Mitropoulos Conducts Schönberg and Křenek

Continuing our exploration of Dimitri Mitropoulos' recordings, we encounter Arnold Schönberg's expressionist Erwartung from 1909 and Ernst Křenek's Symphonic Elegy (In Memory of Anton von Webern), which dates from 1946.

You might expect that these works would have appealed to the modernist Mitropoulos, but his biographer William Trotter claims that the Schoenberg was the source of a crisis of confidence for the composer.

"I am wondering sometimes if this kind of distorted and screwy beauty is of any transcendental value," Mitropoulos wrote to his great friend Katy Katsoyanis. She sensibly replied, "It's very natural, when you are battling desperately with one of these problematic creations, to question whether they are worth all that effort; your mission, however, is to play them, solving their problems, explaining them to the audience."

Dimitri Mitropoulos: a famed, if conflicted interpreter of the Second Viennese School

At this, the conductor was a master; he and the New Yorkers make Schönberg sound as effortless as Schubert. The concerts leading up to this recording were praised by the critics, and even the audience was pleased. You can hear why in this taping from November 19, 1951, from Columbia's 30th Street Studio. Dorothy Dow is fully in command of the ungrateful part of the protagonist in this overwrought monodrama from the pen of Marie Pappenheim.

Dorothy Dow

The critic C.J. Luten wrote, "Erwartung is shocking, violent, and more than a little morbid. It concerns a mature woman, who, upon taking a midnight stroll through the forest, runs into the dead body of her lover. The words of the play are the thoughts which occur to the protagonist throughout the 25-minute course of action."

Actually, Pappenheim and Schönberg were of two minds about the composition. Schönberg did suggest it, but he claims he gave the outline to the author; she says he did not. In the event, the composer thought of the work as expressing a heightened emotional state consistent with the scenario. Pappenheim, perhaps with an assist from later scholars, seemed to believe it had to do with a woman whose mental state was already in turmoil from her place in Viennese society, and "whose tortured emotions are symptoms of an illness she could have avoided by taking possession of her emotional life." (See Bryan Simms' article "Whose Idea was Erwartung?" for more.)

The 1909 work is a prime example of Expressionism, and has been likened both to the Expressionist writers of the era, and to such painters as Kokoschka, Kandinsky and the Der blaue Reiter circle. The composer himself was a talented artist who exhibited his works at the time.

Chaim Soutine - Mad Woman (1920), Schoenberg - Blaues Selbstportrait (1910)

Musically, Erwartung looks both back and forward. Writing in The Saturday Review, composer Arthur Berger noted, "Erwartung stems from an intermediate period separating Schönberg's frankly post-Wagnerian stage from his ultimate crystallization of twelve-tone technique. The Tristanesque contours evocative of love-death and frustration had not yet been subjected to the compression and abstraction that makes them, in his later music, barely recognizable as such... 

Arnold Schoenberg

"Instrumental colors are conceived with utmost imagination and aural sensitivity, and do much to establish the eerie atmosphere. But they almost never overpower the singer. The vocal line constantly inflects the word, its sound and feeling, and the background is a judicious commentary of chamber music."

And of course, Schoenberg was one of the most influential composers of the 20th century. C. J. Luten observed, "Those who admire Alban Berg's powerful Wozzeck, and who do not know Erwartung, will have quite a surprise when they hear this recording. They will find, I think, a remarkable similarity in style, expression, and especially in harmony and instrumentation." Berg was one of the three principal figures of the Second Viennese School, along with Schoenberg and Anton Webern, and his Wozzeck and Lulu are the most noted Expressionist operas.

Ernst Křenek

The companion work on this LP is impressive as well. Mitropoulos had become acquainted with Křenek when the conductor was in Minneapolis and the composer was on the faculty of Hamline University in adjacent St. Paul, and consistently championed Křenek's works. 

During his career, the composer wrote in many styles, but Alfred Frankenstein observed that the Elegy "is a legitimate son of Schönberg's Verklärte Nacht. It is a work for string orchestra of great character and expressive resonance." The recording dates from April 21, 1951, also from the 30th Street Studios.

The sound on both sides is excellent, and has now been remastered in ambient stereo (September 2023). The download newly includes many reviews, notes on Schönberg and his music by Robert Craft, and the text and an English translation of Erwartung.