infotext:
NEOCLASSIC MODERN AND EXPRESSIVE CLASSIC The name OTTO SIEGL (1896–1978) is only marginally familiar to passionate rarity hunters. Born in Graz, he wrote in 1946 that he played ›a lot of chamber music, like most conductors and composers, mainly the viola. […] In recent years I have written a lot of chamber music. Unfortunately, the last major works could no longer be published. It will be a long time before they can be published. It doesn't matter, it doesn't press. My music isn't so up-to-date that it won't be appropriate in a few years' time.' Siegl was a student of Egon Kornauth (a moderate late romantic epigone) and Roderich von Mojsisowicz. In his early years he worked as an orchestra musician in Vienna and as a conductor in Graz, later in Paderborn in Lower Saxony, then at the Cologne Music Academy, where he conducted the university orchestra from 1942 until the end of the war. After the war he returned to Graz and found his final resting place in Vienna. The Duo Sonata Op. 139 for viola and violoncello was written in 1945, probably for personal use, during a fairly productive creative period. At the latest in the years that followed, his style was definitely considered old-fashioned. This timeless hybrid of late romanticism and neo-baroque, which ignored all fashions of the day, met with little sympathy from the critics at a time when other well-known masters of a similar orientation, such as Heinz Schubert, Hans Brehme or Mark Lothar, hardly showed any respect. More than half a century had to pass before the tonal diversity of that time could be given a reasonably objective public appreciation beyond ideological fronts. The Duo Sonata is, like Siegl's string quartets, a very fine example of sophisticated chamber music that remains completely rooted in traditional tonality and draws its formative dynamics from its pull. The lively and dance-like movements are decidedly executed according to baroque topoi, the solemn movements are deeply connected to the melancholy fading post-romanticism. Siegl's harmonic ingenuity and contrapuntal agility are remarkable - his works could well find their place in today's post-ideological concert life. The career of REBECCA CLARKE (1886–1979) as an extraordinary solo violist and talented composer was remarkably short and at times very brilliant. The high point of her career marks her Sonata for Viola and Piano from 1919, with which she won second prize (after Ernest Bloch's Sonata) under a pseudonym at a composition competition in Pittsfield (Massachusetts). With this sonata she has secured a permanent place in the repertoire of viola players all over the world. As a traveling chamber music virtuoso, she wrote the works for her own performances. In 1916 she moved to the USA, in 1924 back to London, and with the outbreak of World War II she finally settled in the New World. At the age of 2 she married the pianist James Friskin, who was the same age, and from then on she almost completely stopped her musical activities. Rebecca Clarke never got over her father's martial upbringing methods, and in later years she processed her trauma in the autobiography 'I had a father too'. Lullaby and Grotesque first appeared in a concert program at Aeolian Hall in New York on February 13, 1918, played by Rebecca Clarke and her cello partner May Mukle. The small work was created not long before, and it breathes that elegant cosmopolitanism in which British and French virtues enter into a natural connection. Among all viola-playing composers was PAUL HINDEMITH (1895–1963) the most famous, powerful and influential. The repertoire for his instrument is unthinkable today without his substantial contributions. In 1937 the theoretical first part of Hindemith's ›Instructions in compositional composition‹ appeared in print. In it, the former student of Arnold Mendelssohn writes: »Perhaps I experienced the transition from conservative schooling to a new freedom more thoroughly than anyone else. The new had to be traversed if its exploration was to succeed; everyone who took part in the conquest knows that this was neither harmless nor dangerous. Knowledge was not gained in a straight line, nor did it proceed without disturbances. Today it seems to me that the area has become clearer, as if the secret language of tones had been overheard.