Among the joys brought by phonographic publishing to music lovers, there are the inexhaustible discoveries of works and composers. Listening platforms have made access to these scores even easier since it is no longer necessary to pay “per piece”, by purchasing the disc, to get to know each other. At the start of 2024, we have selected five original publications that are off the beaten track.
Close to us, the ARC Ensemble, from Toronto, offered us superb publications in its “Composers in Exile” collection at Chandos. The most magical volume was devoted to Walter Kaufmann, a Czech Jew who, rather than fleeing the Nazis by taking refuge in the United States, went to India, where he became active on Bombay radio. The ARC Ensemble had chosen music from this period, fascinating because it was mixed with Indian styles. Returning from India, Kaufmann passed through the United Kingdom before emigrating to Canada (Halifax and Winnipeg) then, finally, to the United States, where he was professor of ethnomusicology at Indiana University.
Forgotten after exile
After Kaufmann, the ARC Ensemble was interested in Alberto Hemsi (1898-1975), a Turk who sought to blend traditional Jewish music into scores that were ultimately quite anecdotal. We move up a very serious notch with the new volume in honor of Robert Müller-Hartmann, born in Hamburg in 1884. Müller-Hartmann lived his exile in England, where he died in 1950. The music disc of room begins honorably with the Sonata for violin and piano from 1923 dedicated to Artur Schnabel. It is deployed at a much higher level with Intermezzos for piano and, above all, the 2e String Quartet, works whose harmonic richness evokes Ravel, Zemlinsky or Szymanowski. THE 2e Quartet has all the makings to enter the repertoire.
A quick word about Walter Kaufmann, because the ARC Ensemble album will not be without a future. The score publisher Doblinger is working to have his works recorded, and a disc bringing together the 3e SymphonyTHE 3e Piano concerto and Indian miniatures was recorded in Berlin for release this year by CPO.
The name of Karl Weigl (1881-1949) emerged from the shadows around twenty years ago when BIS published a recording of his Symphony No. 5“Apocalyptique”, composed in 1945. A disc published by CPO a few months ago Three lieder for soprano and orchestraa Rhapsody in D minor for strings and the Piano Concerto in F minor. We are also in the configuration of a musician (here Austrian) condemned to exile. This former assistant of Mahler, strongly inspired by his master Zemlinsky, suffered the same fate as Müller-Hartmann: oblivion after his emigration (to the United States).
Just like the 5e Symphony, the works brought together here show the injustice of this collective amnesia. THE Lieder of 1916 are an important cycle, the Rhapsody of 1931, which adapts a sextet from 1907, evokes the Transfigured night of Schoenberg, while the Piano concerto (1931), ardently defended by Oliver Triendl and Simon Gaudenz, does not follow any model and attempts to push late romanticism beyond Brahms and Mahler.
Contemporaries
We have already mentioned the name of Jonathan Leshnoff, American composer born in 1973, regarding two Reference Recordings releases. A Double concerto had been recorded by Manfred Honeck in addition to his 4e Symphony by Tchaikovsky. Then, Michael Stern had engraved his 3e Symphony, inspired by the Great War, which led us to describe Leshnoff as “North American Peteris Vasks”. The monograph published by Naxos confirms all the good that we thought: a Elegy (2022) of poignant beauty, a Violin Concerto No. 2played by the very successful Noah Bendix-Balgley, and Of Thee I Singcommemorating the Oklahoma City attack, which the orchestra defends with passion.
What music can contemporary China produce? The era of the “Butterfly Concerto” and “Little Sisters of the Plain” is over, but Western-style modernism is not well regarded. Bis, which revealed the very westernized Ge Gan-Ru, who can be called a “Chinese avant-garde”, even if expatriated, is presented with the CD Sichuan Picture the portrait of Xiaogang Ye (born in 1955), which gives us an interesting reflection of local “orthodoxy”, since the latter is professor of composition at the Central Conservatory of Beijing and president of the Chinese Musicians Association. His music is very pictorial and evocative, but very well put together. Sichuan Picture (2022), 29 miniatures, employs traditional instruments in addition to the symphony orchestra. The CD is completed by the Concerto of life, piano concerto recomposed from film music (and you can hear it!). Noriko Ogawa and José Serebrier are the luxury interpreters of this easy listening and pleasantly exotic music.
Who knows the Concerto for cello and wind orchestra by Friedrich Gulda (pianist who died in 2000) can only be attracted to see Wingsa “concert piece for violin, strings and rhythm section” played by the excellent Benjamin Schmid in a program Jazz Violin Concertos released by the Austrian label Gramola. Gulda seems to take himself more seriously when he “composes jazz” than when he parodies other genres in the Cello Concerto. A very classic cadence opens Wingsbefore an orientalizing movement, unbridled jazz (of which Gulda was fervent) triumphant in the 4e shutter. Gramola’s great achievement is to have found a perfect pairing with two concertos in the spirit of jazz: the Metropolises Continued by Herbert Berger (born in 1969) and the Three Songs for an Abandoned Angel by Sabina Hank (born 1976). It is the latter which provide the most rewarding surprises, Hank in the lead.