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..."

Includes libretto in German and English.

A gripping and imaginative score, steeped in the lush orchestral textures of Strauss and Puccini.

It is good to see the upsurge of interest in Schreker's operas. Irrelohe comes immediately after Der Schatzgraber in the canon and was first produced in 1924 in Cologne. Immediately after the First World War Schreker was hailed by Paul Bekker as the most significant musical-dramatist after Wagner. (''The important question whether a similar type of talent would ever again resurface after Wagner... is now answered: Franz Schreker is such a talent, the first since Wagner, that is of a similar calibre, the same phenomenon, but in a wholly different manifestation.'')

His musical language is steeped in the lush and overripe orchestral textures of Strauss and Puccini, and embraces symbolism, expressionism and the Viennese Jugendstil. One could think of the idiom as a cross between the Strauss of Elektra and Korngold, albeit with a higher norm of dissonance than the latter. Schreker's star began to wane after the critical mauling Irrelohe received, and against a background of resentment at his success, and growing anti-Semitism (he was forced to resign as Director of the Hochschule fur Musik in Berlin; subsequent Nazi persecution seems to have occasioned a stroke which led to his death in 1934). He later enjoyed the venom of that self-appointed pontiff of modernism, Theodor Wiesengrund Adorno (as indeed did Sibelius – so he was in good company).

Irrelohe, to the composer's own libretto, is set in the eighteenth century. Count Heinrich lives as a recluse in Irrelohe castle, fearing hereditary madness should he give way to sexual passion. His love for Eva inspires the jealousy of her suitor, Peter, as well as the enmity of Christobald, whose own fiancee had been raped by Heinrich's father. Peter attempts to prevent their wedding but is killed in the ensuing struggle, and in the meantime Christobald sets fire to Irrelohe. Echoes of Valhalla's fate in Gotterdammerung! Eva finally sings of the redemptive power of love. (The name of the opera, incidentally, derives from a railway station: while travelling on a sleeping-car Schreker, woken up by a guard calling out the name of a station, looked out of the window and saw the name, Irrloh.)

While Schreker's mastery of dramatic and psychological effects is not in question, many critics have felt that his music is too close to the wilder shores of Hollywood for comfort (Wolfgang Molkov's note speaks of it having ''quite an inventory of horror-film cliches'') but we do not condemn, say, Ravel or Prokofiev, because others have pillaged and polluted their harmonic vocabulary; nor should we Schreker. While recognizably indebted, mainly to Strauss and Puccini, Irrelohe as drama with music holds you almost from start to finish. The characters and the vocal lines are drawn with care and the orchestral textures are sumptuous. My only reservation is that although there is a great deal of highly imaginative material and a sophisticated orchestral resource, Schreker's music is predominantly a succession of finely realized atmospheres: melodic inspiration of a strongly individual profile is less in evidence though there are inspired passages – the Prelude to Act 3 is one, though the act as a whole strikes me as the least interesting musically. Everything is dramatically effective and indeed masterly. In his thoughtful paper ''Style, Structure and Taste: Three Aspects of the Problem of Franz Schreker'' (Proceedings of the Royal Music Association: 1982) Peter Franklin speaks of him as ''a brilliant musical psychologist whose 'decadence' is a function of the range of experience on which he draws and the skill with which he manages its naturalistic representation in music''.

The performance under Peter Gulke is thoroughly committed and the cast is a strong one. The recording derives from a concert performance given in the Grosser Musikvereinsaal in Vienna and although the singers are favoured there is an excellent and well-balanced orchestral detail. The break from the first CD to the second in the middle of the eighth scene of Act 2 is not well chosen but otherwise there is no cause for complaint. Those who know Der ferne Klang or Der Schatzgraber will probably need no prompting to investigate this set; for those who don't, Irrelohe is a gripping and imaginative score, well served by all involved in this production.

-- Robert Layton, Gramophone [12/1995]

SCHREKER: Orchestral Works, Vol. 2

Libretto booklet in German only. Plot synopsis in German and English.

Schreker scored a succès d'estime with his ballet Der Geburtstag der Infantin in 1908. Zemlinsky then approached Schreker for a libretto on the same plot. Schreker became so wrapped up in the emotional tensions associated with physical ugliness obliterating the chances of expressing physical love that the project fell away. Instead Schreker produced Die Gezeichneten.

The setting is 16th century Genoa. Alviano is the architect of a temple to debauchery where moneyed profligates have orgies with abducted women. Tamare is one of the profligates who desires Carlotta who is a painter and she in turn prefers to catch Alviano's soul in a painting. Tamare is determined to win Carlotta and Carlotta while painting Alviano discloses her love. Betrothed to Alviano, Carlotta repents of her entanglement, now appalled by Alviano's repugnant face. She goes off with Tamare. Alviano having found them in flagrante delicto kills Tamare. Carlotta dies calling on the name of Tamare; Alviano, distraught, collapses into insanity. The large chorus represents nobles, citizens, soldiers, maids, servants, women, maidens, silent children, fauns, naiads and bacchantes.

