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Music Preview: The symphony unwraps the season with Schoenberg's epic piece More than 300 musicians and singers will fill the stage when the Pittsburgh Symphony opens with Schoenberg's "Gurrelieder" Friday, September 17, 1999 By Caroline Abels, Post-Gazette Cultural Arts Writer
The Viennese of 1913 got a big surprise when they first heard "Gurrelieder," the massive choral piece that Pittsburgh will hear for the first time this weekend.
They'd been expecting the worst. Like many music lovers of today, some Viennese hated the music of Arnold Schoenberg, who pioneered atonality and set 20th-century music on a course that would keep it out of most concert halls this century.
The Viennese instead wanted the melodic and harmonious music they were used to -- the music of Chopin, Mozart, Brahms -- and they arrived at the concert poised to cause a scene.
But when the gargantuan orchestra delved into "Gurrelieder," the Vienna audience was overcome. According to a Berlin magazine of the time that was cited in the liner notes of a recent recording, "people had tear-flooded faces" by the end of the performance "and expressed their gratefulness with more warmth and endurance than they usually do on a successful first night: they seemed to apologize."
Get ready to say sorry to Arnold Schoenberg.
When the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra and The Mendelssohn Choir of Pittsburgh perform "Gurrelieder" tonight and Sunday in Heinz Hall, audiences will hear lush, captivating and harmonic music. Granted, most of Schoenberg's music is not like this, but this is because the composer began work on the cantata in 1900, before he embraced atonality, a style of music that avoids resolution into a single "key" and fails to create traditional harmony.
He abandoned the piece in 1901 but returned to it roughly 10 years later. He had "gone atonal" by then, but decided to complete the piece in the Romantic style.
While the music of "Gurrelieder" takes after Wagner, the story line -- to be led by superstar singers Ben Heppner and Jennifer Larmore -- is essentially operatic: two adulterous lovers are torn apart when the woman is killed by the jealous wife-queen and the man is condemned to wander the countryside with ghosts. (Surtitles will appear on screens in Heinz Hall so the audience can follow the story.)
"Gurrelieder" is also loud. It calls for an expanded orchestra and a huge chorus, which is why it is rarely performed. In fact, the backstage staff at Heinz Hall has been trying for months to figure out how to fit the 142 musicians, 163-member chorus and soloists on the hall's relatively small stage.
Related article:
The two tenors: Ben Heppner and Ernst Haefliger are voices above the crowd in 'Gurrelieder'
"It's been creative," Rocky Esposito, the hall's technical director, said of the process.
For one, the risers on which the musicians usually sit had to be removed for space reasons. That required the raising of PSO conductor Mariss Jansons' podium so that musicians in the back rows could see him. And the movable back wall of the stage was pushed back to create more stage space.
To make matters more challenging, the PSO has had only a week to pull the complex piece together. Orchestra members were off last week, recuperating from the European tour that ended the week before, so extra rehearsals were crammed into this week's schedule.
But musicians say the effort has been worth it. Robert Page, music director of the Mendelssohn Choir, said there's only one word to describe the piece: grandeur.
"People don't know that this is romantic, sensual music," Page said. "If people heard it they'd absolutely plotz -- that's Yiddish for 'explode.' "
Jansons, the one who has to hold everything together when the lights go down, is the one who suggested the PSO tackle "Gurrelieder." Not only did he lead the Oslo Philharmonic Orchestra in a performance of it, it is an effusive, romantic and arresting work, the kind of music Jansons embraces.
Jansons has said that "Gurrelieder" is close to his heart, and that half the weight of the season is riding on the success of this weekend's performances.
Gideon Toeplitz, managing director of the PSO, acknowledged that "Gurrelieder" is "economically very demanding," given the need for strong marketing (this is Schoenberg, remember) and extra musicians, some of whom have come from out of town to play the piece this weekend. But he said he understands Jansons' strong desire to oversee the Pittsburgh debut of the piece.
"I can think of a few colleagues of mine who would not do it," Toeplitz said. "But Mariss Jansons is the music director and it is his prerogative."
The Philadelphia Orchestra is also offering the piece this year, both in Philadelphia and at New York City's Carnegie Hall. Toeplitz said he'd hoped to bring the PSO's production to Carnegie Hall, but the Philadelphia won out.
A Schoenberg festival at Bard College this summer also featured a performance of "Gurrelieder" -- ironic, given that Schoenberg didn't even consider the piece to be pure Schoenberg.
Rather, the composer was indifferent to the success of his early work, saying, in an eerie premonition: "I could see very well that this success would not have any influence on the fortune of my later works."
A block party outside Heinz Hall will precede tonight's 8 p.m. concert. It will celebrate the start of the PSO's season by featuring German-inspired finger foods, an open bar, music and contests. After the concert, Mariss Jansons will sign CDs at Curtain Call, the PSO's new store across from Heinz Hall. Pre-concert activities will also take place before Sunday's 2:30 p.m. concert.
Tonight's concert will be broadcast live on WQED (89.3 FM) beginning at 7:30.
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With: The Mendelsohn Choir of Pittsburgh.