The raison d’être of this
remarkable CD is to commemorate/celebrate an important event. On 29 October
1923, the first German public broadcast was made from an office block on
Potsdamer Straße, Berlin. The very first programme heard was the “Berlin Radio
Hour.” As the advertising blurb for this disc suggests, “Broadcasting offered
completely new possibilities for the production and reception of music”. The
composers presented on this CD “not only benefited from these developments,
some of them also played an active role in shaping them…” All of them would go
on to write music specifically for radio.
In 1923, there were several political
crises, rampant inflation and the after-effects of both the First World War and
the Spanish Flu. All the music heard here is a reflection of the foment in
musical expression that was occurring at this time: serialism, jazz, late
romanticism, nationalism and folksong.
Ernst Toch’s Tanz Suite was commissioned by the expressive dancer and teacher Frieda Ursula Back, who like Toch, was a lecturer at Manheim music academy. She gave the premiere of the original four movement version of this suite under the title, Der Wald (The Forest) on 19 November 1923. This was some ten days after Hitler’s failed coup attempt, the Beer Hall Putsch. Toch added two short intermezzos when he came to revise the Suite for the concert hall. The six movements, all with choreographic titles, give a good impression of the work: The Red Whirl Dance, The Dance of Horror, Idyll, The Dance of Silence, Grotesque and finally, The Dance of Awakening.
Stylistically, Toch has moved
away from “the exaggerated expressive world and harmonies of Late Romanticism”
and has absorbed the music of Stravinsky and Hindemith as well as continuing to
develop his own distinctive voice.
The Suite is scored for a “Pierrot”
ensemble of flute, clarinet, violin, viola, double bass, and percussion. It is
the variety, the emotional contrast, and the sheer invention that Toch has
created from this small group, and which is ideally heard in this performance,
that makes the Suite so appealing and interesting.
There is a problem with Kurt Weill’s Frauentanz, op.10. The liner notes do not provide texts for these songs. Nor do they give translations of their titles. My German runs to ordering a drink and reading musical expression marks on a score – no further. I guess few people will have access to all these medieval poems on their bookshelves.
Neither do the programme notes
explain the history behind the work. Here, Ronald Taylor’s Kurt Weill:
Composer in a Divided World (New York, Simon and Schuster, 1991) comes to
the rescue. He relates that Weill met a certain Nelly Frank at his brother Hans’s
engagement party. They became “emotionally involved” and shared a holiday in
Italy. Nelly was already married; her husband refused a divorce and took her to
the United States. The affair was over. Taylor explains that “in the shadow
cast by the hopelessness of the emotional situation [Weill] composed his
song-cycle Frauentanz the following year, transmuting his suffering into
the Platonic symbolism of medieval courtly love, the worship of an unattainable
ideal of happiness fulfilled.” Frauentanz were written during June and
July 1923 and were premiered in Berlin at an International Society for
Contemporary Music concert during January 1924.
The title, Frauentanz alludes
to the noble ladies of the medieval Minnesang. This was a form of lyric that
flourished in Germany during the 12th to 14th centuries.
“Minne” is the High German word for “loving remembrance.”
No matter what the meaning of
these lieder, they present an impression of lyricism, wit, and emotionalism. The
accompaniment provided by flute, viola, clarinet, French horn, and bassoon is
luminous and engaging.
Curiously, Weill wrote to Busoni
that he wanted these lieder to be sung “without any sentimentality, with a
slender, light and yet expressive voice.” Anna-Maria Palii is anything but
“slender” or “light” with her approach to this song-cycle. They are sung
without a trace of mawkishness and with masterly articulation.
One final thought. In 1947, on his way back to America after visiting his parents in Palestine, Weill stopped over in Switzerland to visit Nelly for one last time. They discussed happy days in the past…
Equally problematic without texts and translations are the Drei gemischte Chöre a cappella, (Three mixed choruses a cappella), op.22 by Ernst Krenek. The poems were sourced from the work of Matthias Claudius (1740-1815) who was a German poet and journalist. When the “crisis” came in 1923, Krenek decided to return to Austria, seemingly staying at the villa of Alma Mahler. At that time, he was involved with Alma’s daughter Anna. There, he devised the Choruses, using “the folksong like works written by a lyricist from the age of sensibility.” Krenek has taken these apparently simple poems, authored in “pure and simple German” and has developed them as “parables, critically reflecting and commenting on contemporary experiences and developments” – not least his own love affair. The titles of the three settings are 1. Der Mensch (The Human Being), 2. Tröstung (Consolation), and 3. Die Römer: Ein Versuch in Versen (The Romans: An Essay in Verse). Whatever the sense of the poems, Krenek’s music is thoughtful, harmonically delicious and a perfectly balanced choral statement.
The final piece on this disc is Béla Bartók’s Tanz Suite, Sz77. This was commissioned in 1923 for a concert on 17 November of that year marking the fiftieth anniversary of the merger of the cities of Buda, Pest and Óbuda into Budapest, the capital of Hungary. Other music heard at this concert included Zoltán Kodály’s Psalmus Hungaricus and Ernő Dohnányi’s now largely forgotten, but delightful, Festival Overture.
Bartók’s Tanz Suite makes
use of folk-song-like melodies of the composer’s own devising. These tunes
reach far beyond Hungary and include influences from Romania, Slovakia, and
northern Africa. Interestingly, the Suite is not just a collection of six
varied dances but is unified into a whole by a beautiful repeating theme, with
the finale recalling music heard in the previous dances. It is given an
absorbing performance here, which discovers the colourful and often radiant
quality of Bartók’s orchestration.
The liner notes are helpful, setting all the works in their historical and political context. Information about the choir and the orchestra is given, but none for the soprano soloist, Anna-Mari Palii. As noted above, it is a great pity that no texts or translations were included. The booklet is printed in German and English.
All the performances are superb.
The outstanding recording adds to the listening pleasure.
This well-conceived programme of music, written with the possibilities of radio in the composer’s minds, perfectly reflects “the time between modernity and tradition, revolution and republic, jazz and dance music.”
Track Listing:Ernst Toch (1887-1964)
Tanz Suite for flute, clarinet, violin, viola, double bass and percussion, op.30 (1923)
Kurt Weill (1900-50)
Frauentanz, Seven medieval poems for soprano, flute, viola, clarinet, French horn and bassoon, op.10 (1923)
Ernst Krenek (1900-91)
Three mixes choruses a cappella, op.22 (1923)
Bela Bartok (1881-1945)
Tanz Suite for orchestra, Sz77 (1923)
Anna-Maria Palii (soprano), Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra/Cristian Măcelaru, Bavarian Radio Chorus/ Howard Arman
rec. 12-13 April 2021, BR Studio 2, Munich (Toch, Weill); 22 March 2022, BR Studio 1, Munich (Krenek); 8-10 March 2017, live recording from the Munich Philharmonic in the Gasteig Philharmonic Hall, Munich (Bartók)
BR Klassik 900206
With thanks to MusicWeb International where this review was first published.
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