AVAILABILITY
www.phoenixcd.com
The odd man out here
is Karel Berman for two reasons. Firstly
he was the only one of the quartet of
Czech Jews to survive the War and secondly
he was to become known almost exclusively
as a singer, though in his youth he
was active as a composer and conductor,
as well as committing himself to the
concert and operatic stages.
It’s fitting that he’s
here, since he was the dedicatee of
important work from both Haas and Ullmann,
not least Haas’ Four Songs to Texts
of Chinese Poetry and the figure
of Death in the latter’s The Emperor
of Atlantis. His 1938-1945 Reminiscences
were originally called simply Terezin
and comprised three movements. In
1957 he expanded the suite to the eight
movements with which we are now familiar.
They comprise a block of pianistic autobiography
and trace Berman’s life from the joyous
and carefree Mládi (Youth) through
the warmth and domestic reflection as
well as romantic burgeoning of the Family
Home. Explicitly descriptive the ominous,
grotesque goose steps of the 1939 Occupation
herald a dramatic change of tone; the
mordant touches of Prokofiev add a sour
taste, as do the mechanistic slowings
down of the Factory scene. Auschwitz
is evoked with spare and granitic remorselessness
in a bare two minutes. Berman calls
upon impressionism for the penultimate
Alone-Alone tableau, its tied bass note
and chords nagging away like a colossal
migraine before the final New Life brings
reminiscences of earlier days and renewed
vigour and hope. This is only one of
two extant compositions by Berman and
it evokes pain and melancholy – and
brutish barbarism – with measured control.
The other works are
naturally better known but no less valuable
for being coupled on this enterprising
disc. Haas’s Suite is a mid-1930s delight
and cast in five archaic sounding movements.
There’s pithy woodland frolic in the
opening Praeludium and a dramatically
bold second movement marked Con molta
espressione. The central Danza is
a rather cocky Parisian one, with a
touch of Martinů
inspired Jazz ŕ la mode,
but there’s plenty of reflective intimacy
in the final Postludium. This is the
only piece here written pre-War and
its lightness of touch acts as a kind
of programmatic Scherzo amidst the denser
tragedies of the companion trio of works.
Of these Ullmann’s
Seventh Sonata is amongst the most powerful,
so much so in fact that it was subsequently
orchestrated, using Ullmann’s notes,
and performed in 1989 as his Symphony
No.2. The opening is deceptively welcoming
and light-hearted, puzzling and disconcertingly
when one remembers it was sketched in
1944 two months before his transportation
from Terezin to the gas chambers and
death. But there’s a sardonic march
to follow and a wide-ranging unsettled,
tonality-bursting central adagio which
makes coded reference to Tristan
und Isolde. A quirky Viennese waltz,
subtly deconstructed, leads on to the
longest movement, a variational finale
of considerable power that utilises
a fugue to impressive effect; binding
themes such as a Hussite hymn and a
Lutheran chorale with increasing command.
The relative concision
of Gideon Klein’s 1943 Sonata barely
masks its power. The longest of the
three movements is the first but its
most intense moments are reserved for
the crepuscular impressionism of the
Adagio,
which is laced with Francophile affiliations
and sonorities. The finale by contrast,
and like many a Czech work of this period,
owes a big debt to Prokofiev. Comparing
Paul Orgel with Jaromír Klepáč
on Bonton (though ex-Panton) and we
find that the native player gives
fuller vent to Klein’s con fuoco
indication in the first movement, and
binds its Schoenbergian influence rather
more succinctly. His greater speed accords
well with the dynamism and intensity
of the musical argument and he is much
eerier than Orgel in the second movement,
who’s more straight and inflects less;
Orgel is not helped by a consistently
over loud recording that fails to deal
with dynamics as well as it might and
that exacerbates a hardness in piano
attack – one that Klepáč
successfully avoids in the finale.
Nevertheless this disc
draws together four mutually elucidatory
works. You’d need to cast your net wide
to track down individual performances
such as Charvát’s Berman on Channel,
or Nishri’s version of the Klein on
Roma. Or then again whilst Kvapil is
a sure bet for the Ullmann on Praga
and you could search for Weichert on
CPO easily enough, you’d still need
to get Schleiermacher on Dabringhaus
und Grimm in the case of the Haas. All
complicated stuff. This Phoenix disc
however comprises sympathetic performances,
not the most incisive it’s true, but
sensitive, and Orgel writes well about
the works in his notes. A good starting
point - but one that needs to be augmented.
Jonathan Woolf
Paul Orgel (piano) 
