The music of George Enescu continues to be a source of discovery for me. As the Fates would have it, though, his Chamber Symphony for 12 Instruments was already familiar to me from a recent Ondine recording by Hannu Lintu conducting the Tampere Philharmonic, which I reviewed only as recently as 36:2. In that review, I stated that the work was new to me and that I had no other versions against which to compare it. Well, that situation didn't last long, for here is another performance of the piece, which, on my first hearing of it under Lintu, didn't make a very favorable impression. Despite it's low opus number, the Chamber Symphony is Enescu's final work. The composer's close friend, Marcel Mihalovici, was called upon to complete the score after Enescu suffered a severe stroke in 1954. There are, of course, far, far more than 33 works in Enescu's catalog; it's just that most of them are without opus number. Considering the more exotic scoring of Schreker's Chamber Symphony, also on this disc, instrumentation for the Enescu is fairly conservative, consisting of flute, oboe, English horn, clarinet, bassoon, horn, trumpet, violin, viola, cello, double bass, and piano. Still, this is not an easy work to assimilate. The mood is dark, often menacing, and sometimes of a bitter, burlesque character, as in the trumpet solo at the beginning of the last movement. The style is somewhat reminiscent of Schoenberg's pre-12-tone Expressionist works, with passages here and there that sound like they could have come from a scene in Berg's Wozzeck. This much I can say: Enescu's Chamber Symphony found me in more receptive ear to this performance by Wolynec and the Gateway Chamber Orchestra than did the performance by Lintu and his Tampere ensemble. - Jerry Dubins for Fanfare

Franz Schreker's early 20th Century compositions pushed him to the forefront of modernism. His ability to work on a large scale as well as with more intimate orchestrations makes this collection a particularly varied and enjoyable experience.
The pieces here range from symphonic overtures to small chamber orchestra pieces. The title composition, 'Prelude to a Drama,' billows in its immensity. This work, which Schreker later shortened and used in his opera 'Die Gezeichneten,' achieves its grandiose scale with sweeping melodies with a minimal focus on the underlying rhythms. Conversely, 'Valse lente' is a subtle, tightly scored piece full of bright color and delightful patterns. Written to be a dance score, it is unobtrusively pleasant. Most of the pieces included in this collection, however, are of a more symphonic nature, given to the soaring energy of the late Romantics. Like a Liszt or a Wagner, Schreker put power in his music.
REVIEWS:
International Record Review (4/00, p.41) - "...Schreker had a wonderful sense of fantasy, a feeling for colour and impressive mastery of the orchestra. Sinaisky and his fine orchestra are expertly served by the recording team, and whole disc serves to advance Schreker's cause..."

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Following the first volume in this series, which charted Franz Schreker's developmental path up to the success of his dance-pantomime�Der Geburtstag der Infantin�(The Birthday of the Infanta; 777 702-2), this second album focuses primarily on the triumphant years that followed the premiere of his opera�Der ferne Klang�(The Distant Sound) in 1912. The�Vorspiel zu einem Drama (Prelude to a Drama) from 1914 and the�Chamber Symphony, composed in 1916, are among the gems of musical Jugendstil (Art Nouveau). Originating as offshoots of contemporary stage projects, these two captivating works display a mastery of sound, harmony, and melody that was unparalleled at the time. The�Four Small Pieces for Large Orchestra�(1931), which separate these older "siblings" on this recording, speak in a new language. These abstract contributions to film music, presented as a compact and multifaceted concert suite, hint at powerful new directions - plans that, sadly, Franz Schreker could never fully realize.

Winfried Zillig conducts this highly erotic music with an incredible cast featuring Evelyn Lear and Thomas Stewart. This is a must for any serious opera collector.

This historic broadcast recording was always counted as one of the best recordings of this opera. With the best singers of the Frankfurt opera after WW II like Heinrich Bensing, there was always a demand for a release of this recording. Thanks to a collector who made a direct master copy of the original broadcast tape in the early 50's, Walhall is able to release it in great sound.

