On Sunday June 9 I went to the Atatürk Cultural Centre in Taksim Square to attend the last orchestral concert of the 52nd İKSV Istanbul Music Festival. This event featured the Tekfen Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Aziz Shokhakimov, and the French cellist Edgar Moreau (photograph by Salih Üstündağ) in a programme of works by Charles Gounod, Camille Saint-Saëns and Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov.
Once again I found myself in a seat from which the defective acoustics in the hall prevented me from hearing everything that was happening on the stage. I therefore brought out my trusty ear trumpet and clamped it to my ear, screwing up my wizened countenance in the hope of catching at least a few of the strains wafting my way. What follows, therefore, is a review of concert items that were only partially heard.
The first of these – the ballet music from the final act of Charles Gounod’s opera Faust – was added to the original work in 1869 in response to the Paris Opera’s insistence on having some dancing interspersed with the singing: an (unsigned) article entitled Grand opera, a laboratory for romantic ballet on the Opéra national de Paris website tells us that ‘From the very beginning, grand opera gave pride of place to ballet.’ Even before this, Faust had been modified to give it sung recitativo passages instead of spoken dialogue, and in 1864 a new aria had been added by the composer to showcase the talents of Charles Santley, the pre-eminent British baritone of the Victorian era who sang it at Her Majesty’s Theatre in London. Thanks to these changes, Faust became the most frequently-performed opera at the aforementioned Paris venue.
It was not at the Paris Opera that Faust received its first hearing, however: it had previously been staged at the Théâtre Lyrique on the Boulevard du Temple in 1859. Even before the modifications and additions had been carried out, the work proved to have considerable popular appeal, and eventually – following further successful performances at the Théâtre Lyrique, as well as in Germany, Belgium, Italy and England – it was chosen to be the work with which the Metropolitan Opera in New York opened for the first time on October 22, 1883.
Charles Gounod (1818-93) spent the first five years of his life in highly unusual circumstances: his family inhabited an apartment at the Palace of Versailles, where his father, François Louis, was employed as official artist to the Duc de Berry, the younger son of Charles X. (By coincidence, it was as he was leaving the Paris Opera that the Duke was assassinated by a Bonapartist in 1820.) When he was 18, Gounod was admitted to the Paris Conservatoire, and in 1839 he won the Prix de Rome, France’s most prestigious award in the field of music, at the third attempt; this entitled him to spend two years in Rome, followed by a year in Austria and Germany, as a scholarship student. While he was in Rome, the painter Dominique Ingres, who was Director of the French Institute there and had been a friend of his father’s, took him under his wing. (As will be understood from his employment at Versailles, François Louis Gounod was no mean artist himself.) It was at this time, too, that Charles first read Goethe’s Faust, and began sketching out an operatic setting that eventually saw the light of day 20 years later.
While Gounod was spending part of his third scholarship year in Vienna, a performance of his setting of the Requiem Mass was warmly received, and this led to further commissions. He then moved on to Prussia, where in Leipzig Felix Mendelssohn – whom he met thanks to his acquaintance with this latter’s elder sister Fanny Hensel, a pianist who was also a composer in her own right – arranged a special concert for him during which the Gewandhaus Orchestra played the older composer’s Scottish Symphony. Mendelssohn also introduced him to the music of Bach, and as a result this latter became an early influence on Gounod’s compositional style, which was famed for its ‘classical purity, restraint and refinement’. Other influences during this period, meanwhile, were the operas of Rossini and Mozart, the work of his near-contemporary Berlioz (who was 15 years older) and the symphonies of Beethoven.
An aside: by enthusiastically promoting Bach’s music, Mendelssohn was very much bucking the trend: in the early days of Romanticism, everything Baroque was abhorred and reviled. To my mind, this shows what excellent taste Mendelssohn, whom I believe to be an underrated composer, possessed. Anyone not already impressed by his symphonies and other orchestral works (such as the highly entertaining Overture to A Midsummer Night’s Dream) needs to listen to his String Octet in E flat major, written when he was only 16. In the following recording, which dates from 1961, the work is played by an ensemble including the much-celebrated violinist Jascha Heifetz (1901-87). The day after the 19-year-old Heifetz’s London début, George Bernard Shaw wrote him a letter containing the following advice: ‘If you provoke a jealous God by playing with such superhuman perfection, you will die young. I earnestly advise you to play something badly every night before going to bed, instead of saying your prayers. No mortal should presume to play so faultlessly.’ The notes under the YouTube version of the String Octet give you some useful information.
