Felix Weingartner - Orchestrazione della sonata per pianoforte Opus 106.

[OrlandiArmando]

Ciao a tutti.

 

Pur non essendo un esperto di incisioni beethoveniane strictu sensu, nel mio peregrinare fra la discografia di Ludwig, soprattutto alla ricerca di bizzarrie, stranezze parafrasi et similia, quasi a creare una WunderKammer stile Rodolfo II d’ Asburgo, mi era famigliare la trascrizione orchestrale che fece a suo tempo Felix Weingartner della sonata per pianoforte Opus 106. Se le mie notizie non sono incomplete, credo che esistano in CD solo due/tre etichette che ripropongono la vecchissima registrazione degli anni '30. La prima è della Pearl, B000027QHN che si può trovare qui: http://www.amazon.it...f/dp/B000027QHN La seconda è recente della Naxos: 0636943191323 e si può trovare qua: http://www.naxos.com...m_code=8.110913 . La terza è un EMI Japan sempre con la stessa registrazione. Tuttavia tutte queste performances, comprese quelle - numerose - che si trovano su Youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X4LqEnF1TiA (un esempio) risalgono alla famosa registrazione che l' autore fece fra il 1925 ed il 1930. So che questa trascrizione fu fatta per l' integrale delle sinfonie che Wein diresse con la vecchia London Philarmonic Orchestra (che fu riformata qualche tempo dopo) e che la partitura fu edita da B&H nel 1926. Qui ne hanno una copia http://www.worldcat....r=brief_results . Possibile che da allora nessuno la abbia più riproposta? I due cd provengono da un vinile 78 giri della Columbia, forse del 1928-1930, che la stessa Columbia ripropose nel 1953. Improvvisamente, ecco una registrazione che mi era sconosciuta: mi arriva un introvabile LP della Urania Records URLP 7089, con la sonata diretta da Kurt Graunke http://de.wikipedia....ki/Kurt_Graunke a capo della Bavarian Symphony Orchestra. (anno 1953 anch' esso). Vi allego qua in calce la copertina ed il retro. Certo, ho recuperato una ventina d' anni.... ma dopo? Chi ne sa di più? Infine, metterò la sonata incisa sull' LP sul sito, non appena mi sarò accertato che nessuno ne detiene più i diritti d' autore.

 

Amicizia,

[Carlos]

Grazie! Bellissima sorpresa.

[GoffredoLIguri]

Grazie Armando, se tu non ci fossi bisognerebbe inventarti

[OrlandiArmando]

Grazie Goffredo....

ma scherzi? Chissà cosa ne penserebbe Fiorella! Allora spinto dai numerosi likes di questo post ecco questi gli ultimi sviluppi: i CD (ed i filmati youtube) contengono un' unica registrazione, quella fatta da Weingartner con la Royal Philharmonic Orchestra e registrati i giorni 26/27/28 e 31 Marzo 1930 nella Central Hall a Westminster. La divisione esatta delle matrici è questa:

 

 

I Allegro (WAX 5487/ 88; Columbia LX 43)

 

II Scherzo - Assai vivace (WAX 5489; LX 44)

 

III Adagio sostenuto (WAX 5490/92/98/99; LX 44/46)

 

IV Largo; Allegro risoluto (WAX 5485/86/91; LX 46/47)

 

Il mio raro LP invece fu registrato negli studi di Monaco di Baviera nell' agosto 1952 da Kurt Graunke con la Bavarian Symphony Orchestra e pubblicato nel 1953 negli USA. Ho messo i quattro files audio on-line proprio sul sito, così possiamo godere di questa novità rara: http://www.lvbeethov...te.html#Opus106 .

