Arnold Schoenberg (1874-1951)
Verklärte Nacht, Op. 4 (Second version for string orchestra, 1943)
Chamber Symphony No. 1, Op. 9 (1906)
Die Jakobsleiter (1915-1922)
Variations for Orchestra, Op. 31 (1926-1928)
Violin Concerto Op. 36 (1934-1936)
Berlin Philharmoniker/Kirill Petrenko
rec. live, 2019-2024, Philharmonie Berlin, Germany
Reviewed from a WAV download: 96 kHz/24-bit
Texts and translations included
Berliner Philharmoniker Recordings BPHR250511 [147]
What’s in a name? This new release from the Berlin Philharmonic’s own label has no conventionally descriptive title. American artist Peter Halley’s striking cover for the collection of orchestral and choral music by Arnold Schoenberg consists of three groups of two vibrantly coloured striped vertical rectangles with a name over each group, first orchestra, then conductor, lastly composer, all in the same font size. A simple statement of creative equivalence perhaps. If so, it feels justified. The more so I think if one doesn’t take the chronological route of composition reasonably chosen in the album’s tracklist, but instead chooses to listen by date of recording, from earliest to most recent. The latter path shows the exciting development of the relationship between orchestra and conductor and with it ever more vital performances, two of which, the Variations for Orchestra and Die Jakobsleiter, are in my view by some way the best in the catalogue.
Taking the order I have just suggested leads us first to the Violin Concerto of 1936, recorded in March 2019, the season before Kirill Petrenko took over as Chief Conductor. Patricia Kopatchinskaja is the soloist. This is Schoenberg demonstrating full mastery of twelve tone technique. If I describe the violin’s initial motif as being notes 1,2,7 and 8 of the chosen tone row however, as the booklet notes do, you might not find it helpful. It’s better to know those notes are A, Bb, C, Db. Even without understanding what Schoenberg does rhythmically, it’s obvious that is a completely singable sequence – no difficult intervals – and tells us something really important about the composer’s approach to accessibility. Despite the anxiousness which twelve tone theory seems to spark in listeners and audiences, what we are presented with in the Violin Concerto is a clear and lyrical leitmotif that can be elaborated upon, lucid textures, recognisable forms and short movement lengths. As Martin Kaltenecker says in one of the essays in the booklet, the Concerto is a ‘masterpiece of the necessary compromises between heart and brain’. This memorable performance capitalises on all those elements. At the centre is Kopatchinskaja’s incandescent reading of the solo part, always rhythmically acute, dancing at times, revelling in what she described in an interview at the time as ‘rhetorically inflected tonal painting’. She has deeply sympathetic partners in Petrenko and the orchestra. I loved the way the waltz in the central section of the first movement seems to emerge organically in this performance, the profoundly sensitive accompaniment of the violin’s aria like theme in the second, and the Mahleresque portrayal of the marches in the rondo finale.
The performance of Verklärte Nacht here is from August 2020 and marked the first time the orchestra was able to play in front of a live (socially distanced) audience since Covid regulations closed concert halls. It’s a febrile account played with an almost shocking intensity, inevitably influenced one imagines by the emotion of the occasion felt by players and audience. Is it too intense perhaps? I watched the performance live in 2020 thanks to the Berlin Philharmonic’s Digital Concert Hall (DCH) and was overwhelmed. Listening nearly five years later I still thought the playing remarkable, as is Petrenko’s command of structure, but the unrelenting emotion and sensuousness, the striving for the absolute extremes of dynamic range and especially the sheer force of the tuttis, made me think that perhaps this is more a valuable record of a memorable point in time than a version I would want to often turn to. Interestingly, there is a contrasting performance from 2012, also in the DCH archive, conducted by Simon Rattle. It makes for a fascinating comparison, Rattle’s account toned down, almost anti-dramatic.
