Appearing for the first
time on DVD, this is the first disc
in a series of seven programs that Sir
Simon Rattle made for television in
the 1990s. Leaving Home is an
historical journey through the radical
changes in music that coincided with
the tremendous social, technological
and political upheaval that was the
twentieth century. Artfully scripted,
and with excellent musical examples,
these fifty-minute programs integrate
history (by means of some nicely chosen
archival film footage), lecture (with
Sir Simon speaking and illustrating
from the keyboard) and performance,
(with Sir Simon on the podium.)
We begin with a summary
of the end of the Hapsburg Empire at
the turn of the century and with the
infamous Tristan Chord of Richard
Wagner, that notorious little diminished
chord that resolves in all the wrong
ways and thus changed harmonic progression
forever after. From Wagner we move on
to Arnold Schönberg, who with his
string sextet cum string orchestra masterpiece
Verklärte Nacht, Sir Simon
illustrates just how far a composer
can push the limits of tonality without
destroying it altogether.
The next topic is the
dis-ease of early twentieth century
Europe. Maestro Rattle shows how nocturnal
images transform from portraits of repose
to symbols of fear and unrest through
an example from Mahler’s Seventh Symphony.
The final and most prevalent topic of
the program is the attempt by Schönberg
and his students Alban Berg and Anton
Webern to move beyond tonality. It was
Schönberg’s belief that tonal composition
had reached its apex in Wagner, and
that there was no logical path but to
leave such music in museums and replace
it with an egalitarian twelve-tone
system of composition in which all
twelve notes of the chromatic scale
were equal, and in which no note could
be repeated until all of the notes had
been used in their proper succession.
We arrive at Schönberg’s
solution through a quick stop at one
of Richard Strauss’s unique works, the
tonally ambiguous and slightly maddening
Elektra, a work in which Strauss
pushed the limits of both tonality and
emotional display; a method and tactic
to which, once out of his system, he
would never return.
There is much to be
learned from this informative program,
which for today’s lightning-fast society
is exactly the right length. If anything,
Sir Simon’s voice and delivery are a
bit too soothing, and interesting as
the material is, I found myself nodding
from time to time while I watched. It
will be of great interest to see how
he handles the basic failure of the
Second Viennese School’s music to take
root anywhere except in academia. Admit
it, there are still a handful of twelve-tone
pieces in the repertoire, but it is
such a limited system that it ran out
of usefulness long before many college
professors figured out that no one was
listening anymore.
In spite of the high
quality of the program itself, there
are some production values that are
sadly missing. First off, the failure
to identify the two audio-only bonus
tracks as anything other than being
"Naxos recordings" is inexcusable.
I had to do a little extra legwork on
the Naxos website to figure out who
was playing. (Both performances are
quite fine by the way.) And, whereas
the composer biographies are nice, they
are simply scans of typewritten pages,
so small in print that to read them
one needs to stand directly in front
of one’s television. Hardly comfortable
or of much use really. Program notes
are concise and of interest.
These are small caveats,
and things that can be easily remedied
with a bit of care. Recommended highly.
Kevin Sutton
for
details
Gidon
Kremer, violin 
ARTHAUS
MUSIK DVD 102033 [50:00] 
