The next meeting of the Salisbury Recorded Music Society will be held on Monday 4th March 2019 at 7.30pm in our usual venue, when Alan Forshaw will present: “Charles-Valentin Alkan – Neglected Genius”
Alkan was a lonely 19th Century genius, virtuoso pianist and composer of some of the most difficult and powerful piano works written. Together with Chopin and Liszt was the darling of Paris musical society until he became a recluse and is now largely unknown and forgotten.
Steffani is not a well known composer today but in his day was admired and enjoyed patronage from a number of European courts. Born in the middle of the seventeenth century he became a chorister at St Marco’s in Venice at a young age.
Angus Menzies played a range of pieces and set them in the context of his most interesting life. In addition to his musical and compositional abilities, he was a diplomat being sent on various diplomatic missions around Europe including Brussels. He was also involved in the various negotiations between the Hanoverian court and the Pope concerning the rights of Catholics in that city. He did sufficiently well to be made a bishop by the Pope.
He offered encouragement to Handel who was embarking on his career and who admired Steffani. We heard several works including a chaconne, arias and a trio sonata. Also an extract from the opera Enrico Leone.
His music was original and showed a blend of Italian and French influence derived from his time in Paris studying with the great French composer Lully.
The Elector of Hanover became George I of England and some of his manuscripts are preserved in Buckingham Palace. He was made president for life of the Academy of Ancient Music in England and in recognition of that, composed a Stabat Mater (and some other pieces) from which we heard an extract.
This was a fascinating evening listening to music that most members have never heard before. It is truly surprising the number of artists and composers who were once famous and sort after, are now almost forgotten and in the case of Steffani, undeservedly so.
The next meeting is on Monday 4 March and concerns another composer largely forgotten today, a Frenchman, Valentin Alkan. He composed much piano music but led an eccentric lifestyle. If you haven’t come to a meeting before you would be very welcome and it is only £3 to attend. There is free car parking outside. Further details look at the ‘find us’
The next meeting of the Salisbury Recorded Music Society will be held on Monday 1 April 2019 at 7.30pm in our usual venue, when we shall be very pleased to welcome our own Ed Tinline who will be presenting an evening on the trumpet and other brass instruments.
The second half of the season gets underway on Monday 4th February at 7:30 as usual with a presentation on organ music. We have not had such a presentation in recent years (if at all) and yet there is a large corpus of music written for this ‘king of instruments’. The music will included works in the 17th century and some written in modern times. At least one recording was made with the Cathedral’s organ.
These are notes to help presenters prepare a presentation to the Society
Background
The Society meets every other Monday during its two seasons: one starts in October typically and the second part starts in February. The sessions start at 7:30 and finish at 9:30. There is a 15 minute break in the middle.
It is possible to bring a stick or a lap top to enable visual presentation of material to take place.
Planning
You have 1 hr 45 mins for your presentation. It is wise to allow 5 minutes for lost time so that effectively means you have 1hr:40 to play with.
So a typical presentation will start with an introduction which could be as much as 10 minutes. There is likely to be some explanation between discs about the next piece and these can be around 2 minutes each or as much as 5 minutes.
So you just need to add up the music lengths, add the talk time including your introduction, and this should add to 1hr:40 or 100 minutes. If you would like questions, then it comes down to 90 mins.
If you can type up a playlist that would be appreciated. About 10 copies is about right but more would be welcome.
Find us
Details on how to find us are on one of the tabs at the top of the site. There is ample parking at the rear. The room is on the ground floor and is accessible to people with mobility difficulties. There is a toilet for those with mobility difficulties.
The work of the controversial conductor, Wilhelm Furtwängler
Younger readers will be less familiar with this conductor who died in 1954. Part of the problem is that he was not keen on studio recordings so those recordings that survive are concert performances. The other problems are his involvement with the Nazi regime and that he was admired by Hitler.
The Society was delighted to welcome Dr Roger Allen who has written a book on this controversial conductor Wilhelm Furtwängler: Art and the Politics of the Unpolitical (Boydell Press 2018). Roger is a fellow of St Peter’s College, Oxford. The conductor left a legacy of recordings made during the turbulent period of the early part of the 20th century culminating in the Third Reich.
The first piece was the third movement of JS Bach’s Bradenburg Concerto No. 3 made in 1930. It had an unusually large number of players, compared that is with today’s pared down recordings made with period instruments. Yet the sound was not ‘mushy’ and the parts could be heard distinctly despite it being a mono recording.
