SCHOECK Vom Fischer un syner Fru (Venzago)
View record and artist detailsRecord and Artist Details
Composer or Director: Othmar Schoeck
Genre:
Vocal
Label: Claves
Magazine Review Date: 03/2019
Media Format: CD or Download
Media Runtime: 36
Mastering:
DDD
Catalogue Number: 50-1815
Tracks:
Composition | Artist Credit |
---|---|
Vom Fischer un syner Fru |
Othmar Schoeck, Composer
Jordan Shanahan, Bass Jörg Dürmüller, Tenor Mario Venzago, Conductor Othmar Schoeck, Composer Rachel Harnisch, Soprano Winterthur Musikkollegium Orchestra |
Author: Arnold Whittall
Alternatively, Schoeck might have welcomed the more modern embrace of ambiguity, reflecting the flexibility of Stravinsky and other contemporaries in seeking a new kind of generic compromise between something stageable and something that worked equally well in concert performance. Another hybrid feature of The Fisherman and his Wife relates to Schoeck’s use of a text (from the Brothers Grimm’s fairy tales) in ‘low’ German dialect (Plattdeutsch) rather than the more familiar ‘high’ German (Hochdeutsch). On the one hand, the piece is not called ‘Von dem Fischer und seiner Frau’; on the other, there is little or nothing ‘low’ about the music, which shuns the earthiness of Stravinsky’s The Soldier’s Tale or Weill’s Mahagonny-Songspiel in favour of Schoeck’s distinctive late romanticism. There may be hints of Hindemith and Stravinsky but the predominant tone is that of Strauss, Pfitzner or Schoeck’s teacher Max Reger.
The story is a classic ‘be careful what you wish for’ parable, depicting female greed and male timidity with a complete lack of present-day political correctness. The complacent fisherman and his restless wife live in a ‘shabby shack’, so when the fisherman nets a flounder (flatfish) who claims to be an enchanted prince with magical powers, the wife seizes her chance. She nags her husband into demanding progressively wilder transformations – shack into cottage, cottage into palace, then herself into king, emperor, pope (complete gender blindness here). Only when she demands to become God does the magical flounder recoil, and husband and wife find themselves back in their original shabbiness with – according to Schoeck – a measure of relief and acceptance.
The vocal parts cover the short refrain like dialogues between the three characters while orchestral interludes vividly portray the various transformations, culminating in the flounder’s turbulent rejection of the wife’s demands. The mix of raw, dialect text and highly seasoned music won’t be to everyone’s taste – this is indeed early 19th-century culture trying on the musical costume of a later time. But the performance in this radio recording is first-class: collectors in search of something that stands determinedly apart from what you might expect of new music at the end of the 1920s should not hesitate.
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