As far as recordings of Moses und Aron are concerned, history seems to be repeating itself. Back in November 1975, the Boulez set was issued on LP a few months after the Gielen account. Now Gielen reappears on CD a few months after Boulez.
When reviewing the latter, Jeremy Noble found much to admire in both versions, concluding that whereas Boulez ''rather underplays the work's rhetoric'', Gielen makes the opera ''more exciting''. The CD transfer of Gielen's account certainly underlines the kind of raw intensity in his approach to which Boulez would never aspire, and which Schoenberg himself might have found overdone—too purely 'operatic'. The Philips sound is larger than life, the voices (especially Moses) grafted on to a close yet remarkably vivid orchestral tapestry. The Austrian Radio orchestra squeezes the last drop of expressionist exoticism out of the ''Dance round the Gold Calf'', and no one who likes the idea of linking Schoenberg with Puccini, and who enjoys thinking of the more sadistic aspects of Moses und Aron in terms of a kind of 12-note Turandot, will want to be without this fiery reading. The drawback is that such an emphasis on the work's pagan side inevitably reduces the impact of that tension which Schoenberg sought between sacred and profane. With Boulez you get more sense of the war between ideas and actions which lies at the heart of the drama, and even in the spacious recording the dialogues between Moses and Aron lack nothing in dramatic urgency.
Gunter Reich is the Moses in both recordings, and the degree of histrionic projection in his performances reflects the different attitudes of the conductors. Both Arons—Richard Cassilly (Boulez) and Louis Devos—convey the strength as well as the seductiveness of Moses's alter ego with considerable success. For the rest, no performance of this opera could survive with an inadequate chorus, or with weak links in the smaller roles. Boulez's team is musically admirable, yet Gielen's chorus sounds that much more at home in the pithy abstractions of Schoenberg's German text.
Two well-contrasted views of this remarkable work, then, and two sterling if not infallibly accurate performances. The difference is that the Boulez comes (at medium price) with the bonus of the Second Chamber Symphony, giving a total playing time of 121 minutes. If Solti's full-price digital recording enters the picture, choice is even more difficult. What is clear is that Gielen remains unsurpassed in the way he links Schoenberg's score to the blood-and-thunder traditions of some very different opera composers.'