Following his return to Paris in 1843, Gounod took up a rather undistinguished post as a church organist, and held it for four-and-a half years. A highly religious man, he seriously considered taking holy orders during this time. That did not prevent him from composing, however, and he continued to produce a large number of works for church and concert hall. Eventually he abandoned the idea of becoming a priest and decided instead to pursue a career in music, specialising in opera. His first breakthrough in this direction came in 1849, when the famous singer Pauline Viardot (a close friend of Frédéric Chopin and his lover, the lady novelist George Sand) secured a commission for him to write a full-length opera. Although neither this work nor several subsequent efforts found favour with the public, in 1858 Gounod achieved real success with his comic opera Le médecin malgré lui, praised for its ‘irresistible gaiety’. The following year saw the first performance of Faust, and with it his reputation was secured. Eight years later it was cemented still further by Roméo et Juliette, which was just as successful as Faust and is still staged internationally.
Charles Gounod’s output was considerable: it includes 12 operas, a large quantity of church music and two-and-a-half symphonies, the ‘half’ being his Petite Symphonie for nine wind instruments. Two short pieces by him that have always been popular are his Ave Maria, (a setting of Bach’s Prelude No 1 in C major from Book I of the 48 preludes and fugues that make up The Well-Tempered Clavier) and his Funeral March of a Marionette. The genre in which he composed the largest number of works, however, is that of songs. Described by Ravel as ‘the true founder of the mélodie in France’ (the mélodie being a form of French art song that arose in the mid-19th century), Gounod wrote over 100 French secular songs, plus 30 more for the British market – an environment with which (as we will see) he was well familiar.
Here is a rendition of Le soir, one of his most famous works in the mélodie genre. In this (somewhat crackly) old recording, it is being sung by the celebrated Swiss lyric baritone Charles Panzéra (1896–1976), best known for his frequent performances as Pelléas in Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande in the 1920s and as the dedicatee of Fauré’s 1921 song-cycle L’horizon chimérique. The accompanist is his wife, Magdeleine Panzéra-Baillot. At 3:43, a biography of Charles Panzéra appears on the screen.
On the outbreak of the Franco–Prussian War in 1870, Gounod moved with his family to London, where he remained for four years. While in England he made use of his experience as a song-writer to compose a number of the religious and quasi-religious drawing-room ballads that were in great demand in Victorian society. He also wrote a choral piece for the grand opening of the Royal Albert Hall on May 1, 1871 (and as a result was appointed director of the Royal Albert Hall Choral Society), and conducted orchestral concerts. Also in 1871, he became involved – precisely in what way is a matter for debate – with Georgina Weldon, a singer and music teacher whose marital relationship was under severe strain. On the restoration of peace in France later that year, Gounod’s wife and children returned to Paris. He himself, however, remained in London for a further three years, thus prompting some unfavourable comments in his home country. From November 1871 until June 1874 he lived as a lodger in the Weldons’ Bloomsbury residence – Tavistock House, the former London home of Charles Dickens and the place where he had written Bleak House, Hard Times, Little Dorrit and A Tale of Two Cities.
In the words of Thomas Hardy’s poem After a Journey, however, ‘Things were not lastly as firstly well’ in London, and Gounod became involved both in litigation with a publisher (which he lost) and in a personal feud with James William Davison, the long-serving music critic of The Times. His relationship with Georgina soured, too, and on discovering that he had been taken back to France by a friend in a state of nervous exhaustion brought on by multiple frayed relationships, she was furious. In revenge, she not only held on to the manuscript of his opera Polyeucte, which he had left at her house (rumour had it that he had promised her the leading role), but also brought a lawsuit against him that effectively prevented him from ever returning to Britain.
