Customer Reviews

Schoenberg: Pierrot lunaire - Lied der Waldtaube - Erwartung / Minton, J. Martin, J. Norman, Zukerman, Harrell, Barenboim; Boulez

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

 

 

I have loved Pierrot lunaire since I was in late elementary school (yes I was a weird child!) but had not picked up a CD copy, content with my old pirated tape of a mono recording. (One of the first LP versions of the piece...I don't remember the performers but it was stunning.The reciter sounds like Lotte Lenya!) And I have always admired Boulez's take on Schoenberg, which is quite transparent, not muddy as so many others can be in this music. But I was extremely disappointed in this CD version.

The problem lies mostly in Yvonne Minton. She is a wonderful singer, but that's just the issue. Pierrot should absolutely NOT be sung. Nor really should it be spoken. Schoenberg's invention of sprechstimme is a unique thing and perhaps among his greatest inventions. It has influenced many composers who have no use for his other musical theories. A good interpretation of this piece makes it sound like a Berlin cabaret piece as seen through a twisted lens. Minton does not do this. She sings, complete with vibrato. As a result, the music looses both the nightmare quality that it should have, and also looses it's sense of humor.

The other pieces on the recording are quite good. The Ewartung is well sung and Boulez brings clarity to an otherwise muddy score. And Jessye Norman sings the Lied der Waldtaube beautifully. But the Gurrelieder piece is best in the context of the complete oratorio, and there are other equally good recordings of Ewartung (there's a wonderful one on a Phillips two-fer that also includes Verklarte Nacht, the Orchestral Variations, and the first Chamber Symphony.)

For the Pierrot, I would recommend the later Boulez recording with Schafer doing the reciter's part, or Jan De Gaetani and Arthur Weissberg's ensemble. This one just doesn't capture the work at all.

Contained on this Disc are two of Schoenberg's seminal expressionist works, Erwartung and Pierrot Lunaire. Erwartung, a "monodrama", is a terrifying emotional rollercoaster ride through a dark woods at night. Boulez and Janis Martin capture the essence of this piece perfectly, and the BBC orchestra, as usual, delivers a spine chilling accompaniment to this piece. Erwartung is the postershild of expressionist art (both in the music and the text). These works prove to the Philistines of 20th century music that atonality IS a legitamate art form and has the potential to express just about anything, even nothingness. Really, buy this album just for Erwartung, it is the best version I have heard on disc. Where we run into problems is Pierrot. The "Dandy from Bergamo" seems just a bit too lyrical at times. On some other recordings, I get the feeling that the sprechstimme is taken way out of proportion (as Schoenberg does indicate very exact pitches for the reciter, even notating sharps and flats). His original instructions, however, say that the recitation should "not call to mind singing", and Yvonne Minton's voice does, as much as one tries to ignore it. A correct reading Schoenberg's instructions can only be seen as extremely elusive and this, I suppose, is just another legitimate reading of the notation. I suppose we must just use our imaginations and realize that the ideal lies somewhere in between the extremes. So, in conclusion, if you are really a Schoenberg fan, get this CD for Erwartung and a different Pierrot. If you just want to try Schoenberg, then I think other albums might present a better "beginner's package".

I have a Boulez recording of the Pierrot Lunaire that I recorded on tape from a friend's Lp in 1979. I don't know anything about this lp, except that it is a Boulez's direction, but I think that it is an earlier version of this 1977 recording. The "sprechstimme" is realized better than the De Gaetani recording, obviously better than this '77 Boulez recording (here the reciter sing, and the Pierrot sould absolutely not be sung) and much better than the 1997 recording with Christine Schafer, who sing and often seems, I don't know how to say, almost like a "strangled hen"!... If anybody knows if this recording (my earlier Boulez recording on tape) is available on cd please tell us!!!

