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'Wiederentdeckte Musik' in Vienna: Schreker at the Jewish Museum, Schreker, Braunfels and Zemlinsky at the Volksoper, Korngold at the Staatsoper, from October 2004

Reviewed by Lloyd Moore
posted 9 August 2005

It has taken some time for Austria in general and Vienna in particular to embrace what has become generically known as ‘Entartete Musik’ (‘Degenerate Music’), a randomly pejorative term invented by Nazi politicians primarily to denigrate works of Jewish authorship and thus completely spurious as a musico-historical concept – but the label seems to have stuck. Perhaps mindful of the negative connotations implied by this label, the Vienna Volksoper has, under the bold initiative of the current dramaturg Birgit Meyer, presented four major works last season under the alternative heading of ‘Wiederentdeckte Musik’ (‘Rediscovered Music’): new productions of Schreker’s Irrelohe and Emmerich Kálmán’s operetta Die Herzogin von Chicago (‘The Duchess of Chicago’), as well as revivals of Zemlinsky’s Der König Kandaules (‘King Kandaules’) and Braunfels’ Die Vögel (‘The Birds’). During the same period, the Wiener Staatsoper staged Korngold’s Die tote Stadt, a co-production first seen at last year’s Salzburg Festival. These performances have neatly coincided with the opening of a major exhibition – curated by Michael Haas, chairman of the International Centre for Suppressed Music, and Christopher Hailey of the Franz Schreker Foundation – entitled FranzSchreker: Grenzgänge, Grenzklänge (‘Sound Frontiers, Border Crossings’). This is the second in a series of ground-breaking exhibitions mounted by Vienna ’s Jewish Museum examining the effects of Nazi cultural policies on Austria ’s Jewish composers and musicians during the 1930s and 1940s. The first, which opened in November 2003, devoted to exiled composers Hans Gál and Egon Wellesz, was a notable success, attracting some 8,000 visitors. Although Schreker himself was not exiled – indeed, he died before he could carry out his plans for emigration (one of the more touching of the exhibition’s artefacts is a notebook in which Schreker is clearly trying to teach himself English) – there can be no doubt that intrigue and anti-Semitic prejudice contributed to his premature death as the result of a stroke in March 1934 at the age of 55. This exhibition traced a chronological overview of Schreker’s life and career, using his eight mature operas, his most significant compositional legacy, as the principal cornerstones and supports.

One of the prime concerns of anyone mounting an exhibition of this nature is to decide at what level to pitch it. This exhibition seemed to strike a successful balance between engaging those knowledgeable of the composer and others coming to him for the first time (whom, we must assume, account for a large proportion of visitors). Haas and Hailey have uncovered a wealth of new information, particularly concerning Schreker’s childhood and early years, helping to round out this hitherto sketchy area of the composer’s life. In addition, there is an audio guide containing spoken commentary and musical examples (including recordings of Schreker conducting his own works) and a fascinating accompanying catalogue, generously filled with newly commissioned articles and including two full-length CDs. The exhibition ran in Vienna until 24 April, after which it travelled to Salzburg in time for the annual summer Festival’s new production of the opera Die Gezeichneten, an event that will hopefully further cement this composer’s growing reputation.

The 1994 CD recording of Walter Braunfels’ Die Vögel – first performed in Munich in 1920 under Bruno Walter – was one of the highlights of Decca’s now sadly discontinued ‘Entartete Musik’ series. The libretto takes as its basis the Aristophanes comedy The Birds: two men, Hoffegut and Ratefreund, have left the unenlightened world of humans behind to seek fulfilment in the kingdom of the birds. On arrival, they find the avian residents in a demoralised state – once fêted and honoured by man, they are now treated as mere prey and carrion. In order to restore their pride and dignity, Ratefreund suggests erecting a city between earth and the heavens, thus starving the gods of the sacrificial smoke they depend on for survival. The birds would thus once more become rulers of the air. When the task of building is completed, Prometheus appears to warn the birds of the wrath of Zeus. When they take no heed, Zeus sends a mighty storm crashing and the city is destroyed. Humbled, the birds sing the praises of the all-powerful God. As a background presence to this is the mythological story of Prokne, who on discovering that her husband King Tereus has been unfaithful with her own sister Philomene, kills their son Ithys and serves him up for the king to eat. Just as Tereus is about to kill Prokne in revenge, the gods turn him into a hoopoe, Philomene into a wren and Prokne into a nightingale. This aspect of the story is only vaguely touched on in Braunfels’ self-penned libretto, but was a constant subtext running through Claes Fellbom’s enchanting Volksoper production. The wonderful Act Two ballet music, for instance, originally designed to accompany a dove’s wedding, was instead given over to a mimed re-enactment of the legend. The cast was particularly strong, Jowita Sip’s flirty and coquettish portrayal of the Wren being a particular delight. Unfortunately, however, the performance I attended was seriously compromised by the fact that the soprano singing the part of the Nightingale was having some kind of problem and the entire opening scene of Act Two (some twenty minutes of music) had to be cut. Well, these things happen and I’m sure the poor girl was as disappointed as I was. That said, this was a hugely enjoyable and at times genuinely moving production that has evidently caught the local opera-going public’s imagination. Sadly, this popular success was not reflected in the condescendingly dismissive reviews of the Viennese music press. They really ought to know better. Die Vögel is a truly marvellous score packed with more glorious music than anyone can reasonably expect.

