Andrew Clements 

Schoenberg: Moses und Aron review – punctilious and impressive

The unfinished masterpiece gets a rare run-out in this superbly controlled rendition from Cambreling, writes Andrew Clements
  
  

Arnold Schoenberg.
Arnold Schoenberg. Photograph: Fred Stein Archive/Getty Images Photograph: Fred Stein Archive/Getty Images

Sixty years after it received its premiere in a concert performance in Hamburg, Schoenberg's unfinished masterpiece remains as much of a rarity in opera houses and concert halls as it has ever been; Welsh National Opera's heroic staging two months ago was only the work's second ever in Britain. On disc, though, Moses und Aron has generally done rather better; this recording, pieced together from concert performances in Berlin, Lucerne, Strasbourg and Freiburg in 2012, takes the total of currently available versions on CD and DVD into double figures. It's one of the best too; the conductor Sylvain Cambreling had clearly prepared both the chorus, the young voices of the EuropaChorAkademie, and the orchestra, the SWR Symphony, punctiliously well; the precision of both is remarkable, and in a work in which both elements are at least as important as the solo protagonists, that's a major advantage, and creates the perfect foil to the battle of wills between Franz Grundheber's more than usually histrionic Moses and Andreas Conrad's suave Aron. Perhaps Cambreling remains just a bit too analytically detached when something a bit more feral is required, in the orgiastic adoration of the golden calf in the second act especially, but it's still mightily impressive.

 

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