This is a fascinating
and far too easily overlooked gallimaufry
of chamber works by German and Austrian
composers who were émigrés
to the UK in the 1930s. The music was
written both before and after their
arrival so some of it reflects probably
happier times in Germany and Austria.
For the record, Reizenstein
arrived in England in 1934, Gellhorn,
Seiber and Goldschmidt in 1935, Gal
in 1938, Rankl, Wellesz and Spinner
in 1939 and Tauský in 1940.
Wellesz's Octet
touched with tangy discord is for
clarinet, bassoon, horn, string quartet
and double-bass. Its rumbling bass-accented
sound is full of life, lived in grand
and confident style with resolute Beethovenian
moments and absolutely nothing of Weimar's
nightlife. Any tendency towards atonal
highlights is held at bay in a English
pastoral andante that suddenly shrivels on the bough into
something heavy with portent. The fifth movement - the finale - bustles along à
la Smetana, full of bonhomie. It is
not the work's first recording. The
Vienna Octet recorded it in the early
1970s on Decca Ace of Diamonds SDD 316
with the Henk Badings Octet.
The Geistliches
Lied is a sumptuous piece of slow-flowering late-romanticism
- part-Korngold and
part-Mahlerian Abschied - from
the end of the Great War. It is beautifully
rounded and paced by Christian Immler
and friends. The Cherry Blossom Songs
are for voice and piano and are in a
lissom and succulent Debussian idiom.
These very songs will also appeal to
those who love the Howells songs. Only
in the final song of the five does the
26 year old Wellesz lean over the Schoenbergian
ledge to embrace a cloud of glisteningly
honeyed Klimtian dissonance.
Spinner is little
known on record and not that well known
in other contexts. He has however been
profiled in the illustrious B&H
house journal Tempo edited by Malcolm
Macdonald. His two pieces for violin
and piano predate his flight to England
by five years. They adopt the fragmented
kaleidoscope of dissonance beloved of
Schoenberg. He was being taught at the
time by Paul Pisk, himself a Schoenberg
pupil.
The long-lived Goldschmidt
wrote his single movement Fantasy
only five years before his death.
It is a luxurious work despite the small
forces which are expertly used. It radiates
a sense of Arcady and is as opulently
allusive as Bax's Elegiac Trio. Goldschmidt has some claims to
popularity - even
rating a live concert broadcast of his
Violin Concerto on Classic FM a decade
or so ago.
Peter Gellhorn's
yielding and enchanting little Intermezzo
was written for Maria Lidka who
was at one time a regular on the BBC
Third Programme. She performed the Joubert
and Fricker violin concertos and premiered
the Reizenstein violin sonata in 1946.
The Intermezzo is most affectingly spun by Pacht and
Lifschitz. Gellhorn became a much featured choral conductor on the
BBC. He participated in broadcasts of Holst's Cloud Messenger,
Rubbra's
In Die et Nocte Canticum and
much else.
Surely it is only Tauský's
reputation as a conductor that held
the Coventry Meditation back
from fame, affection and repeat performances.
Some people have great difficulty in
accepting multi-talented people and
Tauský's modesty cannot have
helped. It was written after the devastating
bombing of Coventry and is based on
the St Wenceslas Chorale as indeed is Josef Suk's Meditation.
The Tauský is a soulful and elegiac piece with only a gentle
veneer of dissonance separating it from the Howell's Elegiac
Meditation. It is most haunting
and poignantly original.
Gál's
1920 Violin Sonata is another melodically
self-assured piece unashamedly recalling
at various times the grandeur of Franck,
Bruch and early Foulds. This is uncompromisingly
warm and romantic writing with none
of the modernistic tendencies of Spinner
or Wellesz. Back to the safe hands of
Christian Immler for five modestly modernised
Schubertian songs straddling the year
1918. Two of them pick up on the Oriental
fashion engendered by the Hans Bethge
translations of Chinese poetry. These
songs recall the very attractive Granville
Bantock examples to be heard on a Dutton
selection issued in 2004.
We return briefly to
Goldschmidt for his setting of
Old Ships by James Elroy Flecker
whose play Hassan was provided
with incidental music by Delius in 1920.
This dreamy and mistily-paced setting
can also be heard in orchestrated form
in the composer's 1959 Mediterranean
Songs.
Mátyás
Seiber died in a road accident
in South Africa in 1960 which was also
the year of his three movement Violin
Sonata. It is a tough piece; not tough
in the Spinner sense. Obdurately impressionistic,
its fragmented accents are those of
Verklärte Nacht. Tough going
for resolute souls.
Reizenstein's
compact little four movement wind quintet
dates from the year of his arrival in
the UK. It is spirited and in a fairly
objective but entertainingly clean-focus
Hindemithian manner. Reizenstein was
one of Hindemith's favoured pupils and
this is most easily acknowledged in
the playfully effervescent finale.
Rankl, for long
associated with the Scottish National
Orchestra from its early days, wrote
fascinating orchestral works including
some fine symphonies. The Fourth Symphony
which I know from a rather distressed
broadcast tape is impressively brightly
coloured. In They Rankl sets
Siegfried Sassoon with music that responds
minutely to every colour and twist and
turn of the text. The same responsive
reins between sung words and piano part
can be heard in the mercurial The
Whim to a poem by Thomas Flatman.
The useful notes are
a cooperative affair with Martin Anderson,
Simon Fox and Eva Fox-Gál, Lewis
Foreman, Boosey and Hawkes, Erik Levi,
Anon, Calum MacDonald, and Philip Ward
all weighing in and all to good and
informative effect.
You can imply who plays
what but personnel allocations are not
absolutely clear from the booklet or
insert. It is a pity that these details
could not have been listed explicitly.
I would also have welcomed a single
width case rather than the dumpy standard
double width; mind you the substantial
English-only booklet might have been
a squeeze in a single case. Slightly
more seriously the words of the songs
are not provided in the booklet -[see
footnote].
This is an eye-opening
set and not to be missed if you have
any curiosity about the music of the
1930s diaspora and its impact on the
countries to which these gifted refugees
fled. I trust that Nimbus will consider
a sequel. If funds permit an orchestral
set would be well worthwhile. Until
then do not miss this double CD issue.
Rob Barnett
Footnote
We have been informed by Nimbus that
there is an insert for the song texts
in NI5730/1 which was omitted from the
set under review. If anyone else is
missing this important insert they should
get in touch with Nimbus sales@wyastone.co.uk
Ensemble Modern, Frankfurt (Dietmar Wiesner
(flute); Catherine Milliken (oboe); Roland Diry
(clarinet); Karl Ventulett (bassoon); Silke Schurack
(horn); Manon Morris (harp); Freya Ritts-Kirby
(violin); Thomas Hofer (violin); Susan Knight
(viola); Eva Böcker (cello); Bruno Suys (double-bass))
