Christine Schäfer, Soprano

Editorial Reviews
Album Description
Following her debut as Konstanze in the 1997 Salzburg Festival, German soprano Christine Schäfer was hailed as “the Mozart singer of our time” by the European press. She appears here in a very special anthology of her recordings for Hänssler.

Tracks:

Nehmt meinen Dank, ihr holden Gonner
Exsultate, jubilate
Mia speranza adorata! - Ah non sai qual pena sia
Ch'io mi scordi di te? - Non temer, amato bene
Ruhe sanft, mein holdes Leben (aus Zaide)
Vorrei spiegarvi, oh Dio! - Ah conte, partite!
Wiegenlied
Das Rosenband
Liebeshymnus
Das Bachlein
Morgen!

Customer Reviews:

Many lovely moments, but Schafer lacks vibrancy.......2006-09-26

Nothing can be lovelier than a recital of Mozart and Strauss arias by a gifted lyric soprano, and those that specialize in the one composer tend to be just as good in the other (Schwarzkopf, of course, but also Battle, Fleming, and Te Kanawa). Chrstine Schager makes a ice impression with her pure, appealing voice, but it seems better suited to the baroque music she specializes in. for music as romantic as Strauss's she's underpowered and rather expressionless. The same is true in the Mozart--listen to Exsultate Jubilate ans decide if she sounds either exultant or jubilant. I didn't find that she did. Abbado's conducting, however, is exemplary throughout, and the orchestra is wonderful.

Schafer's Resplendent Vocal and Maestro Abbado.......2000-07-17

When I first saw the "Mozart & Strauss" arias in Borders Books and Music, I was a bit hesitant to acquire the album. You can assumje that I had the cold feet about whether or not I will like the album or regret buying it.

Two weeks later, I went back for my July acquisition for I usually buy a CD per month. I went back to Borders and there it was lying on the shelves--this time, I bought it!

The album was a replendent effort of Miss Christine Schafer's vocals and the Maestro Abbado conducting the world's reowned Berlin Philharmonic! I espectially loved Schaefer's interpretation of my all-time favorite "Exulate Jubilate" & "Morgen."

I am telling you, buy this album if you have the chance, you won't regret it, I didn't. Also, the recording is superb. I read in the inlet that this audio disc employed the "4DDD" method which brings out the natural sound that the artist had intented and there is no "studio magic" involved in the process of this CD.

I also reccommend "Flippa Giordano," a new debut CD released in the US on July 11, 2000. The CD comnprised of famous arias given rebirth in a voice of a young, wonderful Italian soprano in training, Ms. Flippa Giordano. She perform the famous arias, "O Mio Babino Caro" "Vissi d'Arte" "Casta Diva" "Habanera" with a new approach singing in her lower registers of her voice! Truly refreshing to hear them in a different medium.

Beautiful voice; heartfelt interpretations...........1999-05-28

Christine Schafer possesses one of the most beautiful lyric coloratura voices of this century. Her voice is creamy, limpid, and budding with a variety of different tone colors. Her voice has a depth and a richness to it intermingled with a fresh purity of tone.

The Mozart selections are lovely, especially, "Che mi scordi di te?" which Schafer sings with both pathos and brilliance. "Ruhe sanft" is sung with a sweet caress in the voice. Schafer meets the challenging demands of "Mia speranza adorata" with ease, tossing off the high Gs with clarity and managing the difficult coloratura passages without any sound of strain.

The Richard Strauss selections represent some of the most beautiful singing on disc. "Wiegenlied" is sung with an impeccable legato line and is ravishingly lovely. "Morgen!" seeps with longing and dreams of tomorrow. Schafer's singing is both elegant and passionate.

This disc rarely leaves my CD player. You won't be disappointed! Highly recommended.