Georgina Weldon was a remarkable lady whose highly eventful life was punctuated by innumerable litigations and even more frequent spiritualist séances. An attempt by her to turn Tavistock House into an orphanage-cum-music-school further alienated her husband, who had already been turned off by the overblown spiritualist stuff (after Gounod’s death, for instance, she claimed to be able to channel him). In 1878 her estranged hubby got two doctors to certify her as insane, and in a cloak-and-dagger incident she succeeded in escaping from the asylum staff who had come to take her away. (Full marks for pluck, Georgina! It goes without saying that she sued everyone involved; indeed, she eventually won.) Later, she had two spells in jail as a result of libel lawsuits connected with her musical career. On her release from both Newgate and Holloway Prisons, she was cheered by thousands of well-wishers. Afterwards she kept her prison clothes and wore them while delivering public speeches on judicial and prison reform. The publication of her book The History of my Orphanage, or The Outpourings of an Alleged Lunatic and How I Escaped the Mad Doctors (wonderful title, that!) did not prevent her image as ‘the Portia of the Lawcourts’ from losing its lustre, however, and in the late 1880s she experienced a fall from heroine to zeroine. Someone ought to write a rock opera about Georgina Weldon. Here is a link to her Wikipedia entry.
To return to the subject of Gounod’s musical career... On his return to France in 1874 he found himself behind the times in the musical world: new composers had appeared, and new trends in music now caused him to be seen as old-fashioned. But despite the decline in his reputation among his contemporaries (and it is true that even now his earlier works are more highly regarded than his later ones), Gounod still exerted considerable influence on French composers: Debussy once wrote that he represented the essential French sensibility of his time.
In this 2022 recording of the ballet music from Faust, we hear the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France conducted by Adrien Perruchon. Whatever we may think about the outdatedness or otherwise of Gounod’s music, it is undeniable that this work contains some belting tunes. (As a Mancunian, I feel entitled to use the Northern English adjective ‘belting’, the modern equivalent of which is ‘stunning’.) To illustrate what I mean, try grooving to the waltzes that begin at 0:21 and 10:47 (imagine dancers twirling to these, and perhaps even do some twirling yourself) and check out the cheeky little numbers that begin at 6:53, 8:29 – that rosy-cheeked trombonist is really enjoying himself here – and 13:25. For those who consider Gounod to be an inferior composer, the counter-melody in the cellos that he brings in at 13:50, followed by a well-judged bassoon entry at 14:03, might be instructive. At 15:07, the smiles that come over the faces of the lady flautist and the male harpist show how much the musicians are relishing the joie de vivre this work emanates.
The Tekfen Philharmonic Orchestra, under the baton of Aziz Shokhakimov, gave an excellent performance of the ballet music from Faust in which all the cold entries in this stop-and-start-fest (another triple hyphenation!) were perfectly coordinated. It being a long time since I had seen this conductor in action (he is now much slimmer than he was when he first came to Turkey), I had forgotten the jerky arm movements and – to me, at any rate – incomprehensible gestures with the left hand that mark his conducting style. These actions seemed to mean something to the musicians, however, and they performed almost flawlessly. I thought the woodwind department, in particular, excelled.
The second item on the programme at the concert on June 9 was Saint-Saëns’ Cello Concerto No 1 in A minor, written in 1872. Wikipedia tells us the following about this work (Donald Tovey, by the way, was a highly-regarded British musicologist, writer on music, composer, conductor and pianist who between 1935 and 1939 published a landmark six-volume work entitled Essays in Musical Analysis):
Sir Donald Francis Tovey later wrote: ‘Here, for once, is a violoncello concerto in which the solo instrument displays every register without the slightest difficulty in penetrating the orchestra.’ Many composers, including Shostakovich and Rachmaninov, considered this concerto to be the greatest of all cello concertos.
I rather think those comments do less than justice to the cello concertos by Haydn and Schumann. That being said, here is a link to the full article, which includes an overview of each movement.
