Between 1934 and 1949, Allan Pettersson, one of Sweden’s foremost composers of symphonies, wrote chamber works that differ greatly from his later production. With his Two Elegies, composed at the tender age of 17, Pettersson drew the enthusiasm of his teacher, who saw in him the makings of a composer. The Four Improvisations for string trio recall Bartók’s music with their rhythmic vitality. The Andante espressivo is more personal with its experimental melodic and harmonic leanings. After his forced return from Paris in 1939, where he had gone to study, Pettersson composed a tender and lyrical Romanza and, three years later, his only piece for solo piano, the elegiac and meditative Lamento.

The most important work on this recording is the Concerto for Violin and String Quartet, a harsh, dense work that places great demands on the musicians. Initially rejected by the critics, the work now appears almost unique in terms of its radical tonal language and experimental use of extended techniques. For this recording, Ulf Wallin has brought together colleagues and friends to perform these lesser-known works, which nevertheless constitute an essential milestone in the career of the great Swedish composer.

REVIEW:

The Concerto for Violin and String Quartet of 1949, which opens the program and makes up over half of the album’s run time, is a lush work with numerous challenges for performers, both technically and harmonically, that from the outside would seem likely to limit the scope of listeners who would enjoy it. However, credit to the present performers, for these demands are met, and the results are thoroughly interesting and thought-provoking. The Concerto is the latest included work, chronologically, and it is a clear step toward the composer’s symphonic writing. The earliest works here are the Two Elegies for Violin and Piano, from 1934. These lovely, short tunes reflect the schooling the composer had undertaken; one could perhaps mistake these as having been written in the previous century.

Pianist Thomas Hoppe, Wallin is another draw. Aside from ideal backing on the violin and piano works, Hoppe delivers a beautiful reading of Pettersson’s Lamento for Solo Piano. There is a lot to take in here, and listeners will be rewarded with subsequent hearings.

-- AllMusic.com (Keith Finke)

"The beautifully produced Çedille album of Jewish cabaret music broke new ground. Yet more depths were revealed in a ravaged culture: modest, entertaining, and humane." -- Paul Ingram, Fanfare

The booklet accompanying this release is so thick that it requires a double jewel case to accommodate it and the single CD it documents. So extensive are the essay, annotations, and bibliography to this production—assumed to have been authored by the New Budapest Orpheum’s director, Philip V. Bohlman, though nowhere is he credited as the author—that I will not even try to summarize their contents, which cover the history, politics, and poetics of Yiddish song in stage, screen, vaudeville, and cabaret. The program of Jewish cabaret songs contained herein complements some of the volumes that appeared in the massive Milken Archive of American Jewish Music, though the composers represented on the current CD were not necessarily transplants to American soil. Of those who enriched the Jewish cabaret literature, some did make it to U.S. shores, notably Hanns Eisler, Kurt Weill, and Arnold Schoenberg. But others, such as Viktor Ullmann and Pavel Haas, perished in the Holocaust.

The disc is divided into seven sections: (1) “The Great Ennui on the Eve of Exile,” featuring songs by Edmund Nick and Erich Kästner; (2) “The Exiled Language—Yiddish Songs for Stage and Screen,” featuring unattributed songs, but at least one by Abraham Ellstein; (3) “Transformation of Tradition,” presenting songs by the aforementioned Eisler; (4) “The Poetics of Exile,” offering songs by Kurt Tucholsky, as well as additional songs by Eisler; (5) “Traumas of Inner Exile,” featuring songs by Ullmann; (6) “Nostalgia and Exile,” presenting additional unattributed songs; and (7) “Exile in Reprise,” offering songs by Friedrich Holländer.

The songs were chosen to reflect the various phases of exile—physical, emotional, and psychological—that European Jewry experienced in the period leading up to and during WW II and its immediate aftermath, roughly 1935 to 1945, a period that accounts for the second great exodus of Jews from Europe. Primarily then, these are songs from the smoke-filled nightclubs and entertainment halls of Berlin and other European cities before the rise of Hitler, from the barracks of the concentration camps during the Holocaust, and from the months and years following the liberation. The before, during, and after the Shoah aspects of the recorded material frame and reflect the corresponding attitudes, mindsets, and living conditions of the times—from a song like Elegy in the Forest of Things, expressing a kind of resigned world weariness; to Ellstein’s Deep as Night that tries to deaden the senses to the pain of the outside world with the surrogate internal pain of a longed for love; to the bitter sarcasm of Eisler’s Sweetbread and Whips and Georg Kreisler’s Poisoning Pigeons, a song about spreading arsenic on graham crackers and feeding them to the birds in the park; and finally to I’m an Irrepressible Optimist, a song from the aftermath which cannot erase memories and finds optimism only in the release of death. 

The New Budapest Orpheum Society is an ensemble-in-residence at the University of Chicago. A mixed group of vocalists (Julia Bentley, mezzo-soprano and Stewart Figa, baritone) and instrumentalists (Iordanka Kisslova, violin; Stewart Miller, string bass; Hank Tausend, percussion; and Ilya Levinson, piano), the NBOS performs regularly at Chicago’s universities, synagogues, and cultural institutions, and has also appeared at the United States Memorial Holocaust Museum and the American Academy in Berlin. Philip V. Bohlman is the group’s artistic director; and Ilya Levinson, in addition to her role as pianist, also serves as music director and arranger.

