Schoenberg - Pierrot lunaire ~ Herzgewächse ~ Ode to Napoleon / Schäfer, Pittman-Jennings, Ensemble InterContempolain, Boulez

Arnold Schoenberg (Artist), Pierre Boulez (Artist), Christine Schäfer (Artist), David Pittman-Jennings (Artist), Ensemble InterContempolain (Artist), Florent Boffard (Artist), Jeannne Marie Conquer (Artist), Christophe Desjardins (Artist), Hae Sun Kang (Artist), Sophie Cherrier (Artist), Alain Damiens (Artist) | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (October 20, 1998)
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Deutsche Grammophon
• ASIN: B00000DBV6
• In-Print Editions: MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (19 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #123,894 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)
  • #40 in Music > Classical > Opera & Vocal > Vocal Non-Opera > Odes

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com essential recording

Arnold Schoenberg claimed he had never set out to be a revolutionary. Yet the song cycle he wrote in 1912 based on proto- expressionist poems and featuring a grotesque harlequin figure, Pierrot Lunaire, still reverberates with its haunting, startling originality. This work introduced the world to a hitherto unthought-of musical landscape; to call it innovative would be an absurd understatement. What's particularly exciting about the undertaking here (Boulez's third recorded take on this music) is how utterly fresh the music sounds, its novelty unblunted and yet strangely beautiful--a far cry from the forbidding Schoenberg of stereotype. Soprano Christine Schäfer negotiates the no-man's land between spoken word and sung pitch--the technique known as Sprechstimme which Schoenberg introduced here--with fascinating nuance. She brings a cabaret-savvy sensibility to bear, along with a gripping sense of pathos, alternately sweet and acrid. Boulez treats the songs as miniatures, offering coloristic and multiperspectival--almost Cubistic--portrayals of Pierrot. For all the score's nebulous atmospherics, Boulez distills a keen, sharp clarity of line and timbre. Also included is the extraordinary song "Herzgewächse" (scored for harmonium, celesta, and harp), in which Schäfer matches her voice like a "crystal sigh" to the instrumentation. The album is filled out with Schoenberg's setting, during his exile from the Nazi horror, of Byron's bitterly ironic "Ode to Napoleon Buonaparte" for a baritone reciter. --Thomas May

Product Description

No Description Available
No Track Information Available
Media Type: CD
Artist: SCHOENBERG,A.
Title: PIERROT LUNAIRE/HERZGEWACHSE
Street Release Date: 10/20/1998
Domestic
Genre: CLASSICAL COMPOSERS

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

16 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars One of the Best Schoenberg Discs Available..., January 30, 2005

By 

Sébastien Melmoth (Hôtel d'Alsace, PARIS) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Schoenberg - Pierrot lunaire ~ Herzgewächse ~ Ode to Napoleon / Schäfer, Pittman-Jennings, Ensemble InterContempolain, Boulez (Audio CD)

This is a superb disc in many ways: it features three of Schoenberg's great pieces, one of which (Herzgewächse) is virtually unavailable anywhere else. Since the death of von Karajan, Boulez is now the greatest conductor in the world now working; and his understanding of Second Viennese School oeuvre is as insightful as Karajan's was. Christine Schäfer--for my money and to my ear--is the greatest soprano now working: her voice is exquisite: not shrill nor brittle, but rich, moist, and pure, and oh-so-effortless: she's absolutely wonderful, and she, too, has a deep insight into Modern music: for example, she sings the part of Lulu in Berg's eponymous opera.

As for the works: Herzgewächse is an exquisite song of about 4 min duration. It contains a hair-raising Expressionistic leap of the voice at climax, which Webern called, "the summit of music." The text is by Symbolist Belgian Maeterlinck.

