Arnold SCHÖNBERG: Pierrot Lunaire; Herzgewächse; Oda a Napoleón Bonaparte. Christine Schäfer; David Pittman-Jennings; Ensemble InterContemporain; Pierre Boulez. Deutsche Grammophon 457630-2 [52'35"]

The Austrian composer Arnold Schönberg was steeped in the Germanic musical traditions that he inherited from Wagner and, to a lesser degree, Brahms, but Wagner and Liszt had expanded the boundaries of conventional harmony to such an extent that by the end of the 19th century composers were mining an overworked seam in their efforts to find something new to say, so Schönberg was left with a problem: how could he continue his beloved tradition in the knowledge that it was a spent force? The most common solutions among radical composers were to either use an increasingly large canvas, as with Gustav Mahler, or make the harmony more and more densely chromatic, as did Schoenberg's teacher Alexander Zemlinsky.

Schoenberg tried both methods, and with some success, but he realised that there was only limited mileage in them, so from 1908 he began experimenting with freer tonality. Some eight years before writing his first entirely «serial» work (i.e. using the «twelve-note system» that became known, to Schoenberg's annoyance, as «atonality») the composer found a truly original voice in the unclassifiable Pierrot Lunaire, a monodrama without narrative, based on translations of 21 poems by the Belgian writer Albert Giraud. Taking note of Debussy's free sense of form and attention to instrumental colour, Schönberg wrote his very own Rite of Spring, a singular masterpiece which, however ground-breaking, stands alone as the beginning and end of a phase in his development.

Pierrot Lunaire

Pierrot Lunaire («Pierrot in the Moonlight», or «Moonstruck Pierrot») consists of three groups of seven poems each, each poem being of two four-line verses followed by a five-line verse, and each begins and ends with the same line. As the excellent notes for this recording tell us, Schönberg here plays puppeteer, presenting through Pierrot (a traditionally love-sick and petulant character from European theatre) an array of contradictions: the instrumentalists are soloists and orchestra at the same time. Pierrot is both hero and fool, acting in a drama that is also a concert piece, performing cabaret as high art and vice versa, and doing it with song that is also speech.

The latter is one of the most famous things about Pierrot Lunaire: the use of sprechgesang (literally «speech-song», a means of dramatic declamation first used in German opera at the end of the 19th century) allows Schönberg to veer freely from song and speech and it does at first sound very strange, but it is easily understood if you follow the translation.

Schoenberg receives a lot of flak for being «difficult», but this recording brings out not only the originality and darkness but also the beauty of the score. The composer Pierre Boulez, with decades of experience in this work and mindful of its ironic tone, maintains an elegant balance and flow of tempi throughout, but there is a calmness about his approach that sits at odds with the work's strangeness and theatricality. Crucially, and unlike many performances, he refuses to let the ironic aspect of the score take over, and his poise and attention to detail pay off, bringing light textures throughout. Christine Schäfer has a consummate grasp of the technical demands, blending speech and song beautifully, but she does not as yet sound fully inside the role. Another difficulty lies with the sound, which is (characteristically of DG) a bit bright for this music, but that said, there is plenty of fine playing, and if you haven't previously investigated this enigmatic masterpiece, this is a pretty good way to acquaint yourself with it.

Herzgewachse

This beautiful miniature is rarely performed in concert, probably because of its unusual scoring, and that is a shame. It was written in 1911, about six months before Pierrot, but it deals with a more interior world, being a setting of a love poem by Mäterlinck, whose work had previously provided Schönberg with inspiration for the large scale symphonic poem based on Pelléas et Mélisande. It is an exquisite late Romantic jewel and it receives a ravishing performance here, Schäfer on top form in the highest reaches of the soprano register.

Ode to Napoleon Buonaparte

This peculiar work is something of an oddity, even among the music of Schönberg, who wrote so much that is hard to classify. It is a setting of Byron's angry diatribe against Napoleon, and owing to the date of composition and the fact that the composer, a Jew, was forced to leave Austria in the thirties, is generally considered to be directed at Hitler. Schönberg never said as much, and appears to have composed it fairly quickly, so it is tempting to view its dramatic impetus and its intense compression as symptomatic of composition almost at one sitting.

Like Pierrot, it is an example of the use of sprechgesang, and can quite conceivably be performed by an actor, as there is no actual singing; the soloist recites the poem with music performed by a group of string quartet and piano, the vocal part's rhythm and pitch being notated. The instrumentalists, far from providing a mere background, are an integral part of the drama, which is in the form of a scena with a miniature overture. Boulez's players have tremendous bite and clarity, and if the soloist were better this would be a dream version, but Pittman-Jennings, like so many singers and despite some pedigree in sprechgesang, is completely at a loss when it comes to the spoken word, and at times sounds ridiculous. Boulez directs with a fine sense of the architecture of the piece, and if you want to know how late Schönberg should sound, listen to the opening couple of minutes on this recording: all the drama of the piece is thrillingly conveyed in this short burst.

These are valuable recordings, not least because they bring the latest thoughts of a leading composer of the post-war period on one of the century's greatest classics: the reading of Pierrot Lunaire throws significant new light on a composition which remains full of mystery right at the end of that century, and it is good to see that a rising star of the calibre of Christine Schäfer is of a mind to try her hand at such an inscrutable masterpiece. If you are already a fan of Schönberg and/or Boulez, you will not need a lot of persuading, and Herzgewächse will for many be one of the discoveries of the year, so what are you waiting for? For newcomers, this is a good way to discover this great music, despite the brightness of the recorded sound, so next time you have a bit of spare cash and are wondering what to do with it, give Schönberg a try.

Pierre Boulez's third recording of Pierrot lunaire is his first to use the Ensemble InterContemporain. The result is an intense yet intimate reading, recorded (doubtless to the conductor's specifications) in a way that is positively anti-resonant, and which veers, like the music itself, between harshness and reticence. Boulez's second recording, with Yvonne Minton, has long been notorious as the «sung» Pierrot, flouting the composer's specific instructions about recitation. This time Christine Schäfer is more speech-orientated, the few fully sung notes perfectly pitched, and although slidings-away from sustained sounds are on the whole avoided, the effect is superbly dramatic in the work's more expressionistic movements. There are only a very few places (like the end of No. 11) where the voice is too softly projected in relation to the instruments, and only one movement (No. 18) which seems a little short of the necessary sense of menace. Overall, nevertheless, the work's existence in a strange world half-way between cabaret and concert-hall is admirably caught.

Boulez's first recording of the Ode to Napoleon was with David Wilson-Johnson and the Ensemble InterContemporain, and this new one is a more than adequate replacement. David Pittman-Jennings (the Moses in Boulez's recent recording of Moses und Aron; DG, 10/96) has a heavy voice, but he skilfully inflects the sketchily notated dynamics of the vocal part, and the instrumental backing is appropriately forceful and well nuanced. The sound may be clinically dry, but when the performance itself has such expressive immediacy, this is scarcely a serious drawback.

The disc is completed by the brief, exotic Mäterlinck setting from 1911, whose hugely demanding vocal line deters all but the hardiest. Christine Schäfer copes, F in alt and all, while the accompaniment for celesta, harmonium and harp weaves its usual spell. A memorable disc, and a clear front-runner among current versions for all three works.