?

Likewise, the music deployed to evoke Joan Crawford’s descent into insanity in POSSESSED, is a particularly graceful and lyric excerpt from Robert Schumann’s Carnaval. It’s a lovely little thing, a musical portrait of Chopin, that could hardly be twisted into a darker pretzel shape. Yet, here it is, in the hands of music arranger Franz Waxman, its fragile wistfulness now a musical gargoyle of Joan Crawford’s deranged jealousy and madness.

It goes without saying that neither the Brahms nor the Schumann music can be heard again in the concert hall without this darker cloak of instability clouding our listening experience. What have we learned? That context is everything? That within the most gentle of musical expression lurk demons? That music itself possess its own “Jekyll and Hyde” identity, by turns, outwardly sweet, proper, and well-behaved, and malignant, dangerous, even homicidal?

Musical purists may howl. But we fans of film noir already know that you just can’t trust what you see—and what you hear.

PAVAROTTI

THE FOLLOWING INTERVIEW ARTICLE WITH LUCIANO PAVAROTTI BY JOHN C. TIBBETTS WAS FIRST PUBLISHED IN “THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR” ON 5 May 1989. I RECALL THESE EVENTS NOW UPON RECENTLY VIEWING THE NEW RON HOWARD DOCUMENTARY.

MY 1989 INTERVIEW FOLLOWS BELOW IN ITS ENTIRETY.


I suppose not many folks can say they spent a half hour alone with opera superstar Luciano Pavarotti in the backseat of a limousine...

Let me explain:

OPERA superstar Luciano Pavarotti has received many extravagant titles over the years, from ”The King of the High C's'' to “Grandissimo Pavarotti.'' But perhaps none is as close to his heart as the simple appellation, “Doc.'' “Doctor Pavarotti'' is the way he is known to the citizens of the town of Liberty, Mo., just a half hour's drive from Kansas City.

Mr. Pavarotti has just arrived at the Kansas City airport in preparation for a solo concert recital next Tuesday under the auspices of Richard Harriman and William Jewell College.

It is a warm spring evening, but he has the familiar red silk scarf wrapped about his neck. He is trimmer than I expected. We exchange hurried greetings and move to his curbside limousine for a prearranged interview.

Once inside, the flashing cameras and the noises are shut out. Luciano settles back into the deep cushions with a sigh. He is tired. The evening before, he had just finished preparing Verdi's “Luisa Miller'' with the prizewinners of the latest Pavarotti International Voice Competition in Philadelphia. Ahead in coming weeks are performances at the Metropolitan Opera and a European tour.

“Yes,'' he continues, “I just finished `Elixir of Love,' and there is a recording of `Trovatore' ahead, and then the tour - but after that I go to my beach house at Pesaro [on the Adriatic coast] for the rest of the summer....''

He pauses a moment, checking the slim, leatherbound notebook he carries in the inside pocket of his jacket. The solo recital Tuesday is the only such concert he will give all season. Indeed, the recital will mark the fifth time since 1973 that he has come here under the auspices of the William Jewell College Fine Arts Series. He is looking forward to seeing many old friends.

“I think this recital is very important to everybody,'' he explains, “since the first time I made my first recital was exactly in this place.''

His face is etched in silver outlines by the lights outside the car window. The voice that can fill auditoriums the size of Radio City Music Hall and Madison Square Garden is hushed in this tiny cell of silence.

“That recital gave to my performing a different dimension,'' he says. “I was able, through this first concert and the others that follow it, to reach people who were not the usual people for the world of the opera. Some go only to see opera; others only to the recitals. Now I find both. Yes, it all start here from the Liberty, Mo., concert.''

It had been a chilly February night when Pavarotti first came here to perform sixteen years ago. At that time he was known in the music world solely as an opera performer.

The young man, born in Modena in northern Italy, had given up careers as an elementary school teacher and nighttime insurance salesman to pursue singing. He moved quickly from his opera debut near his home town in 1961 in “La Boheme'' to a debut four years later at La Scala in Milan (again in “La Boheme'') and then his Metropolitan Opera debut in 1972 as Tonio in Donizetti's “La Fille du Regiment.''

In the audience at that Metropolitan debut was Richard Harriman, an English professor from William Jewell College, and supervisor of the college's concert series. Professor Harriman decided he would try to get this young singer to appear at the college in a recital.

