Search - Franz Liszt, Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos, Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra :: Liszt: Les préludes; Orpheus; Tasso; Festklänge

Liszt for Connoisserurs

Thomas F. Bertonneau | Oswego, NY United States | 11/23/2006

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Franz Liszt (1811 - 1886), keyboard virtuoso, Don Juan, and precursor of Wagner in the emergence of "The Music of the Future," as skeptics then called it, also invented a new, if not entirely unprecedented, musical form. He dubbed this innovation the "Symphonic Poem." Related to the Beethoven- or Schumann-type of dramatic freestanding character-overture (think of Beethoven's "Egmont" or Schumann's "Manfred"), and to the Berlioz-notion of "program music," the "Symphonic Poem" aspired to express - or at least to symbolize - in pure tone dramatic conflict, natural phenomena, mythic events, spiritual conversion, and various philosophical abstractions drawn from Goethe and Schiller. The earliest of the thirteen "Symphonic Poems" are contemporary with mid-Nineteenth Century concert overtures by Goetz, Raff, Volkmann, Joachim, Reinecke, and Gade that purport (not without plausibility) to convey the essence of Shakespeare's Hamlet or Macbeth, or Scott's Waverly, or Byron's Manfred. Oswald Spengler wrote in The Decline of the West that only a generic difference separated a play by Shakespeare from a score by Bach: both are graphic representations to be realized by a performance the greater part of which occurs intellectually, even in an actual theater or concert hall; both, as it were, aspire to the infinite, in true Gothic or "Faustian" style. Does it sound farfetched? Nevertheless, in his keyboard compositions Liszt always strained toward the spiritual distance; one of his most famous compositions for piano solo is his set of "Twelve Transcendental Etudes."



The best interpretations of Liszt's "Symphonic Poems" start from an understanding of their transcendental quality. A good example is the presentation of these works on a two-disc set from Universal devoted to recordings by Nicolai Golovanov and the Moscow Radio Symphony Orchestra, all from the late 1940s. Golovanov's fiery approach entirely overcomes the cavernous acoustic of the vintage Russian 78s from which they originate. By contrast, the best known traversal of all thirteen of the sequence, Bernard Haitink's with the Concertgebouw Orchestra, is plush and meditative, a treatment that works well in the quiet "Orpheus" (1854) but not so convincingly in "Mazeppa" (1847), whose Ukrainian rhythms Golovanov makes fully convincing. Another conductor, Hermann Scherchen, also knew how to tear through these scores like a madman, in the Golovanov-fashion. An ideal version of Liszt's "Thirteen" would combine the ardency of Golovanov with the care for texture of Haitink. In his new disc of four of the "Symphonic Poems" for the BIS label, veteran orchestra director Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos does just this. Frühbeck de Burgos has kept a low profile since the 1960s, when he recorded for EMI with the New Philharmonia Orchestra, but he has remained active even though his presence in recordings has been sporadic. Since 1995 he has held the directorship of the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra, which he leads in the present program.



The BIS disc gives listeners four items from the cycle: "Les préludes" (1848), "Tasso, Lamento e Triunfo" (1849), "Festklänge" (1853), and "Orpheus" (1854). "Les préludes" is the warhorse of the "Thirteen," and has probably had a hundred or so recordings over the decades. What might Frühbeck de Burgos do with it that others have not? There is first the extraordinary quietness and delicacy of the opening bars, with the spare texture of strings and solo flute treated as though they were a gossamer-web of the quietest chamber music. Frühbeck de Burgos takes almost sixteen minutes for "Les préludes," bringing out its grandeur without ever making it seem bombastic, while the slower than usual tempi emphasize the symphonic outline of the work. The BRSO strings bring to the music a satiny weight perfect for the German Romantic repertory; the brass choir plays with a rich, blended sound. In "Orpheus," Frühbeck de Burgos discovers an impressionistic anticipation of Debussy's "Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune." The Orpheus myth, which inspires Liszt, and the Pan-and-Syrinx myth, which inspires Debussy, both derive the institution of music from the death of a victim. Liszt's "Orpheus," like Debussy's later work, thus properly laments the very art that it is, acknowledging that this art emerges from and owes its existence to violence misdirected against an innocent party, Syrinx or Orpheus. Where Debussy foregrounds the flute, Liszt features the French horn, the harp, and the violin in concertante roles. As in "Les préludes," Frühbeck de Burgos brings out the delicacy of the textures, which again resemble enlarged chamber music.



"Tasso, Lamento e Triunfo" first bore the name of "Overture." Liszt later numbered the work among the canonical "Thirteen." The change of nomenclature indicates how ambiguous the line between the character overture and the "Symphonic Poem" could be. In listening to Frühbeck de Burgos' reading, we remember how significant an influence Liszt was on Tchaikovsky, who also wrote in the genre of the "Symphonic Poem." Much of the slow first section of "Tasso" consists of a polyphonic elegy for strings, with occasional offerings by solo winds. The sound, to call attention to it, is gorgeous, with just the right amount of concert hall reverberation being captured by the engineers. "Festklänge" is the most outgoing of the "Thirteen." Liszt originally composed it as a wedding piece for his marriage to the Princess Caroline Sayn-Wittgenstein, which never took place. "Festklänge," as the word suggests, celebrates Caroline's Polish heritage in bright sounds, with many brass fanfares, and dance-like rhythms of the mazurka variety. Someone has pointed out that the main theme of the score sounds a bit like "Oh, Canada!" In Frühbeck de Burgos' interpretation, "Festklänge" is a celebratory work that manages to remain dignified.



Admirers of the "Symphonic Poems" will want to add this new BIS disc to their collections. I can think of no better entry into this often-misrepresented repertory than Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos' beautifully played program."