Arnold Schoenberg; Sándor Veress; Béla Bartók - Verklärte Nacht (Thomas Zehetmair)

Information

Composer: Arnold Schoenberg; Sándor Veress; Béla Bartók

• (01) Schoenberg - Transfigured Night, Op. 4
• (02) Veress - Four Transylvanian Dances
• (06) Bartók - Divertimento

Camerata Bern
Thomas Zehetmair, violin & conductor

Date: 2001
Label: ECM
https://www.ecmrecords.com/catalogue/143038752307/verklarte-nacht-schonberg-veress-bartok-thomas-zehetmair-camerata-bern-thomas-zehetmair-camerata-bern

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Review

The closest musical relationship here is between Bartok and his piano student Sandor Veress, especially in the last of Veress’s Transylvanian Dances, which drives a rhythmic course somewhere between the finales of Bartok’s Fourth Quartet and Divertimento. The second Dance is a sort of Magyar fugue, and the third an eerie tension-builder that slowly rises in temperature before lightening up and exiting on the tail of a skittish folk dance. In a sense, one might think in terms of a Hungarian half-cousin to Barber’s similarly intense Adagio.

Thomas Zehetmair showed us his Bartokian mettle a few years ago when he recorded Bartok’s Violin Concertos for Berlin Classics (under Ivan Fischer), and his Camerata Bern account of the Divertimento is similarly perceptive. Flexibility of tempo, thoughtful balancing between full and solo strings (tutti and ripieno in the old concerto grosso sense) and a keen, though never rigid, handling of rhythm – all are part of his canny interpretative ground plan. Listen to how, from around 3'45 into the first movement, he traces the rising progression from cello and viola through to violin (a telling detail that few rivals notice) or to how he controls the ghostly chorus that closes in from 3'36 into the Adagio. Everyone is evidently listening to everyone else, which means that inner voices really glow, and the amply sonorous recording captures them all.

Given a choice, I would have preferred some Janacek, Martinu, Stravinsky or Bloch to yet another version of Verklarte Nacht. The hapless offspring of that angst-ridden couple have since multiplied without restraint, spawning a plethora of late-romantic soundalikes. Schoenberg’s fledgling style was the stuff of Hollywood’s musical future, and although there’s a good deal more to Verklarte Nacht than that, couldn’t we have had, say, the Suite for Strings instead? In the event, Zehetmair eschews schmaltz for chaste dialoguing, clean articulation and a generous quota of drama. Rarely has Schoenberg’s night transfigured to fewer tears or stranger sounds, especially the chilling sul ponticello at 16'29. Cut-glass tremolandos and stylised phrasing are characteristic: indeed, I can imagine that Nikolaus Harnoncourt might handle the piece in a similar fashion (if he ever conducts it). In terms of texture, Zehetmair effects a fine compromise between the full string version and the sextet original. Lovers of musical heavy petting might miss coagulating string lines and intrusive vibrato (if I may allude to one or two illustrious rivals), but give me Zehetmair’s leanness any day. Again, the sound is superb

-- Gramophone

More reviews:
ClassicsToday  ARTISTIC QUALITY: 10 / SOUND QUALITY: 10
http://www.classical-music.com/review/schoenberg-veress-bart%E2%80%94k
https://www.amazon.com/Schoenberg-Verkl%C3%A4rte-Transfigured-Divertimento-Zehetmair/dp/B00004XO8D

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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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Sándor Veress (1 February 1907 – 4 March 1992) was a Swiss composer of Hungarian origin. Veress studied and later taught at the Franz Liszt Academy in Budapest. Among his teachers were Zoltán Kodály (composition) and Béla Bartók (piano). He also did field research on Hungarian, Transylvanian and Moldovan folk music as an assistant to László Lajtha. Among the composers who studied under him are György Ligeti, György Kurtág, Heinz Holliger, Heinz Marti, Jürg Wyttenbach and Roland Moser. He wrote numerous chamber music pieces and symphonic works, as well as an opera, titled Hangjegyek lázadása.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S%C3%A1ndor_Veress

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Béla Bartók (March 25, 1881 – September 26, 1945) was a Hungarian composer, pianist and an ethnomusicologist. Bartók is considered one of the most important composers of the 20th century; he and Liszt are regarded as Hungary's greatest composers. Through his collection and analytical study of folk music, he was one of the founders of comparative musicology, which later became ethnomusicology. Bartók's music reflects two trends that dramatically changed the sound of music in the 20th century: the breakdown of the diatonic system of harmony, and the revival of nationalism as a source for musical inspiration.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B%C3%A9la_Bart%C3%B3k

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Thomas Zehetmair (born 23 November 1961, Salzburg) is an Austrian violinist and conductor. He studied at the Salzburg Mozarteum, and attended master classes with Nathan Milstein and Max Rostal. As a violinist, Zehetmair has made several recordings for ECM, both as soloist and with his quartet (which bears his name). As a conductor, Zehetmair was Music Director and chief conductor of the Royal Northern Sinfonia (2002-14), and has been principal conductor of the Orchester Musikkollegium Winterthur (since 2016) and chief conductor of the Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra (since 2019).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Zehetmair

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