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Richard STRAUSS (1864-1949) Enoch Arden - A melodrama for piano and speaker after
Alfred Lord Tennyson Op. 38 (1896-7)
Five Piano pieces for solo pianoOp. 3 (1880-1): Andante No. 1 [4:17],
Allegro molto No. 4 [4:24]
Emanuel Ax (piano); Patrick Stewart
(speaker)
rec. 22 January 2007, Air Studios (Lyndhurst), Hampstead, London. DDD SONY 88697090562 [61:42]
The story of Tennyson’s
poem, apparently based on a true incident, concerns three children
in a small seaport. Both Philip Ray, the miller’s son, and
Enoch Arden, a sailor’s orphan, love Annie Lee, but she eventually
marries Enoch and they have three children. After a spell of
ill fortune Enoch finds no alternative but to sign up on a
ship to China. It is wrecked on the way home, and Enoch spends
many years on a remote island. Annie eventually gives up hope
of his return and accepts Philip’s offer of marriage. Enoch
is rescued and returns home, unrecognizable, to learn of Annie’s
marriage and her child by Philip. He does not wish to disturb
the happiness which she has now found, and eventually dies,
giving instructions that after his death his family can be
informed of his identity and reasons for not revealing it.
How many people
read it nowadays? Probably few, and yet it was one of Tennyson’s
greatest successes, selling in immense numbers after its publication
in 1864 and in translation in Germany. It was considered by
Matthew Arnold to be the best of Tennyson’s works. Puccini
was offered it as a plot for an opera, but declined. Strauss
wrote his version for the theatre director Ernst von Possart
and the two toured it with great success. John Steane, in his
book on Tennyson, describes the poem as “largely a period piece,
something very central to nineteenth century taste, kindly,
warm, picturesque, moral; unsophisticated, unaristocratic,
unintellectual, uninvigorating”. It would be hard to argue
with that description, and yet when aided by Strauss’s alternately
vigorous and tender accompaniment and with a full-blooded approach
from both performers it can still make a strong effect. It
does so on the two earlier recordings I know, by Claude Rains
and Glenn Gould, and by Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau and Jörg Demus
(in German). It does so to a degree here, but I sense at times
that the performers may be slightly embarrassed about the material.
I assume that this is the reason for the many minor changes
to the spoken text, in particular the omission of the final
lines, intended to be spoken over music:
“So past the strong heroic soul
away,
And when they buried him the little
port
Had seldom seen a costlier funeral.”
Bathetic? Maybe,
but on both of the earlier recordings they do have considerable
impact. Here the piano alone is left to carry their weight,
and I don’t think that it is just familiarity with the printed
text that makes me feel that something essential is missing.
There are no similarly
major changes earlier, but there is a fatal lack of urgency
at times, and a lack of the rhetorical manner which is an essential
part of the curious hybrid form that is melodrama. On the other
hand the recording as such is much better than its predecessors
and the engineers have obtained a very believable balance between
speaker and piano.
The two short piano
pieces used as fillers are both very early Strauss, very appealing
but not likely to sway purchasers greatly. Overall this did
not live up to my expectations, but a rival is unlikely to
turn up soon so that I must recommend it as the only modern
recording of this potentially very affecting work, whilst retaining
a strong personal preference for the much more full-blooded
performance by Rains and Gould.
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