12 Sep 2010
Julius Röntgen: Aus Goethes Faust.
The release of Röntgen’s Faust setting on CPO makes available a recording of yet another composer’s perspective on Goethe’s famous dramatic poem.
Recently in Recordings
Ariane et Barbe-Bleue on Blu-Ray
Paul Dukas’ Ariane et Barbe-Bleue, first heard in 1907, once seemed important. Arturo Toscanini conducted the Met premiere in 1911 with Farrar and later arranged some of its music for a 1947 recording with his NBC Symphony.
Kaufmann Wagner
The economics of the recording companies dictate much that is not ideal. Wagner’s operas were not composed as they were in order to permit the extraction of bleeding chunks, even on those occasions when strophic song forms do occur.
Mahler: Symphony No. 8
Among the recent recordings of Mahler’s Eighth Symphony, Valery Gergiev’s release on the LSO Live label is an excellent addition to the discography of this work.
Songs by Zemlinsky
While not unknown, the songs of Alexander von Zemlinsky (1871-1942) deserve to be heard more frequently.
Gustav Mahler: Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen, Rückert-Lieder, Kindertotenlieder.
Recorded on 5 and 6 May 2008 and 17 and 18 January 2009 at the Lisztzentrum (Raiding, Austria), this recent Bridge release makes available the piano-vocal versions of three song cycles by Gustav Mahler, Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen, Rückert-Lieder, and Kindertotenlieder performed by mezzo-soprano Hermine Haselböck, accompanied by Russell Ryan.
Kathleen Ferrier: A Film by Diane Perelsztejn
Contraltos rarely achieve the acclaim and renown of sopranos. Assigned few leading roles in opera, they are condemned to playing the villain or the grandmother, or to stealing the castrati’s trousers in en travesti roles.
1612 Italian Vespers
Following their 2011 Decca recording of Striggio’s Mass in 40 Parts (1566), I Fagiolini continue their quest to unearth lost treasures of the High Renaissance and early Baroque, with this collection of world-premiere recordings, ‘reconstructions’ and ‘reconstitutions’ of music by Giovanni and Andrea Gabrieli, Monteverdi, Palestrina, and their less well-known compatriots Viadana, Barbarino and Soriano.
Eternal Echoes: Songs and Dances for the Soul
Eternal Echoes is an album of khazones [Jewish cantorial music] for cantorial soloist, solo violin and a blended instrumental ensemble comprising a small orchestra and the Klezmer Conservatory Band.
Mahler: Symphony no. 3 / Kindertotenlieder
Michael Tilson Thomas’s recording of Mahler’s Third Symphony is an outstanding contribution to the composer’s discography.
Oliver Knussen’s Symphonies from NMC
Oliver Knussen burst into British music with an unprecedented flourish. In 1967, the London Symphony Orchestra premiered Knussen’s First Symphony, with István Kertész scheduled to conduct.
Ludwig van Beethoven: Fidelio
Based on performances given in Summer 2010 at the Lucerne Festival, this recording of Beethoven’s Fidelio is an admirable recording that captures the vitality of the work as conducted by Claudio Abbado.
Stanisław Moniuszko: Flis
Stanisław Moniuszko (1819-1872) was one of the most popular composers of his day in Poland, and of the many works he wrote for the stage, two are performed from time to time, Halka (1848) and Strazny dwór [The Haunted Manor] (1865).
Stanisław Moniuszko: Pieśni Songs
The Polish alto Jadwiga Rappé is a familiar voice in various stage and concert works, and the recent release of a selection of songs by Stanisław Moniuszko (1819-1872) is an opportunity to hear her performing artsongs.
Joan Sutherland and Richard Bonynge: Serate Musicali
Originally released on multiple discs in 1981 this reissue on two CDs is a comprehensive collection of art songs by Italian and French composers from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
Richard Strauss: Salome
An exciting contribution to the discography of this popular opera, the live performance of Richard Strauss’s Salome from the Festspielhaus at Baden-Baden is a compelling DVD.
