Of
Haydn’s two late oratorios, both to librettos by Baron Gottfried
van Swieten, Die Jahreszeiten has been the Cinderella
– and with good reason.
There
is no denying the beauty of the music, the folk-music freshness
of much of the melodic material and the exquisite scoring,
but where the text for Die Schöpfung, notwithstanding
a good portion of naivety, has dramatic potential and is a
perfect foil to Haydn’s powerfully descriptive writing, Die
Jahreszeiten is feeble and rurally idyllic and comprises
a pleasant but toothless quasi-religiosity that leads nowhere
in particular. Of course van Swieten is to blame but the musico-dramatic
layout is also lax. Take the second part, Der Sommer:
It starts softly and slowly “Im grauen Schleier rückt heran”
and these grey veils prevail throughout the five-minute-long
sequence. Simon’s “Der munt’re Hirt …” is merry but in an
idyllic way – as befits a shepherd maybe. Then there is some
powerful choral singing for another five minutes, followed
by slow recitatives by Simon and Lukas. Lukas’ cavatina [4:17]
is marked largo, Hanna’s recitative [5:08] is poco adagio
and her aria [6:36] an extremely slow-moving adagio. The three
soloists then share the recitative beginning “O seht! Es steiget”.
What is rising? It’s “the tempest drawing nigh!” and here,
finally, something breaks the idyll, in Karajan’s hands this
tempest is a furious explosion, an outlet, it seems, for the
adrenalin gathered during the frustratingly long period of
laziness. This explosion persists for 4½ minutes – and then
back to the idyll “The gloomy clouds now part aside”. Summer
is over!
Let
me point out again that there is a tremendous amount of marvellous
music in this oratorio but it rarely catches fire. I learnt
Die Schöpfung from an LP-set very early and when I
got an opportunity to hear Die Jahreszeiten in a live
performance I had very high expectations. It was all lovely
music but I still felt done out of it. I nevertheless acquired
the legendary Böhm recording shortly afterwards and have returned
to it time and again with great pleasure – but also with this
disappointment. Even Haydn had doubts about the libretto:
“In Die Schöpfung, the characters are angels, but in
Die Jahreszeiten, they are peasants.”
Having
listened to a number of other recordings through the last
decades – but by no means all the existing ones – I retain
a special feeling for the Böhm, thanks to his unerring choice
of tempos, his unmannered interpretation and, not least, his
three wonderful soloists. He has Gundula Janowitz even fresher
of voice and more natural sounding than for Karajan, Peter
Schreier fairly early in his career, more rounded in tone
but even here insightful and expressive, and, head and shoulders
above all the competition, the likewise young Martti Talvela,
so secure and warm and relishing his first aria, “Schon eilet
froh der Ackersmann” with a glint in his eye. The somewhat
later – later even than Karajan – Decca recording under Dorati
also has much to commend it with the Brighton Festival Chorus
sonorous and incisive and Cotrubas, Krenn and Hans Sotin on
good form. Only last year I reviewed Warner’s reissue of a
live recording under Harnoncourt, that seems a good mix between
modern orchestra (the Vienna Symphony) and period approach.
Comparing
speeds it seems that Karajan is a spring and autumn person
with fresh and lively playing and singing, the chorus “Komm
holder Lenz” (CD1 tr. 2) setting the seal and with an almost
orgiastic drinking chorus celebrating the arrival of the autumn.
His summer is uncommonly languid and drowsy – apart from that
explosive tempest (CD1 tr. 19) and his winter is frostier
than any other – one can feel the cold piercing one’s very
marrow. All this is handled with the utmost skill and with
orchestral and choral contributions to match. It could be
argued, though, that the great orchestra tamer is playing
to the gallery with these extreme contrasts in tempo and dynamics.
Though he is admirably consistent in his approach and can
turn in wonderful results I still have a creepy feeling that
he is more after effect than the truth of the score. And,
to return to that long sloooow section of part two, it becomes
almost perversely slow in Karajan’s reading.
Gundula
Janowitz is, as I have already mentioned, almost as wonderful
as for Böhm, slightly hampered by the tempo of her aria “Welche
Labung für die Sinne”, but on the whole giving a deeply felt
picture of Hanna. Werner Hollweg uses his well modulated tenor
to good effect and his half voice is attractive. He can also
be a bit unsteady, again possibly due to Karajan’s lazy summer
approach. Walter Berry was, just as Ms Janowitz, one of Karajan’s
longstanding favourite singers and with his fruity bass and
lively manners he rarely lets things down but he feels a little
anonymous by the side of Talvela - a little more small-scale.
Whatever
reservations I may have expressed, concerning both the work
and the actual performance, this is still a recommendable
recording, now at a very affordable price. One has to make
do without a libretto, there is not even a synopsis, but the
track-list has at least the first line for each number and
so we get the gist of what it is about.
Conservative
as I most certainly am nowadays, I would still opt for the
Böhm, now in DG’s “Originals” series, as a more natural first
choice, but I will certainly want to return to Karajan for
some unique insights, however laboured. The sound is somewhat
less sophisticated than on some other BPO/Karajan recordings
and the soloists seem to be in a slightly different acoustic,
but this didn’t bother me unduly.
Göran Forsling
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Chor der
Deutschen Oper Berlin, Berliner Philharmoniker/Herbert von Karajan
