Gottfried von EINEM (1918-1996)
Der Prozess Op. 14 (1953) [103:33]
Michael Laurenz (tenor - Josef K.)
Tilmann Rönnebeck (bass), Martin Kiener (tenor), Johannes Kammler (baritone), Daniel Gutmann (baritone), Jörg Scneider (tenor), Jochen Schmeckenbecher (baritone), Anke Vondung (mezzo-soprano), Ilse Eerens (soprano), Alexander Hüttner (tenor), Lars Woldt (bass), Matthäus Schmidlechner (tenor)
ORF Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra/HK Gruber
rec. 2018, Felsenreitschule, Salzburg
CAPRICCIO C5358 [45:34 + 57:59]
Austrian composer Gottfried von Einem’s times saw him enduring the turmoil of WWII in Europe, during which he took risks in helping Jewish friends and colleagues. Von Einem played a significant part in the rebuilding of musical life in Austria after 1945, his opera Der Prozess just one of several that he composed based on dramatic texts. With justice in short supply during the rule of the Third Reich, Franz Kafka’s novel Der Prozess or ‘The Trial’ from 1914/15 and its protagonist Josef K. took on additional dark significance, and memories of random arrest and summary trials based on the thinnest of evidence would still have been raw in 1953 when von Einem composed his opera.
The present recording was made during a concert performance at the Salzburg Festival, so there is no significant stage noise, and the audience is also very well behaved. The booklet notes tell us that premiere on 17th August 1953 in the Salzburg Festival Hall was “a glittering success”, though “the stylistic variety in the opera caused some confusion among the pundits…” After the chiming of a morning bell, von Einen sets up a feeling of nervous uncertainty with a twelve-tone sequence in pizzicato strings, Josef K. Is “under arrest, it’s true, but that won’t keep you from going to work. You’re under arrest, that’s all.” The score is not without a certain dry humour however, though relaxations into tonality are always inevitably undercut by darker colours, and the high drama of the final scene is guaranteed to raise the rate of your heartbeat. This is by no means an avant-garde idiom, but with a voluminous libretto is quite dense. The libretto by Boris Blacher and Heinz von Cramer is printed in the booklet, in German and with an English translation.
While the clarity of the voices is excellent, it is always worth following the drama through the printed words, especially in an opera like this when the dialogue comes thick and fast and almost continuously. Tenor Michael Laurenz is in fine voice as the main protagonist, with plenty of impact at moments of crisis. Roles are shared amongst the cast, so that with a further eleven voices there are 24 characters to be distinguished, another good reason for following the libretto closely.
The music is indeed somewhat eclectic, but none the less effective for that. There are passages that recall Stravinsky and others, but von Einem has a knack for creating the right mood for each scene and in micro-managing each line of text in the drama as it unfolds. This kind of approach makes for intense listening if we are to keep up with what’s going on, but the effort is more than worth it. Violent emotion can turn to touching tenderness at the drop of a hat, and while the convention of stopping everything for an aria has long been abandoned there are some lovely and expressively searching moments along the way.
With labyrinthine detours, Der Prozess continues to its grim conclusion in a dystopian world in which life is cheap, freedom is an illusion, and personal concerns are ephemeral and ultimately irrelevant. Von Einem’s opera captures this dark and stress-filled environment well, bringing out those moments of lightness by which these characters interact with teeth clenched, and through which malicious intent is disguised. Even the final unseen moment of death for Josef K. is ironic, as our hero is ‘unzipped’ by rapid scales on a piano. All of the serious drama is anticipation. The performance is very fine indeed, under the leadership of one of von Einem’s former students, the composer and musician HK Gruber. There is a live atmosphere to this fine recording, but the sound quality is impressive and the balance between singers and orchestra is realistic and effective.
Dominy Clements
