The irresistible beauty of Gurre-Lieder

On September 13, 16 and 17 at La Scala, Riccardo Chailly conducts Arnold Schoenberg's Gurre-Lieder, a gigantic score of extremely rare performance with challenging solo parts and large sound masses. In 1899, at 25, Schoenberg was attracted to the German translation (published in 1897) of “Songs of Gurre” by the Dane Jens Peter Jacobsen (1847-1885). Back then, his language partook in the complex events of post-Wagnerian tonality, so much so that years later (in 1912) he could proclaim in the Gurre-Lieder that his self was presented “in aspects which later I either no longer demonstrated, or I did so on another basis.”

Gurre is the name of the castle where Tove, the woman loved by King Waldemar and killed by the poison of his jealous wife, lives. The affair of love and death that occupies the first part of Gurre-Lieder is followed in the short second part by Waldemar's rebellion against God and in the third part by the evocation (also through the voices of a peasant and the jester Klaus) of the nightly “wild hunt” to which the rebellious king and his knights are doomed. Eventually the sunrise dispels the nightmare. Schoenberg conceived the entire cantata compositionally between 1900 and 1901, but in 1903 he interrupted the instrumentation at the beginning of the third part. He resumed it and finished it in 1910-11. The first performance was conducted by Franz Schreker in Vienna on February 23, 1913, to triumphant acclaim. At La Scala, Gurre-Lieder is being performed for the second time, more than half a century after their premiere in 1973 with Zubin Mehta on the podium. Chailly conducted it in the 1980s with the RAI Milan ensembles (joined by the RAI Rome Chorus) and then in 1985 in Berlin.

PAOLO PETAZZI Almost 40 years have passed since the recording, in May-June 1985, of Gurre-Lieder in Berlin, with the Radio Orchestra, where you, as a very young man, had become conductor, in your first permanent post. Have you not conducted it since then?
RICCARDO CHAILLY I conducted it again with the Concertgebouw Orchestra in February 2024, because they wanted to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the first performance in Amsterdam conducted by Schoenberg. They had not performed Gurre-Lieder at the Concertgebouw in 100 years. And now I am very pleased to bring it back to La Scala on September 13, on the exact day that marks the 150th anniversary of Schoenberg's birth.

PP After a long absence...
RC Gurre-Lieder returns to La Scala after 51 years. I had heard it with Mehta in 1973. After this first sensation, I conducted it with the RAI ensembles in Milan in the 1980s, which involved the RAI Chorus in Rome, before returning to conduct and record it in Berlin. So, the September concerts at La Scala will be the fourth time for me, after Amsterdam, after a long interval. It is an absolutely dazzling, extraordinary score, and I really enjoyed restudying it from scratch and starting from the beginning. At La Scala, the concert is part of a Schoenbergian journey that began in May with Verklärte Nacht (along with the three fragments from Berg's Wozzeck and Webern's Passacaglia), and that after the Gurre-Lieder will continue in October 2025 with the Variations Op. 31 and A Survivor from Warsaw. A pursuit I cherish in this sesquicentennial year.

PP What soloists are we going to hear?
RC Some of the same ones I had a few months ago in Amsterdam. At La Scala I also will have a very good Tove, Camilla Nylund, and Waldemar will be Andreas Schager. The acting voice will be Michael Volle, who will also play the part of the Peasant, and the mezzo-soprano, the Dove of the Woods, will be Okka von der Damerau.

PP I remember that in Berlin, and in the recording, there was a wonderful Brigitte Fassbaender...
RC ...and there was Siegfried Jerusalem, at the height of his career in the Heldentenor repertoire, and as voice actor in the penultimate episode, in the “The Summer Wind's Wild Hunt,” there was old Hans Hotter, who had studied Schoenberg's Sprechgesang admirably.

PP Which is earlier, and different, than the famous Pierrot lunaire.
RC But it is already present in Gurre-Lieder, which was a huge success in Vienna in 1913, conducted by Schreker. Schoenberg, however, abhorred the acclaim of a Viennese audience, which had poorly received his music in previous years. Let us not forget that on March 31, 1913, a little more than a month after the triumph of Gurre-Lieder, protests from the audience caused Schoenberg to interrupt a concert devoted to music by him, Webern and Berg, after the performance of two of Berg's Altenberg Lieder. One can well understand Schoenberg's apathetic reaction to the triumph of the Gurre-Lieder, and one can hardly blame him. But the piece is so great that it transcends everything and arouses great emotions. In all the performances I have conducted I have seen that this music leads to a real collective rapture.

PP Despite its complexity, you can feel in its compositional conception that it was written in a spur-of-the-moment manner, although the late completion of the instrumentation meant that the genesis of the score spanned 11 years. But what is the effect on the conductor of the stylistic change in the instrumentation, in the parts that were orchestrated after 1903, in 1910-11, after the break with tonality and after the originality and radicalism of works such as the Pieces for Orchestra Op. 16 or Erwartung?
RC The stylistic change is evident, but I perceive it as natural. I have no preconceptions about the language itself evolving. Even Schoenberg said he went in a new direction but without denying anything. There is a letter to Kandinsky (dated September 28, 1913) in which he mentions Gurre-Lieder, reiterating that he does not despise it at all. He adds, “For although I have certainly developed very much since those days, I have not improved, but my style has simply got better, so that I can further develop what I already had to say then...” In its greatness, Gurre-Lieder remain a tonal score. Certainly, the orchestra in some sections, such as the reciting voice episode, and before that in Klaus Narr's (Klaus the jester) part, is far ahead of what precedes. But everything happens extremely logically and naturally. I never felt the fracture, the evolution of the piece is very logical.

PP Schoenberg himself in a letter to Berg in January 1913 claims, “It must be seen that the part instrumented in 1910 and 11 is quite different from the first and second parts in the style of instrumentation. I had no intention of hiding it. On the contrary. It is obvious that ten years later I instrument differently.”
RC You can hear this even in the Finale, which likewise no longer has the almost chamber concert character of the pages that immediately precede. When the door opens to C major in the Finale, with the evocation of the sunrise, the whole orchestra and the whole chorus unite in a cathartic dimension; but the symphonic writing is complicated, highly articulated, and it never contains anything predictable or obvious. In any case, beyond the irresistible beauty of the music, its strong tonal basis has likely contributed to its success.

PP And, beyond the complexity of Schoenberg's thought, one can always sense his expressive power, which is spring-like in nature.
RC The account of the deepest emotions is impressive, already in the first part, it is outstanding. It was already a revolution. It is very difficult to direct, because the overall ensemble has a very evolved writing, which is difficult to master.

PP Have you ever conducted Lied der Waldtaube (Song of the Wood Dove) in the version with the reduced orchestra?
RC I have been asked several times. But I got to know this piece within the complete opera, and I don't feel like separating it. It is of extraordinary emotional and dramatic force. Think of those percussion strokes, the words “tot ist Tove,” announcing that Tove is dead. The quality of the music is immense, but I prefer to direct it within the trajectory where it belongs.

PP This answer perhaps makes the next question superfluous. Is there anything you favour, or intend to dwell on, throughout the course of Gurre-Lieder?
RC I am most fit for the third part, but from the opening 6/4 to the end, everything seems so full of surprises, including the flicker of genius of Klaus Narr's humour, that my admiration goes to the whole score.

 

Paolo Petazzi
Translation by Alexa Ahern