Music & Dance Reviews : Works by Nietzsche, Wagner Exposed at USC Institute

One of the continuing missions of the Arnold Schoenberg Institute at USC is the enlightenment of the musical public in matters historical. This week, in cooperation with the two local institutes named after Goethe and Max Kade, the ASI seems to be fulfilling that mission.

As the single musical segment in a six-day conference titled “Wagner-Nietzsche, Prophecy and Provocation,” a Wednesday night concert at the institute drew an overflow crowd into its music room to hear works by the great 19th-Century opera composer and by the philosopher and sometime-musician who was his disciple and later critic.

The agenda proved a fascinating juxtaposition of pieces by the two men--plus one by Arnold Schoenberg--ending with a scrappy but touching performance of the “Siegfried Idyll” by the USC Chamber Orchestra. Larry Livingston conducted the student ensemble with utter authority and sensitive detailing in the original chamber version.

The generous first half paired melodramas by the two composers, then set the five “Wesendonck” Lieder against four Nietzsche songs, and ended with the German philosopher’s brief, amateurish credo, “Gebet an das Leben,” and Schoenberg’s “Der Wanderer,” to Nietzsche’s text.

Veteran mezzo-soprano Herta Glaz, a member of the USC faculty for the past decade, spoke the Goethe and Eichendorff poems in the melodramas most effectively and with clearest enunciation.

Of the Nietzsche pieces, most impressive were the four early songs from 1861-64, melodious items attractively set, vocally grateful and harmonically resident in the post-Schumann idiom of Brahms and Wolf. These were sung attentively by mezzo-soprano Jennifer Trost, who also dealt stylishly with the familiar Wagner suite and with Schoenberg’s Mahlerian song from 1905.

Institute director Leonard Stein presided commandingly, as he often does, at the piano, and also delivered the fascinating, spoken program notes.