Schoenberg: Die Glückliche Hand
Soloists
Philharmonia Orchestra
Robert Craft
Schoenberg’s 3rd string quartet was on my list of the pieces I never wanted to hear after last year’s 365 project. So I wasn’t particularly looking forward to opera. I think that I might have heard it years ago as a student when I did listen to a fair amount of Schoenberg but if I did then I didn’t remember it.
Perhaps surprisingly I found it a fascinating piece. It belongs to that period where Schoenberg was exploring the possibilities of expressionism and atonality before he (at least in my view) took a disastrous wrong term with the arid late serial works. It is the actual sound of the piece which most attractive. Schoenberg conjures up a huge variety of fascinating textures from his large orchestra and his semi-chorus of 12 solo voices. As is so often the case with the second Viennese school and their followers it is the quieter music that makes the greatest impression. Somehow when they unleash the full orchestral resources in fortissimo passages the subtleties disappears and there is some coarseness.
The piece does however demonstrate again what I think of as Schoenberg’s Achilles Heel - his lack of rhythm. The music often seems to get stuck and the composer doesn’t have the means to create momentum. Obviously in atonal music there is no harmonic rhythm or resolution of dissonance to drive things forward and Schoenberg hadn’t found an alternative. Ultimately that is to me why his music is still so difficult to appreciate , even if, like this piece, it has much of real interest.
This opera must be almost unperformable. It only lasts 20 mins or so but demands not only a huge orchestra but also 12 solo chorus singers capable to singing the most difficult chromatic music. Furthermore it requires an sizeable offstage instrumental group which plays for all of (I think) 8 bars.
That’s not going to win it any popularity prizes among opera administrations.
