It’s a huge thrill for me to be conducting two works of the Wiener Moderne in such a short space of time, both of which are also passionate responses to the music of Wagner, Strauss and Mahler. One of them is Erich Wolfgang Korngold’s opera VIOLANTA, written when he was eighteen and which builds on the soundscape of a Richard Strauss without challenging tonality. The other is Schönberg’s epic song cycle, »Gurre-Lieder«, which is likewise fully rooted in tonality. Schönberg’s brilliant command of harmonies is riveting, as is his masterly instrumentation for the humungous orchestra. That places him in the tradition of Richard Wagner, albeit with him creating his very own sound.

Schönberg worked on »Gurre-Lieder« between 1900 and 1903 and then shelved the cycle before resuming and finishing it between 1910 and 1911. During the lay-over he had swerved into atonality, viewing himself as a »conservative revolutionary«, as he put it. For him radical innovation was not an end in itself but stood on the shoulders of Bach, Beethoven, Brahms and was part of a process of »evolving variation«. For Schönberg atonality was only the latest in a series of necessary steps.

So »Gurre-Lieder« gets us wondering what direction Schönberg’s music might have taken if he hadn’t broken with tonality. That said, the Schönberg of the future can already be discerned – for example in the flight of melodrama shortly before the end, when he employs sprechgesang, a technique that he himself had coined and which he was soon to use in his »Pierrot lunaire«. Yet hard on the heels of this comes the thumping choral finale, old and new in juxtaposition. Schönberg’s genius consists in his ability to blend and combine the two styles. »Gurre-Lieder« is a fusion of multiple sub-genres: is it a song cycle, an oratorio, an opera, a chamber symphony? There’s a bit of everything in there. And in its own way the work is very much more than the sum of its parts.

The songs tell a love story and as such can be seen as grand music drama in fin-de-siècle spirit. We have King Waldemar’s unconditional love for the young Tove, his »Wood Dove«, who is murdered by his jealous wife. Waldemar curses God and after his death is condemned to roam the land with the shades of his dead followers. Schönberg uses a huge orchestra, two large choruses and six soloists to convey the drama of the events. The result is one of the greatest works of the concert-music canon.

Danish writer Jens Peter Jacobsen: He wrote the poems for the ‘Gurre-Songs’, a tragic love story about a Nordic king and his secret lover © Alamy Stock

 

I should say, though, that if you’ve conducted operas like Berlioz’s LES TROYENS, Messiaen’s SAINT FRANÇOIS D’ASSISE or the 2nd movement in GÖTTERDÄMMERUNG, as I have, and have ridden their heaving bodies of sound, it does put the challenge of »Gurre-Lieder« in perspective. And they all have lovely, quiet sections that have to be done with great delicacy and finesse.

My first contact with »Gurre-Lieder« was very early in my career. When I was young, I was on a total Wagner trip and got hold of all the recordings I could that had anything at all to do with his world of music. Then I saw an amazing production by Claudio Abbado in Vienna, which made a huge impression on me. I first conducted »Gurre-Lieder« in 2002, at the BBC Proms, and then again at the Edinburgh Festival in 2016. And now I’m so chuffed, in my last season as General Music Director of the Deutsche Oper Berlin, to be conducting the work in the Philharmonie. The drama of the storyline very much lends itself to being performed in an opera house, especially considering the amazing resources of the Deutsche Oper Berlin: the ensemble, the chorus (bolstered here by the Rundfunkchor Berlin) and an orchestra that has the German-language Late Romantic repertoire stamped into its DNA, thanks in part to our collaborations over the years. It’s a real joy to be conducting »Gurre-Lieder« as a way of rounding off our work together.