Christmas with Herbert von Karajan

My Cat Jeoffry listening to Leontyne Price.

On the third day of Christmas we consider the Christmas record I have with Leontyne Price and Herbert von Karajan.

You can hear the whole record on YouTube. But it is not the same as on vinyl! That is my carol and I will continue to sing it. Listening to the vinyl really puts you back in an earlier time. This record came out in 1961.

It runs off the rails now and then as Christmas records do. The arrangement of "Angels We Have Heard on High" goes a little nuts with the "Gloria." Well, maybe someone had one too many Tom and Jerrys. 'Tis the season!

I happen to think "We Three Kings" is a kind of overrated carol.

But there my criticisms pretty much end. The arrangements are wonderful, elegant in that wonderful way of the 1950s and early '60s. "God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen" is a track I particularly love, with its witty accompaniment. You get "O Tannenbaum" with a verse or two in German because people expected it back then.

Conductor and diva must both have been happy with the record because in 1962 they teamed up again for "Tosca."

Herbert von Karajan gets a bad rap, you know? People would say he was bossy and a Nazi and vain and mean. Brooding about that just now I came up with this Guardian article that interviews a lot of people about him and most of them agree with me, that these allegations were unfair.

Who wouldn't, given this Christmas record?

Just listen to it!

Magic in a Mozart mass

This being May it might be fun to explore, off and on, some music devoted to Mary. There is so much of it and it is so glorious!

Here is something to start with. I have always found it interesting that Mozart's "Coronation" Mass was written for the crowning of Mary and not for the crowning of a king. The whole "Coronation" Mass is exquisite. But there is one particular part of it that kills me.

That is in the concluding "Agnus Dei."

A crash course in Latin in case you are new to this: The words to the prayer are "Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi, miserere nobis": "Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world, have mercy on us." At first, Mozart has the soprano sing it straight, without pause, to a melody of rapturous beauty.

But then when it repeats comes this weird moment. The singer is singing "Qui tollis peccata" -- "Who takes away the sins" -- and right then Mozart makes a surprise stop and the orchestra echoes the melody. Since I was a teenager that has given me shivers. It is as if there is something invisible in the room with you!

So you hold your breath. And time stands still. And then he lets the phrase finish.. "Peccata mundi."

"The sins of the world."

Ah.

That happens in this video at 3:42.

Then at 4:25 there is another magical moment where the music melts into the "Dona nobis pacem."

And at 5:10 all the voices start blending and building into the great triumphant fanfare that bursts forth at .. let's see ... 5:43. That is thrilling, almost like Beethoven's "Ode to Joy." Such faith, such power!

Admittedly I have an overactive imagination. But I see faith in that shivery moment at 3:42. It makes you stop and think about what the words mean. Mozart might not have thought that out consciously but that is the effect it has. He stops the prayer and you feel something and you are not sure what it is.

It gives you pause.

That is a nice video, I have to say. Herbert von Karajan is conducting and Kathleen Battle is the soloist and throughout that vast quiet melody, they both look as if they are in a trance. It is touching to see Karajan mouthing the words. And this is not just a performance. It seems to be an actual Mass.

At the end they all look as if they are coming out of a dream.

What a beautiful way to pray!

Out of the mouths of frumps

Last night I caught the clip of Susan Boyle, above, winning millions of people over by singing "I Dreamed a Dream" from "Les Mis" on the show "Britain's Got Talent."

Howard and I laughed happily at it. You had to. This dowdy woman, showing off such a voice. The crowd loved it.

It was fun to see the pop music crowd, accustomed to everyone looking plastic and perfect, suddenly discovering what the classical music crowd has long known: Sometimes the greatest voices come out of the biggest frumps.

A few years ago I read "The Toughest Show on Earth," Joseph Volpe's entertaining account of running the Metropolitan Opera. I believe that was the book where I picked up that Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, one of the greatest and most beautiful sopranos of the 20th century, was really a frump.

Here is Schwarzkopf done up. Incredible.


And in "Der Rosenkavalier," no one made a more beautiful Marschallin.


But as the great musicologist Pee Wee Herman said, everybody's got a big but. And in Schwarzkopf's case that big but was that offstage, she was a frump. Apparently after every concert she would immediately change into frumpy clothes which, German frumpy clothes are even frumpier than normal people's frumpy clothes. Her frump get-up included a dirndl skirt. That is what I read!

Schwarzkopf even showed up once at a post-concert party in her frump clothes. She had gone home and changed. Ha, ha! The hostess looked at her and said: "Elisabeth. How ... how charming." I remember reading that!

I tend to believe it because I do have a picture of Schwarzkopf being a frump. It is a shot of her rehearsing and somehow it ended up on the back of a record album. She probably did not object. Well, she obviously didn't, or else it would not have been there.

I remember looking at it as a teenager going, "What in the world?"

Unfortunately I don't have time now to go running around looking for this picture and scanning it in. Perhaps I can do that over the weekend. For now you will just have to take my word for it: Elisabeth Schwarzkopf was a not-so-secret frump!

It is a little early in the day to be hitting the Dowland but here is a cute YouTube clip of Schwarzkopf singing Dowland and then a Mozart song. There are neat pictures of her with it including a couple of semi-frump shots. One shows Schwarzkopf clowning with an ass. No jokes about her husband, the opportunistic and much-disliked Walter Legge! I mean an actual donkey.

There is another good shot of her pouring a big glass of red wine for a sexy-looking young man who I think could be Herbert von Karajan.

Imagine if Elisabeth Schwarzkopf had put on her frump face and gone on "Britain's Got Talent."

That would have been something to see!