Der Ferne Klang - Orchestral Works & Songs

Chen Reiss, Matthias Goerne, Konzerthausorchester Berlin, Christoph Eschenbach

Musical life in the German-speaking world in the early 20th century was tremendously diverse. Some composers gradually broke away from the tonal language of Romanticism and ventured aesthetically into new realms. They began to compose in free tonality and tried out new sounds. Their most prominent representative was Arnold Schoenberg, and later his students Alban Berg and Anton Webern joined the new style of writing. On the other hand, there were composers who still felt at home in Romanticism and who did not want to give up major-minor tonality, even if they stretched it to the utmost limit. Franz Schreker belonged to this group. He was born Franz Schrecker in 1878 in the principality of Monaco, but later changed his name to Schreker with a long e. His father was a Jewish court photographer from Bohemia, and his mother came from an old Styrian noble family. Schreker's family later moved to Linz and eventually to Vienna after his father's early death. There Schreker first began to study the violin, but soon he switched to the class of the renowned composition teacher Robert Fuchs, who trained a whole series of composers who later became famous, among them Gustav Mahler, Hugo Wolf, Jean Sibelius and Richard Strauss Schreker's first opera Flammen was written in 1902, but it was not staged during the composer's lifetime. His second opera Der ferne Klang was a much more important project. It has strong autobiographical features, as Schreker himself confessed, was premiered in Frankfurt am Main in 1912, and made him instantly famous. Set around 1900 in Germany and Venice, the piece revolves around the young composer Fritz, who can no longer bear the petty bourgeois confinement at home, so he leaves his fiancée Grete and goes to Venice. There he hopes to find an "enigmatic, otherworldly sound". But the longing for Grete consumes him, so he sets out to find her. He finally finds her in a brothel, where she offers her services as a noble courtesan. Fritz insults her as a harlot and leaves her again. Five years later, his opera Die Harfe has its premiere at the Court Theater. Grete attends the performance, but when she recognizes herself in the leading role, she suffers an attack of weakness. The premiere turns into a fiasco. Grete now learns that Fritz is terminally ill. The two meet again, but it is too late for a common happiness: Fritz finds the mysterious "distant sound", whose seductive illusion he longed for all his life, in death, which unites him with the rediscovered Grete. An artist who has always been interested in the music of the early 20th century is Christoph Eschenbach. He was intensively occupied, for example, with the works of Alban Berg, Arnold Schönberg and Alexander Zemlinsky. He only discovered the pieces of Franz Schreker for himself after the turn of the millennium. In 2004 he performed the prelude to the opera Die Gezeichneten with the then NDR Symphony Orchestra, and in 2010 the Chamber Symphony with the Ensemble intercontemporain in Paris. "The Chamber Symphony absolutely fascinated me, so I really wanted to record it," Eschenbach confesses. "It is actually a large-scale piece that is finely fanned out, with very many different facets." In general, Eschenbach admires Schreker's use of orchestral timbres: "His instrumentation was very progressive," he explains, "he took Mahlerian symphonic music further." However, in Schreker's works, he says, "it's not easy to pick out the right colors and to hear and play them out. That requires immense musicality," the conductor emphasizes, "which is absolutely present in the Konzerthausorchester, though. It immediately identified with this music." As further orchestral pieces, Eschenbach chose the Kleine Suite für Kammerorchester, a neoclassical work Schreker composed for radio in 1928, as well as the Romantische Suite (1903), "which, however, is not so romantic anymore, since it reaches far into the modern era," Eschenbach emphasizes. "There, elements of expressionism are already apparent." Individual works by Schreker were strongly influenced by expressionism, Eschenbach says, a musical style that is meant to express the emotions of the soul in music. So he wasn't surprised to find out that Schreker was good friends with Sigmund Freud. Another expressionistic work is the Nachtstück from the aforementioned opera Der ferne Klang, an instrumental interlude that Eschenbach praises as a "magnificent symphonic poème" and therefore chose for the album. Those who write about Schreker usually concentrate on his operas, so that his songs are unfortunately often neglected. Christoph Eschenbach holds them in very high esteem, also because of their often symbolistically tinged texts, and therefore decided to supplement the orchestral works on the album with songs. Vom ewigen Leben are two "lyrical songs" for soprano and orchestra (1923 / 1927) based on poems by the American lyricist Walt Whitman. The Five Songs for low voice (1909 / 1922) are based on poems by the Austrian symbolist poet Edith Ronsperger, except for the first song, which is taken from the Arabic fairy tale collection Thousand and One Nights. Together, the five poems form a cycle that moves from longing for a loved one to alienation, despair, nostalgic memories, and death and redemption. At the time Schreker wrote these songs, he was introduced to Schoenberg's circle. Schoenberg invited him to play the songs for his students - among others, Alban Berg was present - and arranged for the cycle to be included in a concert of new Austrian music in 1912. Eschenbach chose Israeli soprano Chen Reiss and German baritone Matthias Goerne to perform the songs. Eschenbach has been associated with both artists for years through many projects. With Goerne, for example, he recorded song cycles by Schubert and Brahms, while with Reiss he performed The Magic Flute in Vienna, among other works. "Both are masters of text interpretation," he says, explaining his choice. Now all that was missing was a little "treat" to round out the program. Eschenbach chose the Valse lente for it, "a quite enchanting piece. Short, very intimate and very Viennese. It fit very well as a contrast to the other works."

Price: $49.98