« Hindemith remarked that in his works »the realization of the intentions presented in this book about the technique of compositional composition« can best be followed. Of course, this also applies to the works that were created a few years before the end of ›Instruction‹. When Hindemith made recordings of his chamber music for ›His Master's Voice‹ with Szymon Goldberg and Emanuel Feuermann in London in January 1934, he composed this the morning before a recording Duett for viola and violoncello as a gap filler for recording. It happened so quickly: »In my view, the composer must be completely independent of mechanical devices of any kind. [...] Musicians didn't compose so much because they wanted to, but because the compulsion to compose is irresistible.« The Berliner GUNTER RAPHAEL (1903–1960) studied composition with Robert Kahn and Arnold Mendelssohn and early on created excellent works that were acclaimed by leading musicians such as the Busch Quartet and Wilhelm Furtwängler (1926 world premiere of the 1st Symphony in Leipzig) were performed. From 1926 Raphael himself worked as a composition teacher. In the Third Reich he was banned from performing as a 'half-Jew' and contracted tuberculosis, which weakened him for the rest of his rather short life. After the war he only gets relatively insignificant jobs. Some great musicians, such as Sergiu Celibidache, who played with the Berlin Philharmonic Raphael 4st Symphony performs are interested in his work, but the modernist fashions of the day overshadow his work. It was not until 1957, three years before his death, that he was appointed composition teacher and professor of church music at the Cologne Music Academy. He left an impressive oeuvre with great instrumental and vocal works (lots of church music) that are still worth discovering today. The Duo for viola and cello was created in Meiningen in 1941 – during a difficult time of ›inner emigration‹. On the one hand, it is a heartfelt homage to Bach, the grand master of timeless counterpoint; on the other hand, it is an architecturally sweeping, deeply inspired document of new classicism, which in its confessional character is the child of a more heartfelt spirit than the playful objectivity of neoclassicism. Before he, as the main representative of the Polish avant-garde, conquered the musical world with aleatoric experiments like his 2st Symphony or the String Quartet impressed, was the man from Warsaw WITOLD LUTOSLAWSKI (1913–1994) a revolutionary born of tradition. When he was five years old, his father was executed by the Bolsheviks. At fifteen he was a composition student of Witold Maliczewski. He went public in 1939 with his Symphonic Variations. After the performance of his 1st Symphony In 1947 his work was not wanted by the cultural authorities because of its too advanced tonal language, but through the use of folkloric elements he managed to find official acceptance again - up to the grandiose, enduring success of his concert for orchestra. bukoliki (Hirtenwiesen) he wrote for piano solo in 1952 and premiered it himself. They are based on folk tunes collected by Wladyslaw Skierokowski. Lutoslawski arranged the work for viola and violoncello in 1962, commissioned by William Primrose and Mstislav Rostropovitch - at a time when he had long since moved away from traditional methods of notation and was at the forefront of representing modernism, but at the same time confessed in retrospect: "If I used these (early ) looking at works, I am not ashamed of them.« Born in Marseille, Hindemith was to the Germans DARIUS MILHAUD (1892–1974) for the French. He was a highly productive, technically superior, cheerful musician. The external circumstances did not speak for so much joie de vivre, since he had suffered from severe rheumatism since the XNUMXs, which initially forced him to walk on crutches and ultimately confined him to a wheelchair. Those who knew him reported that there was no friendlier person than him. Also, nobody else has cultivated bitonality (simultaneous acting in two mutually contradictory tones) with such elegance and graceful naturalness. With works like Le boeuf sur le toit (1919) Saudades do Brazil (1921) and The creation of the world (1923) he fused ›My hat that has three corners‹ music, samba and jazz in a captivating, enchanting manner into the basic ingredients of orchestral hits for the concert hall. All this happens with an incomparable effortlessness and dexterity, touching, moving and caressing the listener with lively