Customer Reviews

Webern: Passacaglia, Symphony, etc

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(1)
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This is as exceptional a recording of this body of work as ever I have heard. While Dohnanyi exacts the degree of clarity and precision such music requires, he remains ever vigilant of the broader construction of each piece. The results are a performance that is technically outstanding, sophisticated in interpretive depth, and surprisingly accessible for listeners. Since I am here, I thought I'd also point out that numerous official Amazon.com reviews I have read regarding Dohnanyi and Cleveland refer to the maestro as Ernst Dohnanyi. First, it should be pointed out that the Dohnanyi in Cleveland is named Christoph. Moreover, his grandfather, the eminent Hungarian composer/pianist/pedagogue Erno (or, if one must use Ernst, Ernst von) Dohnanyi, does very little work in Cleveland on account of his being deceased.

Webern's "Symphony" (op. 21) is like light passing through a slowly revolving prism, revealing irridescent hues you've never seen before. Following his "Passacaglia" (op. 1), which clarifies but doesn't break with the Romanticism of Brahms, Webern composed 4 masterful orchestral miniatures. "6 Pieces" (op. 6) and "5 Pieces" (op. 10) are incredibly brief, in the atonal style pioneered by Webern's teacher Schoenberg. They met with quite different fates -- the "6 Pieces" provoked a "Le Sacre"-style riot at its Vienna premiere in 1913, and Webern fled into hiding. The "5 Pieces" wasn't publicly performed until 1924, at a festival in Zurich, 10 years after it was written. It was widely acclaimed, establishing Webern's international reputation. (Thanks to John Keillor for these details.) His masterpieces, in my opinion, are the serial works -- "Symphony" (op. 21) and "Variations" (op. 30). Despite their brevity (under 5 minutes and 7 minutes, respectively), these are two of the greatest compositions of the 20th century. Webern here developed Schoenberg's 12 tone rows into something exquisite, far more beautiful than anything his teacher created. These works, along with the String Trio and Quartet (op. 20 and op. 28), became the main influence on the "Darmstadt School" of the 1950s (Boulez, Ligeti, Nono, Stockhausen, & co.).

This disc is one of two that collect Webern's orchestral works. I give Dohnanyi and Cleveland a slight edge over Sinopoli with the Staatskapelle Dresden on Teldec, but they are both suberb recordings. Dohnanyi achieves a smooth, homogenous texture, whereas Sinopoli creates wider dynamics and greater separation of instruments. Dohnanyi's Webern is abstract, cold and restrained, while Sinopoli's Webern is more emotional, warmer and lusher by comparison (not by comparison to Mahler!). The two discs contain the same material, with one exception -- Dohnanyi includes Webern's arrangement of Bach's "Fuga ricercata a 6," a fascinating exercise in pointillism, breaking the music into consituent cells. Sinopoli includes the "Concerto" (op. 24) for 9 instruments, a Bach-influenced composition. On recording quality, the Teldec is superior. The Dohnanyi booklet includes a great photo of Webern, with a tragic expression absolutely apropos to the music, but the cover is a photo of Dohnanyi, and I detest this tradition in classical music. The Sinopoli booklet features instead a photo of a haunting sculpture by the British sculptor Andy Goldsworthy, and keeps the photo of Sinopoli inside, and so it wins the graphic design competition!

These are splendid performances, with a recording quality to match. Dohnanyi brings a warmth to music that has for long escaped many because of its apparent heaviness, as David Hurwitz suggests in his review. "Heavy" is not the word I'd use for a composer who began, like Schoenberg, with the lush legacy of Mahler (Dohnanyi's version of the lovely 'Im Sommerwind' also makes one think of Richard Strauss), to become a great poet -- and an absolute master of brevity! Okay, the later Webern may take some getting into, but if it's heavy, then so is air ... which is not to deny the "chunkiness" of some of the orchestral pieces. Academic accounts can make bones and dust of Webern's late works, but performances like these -- or Karajan's and those of Boulez in mellow moods -- put the marrow right back into the bones. Webern is one of those composers who gives us music in its barest essence, the briefest flights of poetic fancy, in which the silences are perhaps every bit as important as the notes. On a lonely path, he set trends which others have latched on to in various ways and in different musical fields since, playing games with time and space. And also with J.S. Bach! Dohnanyi's version of the Passacaglia is about as delicious as they come. Strongly recommended, spaciously recorded, this single-CD compilation of Webern's orchestral music has earned its place in the repertoire -- and should stay there. "Le loup", Paris.

Just purchased new at the Berkshire Record Outlet for $6.99 and it's been in the player all day. Great sound and genuinely magnificent performances. Sad that it's out of print, almost certain to never return.

Thank you Amazon and Arkiv for offering this again in new CD format. I am listening to Im Sommerwind right now-wow. In addition to the music itself, we have the then (and again) greatest orchestra in the world, the Cleveland. Von Dohnanyi who was normally not my favorite conductor, does a masterful job of treating this music as it should be, "supra-romantic". He and the Cleveland are aided by a wonderful recording; in comparison, much of this music in Boulez's, Von Karajan's and Dorati's hands, while very well played, simply can't compete in my opinion, due to the harsh acoustics of those recordings.