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1 CD -
9031-72308-2 - (p) 1992
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| Felix
Mendelssohn (1809-1847) |
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| Symphony No. 3 in A minor,
Op. 56 "Scottish" |
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39' 46" |
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| - Andante
con moto - Allegro un poco agitato |
16' 21" |
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1
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| - Vivace non troppo |
4' 17" |
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2
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| - Adagio |
9' 16" |
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3
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- Allegro
vivacissimo - Allegro maestoso assai
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9' 52" |
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4
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| Symphony No. 4 in A major,
Op. 90 "Italian" |
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28' 44" |
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- Allegro vivace
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10' 35" |
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5
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- Andante con moto
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6' 42" |
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6
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- Con moto moderato
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5' 49" |
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7
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- Saltarello: Presto
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5' 38" |
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8
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| The Chamber
Orchestra of Europe |
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Nikolaus
Harnoncourt, Dirigent
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Luogo
e data di registrazione
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| Teatro
Comunale, Ferrara (Italia) - ottobre
1991 |
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Registrazione
live / studio
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| studio |
Producer
/ Engineer
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Wolfgang
Mohr / Helmut Mühle / Michael Brammann
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Prima Edizione CD
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| Teldec
- 9031-72308-2 - (1 cd) - 69' 05" - (p)
1992 - DDD |
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Prima
Edizione LP
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Notes
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In 1842
Robert Schumann made a mistake which
was as delightful as it was
significant. He was
reviewing Mendelssohn's new symphony,
which he thought was the "Italian”
because...
... thus may the
imagination of the master well have
been assailed
by fond recollections
when he found these old melodies
sung in beauhful Italy among his
papers, finally resulting,
consciously or unconsciously, in
this tender tone painting.
What Schumann thought
of as the reflection of Italy is,
however, the idiom of the “Scottish”.
Even an expert can be deceived.
Schumanns mistake is significant
in so far as there is confusion
between these two symphonies even
concerning their numbering; the
“Italian” was completed in l833, The
“Scottish”
in 1842;
chronologically, therefore, it was the
4th Symphony.
In 1830
Mendelssohn set off on an
eighteen month long trip to Italy,
taking with him to Rome the
sketches for his “Scottish” Symphony.
It was entirely in
keeping with contemporary practice, as
represented by Goethe or Jean Paul,
that Mendelssohn should prepare a
musical account of his travels; the
"Italian" was also sketched under
southern skies. Seen from the
viewpoint of their origins, the
two symphonies are closely linked;
nevertheless it is worthwhile
enquiring into the
specifically
"Scottish" or “Italian”
idiom, in other words, to
track down the hidden
programmes which the two
symphonies appear to follow in their
different ways. The answers are
contradictory, because it suited the
romantic conception of art carefully
to encode personal experiences,
impressions, recollections and
inspirations, that is to
say to disguise them as
mysterious puzzles.
First of all
the “Scottish” context. In
1829 Mendelssohn wrote
from Edinburgh:
This evening, in the deep twilight,
we went to the palace where
Queen Mary lived and
loved;
there is a small room with a
winding staircase leading to
the door (...).
The adjacent chapel has lost its roof; grass
and ivy grow thickly within; and
on the
broken altar
Mary Was crowned
Queen of Scotland. Everything there
is in ruins and ramshackle, open to the blue sky.
I think
I have
today
found the
opening of my Scottish Symphony.
Landscape, historical
personages and their warfare
- Mendelssohn seems to
have absorbed these atmospheric
impressions, especially in the
elegiac mood of the
inlroduction, and
presumably also in the
tone-painting
of a storm scene at
the end of the
first movement. History
as the
history of warfare is also implied in
the fourth movement:
Mendelssohn suggested
calling it "Allegro
Guerriero", which is apprapriate
because the extensive
warlike complexity is
followed by a kind of "song
of thanks-giving
after victory
in battle". The composer
had very precise ideas on how this
should sound; he envisaged the
hymn of thanksgiving as
sounding like an instrumental
"male voice choir". In
1842 he wrote
to F.