Boulez: Pli selon Pli
Average customer rating:

An already flawed work revised until it just falls apart

the brilliance of this piece & performance are beyond words

Brilliant Modern Song-Cycle

rarefied encrustations of text,timbre of time, and topology

"Webernish with Debussyian shimmer"

Boulez: Pli selon Pli

Manufacturer: Deutsche Grammophon
ProductGroup: Music
Binding: Audio CD

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ASIN: B0000630Q9
Release Date: 2002-05-14

Tracks:

Don (Du Poeme)
Improvisation Sur Mallarme I
Improvisation Sur Mallarme II
Improvisation Sur Mallarme III
Tombeau

Amazon.com

Pli Selon Pli (Fold by Fold) is a portrait of Mallarmé, whose poems are set in fragmented fashion throughout the work's five movements, which Boulez rewrote and added to until they assumed final form in 1989. His 1969 Sony recording had an icy, frozen surface and a general air of impenetrability. Age may have mellowed the maestro, for this version, while still challenging, is more accessible. Textures are more finely drawn; the delicate colorations of winds and plucked instruments, including a mandolin, are more sensuous; and a traditional French sensibility is more obvious. The singer, soprano Christine Schäfer, is more communicative, too: her high notes are smoothly produced, her lines seamlessly woven into the orchestral fabric. The voice is effectively an instrumental line in the work's structure, and texts are fragmented into discrete words and syllables. For all their importance, they occupy a relatively limited portion of the piece's 70 minutes. The crack instrumentalists of the Ensemble Intercontemporain are masters of Boulez's style, and it's hard to imagine a better performance of this modernist milestone. --Dan Davis

Customer Reviews:

An already flawed work revised until it just falls apart.......2006-08-07

Readers here are always quick to revolt against 1-star reviews of respected figures, but hear me out here. I'm a big fan of Pierre Boulez, and not a day goes by when I don't delight in some of his great works like "...explosante-fixe...", "Sur Incises", and "Repons". This disc, however, is a disaster from an otherwise heroic composer.

"Pli selon pli" for soprano and orchestra is a lengthy setting of poems by Stephane Mallarme, whose idea of a work in "perpetual expansion" preoccupied Boulez for much of the 1950s. The work grew in stages. It began first with three "Improvisations sur Mallarme" for voice and small ensemble in 1958 and 1959. Then a grim end, "Tombeau" for large orchestra, was added later in 1959. Finally, in 1960 the work gained an introduction with "Don" for large orchestra, whose opening big tutti chord will sound familiar to anyone familiar with Luciano Berio's "Sinfonia" (where it's quoted in the passage "I have a present for you" *whomp*). Originally the order of many elements were left to the discretion of the conductor, a form similar to that of the Piano Sonata No. 3 and "Eclat", but Boulez ultimately fixed the parts in the order they are here. The completed work has been revise several times since its introduction, and various versions have been recorded. This recording is of the latest revision, that of 1989.

Along with "Le Marteau Sans Maitre" of 1953-1955, "Pli selon pli" ushers out the bleep-bloops and Webern-inspired crystal sounds of early Boulez and introduces the interest in wide contrasts of timbre and the warm tones of alto range that marks all of his subsequent work. The forces of a traditional ensemble are accompanied by guitar and mandolin, and while the soprano has a decisive role, her intonations serve more as exotic instrument in the ensemble than a communicator of poetry.

Unfortunately, "Pli selon pli" is a rather unfocused work, for certain moments drag on for far too long than they should. There can indeed be moments of immense wonder here, the general exploration of the ensemble's capabilities, the soprano's wild gesticulations, and especially the grimly beautiful end, which is among Boulez's most frenetic writing. On the 1969 recording on Sony where Boulez leads the soprano Halina Lukomska and the BBC Symphony Orchestra, there's a good aggression about the performance that overcomes the sluggish parts to make for a three-star listening.

On this revised version, however, those dragging moments drag on even longer, and Boulez's conducting lacks any of the old violence. It's over an hour of extremely sluggish pacing, and the result is unlistenable. I can't believe that at the same time Boulez did this revision, he was at work on the new version of "...explosante-fixe...", one of the most wild and exuberant pieces I've ever heard.

"Pli selon pli" for me has never ranked among Boulez's best work, though at least on the Sony recording it was entertaining enough. But I can't find much good to say about this performance.

the brilliance of this piece & performance are beyond words.......2003-11-22

Most of the avant-garde music from Pierre Boulez's generation is characterized by noise & chaos, but this cd somehow resonates with such a beautiful profound sense of balance, of deliberateness, of perfect order. That doesn't mean it's melodic. I don't know how he achieves such wholeness from this music, but somehow with his great genius he surely got at the clearest, richest, most meaningful realization of the conception of the music. & I don't think it could be performed with much more acuity & depth than the Ensemble Intercontemporain has here.