vitality, fine humor and tender poetry. Like Hindemith, Milhaud taught largely in the United States after World War II. At the Music Academy of the West, founded in 2, Milhaud had two composition students: Murray Adaskin (1947–1906, violist) and Jim Bollé (born 2002, cellist), for whom he wrote the classic three-movement composition in 1931 Sonatine Op. 378 for viola and cello. He loved the contrapuntal tricks, like in his string octet, which can also be performed as two separate quartets. In the Sonatine there is an exchange of voices in the middle of the first movement, the same procedure runs identically again with the opposite sign. The slow middle movement floats intimately and dreamily, and the finale has an almost Ländler character. SIEGMUND SCHOOL (born 1916 in Chemnitz, died 1944 in Terezín/Theresienstadt) is a tragic case. His parents came from Galicia (today divided between Poland and Ukraine) and cultivated the customs of Eastern European Jews. In 1933 he fled from the National Socialists to Prague. From 1937 he had lessons with Alois Hába, among others. In the same year will be in Prague sextet for a successful premiere. He meets his older colleague Viktor Ullmann and gets married. In 1941 he and his Jewish wife were deported to Terezín (Ullmann followed in 1942), where Siegmund Schul died of tuberculosis on June 2, 1944. In the obituary of his friend, Ullmann stated: »In Schul we lost a real personality, a really aspiring artistic personality.« In Prague, Schul dealt intensively with Jewish music and worked on a collection of traditional Prague synagogue songs until his deportation. He composed a lost one in Terezín Divertimento ebraico and the Hasidic dances for viola and violoncello, which were performed in the camp during the so-called 'leisure events'. When Schul died, his manuscripts became the property of Viktor Ullmann. In 1944 Ullmann was transported to Auschwitz and murdered. After the liberation, the chronicler HG Adler took care of the abandoned materials, which miraculously survived the cruel fate of their creators. Christopher Schlüren |
program:
Keepsake of Modern Age
Forgotten modernity
La modernité oubliée
Works for viola and cello
Otto Siegl (1896-1978)
Duo Sonata Op. 139 (1945) 15:44
[01] Largo ma non troppo 03:27
[02] Allegro in resolution 03:02
[03] Improvisation on a French song. Andantino 04:38
[04] Interlude. Adagio 01:24
[05] Clean up. Presto 03:13
Rebecca Clarke (1886-1979)
Lullaby and Grotesque (1916) 05: 44
[06] 1. Lullaby 02:47
[07] 2. Grotesque 02:57
Paul Hindemith (1895-1963)
[08] Duett (1934) 04: 47
Gunter Raphael (1903-1960)
Duo for viola and cello Op. 47/4 (1941) 15:40
[09] I. Invention. Moderately slow 04:35
[10] Decisive, somewhat measured, energetic 02:29
[11] II. Fantasy. Worn 02:27
[12] Very smooth and steady 06:09
witold lutoslawski (1913-1994)
bukoliki (1952/1962) 06:42
[13] I. Allegro vivace 01:12
[14] II. Allegretto sostenuto, poco rubato 01:09
[15] III. Allegro molto 00:45
[16] IV. Andantino 02:13
[17] V. Allegro marciale 01:23
Darius Milhaud (1892-1974)
Sonatina pour alto et violoncello Op. 378 (1959) 17:11
[18] I. Vif 03:58
[19] II. Moderé 08:35
[20] III. Gay 04:38
Siegmund Schul (1916-1944)
2 Hasidic dances Op. 15 (1941/1942) 04:09
[21] I. Allegro moderato 01:26
[22] II. Allegretto 02:43
total time 70:14
Julia Rebecca Adler, Violet
Thomas Ruge, cello
Press:
25.03-2010
Keepsake of Modern Age
Works for viola and cello
One has to be careful with rediscoveries in view of a constantly growing repertoire and at the same time scarce resources - the apparently well-known classics should not be pushed out in favor of a dregs which - no matter how politically incorrect that may sound - has in many cases been rightly forgotten . But this album entitled “Forgotten Modernism”, for which the violist Julia Rebekka Adler and the cellist Thomas Ruge have brought together seven apparently well-known and nowadays almost unknown composers, deserves widespread attention. On the one hand, this is due to the instrumentation of viola and violoncello presented here, which is even rarer than the already exotic pairing of violin and violoncello, but on the other hand also to the complex form of the composing, which is described here as modern, which, in addition to the well-known aspect of the avant-garde rather the supplementary, but often suppressed element of technical security and thus indirectly also the reference to tradition.
