Schoenberg – Pelleas und Melisande & Verklärte Nacht
Orchestre symphonique de Montréal; Rafael Payare
Pentatone PTC5187218 (osm.ca/en/news/pelleas-und-melisande-et-verklarte-nacht-by-schoenberg)
Mostly to infuriate the various factional music theorists, I hold that Arnold Schoenberg failed magnificently to escape tonality. He lived before “hardwired” entered the lexicon, but it seems he proved as well as anybody could that we no more invented “tonality” than we did “rhythm,” we unmasked our propensity to enjoy and exchange our thoughts with others through them.
Both the works on this glorious disc display his thoughts in tone poems that are well-known if only partially loved. I belong to the group who is partial to all of Schoenberg’s thoughts; let the gorgeous playing of the MSO led by Rafael Payare, tell you the story (repeated in every age) of the young lovers who usurp the marriage of the woman to an older more powerful man, with tragic results for all. Pelleas und Melisande in the hands of a German, more expressionist than impressionist, goes right there, all turbulent weather and sultry evenings. This is a tone poem, it’s music at the ultimate point of ripening, and these musicians are equal to the job of plucking its fruitful bounty.
In a more modern take, Verklärte Nacht (from the poem of the same name) sets a scene where a lover tells his doubting beloved that the child she carries, though not “his,” will be his to love. I wish you could hear the strings right now as you read this. Compared to the other, larger work, this is almost restrained, but once the motifs start to overlap, one is delightfully lost between tonic and dominant.
Liner notes are fascinating and informative. Buy two and give one away!
