A Lamb, a Book, and the Apocalypse at Bard Summerscape, August 22, 2010, by Seth Lachterman
Franz Schmidt’s Das Buch mit sieben Siegeln
Christiane Libor, soprano
Fredrika Brillembourg, mezzo-soprano
Thomas Cooley, tenor
James Taylor, tenor
Robert Pomakov, bass-baritone
Kent Tritle, organ
The Bard Festival Chorale, James Bagwell, Choral Director
The American Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Leon Botstein, Music Director
Tonight’s much-anticipated and touted performance of little-known Austrian composer Franz Schmidt’s magnum opus, Das Buch mit sieben Siegeln (The Book with Seven Seals), was nothing short of startling, and more than a bit revelatory. Being fashioned as a dramatic oratorio, the mystifying and unsettling text of The Revelations of St. John the Divine becomes, in Schmidt’s hands, a terrifying and sensational virtuosic musical juggernaut. It was clear from Leon Botstein’s program notes that this evocatively dramatic work is one his favorites; in his program notes, he wastes no time in dubbing it one of the twentieth-century’s greatest choral works.
