As soon you open the score to this hidden gem of Austrian expressionism, you realise it’s going to be an opulent sound. There, beneath the harp, is a little team of celeste, harmonium and piano, poised to shimmer under a lone quiet flute. ‘I often hear sounds that can be scarcely be realised with existing means,’ Schreker wrote to a friend. Excited, I pressed play.
And then I immediately pressed pause, because the first chord is so captivating I had to rush to the keyboard and examine it. Five notes, four of them snug together, curled into a question mark. The harmony itself immediately sets the sound afloat.
You sense that Schreker is a sensualist, drawn to his tonal choices and delicate colours as a tailor might be to velvets, chiffons and lace. Sometimes he is pointillistic: a single stroke of the cymbal, a pluck of the harp, an echo on the harmonium. Other times he is extravagant, drenching the staves with notes, demanding each of his twenty-three soloists a to play a virtuoso part in the rapture. In these moments it feels like Wagner on opium.
The work unfolds like a restless dream. Three of the four movements coalesce into one rapturous flow of colour, flitting from one mood to another. One movement stands out as separate and distinct, though: the Scherzo. The writing here is so nimble I was smiling throughout.
At the end three main ideas return, dreams within the dream. Long after the final bar your mind recalls not distinct melodies but iridescent shapes, like after-images when you close your eyes having being dazzled.
