January 27–February 3, 2000
review
Rapture
Gurrelieder
The Philadelphia Orchestra; Simon Rattle, conductor
Jan. 22, Academy of Music
For all of the vastness of Arnold Schoenberg’s Gurrelieder, the sound that echoes in the memory is from the quiet passages. What unearthly beauty was created by an orchestra of 144 playing softly, and what a remarkable feat it was for Simon Rattle and the musicians to weave this magical blanket of sound with every fine thread still apparent. Even in the much-ridiculed acoustics of the Academy of Music, and even for an orchestra already renowned for a lush and slick tonality, the sheer textural heft and luminosity of the music making this evening was a thing of wonder.
Of course, when the hundreds of musicians (360 or so, including the chorus) roared as one, especially at the finale, well, that was a pretty glorious noise, too.
The work itself, rarely heard in live performance, sustains a sense of rapture and coherence throughout its two hours, despite the turgid claptrap of the neo-Gothic poetry set to music by the composer. Much has been made of the late-romantic tonality of Gurrelieder, with a good deal of talk — much of it by people who should know better — of how this was the way Schoenberg wrote before his ugly, scary period of atonality. An astute listener will hear the roots of Schoenberg’s harmonic experimentation in the dense score, at times deeply submerged, but in several passages verging on atonality. However, the atonality is so completely integrated into a spectrum of shifting harmony that the effect is not as noticeable as it would be standing alone.
There is, too, the remarkable part for spoken voice, potently rendered this evening by Franz Mazura, in which pitches are assigned to a declaimed, rather than sung voice. This directly anticipated the revolutionary sprecht-stimme technique of the composer’s Pierrot Lunaire, which was a major stepping stone in the formation of the 12-tone technique. Gurrelieder is, in other words, not an aberration in the canon of an infamous modernist, but a logical step in the development of a career that is far more diverse than it is popularly given credit for.
There was a palpable sense at the Saturday evening performance that all of the musicians knew they were participating in a historical event. The solo singing was uniformly vibrant and powerfully projected, with special praise due to tenor Gary Lakes, who filled in for an ailing Thomas Moser at the last minute. The immense Philadelphia Singers Chorale threw out billowing waves of song. And this orchestra, following a radiant pulse generated by Sir Simon, demonstrated with breathtaking virtuosity, if anyone possibly had any doubts, that they are still one of the supreme musical ensembles in the world.
