Schreker - Der Ferne Klang

The Guardian 0

Jennifer Holloway/Ian Koziara/Frankfurt Opera/Sebastian Weigle
(Oehms Classics, three CDs)
Schreker’s operas, popular a century ago, are little known today. This recording, taken from a 2019 production, has much to recommend it but suffers from lack of dramatic chemistry between the two protagonists

Though several of Franz Schreker’s nine completed operas were hugely fashionable in his lifetime, none has a secure place in the repertory nowadays. The best known of them was the second to be composed, Der Ferne Klang, whose first performance in 1912 established Schreker alongside Strauss and Schoenberg as one of the leading modernists of his generation. It still gets sporadic stagings, and the new recording – the fourth currently available – is taken from a 2019 production in the city where it was premiered, Frankfurt.