Arnold Schoenberg
Schoenberg’s ‘Moses and Aaron’, Solti London 1965
Composer | Arnold Schoenberg |
Conductor | Georg Solti |
Singers | Richard Lewis, Forbes Robinson |
Ensemble | Covent Garden Opera |
Genre | Opera |
Moses and Aaron UK première
Arnold Schoenberg never witnessed a staging of his masterwork Moses und Aron. He composed the music of its two acts during 1931 and 1932, but had conceived the idea and treatment during the 1920s, as a development of his quest for spiritual revelation begun with the oratorio Die Jakobsleiter of 1917. Both works are rooted in the Old Testament, and depict the struggle of Moses to fulfil his prophetic mission to impose a monotheistic religion which would lead the Jewish people out of captivity into the promised land. Neither Moses nor Schoenberg fully achieved their missions, for Moses died in the desert before reaching Palestine and Schoenberg never composed music for the text he had written for Act 3. By the time Schoenberg died in American exile, he accepted that he would not complete the work, and permitted a concert performance of the Dance before the Golden Calf from Act 2 at the Darmstadt summer school for new music conducted by Hermann Scherchen. He heard of its success by telegram 11 days before his death on 13 July 1951. The completed two acts were played by Nordwestrundfunk conducted by Hans Rosbaud in 1954, and were first staged by Karl Heinz Krahl in designs by Paul Haferung with the same conductor in Zürich on 6 June 1957. For a Berlin staging in 1959, Scherchen experimented with having the text of Act 3 spoken against a background of music from Act 1 Scene 1, but most subsequent performances have omitted Act 3.
Unsurprisingly, the opera acquired a formidable reputation both for its inherent quality and for its challenges in performance. So, it was bold of Covent Garden Opera to envisage its British première as part of its Musical Director Georg Solti’s policy of introducing a foreign opera in English each season, starting with the stagings of Musorgsky’s Khovanshchina in 1962 and Shostakovich’s Katerina Ismailova in 1963, both translated from the Russian by staff conductor Edward Downes. The great Walter Felsenstein, founder director of Komische Oper Berlin, was originally invited to direct Moses and Aaron but after he and others declined, David Webster approached Peter Hall, who was taking a sabbatical from the Royal Shakespeare Company after the supreme effort of directing all seven plays of The Wars of the Roses in Stratford in the Shakespeare quatercentenary year 1964. Hall’s conditions included commissioning a new translation from 29-year old playwright David Rudkin whose first play Afore Night Come had dazzled at the Arts Theatre in 1962; engaging his regular RSC designer John Bury and musical advisor Guy Woolfenden; and seven weeks’ rehearsal. Rehearsals of the chorus under Douglas Robinson began a full six months before production rehearsals, and the delayed dates meant that Solti became available to conduct the landmark event.
The result was an education for both company and audience, and revealed a masterpiece of 20th century music and theatre. The Friends of Covent Garden published Rudkin’s text in advance and organised an introductory event with the creative team which filled the main auditorium. Pre-publicity that Hall had recruited strippers from Soho to enliven the orgy around the Golden Calf created a stir in the media which did no harm to ticket sales for the six performances between 28 June and 16 July. A further three performances were arranged for the end of the following season in July 1966. I attended seven of the nine performances and, after the initial stunning impact, grew to understand the deep seriousness and transcendent beauty of Schoenberg’s conception and its realisation in dramatic form. You may hear from this recording the mesmerising stillness of the six solo voices (Jeannette Sinclair, Noreen Berry, Helen Watts, Kenneth MacDonald, Delme Bryn-Jones, David Wicks) from within the Burning Bush, before the halting but urgent prayer of Moses, uttered in Sprechgesang by company bass Forbes Robinson. The second scene introduces the mellifluous Aaron of Richard Lewis, whose many previous achievements included leading tenor roles in the premières of Walton’s Troilus and Cressida in 1954 and Tippett’s Midsummer Marriage in 1955 (both available on Music Preserved), as well as the revised 2-act version of Britten’s Billy Budd under Solti in 1964. The rivalry between the brothers is vividly captured in the big choral scene with the three miracles which concludes with the march towards the wilderness at the end of Act 1.
Act 2 begins with the magical interlude, perhaps the loveliest section of the whole score, beginning with the whispered ‘Where is Moses?’ in which a small chorus voices its fear that Moses will not return from Mount Sinai. It is followed by a scene which erupts into violence, and Aaron bows to their threats by promising a return to graven images and sacrifices, exemplified by the showpiece scene around the Golden Calf, which skilfully contrasts wanton frenzy with sated calm. It was a powerful moment in the production when the tribal chieftains, led by Victor Godfrey’s Ephraimite, arrived with their horses, and a chilling one when four virgins (Cynthia Johnston, Morag Noble, Yvonne Minton, Elizabeth Bainbridge) were led to their sacrifice. Nothing matched the fury of Robinson’s returning Moses, banishing the golden idol, smashing the tablets of the ten commandments, and confronting his errant brother. At the end, Moses’s despair that he cannot communicate his faith is contrasted with the hopeful hymn of the people as they march to the chosen land following a pillar of fire.
After Solti left Covent Garden and became Music Director of the Chicago Symphony, he recorded Moses und Aron in German in 1984 with Chicago forces and a cast led by Franz Mazura and Philip Langridge; but to my ears that Decca set fails to capture the immediacy of the live performance from 1965, as remastered by Paul Baily in 2011 from tapes in the Richard Lewis collection. Then and now, I would rate the production as a high point of Solti’s decade as Covent Garden’s Musical Director and one of the noblest achievements in the Company’s history.
Nicholas Payne
13 October 2024
Arnold Schoenberg (1874 – 1951)
Moses and Aaron
Act 1
Track 1: Introduction and Scene 1
Track 2: Scene 2
Track 3: Scene 3
Track 4: Scene 4
Track 5: Back announcement
Act 2
Track 6: Announcement
Track 7: Interlude
Track 8: Scene 1
Track 9: Scene 2
Track 10: Scene 3
Track 11: Scene 4
Track 12: Scene 5
Track 13: Final announcement
This recording was taken from the relay of a Proms concert given at the Royal Albert Hall on 19 July 1965.
The recording is in the Lewis Collection at Music Preserved.
Remastered by Paul Baily.
Note from Roger Beardsley:
Note, this was recorded from an AM broadcast and has problems commensurate with that format. In particular there is a low level, but varying form of heterodyne ‘whistle’. This has been reduced as much as possible without affecting the wanted signal.
- Forbes Robinson
Moses - Richard Lewis
Aaron - Cynthia Johnston
A young girl - John Lanigan
A young man - Michael Langdon
A priest - Maureen Guy
A crippled woman - Victor Godfrey
An Ephraimite - John Dobson
A naked youth - Gwyneth Jones, Morag Noble, Yvonne MintonElizabeth Bainbridge,
Four naked virgins - Jeanette Sinclair, Noreen Berry, Kenneth Macdonald, Helen Watts, Delme Bryn-Jones, Dennis Wicks
Six solo voices - The Covent Garden Chorus
- The Covent Garden Orchestra
- Georg Solti
Conductor