Three important pieces of music, loosely linked by the programmatic theme of "exile" are addressed by Camerata Bern under the direction of Thomas Zehetmair. "Verklärte Nacht" is the second ECM New Series appearance for the distinguished ensemble, who previously recorded music of Sándor Veress for the label. Here, too, Veress’s attractive "Transylvanian Dances bridge compositions by two of the great architects of modern music, Arnold Schönberg and Béla Bartók
Verklärte Nacht - Schönberg / Veress / Bartók
Thomas Zehetmair, Camerata Bern
- 1Transfigured Night, op. 4 (version for string orchestra)
26:35 - Four Transylvanian Dances
- 2Lassu03:32
- 3Ugrós02:39
- 4Lejtos04:55
- 5Dobbantós02:11
- Divertimento
- 6Allegro non troppo08:38
- 7Molto adagio08:49
- 8Allegro assai06:52
Vielleicht hat Schönberg das Stück 1899 mit ahnungsvollem Blick ins 20. Jahrhundert komponiert. Verklärte Nacht wäre dann kein Gipfelpunkt der Spätromantik, sondern ihr Abgesang. So jedenfalls klingt Schönbergs populärstes Werk, wenn es von Thomas Zehetmair und der Camerata Bern gespielt wird. Mit kühlem Kopf befreien die Schweizer das Stück vom schweren Ballast spätromantischer Tradition und dem pastosen, dunkel raunenden Klang, den man so gerne mit ihr assoziiert. Feinnervig und gläsern transparent wird da musiziert. Die Dynamik ist ins Extrem geweitet, die Tempi wirken - bei sehr zügigem Grundpuls - fantastisch agil. Zehetmair gibt Schönbergs späte Version für Kammerorchester derart kammermusikalisch, dass man glaubt, der originalen Fassung für Streichsextett zu lauschen. Die Wucht der großen Besetzung geht dabei nicht verloren, nur ist die Expressivität nicht auf donnernde Klangmasse angewiesen. Sie entwickelt sich aus einem überwältigenden Detailreichtum, aus überlegen geplanten Spannungsbögen, flirrenden Linien, hitzigen Steigerungen, schneidenden Gesten der Violinen und fein abgemischten Farbvaleurs. ... Zehetmair gelingt nicht weniger als die Wiederentdeckung dieses strapazierten Werkes als wegweisend moderne Partitur. Das ist das Ereignis der CD, das die eigentlich interessanteren, überdies glänzend gespielten Vier transsylvanischen Tänze von Sándor Veress samt Bartóks Divertimento ein wenig in den Hintergrund drängt. Absolut ungerecht. Aber so spannend begann es eben bei Arnold Schönberg.
Oswald Beaujean, Die Zeit
It is no surprise that of these three substantially varied works, it is Veress's Transylvanian Dances that stand out so vividly on this recording. Camerata Bern had a longstanding relationship with the composer, spanning more than 25 years, and the exhilarating fourth movement of the Dances, played here with electrified vigour, is ample testament to this and their stunning treatment of the other works on this outstanding CD.
Tarik O'Regan, The Observer (Classical CD of the week)
Die Camerata Bern ist mit ihren 22 Streichern für Schönbergs intrikate Partitur die Idealbesetzung. Geführt von Konzertmeister Thomas Zehetmair schafft sie eine absolut stimmige Synthese aus feinnerviger Kammermusik und bisweilen an Wagner gemahnende orchestrale Dichte und entfaltet im Wechsel von Solo und Tutti eine überwältigende Farbenvielfalt. Bei Bartók fasziniert vor allem ihr immenser Dynamik-Spielraum zwischen einem fahlen, schwach schimmernden Pianissimo und scharf dreinfahrenden Fortissimo-Einbrüchen. Und die erstmals eingespielten Veress-Tänze geraten zu schwebenden Stimmungsbildern voll anklagenden Heimwehs mit einem wuchtigen "Dobbantós" als Kehraus.