Compared to Braunfels, whose star is only just beginning to emerge over the horizon, Alexander Zemlinsky might appear to have already joined the select company of the Chosen Few. After all, several of his works are now in the standard repertoire, a full-length biography has been written, his scores are being republished and virtually all of his works are now recorded, many of them in competing versions. Yet one still finds him referred to in concert programmes, CD booklets and the like as an ‘unjustly neglected’ figure, a cliché to be sure, but an indication nonetheless that in terms of a more general public awareness, he still has a long way to go. His eighth opera, Der König Kandaules, was completed in vocal score but only partially orchestrated before being abandoned during the upheavals of the late 1930s and the composer’s subsequent emigration to the USA . The Zemlinsky scholar Antony Beaumont undertook the completion of the instrumentation in the 1990s, since when the work has gone on to enjoy a number of high-profile stagings including a highly acclaimed production at the 2002 Salzburg Festival. The composer’s own libretto is based on a story by André Gide: King Kandaules and the fisherman Gyges have been friends since childhood. During a royal banquet held in honour of Nyssia, Kandaules’ beautiful queen, one of the guests nearly swallows a ring buried in a huge golden carp laid on for the feast. Gyges is summoned to explain the strange find. The ring possesses magic properties which make its wearer invisible. Kandaules offers Gyges the ultimate token of his friendship, a night of love with Nyssia, though he must wear the ring to conceal his identity. The following day, when Nyssia tells of the best sex she’s ever experienced, Gyges, plagued with guilt, confesses all and begs the queen to kill him. Nyssia demands that, instead, it is Kandaules that should die. Gyges reluctantly complies and is proclaimed King. It is a somewhat obscure tale, heavily symbolic, that requires exceptional directorial clarity if it is to be fully understood. Unfortunately, Hans Neuenfels’ production did not exactly aid comprehension by introducing a number of frustratingly irrelevant ideas, the gay wedding ceremony accompanying the orchestral prelude to Act Two being one of the most baffling. This production has been a successful staple of the Volksoper’s repertoire for a number of years now, but does rather show signs of having run its natural course: none of the principals seemed completely engaged and Kurt Schreibmayer as Kandaules seemed strained in the upper register. Nevertheless, it was fascinating to hear this work which contains much exquisite music (the bedroom scene of Act Two is particularly ravishing). Beaumont has unquestionably done a magnificent job and the completed score adds immeasurably to our knowledge and understanding of Zemlinsky.

Of all the so-called ‘entartet’ composers, it is Erich Wolfgang Korngold who has undoubtedly enjoyed the most widespread revival, almost on a scale comparable to the Mahler renaissance of the 1960s. The popular appeal is understandable: it is ‘well-composed’ in every way, displaying high levels of craftsmanship, melodically tuneful with a firmly diatonic yet rich harmonic language and always impeccably and colourfully scored. Yet the idiom (as with, it must be said, that of the other composers under discussion here) is still hard to take for those with hang-ups about inherited notions of what constitutes twentieth-century musical ‘progress’. History is, of course, not nearly as simple as a modernist proselytiser such as Pierre Boulez would have us believe and in our pluralist, post-modern age in which these assumptions have been challenged, one can view Korngold and his contemporaries’ achievements from a broader and more sympathetic historical perspective. Die tote Stadt is, of course, now no longer a novelty, its repertoire status cemented by the runaway success the work has enjoyed in Vienna last year with every performance sold out and the announcement that the work will join the repertory on a permanent basis forthwith. The demand for tickets meant queuing for several hours in advance in order to be even guaranteed a place in the standing-room area, but it was worth the wait. The story is adapted from Georges Rodenbach’s novel Bruges-la-morte. Paul has been living in Bruges for years, alone but for his housekeeper, trying to come to terms with the loss of his wife Marie. When he meets the actress/dancer Marietta , he is so struck by the resemblance to his dead wife that he seems to imagine it is actually her restored to life, a case of blind wishful thinking reinforced in this remarkable production by Willy Decker. Marie’s portrait on the wall, for example, bore hardly any resemblance to Marietta at all, but that is, of course, just the point. In times of emotional crisis, we see what we want to believe. Throughout, the staging was full of strong and imaginative ideas that, while sometimes oddly surreal were, given that much of the action takes place within the irrational context of a dream, never less than apt and convincing. Musically, however, the performance was, for me at least, less compelling: the vocal performances of Stephen Gould and Angela Denoke as Paul and Marietta seemed underpowered and the orchestral playing rather generalised and lacking in weight. My reservations, however, were clearly not shared by the majority of the packed-Staatsoper audience who enthusiastically cheered the work to the rafters.

