This disc of Schoenberg
from the Naxos Robert Craft Schoenberg Collection provides an
interesting cross-section of works from forty years of the composer’s
life. It covers three genres: string quartet, string orchestra
and choral music.
The Six A Cappella
Mixed Choruses that start the disc were begun in 1928 with
the harmonisation of three folksongs at the request of the ‘State
Commission for the Folksong-Book for Youth’ in Berlin. The remaining
three folk arrangements were completed in an analogous style
some twenty years later, Schoenberg then resident in Los Angeles.
The studio surroundings of Abbey Road, lend an unexpected intimacy,
as well as a somewhat exposed quality, to the sound of the Simon
Joly Singers, who rise to the challenge, presenting a fittingly
measured and able performance. The varying nature and mood of
each text is effectively portrayed and conveyed.
The String Quartet
No. 2 provides some of the most profound music on this disc,
although – as Robert Craft in his useful booklet notes writes
– it does ‘not make public statements’. It is surrounded with
a concealed and personal tone throughout. Begun in 1907, and
completed – at a particularly turbulent period in Schoenberg’s
life – in September 1908 before its first performance in December
of the same year, two of the quartet’s four movements see the
addition of a soprano, who sings texts by the German poet Stefan
George. Within the quartet Schoenberg makes considerable advances
in technique and harmonic language, demonstrating skill in a
notoriously difficult medium. The intimate quality found in
the Mixed Choruses is continued in the quartet; both
the performance itself by the Fred Sherry String Quartet and
the recorded sound - now in a different venue - contributing
to this commendable aspect of the disc. Jennifer Welch-Babidge
gives a potent and intelligent performance in the final two
movements of the work, and is appropriately responsive to the
German texts.
The closing Suite
in G for String Orchestra was composed in 1934 and was the
first complete work from Schoenberg’s time in America. It was
written with orchestras containing promising young players in
mind, although the rather advanced technique required is sufficiently
challenging for the work to be only seldom performed. The piece
is labelled as in ‘the old style’, referring to the dance forms
of the eighteenth-century, reflected in the five movements:
Overture, Adagio, Minuet, Gavotte
and Gigue. A lighter outlook here provides a natural
balance to the darkness of the quartet. A full, warm and demonstrative
string tone of considerable depth is supplied by New York’s
Twentieth Century Classics Ensemble, rounding off a considerable
contribution to the Schoenberg discography.
Adam Binks
see also Review
by Michael Cookson
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Jennifer Welch-Babidge
(soprano)