David:
If the melody
still does not come out
clearly, let the
horns in D play louder.
And if
even that does
not help, I
hereby formally authorize you
to
omit the
three drum rolls in the first 8 bars (...). I
hope that
this
will not
be necessary and that it now sounds
distinct and firm, lika a male voice
choir.
Mendelssohn obviously also had a clear
conception of the
landscape. In a letter
from Rome dated
29th March 1831
he wrote;
The loveliest time of the year in Italy
is the period from 15th April to 15th May:
- who then
can blame me for not being
able to return to the mists of
Scotland? This is why I have
had to put aside the symphony
for the time being.
So it
was to
be the misty
landscape of Scotland.
We encounter il not
only in the opening and
closing bars of the first
movement, but
also in the darkened,
melancholy melodic line of the
Adagio movement, the
opening theme of which
is pentatonic
and undoubtedly based
upon a naïve Scottish
folk tune. This
movement may also be
described as folkloric
on accounl of the way
in which it joins
together similar
individual dances into
an unbroken series. Popular simplicity
thus finds expression
in formal simplicity.
The “Italian”
context is more difficulf
to discover. It
is only in the final
“Saltarello” (which
Wulf Konold in 1987 more appropriately
called “Tarantella”) that
it is completely
out in the
open, particularly as Mendelssohn
wrote in a letter
from his travels on 1st
March 1831:
If only I could get
to grips with one of the
two symphonies! I will and must
save the Italian up until I have
seen Naples, because that must be
involved.
Naples is indeed involved in the
fourth movement.
And in the others? In
1974 Martin
Witte linked Mendelssohn's
experiences in Italy -
his experience of classical harmony in
architecture
and the fine
arts - with
the
neo-classical perfection
of this
“classical symphony". In
1988 Karl Heinrich
Ehrenforth expressed the
view that
Mendelssohn was impressed with the
religious processions in Rome, and that
this explains the
processional character
of the slow
movement. Eric
Werner, on the other
hand, drew attention in
1963 to
the almost literal
correspondence between the
theme of the
Andante and Zelter’s
setting of Goethe’s "Es
war ein König in Thule",
making this movement
a tribute to
two distinguished
friends of Mendelssohn, who had both
died in 1832. This
suggests another
interpretation: the
freshness and verve of the
first movement
and the exuberant
dance mood of the southern
Saltarello would,
according to this
view, provide a contrast
with Mendelssohn's own nordic temperament
(represented by the
seriousness of the Goethe/Zelter
song), reflecting the
composer's experience of being an outsider,
a stranger in a strange
environment. And the
slow movement
reveals something else: the
unbroken stream of
quavers might even
represent a symbol of the
inexorability of
passing time; but
its inescapability
is exorcised by the
finite ballad theme,
in wich the song, a
self-contained entity,
represents an
element of the
present in the
all-devouring flow of time.
Art dares to raise an utopian
objection to the
inevitable.
Ehrenforth even goes
a step further and
conjectures:
This interpretation of the second
movement can be biographically confirmed. The
great
monuments of Rome and Naples overwhelm
the visitor
to Italy with their
historical impact, reducing his own
short life span
sub specie
aeternitatis
to a single breath. This is brought home to
him most vividly when
confronted
by the
then still unrestored city of
Pompeii, still very largely buried
beneath
the ash which rained down from
Vesuvius. On 27th April 1831 - after his visit
to Pompeii -
Mendelssohn writes under the influence
of this experience of the "tragedy
of pasf and present, which will be
with me for as long as I live”.
But that would
be more than a mere
musical account of his
travels, it would be a form of
existential
introspection, an unexpected profundity
behind this apparently gay and carefree musical
façade. The
question what is actually “Scottish”
or “Italian”
in Mendelssohn's music must,
therefore, remain unanswered.
And Schumann’s mistake is. in the
cold light of day, even more comprehensible.
Hans
Christian
Schmidt
Translation: Gery
Bramall
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Nikolaus
Harnoncourt (1929-2016)
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