Before we take our closer look at Gurre-Lieder, I want to think about two performers who make one performance a special case

The ruins of Gurre Castle (as of 2007), in the far northeast of Denmark (on the map Gurre looks like a stone's throw across the water from Sweden) where King Valdemar I is supposed to have tucked away his beautiful, dearly beloved mistress Tove -- until, well, thereupon hangs a tale.

Which we'll get to. Just maybe not right away.

So it begins --


Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, Rafael Kubelik, cond. DG, recorded live in the Kongress-Saal of the Deutsches Museum, Munich, March 9-12, 1965

Staatskapelle Dresden, Giuseppe Sinopoli, cond. Teldec, recorded live in the Semper Oper, August 1995

Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra, Andrew Litton, cond. Live performance from Grieg Hall, in the Bergen International Festival, June 4, 2008

Vienna Symphony Orchestra, Josef Krips, cond. Live performance from the Vienna Festival, in the Vienna Konzerthaus, June 10, 1969

In time, these Gurre-Lieder, or Songs of Gurre, come to Tove's declaration, "Nun sag' ich dir zum ersten Mal, 'König Volmer, ich liebe dich'" (replaying the performances we've already heard) --

Now I say to you for the first time, "King Volmer, I love you."
Now I kiss you for the first time, and fling my arms around you.
And if you were to say I had earlier said it
and ever given you my kiss,
then I say, "The king is a fool,
who recalls vague rubbish."
And if you say, "Indeed I am such a fool,"
then I'll say, "The king is right."
But if you say, "No, I'm not that,"
Then I'll say, "The king is bad."
For I have kissed all my roses to death,
all the while I was thinking of you.

Gundula Janowitz (s), Tove; Vienna Symphony Orchestra, Josef Krips, cond. Live performance from the Vienna Festival, in the Vienna Konzerthaus, June 10, 1969

Jessye Norman (s), Tove; Boston Symphony Orchestra, Seiji Ozawa, cond. Philips, recorded live in Symphony Hall, April 1979

by Ken

Believe it or not, we're making progress, even if it's of a kind of sidewise sort. I remember there was a plan to illustrate the special qualities I hear in the conducting of Josef Krips (1902-1974), which at the time seemed to require nothing more than plucking an abundance of for-instances out of the Sunday Classics Archive. I'm not so good at just-plucking-out, however, and as soon as I started, the project began to grow and shift, especially when I found myself taking a better listen than I have before to a performance I've owned for ages: Krips's 1969 Vienna Festival rendering of Arnold Schoenberg's monumental cantata-oratorio-or-whatever (I'm not aware of a term that begins to cover it), Gurre-Lieder.

At that point it seemed necessary to pause the Krips quick-tour and spend a jot of time with Gurre-Lieder, one of the most arresting and astonishing musical creations I know. No sooner had I set out on that tack (well, maybe many, many hours of toil after I set out on that tack), I realized that before we got to that, it might be useful for me to explain why that particular performance exerted such a fascination for me. Which meant a closer look at conductor Krips and the singer who incarnated King Waldemar's inamorata Tove, which is to say the soprano Gundula Janowitz (born 1937).

Again, I first thought this could be accomplished easily and painlessly by a simple raid of the archives. And probably it could have. But again, my mind doesn't work that way. Soon enough I was back at work crafting whole new sets of audio clips and puzzling out a navigable path through them. And in just a moment we're going to partake of a teasing taste of G.J.


BUT FIRST, BACK TO THE BEGINNING -- OF GURRE-LIEDER

I've already told the story of my connection between Tove's third song and the presentation made at the piano by the late Michael Steinberg, then still music critic of the Boston Globe, to gathered members of the Music Critics Association at Tanglewood the summer that the Boston Symphony under then-music director Seiji Ozawa celebrated the 100th birthday of Arnold Schoenberg with a performance of Gurre-Lieder. As I mentioned, I still see Michael's deep emotion as he sounded the theme of "Nun sag' ich dir zum ersten Mal." And we'll be coming back to it when we take our larger look at the piece.

Before we move on to our Gundula Janowitz tease, I do want to take note of the "new" Gurre-Lieder music we've heard, the magical -- or beyond magical? -- six-minute-plus orchestral introduction, as arresting a musical opener as I know.

I'm not sure I could hope for an account of this music more fully considered and realized than Rafael Kubelik's -- the opening of the first stereo recording of Gurre-Lieder, made at a time when performances of the complete work, with its outsize performing-force requirements and its at first glance bewilderingly wide range of musical styles, while not unknown, were far from common. Nowadays pretty much every orchestra (and combined choral forces) seems to give Gurre-Lieder a go, as is the case with such seemingly superhuman pieces -- superhuman, that is, in the demands they make on both performers and audiences, as Mahler 8, the so-called "Symphony of a Thousand." Recordings are plentiful, and YouTube now overflows with Gurre-Lieder performances. It's become almost a standard-repertory piece.

