Fauré • Schoenberg
Fauré: Pelléas et Mélisande; Schoenberg: Pelleas und Melisande
Frankfurt Radio Symphony/Paavo Järvi
Alpha Classics ALPHA1058 58:55 mins
Clip: Schoenberg - Pelleas und Melisande, Op. 5 IV. Sehr rasch
Having only recently nominated this release as my benchmark version of Schoenberg’s Pelleas und
Melisande (see Building a Library, Aug 2024), I was apprehensive that a second encounter would
somehow temper my initial enthusiasm.
Any doubts were immediately swept aside by the sheer conviction and intensity that Paavo Järvi and the Frankfurt Radio Symphony bring to the music.
What makes this performance especially persuasive is Järvi’s ability to control the constantly fluctuating tempo changes in Schoenberg’s score without losing sight of the music’s structural cohesion.
Many other performances fall down on either one of these aspects, disrupting the natural ebb and flow of the musical argument by applying too much rubato in certain passages, or in some cases, running out of steam well before we’ve got anywhere near the conclusion to what is an extremely long work.
Another challenge surmounted in this performance is the lucidity which Järvi and his orchestra bring to Schoenberg’s dense and intricate orchestration.
In many respects this performance also manages to reconcile two diametrically different approaches to the score, providing us with all the necessary Wagnerian warmth and sensuality in the love music, while matching Boulez’s proto-modernist conception with ice-cold precision.
In stark contrast, Fauré’s incidental music to Maeterlinck’s Pelléas exudes restraint and refinement.
Yet Järvi is just as at home, encouraging his players to produce the most delicate gossamer-like textures and investing the concluding movement with a profound sense of sadness. Erik Levi
