The performances of Schoenberg’s last lingering celebration of late romantic luxuriance that Markus Stenz conducted in Cologne a year ago were his final concerts as chief conductor of the Gürzenich Orchestra. The recording derived from them provides a good resumé of Stenz’s qualities, his confidence in handling massive forces and his affinity with music composed on the cusp of modernism; he’s at his best in passages such as the orchestral interlude that precedes the Song of the Wood Dove, which ends the first part of Gurrelieder, and the Wild Hunt of the Summer Wind from Part 3, which foreshadows Schoenberg’s later music. Yet despite the musical virtues of the performance, it doesn’t quite measure up with the best already available on disc from Abbado, Rattle, Chailly and Boulez. The orchestral playing lacks the last bit of finesse, and the recording gives the massive choral climaxes (involving six choirs) an unattractive glare, while the soloists are a mixed bunch; the best of them is the Waldemar, Brandon Jovanovich, a tenor with a baritonal richness to his lower register, but neither Barbara Haveman’s Tove nor Claudia Mahnke’s Wood Dove has the same allure.