SCHREKER: Gezeichneten (Die)

Franz Schreker was a prominent figure in early 20th-century Austro-German music, his reputation as an opera composer rivaling that of Richard Strauss. The Prelude to a Drama is the concert overture of Schreker’s acclaimed opera Die Gezeichneten, a lurid drama involving murder and madness. Conceived as a theatrical pantomime, The Birthday of the Infanta adapts Oscar Wilde’s tragic tale of an ugly dwarf who dies of a broken heart, while the Romantic Suite fully explores the composer’s colorfully detailed and translucent orchestration and lyrical expressiveness. The Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra dates back to the beginnings of music broadcasting in 1923. Since then it has developed its position to become one of Berlin’s top orchestras, and today is ranked in the highest echelon of German radio orchestras. JoAnn Falletta became the first female conductor to lead a major American ensemble upon her appointment as music director of the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra in 1999.

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REVIEW:

Falletta obtains excellent playing from the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra with enormous climatic moments, opportunities for which are readily at hand in his late-Romantic, opulent orchestral scores. The sound quality from the German Radio is way beyond today’s norm. Unreservedly recommended.

– David's Review Corner (David Denton)

Schreker, F.: 5 Gesänge / Ein Tanzpiel / Festwalzer Und Walz

After the ban the Nazi rabble-rousers had imposed on him, it took a long time for Schreker’s oeuvre to be rediscovered, excavated from the archives, subjected to a re-appraisal and acknowledged as an indispensable element in one of the most fascinating periods of musical history. Although being taken for granted may bear the risk of renewed negligence, Franz Schreker’s status should no longer be challenged today. This makes it possible, apart from dealing with all of his main works also to consider what he himself perhaps did not deem his most ground-breaking works, ones permitting interesting insight into a musician’s workshop and displaying cross-references to his other works like you can hear on this recording. Valda Wilson is the featured soloist on this release. Initially trained at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music, the soprano went on to win Opera Foundation Australia’s scholarship to the National Opera Studio London. She is one of the most versatile, exciting and musically curious sopranos of her generation, and is currently singing at the Saarlaendisches Staatstheater in several productions.

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End of the opera. 12 November 1918 (on the day of the declaration of the German-Austrian Republic and the union with the German Reich!). This sentence was written by Schreker at the close of the manuscript full score. The call for the dissolution of the Habsburg Empire and for unification with Germany was a genuine republican position and supported by all political parties.

Strasfogel, I.: Franz Schreker Book / Scherzo No. 1 / Schrek

Franz Schreker’s career was cut short by the events of 1933 in Germany but he achieved real fame with his operas; and the huge success of 'Der Schatzgräber' (‘The Treasure Hunter’) in the 1920s was the high point of his career. In a complex and ultimately tragic tale of destructive greed; desire and toxic social hierarchy; the innkeeper’s daughter Els is forced to confront the consequences of her murderous intent in what conductor Marc Albrecht considers ‘a work of exceptional quality; concentration and significance’. Following the huge success of Korngold’s 'Das Wunder der Heliane' (Naxos DVD 2.110584-85 / Blu-ray NBD0083V); director Christof Loy continues his exploration of strong female characters and neglected 20th-century masterpieces with this highly acclaimed Deutsche Oper Berlin production.

This collection opens with the symphonic interlude from Schreker’s opera Der Schatzgräber (The Treasure Hunter). A convoluted fairy tale it has at its poles the eternal themes of love and death, with supernatural elements in between. As this symphonisches Zwischenspiel from Act 3 celebrates a night of passion the music blossoms with extraordinary heat and vigour. It also swells and palpitates with a thrilling intensity that, in lesser hands, might spill over into excess. I hear the lofty languor of Wagner and the soft outlines of Debussy; there’s a Korngoldian sweep, too. Remarkably, all these echoes and influences are fused into a distinctive whole, broad and beautifully crafted.

As for the recording, the huge climaxes are fearless: no detail goes unremarked and perspectives are very convincing indeed. Schreker’s more delicate touches are also well caught, and timbres are always true. The playing combines body with boldness, passion with polish, and Renes shapes it all like a seasoned pro. Yes, this large-scale performance – with sonics to match – belongs firmly in the concert hall rather than the theatre, but it’s none the worse for that.

