SignumClassics PHILHARMONIA ORCHESTRA 2 CD/SACD Surround Sound SignumClassics PHILHARMONIA ORCHESTRA S i g n u m C l a s s i c s SIGCD133 PHILHARMONIA ORCHESTRA 2 C D s SIGCD132 SCHUBERT CHRISTOPH VON DOHNÁNYI VLADIMIR ASHKENAZY CHRISTOPH VON DOHNÁNYI SHOSTAKOVICH BRAHMS SIR CHARLES MACKERRAS BRAHMS SYMPHONY No.2 & SYMPHONY No.4 S Y M P H O N Y N o.2 & SYMPHONY N o.4 S i g n u m C l a s s i c s THE PHILHARMONIA ORCHESTRA SIGCD135 VLADIMIR ASHKENAZYBRAHMS SIR CHARLES MACKERRAS SCHUBERT SHOSTAKOVICH VLADIMIR ASHKENAZY FESTIVE OVERTURESCHUBERT SHOSTAKOVICH SYMPHONY No.9 SYMPHONY No.5 FESTIVE OVERTURE SYMPHONY No.5 SCHUBERT SYMPHONY No.9 www.signumrecords.com www.philharmonia.co.uk Available through record stores and at www.signumrecords.com For more information call +44 (0) 20 8997 4000 SignumClassics PHILHARMONIA ORCHESTRA S i g n u m C l a s s i c s SIGCD135 PHILHARMONIA ORCHESTRA 2 C D s SIGCD132 SCHUBERT CHRISTOPH VON DOHNÁNYI VLADIMIR ASHKENAZY CHRISTOPH VON DOHNÁNYI SHOSTAKOVICH BRAHMS VLADIMIRB RAHMSASHKENAZYSYMPHONY No.2 & SYMPHONY No.4 S Y M P H O N Y N o.2 & SYMPHONY N o.4 S i g n u m C l a s s i c s PHILHARMONIA ORCHESTRA ESA-PEKKA SALONEN SHOSTAKOVICHSIGCD13 3 BRAHMS SIR CHARLES MACKERRAS FESTIVE OvERTUREVLADIMIR ASHKENAZY SIR CHARLES MACKERRAS VLADIMIR ASHKENAZY SCHUBERTSHOSTAKOVICH SYMPHONY No.9 SCHUBERT SYMPHONY No.5 SYMPHONY No.9 SHOSTAKOVICH FESTIVE OVERTURE www.signumrecords.com www.philharmonia.co.uk SYMPHONY No.5 Available through record stores and at www.signumrecords.com For more information call +44 (0) 20 8997 4000 SCHOENBERG GURRELIEDER www.signumrecords.com www.philharmonia.co.uk Available through record stores and at www.signumrecords.com For more information call +44 (0) 20 8997 4000 Disc 2 SCHOENBERG Part II GURRELIEDER 1 Waldemar: Herrgott, weißt du, was du tatest (p. 17) 4.54 Part III 2 Waldemar: Erwacht, König Waldemars Mannen wert! (p. 18) 2.05 Arnold Schoenberg (1874-1951) 3 Bauer: Deckel des Sarges klappert und klappt (p. 18) 3.57 Disc 1 4 Waldemars Mannen: Gegrüßt, o König, an Gurres See Strand (p. 19) 5.45 5 Part I Waldemar: Mit Toves Stimme flüstert der Wald (p. 19) 3.12 6 Klaus-Narr: Ein seltsamer Vogel ist so ’n Aal (p. 20) 6.43 1 Orchestral Prelude (p. 9) 6.45 7 Waldemar: Du strenger Richter droben (p. 22) 2.45 2 Waldemar: Nun dämpft die Dämmerung jeden Ton (p. 9) 3.23 8 Waldemars Mannen: Der Hahn erhebt den Kopf zur Kraht (p. 22) 6.28 3 Tove: O, wenn des Mondes Strahlen leise gleiten (p. 10) 2.38 9 Des Sommerwindes wilde Jagd 4 Waldemar: Roß! Mein Roß! Was schleichst du so träg! (p. 10) 2.56 Sprecher: Herr Gänsefuß, Frau Gänsekraut (p. 22) 8.34 5 Tove: Sterne jubeln, das Meer, es leuchtet (p. 11) 2.34 bl Chor: Seht, die Sonne (p. 24) 5.37 6 Waldemar: So tanzen die Engel vor Gottes Thron nicht (p. 11) 2.14 7 Tove: Nun sag' ich dir zum ersten Mal (p. 12) 4.15 Total timings 50.09 8 Waldemar: Es ist Mitternachts Zeit (p. 12) 5.53 9 Tove: Du sendest mir einen Liebesblick (p. 13) 6.00 bl Waldemar: Du wunderliche Tove! (p. 14) 4.46 PHILHARMONIA ORCHESTRA bm Orchestral Interlude (p. 15) 5.07 PHILHARMONIA VOICES • CITY OF BIRMINGHAM SYMPHONY CHORUS bn Stimme der Waldtaube: Tauben von Gurre! Sorge quält mich (p. 15) 11.48 STIG ANDERSEN Waldemar RALF LUKAS Bauer Total timings 58.21 SOILE ISOKOSKI Tove ANDREAS CONRAD Klaus-Narr MONICA GROOP Waldtaube BARBARA SUKOWA Sprecher www.signumrecords.com ESA-PEKKA SALONEN CONDUCTOR 2 3 Over a decade earlier, when he began the work, I seems to work like an orchestral song cycle, it had little chance of any performance. Indeed, whereas Part III often seems more like opera. SCHOENBERG GURRELIEDER (1900-03, 1910-11) like the tone poem, Pelleas und Melisande, which interrupted his work on Gurrelieder in 1903, it But it is undoubtedly Wagner whose voice is was an extremely ambitious project for an almost most readily heard behind Schoenberg’s in this In 1900, Schoenberg began a song cycle Waldemar. As punishment for this blasphemy, unknown composer still in his twenties, with work. Like Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen, for soprano, tenor and piano, intending to Waldemar is compelled to ride every night on virtually no formal instruction. Apart from the Schoenberg’s Gurrelieder traces the downfall enter it for a composing competition. A year a wild hunt with the ghostly figures of his dead limited success of a String Quartet from 1897 and of the mighty, reflected in the all-encompassing later, he found he had composed a massive vassals. This apparently interminable cycle, some songs performed to little acclaim in 1900, cycle