Brilliant Modern Song-Cycle.......2003-07-06

Pli Selon Pli (Fold by Fold) is one of the best, if not the very best, song-cycles to come out of the 20th Century. It was written by the venerable Pierre Boulez, one of the most original and provacative living composers--also probably the greatest. Most of his works are still "in progress", and this one had a multi-decade gestation period, but it's finished now, a perfectly balanced work that begins and ends on the same definitive chord.

The great French poet Mallarme may have been shocked to hear what sort of music Boulez wrote to accompany his poems, but the word-setting, though hardly hummable, has a strange beauty all of its own, and acutally lends more melody to this work than you'll find in most atonal pieces--after all, an orchestra can play just harmony and rhythm, but a soprano can only sing a melody, no matter how large the leaps it makes. Christine Schafer dispatches Boulez's difficult lines well--she may be slightly troubled by the high note near the end, but it comes out clearly and maybe is even more convincing this way. Who wouldn't find it tough?

But, in true Boulez fashion, no matter how beguiling the vocal lines it is ultimately the orchestra which dominates. This is no tragedy, however, because in M. Boulez we have one of the master orchestraters of all time. You can see from the pictures included in the liner notes what a battery of percussion is at the disposal of the Ensemble InterContemporain, and Boulez makes good use of all of it. The shimmering sonorities are instantly attractive.

Let me qualify that: they will be attractive assuming the listener has had some experience appreciating atonal music. It would be possible to fall in love with this at first listen, but I doubt if that happens often. It took me a couple years of slowly testing the water to warm up to 12-tone music, but I'm glad I persevered. Nonetheless, my family, who have little tolerance for modern art, give me a very hard time if I listen to this on anything but my headphones. However, if you've bought this and hate it, I recommend giving it a few more chances. You might well warm up to its unusual sound-world, as I did.

Anyway, the glittering, otherworldly sonorities of this masterpiece are, as usual, played with virtuosic panache by the doyens of avant-garde orchestral works, the Ensemble InterContemporain. This orchestra was founded by Pierre Boulez, so they are his definitive interpreters and respond well to his direction. This stuff is pretty beatless, so I don't even know exactly how it would be conducted or how the players follow Boulez's beat, but he has a true rapport with the Ensemble and everything comes off with clarity and precision.

I really like this whole work, but if I don't have time to listen to all of it I'll probably hear the beginning, then head for the denouement--the final movement is all orchestral until the very end, when the single, beautifully creepy line "Un peu profond ruisseau calomine la mort" is sung (it means "A trickling stream we villify as death"). I think the orchestral part really does sound like a stream or river, but I'm not sure Boulez would appreciate me saying that. Anyway, listening to Christine Schafer sing that line, with all the altitudinous writing, then whisper "la mort", followed by the tremendous finality of the last chord, is spine-tingling and unforgettable. The end probably ranks as my favorite part.

If you're a fan of atonal works, or brilliant orchestration in general, this should be on your shelf. It will stretch your ears, but, if you're open to this repetoire, it will very likely make them tingle with delight, too.

rarefied encrustations of text,timbre of time, and topology.......2002-10-22

On February 18, 1890, Mallarme delivered a lecture in Bruges,Belgium to honor Villiers de l'Isle Adam, who died the previous year, the title "pli selon pli" occurs on the fourth line of a subsequent poem "Rememoration d'amis belges", and utilized to describe how the mist disperses gradually to reveal an architecture of the city of Bruges or a topology of an imagined space. It was such an image, a demonstrative concept that Boulez sought this creative exergue, this odyssey which has involuntarily it seems spanned his life,like a possession for timbre and the "word", the image.