Next up is the prelude to Die Gezeichneten (The Stigmatized), set in 16th-century Genoa. It centres on a lurid love triangle that wouldn’t look out of place in a Jacobean tragedy. This opulent opener also has the feel of a Hollywood blockbuster of the 1930s or 1940s. That’s not a criticism, for many of those great film scores were penned by Austro-German composers who fled to the US before the War. There’s surprising delicacy in this score – I revelled in the gorgeous harp writing – not to mention a Romantic blush that reminds me of Gurre-Lieder at times. If this piques your interest see Rob Barnett’s review of Gerd Albrecht’s complete recording.

Composed in 1933 Schreker’s Vorspiel zu einer großen Oper (Prelude to a Drama) is an expanded concert version of the prelude to Die Gezeichneten, which the conductor Felix Weingartner had commissioned 20 years earlier. At 22 minutes it’s the longest piece here. It’s also one of the most satisfying, as it combines a powerful sense of drama with a strong, tight musical structure. There are some startling things here, not least the extended passage in which the timpanist plays a quietly insistent two-note figure as part of a magical dialogue with the orchestra. The recording is especially effective at this point, the timps ideally placed in a deep, wide soundstage.

Although Schreker’s two-act opera Das Spielwerk und die Prinzessin (The Music Box and the Princess) failed miserably in both Frankfurt and Vienna the prelude to this fairy tale is delightful. Textures are wonderfully transparent and those warbling woodwind figures are a telling touch. Rhythms are subtly articulated, tuttis are always proportionate and it all hangs together very well. That said, there’s a rather dated feel to the score, which might explain its poor reception. Still, the playing is alert and refined, the recording warm and clear.

Nachtstu?ck (Nocturne) – the Act 3 interlude from Schreker’s opera Der ferne Klang (The Distant Sound) – was actually premiered three years before the work from which it’s taken. The opera tells the story of Fritz, a composer who loves one Grete Graumann but who can’t marry until he’s written a great piece and found the mysterious sound that haunts him so. The nocturne – which begins with a rocking theme underpinned by gentle tam-ram strokes – manages to be both refulgent and restrained, blending Straussian amplitude with an iridescent fan of ravishing colours.

I suspect most people who listen to operatic ‘chunks’ know little and care less about the narrative that surrounds them. One certainly doesn’t need to know the details of Wagner’s Ring to enjoy the splendid excerpts. That’s also true of these Schreker pieces, which work rather well on their own. Would this collection tempt me to try the full operas? Perhaps, but for all its craft and colour Schreker’s sound world seems at odds with the times – rather like the later novels of Thomas Hardy – his medieval/fairy-tale plots equally so. Music to relish, if not to love. The detailed liner-notes are by Horst A. Scholz.

Little-known repertoire, superbly played and recorded; go on, treat yourself.

– MusicWeb International (Dan Morgan)

After the great success of the Golem by Eugen d’Albert, the Beethoven Orchestra of Bonn under its conductor Stefan Blunier now presents with the opera Irrelohe by Franz Schreker yet another enthralling programme idea and a key work of musical modernity. The orchestra mightily enters the musical fray with six percussionists and lavishes in passion and nonstop dynamic power. MDG’s technicians have produced a fascinating live recording in the challenging acoustic architecture of the Bonn Opera House.

Schreker: Der Ferne Klang

Includes work(s) by Franz Schreker. Ensemble: AML Lucerne Symphony Orchestra. Conductor: John Axelrod.

Franz Schreker (1878-1934) is one of the many late romantic German and Austrian composers who became victims of the Nazi purge on 'degenerate art'. Schreker came in for abuse mostly because of some Jewish roots in his family and a penchant for lurid subject matter in his most famous operas. Musically, his operas are no more radical than Strauss' Elektra. But whereas Strauss retreated into a sort of polite neo-classicism tinged with Wagner in his later years, Schreker stayed a basically late-romantic expressionist and this expressionist aspect doomed his music. Der Ferne Klang debuted in 1912 in Frankfurt and launched Schreker into the top rank of composers of his time. The same year he was appointed to the faculty of the Vienna Academy of Music in the areas of counterpoint, harmony, and composition. The plot involves an artist who abandons his fiancé to go in search of 'the distant sound' which will allow him to produce the perfect work of art. As the opera progresses, the main character, Fritz, leads a life of gradually increasing desolation and eventually dies. On his death bed he finally hears "Der ferne Klang". The score is in fine expressionist mode, though basically tonal. Schreker was one of the most brilliant orchestrators of the early 20th century. The present recording arises out of highly acclaimed live performances of the opera given in the Augsburg Opera House (Germany) in spring 2010.

