Richard WAGNER (1813-1883)
Siegfried Idyll (1870) [18:14]
Arnold SCHOENBERG (1874-1951)
Verklärte Nacht (1899) [28:43]
Richard STRAUSS (1864-1949)
Metamorphosen (1945) [31:47]
Berliner Philharmoniker/James Levine
rec. live, venue not given, first issued 1992
PRESTO DEUTSCHE GRAMMOPHON 435 883-2 [78:56]
James Levine’s long tenure as Music Director of the
Metropolitan Opera, New York, has tended to overshadow his concert work. Here
is an opportunity to redress the balance with a programme which plays to his
strengths in highly dramatic concert music.
Verklärte Nacht and Metamorphosen make a natural pair, despite
coming from opposite ends of their respective composers’ careers. They
are each single movements for strings and are of similar length. Each is in
a highly chromatic post-Wagnerian idiom and each had earlier versions for
smaller forces. Verklärte Nacht was originally written for string
sextet. It was transcribed for string orchestra in 1917 and this version was
further revised in 1943, which is what we hear here. In fact in this form
it is only two years earlier than Metamorphosen. This started life
as a string septet, though Strauss neither finished nor published this version.
He turned it into a work for 23 solo strings, in effect a chamber orchestra,
following a commission from Paul Sacher, that good angel who commissioned
so many important works.
I started my listening with Verklärte Nacht and was immediately impressed
by the quietness of the opening and the fabulous Berlin strings. Not only
are they consistently rich and lyrical but the violins are impeccably in tune
even in their highest flights which so often can seem a bit scrawny in other
hands. Levine handles the tempo very flexibly allowing a good deal of ebb
and flow, which seemed all very natural to me. He also manages the very complex
writing well – to take one example, at nine bars before letter G half
the strings play with mutes and half without while the main themes move between
violins and high violas before descending into the depths. He also achieves
that ecstatic feeling at the culmination of the work.
Metamorphosen was not quite so impressive because of the extremely
slow tempo with which Levine begins. Yes it is marked Adagio, but
Strauss immediately qualified that with ma non troppo. The Berlin
strings sustain the slow tempo magnificently but this is a work which, for
all its beauty, risks dragging unless it is moved along. Matters improve at
the direction etwas fliessender at bar 82 and thereafter the interweaving
and transformation of the themes unfolds with increasing intensity. Even the
drop back to the tempo primo at bar 390 did not feel as slow as the
opening, though I did not check with a metronome. The sad ending, when the
theme from the Eroica symphony returns in the bass, where Strauss
wrote the words In memoriam! was finely judged and I felt satisfied
slightly despite myself.
These two works often make up a disc without any further coupling but here
we have the Siegfried Idyll as well, placed in its chronological
place at the beginning of the programme. This is not another work for strings
as a handful of wind instruments have small but significant parts. Levine
is an experienced Wagnerian and he gives a performance belonging more to the
lush orchestral than to the chamber type. As Wagner’s published version
is for multiple strings, and not for solo strings as at the first performance,
I consider this perfectly legitimate though I would not always want to hear
it like this. Again I admire Levine’s handling of the ebb and flow.
He integrates the wind instruments into the texture well, giving them the
right degree of prominence.
These are live recordings, though you would not guess it as there is no audience
applause or background noise. The venue is not stated, though it was presumably
the Philharmonie in Berlin and not the Jesus-Christ Church where they have
made many recordings. There is a slight tendency to blur in climaxes but it
is not obtrusive and I soon ceased to notice it. The playing of the Berlin
strings is throughout quite wonderful and this makes a most satisfying programme,
if you can reconcile yourself to the slow tempo at the start of Metamorphosen.
Stephen Barber
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