Ferdinand REBAY (1880-1953)
Complete Sonatas for Violin/Viola and Guitar
Sonata for Violin and Guitar in E minor (1942) [23:46]
Sonata for Viola and Guitar in D minor (date unknown) [23:56]
Sonata for Violin and Guitar in C minor (1942) [20:18]
Laurence Kayaleh (violin/viola), Michael Kolk (guitar)
rec. 2019, Pollack Concert Hall, McGill University, Montreal, Canada
NAXOS 8.573992 [68:13]
We should, perhaps, refer to this composer as Ferdinand Rebay the younger, since his father Ferdinand was a composer too, as well as a partner in the publishers Rebay & Robitschek, a company which published, inter alia, the music of Robert Fuchs. At the age of 10 the younger Ferdinand became a chorister at the Cistercian Heiligenkreuz Abbey in the Vienna Woods. From 1901 he was a student at the Vienna Conservatory, studying piano with Josef Hofmann and composition with Robert Fuchs (1847-1927) and Josef Venantius von Wöss (1863-1943). As a side-note, it is interesting that as early as 1903, young Ferdinand Rebay’s name appeared in the English musical press. In The Musical Times (issue dated August 1, 1903) a notice on end of year of year concerts at the Conservatory, by one “Dr. Mandyczewski” (presumably Eusebius Mandyczewski?) “our special correspondent at Vienna” selects for special mention “three young composers”, one of whom was “Ferdinand Rebay, with a refined chorus for female voices and orchestra”. Further evidence that Rebay’s abilities were recognized came a year later in 1904, the year of his graduation, when his composition Erlkönig, for large orchestra, won him the Brahms Prize at the Conservatory and a gold medal awarded by the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde of Vienna.
Indeed, Rebay was to be a well-established figure in the musical world of Vienna for more than thirty years. On his graduation he became choir-master of the Wiener Chorvereins. In 1916 he also took on the role of choir-master of the Wiener Schubertbund. During these years he was also busy as an accompanist of Lieder singers in the city. In 1920 he was appointed to a position at the Vienna Music Academy, teaching both piano and singing; he also worked as a private teacher of piano and music theory. Alongside such work, he composed music in several genres – opera, operetta, oratorio, chamber music and music for solo piano. He seems to have become interested in the guitar through his friendship with Jacobus Ortner, a guitarist and teaching colleague of Rebay (Rebay’s niece, Gertha Hammerschmied, was a classical guitarist and she was the dedicatee of many of his compositions for guitar).
All this comfortable success came to an abrupt and nasty end with the Anschluss of 1938. In that year, perhaps because he was believed to be of Jewish origin, and/or because his wife was Jewish, Rebay was removed from his position at the Academy and also deprived of the right to his pension. He had the strength of spirit to continue composing, however, and with the end of the war he was allowed to resume his position at the Academy. His retirement came in the following year and according to the booklet note by Gonzalo Noqué in another Naxos release, of his Complete Music for Oboe and Guitar (Naxos 9.70073) “he died in Vienna, on 6 December 1953, penniless and unknown”.
Until quite recently Rebay and his music remained largely unknown. Most of his work remained, in manuscript in the Austrian National Library in Vienna and in the library of Heiligenkreuz Abbey. Musicologists and musicians have, in the last few years investigated these repositories; some of it has been published and more will be (see the pages on Renay at Bergmann-edition.com). and a few recordings, mostly of small-scale works have appeared. Apart from the present disc and the other disc from Naxos referred to above, these have included three discs released by Brilliant Classics: Rebay’s Complete Music for Clarinet and Guitar (released in 2011), a disc of Quartets for Guitar, Flute, and Strings (released January 2012) and his Flute and Guitar Sonatas (released October 2012). There is also a disc of Works for Guitar and Piano (dot.Guitar.it), played by Andrea Ferrario and Elema Napoleone and released 2017). I haven’t heard the disc of songs for tenor and guitar reviewed by Byzantion in 2011. I once heard, some time ago, the one disc which ‘competes’ directly with this one – which was reviewed by Dominy Clements, also in 2011, but too long ago to be able to offer any detailed comparisons or make a choice between the two.
Still, what Dominy had to say about the music continues to ring true, so much so that I will take the liberty of quoting a few of his observations; “Ferdinand Rebay is one of those more or less forgotten names in music whose only mistake was to remain composing in traditional classical/romantic idioms while the jet-stream of Western music was being carried along at high speed by the 12-tone techniques of Schoenberg, the racy adventurousness of Stravinsky and a spiky dodecaphonic drive from Darmstadt. These days we’ve forgotten the way music such as Rebay’s was seen as a crime against progress in many quarters in the mid-twentieth century, and about as far away from the ‘mainstream’ of contemporary music as it would be possible to go.” – “if you were to hear the Sonata in E minor blind there is no way you would give it a date of 1942, the same year Shostakovich’s Seventh Symphony was played by starving musicians in war-torn Leningrad.” – “You won’t find emotional profundity in these pieces, and you have to admit that they are works far out of their time. Ignoring the dates of composition and relaxing into Rebay’s superbly crafted and comforting conservatism is however a joy from beginning to end”. All that is well said, and I concur wholeheartedly.
In any of the arts, I have much more respect for the artist who remains true to his/her own sensibility and vision (however unfashionable they may be) than for the one who modishly imitates the latest style. Rebay was certainly one such and he has equally certainly paid the price of neglect for being so. Even to those contemporaries who were well-disposed towards him Rebay must have seemed something of an anachronism. Though Rebay (born in 1880) was a near contemporary of Schoenberg (b.1874), Webern (b.1883) and Berg (b.1885) his music could not be more unlike theirs. His ‘musical’, rather than chronological, contemporaries were figures such as Beethoven (at times one can even hear ‘ghosts’ of Haydn), Schubert, Brahms and Weber (it is significant that the last movement of the Violin Sonata in C Minor is described by Rebay as “Ein fröhliches perpetuum mobile in Webers Manier”). Where his compositions for the guitar are concerned, one might add to the list of models Mauro Giuliani (1781-1829), the man who first established the guitar in Vienna. Though in his refusal of Serialism, one might be tempted to think of Rebay as continuing the late-Romantic tradition, his music – in the chamber works for guitar at least – has a lightness of sound and texture that, for me, makes that label inappropriate.
These sonatas are full of attractive melodies and a sophisticated harmonic awareness, shot through with a very ‘Viennese’ elegance and laced with debts to the folk tradition. The playing of Laurence Kayaleh is equally fluent and beautifully phrased, whether she is playing violin (a 1742 Guarneri) or viola (an instrument of 1820 by Giuseppe Dalaglio); her playing is lyrically eloquent and rich in tonal variety. Guitarist Michael Kolk complements her well and when his instrument is foregrounded (as in some of the variations which make up the second movement of the Sonata in C minor) his judgement of dynamics and his rhythmic sense are both faultless.
All three of these works are rewarding and enjoyable listening – so long as one doesn’t insist that a composer (poet, painter …) should be very much of his/her time. Though never intellectually profound or emotionally urgent, Rebay’s sonatas do explore a range of feelings, from the melancholy to the joyful. The recorded sound is excellent (for which thanks should go to Drew Henderson, listed as “Producer, engineer and editor”).
Glyn Pursglove