When he contacted Pavarotti's press representative, Herbert Breslin, he was told the singer did not do recitals, but possibly they could kick around the idea. “So we talked further,'' Harriman recalls. “It developed that Mr. Pavarotti had considered a solo recital debut, but it would cost me $6,000. Now in those days, that was the fee given to the highest-paid tenor in the world, Richard Tucker. `Nobody's ever heard of your singer,' I said. After a pause, his voice came back to me: `They will!'''

Soon the arrangements were made, but when Pavarotti arrived the night before the recital he was unsure that he would be well enough to go on. The next day, however, he felt better. “I got the call from Mr. Breslin that all was well,'' says Harriman. “We made the drive into Kansas City, where Mr. Pavarotti was staying at the Muehleback Hotel. He warmed up on the piano in the Presidential Suite, which once belonged to President Harry S. Truman. We bundled him up and got him back to campus, and the rest is history.''

What Pavarotti remembers about the concert was his nervousness about appearing on stage alone. “I was very nervous where I'm going to put these hands,'' he says. “So I decided to stuff my hand with a handkerchief, and during the performance my hand began to move normally. From that day I considered it a very good-luck concert for me, because it began something very new for me.''

In a later conversation with me, his accompanist, John Wustman, talked about the concerts here. Pavarotti “was so used to the opera stage, and he felt naked,'' Mr. Wustman said. “There was no prop, no glass, none of the things you might have in `Rigoletto' or any other opera. I think he felt he needed something, and this [handkerchief] idea came to him. It has been his trademark ever since, the world over.''

Wustman was not Pavarotti's pianist that night. He started accompanying Pavarotti at the singer's third concert here, in 1978. “But it is the fourth time I remember the best,'' said Wustman. “That was in September 1983. We moved the concert from the William Jewell campus in Liberty to nearby Kansas City. That was a special time for Luciano.”

Make that “Doctor'' Pavarotti.

That was the year the singer received an honorary PhD in music from the college. The ceremony was packed with spectators, opera fans, and local and national news media. Pavarotti beamed in his cap and gown as he walked to the podium alongside his sponsor, Professor Harriman.

Now, as the William Jewell Fine Arts Series celebrates the opening of its 25th season, it seems only fitting that Doc Pavarotti return for another benefit.

The singer lifts his shoulders in a quiet shrug when I ask him how he managed to be here. He is not one to dwell on such things. “I fit it in, yes. I am glad to come here again. It is really something to be able to come here and make real a piece of music in this way - when you are alone on the stage with nothing else - nothing, just a fantastic pianist like I have.'' There is a knock at the limousine window. The luggage has arrived and has been stowed in the trunk. Time to leave.

One wonders if the quiet simplicity of this area reminds him of his native village of Modena and the soccer fields of his youth. Or maybe it's just the way folks talk to him here. After all, there are times - even in the life of an opera superstar - when the simple title of “Doc'' is preferable to “Grandissimo.”

SCHUMANN, CRAWFORD, MADNESS, AND HOLLYWOOD

When I wrote about the MGM biopic about Robert Schumann, Song of Love (1947) in my book, Composers in the Movies (2005), I noted that the film’s attempts to deal with the composer’s aberrant behavior and psychological disturbances came hard on the heels of other Hollywood films in the 1940s noir period, notably Hitchcock’s Spellbound and Robert Siodmak’s Dark Mirror.

What I didn’t know at the time was that another film at that precise moment, Curtis Bernhardt’s Possessed, also depicted the psychological trauma and collapse of its protagonist, Joan Crawford. More to the point, it saturated its scenes of mania, persecution, aural and mental disintegration with the music of Robert Schumann—in particular, excerpts from Schumann’s Carnaval. Is it mere coincidence that Carnaval, like Possessed, was likewise a portrait of doubles, possessive love, and manic states of mind? Possession’s release in July 1947 preceded by a bare few months the release of Song of Love in October 1947. And is it mere coincidence that two European-trained composers, Franz Waxman in the first film and Bronislau Kaper in the second, found in Schumann the source of musically dramatic trauma? What is immediately apparent is that Possessed prepares us for a stiff dosage of the “Chopin” music from Carnaval, from the opening credits, to a scene with Van Heflin at the keyboard when he first meets Crawford, to a concert scene, and to numerous dramatic and hallucinatory episodes in the deranged mind of the homicidally jealous Crawford. Most spectacularly, at the climactic moment that Crawford guns down Hefflin, the theme erupts in an hysterically dissonant shriek.