Readers who acquired and enjoyed the three volumes from the Milken Archive of American Jewish Music titled “Songs of the American Yiddish Stage” (Naxos 8.559405, 8.559432, and 8.559455) will find much in “Jewish Cabaret in Exile” to their liking. One needn’t necessarily be Jewish, however, to appreciate this material, much of which had its origins in the dives, dance halls, and strip joints of Bertolt Brecht’s, Kurt Weill’s, Lotte Lenya’s, and Marlene Dietrich’s Berlin. Some of it is pretty heady stuff, with the gender-bending sexual stereotyping and absurdist satire of a decadent, Dada-costumed culture on the verge of imploding. Recommended then if you love it. If you don’t, best leave it.
-- Jerry Dubins, Fanfare

Track listing details:

I. The Great Ennui on the Eve of Exile
Edmund Nick (1891–1973) & Erich Kästner (1899–1974)
1 Die möblierte Moral / The Well-Furnished Morals (1:48)
2 Das Wiegenlied väterlicherseite / The Father’s Lullaby (4:49)
3 Die Elegie in Sachen Wald / Elegy in the Forest of Things (3:29)
4 Der Gesang vom verlorenen Sohn / The Song of the Lost Son (5:13)
5 Das Chanson für Hochwohlgeborene / The Chanson for Those Who Are Born Better (2:43)
6 Der Song “man müßte wieder . . .”/ The Song “Once Again One Must . . .” (3:59)

II. The Exiled Language — Yiddish Songs for Stage and Screen
7 Moses Milner (1886–1953): In Cheider / In the Cheder (5:46)
8 Mordechai Gebirtig (1877–1942): Avreml, der Marvikher / Abe, the Pickpocket (5:12)
9 Abraham Ellstein (1907–1963): Tif vi di Nacht / Deep as the Night (3:07)

III. Transformation of Tradition
Hanns Eisler (1898–1962):
From Zeitungsausschnitte, Op. 11 (Newspaper Clippings)
10 Mariechen / Little Marie (1:49)
11 Kriegslied eines Kindes / A Child’s Song of War (2:32)

IV. The Poetics of Exile: Songs by Hanns Eisler and Kurt Tucholsky (1890–1935)
12 Heute zwischen Gestern und Morgen / Today between Yesterday and Tomorrow (2:35)
13 Bügerliche Wohltätigkeit / Civic Charity (3:01)
14 Zuckerbrot und Peitsche / Sweetbread and Whips (2:20)
15 An den deutschen Mond / To the German Moon (2:46)
16 Einigkeit und Recht und Freiheit / Unity and Justice and Freedom (1:53)
17 Couplet für die Bier-Abteilung / Couplet for the Beer Department (1:26)

V. Traumas of Inner Exile
Viktor Ullmann (1898–1944)
Three Yiddish Songs (Brezulinka), op. 53 (1944)
18 Berjoskele / The Little Birch (4:18)
19 Margaritkele / Little Margaret (1:37)
20 Ich bin a Maydl in di Yorn / I’m Already a Young Woman (1:30)

VI. Nostalgia and Exile
21 Georg Kreisler (b. 1922): Tauben vergiften / Poisoning Pigeons (2:46)
22 Hermann Leopoldi (1888–1959) and Robert Katscher (1894–1942): Ich bin ein unverbesserlicher Optimist / I’m an Irrepressible Optimist (3:46)
23 Misha Spoliansky (1898–1985) / Marcellus Schiffer (1892–1932): Heute Nacht oder nie / Tonight or Never (3:22)

VII. Exile in Reprise
Friedrich Holländer on Stage and Film
24 Friedrich Holländer (1896–1976): Marianka (2:32)
25 Wenn der Mond, wenn der Mond . . . / If the Moon, If the Moon . . . (3:00) Lyrics by Theobald Tiger (Kurt Tucholsky)

Around the time The King's Singers was starting up, one of the most productive periods of songwriting in history was coming to a close in America, starting with composers such as Gershwin, Kern, Berlin and Porter in the early 1920s, and continuing through to the early 1960s. In this new 2-CD studio recording - featuring brand new a cappella arrangements by jazz composer and arranger Alexander L'Estrange, and swing-orchestra performances with the South Jutland Symphony Orchestra - The King's Singers bring their own unique performance style to this wonderful music.

REVIEW:

The Philadelphia Orchestra’s first two releases for Ondine under Christoph Eschenbach (Bartók and Tchaikovsky) were extremely good, no doubt about it, but this Mahler Sixth is really extraordinary. Part of its success must stem from the fact that the best German conductors usually do misery especially well, finding the dark side of just about everything. If you don’t believe me, check out Kurt Sanderling’s startlingly deep and edgy rendition of Poulenc’s Concert Champêtre on Supraphon. So you can just imagine what can happen with a piece like Mahler’s Sixth. Anyone fortunate enough to have heard Eschenbach’s performances of this work with the NDR Orchestra in Hamburg will know that he has a special feeling for its harrowing intensity and expressionistic instrumental palette. Toss in the collective virtuosity of the Philadelphia Orchestra, and the result is, to put it mildly, pretty special.

