Berg: Wozzeck (Complete Opera)

"A new recording of one of the supreme operatic masterpieces of the 20th century for less than pounds 10 is not to be ignored, especially when it's as finely realised and as dramatically integrated as this one.

Taken from performances at the Swedish Royal Opera two years ago in a production directed by the late Gotz Friedrich, the result is a Wozzeck that in some ways rivals the best on disc. ...instrumental detail...stands out in sharp relief, and the woodwind obbligatos are heard very clearly. That is thanks also to Leif Segerstam's conducting, which is always sensitive to the drama and narrative potential of any phrase...

To maximise that drama, Segerstam allows his singers great latitude over the question of Sprechgesang: some turn into little more heightened speech, others push it far nearer to singing, and the exact pitches that Berg specifies are taken only as an approximation.

It is a matter of taste, really, and in the context of the whole performance perhaps insignificant. The cast, though, is a fine and enormously committed one. Katarina Dalayman is a superb Marie - passionate, touching and vocally authoritative, as good as any on disc. Carl-Johan Falkmann's Wozzeck is clearly unhinged from the start, and uncovers a terrifying capacity for violence by the time of Marie's murder. Lennart Stregard's Drum-Major oozes testosterone; Ulrik Qvale's Captain and Stren Wahlund's Doctor are understated, almost casual in their abuse of the hapless Wozzeck. It is all totally credible: the set is an irresistible bargain."
- Andrew Clements, The Guardian (London), February 22, 2002

"This comes close to being a giant-killer among Wozzeck recordings; I have a few reservations but I admire this new version greatly and recommend it heartily... Carl-Johan Falkman's singing of the role is... remarkable - few Wozzecks are as frightening as he is in the scene after the murder... Leif Segerstam's handling of the score is admirably pointed and flexible... [Katarina Dalayman's] is the finest performance here, vehement and characterful but beautifully sung... I cannot imagine anyone who loves this opera being disappointed by this newcomer; at its price the phrase 'super bargain' hardly does justice to it."
- Michael Oliver, Gramophone, March 2002

Büchner's unfinished play, Woyzeck, written between 1835 and 1837, had been brought to light in 1879 by the writer Karl Emil Franzos. Georg Büchner, the son of a doctor, had been born in 1813 at Goddelau, near Darmstadt. He followed his father's profession and won early distinction, although his radical political sympathies made it necessary for him to take refuge in Switzerland, where he was appointed to the medical faculty of Zürich University. His very promising career was cut short in 1837, when he died of typhoid.

WoyzeckWoyzeck is exacerbated by the contemptuous treatment he receives from the captain and the unscrupulous behaviour of the doctor, whose experiments provide money for Marie, whom Woyzeck, through poverty, cannot marry, and their child. He stabs her to death, when he finds she has betrayed him with the drum-major, and finally drowns himself in the lake where he has thrown the knife.

Berg's opera follows the order of scenes suggested by Franzos in his 1879 edition of Woyzeck, but uses only fifteen of them. The work is intensely moving in its portrayal of the central character, the victim of a society that has no place for him. At the same time it is of the greatest musical interest. It is the first atonal opera, the first opera that makes no use of the established system of keys, just as Lulu was to be the first opera based on the Schoenbergian principles of serialism, musical structures based on an ordering of the twelve semitones within the octave. It also makes use of a series of traditional musical structures, scene by scene, but employed very differently. There are motifs clearly associated with certain characters and events in the narrative.

The first act of Wozzeck shows the man in relation to the captain, with his fellow-soldier Andres, with Marie and with the doctor, ending with the scene of Marie and the drum-major. In this exposition, Wozzeck and the captain has the structure of a Suite, with a Prelude, Sarabande, Gigue, Gavotte and Air, followed by a Postlude that is an inversion of the Prelude; Wozzeck and Andres is a Rhapsody; Wozzeck and Marie is a March and Lullaby; Wozzeck and the doctor is a Passacaglia on a twelve-note theme, and Marie and the drum-major is Andante affettuoso (quasi Rondo).

The second act serves as a dramatic development and is in the form of a Symphony in five movements. Marie and her child, joined later by Wozzeck, is a Sonata movement; the captain and the doctor, later joined by Wozzeck, is a Fantasia and Triple Fugue; the third scene, Marie and Wozzeck, is a slow movement, marked Largo; the tavern garden of the fourth scene is a Scherzo, and the fifth scene, in the barracks, is a Rondo con introduzione.

The third act, which brings the dramatic climax and final disaster, is a series of six Inventions. The first, Marie and her child, has a theme, seven variations and a fugue; the second, Marie and Wozzeck, is an Invention on One Note, followed by a dance-scene in a bar, an Invention on a Rhythm. The fourth scene, the death of Wozzeck, is an Invention on a Hexachord, the six-note chord heard as the scene begins. There is an orchestral interlude, an Invention on a Key, followed by the final children's scene, an Invention on Quavers.