The Banned Music series
from Decca has unearthed some rich material
from Europe’s darker past and Forbidden
Sounds is Capriccio’s contribution to
the excavation of proscribed music.
There are fourteen composers represented,
some obvious, some less so, and the
works range from those by Zemlinsky,
Schrecker and Schoenberg from around
the turn of the twentieth century (Schoenberg’s
Verklärte Nacht is heard here in
its 1943 orchestration) to Wellesz’s
1969 Symphonischer Epilog. So this is
very much a set predicated on exile
and not necessarily banned works (though
of course some, indeed most, were inevitably
to be so in Nazi dominated and occupied
Europe.)
Some of these performances,
culled from radio broadcasts from a
number of German stations, have been
previously released on disc and won’t
be new to assiduous collectors, though
I must say apart from Vegh’s Verklärte
Nacht most were unknown to me. A strong
exception can be made for the anomalous
inclusion of two small excerpts from
historic recordings of Weill – surely
everyone has heard Lotte Lenya and Gisela
May’s renditions from the Threepenny
Opera from the 1930s and they do seem
more than somewhat out of place here.
Why not a suite or a contemporary performance?
Still it’s a mere five or so minutes’
worth of puzzlement and we can savour
much of the rest.
Zemlinsky’s Triumph
der Zeit, three ballet pieces, dates
from 1903. It’s variously fresh and
verdant with an admixture of Brucknerian-Wagnerian
burnish and weight, robust in the second
piece and bracing and breezy in the
third with some Elgarian-sounding trombones
and biting winds. Schrecker illustrates
more of the cusps of movements in his
evocative choral piece, the Op.11 Schwanensang.
Crudely speaking this is on the cusp
of Wagnerism and Impressionism with
a stubborn spine of Brahmsian choral
writing (it’s more than once reminiscent
of the German Requiem). But there’s
nothing assiduously academic about it
and it makes a strong case for Schrecker’s
burgeoning individuality of utterance.
We tend to think of Erwin Schulhoff
in terms of the 1930s and the last works
written in extremis in 1941 and 1942
(the year of his death) so it’s always
good to be reminded of the mid-1920s
Schulhoff. Here we have the Duo for
Violin and Cello, written before he
adopted a more rigid compositional outlook
influenced by Soviet Social Realism.
This looks more to Kodály (and
his Op.7 Duo in particular which Schulhoff
must have known) and is a tautly argued
four-movement work. Süssmuth and
Eschenburg catch the folk inflections
and the discreet modernity, the Hungariana
and the fine driving conclusion very
well. They are tighter all round in
matters of tempo than a long admired
version of mine by Antonín Novák
and Václav Bernášek on
Praga – though the Czech pairing gives
more room for lyrical evocation.
His fellow Czech, Viktor
Ullmann, is represented by Don Quixote,
a nine-minute Overture, reconstructed
from the short score by Bernhard Wulff.
It was one of the composer’s last works,
written in the year of his murder in
the gas chamber, 1944. It’s a late Romantic
work, ripely orchestrated, with a strong
part for solo violin but also with lighter,
more aerated writing and a rugged march.
The dance courses through it. To conclude
the first disc we have Hindemith’s masterly
Trumpet Sonata – commanding, clear,
and played with a bright penetrating
tone by Reinhold Friedrich. Pianist
Thomas Duis proves a most sympathetic
partner and together they explore the
consolatory chorale that threads its
way through the Trauermusik finale –
very moving and effective.
Sandor Végh’s
Schoenberg is mildly disappointing.
He never lacked for emotional ardour
or honesty but this is a rather fitful
performance. Luckily it won’t tip the
odds because you won’t be buying this
set for the Schoenberg even in its 1943
orchestrated guise. Wellesz wrote his
Symphonischer Epilog in 1969, five years
before his death. It’s tough, dramatic,
knotty and written in a post Schoenbergian
idiom. The snarl and impress of inevitable
dissolution is halted briefly by a moment
of brief, illusory reprieve – before
a brutal, brusque conclusion. The whole
work is tautly argued and impressively,
unarguably brittle. Milhaud marks an
immediate change in temperature. His
1912 Quartet is a joyous, echt Debussyian,
diatonic delight, the two violinists
of the excellent Petersen Quartet conjoining
in the second movement in luscious tonal
tandem. This is the first of Milhaud’s
Quartets and unusually sports two slow
movements, the second eerier by far
– even with hints of a Verklärte
Nacht, so it’s perhaps apt casting after
all to place this work so near the putative
source. The finale is buoyant and oddly
reminiscent of Vaughan Williams’ sound
world. Eisler’s Kleine Sinfonie continues
the eclectic brew of this second disc
– a royal mix of Mossolov, brittle trumpets,
sardonic cabaret, tough Schoenbergian
influence, Renaissance brass hints,
Chorale, mordant Weimar saxophones and
Kit Kat Club heavy drapes. Did Britten
listen to the Allegro finale of this
work – the string writing anticipates
Britten’s own uncannily. The conductor
by the way is Hans E Zimmer, perhaps
better known for his epic film music
scores.
The final disc starts
with Waxman and his hungry hints of
Mussorgsky’s Pictures in the
boldly named Athanael the Trumpeter
– some characteristically verdant orchestration
as well and some typical Waxman fingerprints.
I reviewed Krenek’s Zwölf Variationen
in drei Sätzen recently on
this site when they appeared in an all-Krenek
Capriccio disc. The Twelve Variations
are commendably cogent – they’re grouped
into three (5, 3 and 4 variations) and
elliptical, tangential composition is
the order of the day. The second group
of three - two adagios and an allegretto
– rises and crests on waves of brow-furrowing
ambiguity, intensely compressed and
ultimately rather bleak. The final Adagio
variation seems to be slipping away
but then ends on a note of absolute
defiance. I can’t tell what musico-biographical
forces may have been at work in this
1937 work but one can guess and they
seem unignorable. Paul Dessau was an
uneven composer, a student of Schoenberg,
collaborator with Brecht and best known
for his post War Social Realist works.
We have here a twelve-minute fragment
from his oratorio Hagadah Shel Pessach,
written between 1934 and 1936. It’s
difficult to assess the work at all
from this section of Part II but it’s
predominately grey in colour with some
aggressive rhythmic passages and the
choral writing is assured and strong.
Finally – at last if you’re still with
me – to Manfred Gurlitt. Old timers
or younger fogies will know him best
as an orchestral conductor, because
he was a prestigious music director
and recording artist in Berlin, but
he was also a prolific composer (eight
operas for a start). He emigrated to
Japan in 1939 after having been written
off as a "Cultural Bolshevik"
and died in Tokyo in 1972. The small
segments from the end of his 1926 Wozzeck
show an eclectic, serious minded composer
at work – writing serious and suitably
tense, glowering music.
The collector is left
with a conundrum. Though the recorded
quality from broadcast material varies
it’s never less than acceptable and
often much more. Performances are fully
committed and agile and idiomatic. The
booklet biographical notes, tri-lingual
(German, English and French) are cogent,
if brief. The disparate nature of the
programme will probably determine how
necessary the purchase is.
Jonathan Woolf
RIAS Kammerchor/Deutsches Symphonie Orchester
Berlin/Gerd Albrecht 