Customer Reviews

Arnold Schoenberg: Serenade/Five Pieces For Orchestra

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I still remember the first time I heard this recording of Boulez conducting the Five Pieces. I had heard the work before but the degree of electricity here was something that came as a complete shock to me. From the first note to last this Five Pieces is totally devastating. This is a performance that makes Schoenberg's Mahlerian heritage absolutely clear only he is so much more concentrated and focused in his delivery that the results for me are just shattering. The rapport that Boulez enjoyed with the BBC orchestra at this time is something I have always marvelled at but this takes it to another level. Of course the inner movements are also allowed moments of hushed poetic repose but the outer movements really do remind me of what Robert Craft said of the final pages of the last of the Five Pieces - that it was the greatest thing written in the twentieth century. That statement really surprised me and I think maybe it was a spur of the moment outburst but Boulez does a greater job than anybody of convincing me of its truth.

As for the Seranade, I love this performance. Schoenberg always had a great awareness of early music - perhaps inherited from Brahms. Webern of course even wrote his PhD thesis on Heinrich Isaac's Choralis Constantinus and in his writings Schoenberg refers to composers such as Josquin reasonably frequently. It is highly likely he was also familiar with the madrigals of the late Renaissance period, referred to the Seconda Prattica by Monteverdi. Poets such as Petrach and Tasso were popular amongst madrigal composers and the madrigalian feeling is even further accentuated by the use of instruments such as the mandolin for accompaniment making it sound even more like a twentieth century madrigal. It is a charming and enjoyable work, quirky and mercurial.

The final work on this CD is the Ode to Napolean in which Schoenberg spits vitriolic hatred at Hitler. I have always found Schoenberg's command of English language inflections to be less than perfect - you can hear a slight German accent in the Sprechstimme. Musically by this time Schoenberg starts to also sound increasingly more and more like Brahms and the opening statement by the string quartet and piano has a theme vaguely reminiscent of the opening of the finale of the Brahms Opus 25 G minor piano quartet (the one Schoenberg transcribed for orchestra)! Boulez has always been critical of this tendency in the later Schoenberg but I must confess to liking it. The work is a tour de force - fiery and passionate, yet uplifting and hugely appealling such that I am always surprised it is not played more often, especially when it pays such glowing hommage in the closing passages to George Washington.

All in all this is a desert island CD for me - most especially for the Five Pieces, which is one of the greatest performances of anything I have yet to hear.

I would like to speak in regards to what some reviewers are saying about the works of Schoenberg. I will admit that the first time I heard Schoenberg, I wrote him off as weird music that I would never like and was not worth listening to. In my defense, the first work I heard was "Pierrot Lunaire" which is a very hard work to understand. But I was assigned a paper of the Second Viennese School and its influences for music history and was forced to really listen to these works among others by much more extreme composers like Boulez and Cage (who I have yet to understand, but I am still young!) Once I stopped grumbling about how much I hated serialism and let myself really HEAR the music, I started to understand it and gained a begrudging respect for Schoenberg, which became a genuine liking. So in light of this, I dare anyone who is so willing to bash Schoenberg outright to really listen to his works and the works of those he influenced with an open mind and see if you can't at least respect the music for what it is.

Arnold Schoenberg: Serenade/Five Pieces For Orchestra

Extraordinary subtlety of interpretetion characterizes this particular version. The timbre and deftness of the musicians is a pearl of great price. This composer still is terribly challenging. He provides the largest, most extensive bridge between 19th & 20th century classical music composition. The serenade takes the most aggressive leave of the former century and speeds ahead at lightspeed. As a previous review said, this composer's statements represent a concentration of Mahler's best offerings.
The poetics here can only be taken in small doses...

This music like all of Schoenberg's music is meant for people who listen seriously. Those who take the time and make the effort can hardly fail to hear the great charm (Serenade) or passionate depth (Five Pieces)or great moral weight (Ode) of this great and greatly misrepresented composer. Boulez's music making with his own Ensemble InterContemporain or the BBC Symphony are very fine and the recorded sound very clear.

Ground-breaking music by a reviled genius! Tragic that the Serenade is the first piece by Schoenberg to use the tone-row system, but the work is very rarely performed or recorded. The fact that the guitar is represented in such important chamber music is cause to reflect on the guitar's current status in the classical music milieu. All the works included on the disc represent different aspects of the composer's innovative ideas: radical dissonance, klangfarbe and sprechgesang vie for attention in a challenging but enriching mix.
The recording is pristine and beautifully balanced, the performances lively and energetic with perfect ensemble. These folk clearly know what they're doing!

Nobody but Boulez, for "contemporain" music. In this recording, Serenata op.24, five pieces for orchestra op.16 and Ode to Napoleon, significant Schönberg works, are brought with extraordinary wealth of timbres and detail. Five stars.

Having owned nearly all avaliable recordings of all Schonberg, I have found all of Boulez's recordings on Sony to my favorite.
April 28,2011
Just received a comment stating correctly my post was idiotic and foolish
I agree.
BE YE TRANSFORMED BY THE RENEWING OF YOUR MINDS .Say St Paul
I will now write something new

WELL since my original post was a foolish idiotic rant.,
I will update. I HATE THE ENTIRE MUSIC OF BEETHOVEN.
Now onto Schoenberg. GENIUS!
But I also love love love Webern and Berg.
I HATE ALL GERMAN ROMANTICISM! HATE! (even though I am of german descent)
Boulez captures the supreme genius of Schoenberg.
Dump all your beethoven, BUY THIS CD,TODAY!!!
Get a NEW LIFE.
The music you love /adore, reflects the quality of your soul.

Crazy post I know, but its the truth..which in todays world is rarer than the finest gold.
April 28, 2011

Boulez ruins the Serenade with a ridiculously slow tempo for the first movement, somewhere around half-note = 80 whereas Schoenberg specified half-note = 100. With other composers, you might get away with that sort of nonsense, claiming that you slowed it down to "bring out the interesting inner voices" or whatever. But with Schoenberg you don't second guess. Yes, it goes VERY fast, but this is for a reason. Skip Boulez, try a CD where Robert Craft conducts. He respects the designated tempo and keeps it ALIVE!
(The Five Pieces performance on this CD may be fine -- I don't know that work so well.)

Somebody who dislikes the music presented on this CD wouldn't know good modern classical music if it smacked him/her across the face. This is quite a statement, I understand, but this music is simply brilliant - particularly 5 Pieces for Orchestra (perhas slightly less well-known than other Schoenberg works). This piece is a treatise on timbre that simply blows my mind. It relaxes you, enthralls you, terrifies you, and makes you very glad you spent the $11 on this CD. Buy it, and open your ears.

Depth? Genius? This stuff sounds like your watching an old Bugs Bunny cartoon. Its like the background sound effects when Yosemite Sam steps on a rake or Daffy does a double-take. Imagine being Ray Charles or Andrea Bocelli and "watching" old cartoons: it's the same experience. But in this case, I'd rather be Marlee Matlin.