"Erwartung" is a beautiful piece of singing with a light musical accompaniment and from time to time that music is used to emphasize, amplify a vocal accent or expression. We are quite ahead of what vocal music is producing and even is going to produce at that time or just after. The voice is an instrument that is used to create an atmosphere that is needed for the real meaning of the text. The singing is not only an embellishment. It is fully meaningful and signifying. The meaning is very sad, bleak, sinister even, and dominated by the Moon, a sort of master haunting the landscape and the mind of the singer, of the character. Then the musical texture of this piece is also quite new, as if Schoenberg refused to create a musical line that could be qualified as harmonious in any way. He works on intervals we are not used to hear in vocal music before him, with high jumps and deep dives here and there to express fear and even fright, and then at times notes that are so close, with minimal intervals to give the impression of a non-moving and silent and even dead of death-carrying presence, world. At times the voice gets lost in the music and it brings to the whole a texture, a feeling of a human character manipulated by the music, and the meaning of the word leads you to thinking that the character is manipulated, controlled by the Moon, by Death behind and the German language makes that presence and power very invasive since both of them have the force and the might of their masculine gender. Nothing feminine in that. Pure masculine domination, and when this masculine master is Death, you can imagine how complete the submission to the night and its creatures from beyond the limits of life can be. And then the morning forces to say goodbye, goodbye to the myriads of creatures of the night, the myriads of men the character wants to kiss a last time and be burnt by them, penetrated and possessed by their inner fire. And the morning brings nothing but a sense of want, absence, deprivation, it could be castration, but how can it be that for a woman, except if we call Jacques Lacan to our side and consider that castration is mental and it is the loss of the Ideal of the Ego, what he calls the Phallus, and he always adds that even women have a phallus, quite differentiated from the penis that is an only male organ. It is thus the loss of personal existence, of personal essence, of life, and the last notes of the piece are like the vanishing of a magical being in a small noiseless explosion of smoke, like opening your eyes at the end of a vision of a nightmare and seeing the world is just what it has always been, and the vision had only been conjured in your mind by a sorcerer, the Moon or Death themselves. "Pierrot Lunaire" is nothing new for me and I have already written on this work and how it works on psalmody as opposed to prosody, or vice versa. Here Pierre Boulez does not make the woman sing since she is not supposed to but he makes her speak in such a way that the music of the language comes out in its rhythms and tempos both measured by the speed but also by the repetitions, assonances and other regularities. And he transforms the German intonation of language in such a way that it becomes a music of its own. German starts singing like a nightingale under the moon, a sad blind nightingale chirping along and away into death. The whole work is composed of 21 poems. Each poem has 13 lines. The 21 (3 x 7) poems count 63 stanzas (6 + 3 = 9) and the complete number of lines is 819 (8 + 1 + 9 = 9 + 9 = 18 = 6 + 6 + 6). The beast of John's Book of Revelation is ever present: 666 (Revelation, 13) and three times 9 (idem, Jerusalem Bible's notes on 666). The night is dominant and the main luminary is the moon which is associated to blood and red, and to the dead and death. The negative linguistic elements are overpowering, particles for verbs, negative for nouns and words with negative meanings (blind, mute). This extremely negative vision of the night, the moon and Pierrot, the embodiment of both, is in perfect continuity with the poets, writers and other musicians of that period before the First World War when everything was too good to be true, to last forever. The vision of the moon of course is essential here and perverted just like in the previous work into a dangerous conjurer if not black magic sorcerer, a voodoo priest. An apocalypse is obviously coming up. The last work "Lied der Waldtaube" is in perfect continuity with the previous two. A woman again singing a dirge of fear and death. The music is maybe slightly more psalmodious or even melodious though leading here and there to shrill cries amplified by the music itself that can even sound like a tolling bell in the near distance like at the end of the work. Pierre Boulez receives this music personally and he gives it a special delicacy that enhances the power and the intensity of the bleakness of the vision. It is then launched into eternity and we have to learn to live with that menace over our heads all the time.

Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne, University Versailles Saint Quentin en Yvelines, CEGID

OK, maybe the Sprechstimme is a bit romanticised on this version, but it hasn't sounded this beautiful in many recordings. Deffinitley a good introduction to this work if you're a bit feint-hearted about atonality, and a very informative second version to own even if you're not. Boulez in this repertoire is unbeatable, combining his analytical ear with passion and a sense of line that is just unique. Somehow with him you hear each strand individually while hearing it as a whole.

A warning though about the Gurrelieder. Wonderful though the recording is, Jessye Norman - ample in all ways, line, voice, rubato, feeling - is a tad "cooler" (read: careful and less hystrionic)than Troyanos or Fassbaender on the other two main contenders in my book, Chailly and Ozawa. This is partly because this is an arrangement for smaller orchestra, not the HUGE forces of the original. I was not disapppointed, but some buyers wanting the full symphonic sweep might be. Worth it for Norman though. She brings a largesse to it that is not over the top, but conveys the post-romantic yearning so poigniantly. I have to withhold the 5th star because Norman doesn't quite let rip, and because this is not the only version of Pierrot one should own.

I had been listening to this recording of Pierrot for years and I still couldn't get into it. Then I realized it wasn't entirely my fault. This is a fine, well executed performance of a difficult piece. As well, it is played by some pretty big names (Barenboim, Zukermann, Harrell), but I couldn't shake the impression that there was more emphasis on the correct execution rather than the expression. This is thus vintage Boulez, before age began to mellow him a little. Erwartung is slightly better, though still rather cold. This may be the preferred choice for Schoenberg experts, but if you are looking for a way into his difficult style, I wouldn't recommend this recording.

Very much my preferred recording of Pierrot. She clearly sounds the written pitches before moving throughout the performance - this gives another line of counterpoint to the piece which is simply not there when the "singer" does not do that - as is the case in all other versions i have heard except the other more recent Boulez one. But I like this Minton version best.

this isn't a review (i had to select some stars). i think the reciter's name in the early lp recording of pierrot that he listened to in elementary school is ethel semser (that sounds like lotte lenya, doesn't it?). I have this lp..it's on the westminster label, and it sounds terrific on my old silvertone mono player from the late 40's.