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Pentatone4
Schoenberg: Pelleas und Melisande & Verklärte Nacht
Orchestre symphonique de Montréal; Rafael Payare, conductor
Pentatone, 2024
Arnold Schoenberg was born Sept. 13, 1874. Musicians all over the world are celebrating the 150th anniversary of his birth. Audiences and music-lovers not so much. Schoenberg’s name is still associated with music that is often dissonant and incomprehensible. But as a composer Schoenberg passed through several phases in his career. In his younger days he wrote music that was comparable in sound and style to the works of Richard Strauss. In other words, he was a Romantic heavily influenced by Wagner and Brahms. The music on this new CD dates from this period and shows Schoenberg at his most approachable.
Verklärte Nacht (Transfigured Night) began life as a work for string sextet and Schoenberg himself later created a version for string orchestra. The original version has an intimacy that is unique, but the later version has a much greater dynamic range. Payare and the strings of the OSM play it with the intensity and tonal richness it deserves.
Pelleas und Melisande was composed in 1902 and is based on the Maeterlinck play that Debussy used as the basis for his opera written about the same time. Apparently, Schoenberg had no idea that Debussy was working on the same material. Schoenberg’s work is a symphonic poem in the tradition of Liszt and Strauss. To my ears, Schoenberg’s piece soon wears out its welcome with too many shattering climaxes—and the unrelenting anguish in the score becomes tiresome, too. But without a doubt it is a tour de force for a big symphony orchestra, and the OSM and Payare play it splendidly. The Pentatone engineers get rich and thrilling sound from the orchestra in its home hall: Montreal’s Maison symphonique.
Incidentally, the OSM and Payare recently paid tribute to Schoenberg on the actual date of his birth with a performance of another work from his earlier years, the monumental Gurre-Lieder.