Camille Saint-Saëns (1835-1921), though a highly prolific composer, is not seen as a particularly heavyweight one: Wikipedia notes that ‘The suggestion that Saint-Saëns was more proficient than inspired dogged his career and posthumous reputation.’ His birth chart reveals an unusually strong accent on the sign of Libra, where both his Sun-Venus conjunction and his Ascendant are located. Although Libran individuals have a strong sense of justice, they are said to dislike confrontation. Unsurprisingly, they are natural diplomats. Venus, the bringer of harmony and pleasure, is very much at home in this sign, which she co-rules. Added to this, the fact that the Sun and Venus are so close together in Saint-Saëns’ case means that keeping things sweet is even more likely to be valued above genuineness – which, for better or worse, can sometimes require facing the gnarlier issues and ‘having it out’. I hate to say it, but one of the more negative Libran traits is superficiality – and indeed, Saint-Saëns’ works may be easy on the ear, but they are not great music. Furthermore, despite an earthy Taurus Moon and a watery Scorpio Mars, the element of air predominates in his chart, indicating a personality that (while communicative, versatile and charming) lacks emotional depth: one of the characteristics attributed to the air signs is ‘lack of grief’. He himself wrote: ‘Art is intended to create beauty and character. Feeling only comes afterwards and art can very well do without it. In fact, it is very much better off when it does.’
In fairness to the man, I must point out that he was not a human refrigerator whose life was free from emotional ups and downs. For one thing, he must surely have been devastated by the early deaths of both his children: his elder son André died after falling from a window at the age of two, and his six-month-old son Jean-François died of pneumonia only six weeks later. Poor man! Our composer may not have worn his heart on his sleeve, but that does not mean that he did not possess a heart. Secondly, I must leap to the defence of Libran musicians by noting that one of them was Franz Liszt, a leading composer of the Romantic period who wrote several emotional – indeed, some would say slushy – pieces, such as his set of three piano nocturnes entitled Liebesträume (‘Dreams of Love’).
The first performance of Saint-Saëns’ Cello Concerto No 1 at the Paris Conservatoire in January 1873 was regarded as a sign of its composer’s belated acceptance by the French musical establishment. In those days, his admiration for the ‘new’ music of Schumann, Liszt and (especially) Wagner was seen as totally unacceptable, if not actually criminal, by the leading lights at the Conservatoire. The fact that in later life he became an unbending opponent of all innovation was therefore an ironic reversal of fortune.
Remember that earthy Taurus Moon and that watery Scorpio Mars? Well, both Scorpio and Taurus are fixed signs, noted – dare I say it? – for their stubbornness, and I have to say that Taurus, in particular, is a bit of a stick-in-the-mud. (Sorry, dear Bulls, but astrological wisdom has it that trying to get a Taurus person to go out when she or he has decided to stay in is rather like trying to move a grand piano.) As a result, no astrologer would be surprised to learn that Saint-Saëns eventually became a leading musical reactionary. To compound this tendency, restrictive, arch-conservative Saturn was closely conjunct his Ascendant, indicating a stolid defence of the old and a distaste for change of any kind. Saint-Saëns detested the music of Debussy so much that he is said to have abandoned his customary summer holidays in order to be able to stay in Paris and ‘say nasty things’ about Debussy’s highly innovative opera Pelléas et Mélisande.
This most un-Libran action on his part may also be a sign that his darkly aggressive Scorpio Mars sometimes came to the fore. Another is that after the Franco-Prussian War he led a movement to ban works by German composers from French concert programmes. His pupil Gabriel Fauré, to his credit, did not buy into this scheme, maintaining that music should cut across all national and political boundaries.
I do not wish to give the impression that Camille Saint-Saëns was all spikes and no likes, however. Fauré once wrote the following about his former teacher, whom he evidently regarded with great affection:
After allowing the lessons to run over, he would go to the piano and reveal to us those works of the masters from which the rigorous classical nature of our programme of study kept us at a distance and who, moreover, in those far-off years, were scarcely known... At the time I was 15 or 16, and from this time dates the almost filial attachment... the immense admiration, the unceasing gratitude I [have] had for him, throughout my life.
For all the uncharitable things I have said about our composer being a lightweight incapable of rising above his habitual airy insouciance, I have to say that his Cello Concerto No 1, written in one single movement with three distinct sections, does indeed have its emotional moments. In the following performance by the French cellist Gautier Capuçon with the Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra, the wistful, contemplative middle section begins at 14:56, and continues as far as the recapitulation of the main theme at 18:17. In addition, there is a shorter interlude of a similar nature at 4:54. (By the way, the Libran conductor Alain Altinoglu’s Turkish surname is due to the fact that he is of Armenian extraction.) Here Gautier Capuçon, a highly-respected teacher as well as an ace performer, excels himself: he coaxes a superb tone out of the instrument.
