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Mischa SPOLIANSKY (1898-1985)
My Husband and I – Overture (1967) [5:37]
Boogie (1958) [10:42]
Symphony in Five Movements (c.1941-69) [57:22]
Liepāja Symphony Orchestra/Paul Mann
rec. 22-26 November 2021, Great Amber Concert Hall, Liepāja, Latvia
TOCCATA CLASSICS TOCC0626 [73:43]

Toccata Classics’ release calendar is an enduring thing of wonder. Month after month music of real worth and stature by utterly unfamiliar composers is released. But even by those high standards, this disc of orchestral music by Mischa Spoliansky is pretty special. Film buffs of a certain age will recognise Spoliansky’s name as the composer for a host of British films from the 1930’s for some forty years including Sanders of the River (1935), The Ghost Goes West (1935), King Solomon's Mines (1937), The Happiest Days of Your Life (1950), Saint Joan (1957) and North West Frontier (1959) to name just a few. Chandos released an excellent survey of his film work as part of their “The film music of....” series. In recent years the stature and status of film composers has been reassessed but Spoliansky is a prime example of a creative artist who has been categorised as “just” a film composer – aside from a couple of examples of songs he wrote during his time working in the Berlin Cabaret scene.

This new disc, showcasing three orchestral works centring on the hour-long Symphony in Five Movements, is literally revelatory. A brief biography might be useful and give some context to the music offered here. Spoliansky was born in North East Poland to an opera-singer father and the family travelled with the father’s touring. By the time he was thirteen he was orphaned but already establishing himself as a pianist of note. The outbreak of World War I saw the sixteen year old Spoliansky travel to Berlin to live with his sister where he was due to undertake an apprenticeship as a couturier. However an opportunity to take over the pianist role in a trio at one of Berlin’s large cafe/restaurants was eagerly snapped up. The income from this allowed Spoliansky to pay for a musical education as his playing expanded into orchestras accompanying silent movies. Remarkably in one of these orchestras Spoliansky met Marlene Dietrich who was playing 2^nd Violin at the time and they became lifelong friends with Spoliansky instrumental in getting Dietrich her first main stage performing role as well as accompanying her first recording. During this period, Spoliansky recorded a version of Rhapsody in Blue, met and swapped tunes with Gershwin and generally was a leading composing and performing light in Weimar Berlin’s remarkably rich Cabaret and Review scene.

By 1933 the rise of National Socialism and Hitler in power meant that shows previously cheered were now booed and disrupted. Spoliansky was prescient enough to leave Germany that year with his family and because of having received an invitation to write scores for Gaumont films ended up in London. From that point forward for the next forty and more years film scores – including propaganda work during World War II – dominated his output. Clearly Spoliansky was someone for whom the impulse to create Art was fundamental – in his later years he became a prolific painter as well as writer of his (unpublished) autobiography. At the end of this autobiography he wrote; “I have been a very lucky man” but there is a distinct sense that this astonishingly talented man combined ability and hard work to create his own ‘luck’.

Most of the above information is taken from the booklet accompanying this disc. Especially given the unknown context of the composer and the music this liner – in English only – is a model of its kind. There are two extended essays – a biographical sketch written by Toccata Classics founder Martin Anderson and then a detailed discussion about the specific music on the disc from conductor Paul Mann. Both are written with evident passion as well as valuable insights into the man and the music. Anderson knew Spoliansky’s daughter well and it was she who instigated this project by getting her father’s symphony transcribed from the fair copy manuscript.

So to the actual music, performances and recording. Toccata Classics have turned to the Liepāja Symphony Orchestra from Latvia who I first heard in the same label’s recording of Malcolm Arnold’s powerful Symphony No.9. My good impression of the orchestra from that disc is repeated here – technically adept, musically sensitive and responsive. They are fully up to the actual – considerable – playing demands of these scores. I could imagine a lusher orchestral sound working well too but certainly all three works receive impressive first performances. This is in no doubt due to the insights and understanding of conductor Paul Mann. Even with no comparisons available, it is clear that Mann has immersed himself in these works and all three pieces sound ‘right’.