The many times predictable pointillism of the vocal lines in the self-contained "Improvisations sur Mallarme" for soprano and percussion ensemble of "Improvisation sur Mallarme I" "Le vierge. . ." and, "Improvisation sur Mallarme II" "Une dentelle s'abolit",are difficult.These three"Improvisations" represent different approaches to settings of sonnets. The 'First Improvisation'(according to the interview here with Boulez) is more playful,less strict,the 'Second Improvisation', there is more direct connections between the musical imagery and the text.Yet you always feel the music, the "hanging" timbres ringing moments of vibraphone,harp and piano,i.e.the sustaining exergue are simply timbral "blankets" for the text to attach itself quite evocatively.There is a restrained sensuality in the vocal lines here throughout this work,sung so complellingly by Ms.Schafer, as if they belong to another dimension,for we become overwhelmed by the sheer beauty of instrumental colour.

I thought the rupture, the break with conventional time, that implied the innovations within the serial music was a realm Boulez sought to escape.And here the soprano has more an instrumental demeanor about it, unwilling to break from that undefined role.For aside from the Italian cadre,(Berio and Nono),serialism did not foster a wealth of works for the voice.Only with the introduction of budding electronic means did masterworks occur(as Stockhausen's "Gesang der Junglinge" and Berio's "Visage" Nono's utilization of political text(Canto sospeso" was innovative in all respects. They had their own means of escape from this structural tyranny. For serialism within a short span of time (roughly 1950 to 1959) exhausted itself. Adorno had said as much, who was around,attending concerts, and lecturing himself at Darmstadt Courses, and came to terms with these youngsters,as not being modern enough, or refusing to challenge oneself outside of technical innovation. Serial music seemed to be about itself and nothing more,and the tyranny of creative invention simply recoiled on itself with simply trying the untried, a work for three orchestras,(Stockhausen) a work with voice and percussion(Berio),or two pianos (Boulez). Serialism simply demanded new packages and products, not new content. And this was something Boulez had felt in searching fof another context, one where one needn't use all 12 tones. In the wonderful interview here with Wolfgang Fink, he says as much, "I found it unbearable to use all 12 tones. . . ".

I'm still undecided if the Five Movements here (pli selon pli) actually hang together,and imply,constitute one unified realm, even within the Boulez cognitive field of posing structural freedom of the music's discourse, its creative implications, with an'unfreedom', again something he found profoundly within Mallarme's "Livre" and concept of "alea",chance but with a conscious, controlled unfreedom, something quite different from Cage's pureposless purpose of Zen indeterminacy.The music of chance and musical graphics recall ran faster toward its demise than Boulez's aleatoricism.For instance I still find usefull,and compelling moments in Boulez's 'Third Piano Sonata', and realistically there is yet to be a definitive performance of it. Rosen's and Psi-Chein's and Claude Helffer's are all simply 'readings', and useful guides.Whereas Cage's "Music of Changes"his first focused chance extended work, I find nothing left to think through, as if the work's realization had already occured decades ago.
Boulez's first movement here in "pli selon pli" is a recitation with enormous orchestral forces. It was in 1960, where a provisional premiere had occurred, originally here a piano solo, a soprano was added based on Mallarme's "Don du poeme" and first performed in Cologne June 13, 1960. This was followed by "Improvisations" of 1957-1960, and then an incomplete version of "Tombeau". Since that time "Don" became a piece for large orchestra with voice, as an oppositional counterweight to "Tombeau". "Tombeau" itself exhibited Boulez's ongoing interest in finality ( his dedication to Maderna "Rituel" etc), accumulates itself as it unfolds, as an inevitability of time, further weighing, coaxing the materials to take on, to burden themselves with more distinctions, more internal musical references, more layers added, accreted, and diminshed,but inevitably onward moving,toward greater thresholds of complexity placing itself in a forever impacted realm of musical statement.So these two pillars"Don" and "Tombeau" were the containers for the three "Improvisations", and something I still don't feel convice. The 'Improvisations' grew as self-contained works,with pitched percussive instruments, piano, harp, celesta, crotales,vibraphone, and percussion as developed "sonnets"that drew particular attention to the single melodic line,and timbres and rarely do they suggest the orchestral forces to come.Perhaps that was the subversive element at work here,to transcend from the private instrospections(of the three "Improvisations") to the overtly theatrical with the orchestral canvas,("Don", and "Tombeau") a labyrinth.
Boulez's aesthetic sense of timeless time is remarkable where the moments always seem to float, as Mallarme's imagery of white, blanche swan, frozen and opaque does. And the musical percussive moments suggests an ambiguity, this rarefied air, are well prepared, this is what time and work over long periods renders to the Boulez aesthetic, this sense of durational telescoping this uninhabited place where only the imagination, where only jouissance in the Lacanian sense only occurs between moments, in the crevices,behind shapes and forms, as spider webs, as encrustations to the text as implications.Christine Schafer, and the Ensemble Intercontemporain gives great hard edges to this music, and Boulezian clarity is an obvious feature.

