Customer Reviews

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

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

 

 

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.

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.

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.

Schoenberg's other recording of this piece (Sony) is interesting -- a soprano who sang everything (perfectly pitched, but that's not what Schoenberg wanted 99% of the time anyways), and an ensemble that consisted mainly of egocentric soloists who don't work too well as a group. This recording is MUCH better -- Schaefer preserves Schoenberg's coutours while balancing speech and song perfectly. Boulez's direction is, as you could imagine, crystal-clear and elegant. In a few movements I thought the angst was not intense enough, but that doesn't prevent me from calling this perhaps the finest recording of Pierrot so far. You could get more of Schaefer's "conventional" singing in the exquisite Herzegewächse, where she goes all the way to Queen of the Night F! The Ode is also wonderfully performed. If I recall correctly the speaker is also Boulez's Moses is his DG recording of Moses und Aron (which is another outstanding Boulez achievement, certainly worth checking out!).

I would just like to point out (in contrast to what a few reviews have implied) that while Pierrot Lunaire is "atonal" (not in a conventional key) it is not twelve-tone. Schoenberg did not begin using the twelve-tone system until later in his life.

These songs are incredibly beautiful, and not particularly "hard to listen to". Even if you generally disliked Schoenberg keep in mind that Pierrot is quite different from some of his later works. And don't be put off if you think you don't understand it. Just keep an open mind and enjoy the extraordinary sound Schoenberg has created.

I was not really a big fan Pierrot Lunaire until I purchased this CD. Very often sopranos will try to make the sprechstimme into operatic singing or go too far in the other direction and lose the musical nuances. This definately is not the case in this recording. Schafer delivers an incredible performance full of expression and subtlety which truely brings this masterpiece to life. She expertly walks the line between speech and song and makes it seem as natural as if she were singing Stephen Foster tunes. Added to this wonderful performance are Boulez's brilliant and tactful interpretation, the expert playing of the Ensemble InterContemporain, which makes even the most difficult of modern works sound effortless and natural, and Deutch Grammaphone's incredible sound fidelity. Schafer's amazing performance of the stratosphereic Herzgewachse is added bonus. This is a great CD for fans of 20th century music or any open-minded and adventerous music lover.

Though the long song cycle that is "Pierrot Lunaire" might be the big draw of this DG disc that features some of Arnold Schoenberg's music performed by soprano Christiane Schaefer and the Ensemble Intercontemporain cond. Pierre Boulez, the piece I recommend the strongest is the shortest. "Herzgewäsche" op. 20 for soprano, piano, harp and celesta (1991) is three minutes of lovely, gentle music that is the aural equivalent of eating rich chocolate. The soprano begins in the depths with this setting of Maeterlinck, but as the work proceeds she climbs higher, ending the piece with a glorious high note that might be conventional but is too sublime to be called cliche. Whenever those tiresome claims arise that Schoenberg turned to the avant-garde because he couldn't write music that is simply beautiful, "Herzgewäsche" stands as a strong refutation.

"Pierrot Lunaire" (1912) is a setting of 21 poems by Albert Giraud for female voice and chamber ensemble. The scoring is novel, with piano, violin (doubling viola), cello, flute (doubling piccolo), and clarinet (doubling bass clarinet), violinist, flutist. The recital of its text employs the technique called Sprechstimme, whose interpretation is controversial, though Schoenberg allowed great freedom. Here Christine Schaefer chooses to speak in most passages but sing at moments of great expressiveness. "Pierrot Lunaire" is not among my favourite Schoenberg pieces, but what makes it a noteworthy achievement is how very expressive it is. This is not an abstract song cycle like Webern's late works, but rather Schoenberg's music is tied to the text, only more intense than anything the Romantic era could come up with with its prettifying conventions.

The "Ode to Napolean Buonaparte" op. 41 for baritone and piano quintet (1942) is a late work in the twelve-tone idiom. Its presence here shows just how true Schoenberg remained to his already-established personal style even as he pursued a new theoretical rigour. The music is quite fine if you like the twelve-tone technique as practiced by the Second Viennese School -- it ends with a waltz, showing just how rooted in turn-of-the-century Austria the music of Schoenberg remained in spite of his fresh harmonic language. And indeed, it doesn't sound like any radical departure from the days of "Pierrot Lunaire" for all its theoretical rigour. Still, I am slightly irked by the setting of the English text. Schoenberg learnt English late and imperfectly, and he had a bad feel for the flow of this language -- I have the same complaint about his otherwise amazing piece "A Survivor for Warsaw".

None of these three pieces are among my favourite Schoenberg works. Still, "Pierrot Lunaire" is a pivotal work in 20th century music, and the EIC and Boulez give a flawless performance in DG's crystal-clear sound.

Schoenberg's "Pierrot Lunaire" has been performed and recorded countless times. Its conceptual innovations today we find commonplace. But you always need to put things,objects into its proper context. Coming from the orgy that was 19th Century Romanticism,music faced an impasse, an exhaustion of viable means. This is why this work has been so important. The structural approach of Schoenberg is also a breath of fresh air. It allowed him to deal directly with a self-contained image,magnetizing the various solo intrumental colours to it. I prefer Schoenberg with a little more passion, here the performing is incredibly precise and the sonorities under Boulez goes for the throat without taming the high screeching wind sonorities. However Schafer is also an inspiring performer but she favors a restrained beauty,not really allowing (what can be ) the overwhelming power of sprechstimme to shape the abstract forces here. Schoenberg thought of this work partly as a very sophisticated cabaret-like genre. But Boulez would never go in that interpretive direction for it is too dangerous. You need a fine line between both worlds of high art (which it undoubtedly is) and the more base realism which was certainly part of Schoenberg's dramatic thinking.

That guy just has it in for Schoenberg! Well, there's no accounting for taste.

What more is to be said about this CD? It contains one of my favorite readings of Pierrot Lunaire - a spectacular monument of 20th Century music. The piece is played with all the ironic cabaret influences we'd hope to hear in this piece. The ensemble is truly together, and the sprechstimme is quite convincing - not overdone or misunderstood.

The consummate high modernist performer, Boulez's career has been characterized by his desire to bracket himself from interpretive traditions and to formulate his approach to the music in which the printed score serves as his ultimate guide. In some cases, including, I think, Boulez's prior recording of Pierrot for CBS, the result could seem clinical. But in recent years, Boulez has found his own way to inject a warmth into his performances that was often missing in earlier recordings. Perhaps this is a result of a half-century's experience on the podium and of having lived with the music for as long. But whatever the source is, the results have been stunning, and, in this case, Boulez, Christine Schaefer, and the Ensemble Intercontemporain give us a Pierrot Lunaire that is so stunning, so compelling, that this recording ought to break down the resistances of all but the most virulent Schoenberg haters.