 

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Ecco che cosa ho trovato sull' orchestrazione Weingartner (Pearl) :

 

In view of the fact that he was both a pupil and a protégé of Liszt, it would be easy to deduce that in Felix Weingartner we have an invaluable link between the golden age of Romanticism and the more dispassionate temper of our own times.« It would also be mistaken In reality, as evidenced in the present recording, Weingartner was among the first conductors to take aim at the Romantic movement and shoot to kill. When Debussy described him as “a new knife’’, he referred to something more than the maestro’s angular and incisive demeanour on the rostrum. In a lifelong artistic crusade of almost unnerving consistency, Weingartner sought to purify the memory of the masters by ruthlessly stripping away what he saw as the excrescences of Romantic self-indulgence (egregious rubatos, the irrelevant highlighting of inner voices, capricious fluctuations of tempo, orchestral retouchings etc.). In championing this then unfamiliar respect for the markings in the score, he brought to his interpretations the fellow-feeling of one who knew musical creation from the inside out. Unlike the famous Hans von Bulow, who represented most of what Weingartner despised in a conductor, he was himself an accomplished and prolific composer, whose failure with the public was the bitterest disappointment in his artistic life. And therein lies the greatest paradox in his eminently successful career as a conductor. While on the one hand espousing fidelity to the score, he was not averse to making liberal cuts, particularly in the works of Wagner, as though to demonstrate that even the greatest geniuses were prone to imperfect judgment. “I came to the conclusion,” he once wrote, “that many pages [of Wagner] are too long, not only in actual time but also in organic structure, dramatic necessities and unity of style. I therefore consider judicious cutting an artistic duty that greatly enhances the aesthetic pleasure to be obtained.”

It was in a similar spirit, though from different motives, that he helped to complete Beethoven’s own (ostensibly) imperfect vision of the titanic Hammerklavier Sonata, Op. 106. This colossal work - with Liszt’s B minor Sonata, the greatest overall challenge in the 19th-century piano repertoire - was unique, in Weingartner’s view, for reasons far transcending its unprecedented length and difficulty. Alone among Beethoven’s sonatas, said Weingartner, the “Hammerklavier” exceeds the limits of the instrument for which it was written. And here too, he brought the authority of first-hand experience to his judgment: the great Liszt himself applauded Weingartner’s achieve-ments as a pianist. From his earlier contact with the piece, the “Hammerklavier” preyed on Weingartner’s creative imagination. Might it be possible, he asked, “to lift this gigantic work into the Symphonic sphere of the orchestra, and thus to invest it with that resplendent power which cannot clearly be manifested on a keyboard by two human hands?” Late in his career, after a lifetime’s study of Beethoven’s works, he felt ready to answer in the affirmative. Accordingly, in 1926, and convinced that he was fulfilling what must already have been in Beethoven’s mind, he published the score performed here.

 

Restricting himself to the orchestral forces used by Beethoven in the Ninth Symphony (minus the percussion instruments of the finale), W'eingartner nevertheless availed himself of certain post-Beethovenian developments. For the abrupt and frequent key changes (a feature, incidentally,not characteristic of Beethoven’s own orchestral compositions), he felt obliged to introduce the use of valve-horns and trumpets, but apart from this he adhered strictly to musical devices sanctioned by the composer himself. There are moments, however, as in his Wagner emendations, when Weingartner the composer/ adapter might seem to be trying to have his cake and eat it too. “In a few rare cases, ” he notes, “it is so clear that Beethoven would have continued a part if he had had a third hand or the orchestra at his disposal, that continuations can be carried out without scruple, especially as they in no way represent a change of the original (!), but merely an adaptation to the scope of the orchestra.” Harmonic additions, too, became necessary in the translation of pedal effects. Otherwise, the arrangement is a model of the transcriber’s art, whose fidelity to its model may be easily checked by following the performance from the original piano score. In one important particular, however, it may be said that Weingartner’s painstaking act of interpretative recreation robs the music of one of its most fundamental properties, the element of struggle. In the hand of even the most finished virtuoso, the sonata is manifestly the work of one of music’s most exalted and indomitable.

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C' è tanto materiale da scrivere un capitolo di un libro... a proposito; ho memoria di un passaggio di un libro che riporta più o meno testualmente che l' incipit del primo movimento della sonata ha un che di grandioso nella redazione per piano che si perde nella trascrizione orchestrale.... se non mi aiutano Daniele o il buon Luigi comincerò a scartabellare una montagna di volumi....

[Marziano]

Grazie!