It was back to the Volksoper for a performance of Schreker’s Irrelohe, a work receiving its first staging in Austria and only the second production anywhere since Schreker’s lifetime, when, after the premiere in Cologne in 1924 under Otto Klemperer, changing fashions and rising anti-Schreker (or more accurately, anti-Semitic) feeling meant that it had the briefest of runs before falling into obscurity. I have to confess that I approached the Volksoper that particular evening with some misgivings. Having got to know the work only from a very inadequate CD recording, my general impression had been far from favourable. Much of it sounded coarse and overblown, a classic case of laying on the bombast to mask a paucity of truly striking and memorable ideas. It was a tribute to the standards of the Volksoper that not only was I forced to drastically revise this opinion, but came away convinced that, on the contrary, this was one of Schreker’s most underestimated scores. And I was naturally unprepared for the sheer impact that the work has in the theatre. The story revolves around the curse surrounding the castle Irrelohe which for generations has led each of its inhabitants to commit acts of sexual violence. Thirty years have passed since Lola, now an old woman, was ravished by the then residing lord during the celebrations for her own wedding. Peter, her offspring, is unaware of his parentage. He learns the truth from Christobald, Lola’s erstwhile groom, who has now returned seeking vengeance. Peter’s sweetheart Eva is both afraid of and magnetically drawn to Count Heinrich, the current occupant of the castle. In a long and ecstatic duet, the two declare their love, but Heinrich, determined to tame his violent instincts, refuses to give in to his desires until they are properly wed. During the wedding festivities, Peter, now under the influence of the hereditary madness, attempts to force himself upon Eva but is overcome and strangled by Heinrich just as Christobald sends the castle up in flames. Heinrich is mortified by his killing of his own brother but is strengthened by Eva’s love and the couple look forward to a new and brighter future together.

In the context of Schreker’s output as a whole, Irrelohe is a curiously Janus-faced work: on the one hand, the lush harmonic language and huge performing apparatus place it firmly in the line of the famous operas that preceded it: Der ferne Klang, Die Gezeichneten and Der Schatzgräber. On the other, there is a notably freer use of dissonance and a conscious use of contrapuntal devices such as canon and fugue that point forward to the more severe, linear textures of the later operas Der singende Teufel, Christophorus and Der Schmied von Gent. At times, it comes very close to the sound-world of Alban Berg and Wozzeck in particular (a work, incidentally, which is significantly indebted to Schreker), though one must remember that Irrelohe was completed some three years before the premiere of Berg’s masterpiece. Oliver Tambosi’s production was, as with Der König Kandaules, occasionally marred by some silly-cheap ideas, such as the gratuitous (and these days, hardly shocking) appearance of three stark naked adolescent girls near the start of the Second Act – its dramatic significance was anyone’s guess. But in general, the staging was remarkable for its potently stark and sombre atmosphere, the perfect counterpart to Schreker’s dark, brooding score. Schreker’s mastery of his vast forces never ceases to astonish and the Volksoper orchestra under Dietfried Bernet responded to the eruptive, seething orchestral writing in playing of white-hot (if occasionally over-emphatic) intensity. There were few weak links in the cast, too: Lola (Anne Gjevang) looked and behaved as a woman permanently scarred from her ordeal, while Peter (Wolfgang Koch) was thoroughly convincing in his gradual deterioration into insanity – his distracted air-conducting of the offstage wedding music in the Third Act was a particularly effective touch. The final conflagration provided a tremendous dénouement with Christobald and his three sinister accomplices (dressed as clowns) liberally dousing everything and everyone with petrol while red confetti showered down from above. It was a fitting culmination to a work and indeed a whole week that had been full of memorable moments and surprises.

One can only hope that the success of the Vienna opera houses’ enterprise in presenting these works will encourage other of the major performing institutions to do likewise. For not only is the best of this music worthy of revival in itself, it sheds valuable new light on a musical epoch of exceptional range and depth whose richness and diversity we are only just beginning to explore.

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