Schoeck's "Das Schloß Dürande"

[BerlinExpat]

Othmar Schoeck's "Das Schloß Dürande" has been subject to a total revision to "denazify" it. A concert performance was presented in Bern last year and the new CD recording stems from that. All the details about background to the new edition and the new recording, together with the plot, all in English, can be found here:

https://www.claves.ch/products/othmar-schoeck-das-schloss-durande

The first stage performance of the new edition is scheduled for 16th March in Meiningen, Thuringia and will be broadcast on Deutschlandfunk Kultur on 30th March 2019 at 19:05 CET.

[Alan Howe]

Thanks for this report. Excerpts can be heard here:
https://www.prestomusic.com/classical/products/8546917--othmar-schoeck-das-schloss-durande-op-53

[Alan Howe]

...by the way, if anyone wants the CDs (rather than the download), ordering direct from Claves (postage free) seems to be the cheapest method.

[der79sebas]

Ordering directly from Claves is not cheap, since you have to pay customs (just had the pleasure, in total 20 Euro for "Dürande" and another cd...).

[Alan Howe]

No problem for us in the UK, though.

[der79sebas]

Claves is in Switzerland, so yes, there is a problem, too, for you in the UK!

[Alan Howe]

Maybe I'll find out when the postman knocks, then?

[der79sebas]

So did I :-(

[adriano]

I am totally disappointed of this work. Schoeck's music is turgid, mostly boring and always trying out different styles. And the opera is a bit too long...
One notices also that he had "put in" the singing lines only after he had completed the music (the librettist worked apparently, too slow). The fact that the libretto has now been de-nazified does not make it better (both libretto and music).
But the libretti authors are a problem in most Schoeck's operas - except, for example, the one of "Das Wandbild", written by Ferruccio Busoni.
I prfere recommending recordings of "Penthesilea" and "Venus" - these are really excellent compositions. "Penthesilea" is a masterwork.
The Meiningen mise en scène met with a mixed success.
The performance on the Claves CD is excellent, although using rather unknown singers. Two singing friends of mine (of renown) turned this offer down after they had perused their parts...

[Alan Howe]

My CDs arrived today - and there were no customs charges to pay. The cost was £24.91 for the three CDs. I also received a free CD featuring Mozart's Oboe Concerto and Haydn's Sinfonia Concertante in B flat, conducted by Abbado!

The opera has one absolutely standout performance: that of Georgian soprano Sophie Gordeladze in the role of Gabriele. She has a wonderfully secure, silvery voice - great for the often soaring, Straussian writing in Schoeck's opera. I predict a meteoric career...

By the way, I'm going to have to disagree with Adriano - the opera seems to me to be a fine piece of work, much more lyrical than I had expected. Right up my late, late romantic Strasse!

[adriano]

No problem, Alan :-)
Knowing Schoeck's music quite well, I find this work, compared to other, stylistically "not sincere enough". I just can't find a unity in style holding all together.
However, Willi Schuh wrote about it that "its music is a kind of synthesis of what had gone before it was no mere phrase of convenience".
Robin Holloway writes in his review of the historical Cantus Classics CD of about 1 hour of excerpts from "Dürande" (with a superb cast including Peter Anders, Maria Cerbotari, Josef Greindl and Willi Domgraf-Fassbänder!): "For every flicker of quality there is mediocrity and boredom in plenty, especially where lusty choruses and the Marseillaise are involved. The act 4 love-duet comes to life a little, and the snatch of its finale, more in Schoeck's dissonant vein than before, kindles fire at last".
Anyhow, my friend Chris Walton (the author of a substantial Schoeck biography, published in English by the Unioversity of Rochester Press in 2009) writes: "At times it seems as if Schoeck had invested all the subtlety of his craft in the one area over which he had sole control, namely the orchestration, which is glorious throughout. There are heavy hints of Richard Strauss, as in the final love duet in waltz-time, through there are also frequent Korngoldian overtones. It would be wrong, however, to assume that this accessibility was simly a concession to the German authorities, for it was a logical consequence of Schoeck's development since the late 1920s. Overall, however, the libretto is too awful to allow the music to take flight".