Bernard Herrmann (1911-1975)
Suite from Wuthering Heights (1943-1951 as adapted by Hans Sørensen in 2011)
Echoes for String Quartet (arr. Hans Sørensen for string orchestra) (1965, arr. 2011)
Keri Fuge (soprano – Cathy), Roderick Williams (baritone – Heathcliff)
Singapore Symphony Orchestra/Mario Venzago, Joshua Tan
rec. 2020-22, Esplanade Concert Hall, Singapore
Chandos CHSA5337 SACD [80]
It is probably fair to say that the 1968 issue on LP of a complete performance of Bernard Herrmann’s opera Wuthering Heights was at the time received by the musical establishment with something akin to total indifference. When I borrowed a copy from my local record library in London, the librarian expressed amazement that anybody at all would be interested in what he clearly viewed as a vanity project by a overweening Hollywood film composer of small interest to ‘real’ operatic audiences. Despite this discouraging introduction, I immediately fell in love with the whole first scene of the opera and found the closing scene enthrallingly dramatic, despite the fact that the performance was not of the best with many of the singers and orchestral players clearly sight-reading and struggling with difficult and demanding music. In fact I extracted onto cassette (the purchase of a full-priced 4 LP set being well beyond my means) an hour of excerpts consisting of the whole of the first and last scenes, together with the two arias from the principals – almost exactly the same extracts, in fact, that Hans Sørensen has adopted here to form his ‘suite’ from the opera (he has added two sections from the Prologue, and removed the brief scene with Hindley and Joseph before the nocturne).
Herrmann in his adaptation of Charlotte Brontë’s wide-ranging novel had already fined down the dramatic action to the tragic story of Heathcliff and Cathy, and the Sørensen suite narrows the focus further to the extent that the whole hour of music can be encompassed by just the two singers. In fact the dramatic and musical range of the music provided for the lovers means that there is no lack of variety of pace or atmosphere in the length of the piece, and for much of the time the stage action is indeed continuous. The extended ‘love duet’ between the two young teenagers has an almost Ravellian sense of atmosphere and space, rising to a rapturous Puccini-like climax. Cathy’s aria I have dreamt in my life dreams has established itself as a favourite concert item with American sopranos – Renée Fleming gives a rapturous performance on a Decca recital disc – but it works even better in context. And after the gripping music surrounding the death of Cathy, the atmospheric conclusion may be extended but summons up the desolation of the Yorkshire moors in a manner that is remarkable for a composer nurtured in the film studios of Hollywood.
So, what of this new recording? In the first place, it has to be observed that the orchestral playing of the Singapore Symphony Orchestra is immeasurably superior to that of the pick-up ‘Pro Arte Orchestra’ featured on the complete Herrmann set. And on that old complete recording Morag Beaton was rarely satisfactory as Cathy, a role which inconsiderately requires at once a delicate lyrical voice and then one which can open out into full Puccinian cantilena at climaxes. She was better in quiet passages, but her louder expansions were often blowsy, her sense of tuning was wayward and her diction often occluded – compare her delivery of her aria to that of Fleming, for example. By comparison Keri Fuge here has a perfect sense of youthful wonder, and much more clarity of both words and notes; but she too has trouble with the really big moments. “Oh, Heathcliff, I too am one with them!” she sings of the moors; but the wild ecstasy, the sense of identification, is missing.
Similarly Roderick Williams, normally a superlative singer, seems perilously miscast as Heathcliff. It is already a danger, when Herrmann has provided such a delicately poetic setting of “I am the only being whose doom no tongue would ask”, to avoid the sense of the “homeless waif” as a Victorian gentleman who has strayed into the wrong company; but lines like “I’m the gaunt crags” or “Don’t torture me till I’m as mad as yourself” (to the dying Cathy) really need a sense of desperation and intemperate rage that Williams cannot really supply here. Donald Bell on the Herrmann set, wayward tuning and mangled diction notwithstanding, sounded more genuinely frightening.
Part of the problem must however also be laid at the door of Mario Venzago, whose conducting is often just too civilised, failing to clinch the dramatic power of the moment. The string tone, which really cries out for the full Hollywood sheen in places, is polite rather than that lyrically effusive; and Venzago, already too fast in the nocturne which concludes scene one, is disastrously speedy during the meditation which leads into the final scene, reducing the delicate violin turns to simple decoration rather than suspended resolutions. Herrmann in his reading shows how the music should be handled here, and be damned if the result sounds like Barber’s Adagio. Herrmann’s solo clarinet at the end of Heathcliff’s aria, too, shows an emotional engagement that is smoothly lacking here. It is almost as if the conductor is frightened of excess, anxious to avoid bringing out the Hollywood parallels which are an essential part of the whole.
At about the same time as I so enthusiastically first encountered Wuthering Heights, I encountered Herrmann’s Echoes for string quartet adapted somewhat improbably as a ballet, and was thoroughly unimpressed. This new orchestral arrangement, again the work of Hans Sørensen, has completely changed my mind. The music now has a bleak beauty, and the rhapsodic and rather formless construction no longer troubles me. Moreover the string playing under Joshua Tan has greater warmth than in the operatic suite, giving the music a sense of tranquillity which transforms what I had recollected as a somewhat tetchy work. In its quartet version Echoes has already received a number of recordings, going back to the days of Herrmann himself, but I think that I would now prefer to hear it in this version for string orchestra.
The Herrmann complete recording of Wuthering Heights was at one time available on a set of Unicorn CDs released in 1996, but is now apparently deleted with second-hand copies selling at an eye-watering £186 on Amazon (LP copies actually seem to be cheaper). A later set on the Accord label issued in 2012 (with a largely French-speaking cast) appears to have vanished from sight altogether. This release therefore would seem to be the only manner in which those interested can obtain any substantial sections of the music on disc. That is a disgraceful situation. What we really need is a completely new recording, preferably on video, featuring the complete opera; but then if Herrmann could not get this done during his lifetime, presumably hopes should not be raised too far. On the other hand, if this suite succeeds in arousing interest, then we might begin to expect something. The booklet comes with complete English text and booklet notes in English, French and German, clearly in anticipation of international interest.
Paul Corfield Godfrey
Previous review: Rob Barnett (July 2023)
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