Michael Gielen’s Gurrelieder is one of the more expansive and certainly the most vividly detailed on discs. His tempos, while primarily on the slow side, are not so glacial as Robert Kraft’s on his recording from a few years ago (type Q5330 in Search Reviews), allowing you to feel the pulse of the music throughout. Plus, Gielen encourages simply gorgeous playing from the SWR Orchestra that reveals the multi-layered complexity of Schoenberg’s scoring in remarkable detail–so much so that you don’t mind lingering a bit.
Schoenberg’s orchestral style had changed significantly by the time he got around to orchestrating Part III, and it’s probably never been made more obvious than in this performance. Gielen is a Second Viennese School specialist, and he carefully underlines the expressionist elements (especially in Klaus-Narr’s song, where you can hear faint pre-echoes of Erwartung). Part III also is where Gielen’s slowish tempos take their toll. The Wild Hunt drags and really does sound leaden compared to Ozawa’s bracing pace.
Ozawa’s performance also is superior vocally; while tenor Robert Dean Smith is pretty decent as Waldemar and Melanie Diener offers a nicely sung Tove, neither can erase memories of James McCraken and Jessye Norman. Gielen does have an effective Wood-Dove in Yvonne Naef, and the same goes for his other soloists. The exception is Andreas Schmidt’s Speaker, whose stiff delivery can’t hold a candle to the brilliant Werner Klemperer for Ozawa. The Bavarian Radio Chorus performs handsomely.
Hänssler’s recording captures the performance in warm, spacious sound–possibly the best of any recorded Gurrelieder. This, and the other factors mentioned above, make Gielen’s version recommendable, but not as your only recording of this work, which of course would have to be Ozawa’s. [10/1/2008]
