Alban Berg - Wozzeck

Alban BERG (1885-1935)

Wozzeck

Walter Berry 

Isabel Strauss 

Paris National Opera 

Pierre Boulez 

This Wozzeck has often been criticized for its 'average' singers (with the exception of Walter Berry) and its dry, clinical musical direction - it even led French critics to nickname the work 'Veau sec' (dry veal) as a pun! How wrong! Pierre Boulez only pays attention to every nuance in the score to convey all the work's subtlety, and especially its dramatic progression, which he makes unavoidable from first to last. The evolution is all the more telling as Walter Berry makes Wozzeck's mental evolution perfectly clear, from his rustic simplicity in his absent-minded 'Ja, Herr Hauptmann' in the first scene, through his growing mental confusion and hallucinations to his blood-thirsty murder of Marie - and then his death in the same naive simplicity as at the beginning of the opera, as if unaware that he is dying.

The orchestra's playing is highly atmospheric, and when Wozzeck goes to the pub the dance music sounds so real (with an accordion!) that you could almost smell beer and see drunkards burping away - as vividly as in a Breughel painting. The other singers may not be great, but then this is a crudely expressionist conception of Wozzeck, so they very aptly match their roles - Carl Doench (the Doctor) unscrupulously unhuman in his experiments, Isabel Strauss (Marie) in turns seductive, maternal and whorish.

So this is certainly no civilized Wozzeck, that may not suit those who are drawn to Boehm's, Dohnanyi's or Abbado's more polished recordings. Yet this recording casts a much stronger spell than any other that I have heard, and cannot but make you face all that Berg wanted to express in this work.

Alas, this recording has been unavailable for years - I just managed to get hold of the LP edition (with an identical cover)! Sony should really consider reissuing it on a cheaper series, as well as the Mitropoulos version, whose crumbly ensembles have always prevented me from enjoying it, but whose admirers are numerous.

Find Libretto (German-Spanish)

http://www.kareol.es/obras/wozzeck/acto1.htm