Customer Reviews

Schumann: Scenes from Goethe's Faust

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

 

 

Few conductors take up Schumann's oratorio based on Goethe's Faust, and fewer still have recorded it. Between 1972, when Benjamin Britten gave live performances at the Aldeburgh Festival, later released by Decca, and 1994, when Claudio Abbado made this live recording with Bryn Terfel in the title role, I can't recall a single other version. The reason isn't hard to fathom. Extravagantly praised by connoisseurs, the music is at times discursive and wandering. It dates from late in Schumann's career, when his inspiration was steadily fading. Part 3 came first, in time for the Goethe centennial of 1849, with Parts 1 and 2 slowly following, culminating in the Overture, composed in 1856, just before he fully succumbed to mental illness. I find the Overture rambling and melodically neutral. It's probably best to begin with Part 3, not just because it came earliest but because, like Mahler in his Eighth Sym., Schumann was most inspired by the metaphysical second half of Goethe's epic.

This was unusual. The doomed love story between Faust and Gretchen has always been the popular part, in no small part because Mephistopheles steals the show. Schumann devotes Parts 1 and 2 to this half, but he begins after the Faustian bargain has been struck and gives us a disjointed handful of scenes, including the Cathedral Scene and Faust's death. I won't say that any section strikes me as pure genius while others are outright lame. But Schumann the melodist isn't at his best, for those of us who love his songs, and Mahler had a more cosmic conception of the metaphysical scenes when Faust's soul is transmuted into Doctor Marianus and rises upward through the levels of heaven.

Abbado's account is centered around Bryn Terfel as the star, and his Faust is as good as you'd expect form a singer who succeeds so well in Schumann's lieder. The supporting cast is equally starry. I wish Karita Mattila's Gretchne were more touching, and Rootering's Mephisto more menacing. They have fallen into line with Abbado's rather too civilized conducting. Orchestra and chorus are beyond reproach, and Sony's live concert recording is as good as a studio job. but criticism is moot, since Britten's classic account is out of print and hard to find at a reasonable price. Pierre Boulez has a more energetic account on Opera d"Oro, but it's a BBC broadcast form 1973 if rather dull mono. So Abbado has the field to himself, unless you want to explore a period account under Philippe Herreweghe, which doesn't boast singers anywhere of tis caliber, or a recent Harnoncourt set with the Royal Concertgebouw; it also struck me as under-dramatized. So enjoy Terfel's charismatic turn and let tis somewhat elusive score settle in.

Schumann spent more than 10 years to compose this striking work: Early 1840's he wrote the final chorus on last scenes in Goethe's Faust (now Part 3). Following this he composed Part 1, which dealt with Gretchen's pray and crime from Faust's Erster Teil. In 1850, he restarted the composition, then Faust's Zweites Teil on Faust's death (now Part 2): in which Schumann succeeded to set in music Faust's most famous words 'Verweile doch, du bist so schön!' (Pause the time, you are so beautiful). Just before his last illness Schumann completed this by writing an overture (1853). The performance and recording are both of the first rate, sufficient to break the superstition that Schumann's late music is nothing but waste. Simply hear this. There is a vastly encompassing great music.

Schumann was the master of the epigram - there's no-one better. Indisputably, his genius became more brittle when applied to larger forms or divorced from his lodestar of Clara or his own romantic interests. Unwisely, he nested enough turkeys to underwrite Thanksgiving: the Mass, those endless Ballads, Genoveva, the Julius Casear Overture - but this work is not one of them. Schumann was deeply besotted with Faust throughout his life. It drew fire from him.

This work has never received uncritical praise and recordings of it are rare. Invariably - if not lazily - the Overture is pilloried. A distinction is normally made between the more lyrical Part 3 (which was written earlier) and the two preceding parts (which are more overtly dramatic). The former is much preferred.

To my mind, yes, Schumann grounds out the Overture but in its own morbid way, it perceptively comments on Faust's own labours and toil. And from there on, indisputably, the magic flows mightily. Listen for instance to the conclusion of Part 2 - is it not a wonder of the world?

I am no fan of Uncle Claudio. The unique Klang of the Berlin Phil ebbed away under his ten year tenure. Wasn't there an 1812 overture . . . a Dvorak Ninth . . . . a Beethoven cycle that was furtively withdrawn from circulation . . . . . . mmmmmh, a lean harvest indeed! To my mind, this recording is one of the few items that can be salvaged from his helmsmanship at the Philharmonie. He is greatly abetted by the overwhelming Faust of Bryn Terfel who sings like a god. The recording per se also offers an alternative to those who are deeply allergic to Peter Pears and/or Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau on the Decca recording. One should also add that the sonics are first-class.

All in all, this recording makes the best possible case for a wrongly maligned masterpiece. Try it. And then as Schumann would say, read the damned book!

I owned the 1972 Decca recording by Britten and his Aldeburgh forces for years without feeling much of an urge to take it down from my shelves for two reasons: first, I could not get past my antipathy for either Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau or Peter Pears with their ungrateful tone - one gravelly, the other strangulated - and both pecking away at the text like canaries at a cuttlefish; secondly, the melodic discursiveness of Part One, beginning with a dismally pedestrian overture consisting of a listless, repeated, downward-falling semi-quaver figure followed by some of Schumann's least melodious writing always failed to engage me long enough to persevere.

I am in agreement with a previous reviewer who recommends starting your listening with Part 2, which is much closer to Mahler's inspiration in its whole-hearted response to Goethe's mystical, metaphysical vision. This music was of course written a good few years before Part One and as such is much fresher, inventive and devoid of the stolidity and the calcification of Schumann's genius which marked the inexorable encroachment of his mental illness. The second part really is like a different work from the sclerotic, episodic and disjointed Part One.

Abbado's direction is too polite to bring out the full dramatic potential of the music but he has the advantages of a superb Berlin Philharmonic and a very starry cast. Terfel, here aged only 28, is in finest voice: rich, noble, vibrant - and one is struck afresh by how clear and idiomatic his German is. One could wish that he sang the other bass parts, too, including Mephistopheles, as he is far more firm and alluring than the rather pedestrian Rootering; Harry Peeters as Pater Profundus is superior to him, too. Endrik Wottrich's neat, flexible, slightly "Germanic" tenor is far preferable to Pears' bleating. Karita Mattila is large and lovely of tone if not especially moving or vulnerable as Gretchen. The finest female voice is that of gorgeous, fluting soprano Barbara Bonney in various roles; future stars like Susan Graham takes three smaller parts, too.

If you want this music, there really is no competition - or indeed another recording - unless you are attached to the other very capable singers for Britten and actively enjoy the sound of those I do not. Apart from the obvious quality of both the recorded sound of this live performance and also of its participants, it is worth acquiring almost solely to hear Bryn Terfel at his youthful best, at his most expressive and communicative and always luscious of voice, from the gentlest of falsetto pianissimo to his gleaming, forte top notes .