France has a well-established tradition of excellence in the cello department. I remember listening to Pierre Fournier (1906-86) play at the Atatürk Cultural Centre in 1981 or 1982, and being moved to tears by his performance of a movement from one of the Bach Cello Suites. Other important French cello virtuosi of the past, meanwhile, include André Navarra (yet another Libran, 1911-88) and Paul Tortelier (1914-90). More recently I heard Aurélien Pascal play the solo part in İlyas Mirzayev’s Cello Concerto at the Cemal Reşit Rey Concert Hall in December 2023. In my blog on this latter performance, I wrote the following:
The solo cello – whose voice could invariably be clearly heard, the composer having taken care not to obscure it with intrusive orchestral parts – was played with extraordinary skill by Aurélien Pascal. His intonation, even in the high register, was perfect throughout, his tone exquisite, and his musicianship impeccable.
Edgar Moreau, the cellist we heard at the concert on June 9, began learning his instrument at the age of 4, subsequently receiving tuition from Philippe Muller at the Conservatoire national supérieur de musique de Paris and from Frans Helmerson at the Kronberg Academy in Frankfurt. (As a matter of fact, both Edgar Moreau and Aurélien Pascal were born in 1994, and both were taught by Philippe Muller and Frans Helmerson.) M Moreau’s past achievements include winning the Young Soloist Prize in the Rostropovich Cello Competition at the age of 15 and coming second in the International Tchaikovsky Competition when he was 17. At the Victoires de la musique classique award event in 2013 he was one of the musicians included in the ‘Revelation Instrumental Soloist of the Year’ category, and at the 2015 edition of this same event he was voted ‘Instrumental Soloist of the Year’. His many recordings for the Erato label include A Family Affair, in which he played works by Dvořák and Korngold together with his siblings Raphäelle, David and Jérémie, and a 2023 rendition of cello concertos by Weinberg and Dutilleux that was described by BBC Music Magazine as ‘a beautifully nuanced and heartfelt interpretation’.
Although his performance of Saint-Saëns’ Cello Concerto No 1 with the Tekfen Philharmonic Orchestra did not get off to a good start owing to co-ordination problems, the musicians soon sorted themselves out and got into the swing of things. This is, of course, a work that showcases the solo instrument in a highly effective manner, and it certainly went down well with the audience. I, too, was greatly impressed by M Moreau’s playing, which was consistently top-notch. (I thought the bright red socks he was wearing were pretty impressive, too.) As an encore he gave us a movement from one of the Bach Cello Suites, and here his technique was mouth-wateringly perfect; I especially admired his intonation in the parts that involved double stopping (i.e., playing two notes simultaneously). His playing was sensitive throughout, and I thought the quiet ending he gave to the piece was a particularly nice touch.
In the second half of the concert the Tekfen Philharmonic Orchestra played Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov’s 1888 symphonic suite Scheherazade, which consists of four related movements and is based on the One Thousand and One Nights or Arabian Nights. Wikipedia’s general description of the work hits the nail on the head, speaking of the ‘rhythmic vitality’ and ‘directness of expression’ it possesses, these being features that are largely absent from other works of the period:
This orchestral work combines two features typical of Russian music in general and of Rimsky-Korsakov in particular: dazzling, colourful orchestration and an interest in the East, which figured greatly in the history of Imperial Russia, as well as Orientalism in general... The reasons for its popularity are clear enough: it is a score replete with beguiling orchestral colours, fresh and piquant melodies, a mild oriental flavour, a rhythmic vitality largely absent from many major orchestral works of the later 19th century, and a directness of expression unhampered by quasi-symphonic complexities of texture and structure.
The first half of the following video provides a layman’s overview of Scheherazade. Following this, various musicians give their perspective on the work.
Now, here is a more detailed account of the piece. Those who do not need an introduction to the One Thousand and One Nights should scroll on to 3:24. (Spoiler alert: skip the endorsement that starts at 7:55 and ends at 9:14, where the blow-by-blow analysis of the work begins.)
