Hans PFITZNER (1869-1949)
Von Deutsche Seele - Romantische Kantate for soloists,
chorus, organ and orchestra, Op. 28 (1921) [90:59]
Solveig Kringelborn (soprano); Nathalie Stutzmann (mezzo); Christopher Ventris
(tenor); Robert Holl (bass); Rundfunkchor/Simon Halsey
Deutsche Symphonie-Orchester Berlin/Ingo Metzmacher
rec. live, 2-5 October 2007, Philharmonie, Großer Saal. Deutschlandradio Kultur.
DDD
Previously issued in 2008 as Phoenix Edition 145
CAPRICCIO CAP5092 [47:47 + 43:12] 
My interest in Pfitzner was spurred by a chance hearing of a 1970s BBC Radio
3 broadcast of his First Cello Concerto. The performer was Rohan de Saram
whose name was known to me because of his Pearl LP of the Bax Rhapsodic Ballad
(SHE547). The music was supple, very romantic and the musical ideas were succulent.
The CPO CD of the two cello concertos – good as it is – fails quite to capture
de Saram’s rapturous freedom and lyrical release.
Later I heard the classic DG recording on 437 033-2 20th Century Classics
of Von Deutsche Seele and was further won over. This was set down in
December 1965 in the Munich Herkulesaal with a luxury line-up of Agnes Giebel
(soprano), Hertha Töpper (mezzo), Fritz Wunderlich (tenor) and Otto Wiener
(bass). The Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra and Choir were conducted by
Joseph Keilberth. Other more recent versions included a very good one from
Arte
Nova in 2002. There the forces were the Vienna Symphony Orchestra and
choir/Martin Sieghart with soloists Barbara Holzl, Anton Holzapfel, Gabriele
Fontana and Glenn Winslade. From 1986 comes a set on Koch 314 027 K3 with
the Dusseldorf Symphony conducted by Heinrich Hollreiser.
Pfitzner the man and Pfitzner the composer: these two present tensions. We
expect composers of music we love or want to love to be admirable yet there
is no reason to connect the two. Pfitzner held political and racial views
that were and remain odious and criminally despicable. These views he held
fast to even after the War was over. He was an out and out Hitlerite and a
close friend of Hans Frank the Governor-General for Poland. This did not however
stop him protecting a number of fellow artists who happened to be Jewish.
The days of effete hagiography for our composers has I hope passed but Pfitzner
tests us to the utmost. It’s a matter of choice whether we believe such views
in some way pervade or pollute the art or whether the man and music can be
compartmentalised. Our modern perspective is so different from that of the
1920s when Von Deutsche Seele was written and of the 1930s and 1940s.
For my part I try to apply the test: what would I have made of this music
if I had turned it on midway through a broadcast and not known any of the
background. If I am moved by the music in ignorance of the composer’s name
and life am I any less moved when I know the rest? Was the experience of the
music in some way falsified by not knowing what sort of man the composer was?
I think not; others will take a different road and destination.
This extravagant 90 minute setting of twenty-three poems by Joseph von Eichendorff
(1788-1857) is divided into two sections: Man and Nature and Life
and Singing. Each is in twelve separately tracked episodes. It is most
assuredly not, for most of its span, a bombastic or ‘kolossal’ nationalist
tract – not at all the equivalent of Speer’s architecture or, for that matter,
Stalin’s. Its piercingly romantic lyricism is masterly and poignant. Try the
Abend movement (CD 1 tr. 6) which is magically idyllic. There’s much
sensitive play there between delicate honeyed strings, solo harp and woodwind
and horns – almost Delian. The orchestral writing throughout is highly creative
and replete with interest. There’s much excellent singing from a radiant quartet
of solo voices of which I would only mildly criticise Ventris and Holl for
a tremble in the voice in such testingly slow episodes as Der Wandrer in
Section I. Part II launches with a tense orchestral vorspiel pregnant
with the threat of corbie-cawing brass and drums. A roaring conflict bursts
brutally forth from the choir in Geistliche Gedichte (CD 2 tr. 2) and
recalls - as at least one earlier Part I motif does - the music of Franz Schmidt
in The Book of the Seven Seals. There is peace of a sort in the enigmatically
sinuous Ergebung (tr. 4) but nothing like that in Abend in Part
I. Der Jagt Dahin (CD 2 tr. 5) has a brutalising Orff-like nervy joy
about it. The choir is gloriously well trained as we can hear from their subtle
and tender ministrations in Von allen Guten (CD 2 tr. 8) and their
terpsichorean daintiness in Wohl vor lauter Singen (CD 2 tr. 10). The
solo violin in Schlaf ein is Straussian in its entwining with Holl’s
voice (CD 2 tr. 11). Here references to battle engender a galloping orchestral
figure that might perhaps have inspired Hans Zimmer in his music for Pirates
of the Caribbean. In the final Schlussgesang Pfitzner resorts to
massive hortatory writing for chorus and soloists. It’s supercharged with
orchestral and organ accelerant - a blazing and roaring lunge at sun-drenched
fierce nobility.
There are good notes and the sung German words are printed in parallel with
English translations. You have to work at finding which poem links with which
track but it’s all there to follow.
Later controversial works seem flat beside this poetic epic. I tried Das
Dunkle Reich on Preiser 93311 with Graz-based forces under Alois J Hochstrasser
in a 1979 performance but it failed to impress.
You should decide for yourself but rather like Röntgen’s Aus Goethe’s Faust
this can be seen as an immersive celebration of German romantic poetry
in words and music. The emphasis is on poetry although in Part II Pfitzner
is more given to massive declamation.
Rob Barnett
German romantic poetry in words and music threaded through and tied off with
supercharged accelerant - a blazing and roaring lunge at sun-drenched fierce
nobility.