BERG, A.: Violin Concerto / 3 Pieces from the Lyric Suite /

The nuptials of eros and thanatos unveil their irresistible attraction in Alban Berg’s unfinished ‘Lulu’, based on the work of German playwright Frank Wedekind, considered one of the major works of the 20th c. in general, and of opera in particular. + Krzysztof Warlikowski delves the innermost depths of the human psyche and chooses to tackle "Lulu" as a deeply moving requiem ‘to the memory of an angel’. + Featured in the title role is Canadian soprano Barbara Hannigan. + Paul Daniel conducts the Orchestre symphonique de la Monnaie. + “…a genuinely fresh take on Alban Berg’s work.” (Financial Times)

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Based on real events and drawing on Georg Büchner’s revolutionary play, Alban Berg’s Wozzeck turns a grimly tragic narrative of violence and murder into one of the most powerful and original operas of the 20th century. Berg’s uncompromising portrayal of brutality and madness generated much controversy, but the significance of Wozzeck was soon recognised; its compelling lyrical expansiveness, large-scale dramatic gestures and remarkable musical structures producing music of overwhelming emotional intensity. The Financial Times declared this to be "a beautiful, moving, engrossing production… this is a consummate Wozzeck, blending clarity, lyricism, compassion and crushing force."

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REVIEW:

Marc Albrecht embeds Wozzeck within a lineage of lyrically sprung, dance-driven operas from Weber’s Oberon to Der Rosenkavalier, taking in Lortzing and Die Fledermaus along the way. The singing is accomplished with style, especially the astonishingly secure Captain of Marcel Beekman and the engagingly sinister comic turn of Willard White as the Doctor. Even were it not among the most beautifully played and sung accounts on record and film, this Wozzeck would command attention for Krzysztof Warlikowski’s staging.

– Gramophone

Alban Berg’s Jugendlieder (Youth songs) were written early in his own career. They are, nonetheless, substantial songs that may not be dismissed as being juvenilia. These are beautiful performances of songs that deserve to have a wider hearing. Suré Eloff began her vocal studies in Cape Town, South Africa with renowned master teacher Marita Napier. In the United States, she received a Graduate Diploma in vocal performance from the University of Texas at Arlington, followed by a Fellowship Diploma in Singing from Trinity College London. Specializing in concert and chamber music, Ms. Eloff has performed at festivals and master courses, including SongFest (Malibu, California), Scotia Festival of Music (Halifax, Nova Scotia), Tafelberg Klassiek (Cape Town, South Africa), Ardingly IMS (Sussex, United Kingdom), where she first met British composer Gregory Rose, and Mountain View International Festival of Song and Chamber Music (Calgary, Alberta), where she studied art song and chamber music with renowned Dutch collaborative pianist Rudolf Jansen.

This was the first ever recording of Wozzeck, and Mitropoulos's handling of the score has seldom been equalled, let alone surpassed. The sheer fire and passion of his reading are remarkable.

This was the first ever recording of Wozzeck, preceding Karl Bohm's sumptuous DG account by 14 years. As the only mono Wozzeck in existence, therefore, it is the least adequately recorded (the orchestra is at times somewhat recessed) and it has long been famous for the conspicuous inaccuracy of most of its cast: the Doctor sings only an approximation of his written notes most of the time, and both Marie and the Captain rewrite some passages quite startlingly. But listening to it again on these beautifully presented, carefully remastered CDs I was astonished at how little these flaws matter; indeed Mitropoulos's handling of the score has seldom been equalled, let alone surpassed. The sheer fire and passion of his reading are remarkable, but so is his vivid response to the detail and the colour of Berg's score. Again and again he seems more aware than most conductors of precisely why this or that scene uses a particular musical form or dance rhythm. And he shows at times an astonishing boldness: it was decidedly risky, with singers and players quite unfamiliar with the idiom, to take the fugue in Act 2 scene 2 as fast as Mitropoulos does, but the sense of cruelty as Doctor and Captain goad Wozzeck with Marie's infidelity and as the one reliable thing in his confused world crumbles is as intensely horrible and pitiful as Berg obviously intended it to be.

But I would hate to give the impression that this is a superbly conducted Wozzeck let down by substandard singing. Mack Harrell, who stands out for his commendable accuracy, is an understated Wozzeck but not, I think, an under-acted one. His is not a familiar name now, but his inflexion of the role of Nick Shadow (in Stravinsky's first recording of The Rake's Progress) and of the beautiful lines of Virgil Thomson's Blake Songs are etched in my memory; so is his finely detailed portrait of Wozzeck as a fundamentally decent man driven to murder and suicide by a desperation that he cannot express. He was a singer of rare intelligence and sensitivity. Eileen Farrell, for all her occasional lapses, is a sympathetic, often moving Marie, and although Ralph Herbert is a conscientious rather than a vivid Doctor, 'vivid' is a positive understatement for Joseph Mordino's Captain. He is often inaccurate as to pitch but his rhythms are precise and his acting needle-sharp. Indeed it is hard at times to believe that this is a concert performance: the oppressive atmosphere of the barracks, the hectic whirl of the dance scenes, the horrifyingly abrupt violence of the murder are as gripping as in any live recording in a theatre.

Erwartung was also a firstever recording, made in a studio that sounds rather airless because of the close focus on Dorothy Dorow's pleasing but small voice. Her efforts are little short of heroic (she sings fewer wrong notes than most exponents of the role), but the emotional range of her reading is perhaps inevitably rather narrow. Mitropoulos's understandable reluctance to obliterate her with orchestral exclamations leads to a lyrical but small-scale reading, the work's extremes unexplored. The Krenek, however (recorded, astonishingly, on the same day as Erwartung: a total of 45 minutes of hugely demanding music), is quite a discovery: an extended and passionately expressive elegy on the death of Webern, performed with intense eloquence. It is not otherwise available on CD and it adds very considerably to the value of Mitropoulos's historic, far from outdated Wozzeck.

-- Gramophone [2/1998]

For its second recording for Cypres, Kheops immerses us in works that give pride of place to the clarinet, an instrument whose expressive possibilities fascinated the most original creators in the Habsburg capital at the turn of the 20th century. Brahms's Trio op. 114, dominated by autumnal colors, is an end-of-life work, imbued with a form of renunciation and resignation. The early Four Pieces op. 5 exude a striking expressiveness, the kind of expressiveness that Alban Berg preserved across styles and compositional techniques. And in his Trio op. 3, Alexander von Zemlinsky, who makes no secret of his admiration for the Brahms piece, develops an intense and tumultuous harmonic universe that marks the generational leap between them Kheops, a variable-geometry group combining winds and strings under the sign of individual virtuosity at the service of the collective, radiates maturity and carries chamber music high in Belgium.