Customer Reviews

Schubert: Music for "Rosamunde"

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

 

 

This is one of the few virtually complete recordings of Rosamunde available and what a delight it is. Abbado has just the right touch in all the numbers and the singers are excellent. Von Otter brings warmth and grace to her number and the chorus sings positively throughout. The orchestra gives sparkle to the lighter moments and a hushed, meditative quality to the slower numbers. The recording is a success for DG, well-balanced with the orchestra and chorus not recessed. Let us hope that Abbado has at least several more years to contribute great recordings to music lovers around the world.

Rasmunde was a play with incidental singing and ballet mixed in. The play is lost, but we have this wonderful music. In its time the play was panned and the music praised. So, when you hear that this is the complete Rosamunde, I guess you can say we have the complete worthwhile parts. But you won't get any kind of story from what is here without reading the notes. In fact, the order of the pieces is altered for listening purposes. However, you could program your CD player to give it to you in dramatic sequence if that interests you.

The performance provided here is especially good and tracks 7 & 8 are my favorites on the disk. All the music is very good Schubert which is better than all but the very greatest music. Yes, Schubert is one of my favorite composers, but I am willing to point out his faults. However, when you consider his output and that he died at 31 years old, what we have from him is completely awe inspiring.

Rosamunde is one of the treasures he left us and I am grateful for this recording.

Franz Schubert is considered one of the greatest composers who ever lived, next to Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven. But until recent decades, much of his orchestral output has tended to be overshadowed by the immense number of songs he composed during his short lifespan (he passed away only three months short of his 32nd birthday). One of his greates works in the orchestral arena was the incidental music he composed for Helmina von Chezy's melodramatic play "Rosamunde, Princess Of Cyprus" in 1823. The play itself was a disaster, closing after only two performances; and had it not been for two enterprising English scholars named Sir George Grove and Sir Arthur Sullivan, Schubert's score might well have been lost.

Fortunately, because of their efforts, the music has survived; and it receives perhaps its greatest complete recording here with Claudio Abbado conducting the Chamber Orchestra of Europe. Beginning with the imposing "Magic Harp Overture" (intended for an earlier play), Schubert's "Rosamunde" score is comprised of two ballet sections, three entr'actes, three choruses, a short pastoral passage for winds, and a Romanze for mezzo-soprano ("Der Vollmond Strahlt"). Anne Sofie von Otter is excellent in her rendition of the latter; the Ernst Senff Choir is equally good in the choruses; and Abbado and the C.O.E. make the music sing and shine the way Schubert would have wanted it. It is by far one of the best recordings of theatrically-related classical music around (next to Mendelssohn's score for Shakespeare's "A Midsummer Night's Dream"), and is vigorously recommended.

Abbado's Rosamunde

This recording takes obvious first place in performance of this music. Bouncy and youthful when needed and pastoral and nostalgic at other times, this performance is certainly better than the merely dutiful one of Masur on Phillips. Abbado and the COE are especially excellent in the Overture, the B Minor Entr'acte (thought by some to be originally intended as the finale of the B Minor Symphony), and much of the ballet music. The vocal numbers are excellent also. Focusing on the Entr'acte, the performance here is certainly the most interesting of any I've heard, including both those by Marriner (Phillips) and Mackerras (Virgin Veritas). Abbado seems to be making a case for this music as worthy of being the finale of the B Minor Symphony, though he doesn't use it in that role on his recording of that great work. It seems out of place in this incidental music, but it doesn't quite come up to the level of inspiration of the symphony. It's also in a different type of formal design; the symphony uses sonata-allegro and song form for the first two movements, but the Entr'acte is more of a fantasia, a more radical, Romantic method that doesn't seem to quite fit the rest of the Symphony.

In any event, the complete incidental music for the forgotten play Rosamunde gets the performance it needs. This is the one to have. And if you want to try a radical method of listening to Schubert's B Minor Symphony, get Abbado and the COE on DG and play their performance of the first two movements, follow that with the Newbould completion of the scherzo played by Neville Marriner (Phillips), and then the possible finale (the B Minor Entr'acte) from this recording.

Schubert: Incidental Music to "Rosamunde, Princess of Cypress"

Claudio Abbado & the Chamber Orchestra of Europe

with Anne Sofie von Otter, soprano

Schubert had only about a month to put together the incidental music for the Rosamunde play. As a result, he had to press some already written compositions into service and add them to those newly composed in order to complete the score in time for the first performance on Dec 20, 1823. As it was, the final numbers of the score were ready only two days before the performance, leaving little time for adequate rehearsal. That may be a reason, along with the convoluted nature of the play itself, why there were only two performances before the play was cancelled.

Another result of the disparate sources of the music is that, while several of the individual numbers are among Schubert's best compositions, as a whole they are not very well unified stylistically. The overture was originally taken from Schubert's opera of the previous year, "Alfonso und Estrella," but was later replaced with the overture from his Singspiel "Die Zauberharfe" when the Rosamunde music was eventually published. The third Entr'acte shares its main melody with the slow movement of the A-minor string quartet (D804), which was probably already written.

It's believed by some Schubert experts (e.g. Brian Newbould) that the first Entr'acte was originally intended as the final movement of the "Unfinished Symphony." It is in the same key of B-minor, uses the same orchestral instrumentation, is in a sonata form with development that Schubert typically used in his symphonic last movements, and shares a darkly dramatic mood similar to that of the first movement. On the other hand, Elizabeth McKay points out in the accompanying notes to this CD that the Entr'acte also shares thematic material with the first ballet movement, also in B-minor, and that it's likely Schubert wrote the ballet (and vocal) numbers for rehearsal before completing and orchestrating the remaining numbers. Whether or not Schubert ever intended it as such, the Entr'acte does make a suitable last movement for a "reconstructed" symphony that also uses Schubert's existing sketches for the third (scherzo) movement.

This recording with Claudio Abbado conducting the Chamber Orchestra of Europe is quite excellent throughout, with thoughtful, well paced conducting and excellent sound. Mezzo-soprano von Otter sings the Romanze with feeling, and the choral numbers are sung appropriately. The only oddity about this recording is that the individual numbers are taken in a different order than they originally appeared in the play "to make for good listening," according to the accompanying notes. Nonetheless, this CD provides a fine performance of the Rosamunde music and is probably the best one currently available. I recommend it without reservation.

'Rosamunde' is Schubert's incidental music for a long-forgotten play by Helmina von Chezy, a Berlin Romantic poet. On two counts, the work is just a tiny disappointment. First, it is not as good as my favorite 'incidental music' pieces such as the one done by Mendelsohn for 'A Midsummer Night's Dream'. Second, it is not as good as either Schubert's songs or his liturgical compositions (which have a passing resemblence to 'incidental music'. So, I plant my rating between those of the other reviewers. I was also a bit less than excited about Anne Sofie von Otter's solos, but that may be because there was so little of it. Like all of Schubert and von Otter, this is worthy listening, but not their best.

I bought this CD hoping that Schubert's incidental music to Rosamunde contained some gems beyond the handful of familiar and beautiful selections that have been performed for decades. I was disappointed, however. The familiar Overture, entractes, and a few other bits are the best Rosamunde has to offer. That said, the Romance sung by Anne-Sophie von Otter is quite enchanting.

Of course, since Schubert is Schubert, all this music is worth a listen once. But Abbado would have helped things by giving us a more enrgetic performance; this one fairly lies there on the table. The Chamber Orch. of Europe seems less than inspired, also. Their often rough playing is abetted by DG's fairly rought sound.