MARX Trio-Phantasie. 4 Songs after Poems by Anton Wildgans 1 • Hyperion Tr; 1 Simone Nold (sop); 1 Christoph Renz (fl); 1 Felix Schwartz (va) • CPO 777857 (62:06 Text and Translation)


Let’s get this out of the way first. Consensus opinion as to why Joseph Marx (1882–1964) is little remembered today relies heavily on his loyalty to tonality and a Romantic aesthetic at a time when music’s winds were blowing hard in other directions. Born in Graz, Marx grew up and came of age in the same Austrian musical and cultural milieu that nurtured Mahler, Zemlinsky, Schoenberg, Berg, and Webern; and by the time Marx died, Berio, Stockhausen, and other luminaries of the avant-garde had altered the musical landscape to the point where Marx refused to accept their efforts as music. Thus, it was Marx’s conservatism that’s said to have doomed him. Yet, something even more troubling in Marx’s history may have played a bigger role in sealing his fate, something not touched on in Wikipedia’s abbreviated biography, but discussed at length in joseph-marx.org/en.


Marx’s conservative, indeed reactionary, views made him especially susceptible to the philosophy and propaganda of the Nazi regime; and in turn, the Nazis saw in Marx a willing proponent of their political goals. To what extent he supported those goals or was avowedly anti-Semitic remains a matter of conjecture, but no amount of whitewashing or apologias offered on his behalf can absolve Marx—or other composers and artists of the period—of complicity in the regime’s agenda for cultural cleansing. Marx gave lectures praising the Nazis’ efforts in the areas of cultural and musical purification, which can only mean that he approved banning performances of music by Jewish composers. In the end, it may have been Marx’s Nazi sympathies more than his musical conservatism that tarnished him in the post-World War II era.


For many listeners, exposure to Marx’s music may be limited to his Piano Concerto in E Major, forced, perversely, if deservedly, to share a disc with the Piano Concerto in C? Minor by the Jewish Korngold on Volume 18 of Hyperion’s Romantic Piano Concerto series. But Marx’s main output was in the area of vocal and choral music, of which he penned some 120 songs and a number of works for chorus and orchestra. In addition to the above-mentioned piano concerto, he did compose a second concerto in E? Major, titled, “Castelli Romani”; several orchestral works, including a symphony, titled “Autumn”; and a handful of string quartets, piano quartets, violin sonatas, and the Trio-Phantasie on this disc.


If, like Hugo Wolf, Marx had gone insane, he might have been remembered more for his songs than he is, but since Marx remained of sound mind, though of questionable judgment, he comes with no colorful eccentricities or character quirks to make him more interesting to us. Thus, we have only his music by which to judge his relative merit as a composer.


At nearly 44 minutes in length, the 1914 Trio-Phantasie is an ambitious work in five movements and surely one of the longer-playing scores in the piano trio literature. While there’s nothing specific in Marx’s melodic, harmonic, or rhythmic invention that would suggest Brahms, the overall style of the music is of a cast that identifies it as Austro-German and dates it to sometime in the 1880s, or about 25 years earlier than it was actually written. But other elements make themselves felt throughout the work as well.


The third movement, marked Scherzando , for example, gives strong evidence that Marx had knowledge of the Impressionist school in France; while the big, virtuosic solo piano cadenza at the beginning of the fourth movement, incongruously marked Intermezzo, is reminiscent of the keyboard writing of Liszt and even Rachmaninoff. But it’s the last movement, marked “Tanz-Finale,” that sounds like Marx had encountered a band of Klezmorim. The music almost sounds like it could be a model for Prokofiev’s more Modernistic 1919 Overture on Hebrew Themes.


There comes a point, I think, at which we really do need to separate a composer’s personal politics and professed beliefs from his music in order to evaluate it fairly. Much as I may be offended by what I’ve read of Marx’s Nazi leanings, I have to remind myself that this Trio-Phantasie was written 24 years before the Anschluss , and even if it’s as many years behind its time in terms of musical makeup, it’s still an effusively Romantic, gorgeous piece. The first movement begins in arrestingly dramatic fashion, and the lovely second movement, marked Adagietto , is touchingly nostalgic.


