SCHOENBERG

Gurre-lieder

Alwyn Mellor (soprano), Anna Larsson (mezzo), Stuart Skelton, Wolfgang Ablinger-sperrhacke (tenor), James Cresswell (bass), Thomas Allen (speaker); Choir of Collegiûm Mûsicûm; Edvard Grieg Kor; Orphei Drängar; Students from the Royal Northern College of Music; Bergen Philharmonic Choir & Orchestra/edward Gardner

Chandos CHSA 5172 (hybrid CD/SACD) 102:58 mins (2 discs)

Considering the huge choral and orchestral forces it requires, Schoenberg’s gorgeous early Wagnerian song-cycle-cum-cantata Gurre-lieder has achieved an impressive number of recordings. Most of them have comprised edited versions of live performances – though Marcus Stenz’s highly recommendable 2015 Cologne account on Hyperion was a four-day studio effort.

Yet, compiled from a series of live performances in the spacious acoustic of the Greighallen in Bergen last December, this latest recording from Chandos is quite as distinguished – and rather more successful in capturing the teeming detail of Schoenberg’s complex textures. Of the five solo roles, Stuart Skelton as King Waldemar thrillingly encompasses Schoenberg’s extravagant demands from the tenderest intimacy to the most heroic rhetoric. Alwyn Mellor is full-toned as his lover Tove, qualified only by an occasional tendency to lag behind the beat. There is an austerely fine Wood Dove from Anna Larsson and an incisively sardonic Klaus the Fool from Wolfgang Ablinger-sperrhacke. As the Narrator in the ‘Summer Wind’ episode, Sir Thomas Allen is balanced a little too far forward for Schoenberg’s exquisitely fine-spun textures, yet the densely written male voice choruses of Part Three come over with exceptional clarity, while the Bergen Philharmonic, with reinforcements from the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra, plays vibrantly throughout.

The hero, nonetheless, is Edward Gardner, under whose wonderfully f lexible beat this hyper-romantic music positively breathes in long lyrical phrases and paragraphs. Nor are excitements lacking: the coda to the Klaus episode fizzes with crazy virtuosity and the final sunrise is as grandly summatory as any.