Schoenberg: Gurrelieder - The Two Chamber Symphonies / Norman, Troyanos, McCracken; Ozawa, Imbal

Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com
This is the biggest piece of music that ever gets performed with any regularity. Anyone who avoids Schönberg because his name is synonymous with that nasty, atonal stuff need have no fear. This is a ripely romantic score with big tunes and cinematic orchestration. The story is simple. King Waldemar of Gurre is fooling around with Tove. The queen finds out and has her poisoned. The king curses God, and is condemned to ride on a ghostly hunt throughout all eternity, until the arrival of dawn signals an end to the nightly horror. This performance--which happily has been reissued at bargain price--has been the choice since the day it was released, both for interpretation and for recording. Magnificent doesn't begin to describe it. --David Hurwitz

Schoenberg: Gurrelieder - The Two Chamber Symphonies / Norman, Troyanos, McCracken; Ozawa, Imbal, Music, Arnold Schoenberg, Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra, Boston Symphony Orchestra, Eliahu Inbal Seiji Ozawa, Jessye Norman, Tatiana Troyanos, Kim Scown, Tanglewood Festival Chorus, James McCracken, David Arnold, Eliahu Inbal, Chamber Music & Recitals, Chamber Symphony, Choral, Classical, Classical Composers, Classical Music, Oratorio, Orchestral
Schoenberg: Gurrelieder - The Two Chamber Symphonies / Norman, Troyanos, McCracken; Ozawa, Imbal
Average customer rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars
  • A fantastic bargain in the Schoenberg catalog
  • Seiji Ozawa must mean "chief blunderer" in Japanese.
  • almost ideal
  • This is an excellent recording
  • Ozawa isn't truly the man for this masterpiece
 Schoenberg: Gurrelieder - The Two Chamber Symphonies / Norman, Troyanos, McCracken; Ozawa, Imbal
Arnold Schoenberg , Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra , Boston Symphony Orchestra , Eliahu Inbal Seiji Ozawa , Jessye Norman , Tatiana Troyanos , Kim Scown , Tanglewood Festival Chorus , James McCracken , David Arnold , and Eliahu Inbal
Manufacturer: Philips
ProductGroup: Music
Binding: Audio CD

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Similar Items:
  1. Schoenberg: Gurrelieder; Sir Simon Rattle; Berlin Philharmonic & soloists
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  3. Schoenberg: Piano Concerto
  4. Schoenberg: The String Quartets
  5. Schoenberg: Verklärte Nacht, Pelleas und Melisande / Karajan, Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra

ASIN: B00002DDWQ
Release Date: 2000-01-11

Tracks:

  1. Chamber Symphony No. 1, Op. 96
  2. Gurrelieder: Part One: Orchestral Prelude
  3. Gurrelieder: Part One: Nun daempft die Daemm'rung
  4. Gurrelieder: Part One: O, wenn des mondes Strahlen
  5. Gurrelieder: Part One: Ross! Mein Ross!
  6. Gurrelieder: Part One: Sterne jubeln
  7. Gurrelieder: Part One: So tanzen die Engel vor Gottes Thron nicht
  8. Gurrelieder: Part One: Nun sag ich dir zum ersten Mal
  9. Gurrelieder: Part One: Es ist Mitternachtszeit
  10. Gurrelieder: Part One: Du sendest mir einen Liebesblick
  11. Gurrelieder: Part One: Du wunderliche Tove!
  12. Gurrelieder: Part One: Tauben von Gurre!

Tracks:

  1. Gurrelieder: Part 2: Herrgott, weisst du, was du tatest
  2. Gurrelieder: Part 3: Die wild Jagd: Erwacht, Konig Waldemars Mannen wert!
  3. Gurrelieder: Part 3: Die wild Jagd: Deckel des Sarges klappert
  4. Gurrelieder: Part 3: Die wild Jagd: Gegrusst, o Konig
  5. Gurrelieder: Part 3: Die wild Jagd: Mit Toves Stimme flustert der Wald
  6. Gurrelieder: Part 3: Die wild Jagd: 'Ein seltsamer Vogel ist so'n Aal'
  7. Gurrelieder: Part 3: Die wild Jagd: Du strenger Richter droben
  8. Gurrelieder: Part 3: Die wild Jagd: Der Hahn erhebt den Kopf zur Kraht
  9. Des Sommerwindes wilde Jagd
  10. Herr Gaensefuss, Frau Gaensekraut
  11. Seht die Sonne
  12. Chamber Symphony No. 2, Op. 38: 1. Adagio
  13. Chamber Symphony No. 2, Op. 38: 2. Con Fuoco

Amazon.com

This is the biggest piece of music that ever gets performed with any regularity. Anyone who avoids Schönberg because his name is synonymous with that nasty, atonal stuff need have no fear. This is a ripely romantic score with big tunes and cinematic orchestration. The story is simple. King Waldemar of Gurre is fooling around with Tove. The queen finds out and has her poisoned. The king curses God, and is condemned to ride on a ghostly hunt throughout all eternity, until the arrival of dawn signals an end to the nightly horror. This performance--which happily has been reissued at bargain price--has been the choice since the day it was released, both for interpretation and for recording. Magnificent doesn't begin to describe it. --David Hurwitz

