Franz Schreker’s Masterclasses in Vienna and Berlin - Volume 4
Hugo HERRMANN (1896-1967)
Violin Sonata, Op.17 (1925) [12:45]
Toccata gotica for piano, Op.16 (1926) [3:53]
Invocation for piano. Op.18b No.1 (1925) [2:20]
Seraphic Music – Ludus sopra antiphonae ‘In Paradisum’ (1951) [17:43]
Felix PETYREK (1892-1951)
Six Greek Rhapsodies for piano (1927) [21:37]
Leon KLEPPER (1900-1991)
Two Dances for Piano (1932): No.1 [3:08]: No.2 [2:22]
Isco THALER (1902-?)
In the Rabbi’s Court, for piano (pub 1950) [2:35]
Sabbath’s End, for piano (pub 1950) [2:33]
Kolja Lessing (violin, piano)
Andreas Kersten (piano: Hermann Violin Sonata)
rec. 2017-19, Reutlingen, Kreuzkirche
EDA 046 [69:06]
Previous volumes in this series, which began two decades ago, have been all-piano solo recitals played by Kolja Lessing, featuring composers Felix Petyrek – who appears in this latest volume – Karol Rathaus, Jerzy Fitelberg, Grete von Zieritz, and a collection of other less well-known composers, though including Berthold Goldschmidt, in the third volume.
Most of the composers in the series thus far studied with Schreker in Berlin’s Hochschule für Musik but Petyrek who, though barely a name these days, was then thought amongst Schreker’s most outstanding pupils studied with him in Vienna from 1912-19. Petyrek moved to Athens in 1926 where he was Professor of Piano at the city’s conservatoire and where he first encountered Byzantine scales which profoundly impressed and influenced him. His
Six Greek Rhapsodies soon followed and are exceptionally ear-catching examples of this novelty, far removed from the barbed sarcasm of some of his earlier piano music. Here we find constant shifts, new timbres and scales, music that is fast and fiery or suffused in archaic atmosphere, or bathed in funerary gestures, percussive glints in the treble hinting at Athenian practices. He is especially successful in dance music, which is both driving and exotic, and in Delphic rhapsody with its thorough exploitation of a full range of sonorities including bell tones. The last of these six pieces is also in some ways the most fascinating because though it conforms to the archaic principles of the rest of the set, it seems to me also to evoke Weimar Europe in its sublimated ragtime or even player piano passages to produce a kind of Theban Blues. As I say, fascinating.
For volume four Lessing plays the violin in Hugo Hermann’s Violin Sonata and I wondered for a moment, given his accomplishments, whether he would overdub himself playing the piano part, as Arthur Grumiaux once did in a sonata recording, but fortunately not and the very capable Andreas Kersten supports him. The Sonata shows Herrmann’s powerful free-tonal control in this 1925 work. There’s a somewhat grim central slow movement which gradually modulates to elegiacal tautness. The finale is jagged and terse with a lot of juxtaposition of material and tempi and a rather combative outlook. Toccata gotica is a solo piano work dating from the following year and was dedicated to the young Wilhelm Kempff. Its sonorities are organ-rich (Petyrek was an organist) and its opening section is especially passionate whereas the brief
Invocation is a notturno inspired by Franz Sprandel’s painting depicted on the booklet cover, a descriptive piece but with expressive pungency. Seraphic Music – Ludus sopra antiphonae ‘In Paradisum’ is much later, dating from 1951 and finds Herrmann having moved toward the inspirations of Gregorian chant, which drives each of the three movements, and culminates in a rich bell-like beauty to evoke the pleasures of Paradise.
Leon Klepper’s two Dances were premiered by Dinu Lipatti in 1932. The first prizes contrast between motoric rhythms and lyric reflection whilst the second is more capricious with a slightly Gershwinesque B section. Klepper was big on tangy contrasts of this kind and extreme registral changes and these dances are both representative and also engaging examples of his work. There are two remaining pieces, both as compact as the Klepper dances, and these are by Isco Thaler, whose date of death seems to be unknown, though the Galician-born composer escaped Europe and his two piano pieces played here were published by an Israeli company in 1950. Gently cantorial rather than klezmer-influenced they make for a pleasing pairing.
The notes throughout have been excellent and the recording quality is well judged and unproblematic. As before in this series Lessing proves an invaluable and infallible guide. This is precisely his milieu and he explores it with true conviction.
Jonathan Woolf