That particular theme, the “Chopin” music from Carnaval, is so brief and gentle, that it hardly seems fertile material for a movie about a dangerously unstable woman. But maybe it’s Bronislau Kap er’s genius to recognize in it the potential for high melodrama. Ah, beneath such placid exteriors can lurk madness and murder! Which is exactly the point.

So, there we have it—two movies about madness, two movies with music by Schumann, two movies released within two months of each other... Just a mere footnote in movie/ music history?

Perhaps my taking the time to write about this at all is a kind of “possession” of my own. Has my lifelong preoccupation with Schumann and his music resulted in finding Schumann under every rock and crevice in the Hollywood Hills?

BENJAMIN BAGBY PLUCKS THE MEDIEVAL EPIC STRING

“Hwaet!” declaims Benjamin Bagby, modern-day bard of medieval song and lyric. The word means “Listen!” And we are invited to attend to the music and the sounds of the adventures of ancient gods, heroes, and monsters. Ben came to Kansas City with his company of Sequentia musicians, 17-18 November 2016.

Don’t be fooled by Professor Bagby’s academic credentials. He may be a Professor of Medieval Studies (“Master Professionnel Pratique de la musique medieval”) at the Sorbonne in Paris, but you know his head and heart are invested in the action and romance of the Middle Ages. Midwestern born and raised, his true home is in the feudal castles and monastic cells of old Europe.

During his Kansas City visit we found that nothing could be more spare and affecting than the simplicity of his presence, on stage and in the classroom. Dressed in black, he alone commands our attention. He strums his lyre and plucks his harp while declaiming in old English the epic stories of Beowulf and the pagan songs of Boethius.

Ironically, we can never know if these performances precisely duplicate the art of a particular medieval bard, and we can never rediscover the “original” melody to which any epics were sung in the early Middle Ages, since any given melody probably never existed for any one narrative or story—variations were passed along in each of the oral traditions. Bagby says he relies on careful use of specific information and techniques, coupled with an intuitive spirit based on a working knowledge of both medieval song and the essence of sung oral poetry. That way, he continues, “It is possible to reconstruct highly plausible performance models which allow our venerable ancestral stories to live again.”

We learned that it is the SOUND of his words, rather than their SENSE, that ultimately mattered. Yes, there were subtitles that provided the lyrics of the songs, but gradually, you ignored them and attended to the “music” of the words. It becomes a primarily AURAL experience.

ISTOMIN!

The late EUGENE ISTOMIN (1925-2003) was one of the greatest and most respected pianists of our time. And now we have the news that Sony Classics has released a boxed set of vintage recordings, EUGENE ISTOMIN: THE CONCERT & SOLO RECORDINGS. He was also a helluva nice guy. More on that presently.

We have waited for this for decades, inasmuch as most of his recordings have been out of circulation. The discs include his rarely-heard Bach and Mozart recordings; his celebrated performances of concertos by Rachmaninoff, Beethoven, Schumann and Chopin; and the classic readings of solo works by Chopin (the Nocturnes are in a class by themselves), Brahms (an unsurpassed “Handel Variations”), Schubert, and Stravinsky. In particular, the Rachmaninoff Second Concerto with Eugene Ormandy has long claimed a place among the very finest readings extant.

The legendary Istomin-Stern-Rose Trio
 (Stern, left, Rose, center)

It was a great privilege to call Eugene a friend. I had been listening to his recordings since boyhood (when a Columbia Masterworks recording of his Rach 2 and his Chopin Nocturnes changed my life).

My first encounter with Istomin’s Rachmaninoff. . . at age 8! Many years later we talked about this classic performance.  Never have Istomin’s performances of the Chopin Nocturnes been surpassed.

And when we first met, I was prepared to sit at the feet of a Monument. But no, from the get-go he was just a “Friend.” A very special friend, to be sure—but an amiable guy, as it turned out, whose shop-talk included not just music, but sports, politics, paintings (he was a connoisseur collector), books, and an endless fund of anecdotes about his beloved mentor, Pablo Casals. We met many times, beginning in the 1980s. . . in New York, Washington, DC, and Kansas City. He “introduced” me to the fabled Steinway basement, invited me as a guest to join the jury of the First International William Kapell Piano Competition at Lincoln Center, appeared on my television and radio shows, and allowed me to tape our conversations (including several demonstrations in his New York apartment of Schumann at the keyboard). One particularly cherished memory was a post-concert party held in his Washington apartment with some of his friends and colleagues (including pianists John Browning, Shura Cherkassky, and Paul Badura-Skoda).

