In the early '20s,
Franz Schreker was one of the best-known composers in the world. His music was suppressed by the Nazis because he was Jewish, and due to the High Modernism of the postwar period, a second totalitarianism, his reputation did not recover. This was a shame, for
Schreker was anything but a conservative, and it is good to see that he is finally getting his due. What he needed at this point was a high-profile recording with top soloists, and that is exactly what he gets here from
Christoph Eschenbach and the
Konzerthausorchester Berlin, with soprano
Chen Reiss and baritone
Matthias Goerne.
Deutsche Grammophon's PR text refers to "
Schreker's sumptuous, hyper-Romantic music," but this is not quite right.
Schreker could sometimes be that, as in the
Romantische Suite that closes the album, but Straussian late Romanticism was only one of his influences. In terms of using tone color as a structural element,
Schreker was in every way a contemporary of
Schoenberg (his close friend) and
Webern.
Eschenbach's generous selection of orchestral songs here provides a good way to appreciate this quality; sample
Die Dunkelheit sinkt schwer wie Blei from the
Fuenf Gesaenge, with its mysterious strumming-like sounds. The text of that song is from a German translation of the Thousand and One Nights anthology, and
Reiss sounds great in the
Zwei lyrische Gesaenge to texts (in German) by, of all people,
Walt Whitman.
Schreker could be neoclassic (in the economical
Kleine Suite); he could be Impressionist-tinged; he mastered a full Expressionist idiom in the opera that gives the album its
title, represented here by a substantial instrumental excerpt. This double-album release conveys the breadth of
Schreker's musical language, but he is never blankly eclectic. A wonderful album that will help to rewrite the 20th century canon. ~ James Manheim
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