Schumann: Scenes from Goethe's Faust (Live)

Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra

Erschienen am 09.01.09 bei Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra
Künstler: Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra
Genre: Klassik

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Nikolaus Harnoncourt, whose recordings with the Wiener Philharmoniker made that suave orchestra sound like a provincial band, here makes the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra of Amsterdam, surely one of the great orchestras of Europe, sound weak and nondescript. In this recording of Schumann's rarely performed Scenes from Goethe's Faust, the Austrian conductor has dispensed with the Dutch orchestra's strong-as-silk string tone, individualistic wind playing, and sculpted sonorities, and instead opted for surprisingly scrawny strings, oddly characterless winds, plus a strangely anonymous ensemble sound. Examples include the blunt brass and brutal attacks in the Overture and the weak strings and anemic winds at the start of "Sunrise" from Part Two. Harnoncourt does get the Dutch orchestra and its chorus to make a great noise in the "Scene in the Cathedral" from Part One, and in the "Chorus Mysticus" at the work's close, but these effects are so overdone that they leave no better impression than the quieter passages.
Harnoncourt's interpretation fails to redeem his technical shortcomings. His is a by-the-numbers Faust, that is, it moves from number to number, from orchestral introduction to aria to chorus to orchestral coda, without the numbers adding up to more than the sum of their parts. Admittedly, Schumann called the work Scenes from Goethe's Faust because it treats only episodes from the poet's enormous drama. But as Benjamin Britten's premiere recording shows, the Scenes can add up to more than the sum of their parts if the conductor persuasively conveys the work's human drama and musical structure. In Harnoncourt's interpretation, the work seems more like a series of effects without causes, and the listener's attention is liable to wander when the dynamic level falls below mezzo forte.
Throughout, there is fine singing from the soloists, though one's tolerance for vibrato may be strained at times by the two leads, Christian Gerhaher and Christiane Iven. But neither they nor RSO Live's amazingly immediate super audio sound can compensate for Harnoncourt's deficiencies.

© TiVo

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Schumann: Scenes from Goethe's Faust (Live)

Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra

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Scenes from Goethe's Faust, WoO 3: Overture (Live)