RECORDING OF THE MONTH
Kurt WEILL (1900-1950) Kleine Dreigroschenmusik (1929)
[33:14]
Ernst TOCH (1887-1964) Egon und Emilie Op.46 (1928) [12:22]
Erwin SCHULHOFF (1894-1942) H.M.S. Royal Oak (1930) [35:58]
Elena Vink (soprano); Chaim Levano (speaker) (Toch); Daniel Reuss (speaker);
(Bernard Loonen (tenor); Åsa Olsson (soprano) (Schulhoff)’; Capella
Amsterdam; Ebony Band/Werner Herbers
rc. 3 February 1998, Beurs van Berlage, Amsterdam (Weill), 13-14 April 2006,
De Toonzaal, Den Bosch (Toch), 29 March 2004, Vredenburg, Utrecht (Schulhoff)
CHANNEL CLASSICS CCS 25109 [69:24]
Werner Herbers is a serious musician. The photo on the inner flap of this
release certainly gives this impression. Those of us who remember him as
principal
oboist of the Concertgebouw orchestra also remember how the entire orchestra
would give the impression of revolving around him when in the middle of a
solo, such was the intensity which he gave to each performance; indeed, to
each note.
As a greenhorn composer just arrived in Amsterdam in 1987-88 Werner very
kindly allowed me to work on the piano in his house. The piece I was sweating
over
is long forgotten, but his generosity lives on in my memory, and as a result
he can do no wrong. Fortunately, even with such a declaration hanging over
this review, it is very easy to have a high regard for Werner Herbers’ Ebony
Band from any objective point of view. His revival of remarkable and stunning
scores from undeserved but perhaps unsurprising neglect and obscurity have
made this band the vehicle for some uniquely valuable projects. The resonances
which grew out of the Stan Kenton orchestra experiments by composers such
as Robert F. Graettinger have been allowed to echo on into our times thanks
entirely
to his efforts.
Kurt Weill’s Kleine Dreigroschenmusik doesn’t fall into
this class of obscurity, the Threepenny Opera having retained popularity and
notoriety since its conception in 1928. Weill was forced out of Germany by
the forces set in motion through the rise of Hitler, but the influence of American
jazz and other popular forms can already clearly be heard in the suite which
covers all of the hits from this famous collaboration with Berthold Brecht.
As expected, the Ebony Band play this music with style and bite, rather sweeping
aside the not unattractive but rather swampily recorded Gulbenkian Orchestra
conducted by Michel Swierczewski on Nimbus. The Ebony Band’s qualities
in this music are more comparable with the old favourite 1970s London Sinfonietta
recording conducted by David Atherton on Deutsche Grammophon. There are differences
in inflection, and Atherton’s trombone is more fun at times. In terms
of stylistic conviction and verve the Ebony Band is every bit as good however,
and in some places more convincingly European-sounding - some of the London
Sinfonietta tracks could almost be Ealing Comedy rather than Berlin Nightclub.
While the Kleine Dreigroschenmusik is relatively familiar, the other
two works on this CD most emphatically are not. Another wartime émigré,
Ernst Toch had been a remarkably well known composer in his brief time in
Germany before his career was interrupted by Nazi domination. Egon und Emilie is
a satire on opera on a libretto by Christian Morgenstern, whose humorous
and absurdist texts owe something to the kind of material represented by
English
eccentrics such as Edith Sitwell. The piece is a monologue by an operatic
diva suffering a nervous breakdown - the result of being ignored by her largely
silent partner Egon, who finally gives a misogynistic speech, picks up his
things and leaves, granting us the proverb, “Speech is silver, silence
is golden”. One of the inner flaps of this gatefold package shows the
histrionic female giving her all, while our Egon sits in his evening dress
reading a book, looking for everything like a bourgeois caricature from a
George Grosz cartoon. Recorded in a slightly dry and tubby acoustic, this
is still
a decent recording of a very fine performance, in particular by soprano soloist
Elena Vink. The music is of that anti-romantic New Objective style which
is typical of the period, but poses few difficulties. Indeed, the piece is
full
of a kind of jolly wit and humorous inflection, albeit of a rather Teutonic
nature.
Erwin Schulhoff has since the 1990s become a more familiar name, as one of
that unfortunate list of ‘degenerate’ composers who did not survive
the war. This focus on representatives of the ‘entartete musik’ and
Erwin Schulhoff in particular was one of the strands in which Herbers and
the Ebony Band took a leading role. Their two volumes of his works on Channel
Classics
are essential listening for those interested in the period. H.M.S. Royal
Oak is a Jazz Oratorio, dubbed by the writer and collaborator Otto Rombach
as “an attempt at finding a form for a radio play which is not limited
to the radio.” As such it works superbly on CD with everything present,
and no heavy treading on the stage to indicate any missed dramatic action.
The texts are all delivered in the original German, but translated in the booklet.
Basically, the events are based on a real story about a quarrel on board the
huge eponymous vessel, three officers who get themselves into a violent argument
about the music played by a small band who performed in the officers’ mess.
The prelude to all of this was if anything more remarkable, jazz music having
been forbidden by the admiral of the ship, with an open mutiny following
as a consequence.
The piece is full of marvellous moments and colourful jazzy orchestration.
If, for instance, you know Bix Beiderbecke’s ‘Barnacle Bill the
Sailor’, then you will surely relish the baritone saxophone glops in
the second Rezitazione. Listeners afraid of heavy Germanic weather
in this piece should be informed that it is in fact a real find, filled with
favourable
winds, great fun, and performed and sung with true refinement and gusto.
True humour can only be delivered straight, and Werner Herbers resists any
temptation
to throw in gimmicks, allowing the truly inventive and strikingly clever
score to speak for itself. Schmaltzy salon-orchestra ‘Palm Court’ moments
exist alongside real dances, the insidiously mild and vibrato-laden chorus
of saxophones equal to the strings in a superb Tango-Interlude. Cracking
syncopated rhythms infect the Fox fugato, and there is also some well
delivered ‘sprechstimme’ here and elsewhere. Little references
and associations fizz throughout the piece, and I found myself musing both
on Weill’s ‘Alabama Song’ and Frank Zappa’s ‘Valley
Girl’ in the penultimate Panama-Song. Performers both vocal and
instrumental, choral and solo, are all brilliant, and the large Vredenburg
venue means we get a spacious and generously proportioned recording in which
to revel in all this new stuff.
The cover illustration for this release is a 1925 lino print, ‘Jazz Musicians’ by
Dutch artist Jef van Jole, and is a perfect choice for this excellent release.
Everything is very fine here, but the real find is H.M.S. Royal Oak.
There may be MWI readers who don’t feel inclined to hear how German
humourists took the mickey out of the British in this piece, but I hope we
can take it
on the chin. This is a piece which is packed with surprising and remarkably
high quality music, and the last Finale e Spirituel is as good as anything
by Stravinsky in a comparable genre. All of the performances are live, but
there is no audience noise or applause, the unequal nature of the different
environments an easily acceptable trade-off for having such a well balanced
programme in a single outstanding artefact.
Dominy Clements