Schoenberg: Transfigured Night
Oskar Fried: Transfigured Night
Lehár: Fever
Korngold: Songs of Farewell
Stuart Skelton (tenor), Christine Rice (mezzo-soprano)
Edward Gardner / BBC Symphony (Chandos)
(scroll down for English review)
以一首經典樂曲：荀伯格《昇華之夜》帶出三首後浪漫時期作品。Oskar Fried是第一個把馬勒《復活交響曲》錄音的指揮家，但他也有一段時間作曲，當荀伯格寫好、但未發表《昇華之夜》時，Fried也以同一首詩篇寫了自己的《昇華之夜》（軌二）。荀伯格那首是弦樂六重奏，Fried卻用回詩篇譜曲，成為一首男女二重唱，當成後華格納作品聽的話，不俗而已，但荀伯格卻是真正將詩篇昇華成不能言喻的感情。
至於這錄音的荀伯格（軌三至十）演奏，頭三分一不錯，但當音樂從激憤轉至安寧後，指揮放得太鬆。雖然Gardner有心營造獨奏及齊奏之對比，但我覺得他還是用不到全隊弦樂隊的力量。
《發燒》（軌一）是輕歌劇天皇雷哈爾在一戰期間寫的嚴肅作品，寫的是一位傷兵在醫院發高燒，產生幻覺，舊記憶及戰場之恐怖不斷湧現，是一首描繪式的作品，但也和Fried那首樂曲一樣，比較浮淺。最後康高特《離別之歌》（軌11至14）有四曲、共約十來分鐘，但有一個主題不斷重現，我看康高特野心較小，但那個主題所衍生的旋律充滿柔情，反而比感情波幅大的Fried及雷哈爾更深刻。
Schoenberg’s immortal Transfigured Night is the mantelpiece of this disc, flanked by three post-romantic lesser works. Oskar Fried was now remembered as the conductor who did the first recording of Mahler’s Resurrection Symphony but he was also a composer. While Schoenberg’s Transfigured Night was still lying in his drawers, Fried did his own composition on the same Dehmel poem about infidelity and forgiveness. Yet Fried set it as a duet between a tenor and a mezzo, this is rather like a Wagnerian duet a la Tristan und Isolde but to me, the Schoenberg work truly transfigured verbal imagery to the inarticulate speech of the heart.
As for the playing of the Schoenberg, I notice Gardner’s varying of texture but I think he loosened his grip too quickly when the music started to turn peaceful. Also I don’t think he made full use of the full string orchestra’s sonority.
Fever is Lehár’s little-known opus of more serious composing. The vocal piece is about an injured soldier’s feverish delusions. He embarks on a trip to his past and the horrors of the battlefield, finally approaching his end. Like the Fried piece, I consider this piece quite superficial. Korngold’s Songs of Farewell has four songs, less than 15 minutes in total. Korngold might be not ambitious enough but the little phrase that permeates the work is memorable indeed. That phrase generates in turn passages that are full of sweetness. This I’d rate higher than Fried’s Transfigured Night and Lehár’s Fever.