BaL 11.03.17 - Schoenberg: Gurrelieder

[Beef Oven!]

Erm....isn't it meant to be opulent?

Did Schoenberg mean it to be 'ostentatiously luxurious'?

If he did, Boulez gets it wrong, wrong wrong - and some others do, too.

[Richard Barrett]

Hmmm... I'm going to have to listen to this Sinopoli recording. It's a work I probably would describe as opulent, but that's as much a feature of the Boulez recording as any other I've heard, it just comes from playing all of those thousands of notes!

[Conchis]

Did Schoenberg mean it to be 'ostentatiously luxurious'?

If he did, Boulez gets it wrong, wrong wrong - and some others do, too.

I think he did. That sound is full of calories! Seeing it performed at the Edinburgh Festival last year - the Usher Hall stage crowded with soloists and instrumentalists - it became clear that Schoenberg saw the road of excess as leading to the palace of wisdom.

Tbh, I don't care for Boulez in this kind of repertoire: this is gourmand's music and Boulez is a natural ascetic (I don't enjoy his Bruckner and Wagner for the same reason).

[Beef Oven!]

I think he did. That sound is full of calories! Seeing it performed at the Edinburgh Festival last year - the Usher Hall stage crowded with soloists and instrumentalists - it became clear that Schoenberg saw the road of excess as leading to the palace of wisdom.

Tbh, I don't care for Boulez in this kind of repertoire: this is gourmand's music and Boulez is a natural ascetic (I don't enjoy his Bruckner and Wagner for the same reason).

I don’t mean to be pedantic but fundamental to the meaning of opulence is ostentatiousness - "characterized by pretentious or showy display; designed to impress". I can’t believe that Schoenberg meant the work to be like that. I got a whiff of it in the Sinopoli when I listened to it yesterday, but detected no pretentious showiness in the Boulez.

I’m prepared to have money on it - let’s get the Ouija board out and ask him!

But as I’ve already said, I listened to the Sinopoli again this morning, and really enjoyed it!

[ahinton]

I don’t mean to be pedantic but fundamental to the meaning of opulence is ostentatiousness - "characterized by pretentious or showy display; designed to impress”. I can’t believe that Schoenberg meant the work to be like that. I got a whiff of it in the Sinopoli, but detected no pretentious showiness in the Boulez.

Well, he certainly didn't set out on the road to Gurre with anything of that kind in mind, given that the original intention was to compose a song-cycle for voices and piano; given also the sheer number of pages wherein the orchestral sound is characterised more by subtle delicacy than by anything obviously ostentatious, let alone "pretentiously showy"; Rattle's remark about the world's biggest string quartet or whatever it actually was sounds a trifle silly and attention-seeking but it's not difficult to see where he was coking from in this. What I want to know is how Schönberg developed such astonishing orchestral skill by the time of Pelleas and his first attempts at orchestrating Gurrelieder before reaching the age of 30; it's not as though he'd been acquiring experience and technique through piling up orchestral works in his repertoire as Strauss had done.

[Richard Barrett]

Listening to Sinopoli now (I thought I didn't have it, but it's in his 8CD Second Vienna School box - I never know where on the shelves to find something like that!). I'm going to have to make some comparisons with Boulez and Abbado after this. The Staatskapelle is one of my favourite orchestras, and seems to be on excellent form here, slightly recessed in the recording but clear enough. No complaints about the singing so far but I'm still in the first act.

[Petrushka]

'Opulent' is certainly the right word for Wagnerian Part 1 and, to an extent, the very short Part 2. Thereafter, the orchestration takes on a different hue altogether, lending some validity to Simon Rattle's remark and reflects the long gestation of the work whereby Schoenberg had developed into a totally different composer from the one who had begun the orchestration in 1901. Part 3 has a much more chamber-like transparency to the sound.

I've always thought it a terrible waste to have such a very large mixed choir on stage only for it to be used in full in the final few minutes.

[Conchis]

Listening to Sinopoli now (I thought I didn't have it, but it's in his 8CD Second Vienna School box - I never know where on the shelves to find something like that!). I'm going to have to make some comparisons with Boulez and Abbado after this. The Staatskapelle is one of my favourite orchestras, and seems to be on excellent form here, slightly recessed in the recording but clear enough. No complaints about the singing so far but I'm still in the first act.