Byron's Ode to Napoleon is about 20 mins of excoriating sarcasm and bitter irony on the capitulation of the Corsican. Schoenberg, to whom the sentiments of sarcasm and irony came naturally--set Byron's Ode in English as a protest against Hitler, Stalin, totalitarianism, and autocracy. Set for piano quintet, it's too, too wonderful. It's a 12-tone work, but the tones chosen have tonal ambiguities which also hint at Beethoven's Eroica.

Pierrot Lunaire is of course Schoenberg's most infamous piece. Here it is made most approachable by Boulez and Schafer. The problematic "speech-song" which Schoenberg calls for is smoothed-out by Schafer.

Outstanding performances of exquisite works, well recorded.

14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Boulez gives one of the clearest representations of Pierrot, April 20, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Schoenberg - Pierrot lunaire ~ Herzgewächse ~ Ode to Napoleon / Schäfer, Pittman-Jennings, Ensemble InterContempolain, Boulez (Audio CD)

This is the best recording that I have heard of Pierrot Lunaire. Often the expressionist mood of the piece is emphasized by performers to the exclusion of the panorama of symbolism and emotion contained in Pierrot. Boulez, rather than putting any one aspect of the work too far in the forefront, focuses his energies on making all the movement and structure of the piece clear, allowing the intentions of Schoenberg to come to the forefront. There are so many games in his commedia del'arte evokation that are normally missed. The work is enigmatc in many ways - with the sprechstimme imitation of caberet singing is a mix of high and low/popular art, the soprano vocalist who plays a young man creates gender confusion, the imitation of traditional forms where the are no longer harmonically meaningful (fugue, ect)... it is a fancinating piece, far more so than space here permits me to say! This piece is also a great place to start for those who have not heard atonal music before. The 21 diverse (and short) pieces are easy to comprehend on first listening, though they offer a wealth of information further for those who study them.

12 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars razor sharp sonorities,ferocious clarity,this is late Boulez, July 24, 2000

By 

scarecrow "scarecrow" (Chicago, Illinois United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Schoenberg - Pierrot lunaire ~ Herzgewächse ~ Ode to Napoleon / Schäfer, Pittman-Jennings, Ensemble InterContempolain, Boulez (Audio CD)

I listened to this modest masterwork again after some time, and it is incredible the ultimate sonoric clarity achieved here. The IRCAM musicians who are the in-house band there under the Ensemble Intercontemporain always bring this razor sharp sound to anything they record, Listen to their Ligeti or Birtwistle, and you will discover again this same affinity for this sharpness. Schoenberg's music,his orchestrations has a tendency toward the impacted dense sound.Well darkly brooding gestures,yet there is an affinity for the flagellations of sound, treating sound with sharp surgeon-like instruments.The Piano piece Opus #11 attests to this. Boulez has referred to these orchestration problems in the interviews with Jean Vermeil. Here all the fine wind sonorities are well defined, well balanced, and sculpted. Even the lower register reedy sounding flute is heard,penetrating through the dense counterpoints. The "Passacaglia" I've never heard it again with such clean relief,where you can distinguish the various entrances. Usually this movement has satisified itself with simple unarticulated darkness in the lower octave of the piano is where it starts,barely perceptible tones there when intertwined together. But this "Pierrot" reaches for the extremes in volume as well, Schafer screams when necessary transforming this what can be introspective cabaret music into simply an impassioned dramatic invention,I will not say concert aria, for the structures here betray that. The piano to,as in the opening, the incessant ongoing eighth-note motion is penetrating,tickly,yet dangerously menacing, not a Mozart tinkle but a razor sharp one. The rhythmic gestures as well reveals Boulez again with his desired fast tempi. This does create more impetus for the overall timbre to be and remain sharp and focused. Boulez takes out all the (what can be) sappy melodrama out of this to. His Schoenberg is indeed one with a 20th century modernist vision, one that looks beyond the transition period of the early years of this century.Not Brahms as Solti might have preferred. It is a deeply disturbing vision,that of Boulez, but one that reflects realistically the state of time,either now or then prior to the massive Wars, and the darkest pages of the human spirit awaiting everyone.