The disc itself is generous and well-planned, opening with a sparkling five minute overture to one of Sopliansky’s last stage shows called My Husband and I. Given Spoliansky’s origins and his years in Berlin it is perhaps not surprising that the shade of German Operetta is such a benevolent presence. The works swirls along in ¾ waltz-time for its entire length – the liner references an allegro furioso marking but there is little if anything furious here. In its own right this is a charming work – but at the same time it is interesting to note that Spoliansky is blithely out of time or place – the innocent ear would assume a Silver Age Viennese Operetta not a work written in Swinging Sixties London! Recently I reviewed a disc of Korngold’s Much Ado About Nothing incidental music and there is a definite kinship between the two overtures – bubbling with energy and buoyant humour and played with exactly the right degree of light precision by the Latvian players. Boogie that follows from about a decade earlier is a very odd work. Not ‘bad’ odd but I am not wholly convinced it is ‘good’ odd either! In his liner Mann relates that the manuscript score shows no indication of a commission or dedication so it appears that Spoliansky wrote it for his own diversion. Mann also relates that the score was sent to Sir Malcolm Sargent for appraisal and possible performance. Hard to think of a conductor probably less suited technically or aesthetically to this orchestral romp. Several times the liner references Spoliansky’s sense of humour and clearly on some level this work is intended as a musical a musical joke. It starts with a stately French Overture introduction which barely fifty seconds in decides it would much rather be a boogie-woogie replete with walking bass lines and skiffling drum kit. Think some kind of Hoffnung Music Festival contribution.... there was a Hoffnung Festival in 1958....?? Again all praise to the orchestra who play this music to the hilt – dynamic brass stabs and virtuosic string writing played with aplomb. But at nearly eleven minutes long it is a gag that simply outstays its welcome. Mann rightly points out the sheer technical skill of the writing – given Spoliansky’s decades in the theatre and on film it should come as no surprise that he is adept and effective but the question remains why bother. Morton Gould could write similar pieces of orchestral ‘pop’ but with concision a definite virtue.

The main event is of course the Symphony in Five Movements. This is a remarkable and deeply personal work. Mann references a short score and two fair copy full scores of the work but at the same time that Spoliansky never sought to promote let alone have the work played. The compositional dates for the work are given as c.1941-69. From the liner this appears to mean that Spoliansky sketched themes and ideas for the work over a twenty-five year period before creating the finished score after he had retired from the daily commitments of film composition. Mann’s analysis of the music – both technical and aesthetic - is exceptionally helpful to the listener. Central to this is Spoliansky’s use of a germinal motif that reoccurs throughout the work binding it together into a coherent whole. Through his work on film, one imagines that Spoliansky became adept at creating musical ‘gestures’ with maximum economy. So it is with this motif – initially a descending 3 note scale from C down to A thereby outlining a minor third and then its inversion rising from C up to E so a major third. Instantly Spoliansky creates the theatrical “masks” smiling and sad. Clearly this is not original let alone unique but it is effective. The work opens with the implacable downward gesture which the composer marked risonanza and to be played using an “echo apparatus”. Mann speculates that Spoliansky is evoking the “voice of God” given that the movement has a sub-title “...and thus was man created”. On this recording the natural hall resonance suffices but I do wonder whether Spoliansky – so used to having his film scores manipulated in post-production – was seeking a kind of non-realistic cinematic effect that it would have been interesting (and actually very easy in this digital world) to overlay.

Mann also points out that Spoliansky favours an episodic structure rather than traditional sonata form in the opening movement. There will always be arguments about whether music in isolation can ‘mean’ anything. This is music that clearly does have an extra-musical meaning although tantalisingly Spoliansky left no specific written details of what it might be. Spoliansky sticks firmly to his Germanic and tonal roots – on one level this is not difficult music to assimilate but it is complex and emotionally dissembling. The way Spoliansky juxtaposes passages of widely differing musical character and intent can be confusing for the listener and the music can seem episodic at first encounter. Of course other composers from Arnold to Mahler have done exactly the same thing – with both of those symphonic giants humour and the grotesque are key. To my ear Spoliansky seems a little more literal in his use of humour – the light-hearted passages lack the bitter irony that deliberately sours the trivial tunes beloved of those other composers.

