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1 CD -
8-557520 - (p) 2004
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THE ROBERT
CRAFT COLLECTION - The Music of Arnold
Schoenberg - Volume 2 |
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Arnold
SCHOENBERG (1874-1951) |
Concerto
for String Quartet and Orchestra
in B flat
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20' 36"
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Largo-Allegro
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5' 07" |
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1 |
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Largo
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3' 10" |
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2 |
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Allegretto grazioso
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6' 35" |
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3 |
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Hornpipe |
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5' 44" |
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4 |
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Suite
for Piano, Op. 25
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13' 17" |
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Präludium
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1' 00" |
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5 |
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Gavotte-Musette-Gavotte |
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3' 09" |
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6 |
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Intermezzo |
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3' 11" |
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7 |
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Menuett; Trio; Menuett da capo
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3' 22" |
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8 |
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Gigue
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2' 35" |
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9 |
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Lied
der Waldtaube (from Gurre-Lieder)
- 1923 Chamber ensemble Version
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12' 56"
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The
Book of the Hanging Gardens, Op.
15 - (Text by Stefan George)
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26' 38" |
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Unterm Schutz von dichten
Blättergründen... |
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2' 23" |
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11 |
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Hain in diesen Paradiesen...
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1' 23" |
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12 |
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Als Neuling trat tch ein tein
Gehege...
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1' 43" |
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13 |
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Da meine Lippen reglos sind und
brennen...
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1' 36" |
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14 |
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Saget mir auf welchem Pfade...
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1' 08" |
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15 |
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Jeden Werke bin ich fürder tot...
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1' 07" |
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16 |
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Angst und Hoffen wechseind sich
beklemmen...
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1' 08" |
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17 |
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Wenn ich heut nicht deinen Leib
berühre...
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0' 43" |
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18 |
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Streng ist uns das Glück und
spröde...
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1' 34" |
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19 |
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Das schöne Beet betracht ich mir im
Harren...
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2' 07" |
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20 |
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Als wir hinter dem beblümten Tore... |
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2' 36" |
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21 |
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Wenn sich bei heilger Ruh in tiefen
Matten...
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1' 57" |
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22 |
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Du lehnest wider eine Silberweide...
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1' 38" |
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23 |
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Sprich nicht mehr von dem Laub... |
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0' 49" |
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24 |
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Wir bevölkerten die abend düstern
Lauben... |
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4' 45" |
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25 |
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A
conversation with Arnold Schoenberg
(with Halsey Stevens, July 1949)
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6' 31" |
26 |
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Christopher
Oldfather, piano
Jennifer Lane, mezzo-soprano
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FRED SHERRY
STRING QUARTET
TWENTIETH CENTURY CLASSICS
ENSEMBLE
Robert CRAFT, conductor
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Luogo
e data di registrazione |
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The
American Academy of Arts and
Letters, 155th Street and
Broadway, New York (USA):
- October 2022 (Concerto for
String Quartet and Orchestra)
- September 2001 (Op. 15)
- May 2000 (Lied der Waldtaube) |
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Registrazione:
live / studio |
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studio |
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Producer |
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Gregory
Squires; Silas Brown (Concerto for
String Quartet and Orchestra)
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Engineer |
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Gregory
Squires; Silas Brown
(Concerto for String Quartet and
Orchestra) |
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NAXOS Edition |
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Naxos
- 8.557520 | (1 CD) | LC 05537 |
durata 79' 59" | (p) 2004 | DDD
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KOCH previously
released |
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Nessuna
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Cover |
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Destination
by Ultich Osterloh (courtesy of
the artist)
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Note |
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Volume 2 of the
Naxos Robert Craft Schoenberg
Collection features the Concerto
for String Quartet and Orchestra
after Handel, a work so
freely transcribed and developed
that it should be counted among
Schoenberg’s own compositions.
Arguably one of his most
high-spirited, tender and tuneful
works, it is also one of the most
demanding for the solo instruments
of a quartet since Beethoven’s Great
Fugue. For the first
performance of The Book of the
Hanging Gardens, a setting
for mezzo-soprano and piano to
texts by Stefan George
(1868-1933), Schoenberg himself
wrote: “I have for the first time
succeeded in approaching an ideal
of expression and form which has
been in my mind for years”.
Concerto for String Quartet and
Orchestra in B flat, after the
Concerto Grosso Op. 6, No. 7 by
George Frideric Handel, freely
transcribed and developed by
Arnold Schoenberg
Whereas the playing time of
Handel’s concerto for strings and
continuo is fourteen minutes, and
Schoenberg’s orchestral
elaboration of it 22 minutes, the
work should be counted among the
latter’s compositions and not
simply as one of his
orchestrations (Brahms, Bach). He
was not an unqualified admirer of
Handel, and indeed became livid if
the name was mentioned in the same
breath as Bach. Apropos the Monn
Cello Concerto recomposed for
Pablo Casals, Schoenberg wrote:
“I was mainly intent on
removing the defects of the
Handelian style. Just as Mozart
did with Handel’s Messiah, I
have had to get rid of whole
handfuls of rosalias and
sequences, replacing them with
real substance. I also did my
best to deal with the other main
defect of the Handelian style,
which is that the theme is
always best when it first
appears and grows steadily more
insignificant and trivial in the
course of the piece.”
The concerto
grosso form was introduced by
Arcangelo Corelli in Rome at the
end of the seventeenth century. In
the early eighteenth century,
after a fruitful period in Venice,
composing operas for the city’s
flourishing theaters, Handel moved
to Rome, where he soon came under
Corelli’s influence in the new
genre of string ensemble music. In
1714 Handel followed Corelli’s
pupil Geminiani to London, where
Corelli’s set of twelve concerti,
published posthumously, had
established a fashion. Handel’s
own set of twelve concerti
probably dates from September
1739, which seems a long time
later, but the twenty-five-year
interval was filled in his case
with the creation of a scarcely
believable quantity of other
music, operas, oratorios,
cantatas, works for keyboard and
other instruments.
Schoenberg’s Concerto for String
Quartet and Orchestra, after
Handel, was composed in the summer
of 1933 in the Villa Stresa,
Avenue Rapp, Arcachon (Gironde),
where he had written the Cello
Concerto the year before. Though
officially described as a “leave
of absence,” on 23rd May 1933 he
had been forced to leave Berlin,
and to flee with his wife and
infant daughter to the Hotel
Regina, 192 rue de Rivoli, Paris,
where he soon reconverted from
Lutheranism to the Jewish faith of
his early childhood. The Concerto
was completed in Arcachon before
he left for America in October.
The work was first performed on
26th September 1934 in Prague,
conducted by K. B. Jirak and with
the Kolisch Quartet as soloists.
Rudolf Kolisch, the first
violinist, was the composer’s
brother-in-law.
These biographical circumstances
seem to be at odds with the
character of the piece, arguably
the happiest, most high-spirited,
playful, tender, tuneful, and
balletic music that he ever wrote.
It is also one of the most
demanding for the solo instruments
of a quartet since Beethoven’s
Great Fugue. The character of the
music could classify it as more a
symphony than a concerto, i.e.,
its slow introduction (Largo);
fugal Allegro first movement with
extensive cadenza at the end; slow
(Largo) lyric 3/4 second movement;
Scherzo (4/8 time) Allegretto
grazioso third movement
(quasicadenza at midpoint); and
3/2 time dance finale (Hornpipe),
but one listens to it thinking of
the great ballet Balanchine would
have made of it.
The instrumentation is lapidary
even for Schoenberg, who manages
by means of orchestral doublings,
constantly changing color
combinations, shifting of high and
low ranges, and careful
manipulation of dynamics, never to
“cover” the solo quartet. The
beginning of the first Allegro,
for example, an accelerating,
mostly one-pitch fugue subject for
six woodwinds playing forte, is
matched in volume by a second
entrance scored for pizzicato solo
violin, xylophone, piano, and
harp, in other words percussive
timbres and articulation (plucked
and hammered instruments). The
subject itself is suspenseful, a
single note shifted through
different, increasing speeds.
After a forty-bar exposition,
Schoenberg departs radically from
Handel in harmony and instrumental
style, employing consecutive
triple stops and harmonics in the
solo strings. A little later
still, the quartet seems to go
berserk, zooming through a wild
“passage,” light years from
Handel, harmonically and
instrumentally, but ending with
the fugue theme. The next event is
a cadenza for the soloists, each
one playing consecutive octaves in
chromatic movement. Music lovers
can only delight in the
developments, thematic
recapitulations, contrapuntal
designs, and an adagio ending that
presents the fugue theme in a
variety of speeds, simultaneously
and in different timbres and
ranges.
The second movement features the
solo quartet, muted and with
little help from the orchestra,
except for one lovely four-bar
phrase where it is joined by three
different combinations of solo
string trios from the ripieni
sections of the orchestra. The
melody, the counterpoint, are
exquisite. So is the coda, which
ingeniously modulates to a new
key.
Everyone will recognize, and want
to sing along with, the familiar
melody of the third movement, at
least until its oddly dotted
rhythmic development and changing
keys break free from Handel’s
harmonic spectrum. But the
syncopated maestoso Hornpipe
finale is the glory of this
too-little-known, difficult to
play masterpiece, which has never
received such a fine performance.
Suite for Piano, Opus 25
According to the manuscript, this
neo-classic dance suite—Präludium,
Gavotte, Musette, Intermezzo,
Menuett with Trio and da capo,
Gigue—was written between 24th
July, 1921 and 20th March, 1923.
Actually, the Intermezzo was
composed on 21st July, 1921, about
the time that Schoenberg told his
pupil Josef Rufer:
“Today I have discovered
something that will assure the
supremacy of German music for
the next hundred years” (i.e.
the twelve-tone row).
Allen Shawn’s
comments on the Piano Suite in his
book Arnold Schoenberg’s Journey1
point out that “The first two
groups of four notes … end in a
tritone, and the first and last
notes are a tritone apart. The
last four notes of the row spell
the name Bach backwards. (H means
B in German, and B means B flat.)
All the movements of the Suite are
based on the four forms of the row
plus its transposition to B flat.
But what must more immediately
compel new listeners is the
rhythmic invention in the
Präludium, and, indeed, in all the
other movements.” Shawn wisely
invites us to examine musettes by
Couperin and Bach.
What immediately strikes the
listener about this music is its
glitter and transparency,
high-octane brilliance, simplicity
for the ear (and extreme
difficulty for the player). It
contains more repetition than any
other Schoenberg piece, since the
Gavotte is heard twice, the first
part of the Musette twice, the
first part of the Menuett three
times, both halves of the trio
twice, and the first third of the
Gigue twice. Ostinati are also
common, particularly in the
Intermezzo. In bars 21–22
Schoenberg even manages to evoke
Scott Joplin, consciously or not.
Remarkable, too, are the many
single lines (Gigue) and two-part
counterpoint.
Lied der Waldtaube from
Gurre-Lieder (1923 Chamber
Ensemble Version)
This most beautiful of
Schoenberg’s Lieder is also his
most popular and in no need of
commentary. The listener should
focus attention to the skill of
the transcription of the
accompaniment from an orchestra of
over one hundred (in the original)
for only the fifteen instruments
of his Chamber Symphony, joined by
piano and harmonium. Fittingly,
the first performance took place
in Copenhagen.
The Book of the Hanging
Gardens, Op. 15 - 15 Poems from
Stefan George’s Das Buch der
Hängenden Gärten
Schoenberg became interested in
Stefan George’s poetry in the
autumn of 1907, and had set poems
by him before The Hanging Gardens
(1908), most notably the Litanei
(Litany) and Entrückung (Rapture),
the third and fourth movements of
the Second String Quartet, which
add a high soprano voice to the
instruments. The composer and poet
seem to have had no personal
connection at all. One reason
could be that as charismatic
leaders of cults, they too much
resembled each other.
In 1889, in Paris, George began to
attend Mallarmé’s “Tuesday
evenings”, where he soon attracted
some of the most intelligent young
literati in the German-speaking
world, among them Hugo von
Hofmannstal. George was homosexual
by inclination, a fact he tried to
disguise by referring to lovers in
genderneutral terms (“you”, “my
child”). The texts of The Hanging
Gardens are love poems, the only
ones George ever addressed to a
woman (in this case the wife of
Richard Dehmel, author of the poem
that inspired Schoenberg’s
Verklärte Nacht). But we are told
nothing about the relationship
between her and the man, except
that they are destined to
separate. We are also unable to
visualize the scene, which
includes white marble baroque
fountains, storks and ponds, a
desert, Northern garden flowers
and tropical palms. Furthermore,
there is no consistent narrative
and there are no events.
The first performance of The
Hanging Gardens took place in
Berlin, the Ehrbar Hall, 14th
January, 1910, sung by Martha
Winternitz-Dorda. Schoenberg’s
messianic program note for the
occasion reads, in part: With the
George songs I have for the first
time succeeded in approaching an
ideal of expression and form which
has been in my mind for years.
Until now, I lacked the strength
and confidence to make it a
reality. But now that I have set
out along this path once and for
all, I am conscious of having
broken through every restriction
of a bygone aesthetic; and though
to the goal towards which I am
striving appears to me a certain
one, I am, nonetheless, already
feeling the resistance I shall
have to overcome: I feel that even
the least of temperaments will
rise in revolt, and suspect that
even those who have so far
believed in me will not want to
acknowledge the necessary nature
of this development. So it seemed
a good thing to point out, by
performing the Gurrelieder—which
years ago were friendless, but
today have friends enough—that I
am being forced in this direction
not because my invention or
technique is inadequate, nor
because I am uninformed about all
the other things the prevailing
aesthetics demand, but that I am
obeying an inner compulsion, which
is stronger than my upbringing:
that I am obeying the formative
process which, being natural to
me, is stronger than my artistic
education.
Schoenberg’s pupil Egon Wellesz
quotes the composer saying that
the initial words of the text, no
matter the meaning or the “poetic
events”, meant nothing to him
while composing, and that he
claimed to have understood the
poetic context only days after
finishing the music:
“There to my great
astonishment I discovered that I
was never more faithful to the
poet than when, led as it were,
by the first direct contact with
the opening sounds, I felt
instinctively all that must
necessarily follow from these
initial sounds. Then it became
clear to me that it is with a
work of art as with every
perfect organism.… It is so
homogenous in its constitution
that it discloses in every
detail its truest and inmost
being. Thus I came to a full
understanding … of Stefan
George’s poems from their sound
alone … the external agreement
between music and text—
declamation, tempo, and tonal
intensity—has little to do with
inner meaning.”
Robert Craft
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