Watch: It’s a Schoenberg opening night
OrchestrasAlan Gilbert bet the house in Hamburg, performing Gurrelider to open the Elbphilharmonie season.
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More of a safe bet than bet the house. Yes, it is Schoenberg but GL is one of the most powerful romantic masterpieces ever. Sort of Mahler, Bruckner and Wagner on steroids with just hints particularly midway of new nusical language.
Irony: the works that entered the repertoire were the early romantic pieces that Schönberg decided he had to ‘overcome’, and on which he looked back with a wistful smile: ‘Ach ja, die blumige Romantik…’
Gurrelieder is a fantastic work, a visionary expression, in spite of the flaws, which are typical of the era. There are rather ‘uneasy’ word settings where the line of the voice seems to have been glued-on the orchestral texture, there are dense episodes that are overblown and pompous without any musical or textural reason, there are long stretches where the orchestra is much too heavy and thick – really too many players, and completely unnecessary: with a more or less regular orchestra everything musical Schönberg wanted to say would have been perfectly feasible. But there are unforgettable episodes where S climbs the heights of ‘the masters’ he so profoundly admired: the wonderful prelude depicting a setting sun at the beach, the Lied der Waldtaube with its tragic tone, the orchestral part of des Sommerwindes wilde Jagd which is destroyed by the ridiculous speaking voice raging through the textures (it should be performed with the voice cut).
Amsterdam opera made a music theatre piece of it some years ago which was very successful – a surrealistic, incoherent dream:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sdb403AcD0A
Only a John B. could include such pejorative and stupid comments regarding Gurrelieder. You need to “let it go” and “get a life”!
I say that all the time, but it seems he thinks he knows more about this Schoeberg than any other people….. I have been lectured at about that music and even was forced to sit through a garden lunch with it:
https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/what-is-neurodiversity-202111232645
It was very difficult to swallow my soup and keep my legs still in the same time, the music made them twitch
Sally
Mr.B. is just an embittered, old unperformed “Musikmeister”and kitchen philosopher leaving no trace at all…So we just should grant him his little rants..But ,Mr,Schönberg, perhaps you know from your father the german proverb”Was kümmert es die stolzen Eichen, als ob die Hunde sie beseichen.”
Did this ‘professional musician’ look too much in the mirror? What a silly comment…. He must be a German, and neither a true professional nor a true musician. There is a word for such people but why add to the low-level smell of what some commentators spread on this otherwise informative website? The comment about Schoenberg is a well-informed one, and shared by lots of professionals, true professionals that is. Only people who have no idea who Schoenberg was and what his work means, can get so upset by it.
As for mr Larry Schoenberg: his family ties alone do not give any authority to anything about the composer’s work.
But I know from my study with Alexander Goehr, a thorough Schoenbergian and professor of the Cambridge University Music Faculty, that all types of discussion in the groups were permissable, except for one thing: it was strictly forbidden to have any critical comment about Schoenberg, because he was not a composer but a prophet. That kind of mentality does not belong in music life but in sects.
Oh, Gurre-Lieder / Riccardo Chailly @ La Scala started a few days ago
In Montreal, too. OSM with Rafael Payare. First time in 40 years as a concertgoer that I’ve heard it. Looks like they filmed it, too, probably for Mezzo or Medici. With a real A-list cast, including Ben Heppner as the Speaker (he sounded like he could still do Tristan). A night to remember. And thanks for this video.
This was indeed the opening concert of the OSM-season and part of an ongoing engagament with the music of Schoenberg. A CD with Pelleas und Melisande and Verklaerte Nacht will appear next month on Pentatone. Gurrelieder was live streamed and will be available to watch on Mezzo/Medici.
Concert audiences enjoy a “big bow-wow.” Stokowski led the Philadelphia Orchestra in the American premiere way back in 1932. The performances were recorded live by (RCA) Victor, and first issued commercially (during the Depression !) in very heavy sets of 78 rpm discs.