Roger then went on to discuss the different approaches between Toscanini
Wilhelm Furtwangler. Pic: larouchepac.com
and Furtwangler illustrated with the first movement of the Eroica Symphony. Toscanini came to Berlin in 1930 and his arrival was not welcomed by the German. Beethoven was seen as ‘home territory’ and Toscanini was criticised for not recognising the ‘organic growth’ of the work – a theory propounded by Heinrich Schenker. I am not sure any of us fully grasped the full import of Schenker’s theory as it applied here, but we were able to distinguish the different approach between the two conductors. As Roger explained it, Toscanini played what was in the score – seen as being rather un-German – whereas there was a distinct sense of being ‘ushered in’ to the symphony by Furtwangler.
At Bayreuth he performed a production of Lohengrin in the presence of Hitler a keen Wagner fan. During the war he became a kind of figurehead for the Nazi regime which led to problems when the war ended. He was part of the denazification programme after the war and did not perform for two years.
Other pieces Roger played included part of Bruckner’s 8th and the whole of Richard Strauss’s Metamorphosen for 23 solo strings. Anton Bruckner was also popular with Hitler and he had a bust made and exhibited in Walhalla. Again, Bruckner was much admired by the Third Reich as being an example of ‘blood and soil’ as well as being an Austrian.
Furtwängler poses difficult questions for listeners, similar to those with Wagner, an avid anti-Semite. His close association with, and support for, the Nazis makes uncomfortable listening. Many artists had to flee Germany and the occupied lands because of persecution so it was not some kind of passive thing.
The presentation was extremely interesting going beyond the normal music centred evenings we usually enjoy. In two hours there was not time to explore all aspects and unfortunately we were unable to get the screen to link to his laptop. Nevertheless, the considerable contribution Furtwangler made to the musical world was well explained. His legacy of recordings is revered by many. Peter Horwood, the chair of SRMS, said it had been a ‘fantastic evening’.
This was the last evening before the Christmas break and we shall be back for the second half of the season on 4 February 2019. We wish all our supporters and members a happy Christmas and we look forward to seeing you again in the new year.
The next meeting of the Salisbury Recorded Music Society will be held on Monday 26th November 2018 at 7.30pm in our usual venue, when we will be very pleased to welcome Dr Roger Allen, Fellow and Tutor in Music at Oxford University who will talk on the work of Wilhelm Furtwängler.
In May 2018 Dr Allen published his book on Wilhelm Furtwängler (1886-1954) who has entered the historical memory as a renowned interpreter of the canon of Austro-German musical masterworks and was for many years principal conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic. Furtwangler also left a substantial legacy of recordings which even today are regarded by many as unique and inspirational.
I hope you will be able to come on Monday, the last before our Christmas break, will be well supported.
The next meeting of the Society is on Monday 29 October at 7:30 as usual and will be a presentation by Ian Lace on Debussy and Ravel – two great French composers. We look forward to seeing you there. It is GDP3 for non-members. Parking is outside the door and is free. Appropriate venue for people with mobility difficulties.
We held our first member’s evening this season and it turned out to be excellent. A small, but perfectly formed selection of music was put forward and we heard a mixture of old favourites and some completely new pieces.
We started with a concerto in D by Johann Fasch a contemporary of Bach and Telemann. Not a composer we have heard played before I think so it was interesting to hear this.
This was followed by the familiar K393 Solfeggio and the Great Mass in c minor by Mozart. This was followed by some extracts from Mendelssohn’s Elijah.
A surprise addition was John Downland’s songs Go Crystal Tears, Mrs Winter’s Jump and I saw my Lady Weep. Forward in time to the romance from Berlioz’s Damnation of Faust which resulted in a considerable financial loss for the composer.
Finally, and perhaps to shake everyone up, we heard the Drunkard from Shostakovich’s Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk. A rumbustious piece to finish the first half. This composition was banned from performance in Russia and led the composer to live in fear of his freedom.
After the break it was Darius Milhaud’s suite for alto sax Scaramouche.
This was followed by some songs which may have been played in Shakespeare’s plays presented from his own disc by Jeremy Barlow. This will merit a fuller presentation in future.
We finished with a live recording of Mahler’s symphony No 8 (final two sections) which rounded the meeting off wonderfully.
So we spanned the centuries and the styles and heard the new and the familiar.
Salisbury Recorded Music Society 