Transfigured Night: Haydn & Schoenberg

Alisa Weilerstein (cello), Trondheim Soloists

With a title like ‘Transfigured Night’, you might expect cellist Alisa Weilerstein’s debut album for Pentatone (she has recently jumped ship from Decca) to focus on the fin-de-siècle world of the Second Viennese School. But while Schoenberg’s eponymous string sextet Verklärte Nacht (which in turn took its title from a poem by Richard Dehmel) does indeed feature prominently, the programming is much more intriguing. She couples this landmark from the founder of the Second Viennese School with a pair of cello concertos by the senior member of the ‘First’, Joseph Haydn.

This ingenious coupling throws up some fascinating contrasts: between the first flowering of Viennese Classicism (Haydn), and the post-Tristan stretching of late-Romantic tonality to its limits (Verklärte Nacht); between the Eisenstadt/Eszterháza-based ‘outsider’ later embraced by the Austrian capital with open arms, and the Viennese native forced by the advent of Nazism into permanent US exile. (Weilerstein writes with moving restraint of her own family’s flight from Nazi Vienna in 1938, just a few years after Schoenberg’s departure.) Yet what links the two composers is just as fascinating: a fundamental preoccupation with the use of small motifs as a way of developing large-scale musical structures. The cheerful courtliness of Haydn may seem a long way from Schoenberg’s intense proto-Expressionism, but there is more to link these two great musical pioneers than immediately meets the ear.

As for the performances themselves, they combine Weilerstein’s immaculate technique and dazzling virtuosity with a deeply thoughtful musicality, the cellist finding perfect partners in the excellent, youthful Trondheim Soloists. With a string force of around 6/5/4/3/2 plus pairs of oboes and horns, the Haydn concertos manage to strike a nice balance between intimacy and fullness of tone. These are stylish but full-blooded accounts, an approach that might be thought to suit better the later D major Concerto (once thought to be the work of Anton Kraft), but which also pays unexpected dividends in the earlier C major work (rediscovered in Prague in 1961, two centuries after it was first composed).

Outer movements are crisp, alert, rhythmically buoyant and, in the finales, urgently driven. But listen beyond the brilliant surfaces and you will discover slow movements that, in both works, approach a level of almost vocal expressiveness that is rare outside of Mozart. There are some spectacular cadenzas from Weilerstein (who directs from the soloist’s podium), while the solo octaves and hectic string crossing in the playful finale of the D major work are tackled with a mixture of glee and abandon. It’s the C major’s finale, however, that is the real cracker, the Trondheim players matching Weilerstein in virtuosity as the music races along thrillingly. This is classy playing, and ideal for those who don’t insist on a wholesale jettisoning of vibrato in this repertoire.

Virtuosity of a different type is on display in Verklärte Nacht: from the marvellously hushed opening, Schoenberg’s every slightest marking, from dynamic swellings to elastic tempo modifications, is acutely observed by the musicians, so that you could almost reconstruct the score in all its detail just by listening to the recording. Yet far from feeling fussy, this results in a performance of extraordinary immediacy and focus, Dehmel’s woodland encounter springing vividly to life, as if in a particularly tangible dream. Here in particular, the size of forces strikes the listener as ideal: small enough to create a chamber-like feel without the inevitable limitations of the work’s original solo scoring, but large enough to bring richness and depth without the overweening opulence and loss of focus that often mars larger-scale accounts.

Above all, it’s the range of colours and the resulting depth of expression that marks this performance as something really special. From the weightiest fortissimo to the tenderest pianissimo, you get the impression that the musicians aren’t just playing but actually feeling this music, leaving you wondering – while being swept along by the expressive tide – how such a tonal and emotional kaleidoscope could be conjured up by what is, after all, ‘just’ a string orchestra. By the end, there really is a sense of transcendence and transfiguration, a magical ending to a wonderful disc.

Apart from Alisa Weilerstein’s own personal note, there are some exceptionally intelligent booklet notes by Mark Berry, and (most helpfully) the full text of Dehmel’s poem. The recording, made in Trondheim’s Selbu Kirke after a period of intensive rehearsals, is in Pentatone’s usual demonstration class. Top marks all round!