Chandos has just released Vol II of Schreker's orchestral works performed
by a top-flight orchestra, led by a sensitive conductor, and graced with
exceptional sound.  (Vassily Sinaisky/BBC Phil)

Schreker's music is characterized by exoticism, perfectly judged
proportionality, heart-stopping chord progressions, textures of the
greatest delicacy....

"Delicacy?" "Not the Schreker I've heard!" you say.  But like Bach's
Toccata and Fugue or Strauss's Also Sprach Zarathustra, I feel that
Scheker's most oft-heard work--Die Gezeichneten--is ironically his least
characteristic.  While Gezeichneten has moments of great beauty and power,
there are also moments of bluster, claustrophobia, and Hollywood sheen,
(though nothing as saccharin as Korngold's Passover Psalm, Op. 30).  I
urge skeptical listeners to venture beyond this piece and try Die Ferne
Klang, the Chamber Symphony, the Whitman Songs, or the works below--most
of which are much less "over the top" and, IMHO, of a much higher quality.

Anyway, if you're looking for contrapuntal rigor to justify the
hyper-sensuality, you wont find it.  I see Schreker as one of the first
"wall of sound" composers-- similar in aesthetic to Ligeti, Ives, or
Varese.  Pieces are unified by harmonic leitmotivs, as well as intervalic
ones.  Because Schreker cuts and pastes with Wagnerian moonbeams, (rather
than off-key church chorales and marches, vowel sounds, electronic bloops
or fire-sirens); one might be tempted to dismiss the composer as just
another flaccid post-romantic.  Don't.

The Romantic Suite

The gem of the Romantic Suite is the third mov't, or intermezzo.  It was
originally written for a competition sponsored by the Neue musikalische
Presse, which Schreker won.  For strings alone, it's lush but not heady
and brings to mind the rustic sentimentality of Grieg or Prokofiev.  The
rest of the mov'ts are imaginative and fetching, though not quite on the
same level as his other suite, The Birthday of the Infanta.

Funf Gesange

With the Funf Gesange, for low voice and small orchestra, (see!), sung
seductively by Katarina Karneus, we're back to major league stuff.  The
songs are dark-hued and brooding, based on texts from Arabian Nights and
by the poet Edith Ronsperger.  The music parallels the text, with the same
kind of hovering, Mussorgskian chords that Debussy found compelling enough
to open his Nocturne with.  And the chord progression under the phrase,
"From tall, slender flower vases..." is among the most gently ecstatic I've
ever heard.  The disc is filled out with the Prelude to Das Speilwerk, and
Prelude to a Grand Opera.  (Memnon.) Just to show I'm not a blind follower,
I'm not so thrilled with these last pieces.  Written one year before his
death, the overture to Memnon is cast in a more astringent style and
well proportioned; yet for all its technical excellence, I found myself
underwhelmed.  In fact, Schreker's appropriation of Eastern elements for
the scoring of Memnon sounds downright awkward.

One hit, one guilty pleasure, and two misses--oh, get the CD for the first
half.

John Smyth