With Eugene Istomin, Washington, D.C. 1989

You can hear his voice and his performances in two of my radio series, THE WORLD OF ROBERT SCHUMANN (in which he demonstrates Schumann’s First Sonata), and in a “Tribute” episode of PIANO PORTRAITS, in which he talks about his career, his memories of Serge Rachmaninoff, his association with the famed Istomin-Stern-Rose Trio, his favorite piano (loaned him by Vladimir Horowitz), and his marriage to the remarkable Marta Casals Istomin (who graciously consented to an interview).

Istomin and Rachmaninoff (drawing by John C. Tibbetts)

Oh—I forgot to mention Eugene was a rabid baseball fan of the Detroit Tigers. He would attend Spring training, sit in the dugout, and answer to the nickname “Fingers”! I cherish a photograph he let me take of him wearing the full Tigers regalia!

Watch—and listen—for EUGENE ISTOMIN: THE CONCERT AND SOLO RECORDINGS.

PIANO MAN!

When world-class concert pianist Bezhod Abduraimov returns to his home base in Kansas City for a concert, it’s a “must” event...

And sure enough, his recital of Schubert Impromptus, a Liszt Mephisto Waltz and the Moussorgsky Pictures at an Exhibition on 1 December 2015 was a dazzling, roaring affair. Truly, I have devoted most of my life to cultivating, listening, studying, researching, and enjoying many of the great pianists of our time... and I can tell you that Bezhod, at the tender age of 24 is, to put it bluntly, the Real Thing.

Post-concert autographs

Bezhod Abduraimov is the star pupil of Stanislav Ioudenitch, co-winner of the 2001 Van Cliburn Gold Medalist . Bezhod, as we affectionately call him in these parts, won the Grand Prize at the 2009 London International Piano Competition at the Royal Festival Hall with a performance of Prokofiev’s Third Piano Concerto. The voting was unanimous. He is currently affiliated with the International Center for Music at Park University, Kansas City, MO and records for Decca Records. Critic Michael White has written:

“A year on [from the London International] he’s matured in both appearance and performance into a power-player who projects big sound with big gestures but without the vulgarity or self-indulgence of some young pianists I can think of on the power circuit. For all the drama, aural spectacle and electricity in his playing, it’s substantial, disciplined, and accurate. He doesn’t splash, he doesn’t fake. It’s real.”

He is a native of Uzbekistan, a landlocked country in the heart of central Asia. “It used to be part of the Soviet Union,” explains mentor Stanislav Ioudenitch, “one of the fifteen republics. It borders Kazakstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan to the east; and to the south by Afghanistan and Turkmenistan. Bezhod was from Tashkent, a large city. His teacher was Tamara Popovich. She was one of the most renowned teachers for young players. Alexei Sultanov, who is another Cliburn Gold Medalist, was also there.”

Bezhod and his sister

I have had the privilege of knowing this young man for almost ten years. Back then, in his mid-teens, he was so shy he could hardly make his way out to the platform. Now, seasoned and fully assured, he is absolutely fearless, blazing through Lisztian fireworks and tenderly nuancing the subtlest of Schubertian “heavenly lengths”—The phrase is Schumann’s—with an almost terrifying calm. But above all, he may be developing into one of the greatest Liszt pianists of our time.

The world is his stage, now... but Bezhod will always be one of ours!

MASTER PIANO CLASSES: SEYMOUR BERNSTEIN AND CLAUDE FRANK

My recent viewing of SEYMOUR: AN INTRODUCTION, the new film documentary by Ethan Hawke, has struck all manner of resonances within me about two great pianists, the titular Mr. Bernstein, and the late Claude Frank (1925-2014), pictured below with me at the University of Kansas.

Hawke’s informal portrait of the noted concert pianist/ educator Seymour Bernstein touches a lot of bases (or, piano keys!), namely the biography of a New York-born artist who grew up a keyboard prodigy, survived service in Korea, studied with the eminent British pianist Clifford Curzon, garnered world fame on the concert platform, and has spent his later years teaching the craft and philosophy of art and music.

There’s plenty of piano music, of course, mostly performed by Bernstein himself, with fascinating sidelights on other pianists, notably the eccentric Canadian pianist Glenn Gould, insights into the great piano composers (notably, a passionate commentary on Robert Schumann’s great C-major Fantasie), a tour of the legendary Steinway basement during a piano selection, and peeks into his work with students in master classes.