The works by unknown composers presented here are particularly meritorious, as they show that modernism – in contrast to the subsequent epoch – still had presentable standards of craftsmanship even in less prominent figures. Otto Siegl (1896 – 1978) really mastered his counterpoint, as his Duo Sonata op. 139 impressively shows in its development of tonal lines; his forgiving tonality, even folk music-like echoes result from the clean voice leading. A game music, certainly, but one in which, in 1945, the composing was initially focused on the pure material.
The two character pieces by Rebecca Clarke (1886 - 1979), Lullaby and Grotesque, are more romantic in mood and not without small borrowings from Richard Strauss; with these miniatures, however, it is surprising how the composer, a student of Stanford, achieves the impression of a much larger ensemble through double stops. The Duo op. 47/4 by Günter Raphael from Berlin stands out from the linear thinking Otto Siegl and the more chordal work of Rebecca Clarke, because with him the superiorly controlled counterpoint with underground aggressiveness and sharp tones, while exploring all technical possibilities from pizzicato to sul ponticello, is colored in a clearly characteristic way. Comparable to this, Lutoslawski's five short studies Bukoliki are presented, in which rhythms set hard against each other play a far greater role than the multi-fingering. In a direct comparison, Raphael's and Lutoslawski's pointedness has a stronger effect than Hindemith's duet, which is openly more modernistic but seems a bit scattered - and of course it was also created in a very short time as an occasional work. In what is probably the best-known piece on this album, the Sonatina op. 378 by Darius Milhaud, there is a lot of unanimity, i.e. the alternation of the instruments, used. The two tiny Hasidic dances by Siegmund Schul from Chemnitz, who died in the Theresienstadt concentration camp, are just four minutes long.
Julia Rebekka Adler and Thomas Ruge are soloists with the Munich Philharmonic and play these pieces with a great deal of sensuality in sound, not impasto, as orchestra musicians often play as soloists, but not too pointed either. One must also point out the excellent commentary on this carefully designed edition by Christoph Schlüren, a recognized expert on forgotten music.
Michael B. White
02/2010
VINEYARD/KEEPSAKE OF MODERN AGE
Julia Rebekka Adler has been playing viola since she was barely big enough to manage an instrument of its size. Born in Heidelberg, Germany, in 1978, she studied with Kim Kashkashian, Johannes Lüthy, and Wolfram Christ at the Musikhochschule Freiburg, went on to take master classes with Walter Levin and Yuri Bashment, and completed her training with Hartmut Rohde at the Universität der Arts Berlin. Having won numerous prizes, Adler is today counted among the top viola players on the scene, holding posts in the Munich Philharmonic, the Viardot Piano Quartet, and Berlin's Solistenoktett. Her recordings thus far are few, and, but with one exception, a Hoffmeister concerto, devoted to 20th-century composers.
As the first of the two above headnotes would suggest, Adler has taken a special interest in Mieczysław Weinberg (1919–1996), whose name may also be found in alternate spellings as Moisey Vainberg and Moisey Samuilovich Vaynberg. Of Polish-Jewish origin, Weinberg, who lost most of his family in the Holocaust, escaped to the Soviet Union/Russia in 1939, remaining there until his death. He is considered by some to be the third great Soviet composer after Prokofiev and Shostakovich, but others have criticized his work as derivative and damaging, not only to his own reputation but to that of Shostakovich, of whose music Weinberg's can be uncomfortably imitative. Alexander Ivashkin, cellist and Chair of Performance Studies and Director of the Center for Russian Music and London's Goldsmiths University, slammed Weinberg, charging that “his works only served to kill off Shostakovich's music, to cover it over with a scab of numerous and bad copies .” And Thure Adler, Julia's husband and unofficial manager, in referring to Weinberg's viola sonatas, admitted that they “do not qualify as easy listening.” But others, including Hartmut Rohde, called Julia's recordings “a once-in-a-hundred-year's event for the world of the viola;” and Andreas Reiner, professor of violin and first chair of the Rosamunde Quartet called the recordings “a musical mighty deed.” In the end, with whichever side one chooses to make camp, the large body of Weinberg's work, which includes 22 symphonies and 17 string quartets, cannot be ignored; and indeed it hasn't been by a number of companies that have recorded many of his works. If you are a regular visitor to archivemusic.com, you will find Weinberg listed under Vainberg.