Even now, though, no Gurre-Lieder conductor I know has outdone Kubelik in his understanding and command of the piece, starting with an introduction, as we've heard, as rich in musical color and texture as we might wish, allowing seemingly effortlessly for the hints of musical glowering that flash as the music progresses, all rendered with a never-forced-sounding yet irresistibly driven sense of forward movement. The stage could hardly be better set for the first Gurre song. Unfortunately there the Kubelik Gurre-Lieder runs into trouble.

Waldemar is an extraordinarily difficult part, calling for a voice of Heldentenor weight that has all the ardor and romance called for in Part I and can also navigate the variety of vocal challenges still to come. I think of it as Tannhäuser-tough, and the singer I wish we could have heard sing it is Lauritz Melchior. I don't think it's entirely a coincidence that the first really fine Waldemar I heard -- first at Tanglewood, then when Seiji and the BSO were able to reschedule it, this time with a Philips recording team on hand in Symphony Hall (for me stil the "basic" Gurre-Lieder recording) -- was also my unexpectedly terrific first live Tannhäuser, James McCracken. And what's true for Tannhäuser is also true for Waldemar: You can't get by with just an "adequate" or "okay" one; it's got to be someone who can really take vocal possession of the music. (We'll be hearing samples of his Waldemar when we return to Gurre-Lieder in, um, the not-too-distant future.)

Sinopoli by contrast feels it necessary to "italicize" the orchestral introduction's delicately shifting moods, which Kubelik gives a feeling of simply allowing to take shape. Still, Sinopoli does what he does so beautifully that I'm not complaining. Then we have Andrew Litton, who seems to have an edge in re-creating this Danish saga on authentically Scandinavian soil, except that that's not what he's interested in doing. Far from imbuing the music with any sort of Nordic chill, he bathes it in a glow that seems more sun- than moon-like. How could I not love it?

Then, of course, there's Krips, about whom all I'm going to say for now is that there' a quality in his performance that for me lifts the introduction above even what Kubelik achieves. I'd be curious to hear if you pick up anything that sets Krips's orchestral introduction apart.


NOW FOR OUR GUNDULA JANOWITZ TEASE

We're in Act I of Tannhäuser: With TANNHÄUSER having freed himself in the opening scene from the grasp of Venus and the hedonistic life of the Venusberg, an instantaneous scene change finds him "standing in a beautiful valley, under a blue sky. In the back is the castle of the Wartburg, and in the distance the Hörselberg. From the hills come sounds of sheep bells."

A YOUNG SHEPHERD:
Lady Holda came down from the mountain
to roam among flowers and meadows;
my ears perceived right merry sounds;
my eyes delighted to see her.
Then I dreamed many a merry dream,
and when my eyes were hardly closed
there beamed forth the warm sunshine,
and May, sweet May was come.
Now I play my merry reed pipe,
for May is come, dear May!
-- translation by William Gann for Capitol Records, ©️1961

Gundula Janowitz (s), A Young Shepherd; Vienna State Opera Orchestra, Herbert von Karajan, cond. ORF broadcast of a live performance, Jan. 8, 1963 (released by DG in 1998)

THEN, A QUARTER-CENTURY LATER, THERE'S THIS:

SCHUBERT: "An die Musik" ("To Music"), D. 547





Gundula Janowitz, soprano; Charles Spencer, piano. Live performance in Milan, 1989

NOTE: We spent much time and heard a heap of performances of "An die Musik" in the August 2018 post " 'An die Musik': How does a musical setting (of a 'not strikingly original' poem) that's 'conventional in every way save for its greatness' achieve that greatness?"

The thing about Janowitz is that her voice wasn't the sort one would expect to fill out, let alone flourish in, a lot of the repertory she sang. It didn't have an abundance of color or tonal shades, but she made it work -- at least for those of us who are susceptible to the basic "grab" of the sound -- in roles you'd think she shouldn't have. For some reason it never occurred to me that Tove might be one of them. It was (I think in her way she holds up to the obvious sumptuousness of Jessye Norman's special vocal endowment -- and she sure sang this music beautifully), and that's what we're going to explore, in probably a pair of posts. I'm thinking of one devoted to her Classical repertory taking us into the Romantic era with Weber's Der Freischütz, and then another focusing on Wagner in particular, but also including a couple of Italian roles.

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