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, Eliahu Inbal - Schoenberg: Gurrelieder - The Two Chamber Symphonies / Norman, Troyanos, McCracken; Ozawa, Imbal

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 Amazon.com

Still sounds pretty good to me

I hadn't realised just how many recordings of this monumental work there were out there until I started a little research and I can claim to be familiar with only four -although I have listened to some excerpts of others. The other odd thing my investigations revealed was just how many totally contradictory opinions you can glean from a trawl through the Amazon reviews, both US and UK.

OK; in the end you can only tell it as you see - or rather hear - it yourself. My departure point and single biggest discriminator is the quality of the soloists. I realise that you need a wonderful conductor, orchestra and choir to do those massive sonorities justice and the final, blazing paean to Nature and the sun from combined forces has to be right, but the emotional core of this overlong, rambling, unbalanced, but ultimately fascinating, work lies with the outpourings of feeling from the hero, heroine, two bemused onlookers and, finally, the recitalist of the poem. I agree that several conductors seem to lose detail in a soup of sound - or maybe that is as much a location and recording problem - but I can forgive some of that when the voices are right. (Gielen's relatively new recording sounds to my ears to be serious undercast, although Diener repeats her touching, slightly low-key assumption of Tove.)

First, I will not budge on one fact (i.e opinion!): nobody, but nobody, not even Troyanos, begins to approach the depth, strength and variety of colour that Janet Baker brings to her Wood Dove narration. Her voice, in the rather elderly and hissy live, Danish recording conducted by Ferencsik, is awesomely powerful and resonant yet also delicate and moving. She conveys every nuance of emotion in a tour de force of a performance. Troyanos is good but just compare key moments such as "Tod ist Tove". Everyone else, barring Troyanos (and perhaps Fassbaender on the Chailly set) is an also-ran in this part - and some are quite disappointing - particularly Jennifer Lane in the Craft performance.

Regarding Waldemar, there are, to my ears, a lot of rather windy, over-parted tenors who have a go at this role; strangely enough, Alexander Young, Baker's and Arroyo's partner, makes a success of it simply by treating the role quite lyrically and focussing his lighter voice tellingly instead of trying to blast. O'Mara, on the Craft, is very good; having heard him live I suspect that the recording is kind to him, as his voice in the flesh is not that large, however pleasing and musical. No; for me McCracken in the Ozawa set is close to ideal in timbre and attack - if only he had attempted to sing more quietly in the more intimate passages. However, his is still a thrilling assumption of the role and the right, huge voice for this frenetic, despaired and desperate character - and it is possible that the close recording is partly to blame for his prominence in quieter passages.

I need a soprano of real heft and amplitude of tone as Tove - but someone who can fine down her large voice from the more ecstatic moments to accommodate the declarations of love. Arroyo (Ferencsik -again) and, of course, Jessye Norman for Ozawa, have huge, beautiful voices and their competitors,such as Melanie Diener, while being perfectly adequate, rather pale in comparison.

The strength of the Craft set lies in the coherence and splendour of the choral singing and his control of tension - but the Tanglewood Festival Chorus, too, won a Gramophone Award for their contribution to Ozawa's recording. The soloists in Ozawa'a performance are, as I mention above, recorded rather too closely but the ambience of the Boston Symphony Hall is kind. The Ferencsik does not have as stellar an orchestra or choir as Ozawa but they still generate excitement and depth of sound. The best overall sound is to be found on the Craft (formerly Koch, now Naxos).

So, ultimately, I find myself returning either to Ferencsik or Ozawa for the sterling solo performances and it is the latter that I would cling to at a push - while always regretting that it was not Baker who sang for Ozawa. I don't think that Chailly provides the same thrills; his soloists (Fassbaender apart) strike me as competent but bland - though I do enjoy Hotter's declamation even if he had an inauthentic voice type for the spoken role, if we are to heed the composer's wishes for a lighter ex-tenor sound.
April 1, 2008

A fantastic bargain in the Schoenberg catalog

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? March 21, 2006

Seiji Ozawa must mean "chief blunderer" in Japanese.

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. November 27, 2003

almost ideal

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. July 30, 2003

This is an excellent recording

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. June 30, 2002

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