The 1945 Sonata for Clarinet and Piano, played here in transcription for viola, is a fairly early work by the 26-year-old composer, and is, of the works recorded on these discs, the most clearly imitative of Shostakovich, as well as the most easily assimilated by the ear on a first hearing. As many years as the composer had been alive in 1945 would pass before he wrote his first sonata for viola solo in 1971. The three additional solo sonatas would follow in 1978, 1982 and 1983, and are among his later to late works.
As with all such compositions for solo string instruments—from Biber and Bach to Reger and Ysaÿe—Weinberg's scores present thorny technical challenges to the player in terms of double-stopping, awkward fingerings and bowings, and tricky string crossings. To the listener, they can present challenges as the ear tries to sort out melodic strands and harmonic implications. On both counts, I found Weinberg's essays for solo viola no more or less daunting than Reger's Suites for Solo Viola or Ysaÿe's Sonatas for Solo Violin. To be sure, Weinberg's harmonic palette relies heavily on sharply clashing minor seconds, major sevenths, and other dissonant constructs, such that after repeated exposure the ear comes to accept them as being consonantly stable, thereby allowing phrases and, in some cases movements, to end on cadences that would ordinarily be considered unresolved in traditional tonal harmony—the phrase ending on a minor seventh double-stop, ED, in measure 19 of the first sonata's first movement being one example.
It would be a stretch, however, to pin Weinberg with the label avant-garde. His music may be freely tonal, but it is not in the atonal style of Schoenberg, nor does it fall into any readily classifiable mid- to later 20th-century “ism.” Much about it is Russian in the way that Shostakovich is Russian—dark, brooding, and at times bitter, ironic, and mocking. If I had to put Weinberg into historical context, I'd say that he and Galina Ustvolskaya (also b. 1919) were in the first flank of post-Shostakovich Soviet modernist composers that gave rise to the likes of Boris Tchaikovsky (1925–1996 ), Denisov (1929–1996), Gubaidulina (b. 1931), Schnittke (1934–1998), Kancheli (b. 1935), Silvestrov (b. 1937), and Tischenko (b. 1939).
Fyodor Druzhinin (1932–2007), whose name may not be as familiar as some of those cited above, may nonetheless be included among them. His primary career pursuit, however, was that of violist who replaced Vadim Vasilyevich Borisovsky as a member of the Beethoven Quartet in 1964. It was Druzhinin for whom Weinberg wrote his Sonata for Viola Solo No. 1, and it was Druzhinin who edited and published the score and recorded it for LP. His own Sonata for Viola Solo heard here is much in the same vein as Weinberg's solo sonatas.
Julia Adler's viola is not identified, but on its C and G strings it produces a tone of such amplitude and fullness that one might be fooled into thinking it was a cello, while even in the highest reaches of its A string there is never the slightest hint of that pinched, nasal quality that can blanch the instrument's sound. But the viola doesn't play itself, and for these truly astonishing and magnificent performances, Adler must be given her due. I would have to agree with the above-quoted Andreas Reiner called Adler's performances “a musical mighty deed.”