"Webernish with Debussyian shimmer".......2002-09-26

Oliver Messiaen best captured Boulez's sound world with this pithy quote -- "To his Webernish pursuits he added a bit of my rhythmic restlessness and, above all, a Debussyian shimmer." And of course if you don't like Webern, there's little chance you'll enjoy Boulez. But while Messiaen thought Boulez surpassed Webern, I don't agree. Boulez's longer works such as "Repons" and "Pli Selon Pli" begin with an interesting concept and sound, but run out of energy, a problem Webern avoided through brevity. Stravinsky was to have said of "Pli Selon Pli" that it was "pretty monotonous and monotonously pretty," which is quite apt, I'm afraid. This is, I believe, the third version of the work, which Boulez has continued to alter over the years, but presumably this is the final version. It uses a chamber orchestra (Boulez's own Ensemble Intercontemporain) rather than a full orchestra, and is smoother and more subdued than the original recording with Boulez conducting the BBC Symphony Orchestra in 1969 (still available on Sony -- see my review). Unfortunately rather than tightening up the piece, which was already too long at 60 minutes, Boulez indulgently lengthened it to 70 minutes in this 2001 recording.

I am partial to avant-garde music, but I see Boulez as being overrated in critical circles. He was an important theorist of and advocate for the Schoenberg/Webern tendency that came to be known as "serialism," yes, and even more importantly, popularized as a conductor the great works of 20th century modernism. But as a composer, it is my considered opinion that Boulez was more ambitious than accomplished.

Average customer rating:

Christine Schäfer, Soprano
Haydn , Mendelssohn , Schafer , and Rilling
Manufacturer: Hanssler Classics
ProductGroup: Music
Binding: Audio CD

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Christine Schäfer - Mozart Arias & Strauss Orchestral Songs / Pires - Berlin Phil. · Abbado
The Songs of Robert Schumann 1 / Christine Schäfer, Graham Johnson

ASIN: B0000645AO
Release Date: 2002-03-26

Tracks:

"Mit stauen sieht das wunderwerk"
Recitativo: "Und Gott sprach: es bringe die Erde Gras hervor"
Aria: "Nun beut die Flur das frische Gruen"
Aria: "Auf starkem Fittige"
Aria: "Ei, wie schmeckt der Coffee suesse"
Aria: "Ach, es schmeckt doch gar zu gut"
Rezitativo: "Es bleibt dabei"
Aria: "Unser trefflicher, lieber Kammerherr"
Aria: "Klein-Zschocher muesse"
Qui tolis peccata mundi
Quia respexlt
Omnes generationes
"Ich folge dir gleichfalls"
"Zerfliesse, mein Herze"
Aria: "Hore, Israel"
Chorus: "Furchte dich nicht, spicht unser Gott"

Album Description

Following her debut as Konstanze in the 1997 Salzburg Festival, German soprano Christine Schäfer was hailed as “the Mozart singer of our time” by the European press. She appears here in a very special anthology of her recordings for Hänssler.

