Weinerbrot
In my youth, Sunday morning coffee was often accompanied by some variety of Danish – cheese, prune, apricot, or what-have-you. I figured the Danes must be really good bakers to have such delicious pastries named after them. Turns out that the Danish word for "Danish" isn't "Danish" at all: it's "weinerbrot", which is Danish for "Viennese Bread". This tells you a lot about the Viennese; so does the music of Fritz Kreisler.
Today's work CD is My Favorite Kreisler, recorded by Itzhak Perlman on violin accompanied by the redoubtable Samuel Sanders on piano. This is an assortment of pieces, some Kreisler originals mixed with his arrangements and pieces "in the style of" other composers. They're a tasting menu of lyrical/romantic and virtuoso courses, served a la Perlman, shmaltz included. Perlman, who is the heir of the Isaac Stern style, is a master of the romantic voice; while technically flawless, his sentimentality always come through in his interpretations. This includes a shining layer of schmaltz - and not just any chicken-fat, but the best organic free-range poulet de Bresse schmaltz, which gives it a unique flavor that I, for one, find delicious.
Kreisler, a native of Vienna who traveled and lived elsewhere in Europe and died an American citizen, wrote music that always brings to mind a society café somewhere in mitteleuropa. An evening at the Opera has ended; elegant ladies and their formally-clad escorts are sipping sweetened dark (but never bitter) coffee out of porcelain cups, about to take another bite of sachertorte. A violinist, accompanied by piano, is playing "Caprice viennois, Op. 2", "Shon Rosmarin", and "Liebesfreud", and the waiters are going from table to table with shining sterling tureens filled with schlag, snowy mountains of schlag.
Today's work CD is My Favorite Kreisler, recorded by Itzhak Perlman on violin accompanied by the redoubtable Samuel Sanders on piano. This is an assortment of pieces, some Kreisler originals mixed with his arrangements and pieces "in the style of" other composers. They're a tasting menu of lyrical/romantic and virtuoso courses, served a la Perlman, shmaltz included. Perlman, who is the heir of the Isaac Stern style, is a master of the romantic voice; while technically flawless, his sentimentality always come through in his interpretations. This includes a shining layer of schmaltz - and not just any chicken-fat, but the best organic free-range poulet de Bresse schmaltz, which gives it a unique flavor that I, for one, find delicious.
Kreisler, a native of Vienna who traveled and lived elsewhere in Europe and died an American citizen, wrote music that always brings to mind a society café somewhere in mitteleuropa. An evening at the Opera has ended; elegant ladies and their formally-clad escorts are sipping sweetened dark (but never bitter) coffee out of porcelain cups, about to take another bite of sachertorte. A violinist, accompanied by piano, is playing "Caprice viennois, Op. 2", "Shon Rosmarin", and "Liebesfreud", and the waiters are going from table to table with shining sterling tureens filled with schlag, snowy mountains of schlag.
posted by DJStan at 12:54 PM
4 Comments:
"Weinerbrot" sounds more like "hot dog bun" to me.
And I will never again hear Itzhak Perlman without thinking of chicken.
You know that "weiner" qua hot dog is just short for weinerwurst - or Vienna Sausage as referred to by the Germans who brought them to the USA. So you're thinking of weinerwurstbrot, I guess. :)
Once I saw Perlman in Zabar's (a major foodie spot on NYC's Upper West Side), introduced myself, and told him that I really liked his appearances on Sesame Street. Got a nice chuckle in return. BTW, he was buying lox, not chicken.
Weinerwurstbrot! Yes, that's it exactly.
I'll bet Perlman really did appreciate the Sesame Street comment. Couldn't have been something he heard often. (Now I'll think of both lox and chicken. Weinerwurstbrot, too. Danke shoen.)
I was a child accompanying my mother to her favorite Chicago ... I called it a "violin store" ... to get her bow re-strung, or something, when she saw Jascha Heifetz across the room. OMG, you'd think she'd just seen Frank Sinatra or, I don't know, Shaun Cassidy or something. She got all blushy and whispered to me like a schoolgirl, "Do you know who that is??" (Of course I didn't.) "That's Jascha Heifetz!!" (I'd heard the name, couldn't help it, but it was like an old-people thing to me. Might as well have been Lawrence Welk. Who, come to that, I would have recognized.) Finally she collected herself enough to say hello. I think we floated home.
My father, the armchair philosopher, was a Heifetz fan; my mother, the romantic, was a Sternite (although she particularly liked Zino Francescatti - she had a real weakness for Italian guys, especially the French ones!).
I come down more on the warmer Stern side, although we had a recording of Heifetz performing the Beethoven Violin Concerto in D Maj that I loved (great cadenza and characteristic power coupled with elegance throughout).
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