In December 1910, Marx met and struck up a friendship with Anton Wildgans (1881–1932), an Austrian playwright and poet known for his mystical dramas charged with symbolic messages typical of German Expressionism. The relationship between the two men, described by Wildgans’s wife Lily as “love at first sight,” evolved into a bond with strange homoerotic overtones which neither Wildgans nor Marx ever acted on. But in collaborating on the Four Songs heard on this disc, Wildgans, who expressly wrote the poems for Marx to set to music, sent the composer a letter in which he spoke openly of the erotic nature of the last poem, “Pan dreaming of Syrinx,” saying, “The beginning and ending provide ample opportunity for dreamy, yearning melodies and harmonies, while the rhythm of the middle stanzas makes it possible to set the sex to music.” And if that weren’t explicit enough, Wildgans went out of his way to reference the role of the flute as “a phallic symbol.”


Eventually, the relationship between the two men cooled over fundamental differences in temperament. When Wildgans sent Marx a new poem titled “Dies Irae” to set, Marx replied with a kind and diplomatic letter, but one in which he offered Wildgans some constructive criticism, which the poet didn’t take too well.


The Four Songs —“Du bist der Garten” (You are the Garden); “Durch Einsamkeiten” (Through Solitudes); “Alles Tagverlangen” (All Daily Desires); and the already cited “Pan träumt um Syrinx”—are of the same period as the Trio-Phantasie , having taken shape between 1914 and 1916. They’re of a very different style than the trio, however. Debussy’s Prélude to the Afternoon of a Faun and his own Syrinx for solo flute echo through the pages of Marx’s Syrinx , while the three songs that precede it, set to poems shot through with Expressionist symbols—e.g., “Hayricks on the meadows crouch like giants”—are woven into a dense chromatic cloth not that much different from the songs of Marx’s near contemporaries Zemlinsky, Pfitzner, Wolf, and Schreker. Every so often, one hears a glint of Richard Strauss, but in these songs, at least, Marx doesn’t possess the gift for soaring lyrical melody that so often characterizes Strauss’s vocal writing.


Only once before have I encountered the Hyperion Trio. It was back in 2007 in issue 30:6, on a four-disc Thorofon collection of piano trio works by Schubert, Mendelssohn, Schumann, and Brahms. I wasn’t overwhelmed by the ensemble’s performances, but then the works being offered were among the most frequently recorded in the piano trio repertoire. The members of the Hyperion Trio—Oliver Kipp, violin; Katharina Troe, cello; and Hagen Schwarzrock, piano—haven’t changed since then. They’re the same names that appear on the present disc, and that’s a good sign because it means the group is stable; and in this case, the players have no competitors I’m aware of in the Trio-Phantasie , though CPO doesn’t claim first-recording status for the piece. The ensemble presents what sounds like a more than respectable performance, investing Marx’s music with a great deal of emotional fervor.


I do find another recording of the first three of the Four Songs on this disc—they’re included in a collection of songs by Mahler, Marx, Schreker, and Strauss on a Preiser CD—but oddly, the final “Pan dreaming of Syrinx” song is omitted. Perhaps it wasn’t published together with the first three songs, since it seems to have been written two years later.


Soprano Simone Nold sounds just a little light or thin on her topmost notes, but her timbre is beautifully suited to these songs, and she has a tight, unobtrusive vibrato that makes her a pleasure to listen to. Violist Felix Schwartz and flutist Christoph Renz, who variously join Nold and the Hyperion Trio throughout the songs, make lovely sounds.


CPO is investing heavily in Joseph Marx, having already produced four previous discs sampling his symphonic works, chamber music, and songs. Whether it will spur a Marx revival or not it’s hard to say. I, for one, certainly found this release captivating enough to listen to it more than once, and recommend it to anyone curious to explore the music of a composer who, if not musically, at least chronologically, falls within the orbit of the Second Viennese School.


