Schoenberg Verklärte Nacht;
View record and artist detailsRecord and Artist Details
Composer or Director: Arnold Schoenberg
Label: Classics
Magazine Review Date: 3/1995
Media Format: CD or Download
Media Runtime: 78
Mastering:
DDD
Catalogue Number: CD80372

Tracks:
Composition | Artist Credit |
---|---|
Verklärte Nacht, 'Transfigured Night' |
Arnold Schoenberg, Composer
Arnold Schoenberg, Composer Atlanta Symphony Orchestra Yoel Levi, Conductor |
Pelleas und Melisande |
Arnold Schoenberg, Composer
Arnold Schoenberg, Composer Atlanta Symphony Orchestra Yoel Levi, Conductor |
Author: Arnold Whittall
The disc is labelled ''The Romantic Schoenberg'', and Yoel Levi was evidently determined at all costs to shun the kind of intensity that might suggest anticipations of Schoenberg's more abrasive later style. The orchestra play well and many details of phrasing and dynamics are responsively handled, but the textures are forced into an over-blended homogeneity and the result lacks drama. This is an effusive yet ultimately rather cautious romanticism, and for performances which match warmth with urgency I much prefer Karajan's imposing full-scale reading, or the Orpheus CO's more intimate and subtle interpretation.
Levi's view of Schoenberg's romanticism is a little more persuasive in the expansive, doom-laden pages of Pelleas und Melisande, though caution again emerges in a fairly tame scherzo section, and the overall effect is to make the score seem more episodic than it need be, weighing down the textures, rather than highlighting the contrapuntal interdependence of the various strands. Boulez—with help from the Erato technicians—has shown how a balance can be struck in this complex score between clarity and integration: Karajan, too (on a three-disc set), offers a masterly demonstration of how richness of sound need not bring over-emphatic expression in its train.'
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