Word: oratorio
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SCHOENBERG: GURRELIEDER (London). 2 vols. This quasi-oratorio is in many ways a summation and culmination of Romanticism: a magnificent music-drama about doomed love and transcendence, it echoes Wagner's Tristan and foreshadows Mahler's Eighth. Riccardo Chailly guides the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra, a large chorus and superb soloists led by Susan Dunn and Siegfried Jerusalem in this infinitely expressive, dramatically gripping performance...
MESSIAH, 3 Vols. (harmonia mundi). Handel's Messiahs -- that's right, Handel composed more than one version of his beloved oratorio -- have become a holiday ritual since the premiere 250 years ago. A pragmatist as well as a great composer, Handel penned several alternative sections to accommodate the strengths and limitations of different musical ensembles. This recording assembles, as addenda, all the alternative arias, recitatives and choruses (hence the three volumes). Nicholas McGegan, a major authentic-period- instrument and practiced Handel conductor, leads marvelous singers and players in a splendid performance. Hallelujah...
...oratorio, the someone else was Carl Davis, an American-born film composer and accomplished pastiche artist. After McCartney wrote the text and invented the tunes, Davis arranged them slickly for soprano (Kiri Te Kanawa at the Liverpool premiere and on the recording), mezzo (Sally Burgess), tenor (Jerry Hadley), bass (Willard White), boy soprano, chorus, cathedral choir and full orchestra...
...high percentage of Irish Liverpudlians as well as to McCartney's own ethnic background), born during the air raids of 1942 (Part 1, War). The second, third and fourth sections (School, Crypt and Father) detail typical adolescent angst, including the death of Shanty's dad. In the oratorio's second half, the hero meets Mary Dee, marries her (Wedding), impregnates her (Work), fights with her (Crises) and finally, after a traffic accident that almost claims her life and that of their unborn child, reconciles with her (Peace). "So on and on the story goes/ From day to day throughout...
Shanty's wedding music stands out as a luminous love song, but overall the oratorio is rambling and generic; there is nothing to match the economy and effect of such "classical" McCartney tunes as Eleanor Rigby and Yesterday, and you certainly can't dance to it. Indeed, the piece emerges as a curious cross between Elgar's The Dream of Gerontius and the Who's Quadrophenia, but it lacks either the former's ecstatic fervor or the latter's nose-in-the-dirt realism. One waits in vain for the real McCartney to loosen his tie and do something...