Customer Reviews

Schoenberg - Die Glückliche Hand · Variations for Orchestra, Op.31 · Verklärte Nacht / Nimsgern · BBC Orch. · NY Phil. · Boulez

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For decades spoil sports like "denisdiderot" below have been attacking Schoenberg's 12 tone system, saying, for example, that his music has no relation to "natural acoustics" and to the way "human beings make sense of sound". Well, last I checked, I'm a human being, one who happens to love this music, and I join musicians and music enthusiasts around the globe in praise of Schoenberg's work. The music of a "mediocre musical talent" doesn't last 50 years after his death. A talentless hack is forgotten. Schoenberg hasn't been forgotten and never will be. I dare say, though the real Denis Diderot is certainly remembered, the person below using Diderot's name as an alias will be forgotten shortly after his own death. Schoenberg will live on in the hearts and minds of musicians and music lovers everywhere as he does today.

Schoenberg's music is not for everyone, but then there's a lot in music that isn't for everyone. Try to accept that, though you may not connect with this composer, there are many who honestly do, and you may be missing something.

As to the person below who suggests we "use this site for what it was meant for", my understanding is that the purpose of Amazon reviews is to register opinions about the music. It is in that spirit that I have offered my review.

Die glückliche Hand alone is already a good reason for purchasing this CD - this work is very rarely recorded (Boulez's was only the second recording ever, and it was issued in 1981!), the few other recorded alternatives being mainly live performances (including one by as legendary a conductor as Hermann Scherchen).

Here is your only opportunity to get the full libretto, and what strikes one is that it almost entirely consists of scene indications, with the Man's words reduced to a minimum (he mainly admires the woman's beauty and wishes he could stay with her forever) and at both ends of the work, the choir of 6 men and 6 women blaming him for seeking things that he cannot obtain while he could be happy with his self. Numerous and quick changes in the colour and intensity of light are requested by Schoenberg throughout, and he describes very precisely what the characters should do on the stage and their surroundings - you would obviously benefit even more from the whole of it if you experienced the work on a stage or at least on film, rather than trying to imagine the scenery! I recommend you to read the whole of them before listening, otherwise you will end up the nose in the booklet without hardly any time to listen to the music!

The Happy Hand depicts a man's quest for love from a woman who excites him but always ultimately rejects him to join her lover, a dandy. The lovers are supposed to appear to him as in a dream, and he by the way hardly ever sees them as he mostly stands on the front facing the public while they are moving behind. This `hand' is supposed to represent what urges one to make the same mistakes repeatedly while following one's desires. Psychoanalysis determined the choice of the subject, with the obstacles to the man's dreams and desires being represented by a bat-winged cat-like beast sucking blood from his nape at the very beginning and end (and taking the shape of a rock that falls upon the man in between!), or the rage of a couple of workmen as the man manages to create a golden jewel after breaking an anvil on a single hammer stroke...

You also get a fine recording of Variations op. 31, though Boulez achieved much more unity, perfection of ensemble and a greater sense of nuances in his subsequent recording with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra (coupled with his only recording of Pelleas and Melisande on Warner).

Boulez also conducts a dramatic performance of the string orchestra version of Die verklärte Nacht, with the feelings of the characters depicted as vividly as possible without the work being overly romanticized and sentimentalised - so to me he finds here a better balance in this work than Karajan, who tends to use it (like Strauss' Metamorphosen) as a mean of displaying the virtuosity of his strings. It also makes a fascinating comparison with Boulez's other recording - the one of the string sextet original scoring.

The way Boulez's recordings of Schoenberg works on Sony have been combined on CD leaves me puzzled though - for instance you have here three works representing three different steps in the composer's career, whose unchronological order in the tracking moreover makes the overall listening sound like a series of anachronisms - Die verklärte Nacht sounds almost reactionary coming after the Variations! Coupling Die glückliche Hand with Erwartung would have made much more sense, all the more as not everyone will be drawn both to postromantic and dodecaphonic works. Here is maybe the reason why the CD was deleted despite containing an account of the much-loved Transfigured Night by a great conductor. And there are surprisingly no many more alternatives left in the catalogue, apart from Karajan...

It's pretty hard to find a first-rate recording of one of Schoenberg's operas that comes complete with a libretto. Not only is this a first-rate recording with a libretto, it's also a bargain! I'm not too wild about the Boulez rendition of Op. 4 though. I like Karajan's version much better, but that's just a personal preference.

Boulez is one of the great interpreters of this music, along with Karajan. Like one of the other reviewers, my personal preference is for Karajan in op.4, but that doesn't stop me admiring the different way Boulez tackles this beautiful piece. As for the other performances, all I can say is, check them out and decide for yourself. At the low price offered, you can't go wrong. Also, Schoenberg is not difficult once you widen your horizons, open your heart and ears and really LISTEN to him. The experience opens up an infinite world of extraordinary beauty and radiance. Try it!!

I would just like to say that I am an obnoxious blowhard with nothing better to do than waste my time smearing music that is over 75 years old and calling long dead composers communnists. Modern music is hard to understand and makes my pea size brain to hurt, but unfortunately I have yet to figure out that if I don't like it, I don't have to listen to it. Therefore, I feel the need to post the same nonsensical babble on every CD containing Schoenberg's music that I can find. Please disregard my rantings as I am mentally deficient.

In Berg, WEbern , Schonberg very highly recommended.
Yeah I realize there are english casting in some of the Schonberg choral/operas, the works were scored in german.
I realize this .
But somehow the english chorus'/solists (there are a few germans cast in some cds) but its the finest in terms of orch/conducting/soloist voice quality.
This is based upon my extensive collections in Berg, Webern, Schonberg, on many other labels, german casting.
I'll let this comment stand for all the Boulez/Sony releases.
I am not refering to his Erato not DG releases.

Schonberg was a supreme genius in all his scores, only his Pelleas he mentioned he did not care for the opening part.


btw I have to say A music Fan May 5,1999, does have a point. there are a number of children playing with those voting buttons.

You are all babies... use this site for what it was meant for..

the music contained on this cd is proof enough in and of itself that Arnold Schoenberg was a mediocre musical talent, and turned to composing in an alienist atonal style only after he could plainly see that he could not compete on tonal musical grounds with the likes of strauss, pfitzner, schreker, ravel, debussy, and the like. the man craved attention and success, and most of all, "historical significance" for himself, and therefore devised a system of composing that purposefully could not be understood, thus setting himself up as a pretended misunderstood "genius" in the romantic sense, and claiming that anyone who cried foul regarding his music was simply not sophisticated enough to comprehend his noise. Then he created a rigid mathematical system of organizing tones with no relation whatsoever to natural acoustics or the way human beings make sense of sound. If his ludicrous communistic regimentation of musical tones is not enough to prove that Schoenberg was a musical mediocrity at best, or incompetent at worst, then just listen to the garbage contained on this cd for confirmation.