Manfred GURLITT (1890-1972)
Goya-Sinfonie (1938-39) [51:01]
Four Dramatic Songs for soprano and orchestra (1950-52) [19:13]
Christiane Oelze (soprano)
Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin/Antony Beaumont
rec. 20-24 February 2007, Jesus Christus Kirche Berlin-Dahlem. DDD
PHOENIX EDITION 114 [70:14]
This is part of Phoenix Edition's ‘Modern Times’ series.
Gurlitt's Goya Symphony is for orchestra alone and is in four movements
of which the last is a Theme and ten variations here thoughtfully presented
with each variation separately tracked.
Gurlitt is a lyric composer but he is no lavish late-romantic at least not
by George Lloyd or Josef Marx standards. His palette has clear affinities with
Mahler in its patteringly confident Allegro deciso and with Hindemith
and Siegfried Wagner in the marzipan playfulness of the first two movements.
The cantabile is mildly astringent - rather similar to Rawsthorne at
one moment - and less disorientatingly with Franz Schmidt in the cheerier reaches
of the Husarenlied Variations. The implacably grim and insistent Largo (III)
includes, at its apex, a fusillade of rifle fire. This volley is followed by
three ringing anvil blows. The theme and variations sequence is lengthy and
includes an explosively urgent and ruthlessly exciting Allegro tumultuoso (tr.
8). Much of the cheerier material recalls for me the jaunty Schmidt or Hindemith
but there are more serious and even poetic episodes (as in tr. 11). The final
(tr. 14) Maestoso has a sourly trudging and tragic mien as the music
winds towards catastrophe. A trumpet call is heard that must have been influenced
by the trumpet elegy that calls out over Franz Schmidt's fourth symphony of
about the same time. The symphony ends in a Rosenkavalier shimmer amid
a distant echo of the trumpet theme.
The Four Dramatic Songs were a musical wedding present to his new Japanese
wife in 1952. That was the year in which he divorced Wiltraut Hahn with whom
he had travelled to Japan in 1937. These four songs are intense, concentrated,
darkly inward but accessible enough. They are not as florid as those by Schulhoff
and Zemlinsky but they have a fascination and concentration best exemplified
by the last song in which Gurlitt's own personal situation is perhaps paralleled.
A nobleman suffering from leprosy is healed in the arms of a young girl.
The last song has the brass making their presence abrasively and dramatically
felt. The bells of redemption ring out in healing at 4:43.
The words to the four songs are given in German and in English translation
side by side.
I am more than indebted to Antony Beaumont's liner essay. To him we owe the
tantalising prospect/hope of hearing Gurlitt's Shakespeare Symphony (1952-54)
and the cello and violin concertos.
Gurlitt made something of a splash in 1921-5 with his opera Wozzeck which
was eclipsed by Berg's opera of the same name. A similar fate engulfed his
opera Soldaten (1929-30) with Bernd Alois Zimmermann's own opera on
the same title. The opera Nana was overshadowed by Berg's Lulu. Despite
having his music blacklisted by the Nazis he continued to write in exile in
Japan where between 1933 and 1945 there were three more operas and various
substantial instrumental works. There his Goya Symphony was premiered
on 14 January 1943.
Rob Barnett