Conductor Lorin Maazel passed away yesterday at the age of 84. He will be remembered for his long, distinguished career and dramatic and idiosyncratic interpretations.
Maazel debuted as a conductor at the age of 9, after starting violin lessons at 5. As an 11-year-old, he received an invitation from Arturo Toscanini to conduct the NBC Symphony. His music director posts included the Cleveland Orchestra (1972-1982), Vienna State Opera (1982-1984), Pittsburgh Symphony (1988-1996), Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra (1993-2002) and the New York Philharmonic (2002-2009). In 2008 he served as a cultural ambassador, leading the New York Philharmonic on a tour of North Korea. In 2009 Maazel and his wife founded the Castleton Festival, a summer program for young musicians at his Virginia estate.
Learn more about Lorin Maazel’s life in this obituary at The Guardian and this PBS Newshour interview.
These memorable quotes reflect Maazel’s views on the essential role of the arts in society:
Our Orchestra must also continue to play its leadership role in the community and in our nation. The young look to us to provide substance in place of dross, emotional depth in place of shallow titillation.
In these confused times, the role of classical music is at the very core of the struggle to reassert cultural and ethical values that have always characterized our country and for which we have traditionally been honored and respected outside our shores.
Here is the final movement of Dvořák’s “New World” Symphony with the New York Philharmonic:
Can you imagine how shocking the opening of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5 in C minor, Op.67 must have been for audiences at the first performance in 1808? While the classical style of Mozart and Haydn was rooted in elegance and balance, Beethoven made the orchestra growl. There’s a sense of struggle, as if he’s impatiently pushing the classical orchestra to its limits.
The entire symphony springs from the first ferocious four notes. It’s a study in concentrated energy and relentless forward motion. While the four note motive develops on the smallest level, the piece is also developing on a large level. It’s an unfolding process in which turbulent C minor is transformed into heroic C major.
Here is a performance by Paavo Jarvi and the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen:
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Did you notice how the opening motive runs through the entire piece like musical DNA? In the first movement, as we move into the second theme, it’s still there in the basses (0:55). In the second movement we get the same “short, short, short long” (7:55, 8:14 and 12:11). We hear it in the third movement (16:19) and fourth movement (25:06, 25:25). As you listen, you’ll hear many more examples.
Beethoven’s ability to unify the symphony with a common motivic thread was revolutionary in 1808. The end of the third movement would have been equally shocking. Listen to the passage starting around 19:16 one more time. The music gets softer and softer, hinting that something significant is about to happen. Then, as the movement should be ending (20:03), Beethoven creates a musical bridge linking the third and forth movements. He later briefly returns to the third movement’s theme before the recapitulation of the final movement (26:09).
The climax of the symphony (and the goal of the first three movements) comes with the heroic proclamation at the opening of the final movement. Beethoven reserves the special color of the trombones for this moment. While trombones had long been used to double the voices in church music, this was one of the first times they were incorporated into the orchestra. Notice the way the trombone color, with its heroic and supernatural connotations, transforms the sound. Beethoven expands the orchestra further with the piccolo and the contrabassoon.
French impressionist composer Maurice Ravel (1875-1937) found inspiration in the American jazz, which was sweeping Paris in the 1920s. At a time of prohibition and racial discrimination in the United States, many African-American jazz musicians settled in Paris, enjoying its liberating cosmopolitan energy. Additionally, Aaron Copland, George Gershwin and other young American composers came to study with eminent composition teacher Nadia Boulanger.
Here is what Ravel said about the potential of the new musical language of jazz:
[quote]The most captivating part of jazz is its rich and diverting rhythm…Jazz is a very rich and vital source of inspiration for modern composers and I am astonished that so few Americans are influenced by it.[/quote]
Let’s listen to two of Ravel’s jazz and blues influenced pieces from the 1920s:
[typography font=”Cantarell” size=”28″ size_format=”px”]Piano Concerto in G major[/typography]
Here is the Piano Concerto in G major performed by Krystian Zimerman and the Cleveland Orchestra, conducted by Pierre Boulez. The piece opens with splashes of bright color. Pay attention to the way Ravel combines the instruments of the orchestra and the colors created throughout the piece. Around 0:45, you’ll hear blues chords which might remind you of Gershwin. In the opening of the whirlwind final movement, listen for the jazzy conversation between the screeching clarinet and the trombone. Do you hear comic elements in this movement?
[ordered_list style=”decimal”]
Allegramente (0:00)
Adagio assai (8:38)
Presto (18:09)
[/ordered_list]
Now that you’ve heard the whole piece, go back and listen again to the second movement. (8:38). In character, this Adagio assai seems far removed from the exuberant outer movements. The long, dream-like solo piano opening almost makes us forget we’re in the middle of a piano concerto. Consider how the music is flowing. The three simple beats in the left hand of the piano suggest Erik Satie’s static, almost expressionless Gymnopedies. But while Satie’s music remains a numb, out of body experience, Ravel’s long melody restlessly searches and builds expectation, offering up one surprise after another.
Can you feel a sense of tension and anxiety slowly build as the movement develops? Maybe something ominous and unsettling was lurking slightly below the surface from the beginning? Listen to the frightening chord at 14:53. It’s a glimpse of terror which forms the climax of the movement and then quickly evaporates.
At 16:54, think about where you expect to hear the music resolve and then listen to the resolution Ravel gives us. For a moment we enter a new world. What new musical colors do you hear and what instruments does Ravel use to create them? Does the music remind you of the hazy dreamscape of a Monet painting?
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[typography font=”Cantarell” size=”28″ size_format=”px”]Sonata for No. 2 for Violin and Piano[/typography]
The second movement of Ravel’s Violin Sonata No. 2 also is influenced by the blues. In the opening, it’s easy to imagine a sultry day in Louisiana. Here is a performance by violinist Janine Jansen and pianist Itamar Golan:
[ordered_list style=”decimal”]
Allegretto (0:00)
Blues. Moderato (8:00)
Perpetuum mobile. Allegro (13:20)
[/ordered_list]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bfvb_ZavXWw
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[typography font=”Cantarell” size=”28″ size_format=”px”]La création du monde[/typography]
Ravel wasn’t the only French composer to be influenced by jazz. Darius Milhaud’s La création du monde (The Creation of the World), written between 1922 and 1923 is a ballet depicting the creation in African mythology. Here is a performance by Leonard Bernstein and the National Orchestra of France:
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Can you imagine how shocking the opening of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5 in C minor, Op.67 must have been for audiences at the first performance in 1808? While the classical style of Mozart and Haydn was rooted in elegance and balance, Beethoven made the orchestra growl. There’s a sense of struggle, as if he’s impatiently pushing the classical orchestra to its limits.
French impressionist composer Maurice Ravel (1875-1937) found inspiration in the American jazz, which was