As you will probably have gathered by now, one of the most outstanding features of Scheherazade is Rimsky-Korsakov’s masterful use of the orchestra. The following account, although ostensibly about his orchestration, is in reality an excellent overview of his life and musical career. One of the subjects it focuses on is his activities as a completer of other composers’ works after they had died: at 14:31, for instance, the speaker describes the enormous contribution he made to Mussorgsky’s famous Night on Bald [or ‘Bare’] Mountain after poor Mussorgsky had drunk himself to death (Ilya Repin’s famous portrait of this latter composer was painted only a few days before he passed away), and at 15:18 we hear how Rimsky-Korsakov – in collaboration with Alexander Glazunov – reworked and completed Borodin’s opera Prince Igor. One interesting aspect of our composer’s psychological make-up is his synaesthesia. For him, sounds were strongly associated with colours: he thought the key of E major represented the colour blue, for instance. (This subject is touched on from 25:28 onwards.) Finally, at 26:19, the presentation gets round to describing Rimsky-Korsakov’s landmark textbook of orchestration.
Incidentally, Scheherazade has a connection with Istanbul through the One Thousand and One Nights. It was the French translation of this literary work that first popularised it in Europe, thus giving impetus to the rise of Orientalism. In fact, it was probably this translation (or a Russian version of it) that Rimsky-Korsakov read while preparing himself to write his well-known piece. The author of Les mille et une nuits was the Orientalist, archaeologist – and part-time rip-off artist – Antoine Galland (1646–1715), a Frenchman who had ties to Istanbul. In addition to some more dubious accomplishments, he seems to have been quite a linguist. Wikipedia again:
His version of the tales appeared in twelve volumes between 1704 and 1717 and exerted a significant influence on subsequent European literature and attitudes to the Islamic world. Jorge Luis Borges has suggested that Romanticism began when his translation was first read... After completing school at Noyon, he studied Greek and Latin in Paris, where he also acquired some Arabic. In 1670 he was attached to the French embassy at Istanbul because of his excellent knowledge of Greek and, in 1673, he travelled in Syria and the Levant, where he copied a great number of inscriptions, sketched and – in some cases – removed historical monuments. ...
During his prolonged residences abroad, he acquired a thorough knowledge of the Arabic, Turkish and Persian languages and literatures... Galland published in 1694 a compilation from the Arabic, Persian and Turkish entitled Paroles remarquables, bons mots et maximes des orientaux... Among his numerous manuscripts are a translation of the Qur’an and a Histoire générale des empereurs Turcs.
It was in fact in the 1690s, during his time in Istanbul, that Galland came across The Tale of Sinbad the Sailor (the storyline of which figures largely in Rimsky-Korsakov’s symphonic suite); in 1701 he published his French translation of this tale. The success of this venture then encouraged him to embark on a translation of the 14th- or 15th-century Syrian manuscript of The Thousand and One Nights, and it was this 12-volume magnum opus that secured his reputation for all time.
To return to the musical portrayal of these tales, here are two highly-rated versions of Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherazade for you to compare if moved to do so. The first is by the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, conducted by Kirill Kondrashin.
The second, meanwhile, is by the London Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Leopold Stokowski (1882-1977), a man of mixed Polish and Irish extraction who is best known for his extraverted but baton-less conducting style, his long association with the Philadelphia Orchestra and his appearance with that orchestra in the 1940 Disney animated feature film Fantasia with that orchestra.
The Tekfen Philharmonic Orchestra’s rendition of Scheherazade, a piece marked by many changes of tempo, impressed me with the invariable cleanness of the orchestra’s entries. Full marks to them for coordination, then, and kudos to conductor Aziz Shokhakimov. In the first movement the intonation in the violin solos, played by the concert master (i.e. the principal of the first violins), may not have been as spot on as one might have wished. Things picked up in the second movement, however, and we heard some fulsome brass sound and some delicious playing from the harpist. All in all this was a highly enjoyable performance, and it made a great ending to the orchestral concerts of the 52nd İKSV Istanbul Music Festival.
To round off this review, here is Disney’s Fantasia, where we see Leopold Stokowski in action. Everyone has their favourite animal character from this visual masterpiece, but I personally rave over the ostrich ballet-dancers that appear at 1:37:21.
