Gurrelieder/Chamber Symphony 1 [Import]

Track Listings

1. Chamber Symphony No.1

2. ( 2-13 ) Gurrelieder, Part I

3. ( 1) Gurrelieder, Part Ii

4. ( 2-11 )Gurrelieder, Part Iii

5. ( 12 ) Verklarte Nacht

Tracks:

Erwartung, Op. 17: Scene I: 'Hier hinein?...Man sieht den Weg nicht...'
Erwartung, Op. 17: Scene II: 'Ist das noch der Weg?'
Erwartung, Op. 17: Scene III: 'Da kommt ein Licht!...'
Erwartung, Op. 17: Scene IV: 'Er ist auch nicht da...'
Erwartung, Op. 17: Scene IV: 'Das Mondlicht...nein dort...'
Erwartung, Op. 17: Scene IV: 'Nein, das ist doch nicht moglich...'
Erwartung, Op. 17: Scene IV: 'Du siehst wieder dort hin!...'
Erwartung, Op. 17: Scene IV: 'Der Morgen trennt uns...'
Pierrot Lunaire, Op. 21: Part I: 1. Mondestrunken
Pierrot Lunaire, Op. 21: Part I: 2. Colombine
Pierrot Lunaire, Op. 21: Part I: 3. Der Dandy
Pierrot Lunaire, Op. 21: Part I: 4. Eine blasse Wascherin
Pierrot Lunaire, Op. 21: Part I: 5. Valse de Chopin
Pierrot Lunaire, Op. 21: Part I: 6. Madonna
Pierrot Lunaire, Op. 21: Part I: 7. Der kranke Mond
Pierrot Lunaire, Op. 21: Part II: 8. Nacht (Passacaglia)
Pierrot Lunaire, Op. 21: Part II: 9. Gebet an Pierrot
Pierrot Lunaire, Op. 21: Part II: 10. Raub
Pierrot Lunaire, Op. 21: Part II: 11. Rote Messe
Pierrot Lunaire, Op. 21: Part II: 12. Galgenlied
Pierrot Lunaire, Op. 21: Part II: 13. Enthauptung
Pierrot Lunaire, Op. 21: Part II: 14. Die Kreuze
Pierrot Lunaire, Op. 21: Part III: 15. Heimweh
Pierrot Lunaire, Op. 21: Part III: 16. Gemeinheit
Pierrot Lunaire, Op. 21: Part III: 17. Parodie
Pierrot Lunaire, Op. 21: Part III: 18. Der Mondfleck
Pierrot Lunaire, Op. 21: Part III: 19. Serenade
Pierrot Lunaire, Op. 21: Part III: 20. Heimfahrt (Barcarole)
Pierrot Lunaire, Op. 21: Part III: 21. O alter Duft
Gurre-Lieder: Lied der Waldtaube

Customer Reviews:

Sprechstimme???.......2006-03-25

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 this 1977 recording. The "sprechstimme" is realized better than the De Gaetani recording, obviously better than this '77 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!!!

response to weirdears.......2006-01-26

this isn't a review (i had to select some stars). i think the reciter's name in the early lp recording of pierrot that he listened to in elementary school is ethel semser (that sounds like lotte lenya, doesn't it?). I have this lp..it's on the westminster label, and it sounds terrific on my old silvertone mono player from the late 40's.

Great Erwartung, OK Pierrot..........2003-07-18

Contained on this Disc are two of Schoenberg's seminal expressionist works, Erwartung and Pierrot Lunaire. Erwartung, a "monodrama", is a terrifying emotional rollercoaster ride through a dark woods at night. Boulez and Janis Martin capture the essence of this piece perfectly, and the BBC orchestra, as usual, delivers a spine chilling accompaniment to this piece. Erwartung is the postershild of expressionist art (both in the music and the text). These works prove to the Philistines of 20th century music that atonality IS a legitamate art form and has the potential to express just about anything, even nothingness. Really, buy this album just for Erwartung, it is the best version I have heard on disc. Where we run into problems is Pierrot. The "Dandy from Bergamo" seems just a bit too lyrical at times. On some other recordings, I get the feeling that the sprechstimme is taken way out of proportion (as Schoenberg does indicate very exact pitches for the reciter, even notating sharps and flats). His original instructions, however, say that the recitation should "not call to mind singing", and Yvonne Minton's voice does, as much as one tries to ignore it. A correct reading Schoenberg's instructions can only be seen as extremely elusive and this, I suppose, is just another legitimate reading of the notation. I suppose we must just use our imaginations and realize that the ideal lies somewhere in between the extremes. So, in conclusion, if you are really a Schoenberg fan, get this CD for Erwartung and a different Pierrot. If you just want to try Schoenberg, then I think other albums might present a better "beginner's package".

I loved it.......2002-09-20

OK, maybe the Sprechstimme is a bit romanticised on this version, but it hasn't sounded this beautiful in many recordings. Deffinitley a good introduction to this work if you're a bit feint-hearted about atonality, and a very informative second version to own even if you're not. Boulez in this repertoire is unbeatable, combining his analytical ear with passion and a sense of line that is just unique. Somehow with him you hear each strand individually while hearing it as a whole.

A warning though about the Gurrelieder. Wonderful though the recording is, Jessye Norman - ample in all ways, line, voice, rubato, feeling - is a tad "cooler" (read: careful and less hystrionic)than Troyanos or Fassbaender on the other two main contenders in my book, Chailly and Ozawa. This is partly because this is an arrangement for smaller orchestra, not the HUGE forces of the original. I was not disapppointed, but some buyers wanting the full symphonic sweep might be. Worth it for Norman though. She brings a largesse to it that is not over the top, but conveys the post-romantic yearning so poigniantly. I have to withhold the 5th star because Norman doesn't quite let rip, and because this is not the only version of Pierrot one should own.

