Word: wozzeck
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...turned out, this was the kind of carping that a student aims at the teachers who mean the most to him. In 1948, for example, Boulez castigated Berg for having introduced a polka into the atonal fabric of Wozzeck. Today, admitting that he "may have been a little too aggressive," he praises the way in which Berg joined music to dramatic expression in the same opera. "In Wozzeck, the contradiction between pure and theatrical music has completely disappeared." Boulez's recent recording of the opera (CBS Masterworks) signals this change of attitude with its unfailing projection of just...
ALBAN BERG: WOZZECK (2 LPs; CBS Masterworks). To many students of music, Berg's masterpiece represents an enduring statement about human nature and musical revolution. To others, it is nothing but a stumble through an atonal desert. This recording will be appreciated by Berg's admirers, for Pierre Boulez's conducting is impeccable, and so is the courage of Walter Berry, who convincingly sings his way to murder and death through the cactus-like orchestration...
...connoisseur of "serious" music may sample Bomarzo, the hero of which is "sexually ambivalent and frustrated, ghost-ridden, and obsessed with death." One shudders to consider the effects of Mr. McLendon's taste on works such as Tristan und Isolde (premarital sex), Salome (fetishism and degeneracy) and Wozzeck (sadism and murder). "English records that deal with sex, sin and drugs" are what make the best popular music true, if controversial art, precisely because they deal with an imagery that is valid for youth today...
Perhaps the play's appeal has to do with the success of Alban Berg's opera Wozzeck (whose title, incidentally, is a misspelling arising from an editor's error). Certainly Berg's music gives the Buechner work a substance it lacks as a play. On the other hand, the original version has a certain power about it that derives at least in part from its starkness. I have an uneasy feeling that it would be much less appealing to young directors (and audiences) had Buechner lived to finish it and polish the rough edges...
...past decade, four of the most widely praised new Metropolitan Opera productions-Mozart's Don Giovanni, Berg's Wozzeck, Strauss's Salome and Die Frau ohne Schatten-all had one element in common: Conductor Karl Böhm. It was hardly coincidence. Long recognized as one of the world's foremost maestros, Böhm helped lead the way in elevating his profession to its rightfully high place in opera. Now 72, he dates his career back to the days when many opera houses did not even bother to list the conductor's name...