Customer Reviews

Boulez conducts Webern, Vol. 2

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

 

 

Admittedly this isn't a recording for everyone. Those who are devout admirers of Webern as a 20th Century composer might be taken aback with how Boulez and the Berlin Philharmonic perform these works. Boulez views Webern here as a composer more at home in late 19th Century romanticism, paying homage to Mahler. So Boulez does emphasis the lush, crisp playing of the Berlin Philharmonic's string section throughout these works. And he emphasizes Webern's links to 19th Century romanticism and earlier musical periods by conducting Webern's orchestrations of Bach's and Schubert's music. Deutsche Grammophon's state of the art recording technology does a splendid job capturing the rich textures of Webern's music.

If you have more than just a passing interest in classical music, then at some point it will do your heart and head some good to encounter the music of Anton Webern. You may like it, you may hate it, but you will never hear anything else quite like it. I like it, but I will readily confess that it is not something I listen to often. Maestro Pierre Boulez brings his masterly touch to bear on these masterpieces of Viennese orchestral expressionism, and the result is pure and radiant sonic joy.

As in the James Levine-conducted Sibelius disk reviewed above, what we have here is the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra in 4D sound, this time in music that seems far removed from the music of Sibelius, even though much of it was composed at about the same time that the two Sibelius symphonies on the Levine disk were composed. Even if the very thought of listening to anything by Schoenberg, Berg, or Webern makes you break out in a cold sweat, you ought to give this disk a try. Not only are there original compositions by Webern, but also orchestrations of Bach and Schubert, and the whole disk is an example of music well served by clarity of conducting, clarity of playing, and clarity of recording: in short, Boulez Conducts Webern II is a clear winner.

Webern has known no greater intepreter than Pierre Boulez. Webern inspired this post-war generation of composers those who found sustenance in the European preservation of a new musical language. Anything American was inferior and continues to be do to our proclivities for pure entertainment and self-indulgence in our concert halls. It's bizarre that it was an American soldier during World War 2 that shot Webern while he was out for a cigarette from his modest cottage. This is an oddly conceived CD with Webern couched between his orchestrations of Bach and Schubert. We know Webern was an learned man, who kept a place of history always within his thinking. But he was also a visionary composer who had a very private introspective pallette of compositional ideas. And this CD does not really serve that side of Webern. The early "Passacaglia" I've heard better. Here Boulez rakes up the sonoric dirt so that the snarling trombones are in the forefront. I also thought this reading was too surface oriented something Boulez frowns upon, at least before. Webern's music is really not a social affair and when you make the "Five Movements" Op.5 here for string orchestra it is like letting someone into your diary. The large massive Berlin sound has to be controlled at least in Webern, and Boulez certainly knows where the pitfalls occur in this work."Im Sommerwind" was an early Idyll, an immature excursion into Strauss and Wagne which will equal them so why bother?. Webern's ultimate power is the distance placed between the orgies that was late Romanticism. Webern found the crumbs of this vast Romantic feast and there is not point revealing it.

Reviews are so subject that it is almost a waste of time writing them. What matters is that you experience the music and let it take you on a magnificent journey. Too many classical music critics and reviewers analyze the music to death until it loses what it was meant to do and that is entertain the listener.