Deaf as I am to most of Serial Schoenberg, I have always revelled
in the "anti-Schoenbergian" glory of his 1900 "Gurre Lieder" (or
"Gurrelieder" or "Gurre-Lieder," let musicologists decide), and went
into a great deal of trouble, gladly, to catch live performances.

That quest took me, among other exotic locations, to Los Angeles and New
York, for each of Zubin Mehta's farewell performances with his orchestras,
and there should be a "Gurre" for me in September in Berlin, when the Simon
Rattle era begins with the Philharmonic there.

Besides the upcoming New York series, the work is really "catching
on" again - in the past few weeks, there were both live performances
(Rattle-Philadelphia) and the re-issue of the Ferencsik recording in the
EMI Classics series.  The contrast between the two is amazing.  Ferencsik
(THE conductor of my childhood, Over There) was a good-to-excellent
performer, with some outstanding Strauss productions in Europe and
San Francisco near the end of his life, but he made a mess of "Gurre,"
overdoing even Ozawa's "punched-up" approach.  Rattle, of course, gets it
right:  a straightforward performance, letting the work's glorious excesses
speak for themselves, not going over the top of what is already over the
top.

Boulez is Rattle-restrained, of course (his best is with the BBC Symphony,
1974), and the combination of lush music and a Spartan director works very
well.  Abbado conducted some fabulous performances.  Still, when it comes
to recordings, my favorite remains the ancient Stokowsky LP (1932) - the
cleanest, "rightest" performance I can imagine.

What's missing from this picture? Oh, the singers.  I didn't do that
deliberately, but when I hear "Gurre," I usually listen to the music.
A revolutionary idea, I know, but give it a try.

Given that proletarian attitude of "first the music, then the performers,"
Rose Bampton's Wood Dove in the first Stokowski recording towers over all,
and I am trying hard to find a tenor who did justice to the music.  Jess
Thomas is definitely in the lead, Richard Lewis did well, as did Herbert
Schachtschneider (on the Kubelik recording), and recent performances by Ben
Heppner are fine, but - as always - something stands between his singing
and what I want to hear.  But if you want to hear a perfect "So tanzen die
Engel," Siegfried Jerusalem is the ticket, at:

http://www.amazon.de/exec/obidos/ASIN/B000025WWW/musicoldmix/302-9930080-3928866

Notice how there is a minimum of audible effort - not like Heppner belting
it out.  (My apologies to Heppner fans:  the fault is in my ear.) I liked
Thomas Moser too, on the great Sinopoli-Dresden recording - note, again,
the restraint.

Tove:  the "original" Jeanette Vreeland, of course; later Inge Borkh and
Gundula Janowitz, but NOT Martina Arroyo (who sang with Ferencsik and came
up with the worst performance I ever heard from her, apparently not
understanding either the text or, worse, the music).

Oops, too much about singers.  For "Gurre," above all, truly it's Prima la
musica, poi tutti.

Janos Gereben/SF, CA
[log in to unmask]