Schoeck's one-act opera, Penthesilea is an astonishing and masterly score. It seems barely credible that a work so gripping in its dramatic intensity, and so powerful in atmosphere, should be so rarely performed and so little known. It has the listener on the edge of the seat throughout its 80 short minutes and, like any great opera, it casts a spell long after the music has ended. In the Grove Dictionary of Opera, Ronald Crichton wrote that ''at its most intense, the language of Penthesilea surpasses in ferocity Strauss's Elektra, a work with which it invites comparison''. In so far as it is a one-act work, set in the Ancient World, highly concentrated in feeling and with strongly delineated characters, it is difficult not to think of Strauss's masterpiece. Yet its sound-world is quite distinctive. Vaughan Williams once spoke of originality as the power to make a C major chord sound new, citing the example of Sibelius. Though he is a lesser figure, Schoeck similarly renders the familiar language of Straussian opera entirely his own. The vocabulary is not dissimilar yet the world is different.
The action takes place during the Trojan War. Penthesilea is the queen and leader of the Amazons, female warriors who may give their love only to a man they have defeated in battle. Penthesilea believes that she has vanquished Achilles though in fact the reverse is the case. To win her love he must allow her to believe herself the victor. But when Achilles reveals the truth, she is appalled. In the subsequent combat to which he challenges her, he offers no resistance and when she realizes that he has perished by her hand, she takes her own life. Schoeck based his libretto on Kleist's tragedy of 1808, beginning at the ninth scene of the play, shortening and rearranging it but adding nothing. In conversation with Werner Vogel in 1946 Schoeck is quoted as saying that on the dramatic stage, ''Kleist's language goes by too quickly and thereby has too little an effect. In the opera, words are magnified for more time is available for them. The listener has to become conscious of Kleist.'' The inevitable slowing-down heightens rather than hinders understanding. First given at the Staatsoper, Dresden in 1927 Penthesilea has rarely been heard since, even in Schoeck's native Switzerland. It was first recorded in 1973 at the Lucerne Festival with Carol Smith as Penthesilea and Roland Hermann as Achilles, and Cologne Radio forces under Zdenek Macal and issued on LP in 1975. Good though that was, this newcomer completely supersedes it.
We are immediately plunged into a vivid and completely individual world, packed with dramatic incident: off-stage war cries and exciting, dissonant trumpet calls. There is an almost symphonic handling of pace, but the sonorities are unusual: for example, there is a strong wind section, some ten clarinets at various pitches, while there are only a handful of violins; much use is made of two pianos in a way that at times almost anticipates Britten. The present performance emanates from the 1982 Salzburg Festival; Helga Dernesch in the title-role commands the appropriate range of emotions as Penthesilea and the remainder of the cast, including the Achilles of Theo Adam, rise to the occasion. The important choral role and the orchestral playing under Gerd Albrecht are eminently committed and the recording is good without being state-of-the-art. There is a useful essay and libretto, though in German, not English or French. However, since the action is drawn from the Iliad this should hardly present problems. Schoeck was only a few years older than his better-known compatriots Frank Martin and Arthur Honegger, yet has never gained the recognition accorded to them. Let us hope that this issue advances his cause. It is a marvellous opera recommended with all possible enthusiasm.'