Overblown great music?

[adriano]

Gabriel Fauré's, César Franck's, Florent Schmitt's and Elgar's Piano Quintets; Schubert's String Quintet, Janacek's String Quartets, Schönberg's "Verklärte Nacht", Ravel's "Introduction et allegro" and his Trio, Rachmaninov's "Trio Elégiaque", plus, of course, many chamber pieces by Brahms, do really blow my socks off (I like this expression). And this list is terribly incomplete :-)

[Alan Howe]

I agree 100%!!!

[eschiss1]

When I first heard Beethoven's late quartet in C-sharp, it was in an orchestral form (Bernstein's string orchestra arrangement.) I haven't listened to that recording (overheard in a store) since but I can't deny it caught my attention. (The work kept my attention by being itself.)

[matesic]

I perceive a golden opportunity to return to the "subject" (the words in the box above) here! I love to have my socks physically blown off by some great chamber music (Elgar's quartet, Shostakovich's 9th, Ravel's violin sonata), but deplore the increasing tendency of certain groups to overplay pieces such as the Schubert G major quartet. Yes, the composer was striving for an "epic" scale, but can scarcely have imagined the grandiosity and overblown intensity we often hear today. I'm not sure I want to hear Bernstein's arrangement of Beethoven's Op.131 either!

[Double-A]

Maybe "overblown" and "knocks your socks off" are almost synonymous, at least in Alan's definition of "overblown" which is perfectly compatible with "great".

I do think though that "knocks your socks off" is not a sine qua non for great music (Raff may not knock your socks off and still be well worth listening to--especially the chamber music--to me anyway).  Schumann's piano quintet to me is the ultimate knocks-your-socks-off chamber piece.  To me however his piano quartet is equally great--if not greater--but the socks of the audience are perfectly safe throughout the performance.

P.S. "erlebnisreich" is maybe better translated as "full of life" or "rich with life"--"eventful" is basically just the opposite of boring and does not express the intensity adequately.  At the bottom of the word "Erlebnis" is "Leben", so life in one form or another ought to be included in any translation.

[semloh]

My 'Mahler moment' was the Ken Russell film, which prompted me to borrow Mahler LPs from the public library. I was completely bowled over by what I heard - after 20 years of listening to classical music it was a revelation, and I still react the same way another 45 years on!  Maybe that film was a small factor in Mahler's popularity during the 70s.

I'm not sure one can justifiably accuse the music-buying public of "morbid emotionalism", despite evidence that it is widespread in contemporary society [such as  the ubiquity of exaggerated and superficial emotionalism in popular TV programmes]. As far as music lovers are concerned, the amazing popularity of Vivaldi, Bach, Beethoven and Mozart, surely suggests otherwise. Maybe I am being snobbish but I would venture that such a term might be more reasonably directed at the crossover fans, who swoon over Karl Jenkins and the like, rather than those who buy Mahler CDs.

Many people's working lives suppress emotional honesty, and are frustrating and unfulfilling. In most organisations the individual is forced into a managerially defined identity which has no place for human qualities. If so, maybe music that invokes strong emotions provides a catharsis - an ready outlet for what has been suppressed. Perhaps the UCs could serve the same purpose, but at this point it happens to be Mahler... (?)

[MartinH]

You're onto something regarding music as a way of fulfilling the absence of emotion. Most people listen to music as entertainment and incapable of deriving emotional pleasure from great music. But even trained musicians often miss out: I can't tell you the number of musicians I know, including conductors, for whom something like the last movement of the Mahler 3rd are just notes on a page to be conquered.  Nothing deeper or profound can be found - just notes. There is some music that literally chokes me up; fellow listeners hear nothing. People who really care about great music DO listen on a level different from others and when the composer, performer, and listener are all aligned (in some mysterious way) real magic happens. But lest I think that my music means more than "lesser" music, I see those old films of the hoards of screaming fans listening to the Beatles; that music sure hit an emotional button somewhere (of course, there was more to it than the music alone.) There are surely plenty of unsung works that hit my buttons (Bloch c# minor symphony, Balakirev 1st, Schmidt 4th) in the same way that Mahler hits it for others.

