SCHOENBERG: Chamber Symphony No. 2, op.38; Die gluckliche Hand, op. 18; Wind Quintet, op. 26 – Mark Beesley, bass/ Simon Joly Chorale/ New York Woodwind Quintet/ Philharmonia Orchestra/ Robert Craft, conductor – Naxos 8.557526, 78:21 ****:
This is the latest from the ongoing Robert Craft-conducted series that will surely end up being one of the jewels in the Naxos crown. This particular disc allows us to sample some esoteric music in the Schoenberg catalog, and some removed quite unfairly. To speak to the latter first, the composer’s remarkably sweet and romantic Chamber Symphony No. 2–started as early as 1906 (right after the first one) – but completed, with some stylistic conundrums and difficulties, in 1939–would surely have an attractive following in this day and age were it presented more frequently. There is nothing to dislike, or even consider disliking, as the work is replete with Gurrelieder-like harmonies and big sweeping post-romantic sentiment. Craft’s Philharmonia plays it gloriously here.
Die gluckliche Hand (The Hand of Fate) is a strange animal. It’s autobiographical: Schoenberg as the consummate artist with a huge ego wanting to be loved – recently abandoned by his wife (she returns to him later after Webern insists he take her back). It’s odd: a mixture of pantomime, song, chorus, and stage drama; the work was perhaps destined to never be performed because no one could quite figure out exactly what it is. Listening to this 2000 recording by Craft, I am beginning to believe that after all is said and done it really belongs to the recorded realm alone, not with all of the distracting appurtenances that Schoenberg attached to it. The high symbolism–in the beginning a man is lying down, head towards the audience with a hyena creature gnawing at his neck–takes a very descriptive program to explain it all, and one has to ask the value of such a work if such verbal explanations are needed. No, it seems to me that reading what Craft provides us here and then listening to some very powerful music is the antidote to this work’s particular performance ills.
The last work here, played to stunning effect by the New York Woodwind Quintet, comes from around 1920, when the composer had solidified his 12-tone technique, especially in such pieces as the genius-laden Piano Pieces, Op. 25. The technique is so profoundly difficult in this work that original performance lasted an hour, as the tempos Schoenberg insisted on could not be met. Now apparently, they can, as this one clocks in using the proper markings at around 38 minutes. It is thorny but rewarding, as almost all of Schoenberg is. His use of color, not only in judicious mixture of the available winds, but in the conflicts among the various registers of each instrument, is particularly interesting.
All in all a sumptuous disc for the Schoenbergian partisan–novices might want to start with Transfigured Night or the aforementioned Gurrelieder, but this is a splendid album capture in clear and vibrantly honest sound.
— Steven Ritter
