Search - Arnold Schoenberg, Alban Berg, Bela Bartok :: In Honor of Rudolf Kolisch

Historical Documents For Specialists & Collectors

Jeffrey Lipscomb | Sacramento, CA United States | 06/17/2005

(4 out of 5 stars)

"This Music & Arts CD set (6 discs for the price of four) contains what can be rightly regarded as "urtext" performances of Schoenberg, Berg, Webern and Bartok. It is in honor of a modern music pioneer, Rudolph Kolisch (1896-1978), the Austrian violinist whose sister was married to Schoenberg. Due to an accident as a boy that cost him about half the middle finger on his left hand, Kolisch became a violinist who bowed with his left hand and played with his right. Obviously he could not play in an orchestra without inflicting damage, so Kolisch dedicated his career to chamber music, primarily of the New Vienna School.



Amazon has only displayed the musical tracks here without identifying the works. There is so much here that I can only address the contents with brief remarks. Despite extremely variable sound, there are some genuine treasures in this set. They will surely appeal to anyone who is interested in the history of performance practice and in hearing how Kolisch and his associates interpreted these works, several of which they premiered. This set comes with a 47 page booklet that includes an appreciation of Kolisch by pianist Russell Sherman (who studied with Schoenberg pupil Eduard Steuermann), an encylopedic and illuminating essay by Tully Potter on the Kolisch Quartet (and the later Pro Arte Quartet led by Kolisch), and extensive notes on the music itself, much of it written by another Schoenberg pupil (conductor Rene Leibowitz).



CDs 1 & 2 contain the first-ever 1936-37 recordings of Schoenberg's four string quartets (composed 1905, 1908, 1927 & 1936) by the Kolisch Quartet (Rudolf Kolisch, Felix Khuner, Eugen Lehner, and Benar Heifetz, with soprano Clemence Gifford in #2). Included are two brief speeches by Schoenberg. These recordings were sponsored by the wealthy film composer Alfred Newman for the purpose of preserving Schoenberg's works and Kolisch's interpretations for posterity. They were issued on private edition 78 rpm discs, and (not mentioned in the notes) they were briefly available on 4 ALCO LPs in the 1950's. I saw that extremely rare set for the first time recently in San Franciso at a collector shop that has a thriving mail-order business overseas. The asking price: $500! So if the music interests you, this M&A set is a genuine bargain! These performances have also been issued on the Swiss CD label Archiphon, but reportedly the transfers are poorly-pitched and overly-filtered.



CD 3 has 1950 recordings of Schoenberg's 3rd Quartet and Berg's Lyric Suite by the Pro Arte Quartet of the Univ. of Wisconsin (Kolisch, Rahier, Milofsky, & Fiedlander) that were once on the Dial LP label.



CD 4 features a "live" 1967 recording of the Schoenberg Violin Concerto with Kolisch and the Wisconsin Festival Orchestra conducted by Leibowitz, an 8 minute interview with Kolisch, and a 1966 live Kolisch performance of the Bartok Sonata for Solo Violin (I regard this disc as an utterly essential item). My other favorites here: Krasner/Mitropoulos (Columbia LP) in the Schoenberg, and Robert Mann's incredible Bartok (available on the internet for $17 from Bartok Records).



CD 5 has a 1945 recording of the Pro Arte Quartet playing Bartok's 5th String Quartet, a 1966 account of the Schoenberg Fantasie (Kolisch with pianist Gunnar Johansen), and the early & unnumbered (1897) Schoenberg String Quartet in D major (Pro Arte Quartet 1952). The latter work is atypical: it sounds very Brahmsian, with a dash of Dvorakian melody tossed in.



CD 6 has three 1950 Pro Arte items that were originally on Dial LPs: Webern's Five Movements for String Quartet op. 5 and Six Bagatelles for String Quartet op. 9, plus a "live" 1940 reading by the Kolisch Quartet & friends of Schubert's Octet. The latter is rather poorly-played and utterly lacks the old world charm of the wonderful Vienna Konzerthaus (Preiser CD).