Schoenberg - Pierrot lunaire ~ Herzgewächse ~ Ode to Napoleon / Schäfer, Pittman-Jennings, Ensemble InterContempolain, Boulez

Average customer rating:

Sprechstimme???
Lovely, but not a first choice.
One of the Best Schoenberg Discs Available...
atonal vs. twelve-tone
How the soul recovers itself in the midnight of pain

Schoenberg - Pierrot lunaire ~ Herzgewächse ~ Ode to Napoleon / Schäfer, Pittman-Jennings, Ensemble InterContempolain, Boulez
Arnold Schoenberg , Pierre Boulez , Christine Schäfer , David Pittman-Jennings , Ensemble InterContempolain , Florent Boffard , Jeannne Marie Conquer , Christophe Desjardins , Hae Sun Kang , Sophie Cherrier , and Alain Damiens
Manufacturer: Deutsche Grammophon
ProductGroup: Music
Binding: Audio CD

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Arnold Schoenberg: Suite, Op. 29, for 2 Clarinets, Bass Clarinet, Violin, Viola, Cello & Piano / Verklärte Nacht, Op. 4 (Sextet for 2 Violins, 2 Violas & 2 Celli) - Ensemble Intercontemporain, Pierre Boulez
Verklarte Nacht and Pierrot Lunaire
Complete Webern
Le Chant du Rossignol/L'Histoire du Soldat

ASIN: B00000DBV6
Release Date: 1998-10-20

Tracks:

Pierrot Lunaire - Part I: 1. Mondestrunken
Pierrot Lunaire - Part I: 2. Colombine
Pierrot Lunaire - Part I: 3. Der Dandy
Pierrot Lunaire - Part I: 4. Eine blasse Wascherin
Pierrot Lunaire - Part I: 5. Valse de Chopin
Pierrot Lunaire - Part I: 6. Madonna
Pierrot Lunaire - Part I: 7. Der kranke Mond
Pierrot Lunaire - Part II: 8. Nacht
Pierrot Lunaire - Part II: 9. Gebet an Pierrot
Pierrot Lunaire - Part II: Raub
Pierrot Lunaire - Part II: 11. Rote Messe
Pierrot Lunaire - Part II: 12. Galgenlied
Pierrot Lunaire - Part II: 13. Enthauptung
Pierrot Lunaire - Part II: 14. Die Kreuze
Pierrot Lunaire - Part III: 15. Heimweh
Pierrot Lunaire - Part III: 16. Gemeinheit!
Pierrot Lunaire - Part III: 17. Parodie
Pierrot Lunaire - Part III: 18. Der Mondfleck
Pierrot Lunaire - Part III: 19. Serenade
Pierrot Lunaire - Part III: 20. Heimfahrt
Pierrot Lunaire - Part III: 21. O alter Duft
Herzgewasche
Ode To Napoleon Buonaparte

Amazon.com essential recording

Arnold Schoenberg claimed he had never set out to be a revolutionary. Yet the song cycle he wrote in 1912 based on proto- expressionist poems and featuring a grotesque harlequin figure, Pierrot Lunaire, still reverberates with its haunting, startling originality. This work introduced the world to a hitherto unthought-of musical landscape; to call it innovative would be an absurd understatement. What's particularly exciting about the undertaking here (Boulez's third recorded take on this music) is how utterly fresh the music sounds, its novelty unblunted and yet strangely beautiful--a far cry from the forbidding Schoenberg of stereotype. Soprano Christine Schäfer negotiates the no-man's land between spoken word and sung pitch--the technique known as Sprechstimme which Schoenberg introduced here--with fascinating nuance. She brings a cabaret-savvy sensibility to bear, along with a gripping sense of pathos, alternately sweet and acrid. Boulez treats the songs as miniatures, offering coloristic and multiperspectival--almost Cubistic--portrayals of Pierrot. For all the score's nebulous atmospherics, Boulez distills a keen, sharp clarity of line and timbre. Also included is the extraordinary song "Herzgewächse" (scored for harmonium, celesta, and harp), in which Schäfer matches her voice like a "crystal sigh" to the instrumentation. The album is filled out with Schoenberg's setting, during his exile from the Nazi horror, of Byron's bitterly ironic "Ode to Napoleon Buonaparte" for a baritone reciter. --Thomas May

Customer Reviews:

Sprechstimme???.......2006-03-24

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 the 1978 recording. The "sprechstimme" is realized better than the De Gaetani recording, obviously better than the '78 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!!!

