The Swiss composer Othmar Schoeck wrote 11 compact discs’ worth
of lieder – some 400 songs. We know this from the Jecklin series
released in the 1980s and 1990s and sporting great names: Ian
Bostridge, Lynne Dawson, Christine Schäfer, Julianne Banse,
Wolfram Rieger and Julius Drake. Schoeck was among the last
famous exponents of lied alongside Marx and Pfitzner. The voice
was his natural channel for expression. There were no symphonies
and while there are two string quartets even his instrumental
works (concertos for violin, horn, cello) also proclaim his
vocal style-set. His espousal of the human voice is also evident
in his eight operas. Schoeck’s lieder are predominantly for
voice and piano but major examples for voice and orchestra (Elegie;
Lebendig Begraben, Befreite Sehnsucht) and - as
we can see here - for voice and string quartet also exist. He
was another late-romantic who persisted in his lyrical art long
after the world had turned its back on the style. Fashion changes
and Schoeck;s credit has risen since the mid-1970s. Commercial
recordings are not exactly legion but they are certainly not
that difficult to run to ground. That said, the illustrious
Jecklin series has been deleted and there are no signs of reissue
– a pity as it’s one series that cries out for a celebratory
boxed set. The ascent of Schoeck’s music from obscurity has
been further confirmed, indeed accelerated, by the appearance
of a major book in English. Chris Walton’s magnificently detailed
and atmospheric biography incorporating commentary on the music
has been published. It is so much more than a straight translation
of Walton’s Schott published biography (German only, 1995).
Well worth getting, it is a most absorbing and intimate read:
“Othmar Schoeck – Life and Works”, University of Rochester Press,
2009, ISBN-13 978-1-58046-300-3; pp.446) and counterpoints the
music with the life. Chris Walton wrote the satisfying notes
for this ECM release and the insert also includes the sung texts
with parallel translation into English.
Schoeck’s lieder find their undeniable beauty in melancholy,
in haunting nostalgia and in golden reflection. Notturno
– a cycle in five parts with two poems in each part (parts
separately tracked here) is no exception. There are episodes
of exuberance or panic but the centrifugal pull is always towards
regret or sorrow. The poems are by Nikolaus Lenau with the final
song setting words by Gottfried Keller who wrote the story A
Village Romeo and Juliet later to form the basis for Delius’s
opera of the same name. The string quartet is a true and significant
partner to the baritone voice. The writing is simply masterly
and is analytically put across by ECM’s engineering team. Every
mood and emotional eddy is reflected, foreshadowed and intensified
by the instruments. The weave of the sound is tender yet sinister.
Gerhaher ‘lives’ the words magnificently. His voice combines
the ringing sonorous strength of an early advocate of the cycle,
Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau with the honeyed softening of Herman
Prey or Peter Schreier. The realm created by Schoeck and most
vividly put across on this disc is very close to Peter Warlock’s
contemporaneous The Curlew. The two works are brothers
under the skin. This is one of Schoeck’s finest works and the
final hypnotic Keller poem where the soul of the ‘hero’ melts
into eternity is utterly superb. The pacing and warmth of this
‘Abschied’ is most adroitly done. The surrender of the soul
to the sunset is gently ‘rounded with a sleep’.
Notturno has been recorded several times over the years.
Klaus Mertens and the Minguett 4tet on NCA, François Le Roux
with works by Samuel Barber Dover Beach and Louis Durey
Chansons basques on Gallo. Olaf Bär recorded it in 1997
with Wanderung Im Gebirge, Op. 45 on Denon with the Carmina
Quartet. That recording has appeared in harness with the Szymanowski
quartets but shorn of the Op. 45 work at bargain price on Dal
Segno DSPRCD056. Accord at one time issued some archival tapes
which included Notturno and the Eichendorff Lieder.
EMI recorded Fischer-Dieskau in the work in 1993 but old-timers
might well recall his 1960s CBS LP with the Juilliard Quartet
(S72687). It would be good to hear the DF-Ds. The only one I
have encountered is the Dal Segno Bär. Bär lacks Gerhaher’s
aureate qualities though he has more abrasion, protest and anger
in his voice. The Dal Segno does not include texts and translations
but where the ECM offers just Notturno Dal Segno include
good versions of the two Szymanowskis and the Webern Langsamer
Satz. However on this showing if Notturno and musicality
is your priority then Gerhaher and ECM have the edge.
Rob Barnett
Nick Barnard received this disc for blind review with no clues
as to composer or participants
Winning streaks have to come to an end. So far I’ve had a pretty
good run with the blind listening discs. Even when I’ve not
known for certain the repertoire the composers involved have
seemed clear. Until now; this disc has me flummoxed both as
repertoire and composer. But what a wonderful work this is …
whatever it is. The repertoire for voice and string quartet
is smaller than I think it deserves to be. Composers seem compelled
to add something else to give weight or colour. There are several
examples of British composers using this combination from Gurney
and Finzi to Butterworth and Ginastera’s String Quartet No.3
is in effect a song-cycle but I can’t think of many else.
