One has to wonder whether Eugen d'Albert was his own worst enemy.
After all, a man who got through no fewer than six wives and at least one
mistress in a single lifetime must have had either very poor judgement or at
the very least a pretty minimal attention span.
Following the same line of thought, one might also question the commercial
sense of a jobbing composer who lumbered his substantial op.8 with the
distinctly user-unfriendly title
Overture to Grillparzer's
Esther. Indeed, I note that some years ago Hyperion's canny
marketing department clearly felt it advisable to simplify the title to
Overture to 'Esther' on the front cover of an
engaging BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra recording conducted by Martyn
Brabbins (
CDA67387).
Thankfully, in the case of this overture, d'Albert's music
is rather more fluent than its awkward title might suggest. Anyone who
appreciates Brahms's sound-world will feel quite at home here, though
the absence of a memorable "big tune" makes the overture a
pleasant, rather than an especially striking, musical experience.
Of the other four shorter tracks, the introduction to the opening prelude
of
Die toten Augen is effectively atmospheric and suggestive of the
drama to come - a religious epic surely worthy, in its combination of
superficial piety and underlying prurience, of the attention of Cecil B.
DeMille. The Act II prelude to
Gernot, an opera set among barbarian
tribes during the era of the Roman Empire, depicts a lively wedding
celebration and would, I suspect, have made a rather better choice for the
disc's opening track than
Grillparzer's Esther.
D'Albert's eclecticism in the choice of subject matter for
his 19 operas is demonstrated by the conjunction of
Der Rubin and
Die Abreise. The overture to the former, set in Abbasid Baghdad, is
enjoyable enough in a conventional late 19th century way, though the
composer's apparent determination to steer clear of
"oriental" musical clichés means that it could just as easily be
introducing a drama taking place in medieval Iceland. Meanwhile, the
domestic comedy
Die Abreise boasts a light-hearted, chirruping
overture that sets an appropriate tone for the jolly japes that occur when a
husband suspects his neglected wife of some extra-marital flirtation – a
storyline no doubt reflective of widespread male paranoia in an era of
increasing women's emancipation.
That takes us to the two most substantial items on the disc, the
Aschenputtel suite, consisting of five movements depicting
incidents from the familiar story of Cinderella, and the earlier
Das
Seejungfräulein, written by d'Albert for soprano and orchestra
and premiered by his third wife, the singer Hermine Finck.
The comparatively late
Aschenputtel suite marks a significant
change in style from what we have heard so far on this disc. The far more
expressionist score is, in places, somewhat reminiscent of Debussy, a
composer whose music certainly featured in d'Albert's
pianistic repertoire (
see here). Whereas the
Aschenputtel suite's five movements are each comparatively
brief, the substantial
Das Seejungfräulein provides d'Albert
with the opportunity to explore the far wider range of moods appropriate to
its familiar "redemption through the power of love" storyline. As
a result, this is the most complex, rounded and involving work on this disc.
Lithuanian soprano Viktorija Kaminskaite rises well to the challenge of what
I imagine will have been a less than familiar score and gives a moving,
atmospheric account.
D'Albert's orchestral music remains very much on the fringes
of the repertoire and only occasionally appears on disc. Although these well
played and expertly recorded accounts from Jun Märkl and his Leipzig players
certainly fill in some useful gaps, it is fair to say that their most
striking single feature is their sheer diversity. I wonder whether, having
heard them, we may begin to suspect that d'Albert concentrated rather
too much effort on accumulating all those wives, when his time might have
been better spent establishing a more consistent and readily identifiable
musical personality.
Rob Maynard