My sense is that this work is Spoliansky’s testament to the human experience and the opposites that shape and dictate life. Hence happiness is juxtaposed against sadness, light/darkness, love/hate with the triumph of the human spirit the ultimate goal. Spoliansky chose to give the movements almost Nietzchian titles so after the opening movement there follows; Ode to Love, Of Laughter, Of Weeping, And new life blooms from the ruins. Yet within each of those movements there then appears strong contrast. So if the second movement Ode to Love would seem to be a ‘slow movement’ it starts with a quirky xylophone solo skittering around like some cartoon mouse. As Mann suggests love can come unexpectedly and arbitrarily so this ‘chase music’ evolves with a counter-subject played in half-time by the strings and horn with a Korngoldian sweeping melody. This is a moment when you can imagine the Vienna Philharmonic pulling at the heart-strings to even greater effect. Yes of course there is a cinematic quality to this and other passages in the work but in no way should that be considered a pejorative term. Instead this is again the composer using a form of musical shorthand to give the listener maximum information with minimum use of resources. Likewise the central Of Laughter – this is the symphony’s shortest movement and the humour is again natural and without irony – Mann’s characterisation of a light hearted inebriated party (again in Viennese waltz time) is neatly appropriate.

In purely musical/dramatic terms this movement also sets up the work’s heart and key movement powerfully. Of weeping is the powerful epicentre of the symphony. Again challenging the “music is absolute” argument there appears to be a clear message here. This is Spoliansky’s memorial to the Holocaust. The musical mood moves from memorialising to a lament and final anguished protest. Along the way the score does seem to explicitly indicate this narrative. The opening section uses melodic shapes that represent Jewish Folklore. The lone Cor Anglais then intones a song marked “Moritat”. A Moritat is ballad specifically about murder or death – Weill’s “Mack the Knife” from the Threepenny Opera the most famous example. This song is repeated seven times in differing orchestral garbs – almost as if it is being passed around the orchestra as the different instrumental sections bear witness. Worth remembering here that the number 7 is the most significant in Judaic numerology. To quote Rabbi Eliyahu Safran; “Seven is completeness and wholesomeness.....the number seven thus joins for all eternity the Creator and His Creation, God and His people; and the hyphen uniting them, is the holy Shabbat.” And in case there was any doubt as to there being an extra-musical meaning here the seventh repetition is overwhelmed at its climax by the German National Anthem – this is a powerful indeed disturbing passage heightened by the fact that Spoliansky finishes the movement in a way that echoes then end of the Ode to Love – so again both love and genocidal hate are part of the same human experience.

But irrepressible optimism and humour seem to have been central to Spolianky’s character. So the symphony’s closing movement – the longest in the work – hauls itself from abyss of sorrow and is able to look forwards towards a more positive future. Musically Spoliansky does this by revisiting themes and moods from the earlier movements. The “voice of God” motifs re-appear with Mann characterising them as now “profoundly cathartic”. Compositionally this reintegration of so many themes and passages is something of a tour de force – there is a sense that Spoliansky might be teetering on the edge of the disjointedly episodic with almost too profligate use of musical material. The symphony’s closing pages do have an epic cinematic ‘riding into the sunset’ spirit with the rising/major key version of the “Voice of God” finally and irrevocably triumphant. I have to say I find Mann’s pacing of the entire work to be wholly convincing and very impressive as is the playing of all sections of the Liepāja Symphony Orchestra. Individual solos are all beautifully played and the sense of engagement and dedication is evident.

I am too early in my knowledge and understanding of this work to really get a sense of how ‘great’ it is but the sincerity of intent and conviction behind every note is palpable and moving. What is unclear is if there are any other Spoliansky orchestral scores waiting to be heard – if so a Volume 2 would be eagerly awaited. Toccata Classics has a proud history of bringing impressive and worthwhile music to the attention of the listening public. Hard not to consider this release one of their greatest triumphs to date.

Nick Barnard