Mercury Living Presence Stereo 1962
On The Absolute Sounds Superdisc List.
Mercury SR90278: Here we have orchestral excerpts, along with an occasional bit from the soprano, from two operatic masterpieces of the past hundred years. Both of these suites were composed and presented more or less as marketing ploys to raise interest in staging the operas, and so their life as legitimate concert works might be questioned. The vocals are so much a part of the texture that their absence yields an entirely different aural and dramatic encounter. We need only compare our experience of the first two orchestral movements of the Lulu-Suite with the third movement, which adds a vocal part; or the Suite as a whole to the first few minutes of the opera, if you really want a jolt.
Wozzeck is the quintessential 20th century opera. The angst of its protagonist: his impotence in terms of social status and ambition (small that it is) and his subsequent murderous passion leading to his becoming his own victim; the poignant romanticism of its orchestration and harmonic language; and the directness of its text all conspire to paint a portrait of our times, of what Western Civilized Man was then and was to become for the next eight decades. The Three Excerpts don't really do the opera justice for several reasons, but then they don't mean to be a Reader's Digest version of events. Its brevity; the absence of the male singers; and the omission of the text here and there, even within the scenes excerpted — those elements will be missed if you know the work only in its operatic form. That said, this is achingly awesome music, and not to be missed.
Dorati had distinguished himself in the previous decade as the century's premiere ballet conductor, and would go on to conduct Haydn's 100+ symphonies for Decca. (An achievement like unto that of Peter Jackson's in directing The Lord of the Rings trilogy — no, better). He is amazing here. He gets the textures just right, letting in lots of light through the lush orchestration, yet never falling too much in love with sound for its own sake. Berg's music sings even without the voice. Importantly, Dorati finds a dramatic continuity where I would have not expected it, given the narrative gaps inherent in these pieces. Pilarcyzk, the lone human voice on this record, lacks the necessary degree of dismissive carelessness required of Marie, Wozzeck's philandering wife (if I may be permitted the usage in these times of gender equality). She is better and stronger as Lulu.
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