Monumentalism Fully Justified

Schoenberg's Gurrelieder is a sumptuous score and it receives a fine performance on this double cd from Simon Rattle and the Berliner Philharmoniker. Written for enormous forces, as well as the large orchestra there is the participation of the Rundfunkchor Berlin under Simon Halsey, the MDR Rundfunkchor Leipzig under Howard Arman and the Ernst Senff Chor Berlin under Sigurd Brauns. There is also an impressively starry cast of soloists with soprano Karita Mattila, mezzo Anne Sofie von Otter, tenors Thomas Moser and Philip Langridge and bass-baritone Thomas Quasthoff. Along with Verklarte Nacht, Gurrelieder is an early work of a precocious talent ( even if it was eventually 13 years in the completion ) and these two works on contrasting scale are somehow looked upon as the acceptable face of Schoenberg before serialism really took hold. Whatever your views on his subsequent direction, Gurrelieder is a towering achievement and a summing up of late romanticism. The settings are of texts by Jens Peter Jacobsen and tell the story of a king, his love for one other than his wife, the murder of said love, the cursing against God by the king and the consquent ghostly afterlife inflicted on the king and his subjects. Despite that, it finishes on an upbeat rejoicing for life and sunlight. The size of the forces required mean that it is infrequently staged and this rehearing was the first time I have taken it off the shelf for sometime. I was taken this time by a certain Wagnerian feel to the orchestrations, use of lietmotifs etc but without the bellowing singing and inordinate length. Arguably the sort of repertoire that suits Rattle best, this is a fine representation of the work.