Lulu by Gran Teatro del Liceu, Barcelona
Released in late 2011, Deutsche Grammophon’s DVD of the new staging of Berg’s Lulu at the Gran Teatro del Liceu, Barcelona is an excellent contribution to the discography of this fascinating opera.
Lulu by the Metropolitan Opera
A recent release by the Metropolitan Opera, this two-disc set makes available on DVD the famous performance of Berg’s Lulu that was broadcast on 20 December 1980 as part of the PBS series “Live from the Met.”
Elmer Gantry the Opera
The novels of Sinclair Lewis once shot across the American literary skies like comets, alarming and fascinating readers of that era, but their tails didn’t extend far behind them.
Historical Performances from Covent Garden: Barbiere, La traviata and Tosca
Once the province of only the most dedicated opera fanatics, mid-20th century recordings of privately taped live performances have become more widely available.
Lucia and the glass harmonica
Flute players in opera orchestra around the world must look forward to the frequent appearances of Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor, knowing that while the stage spotlight in the mad scene will be on the soprano, the orchestral spotlight will be on their instrument.
OPERA TODAY ARCHIVES »
Recordings
Known in his day, Julius Röntgen (1855-1932), a prolific composer of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, composed over 650 works in almost every genre, including a fascinating late work entitled Aus Goethes Faust (“From Goethe’s Faust”).
Composed in 1931, late in Röntgen’s career, this cantata-like work resembles Schumann’s Scenes from Goethe’s Faust in his selection of episodes to set to music, and also calls to mind the way other composers set similar scenes: Boito in his setting of the “Prologue in Heaven,” Berlioz for the scene in Auerbach’s Cellar, and both Liszt and Mahler for their settings of the closing passage “Alles vergängliche ist nu rein Gleichnis” in the movement Röntgen specifically calls the Chorus mysticus. Notwithstanding the associations that emerge Röntgen approached this score in his own style that remains firmly tonal in an idiom that Brahms or Reger would use. In the latter Röntgen’s writing sounds at times like the scores Erich von Korngold would compose for Hollywood films a decade later. That stated, the music is facile and engaging, with clear structures, chromatic, but not atonal harmonic, and contrapuntal episodes that call to mind Röntgen’s association with the music of Bach.
In creating a secular cantata with its basis in Goethe’s Faust Röntgen used both instrumental and vocal movements that reflect the major episodes in the dramatic poem. The opening piece is an instrumental “Prologue in Heaven” that sets the tone with rich harmonies and sometimes ominous scoring of the thick chords. It is an evocative piece that works well because of the instrumental idiom that Röntgen uses, allowing the vocal movements to occur later.
In Röntgen’s selections from Goethe, he invokes the Erdgeist, the Earth-Spirit, rather than referring to Mephistofeles by name or calling the figure the devil. In this sense, the theology seems rooted in the dualist Manichaeism that juxtaposes heaven and earth, thus making one transitory, the other eternal, with Faust ultimately poised for heavenly things. In this sense, though, the drama of hinges on the confrontation between Faust and the Erdgeist, and this is expressed well in the eighth number, “Faust’s “Anrufung an den Erdgeist.”
While this piece may never supplant the conventional settings of the Faust story, this setting is of interest as another interpretation of the tale. Its structure suggests a scenic cantata, with the details of the story left to the audience, as the musical pieces depict various points of arrival that find expression in music. The use of chorus in “Faust’s Dream” is effective, and while the music for the concluding portion, the familiar lines “Alles vergängliches ist nu rein Gleichnis” suffers comparison with Liszt’s setting of the same text in the Faust Symphony and Mahler’s in the second part of his Eighth, Röntgen caps his own work fittingly. As much as this Faust is a curiosity, this recording makes a case for performing the score as another interpretation of the familiar legend.
James L. Zychowicz