Schubert: Rosamunde, complete incidental music (CD review)

Ileana Cotrubas, soprano; Rundfunkchor Leipzig; Willi Boskovsky, Staatskapelle Dresden. Brilliant Classics 95122.

As you know, only a relative handful of people heard any of Schubert's prolific musical output during his lifetime, the lucky few being mainly family and friends. However, one work that did get a fairly large audience, at least initially, was Schubert's incidental music to the play Rosamunde, Princess of Cyprus by Helmina von Chezy. The premiere took place at the Theater an der Wien in 1825, but it failed and had only two performances. Fortunately for fans of Schubert, his music gained popularity after his death, the Rosamunde score remaining a treasure for us today.

Oddly, though, there aren't a lot of recordings of the complete incidental music, the one I've been living with quite happily until now being from Kurt Masur and the Gewandhaus Orchestra on Philips from 1983. However, the Brilliant Classics reissue here under review from Willi Boskovsky and the Staatskapelle Dresden provides a good alternative. Recorded a few years earlier, 1977, than Masur's, it sounds marginally clearer (if not so rich), with Boskovsky putting in a slightly more energetic performance than Masur.

So, the Austrian composer Franz Schubert (1797-1828) wrote the Rosamunde music in 1823 on a commission from the Theater an der Wien, and he completed it in barely two weeks (in some accounts less than five days). Although the play closed, as I say, quickly, critics and audiences rather enjoyed the music, and it has delighted listeners ever since (or, at least, ever since people like Schumann, Mendelssohn, Liszt, and Brahms got behind it after the composer's death). The play itself doesn't matter anymore, lost to history--the plot and characters apparently being quite melodramatic, even corny by today's standards of entertainment--but Schubert's music remains forever charming.

Maestro Boskovsky, perhaps better remembered as a conductor of German waltz music, especially the Strauss family, does a good job with this light music from Schubert. Things begin with an overture, which Schubert didn't have time to write, so concert performances usually use either the one we have here, written a year earlier for Alfonso and Estrella, or the one from 1820 for the fairy-tale play Die Zauberharfe ("The Magic Harp").

Boskovsky takes a characteristically chipper view of the music, even if the story was evidently rather depressing (some referred to it as "a grand romantic play"). Not that Boskovsky doesn't sufficiently address the more-dramatic elements; he does. It's just that his interpretation dwells more on the purely sweet, lilting aspects of the score, allowing a free flow of rhythms throughout.

Willi Boskovsky

In addition, there's the matter of tempos. In comparison to the aforementioned Masur performance, Boskovsky is consistently faster. He's faster, in fact, in every single movement (except in the overture because the conductors use two different ones). Yet Boskovsky never hurries the music. It's really lovely, dancing along as it does on its sprightly airs.

My own favorite parts of the score are the gentler sections--the ballets, andantes, and, of course, the Entr'acte No. 3. Then, too, the Staatskapelle Dresden play beautifully, and Ms. Cotrubas and the Leipzig Radio Choir add brief but effectively touching contributions to the affair.

As a bonus coupling, the program provides the overture to Die Zauberharfe, the music Schubert eventually decided would be best for the score rather than the more-hastily chosen Alfonso und Estrella, which he used for the first public performances. So, with this recording, you can have your cake and eat it, too.

Producer John Mordler and engineers Horst Kunze and Gerald Junge made the recording at Lukaskirch, Dresden, Germany in March 1977. Compared to the Philips/Masur disc I had on hand, which sounds warm, spacious, dark-hued, and mellow, the Brilliant Classics/Boskovsky reissue sounds more close-up and more sharply focused. The Masur disc seems like a sixteenth-century tapestry compared to Boskovsky's twentieth-century photograph. I enjoyed the sound of both, but they are different.

Anyway, the Boskovsky recording displays a fair amount of transparency without sacrificing much in the way of natural ambience or dimensionality. Dynamics are good, too, as are stereo spread and transient response. Highs are adequate, although bass could be deeper and some midrange frequencies betray a slight degree of fuzz around the notes.

JJP

To listen to a brief excerpt from this album, click here: