I recently bought the Simon Rattle performance of Schoenberg's *Gurrelieder*
(This is the spelling I find on my recordings and also in the German
translation of Jens Peter Jacobsen's *Ein Kaktus erblueht*, A Cactus Blooms,
in which these poems appear. I recall a discussion on an Internet list in
which there was some dispute on this.)  w/ the Berlin Philharmonic, Karita
Mattila as Tove, Anne Sofie von Otter as Waltdtaube (the Wood Dove), Thomas
Moser as Waldemar, Philip Langridge as Klaus-Narr, and Thomas Quasthoff
as the peasant and the speaker.  It's on EMI 7243 5 57303 2 9.

This is my third recording so I am not unfamiliar w/ it but it's not a
work that one hears often.  I don't think I've ever heard it on the radio
nor do I recall ever seeing it offered in a live performance.  And it's
been a long time since I had listened to either of my other two recordings.
It's thus a revelation each time I hear it and last night's hearing was
not so much a reintroduction to an old friend as a rediscovery.  The
orchestral work alone is IMO among the finest ever written, matched perhaps,
but not surpassed, by the grand orchestral works written later in the
century.  (*Gurrelieder*, in fact, was started in 1902, when Schoenberg
was 25, and had not written anything for orchestra before, except for his
*Lyric Suite*, but not finished until 1913, over which time his musical
style had greatly changed, although there seems nothing disjointed about
this work.)

Each of the singers was wonderful, Karita Mattila providing a deja
entendu when I recognized her as the delightful Eva in the Metropolitan
Opera performance of *Die Meistersinger* that I had attended last year.
Quasthoff was in his expected fine form.  In his role as Speaker, introducing
the final sunrise, I couldn't help feeling reminded of Edith Sitwell reading
her poems in William Walton's *Facade*.  There was the same clarity of
delivery, the same modulated expressiveness and the same blending w/ the
accompanying music.  The difference was that Sitwell's lines, in contrast
to those of Jacobsen, were essentially little more than nonsense lines
recited solely for their sonoric value.  I wonder whether how, if at all,
such a distinction would be perceived by listeners who didn't understand
both English and German.

Walter Meyer