The music is utterly gorgeous - jewelled, mystic, silvery, haunted, euphorically climactic in episodes fully worthy of the operas of Korngold, Schoeck (including Massimilla Doni and Schloss Durande) and Strauss. This is voluptuous stuff written in the dazzling hey-day of late-romantic opera with a footing in the twin heritages of Wagner and Puccini. Listen, for example, on CD1 to the surging flowing romance of the Halloh! Vitelozzo (tr. 3) or the tenderest of orchestral gestures in Holde Martuccia (tr. 5). This is the material which Hollywood was later to mine in light-flooded scores written for the screen romances of the 1940s by Korngold and Waxman. The Verwandlung in Act II Track 9 (CD1) is yet another ultra-romantic and, let's face it, irresistible, affirmation of the passionately tear-stained musical line that Korngold was to purvey in Hollywood (e.g. in the marsh music of Elizabeth and Essex and the great theme from Anthony Adverse). All those who love their Korngold need to add this set to their shelves as soon as possible. Get it now before it disappears. If you remain unconvinced then try listening to CD2 track 6 which is Carlotta's song 'Ah Welche nacht' in which she is joined by the choir which shines at first quietly and later with greater passion in an echo from Delius's A Mass of Life. At the peak moving directly into tr.7 and in Adorno and Carlotta's duet, there is some unsubtle romance-exalted material but overall this is grand opera at its hyper-sentimental apex. Wonderful singing from Becht and Martin but then I did not detect any really weak links in this cast.

This 1984 performance dates from the first flushed up-rearing of interest in Schreker and Zemlinsky. At this stage Albrecht was busy with many such revivals. Two years previously at the same Salzburg Festival, Albrecht directed a rare revival of Schoeck's Penthesilea. Austrian Radio's engineers made a superb job of this recording which has now been digitally remastered. There is the occasional creak and cough but miraculously few - even in the moments of greatest quiet. Speaking of which, here is an opera which, for all its superheated storms, revels in glimmering Baxian webs of orchestration, fine tintinnabulation and the softest gong impacts. Schreker could not resist ending the work (CD2 tr. 12) with a hideously retching and yawing apostrophe to inimical fate.

The set is well documented but sadly I cannot provide the registers of all the singers as these details are not listed in the booklet. Only the sung German text is given. There is no English translation. The notes and a very good synopsis are in both German and English.

There are other recordings of this work of which only one is currently available. The deleted Decca recording (444 442-2(3)) was issued in 1993/94 as part of the now cob-webbed and threadbare ‘Entartete Musik’ series and now reissued as an ArkivCD. The Berlin Deutsche SO conducted by Lothar Zagrosek. There is also a still currently available recording on Marco Polo.

The opera was premiered at Frankfurt-am-Main on 25 April 1918. Its UK premiere came on 31 January 1965 on the Third Programme.

This set should be on the wish-list of every collector who values their operatic Zemlinsky, Schoeck, Korngold, Pfitzner or Schreker. I am now all the more regretful that I missed Schreker's Irrelohe while it was still available on Sony.

- Rob Barnett, MusicWeb International

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

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.

SCHREKER: Der Ferne Klang

As a famous music authority and critic once wrote, the life story of the Austrian composer Franz Schreker and the reception history of his oeuvre would have offered fine material for a magnificent novel with a musician as its protagonist – if not for the fact that everything had actually occurred in real life: his childhood spent in poverty; the difficult initial path to local prominence in Vienna; the breakthrough to superstar status in German-language opera houses; his appointment as director of the Berlin College of Music; his failure to resist the seductive powers of flatterers; the gradual loss of favor among audiences and critics that many seeming friends followed with malicious spite; and then the final blow, when the new »master race« turned the world upside down – all of this was fact, not fiction. Following the release of several operas by Franz Schreker during past years on cpo (some of them in premiere recordings), our label now turns to the orchestral works of a man who in some circles continues to be dismissed as a mere »sound magician,« even though he was a melodist and harmonist of the first water and had learned his craft so thoroughly at the Vienna Conservatory that he himself became a sought-after teacher. The present program traces Schreker’s path from his studies with Robert Fuchs to his first enduring success – the captivating pantomime The Birthday of the Infanta (1908) after the fairy tale by Oscar Wilde, which definitely numbers among the finest creations of the musical art nouveau.

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)

SCHREKER: Flammen