Jörg Hillebrand, Stereo
In der Streichorchesterfassung der Verklärten Nacht wird der Auflösungsprozess der Romantik in eine knappe halbe Stunde gebannt - mit agilen, fluktuierenden Tempi, weiter Dynamik und Farbpalette, irisierendem, detailgenauem Linienspiel, Kontrasten zwischen fahlen, wie ausgedörrten Klängen und gleißenden Höhen der Violinen, zwischen expressivem Drang und spröder Innerlichkeit. Das Streichorchester klingt transparent wie ein Sextett, das die Orchesterfülle aufgesaugt und zersträhnt hat.
Ellen Kohlhaas, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung
Three important pieces of music, loosely linked by the programmatic theme of "exile" (two are further linked by Swiss connections), are addressed by Camerata Bern under the direction of Thomas Zehetmair. The programme begins with a most sensitive exploration of Arnold Schoenberg's Verklärte Nacht. In the soul-baring chapter entitled "How One Becomes Lonely" in his book Style and Idea, Schoenberg talks about the difficult birth of what is now regarded both as a summit of Late Romanticism and the dawning of musical Modernism. Riots and fist fights broke out at the first (1901) performance of the "Transfigured Night" and the critics were merciless. "It sounds as if someone had smudged the score of 'Tristan' while it was still wet" etc. A Viennese musical society refused to programme the work on account of its (limited) use of dissonance. Yet within 25 years Schoenberg would be castigated for supposedly abandoning the beguiling lyricism of "Verklärte Nacht" in favour of an "arid" dodecaphony. "I have not discontinued composing in the same style and the same way as at the very beginning, " the composer would insist again and again. "The difference is only that I do it better now than before; it is more concentrated, more mature." In his years in America, in particular, Schoenberg struggled to convince the musical public of this and while "Verklärte Nacht" has slowly eased its way into the concert repertory much of Schoenberg's "mature" music is still held to be "difficult" even 50 years after the composer's death.
"Verklärte Nacht" is a symphonic poem after a sentimental, highly atmospheric poem by Richard Dehmel. Schoenberg biographer Malcolm McDonald sketches the plot: "Two lovers wander among the trees on a cold moonlit night. She confesses she is pregnant, not by him, but by an earlier lover whom she took because she had believed that having a child would bring meaning, if not happiness, to her life. He, inspired to calm confidence by the beauty of the moonlit world, assures her that the love they have now found together will unite them and make the child their own; they embrace, and walk on 'through the high, bright night'. The layout of Dehmel's poem - in five sections, the woman's outburst and the man's reply framed by passages illustrating their walk in the moonlight - gives the basic form of Schoenberg's piece, and every phrase is most sensitively illustrated in the music, from the dragging steps at the opening to the wonderfully radiant evocation of the transfigured night at the close. Yet on another level the music makes so much sense on its own terms that one hardly feels the programme to be a vital element in its structural logic, however it may have affected the initial inspiration."
As Thomas Gerlich notes in the CD booklet there is no road - or at least no direct road - leading "from Schoenberg's productive assimilation of German Romanticism to Bartók's mature instrumental compositions" and Veress is quoted to the effect that Bartók took nothing from Schoenberg. Yet it is also a matter of historical record that the Hungarian composer was inspired by the emotional climate of Berg's Lyric Suite, a work that would not have come into being without Schoenberg's example and encouragement, so indirect affinities between the composers do exist; Adorno even claimed that Bartók strove to reconcile Schoenberg and Stravinsky. Whatever the truth of this, the signature on the "Divertimento" is unmistakable. Bartók wrote the first draft of the piece in 1939 - in a chalet in the mountains to the south of Bern - in response to a commission from Swiss patron/conductor Paul Sacher barely months before taking the long-contemplated step into exile. The irony of this situation, and its qualified "luxury", was not lost on Bartók and he wrote to his son that he felt like a court composer of olden times. Thomas Gerlich: "Whether the Divertimento prefigures his departure, whether - despite its seeming buoyancy - grief and leave-taking are composed into the work, as commentators speculate, remains open to debate." Traditional Hungarian lament is clearly embodied in the Divertimento's slow movement, yet the work as a whole radiates strength and resilience. Hungarian Bartók scholar and musicologist Bence Szabolsci has written of the Divertimento, "It was as if during those dark years he had found his faith and optimism. He never composed so melodiously as then, and never again was he able to summarise all his achievements in one tremendous synthesis as he did at that time."