My own journey to appreciating Schoenberg was a rocky climb. My piano teacher (from age 9 to age 18) regarded Schoenberg as the Devil incarnate who ruined Western music. I also studied viola for a few years with a teacher who held Schoenberg in utter contempt. And my college girlfriend's viola teacher was Robert Gross (a Hindemith pupil), and he was no Schoenberg fan either. But in 1970 I heard Lorin Maazel & the New Philharmonia (on my first visit to Carnegie Hall) perform the Op. 31 Variations for Orchestra, and I was simply astonished at the work's power & genius. In general, I find Berg & Webern easier to listen to, but Schoenberg's music in sympathetic performances is quite simply superb.



Probably the easiest place to start is with Schoenberg's tonal works like Verklarte Nacht (try Stokowski's on a Bridge CD or the original sextet version by the Hollywood Quartet on Testament), his Chamber Symphonies (#1 with Scherchen on Tahra, and #2 with Prausnitz on EMI - see my review of the latter), and Gurrelieder (my favorite is still the old Leibowitz on Preiser CD, despite rough playing & mono sound - its wonderful singers included Richard Lewis and Ethel Semser). Unfortunately, my favorite performance of the marvelous "Pierrot Lunaire" (Semser with Leibowitz) is on a long-gone Westminster LP. The piano works are also very gratifying, especially as done by Steurermann (Columbia LP), Jacobs (Nonesuch CD), and Helffer (a superb Harmonia Mundi 3-CD set that also has piano pieces by Debussy & Bartok).



While the sound of this M&A set is saddled with often noisy originals (the best-sounding items are the ones taken from Dial LPs), the performances here are revelatory. Once heard several times, the Schoenberg string quartets are very nearly as accessible as Bartok's (although the latter's are resolutely tonal, and their over-all superiority is, to my ears, partly a function of greater rhythmic drive & folk music elements). The dreamy and haunting Quartet #2 is unique for its use of a soprano voice (excellently sung here). All in all, I still prefer the greater virtuosity of the Juilliard Quartet's magnificent 1950's set (with soprano Uta Graf) on wonderful-sounding mono Columbia LPs that disgracefully remain in LP limbo. But I DEFINITELY will keep these Kolisch readings. Likewise, I still prefer the Juilliard's recordings of the Bartok Quartets from 1950 (Pearl CD - see my review) & from 1963 (out of print Columbia LPs). The Juilliard's Schoenberg & Bartok cycles strike me as the very finest modern music quartet recordings ever made.



The Berg Lyric Suite here joins the extraordinary 1936 Galimir Quartet's (coupled on a Testament CD with Louis Krasner's greatest-ever Berg Violin Concerto, with the BBC Symphony conducted by Anton Webern) and the mono RCA LP version with the Juilliard as the work's finest-ever accounts. I have never heard Schoenberg's Violin Concerto sound so ingratiatingly like Berg's concerto as it is here with Kolisch & Leibowitz (despite rather poor sound and occasional slips by Kolisch - he was age 70!). And Bartok's solo violin sonata, played with the last mvt. microtone harmonics that were edited out by Menuhin (who commissioned it) is spellbinding, despite some rough playing (it reminds me of Enesco's mesmerizing Bach recorded when he was old and suffering from arthritis). The interview with Kolisch about this last work is fascinating.



If you have difficulty in digesting the 12-tone method, as many people do, here's a simple suggestion: buy or rent the DVD of Nicholas Ray's superb film "Rebel Without A Cause," starring the short-lived James Dean. It's visually brilliant (Ray's use of the color red is downright iconic) and the music, especially in the Planetarium sequence, is utterly riveting. The film's music was composed by Leonard Rosenman (pupil of Schoenberg & Sessions), and nearly the entire score is in the manner of Berg and Schoenberg! Gorgeous recorded excerpts from Rebel & Rosenman's score for East of Eden can be heard on a Nonesuch CD (see my review). Another illuminating resource is the 2002 book "Arnold Schoenberg's Journey" by Allen Shawn (available at Amazon).



This set's old sound will likely be of limited appeal to general listeners. But for collectors & specialists in this music, what is heard here will be an enduring source of wonder and inspiration.



Highly recommended to the curious few.



Jeff Lipscomb







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