Arnold Schoenberg’s Gurrelieder is a work requiring huge forces to perform, wheeled out on the most special of occasions, here not only closing the 2016 Edinburgh Festival but marking a final farewell to Donald Runnicles as the BBCSSO’s Chief Conductor. He will be back on occasion as Conductor Emeritus, but this ram-packed performance in the Usher Hall with an orchestra of 138 and chorus of 170 marked the changing of the guard and a festival finale in splendid style.
Tell someone you are going to two hours of Schoenberg without an interval, and you might get a pitying look, understandable as the composer is better known for his more avant garde twelve-tone and atonal compositions. Written as a song cycle for piano, tenor and soprano at the turn of the century, Schoenberg orchestrated and developed the work, a lush romantic setting of the unhappy tale of medieval Danish King Valdemar IV and his mistress Tove from the Danish novelist Jens Peter Jacobsen. Begun in 1900, and ten years in the writing, it is a fascinating glimpse into the different influences on the young Schoenberg – initially Wagnerian but latterly owing more to Mahler with an occasional Richard Strauss chord change along the way. By the time this work was performed to an adoring Viennese audience in 1913 Schoenberg had moved on to modernism, but we are nevertheless left with a thrilling, monumental and passionate piece of music.
The story of King Waldemar’s love for his beautiful mistress Tove is played out in nine songs, sung alternately and linked by orchestral passages. They meet in secret at Gurre Castle, but Queen Helwig is having none of it and poisons Tove, the story related by the Wood Dove. Waledmar curses God, warned by a Peasant, is condemned to roam with the undead in a savage night-time hunt accompanied by Klaus the Jester until he is reunited in death with his beloved Tove as the sun rises on a new day.
The music is dense and lush, rippling initially in a way only 8 flutes and piccolos can in a 25 strong woodwind section including bass clarinets and contrabassoons. In the extended brass some horn players doubled on Wagner tubas, while a rare bass trumpet and contrabass trombone produced some sock-trembling moments. A huge string section, four harps and an army of percussionists provided a truly thrilling sound. The climactic moments were immense, Runnicles using a huge score, turning each page like stripping a bedsheet, brought out the softer side too, generally balancing the sound sensitively to allow his soloists to soar. He had a lot to look after, and a steady no nonsense beat given straight ahead for all to see was a sensible approach, but he allowed himself more animation in the big moments, both feet off the ground at one point.