The next performance by date took place in January 2023. I think we can say that by then most critics and audiences recognised this combination of conductor and orchestra as something special, even given the illustrious history of previous partnerships in Berlin. Special is definitely a fitting adjective for their account of Schoenberg’s Variations for Orchestra, a piece premiered by one of Petrenko’s legendary predecessors, Wilhelm Furtwängler, with the Berliners in 1928. The overall impression conveyed in this new performance is one of great power and muscularity deployed in the lightest, most transparent way possible. There is also an attendant sense of coherence both in the basic sense of bar to bar intelligibility but also in Petrenko’s mastery of the work’s symphonic architecture and ambitions. The Schoenberg was preceded in concert by a brilliant performance of Brahms’s Haydn Variations and even without the Brahms as a reference point on these discs, the sense of late romantic lustre, of Brahmsian inflexion is undoubtedly in the air. Let me try and give some specific examples of what makes this such a fine performance: the way the uneasy, nervy counterpoint of the first variation is laid out with unprecedented clarity; the organic scaling back of the texture in the second variation from an orchestral to a chamber sound with woodwind and first violins and cellos only, sounding like a reinvention of the Schubert Octet; the third variation sounding here as if Schoenberg has disassembled a Sarabande; the waltz, which is the fourth variation, played with an incongruent, edgy elegance; the harshness of the eighth variation realized with an almost brutal force; the ninth variation played like a mini concerto for orchestra, every solo compellingly rendered. By the time the Finale is reached one feels that neither players or composer can possibly have any more virtuosity left, but the way Petrenko guides us through its potentially tricky transitions, navigating Schoenberg’s inventive restatements of the Theme and the ‘BACH’ motif, which has been dotted through the piece, is thrilling. The Adagio which occurs just before the conclusion is wonderfully realised, as if granting us a moment for a retrospective appreciation of the whole, before the recapitulation of the final Presto catapults us to the final chord. Despite its sonic limitations, my library choice for this piece hitherto has been another live performance with the Berlin Philharmonic, conducted by Dimitri Mitropoulos, recorded at the Salzburg Festival in 1960 (Orfeo C488981B). But this new performance is better in every way, a tribute to Petrenko’s ability by this stage of their relationship to somehow raise this already incredible group of players to new heights of concentration and achievement.
The final two pieces by performance chronology in the set formed a concert given in January 2024. Schoenberg’s Chamber Symphony No. 1, a single movement ‘freely tonal’ work from 1906 for 15 solo instruments, is given a refreshingly vivid performance which underlines the piece’s liminal position between late romanticism and modernism. If anything, it feels as if the performance strives to stress more of the former, with the interesting effect that playing up the lushness of some of the harmonic writing feels preternatural, paradoxically modernist, set against the compression of the writing and the stripped down instrumental forces. Petrenko and the players draw the listener into this strange environment effortlessly, so that I found myself startled, almost as if I had snapped out of a trance, when the piece concluded.
The masterpiece of condensation which is the first Chamber Symphony also provides the most striking contrast imaginable with the work which followed after the interval, the centrepiece of this set. Die Jakobsleiter was conceived as a large-scale oratorio, inspired after reading Swedenborg, Strindberg and Balzac in which Schoenberg said he wanted to show how ‘modern man, having passed through materialism, socialism, and anarchy and, despite having been an atheist, still having in him some residue of ancient faith (in the form of superstition), wrestles with God […] and finally succeeds in finding God and becoming religious. Learning to pray!’. Schoenberg wrote his own text, which is remarkably effective, and of sufficient interest for his publishers, Universal Edition, to publish in 1917. However, he only completed the music for the final movement of what would have been a monumental work. It’s often described as a ‘fragment’, as in the booklet notes for these discs, but that’s misleading on two counts. First, what’s left is substantial, over 45 minutes of music. Second, formally and narratively it feels like a complete piece. Thanks for this is due to Schoenberg’s former pupil, Winfried Zillig, who prepared the performing edition of the score. Oddly, Zillig is not referenced in the booklet for the set and yet he deserves huge credit for what he achieved, not least sifting through Schoenberg’s many thoughts and directions on the piece, which continued to change throughout the composer’s life. Zillig’s guiding aesthetic was, he wrote, to leave a version that ‘sounds as Schoenberg could have written it in 1917’, in order to create ‘a sublime likeness of a sublime work’.
The forces required for Die Jakobsleiter are significant: nine soloists as well as a chorus and large orchestra with four offstage groups requiring conductors. Given the resources demanded and what has been perceived as difficult subject matter and music, the work has not received many recordings. Boulez with the BBC Symphony Orchestra on Sony (074644846225) was highly influential. It was recorded at IRCAM in 1980 and based on landmark concert performances given in the late 1970s in Paris and London. Amongst other things it cemented the practice first experienced at the work’s public premiere in 1961 (by Rafael Kubelik and the West German Radio Orchestra) where at the ending of the oratorio the character of the Soul sang a duet against her own prerecorded voice played through speakers, a mechanical intervention that neither Schoenberg nor Zillig requested (a second offstage voice is suggested in the score). It’s not perfect sonically: the singers often sound recessed and the IRCAM acoustic is very dry. Musically the soloists are no better than competent and the chorus (the BBC Singers) sounds underpowered. Kent Nagano on Harmonia Mundi (HMC801821DI) has better sound and soloists (including Jonas Kaufmann) but somehow his account never quite sparks. There is also a live recording available conducted by Michael Gielen (who conducted the first performance of the work the Berlin Philharmonic gave in 1970) on SWR Classics (CD93015), where the Schoenberg is generously paired with Mahler’s Eighth Symphony, an obvious influence. It’s always interesting to hear Gielen in twentieth century music, but both the solo and choral singing is variable. Nagano’s is the most recent of the three but dates from 2004, so it’s high time for a new account.
