SCHOENBERG: Pelléas et Mélisande, Op. 5; FAURÉ: Pelléas et Mélisande, Op. 80 – Frankfurt Radio Symphony/ Paavo Jarvi – Alpha Classics Alpha 1058 (5/20/24) (58:55) [Distr. By Naxos] *****:
Here we have two vintage performances, long suppressed, from Estonian conductor Paavo Jarvi (b. 1962) of Romantic music inspired by Belgian writer Maurice Maeterlinck’s 1892 Symbolist drama Pelléas et Mélisande. Maeterlinck’s plot echoes Wagner’s opera Tristan und Isolde in several thematic aspects: illicit love and death within the confines of an ancient castle in the legendary kingdom of Allemonde; a woman of mysterious origins pursued by two half-brothers, Pelléas and Golaud; fratricide at the discovery of Pelléas’ avowal of love for his brother’s wife; the birth of Mélisande’s child by Pelleas; and the death of Mélisande of a broken heart.
Arnold Schoenberg took up the project of orchestrating Maeterlinck’s drama at the suggestion of admired role model Richard Strauss. Conceived as an uninterrupted symphonic poem, Schoenberg’s 1902-03 epic sets the drama in eleven scenes in the richly chromatic context of post-Wagner, leitmotivic harmony, the key of D minor – the same tonality that inhabits the equally expressive 1899 string sextet Verklaerte Nacht – unfolding in sonata form appropriate to a through-composed symphony in four movements, rich in dense, contrapuntal texture. Following Franz Liszt’s example of thematic transformation of an original ground-motif, Schoenberg invests instrumental colors to define his three characters and symbolic actions or affects, such as Love, Jealousy, Fate, and Death. The virtuosity of instrumentation makes itself felt in enraptured moments, like the use of trombone glissandos. Structurally, the last scene recapitulates the opening motifs and Love music, with a kind of epilogue in response to Mélisande’s death.
Paavo Jarvi recorded the Schoenberg opus in October 2012 and the Fauré four-movement suite in January 2014. The haunted atmosphere established at the Schoenberg score’s opening Jarvi maintains with astonishing clarity, his instrumental forces relishing both their intimate moments and the startling transitions into massive effects. Jarvi captures the untamed ardor that marks the growing passion of the two title characters – trumpet and English horn, respectively – while brother Golaud (horn) seethes with jealous anger. Jarvi’s sense of transition feels seamless, as when the music moves to the fountain scene, with Melisande’s having lost her wedding ring only to encounter Pelléas. The Frankfort string choir describes the burgeoning Love theme that occurs at the park fountain and culminates in Pelléas’ death. The nervous, angularly chromatic texture strikes us passionately eerie, intimidating and dizzily fretful, courtesy of superior sonics from Producer Udo Wuestendoerfer and Engineer Philipp Knop.
Gabriel Fauré conceived his incidental music for Maeterlinck’s play in 1898 for a London production. Over-worked at the time, Fauré assigned his promising pupil Charles Koechlin the orchestration for a small ensemble, which Fauré himself edited and corrected later, setting the now expansive music as a suite in four movements. Faure’s version of the drama proceeds on an intimate scale, delicate with French touches and hues, creating what scholar Jean-Michel Nectoux calls “an expansive sound. . .a hazily blurred atmosphere and. . .indistinct sound” appropriate to Maeterlinck’s evocative narrative.
The air of tragic nostalgia permeates Jarvi’s opening Prelude to Act I, with its restrained but heated sense of passion. Golaud’s appearance, marked by a horn call, intrudes upon the otherwise idyllic romance played out by titular protagonists, marked by harp, flute, and strings. Mélisande sits beside her spinning wheel in the second movement, Fileuse, in which the oboe sets an air of contentment above rapid violin triplets, the melody’s swelling gracefully with erotic anticipation. The most popular section, the pastoral Sicilienne, plays a solo flute and oboe against harp and plucked strings: the scene proper depicts Mélisande’s loss of her wedding ring at the fountain. It remains a mystery to this record collector that Serge Koussevitzky, leading his 1940 Boston Symphony recording for RCA, omitted this precious movement. Fauré’s darkest moments come, appropriately, with the Death of Mélisande, serving as the prelude to the final act. Jarvi sustains the funereal atmosphere with undue heaviness and bathos, but with dignified poise. If a sense of transfiguration occurs in this dirge, the magic belongs to the composer.
—Gary Lemco