of nature. Like Tristan und Isolde, it charts cantata for five soloists, a narrator, three however, is broken by the return of Spring. As Schoenberg had no professional performances a yearning for the loss of individual identity in male choruses of four parts each, an eight- new life blossoms throughout the world, the to his name, and yet Gurrelieder shows complete the ecstatic union of two lovers. Waldemar and part mixed chorus, and an orchestra of about souls of Waldemar and Tove find release in mastery of the techniques of musical narrative Tove know that only in death will their desire, 150. The poems that had inspired such a the renewal of nature, and thus the eternal and tone painting of Wagner and Strauss. forged out of their separateness in life, finally be vast work were drawn from a collection by the union that Tove once promised Waldemar. reconciled and find resolution. The beginning of Danish poet, Jens Peter Jacobsen (1847-85), Perhaps it was Gustav Mahler who provided the piece takes place at dusk, leading into an itself based upon medieval legends. Both the It is an astonishing work for many reasons, not Schoenberg with a model. Gurrelieder finds intense love duet at midnight, passes through the text, and Schoenberg’s response to it, reflect least that while its composition was begun in some parallels in Mahler’s youthful cantata Das nocturnal hunt of the ghostly riders and ends at the powerful influence of Wagnerism at the 1900, when Schoenberg’s musical language klagende Lied, completed in 1880 at the age dawn with the promise of new life on the arrival fin-de-siècle to which few young composers, was still essentially late-romantic, it was not of just twenty. Mahler revised the work several of the summer wind, a year and a day later. For writers and artists were immune. Indeed, completed until 1911, by which time he had times before it was finally premièred in Vienna, all the medieval origins of the text, this blurring Schoenberg’s friend Alexander Zemlinsky had written some of his key atonal works in a more conducted by himself, on 17 February, 1901. of the world of nature and the erotic is typical begun setting part of the same text in 1899. modernist idiom. In January, 1910, it was Alban Berg was at the concert and wrote to of the artistic concerns of the fin-de-siècle. performed with the orchestral parts in a six- Schoenberg (then in Berlin) describing it as ‘a The ‘songs of Gurre’ tell the tale of two lovers handed piano reduction by Webern. The fully magnificent work’. The comparison is a useful Part I consists of nine songs (tracks 2 - bl), sung – King Waldemar and Tove. When their love orchestrated version was premiered in Vienna one for other reasons. Both composers were alternately by Waldemar and Tove, seamlessly is discovered by Waldemar’s wife, Queen on February 23, 1913, conducted by Franz wrestling with a hybrid musical form, caught joined by orchestral transitions. They fall into clear Helwig, she has Tove killed, a blow from which Schreker. Schoenberg was dismissive of its between the idea of operatic and theatrical pairs, with each character giving their account Waldemar never recovers. He rails against God positive reception, stung by the fact that his music on the one hand, and instrumental, of successive stages in the unfolding narrative. himself, accusing him of being a tyrant to allow earlier style was enthusiastically acclaimed symphonic music on the other. Gurrelieder is The first two songs depict the landscape and Tove to die and thus to be separated from while his more recent works were rejected. certainly hard to locate in terms of genre; Part atmosphere, as evening turns into a moonlit 4 5 night. Waldemar is riding out to the castle of In the very brief Part II, Waldemar not only night. It opens with a reference back to the it merely adds to the sense of madness. The Gurre, where Tove awaits him. Songs 3 and curses God but threatens to storm heaven start of the seventh song in Part I, Waldemar’s Fool’s apparent nonsense acts as a kind of 4 depict his journey and arrival, an ecstatic itself if the souls of himself and Tove are kept anticipation of the lovers’ parting in death. sidestep, a strategy that exacerbates the sense moment reflected in the whole of nature. apart. It was wrong, he cries to God, to take Schoenberg unleashes the massive power of that the emotional burden here is too great to Songs 5 and 6 express the lovers’ meeting and Tove’s life and thus rob him of the one thing he his orchestra here, with an overpowering use be properly expressed.