Customer Reviews:

5 out of 5 stars A fantastic bargain in the Schoenberg catalog.......2006-03-21

Ozawa has had a checkered career on records (as in life), so his detractors below sound plausible. But the acclaim he won for this Gurre-Lieder from 1979 (in gorgeous, state-of-the-art sound) is well deserved. Ozawa is more exciting and involved than Sinopoli, Boulez, and Chailly, whose excellent versions are trumped here, and the recent Berlin performance on EMI under Rattle seems pale by comparison. This is great musicmaking of the kind Ozawa rarely achieved, and his soloists are commadning, particularly Norman as a Tove of true Isolde stature, her voice as magnificent as we have ever heard it. But James McCracken and Tatiana Troyanos are scarcely far behind. (Indeed, the three of them should have recorded Tristan.) They outsing the competiiton with the sole exception of Ben Heppner on Levine's live recording from Munich (Oehms).

Yet one shouldn't overlook the two companion pieces, the Chamber Sym. #1 and #2, performed with equal vibrancy by Eliahu Imbal and his Frankfurt orchestra in 1974. The first work is given in its lush re-orchestration for full symphony and comes across as a lost Struass tone poem. Anyone phobic about Schoenberg's later idiom will be delighted. Only the Chamber Sym. #2 represents the composer's atonal maturity, and although it is not easy listening, I am grateful to own it as part of this fantastic two-fer, one not to be missed. Why, oh wh, did Ozawa lapse from this inpsired level and pull the BSO down with him?

3 out of 5 stars Seiji Ozawa must mean "chief blunderer" in Japanese........2003-11-27

Norman, McCracken, and Troyanos are all incredible singers. The orchestra and the choir played and sang respectably, but in this work they were in serious need of some direction, and they obviously didn't get enough. With simpler music, a rotten conductor can get away with murder, but with something as large and challenging as Gurrelieder, shabby conducting leads to volume imbalances so large that several melodic lines get drowned out and tempos so brisk that the handful of players that can still be heard end up skipping and slurring many notes.

To prove my point, listen to one of the more complex numbers on this one like "Gegrusst, o Konig" or "Seht die Sonne" and then listen to the same section conducted by a real conductor like Boulez, Chailly, Sinopoli, or Rattle. I guarantee you it will be a night and day difference. Luckily, Ozawa managed to keep it somewhat together while Norman and McCracken were singing, so it's not a total loss.

5 out of 5 stars almost ideal.......2003-07-30

This is one lush, romantic score. Its like 'Tannhauser meets Salome.' Having both Troyanos and Norman in fabulous voice would seal the deal regardless of the rest of the cast. But with James McCracken you have the perfect tenor for this music. The equally underappreciated Jess Thomas made a good recording of this role as well. But McCracken was special. No one sounded like him. And his recording opportunities were shamefully rare.
This music demands a tenor with power and conviction. McCracken had those qualities like no one before or since. The only problem with this recording is that the voices are too far forward. Given more reverb this Gurrelieder would have been perfect.

5 out of 5 stars This is an excellent recording.......2002-06-30

Schoenberg's Gurrelieder is a hard work written for a grand ensemble. But this recording is really excellent. Especially the voice of Jesse Norman, Tatiana Troyanos's marvellous performance on Lied der Waldtaube, three men's choir in the third section and the eight voice choir's performance in the final section is really worth to listen again and again. And also we can't pass by Eliahu Inbal's Chamber Symphonies recording, it is also great.

2 out of 5 stars Ozawa isn't truly the man for this masterpiece.......2001-12-12

There is no question about Arnold Schoenberg's gigantic oratorio "Gurrelieder"'s greatness as being on the very same rarefied plane as any of mankind's other masterpieces in music (e.g., the Beethoven 9th Symphony, the High Mass in b {natural} by JS Bach, the Wagner opera "Tristan und Isolde", or Stravínskiy's ballet "Vjesná Svjashchjénnaja" ("Le Sacre du Printemps"), and most probably no single conductor's reading of this super-score will totally satisfy everybody. Certainly the ingredients for a superb performance are present: a truly great orchestra, worthy choirs for the 3rd part, wonderful soloists. The one thing that is however missing in this recording is a truly involved conductor who can truly bare his heart on his sleeve like a Kegel or a Sinopoli - or a Stokowski. So many, many of the really great moments of passion, tenderness, pain, and outrage (e.g., the interlude prior to the Song of the Wood-Dove) go for nothing in the hands of Seiji Ozawa - they're just brushed aside and not truly developed in terms of the eloquence and lushness this huge piece calls for. Whatever Ozawa's greatness in Berlioz or whoever else, he almost feels mechanical in his approach - which is not what Schoenberg, any more than Mahler, Wagner, Chaykóvskiy, Puccini, or Richard Strauss, would have had in mind. No, thanks to him (and it was his interpretation through which I first came to know this chef-d'oeuvre), I can't really recommend this recording almost at all.

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