As a coupling, the early piano quartet movement is more appropriate than you might at first think. First of all, it shares the same key as the symphony, and second, it’s useful to have it along as part of an all-Mahler program, allowing collectors to round out their collections without having to search for an acceptable all-chamber-music program. The engineering also represents the best in this series so far, with virtually no audience noise, tremendous presence in both stereo and multichannel formats, and extremely natural balances between orchestral sections. I know that Mahler Sixes seem to be a dime a dozen these days, but this one, a first for Philadelphia, belongs among the elite few (Bernstein I and II, Chailly, Levi, T. Sanderling, and Gielen). It’s just bloody thrilling.

— ClassicsToday.com (David Hurwitz)

This second volume of Septura’s brass chamber music series takes us back to the 17th century and the music of Baroque opera, in four contrasting works by Rameau, Blow, Purcell and Handel. The astounding variety in content, colour and character of the originals demands especially inventive arrangements, and these pieces are vividly brought to life by incorporating stylistic elements from ‘period performance’. The exhilarating result is a stunningly virtuosic set of new Baroque works for brass.

Nearly all of Daniel Purcell’s surviving solo harpsichord music consists of arrangements, the only clear exception being the short Toccata, a brief essay in the style of the preludes from Henry Purcell’s harpsichord suites. The Suite is a simple but effective arrangement of movements from the composer’s own suite

Paul Watkins presents three enduring masterpieces of the chamber music repertoire, Johannes Brahms’s two cello sonatas and the Clarinet Trio. Joining Mr. Watkins are two musicians of the highest caliber, the pianist Ian Brown, his established duo partner, and clarinetist Michael Collins. Completed in 1865, the Cello Sonata No. 1 is somewhat reserved in character, with an elaborate fugal finale that pays homage to Bach. Some twenty years later, Brahms composed his more adventurous, expansive and extroverted Cello Sonata No. 2. The Clarinet Trio, op. 114 was written for clarinetist Richard Mühlfeld, an artist who inspired Brahms to compose a series of works for the clarinet considered some of the supreme masterpieces in the instrument’s repertoire. “Perhaps no clarinetist around today is capable of floating a purer, smoother and more beautifully contoured melodic line than Michael Collins, and he is often heard at his best in [Brahms’s] four late masterpieces.” - BBC Music Magazine “Paul Watkins [is] unquestionably, in my opinion one of today’s foremost cellists.” - Fanfare

All selections are performed twice on this box set. All selections on CD 1 are sung in their original languages. The same works are repeated on CD 2, where the German language songs are sung in English. The Hebrew and English language works on CD 2 are again sung in their original form.

Gulda's “Symphony in G“, presented on this album, was discovered in the SWR archive in the course of research for the release of all the recordings the Austrian pianist made for the German Southwest Broadcasting Corporation (SWR). Until now nobody actually knew that this work existed for there are no indications of Gulda being commissioned or of a specific occasion for which he might have composed this symphony. Therefore, one listens here to the world première of a piece which – apart from being recorded in the studio on 20 November 1970 – has never been performed in public. At the beginning of the 1970s Gulda gave concerts that exclusively featured his own compositions. This also applies to his performance at the Heidelberger Jazztage in 1971, released here for the first time digitally and on album. Almost all of Gulda's jazz works, though often based on classical forms, cannot be played without knowledge of improvisation so as to “keep them away from bunglers” (as the pianist himself put it). One of Gulda’s few compositions without improvisation to be heard here is No. IV from the ten-part piano cycle “Play Piano Play”. “Prelude and Fugue" was probably Gulda’s favourite work and was the last piece of Gulda’s performance in Heidelberg. An exception on this album is Fritz Pauer's "Etude.” In 1966 Fritz Pauer won a prize in the jazz competition Gulda had initiated and so Gulda decided to include this work in the Heidelberg concert from 1971.

The pianist Anna Zassimova offers us a musical journey through most of Chopin’s creative periods, bringing together miniatures and some larger scaled, highly structured works. We can thus follow the composer’s stylistic evolution: slightly whimsical at first, then works that are often tragic and violent, evolving in his final years towards great luminosity and relative calm.

Highlights of this recital include the Ballades Nos 2 and 4, the Mazurkas, Op. 41 and Op. 50 and the Scherzo No. 4 in E major. The mazurkas can be seen as a kind of diary that Chopin kept throughout his life as an artist, reflecting his deep-rooted attachment to Poland. In them, folklore was entirely recreated and stylized. Considered the finest of Chopin’s creation and among the most representative of romantic music, the Ballads are pure music in its finest form. Without any specific programme, they are said to have been inspired by the poetic ideas of one of his friends, the poet Adam Mickiewicz. Finally, the Scherzo has an almost fairy-tale, luminous atmosphere, although there are more passionate and intense moments, and it thus appears close to the character of the scherzo as it was once conceived.