It will probably win BAL but, having listened to it recently, I find Moser a disappointing Waldemar. He's OK (just about) but I want a more distinctive voice in this music. Have you heard Chailly's 1984 recording? If you haven't, check it out. The Decca recording is ideal.

[ahinton]

'Opulent' is certainly the right word for Wagnerian Part 1 and, to an extent, the very short Part 2. Thereafter, the orchestration takes on a different hue altogether, lending some validity to Simon Rattle's remark and reflects the long gestation of the work whereby Schoenberg had developed into a totally different composer from the one who had begun the orchestration in 1901. Part 3 has a much more chamber-like transparency to the sound.

I've always thought it a terrible waste to have such a very large mixed choir on stage only for it to be used in full in the final few minutes.

The same might be said of Busoni's Piano Concerto (except that his is a male choir)

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

'Opulent' is certainly the right word for Wagnerian Part 1 and, to an extent, the very short Part 2. Thereafter, the orchestration takes on a different hue altogether, lending some validity to Simon Rattle's remark and reflects the long gestation of the work whereby Schoenberg had developed into a totally different composer from the one who had begun the orchestration in 1901. Part 3 has a much more chamber-like transparency to the sound.

I'm not so sure of this - is it really true that the orchestration of the chorus of the dead has a much more chamber-like transparency to the sound than, for example, Nun sag ich dir zum ersten Mal in Part One? Is the Final Hymn to the Sun more transparent than the Prelude to Act One? Is so much pared away from the Chamber Ensemble arrangement of the Song of the Wood Dove? Schönberg had composed the whole work in 1903, the completion of the orchestration owes as much to the fact that a performance was on the cards (the premiere conducted by Franz Schreker) as to anything else. And it's something of an overexaggeration to describe Schönberg as "a totally different composer" in 1911 (two years after the Five Orchestral Pieces ) from the one he was in 1901/3.

I've always thought it a terrible waste to have such a very large mixed choir on stage only for it to be used in full in the final few minutes.

If it is a "waste", then it's a "magnificent" one!

[visualnickmos]

I "only" have Ozawa's recording (Philips) which I enjoy very much, but I can't help feeling drawn to the idea of Boulez in this remarkable piece...
However, I suspect Ozawa will have to be my only version - life is too short to assimilate all one's desires!

[Richard Barrett]

Have you heard Chailly's 1984 recording? If you haven't, check it out. The Decca recording is ideal.

I will give that a listen if I can. I'm not bothered by Thomas Moser's undistinctiveness, maybe because I'm paying more attention to the orchestra most of the time!

I do think it's a waste to have a chorus doing nothing for all that time and then singing for a few minutes. Of course Mahler does a similar thing with the children's choir in his 3rd Symphony. At the beginning of the last century it seems to have been OK to do that sort of thing - I think it would be very hard to justify to the beancounters these days.

[Conchis]

I will give that a listen if I can. I'm not bothered by Thomas Moser's undistinctiveness, maybe because I'm paying more attention to the orchestra most of the time!

I do think it's a waste to have a chorus doing nothing for all that time and then singing for a few minutes. Of course Mahler does a similar thing with the children's choir in his 3rd Symphony. At the beginning of the last century it seems to have been OK to do that sort of thing - I think it would be very hard to justify to the beancounters these days.

That sums up the difference between the late nineteenth and early twenty-first century mindsets. Those late romantic/early modern composers just assumed there'd be some wealthy aesthete to pick up the bill; or they were convinced that in the near future all art would be funded by the state. A Schoenberg of 2017 who composed a similarly-proportioned work would be reconciled to only hearing it in his head, or via his synthesiser.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

I do think it's a waste to have a chorus doing nothing for all that time and then singing for a few minutes.

In what sense a "waste" do you mean here, Richard? I can't imagine the final chorus being as effective without the women's choir, but nor can I imagine the women being employed anywhere else in the work without spoiling what is already there. It's certainly an extravagance to have a performing group waiting around for most of the evening, but - and I speak as someone who used to be regularly employed as a Timpanist for performances of Messiah - hanging around listening to a masterpiece is no great hardship!

[Beef Oven!]

'Opulent' is certainly the right word for Wagnerian Part 1 and, to an extent, the very short Part 2. Thereafter, the orchestration takes on a different hue altogether, lending some validity to Simon Rattle's remark .........

It sounds like the right word, but it’s not. It’s a word that we sometimes use incorrectly, but I agree with your analysis and what you mean.