Customer Reviews

NEW Abbado/vienna Philharmonic Orc - Schoenberg: A Survivor From Wa (CD)

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Tolstoy was not only himself a great artist, but moreover he was a great thinker and a great human being: a real mensch.
And as a thinker, Tolstoy considered art and its significance in the human condition in such letters as The Kreutzer Sonata (1889) and What is Art? (1898).
In the latter Tolstoy argues against the sterility of l'art pour l'art which titillates individuals in their subjectivity, while he argues in favour of socialistic art which promotes psychic well-being and good fellow-feeling in the community of folk.
Tolstoy privileges art-as-communication--that is, art which clearly conveys human meaning (thoughts and feelings) between the art-producer and the art-receiver, thereby fructifying the communion of humanity.

Tolstoy's humane philosophy of art is effectuated in Schönberg's extraordinary mini-oratorio A Survivor from Warsaw (1947)--an artwork composed in the purest dodecaphonia with the most scintillating orchestration wherein Schönberg directly confronts and exposes murderous totalitarianism with human dignity and the inextinguishability of the human spirit.
This aesthetic exposure and confrontation of corruption is imperative, for in the condition of natural ignorance without instruction people `cannot tell their right hand from their left' (Jonah 4:11a)--hence the absolute necessity of discernment between the concepts of `clean' and `unclean' (cf. Gen. 7:2, ff.): i.e., the moral conviction of right and wrong.

It is not by accident that Schönberg evokes the Shema (Deut. 6:4) as the work's faithful climax.
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As with Herzgewäche (Op. 20) and the Orchestral Songs (Op. 22), recordings of A Survivor (Op. 46) are few; this OOP reading by Abbado/VPO w/the VSO men's choir and baritone Gottfried Hornik (who sang in some very good company in the late-'80s) is surely the finest: for, along with Karajan and Boulez, Abbado has the best apprehension of the technique, aesthetic, and expression of the New Viennese School--as further exibited on this disc in the Webern orchestral works (Opp. 1, 6, 10, 30) plus Webern's phenomenal orchestration of Bach's 6-voice ricercar from The Musical Offering which (like his setting of Schubert's piano dances D.820) is equally revelatory both of Webern's own mind and the mind of the original artist.

Abbado/VPO ably administer a beautious dialectical/critical machine of Modernism and Romanticism.
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Abbado's Schönberg Gurrelieder
Abbado's Schönberg /w Pollini Piano Concerto
Abbado's Berg Wozzeck
Abbado's Berg w/von Otter Orchestral/Songs etc.
Abbado's Berg w/Price Altenberg-Lieder etc.
Abbado's Berg w/Price Altenberg-Lieder etc.
Abbado's Berg w/Banse Altenberg-Lieder etc.
Abbado's Berg w/Stern Chamber Concerto
Abbado's Berg w/Stern Kammerkonzert
Tolstoy What Is Art?
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i had never heard of a survivor from warsaw until i impulsively bought this. and i thought i was a schoenberg expert.

it is harrowing. it is not beautiful. but it is great.

the webern is great too, but overshadowed by those 7 minutes.

buy this. now.