Paul Sacher was also a force behind the writing of Veress's Transylvanian Dances and instrumental in the composer's decision to abandon Hungary for Switzerland. Veress had been Bartók's assistant in folk music research in Hungary as well as his piano student and was for many years one of Bartók's closest associates. His dances are "free re-creations of certain styles of dance music indigenous to Hungarian villages, particularly to the Székler of Transsylvania."
Sándor Veress was an early supporter of the Camerata Bern, the outstanding ensemble of his adopted hometown. In 1965/66 he wrote his Musica Concertante for them. The work is featured on an earlier ECM album with Camerata Bern, recorded in 1992/3 (ECM New Series 1555).
"Verklärte Nacht" is a symphonic poem after a sentimental, highly atmospheric poem by Richard Dehmel. Schoenberg biographer Malcolm McDonald sketches the plot: "Two lovers wander among the trees on a cold moonlit night. She confesses she is pregnant, not by him, but by an earlier lover whom she took because she had believed that having a child would bring meaning, if not happiness, to her life. He, inspired to calm confidence by the beauty of the moonlit world, assures her that the love they have now found together will unite them and make the child their own; they embrace, and walk on 'through the high, bright night'. The layout of Dehmel's poem - in five sections, the woman's outburst and the man's reply framed by passages illustrating their walk in the moonlight - gives the basic form of Schoenberg's piece, and every phrase is most sensitively illustrated in the music, from the dragging steps at the opening to the wonderfully radiant evocation of the transfigured night at the close. Yet on another level the music makes so much sense on its own terms that one hardly feels the programme to be a vital element in its structural logic, however it may have affected the initial inspiration."
As Thomas Gerlich notes in the CD booklet there is no road - or at least no direct road - leading "from Schoenberg's productive assimilation of German Romanticism to Bartók's mature instrumental compositions" and Veress is quoted to the effect that Bartók took nothing from Schoenberg. Yet it is also a matter of historical record that the Hungarian composer was inspired by the emotional climate of Berg's Lyric Suite, a work that would not have come into being without Schoenberg's example and encouragement, so indirect affinities between the composers do exist; Adorno even claimed that Bartók strove to reconcile Schoenberg and Stravinsky. Whatever the truth of this, the signature on the "Divertimento" is unmistakable. Bartók wrote the first draft of the piece in 1939 - in a chalet in the mountains to the south of Bern - in response to a commission from Swiss patron/conductor Paul Sacher barely months before taking the long-contemplated step into exile. The irony of this situation, and its qualified "luxury", was not lost on Bartók and he wrote to his son that he felt like a court composer of olden times. Thomas Gerlich: "Whether the Divertimento prefigures his departure, whether - despite its seeming buoyancy - grief and leave-taking are composed into the work, as commentators speculate, remains open to debate." Traditional Hungarian lament is clearly embodied in the Divertimento's slow movement, yet the work as a whole radiates strength and resilience. Hungarian Bartók scholar and musicologist Bence Szabolsci has written of the Divertimento, "It was as if during those dark years he had found his faith and optimism. He never composed so melodiously as then, and never again was he able to summarise all his achievements in one tremendous synthesis as he did at that time."
Paul Sacher was also a force behind the writing of Veress's Transylvanian Dances and instrumental in the composer's decision to abandon Hungary for Switzerland. Veress had been Bartók's assistant in folk music research in Hungary as well as his piano student and was for many years one of Bartók's closest associates. His dances are "free re-creations of certain styles of dance music indigenous to Hungarian villages, particularly to the Székler of Transsylvania."
Sándor Veress was an early supporter of the Camerata Bern, the outstanding ensemble of his adopted hometown. In 1965/66 he wrote his Musica Concertante for them. The work is featured on an earlier ECM album with Camerata Bern, recorded in 1992/3 (ECM New Series 1555).