Famously Schoenberg’s String Quartet No. 2 includes settings
for voice and quartet which marked his setting sail for the
brave new world of atonal composition. Which perhaps gives a
little sign-post for the work under consideration. So what can
I say for certain; on the cover of the disc was written that
it dates 1931–33. It is a song-cycle (I assume) for baritone
and string quartet set in German. Recently I reviewed the two
Franz Schmidt String Quartets from Nimbus which dated from half
a dozen years or so before this work and they share some of
the same aesthetic values of extended tonality music rooted
in the song traditions of the previous century. There is a parallel
in the use of extended tonality, sliding chromaticism prevails
in most of the movements but this composer avoids the anguished
bleak torment of Zemlinsky or the confident lush dexterity of
Korngold. Somehow he is gentler in his manipulation of tonality
at the brink. Perhaps it is closer to the sound-world of Joseph
Marx. Given that I cannot speak German the specific content
of the text eludes me but there is a prevailing mood of uneasy
calm. With the exception of a strange brief nocturnal scherzo
[track 2] – all moth-like muted strings fluttering around the
lamp of the baritone’s voice – the work is predominantly slow
and/or intense and sombre. Yet I would not be sure that I would
characterise it as ‘sad’ – more haunted; a sequence of bleak
reflections on things past perhaps.
This is an ambitious work – which makes its unfamiliarity to
me all the more surprising – and given the relative lack in
variety of mood in lesser hands I suspect the attention might
wander. But not here – the string quartet are absolutely superb,
technically impervious to any of the complexities thrown at
them but even more impressive than that is the range of colour
they produce to match the musical moment. In the middle of the
long first movement – 17:29 alone - the very extended instrumental
interlude is played with real attack and expressive intensity.
Interesting that this should be one of the most overtly restless
and expressionist passage in the work yet the singer is notable
by his absence; I wonder what the musical message is here? The
baritone is truly magnificent. To my ear it sounds like idiomatic
German and his is a young, beautiful, naturally burnished easy
and unforced voice. His control of vibrato is perfection, again
subtle and unforced. One of my pet hates in song and lieder
is archly mannered ‘word-painting’ that some critics and listeners
seem to mistake for showing hyper-sensitive awareness of the
text. To my mind all that results in is a psychotic pointing
of each and every word at the expense of the dramatic arc of
a text. The singer here, with superb diction – I can hear every
word I just don’t know what they mean! – goes for the longer
line. Hear the way he blanches away his tone after the quartet’s
interlude mentioned above [track 1 11:30] to create a frozen
trance-like state – the very lack of word pointing working
brilliantly. The sinking into the depths both musical and psychological
at the end of this movement is superbly performed here.
The central setting of the work finds the singer in more declamatory
mood, the music more assertive. All the performers harden their
tone and push on. Not that this is ‘fast’ music as such just
with more forward momentum as if some decision has been reached,
the range of emotion and dynamic the widest and most restless
in the work yet it ends with chilly harmonics. The fourth movement
is sung with a pared back childish simplicity although I find
the effect to be unnerving rather than innocent – certainly
the accompanying strings do nothing to imply this is music without
shadows. At barely 2:30 this is the shortest most mysterious
movement – perhaps the child is a ghost or death stands near…?
After the extended sequence of minor key agonisings of the earlier
movements the end of the work is quite quite beautiful. Another
string interlude – balancing the one in the opening movement
but travelling far less troubled waters - reaches [track 5 from
around 8:00 onwards] a passage when the strings hold a sequence
of simple high chords with the minimum of vibrato or volume
and the singer returns having found some inner peace and consolation.
He lightens his tone and there is a sense of wide-eyed acceptance
that is disarmingly moving. He leaves the strings to have a
final gentle adieu – one gently dissonant side slip apart. An
analogy that sprung to mind is the wonderful moment at the end
of The Cunning Little Vixen when the gamekeeper sees
the circle of life reborn in the new fox cubs – a moment of
wondrous rapture. Perhaps our singer here has woken from a dream
(Paul-like at the end of Die tote Stadt) and with the
dawn sees new hope. A word here for the engineering too which
I think is ideal. It sounds as though the singer is standing
just in front of the quartet but the result is a perfect balance
allowing both vocal and instrumental detail to register. The
quartet is close enough in the mix that during the several extended
instrumental passages the music registers with all the immediacy
one would wish for yet during the accompanying music there is
no sense of any synthetic balance being required. The engineer/producer
have not been afraid for the strings to swell and engulf the
voice – its all very sensual in a way that seems to suit the
musical settings ideally.
As a work it is does bear passing similarities to other works;
some of Gurney’s pain but far better written for the strings;
some of Korngold’s lushness but expressed in a more chaste and
controlled, less gushing way. Closer to Marx’s tonal world but
to be honest much more interesting and skilfully set; simpler
more melodic earlyish Zemlinsky (not as Zemlinsky was writing
by 1931). Oh, what the hell – it’s wonderful and unique and
this is why I love music; every day a new discovery like this.
I’m going to stop now and listen to it all over again ….
Nick Barnard
Christian Gerhaher (baritone) 