The second headnoted album, titled “Keepsake of Modern Age,” is all over the musical map, and may possibly appeal to more catholic tastes. Despite the disc's title, and the fact that all of the pieces on it do indeed date from the 20th-century, not all are “modern” in the sense that is usually attributed to that label. For example, the CD opens with a duo sonata for viola and cello by Otto Siegl (1896–1978). It's a five-movement “neo-Baroquish” suite-like affair that contains some very lovely and expressive Romantic writing. The composer is even quoted as having said, “My music is not actually 'modern' as such, and will be just as valid in years to come.” Like the mute swan that only upon death “sang once and thus he sang no more,” Siegl seems not to have been heard from again. Very little is known of him, other than the fact that he was born in Graz, Austria, and served as the town orchestra's concertmaster before he moved to Cologne, where he taught at the conservatory and conducted the orchestra there from 1942 until the end of the was. I wasn't able to find much information on Siegl beyond that which Christoph Schlüren's booklet note offers. But what I did discover on my own was that Siegl wrote an opera, several oratorios, three symphonies, two concertos, one for piano and one for violin, several miscellaneous orchestral works, five string quartets, and a number of songs. Yet nothing of his output other than this duo for viola and cello is listed. Artists and record company execs, are you paying attention? Here is fertile soil for tilling.
The other two unfamiliar composers here are Günter Raphael (1903–1960) and Siegmund Schul (1916–1944). Raphael had a bit more of a run. His first symphony was premiered by Furtwangler in Leipzig in 1926, and one of his star pupils was Kurt Hessenberg. But being declared a half-Jew in Nazi Germany didn't help his career. Nonetheless, Raphael managed to compose five symphonies, concertos for violin and organ, half-a-dozen string quartets, and a considerable volume of chamber music for various combinations of instruments. A handful of his works have been recorded.
Schul was not so lucky. Born in the Saxon town of Chemnitz, he moved to Prague, where he befriended composers Alois Haba and Viktor Ullmann. Schul's output, however, is small; for in 1941 he was deported to the Theresienstadt concentration camp, where he died three years later at the age of 28.
The remaining composers on the disc are of a familiarity that their bios needn't be elaborated. Nor are any of the pieces chosen here—not even Bukoliki by Lutosławski, a composer usually associated with the Polish avant-garde—of an uncompromisingly modernistic bent. Some, in fact, like Rebecca Clarke's Lullaby and moments from Raphael's Duo are infused with a great deal of Romantic passion, while Milhaud's Sonatine and Schul's Chassidic Dances are thoroughly charming and delightful.
Once again, Julia Adler rises to the occasion, turning out some of the most gorgeous viola playing to be had on disc, and every bit of her match is cellist Thomas Ruge. Also deserving of honorable mention is pianist Jascha Nemstov who accompanies Adler on the Weinberg album in the transcription of the clarinet sonata for viola and piano. The Neos CDs are beautifully recorded, presenting the players in exceptionally crisp, clean sound. Admittedly, the Weinberg works will take a little effort to come to terms with, but are bound to be worth it in the end. Both of these releases receive strong recommendations.
Jerry Dublins
01/2010
FORGET MODERN: ALTO VIOOL/CELLO DUO'S
Onder de titel Keepsake of modern age biedt het German label op Basis van opnamen van Deutschlandfunk een omnibus van hier waarschijnlijk zelfs bij menige alto and cellist onbekende works van bekende en haast onbekende composers. Gemeen hebben ze dat ze op Milhaud's Sonatine uit 1959 na all in the first help of the twintigste eeuw be written. Aardig zijn before Rebecca Clarke's Lullaby and Grotesque en Lutoslawski's Bukoliki. Substantial zijn de also boeiende works van Siegl, Raphael and Milhaud. The warm sounds of a delicious, non-pinky clinking alto and a gulle cello vallen aangenaam op het oor. The muziekjes speak on middellijk aan, zijn in gangbaar idioom geschreven, voortreffelijk uitgevoerd en opgenomen. A new CD on the part of Brokjes tegelijk te missed and missed an inspirational bron for old and cello students, op zoek naar minder voor de hand liggend moois.