Arnold Schoenberg (1874-1951)
Verklärte Nacht; version for string orchestra (1943)
Richard Strauss (1864-1949)
Metamorphosen; study for 23 string instruments (1945)
Chamber String Orchestra of the Ignacy Jan Paderewski Academy of Music in Poznań/Jakub
Chrenowicz
rec. 2021, Aula Nova, Ignacy Jan Paderewski Academy of Music, Poznań, Poland
Dux 1799 [56]
The timing of the issue of this disc is slightly infelicitous in that only last month I glowingly reviewed a recording of these two celebrated string works by the United Strings of Europe on BIS; furthermore, they gave us four additional items and thus over twenty minutes more of music. I was apologetic about recommending that one, having already made recommendations in my surveys of these works, so naturally determined that this disc would have to be of the highest quality to merit a similar endorsement.
Timings for both works are conventional. My first impressions of Verklärte Nacht are that the sound here is just a little harsh and edgy and thus lacks some of the warmth and intensity of the United Strings of Europe, such that the opening lacks somewhat of the creeping mystery and menace; there is also a strange little blip or skip in the recording at 3:36 – a background pulsing – or perhaps that it is a flaw only on my copy? The transition between the climax of the first Grave and the Molto rallentando sections is rather prosaic and anticlimactic and I am not gripped as I am by the very best performances and there are some tuning issues halfway through that second section and bow contact at the beginning of some phrases is not always impeccable. The great chorale beginning the Adagio is nicely articulated but a little too restrained; I do not sense much of the erotic passion which should animate this most sensual of compositions. The solo violin work of leader Marcin Suszyscki, however, is delicate and the apotheosis of the movement is ethereal, so for the first time here I feel swept along by the music; the intensity previously missing manifests itself from seven minutes in. The surging finale is first lovely – but then, how tame are the chords at 1:40. A very mixed bag, then.
Metamorphosen is cut from the same cloth: at first, intermittently intense then too flaccid – but given that the tension is cumulatively increased over the twenty-seven minute span of the piece I attribute that initial suggestion of slackness to a deliberate aesthetic choice not to give too much too soon, as by half way through I am caught up in the momentum generated. I think this is more successfully delivered of the two works, even if at the fifteen-minute-mark I miss some of the wild abandon so redolent of nostalgic grief.
My standards are perhaps unrealistically high for these two works which I so much love but I think I can still reasonably maintain that these are good but not outstanding accounts; the United Strings, the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra and Sinopoli exceed this group in the Schoenberg; Pople with the London Festival Strings and Karajan with the BPO are supreme in both.
The disc is neatly presented in a slim cardboard pack, but I cannot say that the muddy brown, abstract artwork in oils selected for the cover does much for me.
Ralph Moore
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