Arnold Schoenberg: Die Jakobsleiter; Chamber Symphony No. 1; Begleitmusik Zu Einer Lichtspielszene [Import]

I hope this particular recording will be in print as long as I live. Pierre Boulez has done a masterful work with the orchestra, managing to bring out the mysticism and huge drama of Schönberg's oratorio The Jacobsleiter with a rythmic agility that knows no borders!

In the late Seventies Columbia Records already had a Mister Modern in the person of Robert Craft, who could be responsible for the Second Viennese School and its highly unpopular music, so it was noble of them to recognize that Pierre Boulez was a far more capable conductor and to give Schoenberg, Berg, and Webern a second chance. The result, mostly recorded in London, was a classic of the gramophone, as they say. This CD is a typical installment in the Schoenberg series, drawing on fine musicians, even finer singers, and Boulez at his freshest and most appealing. Another advantage of this program is that it mixes early, middle, and late Schoenberg, affording a fascinating entry point into the composer's immensely varied output.

The featured and most unusual work is Jacob's Ladder (Jakobsleiter), a 45+ min. oratorio that takes off from the story in Genesis about Jacob wrestling with the angel Gabriel. familiarity with the Bible does a listener little good, however, since Jacob doesn't appear in Schoenberg's text, written about himself, which is highly philosophical. I essence we have the angel Gabriel pondering the existential possibilities of belief in a modern, anguished world. There is no doubt that the nearly unreadable poem was highly personal to the composer, who published it in 1917 before finishing the music. Jakobsleiter had an unfortunate future ahead of it, however. Schoenberg was called up briefly for army service in the fall of 1917, and he couldn't pick up the thread of the work, abandoning it until 1921.

Even then, he completed only the short score by 1944, and at his death in 1951, only the first hundred measures or so were orchestrated. The premiere took place in 1961 under Kubelik. How amazing, then, to find that this is one of Schoenberg's most captivating and accessible dramatic works, its impact as mysterious and biblical as the opera Moses und Aron. There are stretches of choral writing couched in almost conventional harmony, and even though the score is based on a tone-row, any listener with a will to try can become engrossed in Gabriel's long monologues and his interaction with various kinds of believers, skeptics, and atheists. The angel is sung superbly by bass-baritone Siegmund Nimsgern (a famous Alberich and Telramund on the Wagner side), supported by such London notables Ian Partridge, John Shirley-quirk, and Anthony Rolfe-Johnson -- I was rather amazed at how adept these singers were in atonal music. There's a wordless vocalise for The Soul at the end, which is both lovely and treacherously high-flying. Mady Mesple is stretched to the limit but gives the part a courageous try.

The early work on the program is the Chamber Symphony no. 1, Op. 9. The low opus number shouldn't fool newcomers. Schoenberg had reinvented the symphony, jettisoning anything as simple as melody supported by accompaniment. Instead we get a crystallized concentration of elements in which every note is placed with rigor. As a listen, the work is challenging and abstruse, despite the presence of relatively easy harmonies here and there. The best way to enter is through the emotional lushness of its late-Romantic idiom. There are any number of good recordings of the First Chamber Sym., but Boulez's from 1980 is exceptionally vital, clear and well recorded.

Finally comes the intensely expressionistic Accompaniment to a Cinematographic Scene, debuted in 1930, which is essentially, despite its cumbersome title, move music to be played for a silent film. No specific film ever emerged; Schoenberg was told simply to write a score that evoked fear and terror -- in other words, music that might be played to go with F. W. Murnau's classic vampire film, Nosferatu. No theater orchestra, before of since, could have executed what Schoenberg produced, however, and only latterly has it appeared in concert, thanks to Simon Rattle, who toured with it when the Berlin Phil. came to America several seasons ago, each concert combining Brahms and Schoenberg in a fascinating merger. Dense as the music is, there's great atmosphere to it, and if you close your eyes and run some gory movie scenes in your head, you'll have no trouble getting absorbed.

DIE JAKOBSLEITER, a 47-minute fragment of an oratorio that was interrupted by WWI and never completed, is the feature on this disc, performed by the BBC Singers and BBC Symphony Orchestra, recorded in 1980. It is well worth hearing if you, like me, consider Schoenberg to be one of the most important and interesting of early 20th century composers.

Schoenberg's libretto features the Archangel Gabriel summoning the malcontents, doubters, rejoicers and the indifferent to transformation. Its syncretism includes reincarnation, karma, theosophy and Swedenborgian mysticism, an ultimate oneness. Quite amazing!

Musically it is an example of the atonal period, but includes developments in the direction of the 12-tone method of the 1920s. It's not one of my favorite Schoenberg works, but the vocals and orchestral music are both compelling.

The CHAMBER SYMPHONY NO. 1, OP 9 of 1906, a 20-minute piece here performed by a 15-member ensemble of Ensemble Intercontemporain musicians recorded in 1980, is a strong early work, suggestive of Schoenberg's move away from Romanticism in its clarity and transparency.

Also included is an 8-minute piece from 1929/30 called "Accompaniment to a Cinematographic Scene," performed by the BBCSO and recorded in 1976.

This is a fine entry in Sony's Pierre Boulez series.

For anyone unfamiliar with Schoenberg:

Arnold Schoenberg (1874-1951) was arguably THE pivotal composer who launched the 20th century avant-garde in classical music. Along with his students Alban Berg, Anton Webern, and Hanns Eisler -- the Second Vienna School -- Schoenberg exploded the late Romantic soundworld and opened up new worlds of possibilities, first with atonal expressionism, and later with the innovative serialist system of composition. Schoenberg was a good friend of the painter Kandinsky, and while Kandinsky pioneered the break from representation to total abstraction in painting, Schoenberg pioneered the break with tonality in music. While the pretty chromaticism of the earlier radical Debussy continues to influence French composers and tendencies such as minimalism and spectralism, Schoenberg's ongoing influence is most obvious in German and Austrian Neue Musik, but in a larger and less direct way his innovations shape contemporary practice through the training of composers and through the existence of an open universe of sound that cannot be closed off. It is generally agreed that Schoenberg's writing falls into three periods, an early Romantic period (1894-1907), the free atonal expressionist period (1908-1922), and the 12 tone period (1923-1951).