Der ferne Klang by Franz Schreker (1878-1934) premiered on August 18, 1912 at the Frankfurt Opera House. Schreker had already begun composing his first full-length opera in 1901, after the text he had written in just a few weeks. Now the work, which was initially considered impossible to perform, but which made Schreker suddenly famous, is returning to the location of it's premiere for the first time after 1945. Almost half of all operas by the Austrian, who with one exception was both composer and librettist for all of his stage works, performed or premiered in Frankfurt. The Choir of the Oper Frankfurt and Frankfurter Opern- und Museumsorchester perform under the direction of Sebastian Weigle.

"Oper Frankfurt is arguably the “right” company to produce this Der ferne Klang recording, because Austrian composer Franz Schreker (1878-1934) had a special connection with this opera house. It was here that he scored his first big success with this opera, followed by the premiere of his complete version of Die Gezeichneten, two of his most definitive works. His musical idiom is decidedly Late/Post Romantic, yet uniquely his own, beguiling in its lush and translucent tone colours. His style can also extend into an intensely expressionistic and harmonically adventurous, if unsettling, musical soundscape. At the height of his fame during the early years of the Weimar Republic, Schreker was the most performed opera composer after Richard Strauss. He was also a noted pedagogue, as director of Berlin’s Hochschule für Musik, and counted Berthold Goldschmidt and Ernst Krenek as his students. But by the late 1920s, with the rise of National Socialism and its inherent antisemitism, Schreker, who was Jewish, lost his academic appointments and his compositions were banned. Sadly he descended into obscurity, suffered a stroke and died at the age of 56. It was only in the 1980s, through Decca’s “Entartete Musik” series, that Schreker reemerged from a decades-long obscurity. His revival gathered momentum both in Germany and America. Salzburg Festival’s striking 2005 Die Gezeichneten garnered critical and audience accolades, reaffirmed by the more recent Warlikowski production in Munich, which made a powerful (if nightmarish) impression on me in 2017...

Thankfully, Oper Frankfurt’s production of Der ferne Klang was revived before COVID shut everything down, and it is now commercially available on CD. It features a strong ensemble cast led by tenor Ian Koziara and soprano Jennifer Holloway as the two lovers. Both sing beautifully, with Koziara taking top vocal honours for his free, beautiful, never stentorian, ringing tone. Holloway is equally impressive, a few fleeting moments of steely sound notwithstanding.

This recording includes no less than three Canadians— bass-baritone Gordon Bintner, baritone Iain MacNeil, and mezzo Julia Dawson—all members of the Oper Frankfurt Ensemble. Bintner, as the Graf, has the most music to sing, including a very nice aria, “In einem Lande,” which he handles beautifully, particularly at the top. MacNeil and Dawson have less to sing but both offer fresh voices and vivid imagination. All supporting roles are well taken, perhaps with one painful exception. I debated whether to mention it as it involves a singer I have admired in the past. I heard soprano Nadine Secunde (Alte Frau Mama) as a marvelous Sieglinde and Elsa 30 years ago. Here she is in shockingly poor vocal estate, afflicted by a painful wobble —perhaps in character for an ‘Old Lady’, but does it have to be this way? Sebastian Weigle shows his fine understanding of Schreker, leading the Frankfurt forces with strength and eloquence— the Zwischenspiel in Act III is a highlight. This piece might not delight everybody, but if you are fond of Strauss and early Schoenberg, and have an inclination to stories with a Freudian bent, you are in for a treat.

The opera’s story has little to do with logic, yet is strangely suited to Schreker’s lush and atmospheric score. As the listener, one takes a journey of poetic imagination that’s oddly satisfying. This is a perfect opera to illustrate that one should listen not with the head but with the heart. As with a lot of Schreker, the visual element is important, if not crucial, to the total enjoyment of the work, so it’s regrettable that this isn’t a DVD release. That said, it is still very enjoyable and an important addition to the discography of a much neglected composer. Highly recommended." —— Joseph So