BERG Wozzeck (Weigle)
View record and artist detailsRecord and Artist Details
Composer or Director: Alban Berg
Genre:
Opera
Label: Oehms
Magazine Review Date: 11/2018
Media Format: CD or Download
Media Runtime: 93
Mastering:
DDD
Catalogue Number: OC974
Tracks:
Composition | Artist Credit |
---|---|
Wozzeck |
Alban Berg, Composer
Alban Berg, Composer Alfred Reiter, Doctor, Bass Audun Iversen, Wozzeck, Baritone Claudia Mahnke, Marie, Mezzo soprano Edward Jumatate, Marien's Son, Singer Frankfurt Opera and Museum Orchestra Frankfurt Opera Chorus Iurii Samoilov, Second apprentice, Baritone Katharina Magiera, Margret, Contralto Martin Mitterrutzner, Andres, Tenor Martin Wolfel, The Fool, Countertenor Peter Bronder, Captain, Tenor Sebastian Weigle, Conductor Thomas Faulkner, First Apprentice, Bass Vincent Wolfsteiner, Drum Major, Tenor |
Author: Peter Quantrill
The claustrophobia which boxed in previous issues of Wagner and Strauss from the same source works here to advantage. While Decca and DG captured the Vienna Philharmonic under Böhm, Abbado and Dohnányi revelling in the score’s waltz rhythms, much of its teeming inner life was lost or garbled. Not here. The ghostly sonata form at play in Act 2’s confrontation between Wozzeck and Marie reaches a conclusion of positively Brahmsian inevitability. Neither Sebastian Weigle nor Teodor Currentzis (BelAir, 12/12) lose out in such historical comparisons, and the muscular heft of the Frankfurt orchestra’s core sonority is a compelling, perhaps more idiomatic alternative to the glassy polish of the Bolshoi players.
Audun Iversen sings the title-role in the manner of Gerhaher more than Goerne, as a creature of numbed dignity gradually roused to fury and driven to insanity. Rather as with good stagings of Figaro, he and Weigle (and Loy) convey that we have landed in the thick of a drama long in progress and ever accelerating towards its end. His three enemies in authority are nicely differentiated – there is even a coarse streak of Ländler-like humour to their exchanges – and Claudia Mahnke invests Marie with powerful erotic allure and pride. ‘Better a knife in my body than a hand on me’: this and other defining lines hit home. For a CD-only Wozzeck it’s a compelling modern alternative to the uniquely unsettling experience afforded by Boulez on Sony, but Loy’s production deserves to be seen as well as heard.
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