I wonder if this was made in conjunction with concert or staged performances. It must have been an expensive undertaking with SACD sales perhaps able to recoup the cost of writing and printing the booklets.
I have Boulez's second studio recording which is very fine, particularly for the impassioned Choral singing/outbursts-- I am frequently reminded of the choruses in Bach's St Matthew Passion . I read somewhere that Schoenberg chose this spelling of 'Aron' serially/simply to use 12 letters for 'Moses und Aron.' [ Though it would've been nicer if he changed his surname to Schoenburger ] I wonder if he identified with Moses, the analogy being Moses' uncompromising defense of his divine revelation is equated to Schoenberg's conception that serialism was the inevitable route of Western art music. [ There's an account in a Korngold biography of Schoenberg using a pen to demonstrate his revolutionary 12-tone method. He allegedly held this pen up to Korngold and then rotated it upside down, demonstrating that he'd turned Western tonality onto its head. Korngold, unfazed, replied, 'That is still a pen, Herr Schoenberg : the only problem is that now one cannot write with it.' ]
|