Page 197 - Alison Balsom Quiet City FULL BOOK

Othmar Schoeck: Elegie Christian Gerhaher I(baritone, Kammerorchester Basel/Heinz
Holliger (Sony)

This recording of Othmar Schoeck’s Elegie for voice and chamber orchestra from 1923 puts
together a dream team: Christian Gerhaher and Heinz Holliger must have had this work in their
sights for a good while. Schoeck was the greatest 20th century composer from the German-
speaking part of Switzerland, with Holliger himself, from a much later generation and in a very
different style, not far behind in that ranking. Gerhaher has recorded another, later cycle for voice
and string quartet, the Notturno with string quartet, in an ECM recording released in 2009. There
is a linking thread here: the majority of the poems in both cycles are by the nineteenth century
poet Nikolaus Lenau, who is also is the main protagonist in the “opera” Lunea by Heinz Holliger,
with central roles for Gerhaher, premiered in 2018, also released by ECM earlier this year.
For this recording of the Elegie, recorded in the weeks before the first lockdown in early March
2020, and released now just ahead of the centenary of the work’s completion and premiere,
Holliger has the role of conductor of the 15 instrumentalists of the Kammerorchester Basel. Their
orchestral contribution – their Boulez-like clarity and balance presumably coming from Holliger’s
influence – is just fabulous. Solo instruments often have the role of delicately shadowing the