Lovely, but not a first choice........2005-02-16

The Pierrot is the major work on this CD. Schafer sings it beautifully and sensitively. But is this enough? Compare (even via the audio snippets on Amazon) this performance with Jan DeGaetani's (with no Boulez). One reviewer says that Schafer "smooths out" the sprechstimme. Well yes, but I prefer it unsmoothed. Otherwise, it becomes, essentially, singing, and that is precisely not what we want to hear. At every moment in the DeGaetani performance, she is precisely between singing and speaking; at every moment, the performance has an unpredictability that I really don't think Schafer/Boulez can offer. Unlike almost every sprechstimmer (and really, I think was artistic folly for Shoenberg to focus on this technique so much), there is high drama in DeGaetani's work.

So, yes, 4 stars for the Schaefer performance. It is a fine, artistic, and honorable performance. But for the performance God and Arnold would prefer, I'd start with the DeGaetani.

One of the Best Schoenberg Discs Available..........2005-01-31

This is a superb disc in many ways: it features three of Schoenberg's great pieces, one of which (Herzgewächse) is virtually unavailable anywhere else. Since the death of von Karajan, Boulez is now the greatest conductor in the world now working; and his understanding of Second Viennese School oeuvre is as insightful as Karajan's was. Christine Schäfer--for my money and to my ear--is the greatest soprano now working: her voice is exquisite: not shrill nor brittle, but rich, moist, and pure, and oh-so-effortless: she's absolutely wonderful, and she, too, has a deep insight into Modern music: for example, she sings the part of Lulu in Berg's eponymous opera.

As for the works: Herzgewächse is an exquisite song of about 4 min duration. It contains a hair-raising Expressionistic leap of the voice at climax, which Webern called, "the summit of music." The text is by Symbolist Belgian Maeterlinck.

Byron's Ode to Napoleon is about 20 mins of excoriating sarcasm and bitter irony on the capitulation of the Corsican. Schoenberg, to whom the sentiments of sarcasm and irony came naturally--set Byron's Ode in English as a protest against Hitler, Stalin, totalitarianism, and autocracy. Set for piano quintet, it's too, too wonderful. It's a 12-tone work, but the tones chosen have tonal ambiguities which also hint at Beethoven's Eroica.

Pierrot Lunaire is of course Schoenberg's most infamous piece. Here it is made most approachable by Boulez and Schafer. The problematic "speech-song" which Schoenberg calls for is smoothed-out by Schafer.

Outstanding performances of exquisite works, well recorded.

atonal vs. twelve-tone.......2004-10-04

I would just like to point out (in contrast to what a few reviews have implied) that while Pierrot Lunaire is "atonal" (not in a conventional key) it is not twelve-tone. Schoenberg did not begin using the twelve-tone system until later in his life.

These songs are incredibly beautiful, and not particularly "hard to listen to". Even if you generally disliked Schoenberg keep in mind that Pierrot is quite different from some of his later works. And don't be put off if you think you don't understand it. Just keep an open mind and enjoy the extraordinary sound Schoenberg has created.

How the soul recovers itself in the midnight of pain.......2004-09-09

Pierrot Lunaire is not an idiosyncratic piece of music - it is absolutely classical and central to the human experience and imagination. There is something in us that simultaneously desires to forget and remember our midnights - when too much cigarette smoke fills the air and all of the coffee we drink does nothing for us yet we keep drinking it anyway. We have had too much wine in our yesterdays but all we got from it is a massive hangover in this midnight that fills us with a terrifying lucidity through which we contemplate our failed romances, (what is worse) our successful romances, the terror of being and the laughter we use to cover it, and the antics of a perfectly white clown. That is the greatness of Arnold Schoenberg, that he communicates through his music that supreme subliminity that crept into Western conciousness in the nineteenth century and reached its final, monstrous fruition in the plays of Samuel Beckett. There is something more scary than a haunted house - Pierrot Lunaire.

The Songs of Robert Schumann 1 / Christine Schäfer, Graham Johnson

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The Songs of Robert Schumann 1 / Christine Schäfer, Graham Johnson
Robert Schumann , Christine Schäfer , and Graham Johnson
Manufacturer: Hyperion UK
ProductGroup: Music
Binding: Audio CD

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