And still well worth a listen not least for the lava flow of string tone in the Orchestral Interludes…
For me the most interesting Schoenberg recordings of this Century are:
https://www.amazon.de/Arnold-Schoenberg-Complete-Napolitano-2013-02-12/dp/B01M6BXIK6/ref=sr_1_3?__mk_de_DE=%C3%85M%C3%85%C5%BD%C3%95%C3%91&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.9osna_7iK6oAF4PvVhfrMXbjbGEAGZ6WNJht5jPxnBPGjHj071QN20LucGBJIEps.Kd_insaM9phdo4lN_xeKg146i6ZVOSJ35krbCsz7mnU&dib_tag=se&keywords=schoenberg+napolitano&qid=1726398312&s=music&sr=1-3
… and the latest:
https://www.amazon.de/Kammerkonzert-Arnold-Schoenberg-Pina-Napolitano/dp/B0CGX4LSYH/ref=sr_1_1?__mk_de_DE=%C3%85M%C3%85%C5%BD%C3%95%C3%91&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.9osna_7iK6oAF4PvVhfrMXbjbGEAGZ6WNJht5jPxnBPGjHj071QN20LucGBJIEps.Kd_insaM9phdo4lN_xeKg146i6ZVOSJ35krbCsz7mnU&dib_tag=se&keywords=schoenberg+napolitano&qid=1726398495&s=music&sr=1-1
Early Schoenberg is very easy-listening, but very derivative of Wagner (isn’t everyone though?), but if he had continued to compose like that, the name Schoenberg would not be remembered today.
No.
The music uses a generally-used late-romantic language but has its own definite voice. And to call it ‘easy-listening’ is grotesque, given its density and sophistication.
Its artistic quality places it on the level of Mahler and Strauss. And the differences between these three are very clear.
Yes the later music is much more original, but what is originality worth if the music itself suffers?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XWdjI8ktlSU
(This fragment depicts a dance scene – make of that what you want, I think it’s hilarious)
Originality is not an artistic category. If every composer invents his own, original language, how could he convey content and meaning? And then, even a crazy crank or criminal can be very original. Artistic quality and originality are two different things.
You have neither of the two.
I sometimes wonder, in a dreamy way, on a relaxing afternoon, what has this so-called ‘professional musician’ produced in his long, probably grim and bitter life? What are his compositions, his books, his articles? Which research has he produced that opened new perspectives on familiar themes? How has he contributed to the art form? We will never know, because he hides behind the greatest accolade he probably could find: “..to be a really professional musician… how wonderful would that be.”
I disagree with all four of your assertions. Your first is really strange. (sorry)
Mariss Jansons did the same thing in Pittsburgh, and the marketing team kept trying to talk him out of it. Coming off a successful late summer tour, the house was packed, and the marketing chief was let go.
Financially it matters little if you perform Gurrelieder to a packed or a 70% sold house. It‘s always a deficit bottom line. But worth it. (if you payed for the appropriate cast)
I have now lived long enough to see performances of Gurrelieder become fairly regular. Who would have thought this forty years ago?
I’ll be travelling to Los Angeles in December to see it under Mehta.
I actually think it’s a shame that in the Schoenberg year there are performances of the Gurre-lieder everywhere. It probably won’t be played anywhere in the next 10 years.
Rattle also did it a few months ago with the BRSO…The Alan Gilbert performance was very special.Incredibly transparent, lucid and singer friendly(the tenor part is hell!!!)…And he had an absolute luxury cast. Jamie Barton is the best Wood Dove now, and Simon O´Neill practically owns Waldemar(both also sang at the BRSO Rattle performance). .And Michael Schade and Michael Nagy really shone in the smaller roles.
I wonder, how would this commentator know? How could he make any assessment?
Sydney in March, sell out; Simone Young, Simon O’Neill, Ricarda Merbeth …
https://youtu.be/793kYMGF35E?si=1xTIgPvFi2ldeaW0
Didn’t one of the London orchestras open their season with this a couple of years ago? But why credit our own bands with boldness when we can big up foreign ensembles instead?
Schoenberg gave up too soon.
The serial stuff was an only-slightly-interesting, ultimately-uncompelling experiment, not worth even one percent of the insistent promotion it got as it metastasized through the 20th Century.
But he returned to ‘some sort of’ tonality later in life. In the thirties he finished a 2nd chamber symphony that he had begun in his tonal period but had laid aside, and he made a kind of ‘re-composition’ of a cello concerto by 18C composer Momm. There also is a late string piece for students. But the real fire in tonal writing had gone.
Harvey Sach’s recent book on Schoenberg is very enlightening: it shows what S’s problem was and unintentionally conveys a warning in a cultural sense, against the intellect disconnected from nature and human subconsciousness.
https://www.curtis.edu/news/harvey-sachs-publishes-new-book-schoenberg-why-he-matters/
Schoenberg could have done what Stravinsky did: a turn towards a kind of tradition but shaped according to his own tastes. Schoenberg did this only intellectually by using traditional forms in his 12-tone works, but disconnected from tonality, while Stravinsky’s music of his so-called ‘neo-classical period’ was firmly rooted in tonality, thus in nature and human nature. Stravinsky’s neoclassical works have entered the repertoire: the violin concerto, Symphony of Psalms, Apollon, Jeu de Cartes. When he turned atonal in his last period, this did not result in the same acceptance: he got into the same problem as Schoenberg.