The music belongs to what we might describe as Schoenberg’s atonal period, before his serialist works, but it’s completely navigable, with the initial cello ostinato holding the key to what follows. Its sequence of six notes is presented in different orders, registers and patterns (whilst maintaining pitch relationships) when new events and ideas occur. Dramatic and musical momentum essentially pivots on the introduction of new ‘types’ (for example, ‘One Who Is Called’, ‘One Who Is Rebellious’, ‘The Chosen One’ and ‘The Soul’) whose dialogue with the angel Gabriel also provides the development of Schoenberg’s theological narrative.
The realisation of the score by Petrenko and his combined forces is remarkable, and the grasp of form and the consistency of approach, even down to the smallest detail, is striking. To take one important example, I have never heard Sprechgesang deployed and performed so intelligently and dramatically, all of the singers and the chorus completely buying into what Petrenko asks of them. Special praise must go to Wolfgang Kosch’s portrayal of Gabriel who is a binding thread in terms of the series of interactions which make up the work, bringing genuine characterisation, variety and colour to the role.
There is a highly theatrical element to Petrenko’s approach, which feels entirely appropriate, and a combustibility to both the orchestral playing and the singing which is riveting. It reaches its apotheosis in the work’s final section where Petrenko’s dramaturgical grounding results in a coup de thèâtre which feels simultaneously a profoundly spiritual experience: the soul’s dying breathes are responded to by an ingenious series of musical effects, xylophone and harp combining in an etiolated soundscape before a wonderfully played violin solo (Noah Bendix-Balgley) seems to be bestowing a sort of benediction, whilst offstage music (shared between various groups in different parts of the Philharmonie) evokes an ever distancing trajectory, the soul’s vocalising being the last thing we hear, fading away. We also have two voices for the soul, (Liv Redpath and Jasmin Delfs) not tape, and the effect is magical.
If you don’t know the work, my strong recommendation would be to watch it first on the accompanying Blu-ray rather than listening to the audio. One gets even more of a sense of the occasion, the huge forces deployed and Petrenko’s calm authority every step of the way. The ending I have just described is wonderfully captured for example, where the video skilfully switches between the main stage, the offstage groups and solo playing. Perhaps more importantly the subtitles, simultaneously but unobtrusively displayed in German and English, provide a vital aide to one’s appreciation. (I should say that for the purposes of this review I’ve had access only to hi-resolution downloads of the audio. My description of the video footage comes from the Digital Concert Hall. I assume it will be displayed identically on the Blu-ray as in past Berlin Philharmonic Recordings releases.)
When you do want to turn to the audio, the booklet has full texts and translations. Musically I’ve found using Zillig’s vocal score much the easiest option to work out what is going on, although it must be a répétiteur’s nightmare to play. It hardly needs to be said, given this label’s previous track record, but the sound in all of the pieces is demonstration quality. Die Jacobsleiter in particular must have presented some real challenges to the audio engineers but they have triumphed.
As is always the case with this label there is a substantial booklet. Harvey Sachs, the author of a recent biography of Schoenberg, contributes a very well written general introduction to the composer. Martin Kaltenecker’s essay is more analytical and his insights excellent. If they had chosen to, Berliner Philharmoniker Recordings could presumably have put out a wider set of recordings including excellent Schoenberg performance from the Rattle era: the Five Pieces for Orchestra, Gurrelieder, the orchestration of the Brahms Piano Quartet No. 1, to name but a few. But I think the focus on the newer partnership and the sub-plot of its development over a five year period works really well. This is a brilliant set of performances which bring Schoenberg’s music vividly and contemporaneously to life.
Dominic Hartley
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Soloists
Wolfgang Koch (baritone); Daniel Behle (tenor); Wolfgang Ablinger-Sperrhacke (tenor); Johannes Martin Kränzle (baritone); Gyula Orend (baritone); Stephan Rügamer (tenor); Nicola Beller (soprano); Liv Redpath (soprano); Jasmin Delfs (soprano); Patricia Kopatchinskaja (violin)
Recording details
Verklärte Nacht, Op. 4 – rec. live 28 August 2020
Chamber Symphony No. 1, Op. 9 – rec. live 25-27 January 2024
Die Jakobsleiter rec. live 25-27 January 2024
Variations for Orchestra, Op. 31 – rec. live 25-27 January 2023
Violin Concerto Op. 36 – rec. live 7-9 March 2019
