Arnold Schoenberg - Transfigured Night; Pelleas und Melisande (Herbert von Karajan)

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Composer: Arnold Schoenberg

1. Verklärte Nacht, Op. 4: 1. Grave
2. Verklärte Nacht, Op. 4: 2. Molto rallentando
3. Verklärte Nacht, Op. 4: 3. Pesante - Grave
4. Verklärte Nacht, Op. 4: 4. Adagio
5. Verklärte Nacht, Op. 4: 5. Adagio
6. Pelleas und Melisande, Op. 5: Die Achtel ein wenig bewegt - zögernd
7. Pelleas und Melisande, Op. 5: Heftig
8. Pelleas und Melisande, Op. 5: Ciff. 9: Lebhaft
9. Pelleas und Melisande, Op. 5: Ciff. 16: Sehr rasch
10. Pelleas und Melisande, Op. 5: Ciff. 33: Ein wenig bewegt
11. Pelleas und Melisande, Op. 5: Ciff. 36: Langsam
12. Pelleas und Melisande, Op. 5: Ciff. 43: Ein wenig bewegter
13. Pelleas und Melisande, Op. 5: Ciff. 50: Sehr langsam
14. Pelleas und Melisande, Op. 5: Ciff. 55: Etwas bewegt
15. Pelleas und Melisande, Op. 5: Ciff. 59: In gehender Bewegung
16. Pelleas und Melisande, Op. 5: Ciff. 62: Breit

Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra
Herbert von Karajan, conductor
Recording dates: 1973 (1-5), 1974 (6-16)
Label: Deutsche Grammophon
http://www.deutschegrammophon.com/en/cat/4577212

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Review

Reference Recording: Karajan’s Luscious Schoenberg

Herbert von Karajan. Remember him? Considering how much he recorded, he gets remarkably little mention nowadays—but at his best, as here, he was amazing. He reportedly paid for these recordings himself because he believed in the importance of preserving the masterworks of the Second Viennese School, and the effort shows. Of course, his approach to string playing was uniquely rich, sensual, and so out of fashion in these days of vibratoless “authenticity”—but Karajan new personally what the truly authentic style in this music should have been, and this is it.

His Verklärte Nacht is almost suffocatingly decadent, and phrased as a single, 30-minute long arch of melody. It’s not for those on a low calorie aural diet, that’s for sure. The “transfigured” closing pages are especially magical, but that might be said of the whole performance. Similarly, Pelleas is so lovingly phrased, so beautiful and purposeful in its progress, that the music’s intense chromaticism never degenerates into mere timbral sludge (as it so often can). Each episode is fully characterized and richly colored, and you always get the sense that something is “happening,” even if you’re not sure exactly what (then again, the characters in this story are just as clueless as we are).

Does anyone listen to this music frequently? Perhaps not, but when you do, you might as well go for broke, as Karajan does here.

-- David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday

More review:
BBC Music Magazine PERFORMANCE: ***** / SOUND: *****
http://www.amazon.com/Schoenberg-Verkl%C3%A4rte-Nacht-Pelleas-Melisande/dp/B000006141

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Arnold Schoenberg (13 September 1874 – 13 July 1951) was an Austrian composer, leader of the Second Viennese School. Schoenberg was known early in his career for simultaneously extending the traditionally opposed German Romantic styles of Brahms and Wagner. Later, his name would come to personify innovations in atonality that would become the most polemical feature of 20th-century art music. In the 1920s, Schoenberg developed the twelve-tone technique, an influential compositional method of manipulating an ordered series of all twelve notes in the chromatic scale.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arnold_Schoenberg

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Herbert von Karajan (5 April 1908 – 16 July 1989) was an Austrian conductor. He was principal conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic for 35 years. He is generally regarded as one of the greatest conductors of the 20th century. He made a large number of recordings and was the top-selling classical music recording artist of all time, having sold an estimated 200 million records. He was admired and also criticized for his over polished sound of the orchestras he conducted.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herbert_von_Karajan

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