[Alan Howe]

It's bound to be different for different people. My original point was that my Mahler buttons have been pushed too often and too hard...

[adriano]

In my personal opinion, it is sad (or questionable) that Mahler's music had also to be promoted through a miselading film like "Death in Venice" and Ken Russel's stupid and exhalted Mahler movie (his Tchaikovsky is even more stupid). With the Visconti, Deutsche Grammophon even issued an LP with the title of "Death in Venice" using excerpts from Kubelik's recordings.
I will never pardon that Thomas Mann's Aschenbach had to be transformed into Mahler, in order to make the film more "commercial" and this also by using the Adagietto as a seducing element for audiences.
These were the beginnings of the Mahler "popularisation experiment"; suppose Bernstein did not count with such unpleasant side effects.
A note: Nothing against those earlier Ken Russel movies he did for TV - and for his congenial "Tommy"!

[Alan Howe]

Russell's film on Elgar was excellent; but he became maddeningly self-indulgent with the years.

[FBerwald]

Since we have slightly diverged into the topic of screen depiction of composers, I can think of nothing worst than the trash called "The Strauss Dynasty" 1991. It reduced the Strauss family to caricatures :- Johann - A grinning idiot, Josef - a sickly waif, Edward Strauss got the worst depiction - a talent-less hack seething with envy of his brothers [Even Offenbach is shown as a sneering old man]. Johannes Brahms makes one ridiculous and brief appearance where he plays the role of a musical detective and demonstrates how the waltzes of Johann and Josef are different ... something to the effect that While Johann's melodies were natural and free Josef's melodies have an unnatural and deliberate slant probably because of his training as an Engineer. To top it all off, Edward burns the entire Strauss Orchestra Manuscripts after Johann's death because he wanted to destroy his elder brother's legacy. The entire series was so bad ... Anyone else seen this garbage?

[Gareth Vaughan]

No. Thank God!

[Double-A]

I doubt very much that Death in Venice was made to promote Mahler.  For starters it appeared at a time when Mahler didn't require promotion any more.  You might argue that it tried to profit from Mahler's popularity--but he never was popular enough to help the promotion of a movie (in spite of Alan's complaint).
While you might question the decision to turn Aschenbach into Mahler I think you'll need to admit that a composer is a more suitable movie character than a writer (who is of course great for a novel--almost too great I think sometimes when I read yet another book with a writer as hero/heroine).  Hence turning him into a composer is ok with me.
I do think the movie does a good job tackling Mann's themes which to me is the main thing it ought to do.  Anyway Aschenbach in the book is of course Thomas Mann, but not really.  Analogously Aschenbach in the movie is Gustav Mahler--but not really.   I admit it has been a long time since I saw it last so I am not sure I'd still like it.

[Alan Howe]

What 'Death in Venice' did was to popularise Mahler's music - especially the Adagietto from Symphony No.5. Unfortunately this has turned into the Classic FM phenomenon where all anyone knows of Mahler is that vastly over-performed piece.

Incidentally, the film came out in 1971 which was still pretty early in the Mahler boom.

[adriano]

Yes, but Bernstein had completed his cycle already in 1966 (except for the Adagio of No. 10) and Abravanel was already quite far with his cycle too (which he concluded in 1974). In other words, Mahler was already well-known around the world.
Death in Venice was (at least officially) not produced to promote Mahler, but the music industry did take advantage of this oppurtunity and, Visconti had an easily available and commercially promising "source music" to use (like Stanley Kubrick later on). I think producers were more clever than artists. Visconti, in any case, had declared that the Adagietto was for him the epitome of Decadence - a thing which made me furious. He also said he had transformed the writer Aschenbach into a composer in order for audience to have an easier understanding by just listening to music intead of having written texts quoted.
Critics of that time were all other than enthusiastsic about what had become of that poor Adagietto - this, among other, a totally miselading sampler of Mahler!
Incidentally, Thomas Mann had visited a concert performance of Mahler's Eight.