SCHUMANN
Manfred
•
Andrey Boreyko, cond; Johann von Bülow (
Manfred
); Stefan Wilkening (
Geist
); Tina Amon Amonsen (
Astarte
); Vera Bauer (
Menesis
); Dieter Prochnow (
Abt
); Mechthild Bach (sop); Elisabeth Popien (mez); Hans-Jörg Mammel (ten); Markus Flaig (bass); Manfred Bittner, Ekkehard Abele, Tobias Berndt (bass); Düsseldorf Städtischen Musikvereins Ch; Düsseldorf SO
•
ARTHAUS 101575 (DVD: 89:00)
Close but ultimately no cigar, though I can’t fault anyone here for lack of trying. The Germans, evidently as perplexed as anyone else as to how best present Schumann’s romantic “mental” theater music with narration, tried to come up with a new concept for the Schumann 2010 music festival in Düsseldorf. Using the natural layout of the Tonhalle, built in 1926 as a planetarium, and therefore in possession of a circular roof of great diameter, director and visualization artist Johannes Deutsch assembled 1,400 images over a two-year period designed to take advantage of such a large space, and to represent the closed cosmos of Byron’s poem. The narrator, never on stage, is nonetheless shown in the midst of these images (the Alps prominent among them) as a sort of giant Manfred trapped in the judgmental world of his own creating since he has rejected any other traditional outlet of forgiveness. Manfred, like Don Giovanni before him, is not going out without a fight (tormented over his incestuous relationship with his sister Astarte, touching close to home in Byron’s own life) and remains stubbornly unrepentant to the end. But before we get to the end we endure a heap of philosophical romantic pathos that really grates after a while. We just don’t have the same responsiveness to the crazed inclinations of the Romantic age, and this is one of the things that makes the production so hard to endure.
Deutsch uses Schumann’s own reduction in German by Karl Adolf Suckow for the sake of authenticity. Even though the English subtitles help a lot, it still becomes a ponderous chore to follow along for the time required, and even the mesmerizing visuals lose their initial power 30 minutes into the performance. There is simply too much talk and not enough music. I cannot say how I would have reacted if the text had been recited and sung in English—probably a lot differently, and the audience seems to like what it sees and hears. Until that happens I am still inclined to think that a fine SACD program of just the music would suffice for almost anyone. Until then, if you like reading on a TV screen or you speak German, this is the best thing we have to date. Standard PCM sound is good (but I wish they had gone to the trouble of giving us DTS) and the picture is very good.
Steven E. Ritter