Ah, yes, the master class. . . Bernstein adopts a warm, patient, and magisterial approach to his students, unlike other master classes I have attended, where somebody like Menahem Pressler is nothing short of ferociously impatient with his students. That is appreciated. But watching these sequences brought to mind my friendship with the late pianist Claude Frank (my drawing below).

I first met Claude when he visited the University of Kansas in 1983 in the first of several Artist-in-Residence appearances there. Instantly, the old-world charm and wit of this master pianist—student of Artur Schnabel and master of the German school of Schubert and Beethoven and Schumann—appealed to me and everyone he met at the University. He sat down with me at the keyboard and talked about his early years in Nuremberg, his escape to America before the onset of World War II, his experiences in the American Army, his subsequent concert career, and his ground-breaking recordings and performances of the complete Beethoven Sonata Cycle. His passion for music and life infused his every word, while he generously punctuated his remarks with performance excerpts. That led to our many other encounters. He became a vital resource for my Public Radio series, The World of Robert Schumann; and just recently, I produced a radio program that featured his affectionate tribute to music in the movies, in particular, his one-man platform performance that mildly satirized the Schumann biopic, SONG OF LOVE (1947). He had allowed me to tape that performance fifteen years ago, and hearing it again now brings tears to my eyes.

Claude Frank and his wife Lillian Kallir (my drawing pictured here), also a world-class pianist, frequently performed together. I vividly remember hearing them both perform a Mozart two-piano concerto. And their daughter, Pamela, has become in her own right a celebrated violinist. Here, indeed, was a family that made beautiful music together. Pamela survives both parents, and a recent performance with Emanuel Ax consolidates her position as one of the pre-eminent violinists in the world.

Master classes. . . nay, MASTER MUSICIANS both, Seymour Bernstein and Claude Frank. I never met the former, alas, but my memories of the incredible generosity and engaging humor of the second, remain a special “musical tone” in my memory.

And kudos to Pamela Frank, whose career carries on the Frank legacy.

WINTERS JOURNEY

Maybe it’s the bleak midwinter we’re enduring. . . or, better yet, maybe it’s the sheer wonder of Schubert’s songs that has occasioned a recent surge in interest in Winterreise (“Winters Journey”), one of the very last compositions by the composer, who died a few months later, in 1828, at the age of 31. First, published this month was Ian Bostridge’s Schubert’s Winter Journey: Anatomy of an Obsession. It’s a curious book, part-confessional, part musicological treatise, and part cultural history.

Then, appearing on the newsstands today is the new Gramophone magazine, featuring a long cover article on the music and its most famous performers (including Mr. Bostridge).

I have already had the pleasure of hearing Mr. Bostridge sing Schubert, and I have enjoyed other performances by other luminaries, notably Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, whose recording with Joerg Demus ranks high on the Chosen List. It was the Fischer-Dieskau/ Demus reading that reached my ears while still a college student. And maybe its status as a “first hearing” is the reason that is so happily engraved in my ears and on my mind.

Not the dappled woodlands and burbling streams of Schubert’s earlier cycle, Die Schoene Muellerin (“The Beautiful Miller’s Daughter”), no, here are the bare paths and frozen tears of a wanderer out of hope and out of time, singing as he trudges toward a chilly horizon. And finally, in the last song of the cycle, “Der Leiermann” (The Hurdy-Gurdy Man), he bids the shabby little musician, “Will you play my songs for me?” Is it an End, or a Beginning?

A few years before he composed this music, Schubert had a dream. “Whenever I tried to sing of love,” he confessed later, “it turned to pain. And again, when I tried to sing of pain, it turned to love.”

This is not to label Winterreise as one dismal and unrelenting outcry. Rather, there is so much else that moderates and enriches the musical textures and moods, like the sinister circling motifs of “Die Kraehe” (The Crow), the churning wheels of the cozy little mail coach (“Die Post”), and even a dream of Spring (“Fruehlingstraum”).

Ian Bostridge’s book befits the marvels of the music. As a member of a generation of other musician-writers, notably, pianists Graham Johnson and Leslie Howard, he writes with the supple skills with which he performs. It is a must for every music lover—and for the music lover surely to come, who will rush to attend an ear after reading its pages.

Here is an except from Winterreise, the unsettling song, “The Crow”. . .

Crow, strange creature,
Won’t you leave me?
Do you really mean to take
My body here as carrion, soon?