Accepting the ‘Gurrelieder’ Challenge

“You’ll be pleasantly surprised. I promise you. It has melodies , really gorgeous ones--like Brahms and Tchaikovsky.”

The foregoing generic sales pitch for non-frightening works by frightening composers may not be particularly effective, but you have to keep trying, right? And you can never get away with such a bluntly passionate exhortation as: “Forget the composer’s name! Just listen!”

We’re talking about the likes of the young Arnold Schoenberg’s schmaltzy “Verklarte Nacht.” Or consider, as we will, his massive, lyrically resplendent--by any measure, not only that of the composer’s later, less audience-friendly creations--dramatic cantata, “Gurrelieder.” Additional problems exist with the latter in that it is fearsomely difficult to sing and play.

One might think that performance problems would more readily be resolved in the studio, but that has not proved the case with past “Gurrelieder” recordings or in two new, often impressive entries.

The major stumbling block to a successful “Gurrelieder” is filling the central tenor role of the love-and-death-obsessed King Waldemar, for which the composer unreasonably demands the strength and sensuality of Wagner’s Tristan (find someone who can even pull that off today), complemented by the pristine grace of Mozart’s Tamino.

London’s new recording (430 321, two CDs) has in Siegfried Jerusalem the closest we are likely to come nowadays to such a paragon. He is at once secure and strong, if not quite heroic, and touchingly gentle.

Paul Frey, his competitor in Denon’s edition (81757 9066, two CDs), offers less pleasing timbre, and the difficulties he encounters at both extremes of the range make listening to him a chore, particularly in the ecstatic opening pages.

Waldemar’s music rises out of and expands on the most lusciously melodic, gorgeously orchestrated material imaginable.

For London, it is left to Jerusalem to create the appropriately otherworldly mood, since his conductor, Riccardo Chailly, seems intent largely on maintaining mobility and the cohesiveness of his Berlin Radio Symphony, which plays well, if with little soloistic individuality.

On Denon, conductor Eliahu Inbal provides a suitably misty, dynamically subtle framework in the opening pages, sensitively played by the Frankfurt Radio Symphony. But with the entry of Frey’s workaday tenor, the magic is dissipated.

Chailly ultimately produces a solid, if occasionally brusque, entity. His soprano soloist, Susan Dunn, rides the orchestral climaxes with a voice that is focused and unusually sweet for an instrument of such amplitude, although more dramatic heat would have been welcome. Mezzo Brigitte Fassbaender delivers an expressive “Song of the Wood Dove.”

For Inbal, who provides the more characterful overall interpretation, soprano Elizabeth Connell’s tones, often attacked from below, are so fluttery as to sound at times like slow trills, while Jard van Nes’ mezzo is at least a size too small and a shade too bright for the Wood Dove’s lament.

Intoning the concluding section’s hypnotic, literally melodramatic invocation to the summer wind--to some listeners the death knell of tonality, if not the end of Romantic music--Inbal’s Hans Franzen is rough and commonplace beside Hans Hotter’s sophisticated theatricality for Chailly.

And in the secondary parts of Klaus the Fool and the superstitious Peasant, London’s pair--tenor Peter Haage and bass Roland Becht--are marginally more persuasive than their Denon counterparts.

Another tangible difference between these ambitious productions is the sonic ambience favored by the respective labels. London’s sound, close-to and overbright, unnaturally separates the singers from their cushioning orchestral context. Denon’s warm, less focused sonics mesh soloists and orchestra, in keeping with the score’s implicit demands.

Where does this leave us regarding a choice?

It may hardly sound like a ringing endorsement, but there is less that is palpably “wrong” in the London. It may not set a lofty, unchallengeable standard, but to these ears it is the most satisfying recorded “Gurrelieder” to date, including several currently unavailable LP versions that may eventually show up on CD.

The only other currently available CD edition is Philips’, dating from the late ‘70s. It is listlessly conducted by Seiji Ozawa and ultimately done in by James McCracken’s brutal Waldemar.

Note, however, that a Sony production, recently recorded during Zubin Mehta’s farewell performances with the New York Philharmonic, is scheduled for release later this year.

Of related interest: There’s a strong new “Verklarte Nacht,” in its original string sextet scoring, from the Berlin Soloists, members of the Berlin Philharmonic (Teldec 46277). The imaginative, handsomely executed program also includes Wagner’s “Siegfried Idyll,” the string sextet from Richard Strauss’ “Capriccio” and a couple of rarities, Liszt’s touching little “At Wagner’s Grave” and the “Lyrical Andante” of Max Reger.