This recording of Schoenberg’s Gurrelieder was made at Boston’s Symphony Hall in April, 1979. A distinguished cast of soloists headed by James McCracken (Waldemar), Jessye Norman (Tove), and Tatiana Troyanos (Wood Dove) joined the Boston Symphony Orchestra and Tanglewood Festival Chorus under Seiji Ozawa. Philips’ original LP issue sounded good but inevitably suffered near melt-down at Schoenberg’s gigantic climaxes. This drawback has been largely overcome in these newly-remastered CDs. Only at very high playback levels are you likely to find the brass too strident or the chorus sopranos edgy, although the sound is still generally top-heavy. However, it’s more likely you’ll get a call from your neighbours before reaching that point, and this transfer conveys not just the gigantism of the score but also the ambience of the recording location with palpable realism.
Ozawa’s account sometimes can be a little short on imagination, though. Compare the orchestral prelude to Waldemar’s first song, or the impressionistic strands of orchestration in the song of the wood-dove (Troyanos sings it beautifully!) to the Decca recording by Chailly and you’ll hear a wealth of inner detailing that Ozawa often paints over too hastily. Chailly is somewhat better at layering Schoenberg’s terraced orchestration so everything is audible, but Ozawa’s Wild Hunt at the beginning of Part 3 is especially well managed. The orchestra rips into the horrific passage following Waldemar’s “today the dead ride abroad” outburst with awesome power. There’s a heady feeling of catharsis, too, about Ozawa’s final chorus. Gurrelieder rarely fails here, but the trumpets blaze magnificently as the chorus intones “behold the sun”, clinching a performance that’s seldom as thoughtfully managed as Chailly’s, but that’s often more exciting at crucial moments.