There are Many Better Versions.......2002-07-19

I have loved Pierrot lunaire since I was in late elementary school (yes I was a weird child!) but had not picked up a CD copy, content with my old pirated tape of a mono recording. (One of the first LP versions of the piece...I don't remember the performers but it was stunning.The reciter sounds like Lotte Lenya!) And I have always admired Boulez's take on Schoenberg, which is quite transparent, not muddy as so many others can be in this music. But I was extremely disappointed in this CD version.

The problem lies mostly in Yvonne Minton. She is a wonderful singer, but that's just the issue. Pierrot should absolutely NOT be sung. Nor really should it be spoken. Schoenberg's invention of sprechstimme is a unique thing and perhaps among his greatest inventions. It has influenced many composers who have no use for his other musical theories. A good interpretation of this piece makes it sound like a Berlin cabaret piece as seen through a twisted lens. Minton does not do this. She sings, complete with vibrato. As a result, the music looses both the nightmare quality that it should have, and also looses it's sense of humor.

The other pieces on the recording are quite good. The Ewartung is well sung and Boulez brings clarity to an otherwise muddy score. And Jessye Norman sings the Lied der Waldtaube beautifully. But the Gurrelieder piece is best in the context of the complete oratorio, and there are other equally good recordings of Ewartung (there's a wonderful one on a Phillips two-fer that also includes Verklarte Nacht, the Orchestral Variations, and the first Chamber Symphony.)

For the Pierrot, I would recommend the later Boulez recording with Schafer doing the reciter's part, or Jan De Gaetani and Arthur Weissberg's ensemble. This one just doesn't capture the work at all.

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

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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ASIN: B00002DDWQ
Release Date: 2000-01-11

Tracks:

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

Tracks:

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

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

Average customer rating:

An admirable Schoenberg package
Nice collection for Schoenberg's music.

Gurrelieder/Chamber Symphony 1
Schoenberg , Chailly , and Royal Concertgebouw Orch
Manufacturer: Polygram Int'l
ProductGroup: Music
Binding: Audio CD

General | Symphonies | Classical | Styles | Music

General | Classical | Styles | Music
ASIN: B00008MLU1
Release Date: 2003-10-13

Tracks:

Chamber Symphony No.1
( 2-13 ) Gurrelieder, Part I
( 1) Gurrelieder, Part Ii
( 2-11 )Gurrelieder, Part Iii
( 12 ) Verklarte Nacht

Customer Reviews:

An admirable Schoenberg package.......2006-10-02

With its gigantic demands on orchestral budgets (seven clarinets, five bassoons, two cors anglais, ten horns, seven trombones, and a percussion section that works overtime), GURRELIEDER is always spoken of as the last hurrah of German romanticism; but it harks back also to medieval legend and the Brothers Grimm, with its qualities of - in Chesterton's irresistible phrase - "noble nightmare". Part III, particularly, is as hypnotic a danse macabre as any Ingmar Bergman excursion into "old, unhappy, far-off things". Chailly conducts this epic brilliantly, once past the Wagnerian-Straussian love music of the opening, in which he seems a bit constrained. (His orchestra here, contrary to a previous reviewer's assertion, is the Berlin Radio ensemble. The Concertgebouw is used only for the CHAMBER SYMPHONY.)

Siegfried Jerusalem's singing as Waldemar is almost too beautiful; it underplays the character's blasphemous fanaticism; but in technical terms it is astonishing, the two-octave tessitura made to sound almost easy. Similarly beautiful is Susan Dunn's Tove. Hans Hotter, in his 80s when this recording first came out, here takes to gripping effect the spoken role of Part III's narrator, constantly verging on conventional song.

Others have surpassed Chailly in VERKLAERTE NACHT, showing a greater affection than he manages toward the string writing's opulent lyricism. Compared to Karajan or James Levine, Chailly lacks breadth in this glorious fin-de-siecle meditation. And the CHAMBER SYMPHONY is an acquired taste at the best of times, 20 minutes of woodwind-dominated chattering which calms down only occasionally for a poignant aside that makes the whole effort worth while.

But it's hard to imagine a better played and sung GURRELIEDER than this, or a more convincingly recorded one. The tiniest instrumental murmur - cymbal, celesta, bass drum, whatever - comes clearly across, with especially ravishing results in the harp tintinnabulations that accompany Tove's invoking of death. (There are rival CD versions, naturally, but Zubin Mehta's should be avoided. Mehta's Eva Marton has nothing like Susan Dunn's vocal steadiness. Hotter, reprising his role for Mehta, is obscured by clumsy microphone placement. Worst of all, the Mehta production has an outbreak of atmosphere-destroying audience applause at the very end.) So treat the other Chailly-directed pieces as makeweights in an admirable package of the composer in his earlier, and better, days. Considering that Chailly's GURRELIEDER was for years available only at full price, with no fillers at all, the present collection is competitive in economic terms too.

Nice collection for Schoenberg's music........2005-12-28

This re-issue contains three Schoenberg's important orchestral works. Chailly had a wonderful control over beautiful Royal Concertgebouw sound. The sound here is better captured than Seiji Ozawa's performance at Philips. It's a shame this decca re-issue is sold much higher price in U.S. than in other places.

Track Listings: