CLASSICAL CD OF THE YEAR: Andrew Clements
GURRELIEDER was Schoenberg’s farewell to 19th- century romanticism, the “key to his development”, as he described it. It was begun in 1901 but was only performed 12 years later, by which time he had left the lush Wagnerian world that it celebrates far behind.
The massive proportions of the oratorio once made it a work for special occasions, but over the last decade it has moved steadily towards the centre of the choral repertory; Claudio Abbado’s majestic performance (Deutsche Gramophon), recorded live in the Vienna Musikverein in 1992, has to beat off competition from versions already in the CD catalogue.
Abbado is adept at catching Gurrelieder’s almost schizophrenic quality, which at one moment looks back fondly on the harmonic world its composer was about to abandon, while at the next anticipating some of the expressionist language he would exploit so brilliantly in the years before World War I. But this performance never holds back on the passion, while the Vienna Philharmonic responds sumptuously to the fund of melodies that powers this score.
Gurrelieder’s story of doomed love demands singers of Wagnerian authority in the main roles. Siegfried Jerusalem takes the role of Waldemar with all the experience of one of the leading heroic tenors of our time, while Sharon Sweet is a thrilling Tove.
Abbado breaks with convention by having a female Speaker — the actress Barbara Sukova chillingly heightens the hallucinatory quality of the closing pages. Like everything in this performance the effect is perfectly calculated and vividly delivered.