‘Gurrelieder’ leaves Disney Hall steel quivering

There is probably no topping the “Tristan Project” any time soon. The Los Angeles Philharmonic’s semi-staged performances of Wagner’s “Tristan and Isolde” in December were a genuine occasion, still vividly talked about and not likely to be soon forgotten. But what could follow it? The only answer turned out to be Schoenberg’s over-the-top “Gurrelieder,” in the elated performance conducted by Esa-Pekka Salonen on Sunday afternoon in Walt Disney Concert Hall.

“Gurrelieder” is not longer than “Tristan,” but it is otherwise the expansive next step. Though an oratorio, it continues musically and dramatically where Wagner’s opera left off. The forces are more extravagant (it requires an orchestra a third larger than the Wagner’s). The harmonies are more reckless. The melodies more fervent. The orchestral textures more sumptuous. The climaxes louder. The crazy tenor crazier. The sexual obsessions even more neurotic. And then there are those raucous choruses.

Mostly finished in 1901, “Gurrelieder” is the work of an audacious 25-year-old composer who zealously dived into the 20th century without bothering to remove his heavy 19th century clothes but then stripped them away, musical garment by garment, throughout the increasingly riotous course of this wildly imaginative score.

The inspiration for “Gurrelieder” (Songs of Gurre) was a novella by the Danish poet Jens Peter Jacobsen about the medieval King Waldemar’s affair with the beautiful Tove in her castle in Gurre. Schoenberg began conventionally with nine rapturous songs sung by Waldemar and Tove charting the ecstatic course of their growing love. A wood dove then reports the brutal murder of Tove by Waldemar’s jealous wife.

In the second half of “Gurrelieder,” Waldemar curses God and becomes a demon, calling a clattering army of the dead from their graves every night to manically search for Tove’s spirit. Only a deus ex machina appearance by the poet himself can resolve the surreal situation. In a melodrama of spoken song, or Sprechstimme, Schoenberg had the poet appear and describe the spiritually transforming Nordic summer wind. The sun rises and the orchestra and chorus make the mightiest noise heard up to that time in a concert hall.

When Schoenberg conceived and drafted this huge oratorio, he was a young, relatively inexperienced composer driven by enormous amounts of orchestral testosterone, exploding with romantic ardor and magnetically drawn to the utopian visions of a new century. Forced by practical considerations to put it aside for a decade, he finished it in 1911. By that time, he was well along in his march toward atonality, and the new century had become tense in his native Vienna. The four piccolos that blow in the summer wind (what a sound!) don’t so much sweep away the demons as make them dangerously invisible in a blinding light.

The Philharmonic approached “Gurrelieder” in a very different way than it did “Tristan.” Rather than produce an elaborate occasion, the orchestra offered the work three times last week for audiences of choristers in town for a convention, with the only public performance Sunday. This made financial sense, since the private performances could also serve as semi-public rehearsals, while what the rest of us heard was fairly well-polished. But the schedule shortchanged the Philharmonic’s core audience.

Like his approach to “Tristan,” Salonen’s conception was to combine a dug-in sound with transparency. With larger forces, however, that proved a more difficult ideal to realize. And no conductor can be really free with “Gurrelieder” unless superhuman singers can be found.

John Treleaven is not a superhuman tenor. He is on the light side for the heroic music of Waldemar, and he often strained, although he was dramatically engaged and pleasing when he wasn’t oppressed by the massive instrumental machine behind him (which included 50 winds and brass a-blowing).

Still, Angela Denoke, as Tove, held up just fine, her energy seemingly stimulated by Schoenberg’s most blissful blasts from the band. Lilli Paasikivi (the wood dove), Christopher Maltman (a peasant) and Anthony Dean Griffey (Klaus-Narr, the fool) were luxury casting. Each has a single important number, and each delivered a mesmeric dramatic characterization.

A controversial touch was the inclusion at the end of the German actress Barbara Sukowa as the speaker, a role usually assigned to a low male voice.

But she is an arresting actress with an edge, which further helped urge the oratorio out of its 19th century Romanticism and into something a bit more decadent.

The men of the Los Angeles Master Chorale had the extremely difficult task of making the Wild Ride of Waldemar’s army of the dead come to life. Salonen trusted them, pushing them fast and hard and making a frightening impact. At the end, when the full chorus is finally heard as the sun rises, Schoenberg gives permission for everyone to let loose. Salonen pushed the Disney acoustic as far as it could go. The result was amazing. The steel may still be quivering as you read this.