FANFARE: Jerry Dubins

Around 1800 Ignaz Pleyel was regarded, next to Haydn and Mozart, as Europe's most successful and popular instrumental composer of music; his numerous works circulated from Scandinavia to Southern Italy in countless printed editions. His star began to fade during the 1820s; Pleyel came to be regarded merely as an epigone of his esteemed teacher Haydn. This new release demonstrates that his music really has not deserved to be forgotten. Moesusconducts the Stuttgart Radio Symphony.

WEINBERG String Quartets Nos. 1–17. Capriccio. Aria • Qrt Danel • CPO 777913 (6 CDs: 436:41)


If you’ve not been collecting CPO’s Weinberg string quartet cycle with the Danel Quartet, here’s your chance to acquire it complete—all 17 quartets—in a boxed set, selling for under $8 per disc at ArkivMusic. It’s not as if there’s a lot of competition, either. The Pacifica Quartet included Weinberg’s Sixth Quartet in Volume 3 of its complete Shostakovich quartet cycle. There’s a single Delos CD of Weinberg’s quartets 11 and 13, performed by the Vilnius String Quartet; one surviving Olympia CD containing the quartets 7, 8, and 9, played by a group calling itself the Dominant Quartet; and a No. 8 recorded by the Borodin String Quartet for Melodiya. And that, to the best of my knowledge, is about it, at least insofar as what’s currently available on CD. I don’t know if a complete Weinberg quartet cycle was ever undertaken in the LP era.


Mieczys?aw Weinberg (1919–1996) has long stood in the eclipsing shadow of his close contemporary and loyal friend Shostakovich. But Weinberg’s neglect is not entirely due to his being judged the lesser of the two composers; much of it is due to his being charged, and not entirely without good reason, as being a shameless Shostakovich imitator.


Anyone who is familiar with Shostakovich’s 15 string quartets and who listens to Weinberg’s quartets can’t entirely deny the accusation, for there is at least a kernel of truth to it. One hears many of the same techniques—the lengthy and sometimes fierce rhythmic ostinatos, the corrosive dissonances, and the hollow, haunted-sounding melodies—as well as many of the same emotional states—the feeling of bone-chilling cold, the sense of caustic, cruel irony, and a palpable perception that perpetual tragedy is life’s natural condition.


Certainly the Jewish Weinberg had even more cause for such a bleak outlook than Shostakovich did. Born in a Warsaw ghetto, Weinberg was the only member of his immediate family to survive the Holocaust, and but for Shostakovich’s intervention and Stalin’s sudden death, he almost didn’t survive a Soviet purge of Jews in 1953 that came to be known as the “Doctors’ Plot.”


Before receiving this six-disc set, I was familiar with only two or three of Weinberg’s quartets, and I can tell you that now, after listening to all of them, my previous skepticism has been transformed into genuine enthusiasm. The first thing I learned is that the “Jewish” element is more pronounced and more pervasive in Weinberg’s music than it is in Shostakovich’s, no doubt an artifact of his childhood years in a family of itinerant Yiddish theater performers.


The second thing I discovered was that there is an underlying lyrical lilt to much of Weinberg’s writing, especially in the earlier quartets, that doesn’t sound all that strongly influenced by Shostakovich. The Fourth Quartet, for example, composed in 1945, after Weinberg had already been in the Soviet Union for several years and had already struck up his relationship with Shostakovich, is a real melodic beauty.


Only Weinberg’s First Quartet, dating from 1937, was written in Poland, two years before the composer fled the country ahead of the Nazi invasion; and it was one of only two of his 17 quartets he would later revise. It’s the revised version, made almost 50 years later in 1986, that’s performed here by the Danel Quartet, the original being practically illegible in many parts, according to the album note.


The Second Quartet, dating from 1940 and composed shortly after Weinberg had arrived in Minsk, was also extensively revised almost 50 years later in 1987, but that revision, bearing a different opus number, was rescored as a chamber symphony, so that the quartet stands as an independent work.


After that, Weinberg’s output of string quartets remains pretty steady up until 1987. He wrote no more quartets in the last nine years or so of his life, but he did write a 20th Symphony, three more chamber symphonies, a flute concerto, and most curiously, a “Kaddish” Symphony, his penultimate work—curiously, because it’s reported that just two months before his death in Moscow, he converted to Orthodox Christianity.


The quartets are arranged in the order they were originally released on the individual CPO discs, which means they’re not ordered chronologically, skipping randomly from one to another. The First Quartet doesn’t show up until Volume 5, while the second to the last quartet, No. 16, is on Volume 1. But if you purchase this set, I strongly suggest that you listen to the cycle in numeric/chronological order, because that way it becomes easy to hear Weinberg’s writing before he fell so profoundly under Shostakovich’s influence, during the period of that influence, and after it. The last five of Weinberg’s quartets were, in fact, composed between 1977 and 1987, post-Shostakovich’s death in 1975.


By listening to the quartets in this way, one hears the many different influences that Weinberg was subject to. In the first two or three quartets, there’s a strong sense of Berg and the music of the Second Viennese School, as well as of Bartók, which Weinberg would probably have been exposed to during his studies at the Warsaw Conservatory. Then we encounter the Shostakovich influence from about quartets Nos. 5 or 6 through 12. But along the way, Weinberg had to have encountered Prokofiev and Myaskovsky too. The last five quartets, Nos. 13 through 17, largely continue in the vein of Weinberg’s now deceased mentor, Shostakovich, but more Modernist elements of other Soviet composers active at the time, for example, Alfred Schnittke, begin to creep into Weinberg’s writing.


I realize that all of these discs have been (and still are) available individually; these are not brand new releases, but presented here as a complete cycle, I believe this set represents an important milestone in the Weinberg revival, and it affords us a fuller perspective on this neglected Soviet-era composer. These quartets make for really interesting and, for the most part, really rewarding listening.


The Danel Quartet, which already recorded a complete Shostakovich cycle for Fuga Libera and a number of other works by mostly 20th-century French composers, is truly superb, and CPO’s recordings are clear, bright, and perfectly balanced. This is very strongly recommended to anyone interested in becoming acquainted with a major body of 20th-century string quartet music.


FANFARE: Jerry Dubins

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WEINBERG String Quartets Nos. 1–17. Capriccio. Aria • Qrt Danel • CPO 777913 (6 CDs: 436:41)


Initially released as individual discs between 2007 and 2012, this set of Weinberg’s 17 quartets plus the capriccio and aria seems to have flown, by and large, under the critical radar. I could only find a few reviews online: Vol. 1 by Steve Schwartz at Classical Net, Vols. 1 and 3 by Barry Brenesal here in Fanfare, Vol. 5 by Gary Higginson at MusicWeb International, and Vols. 1, 4, and 6 at allmusic.com, although Quatuor Danel’s complete set of the Shostakovich quartets on Fuga Libera garnered high praise from James Leonard at the latter web site.


As is so often the case with sets of complete quartets or symphonies, the works are presented well out of order. Vol. 1 contains quartets Nos. 4 and 16; Vol. 2 quartets Nos. 7, 11, and 13; Vol. 3 quartets 6, 8, and 15; Vol. 4 quartets 5, 9, and 14; Vol. 5 quartets Nos. 1, 3, and 10 (along with the capriccio and aria); and Vol. 6 quartets 2, 12, and 17. I wish I had a window into the heads of record producers, and thus had some idea to give you as to why we get these things in such a crazy-quilt pattern. It would be one thing, I believe, if they had only recorded six or nine of the 17 quartets. In that case, you might expect that they’d be programmed for contrast’s sake and not chronologically, but when you get a complete set of 17 works written over a long span of time and in differing styles, I really appreciate being able to hear them in the order of composition so as to get a hold on the composer’s mindset and growth as an artist.


Now that I’ve gotten that out of the way, all I can say about this music—individually per quartet and as a whole—is that it is simply astonishing that this poor guy was ignored for so many decades. The reason, one fathoms from reading his biography, was not as mysterious as it may seem considering the exceptionally high quality of his work. As a Polish-Jewish refugee who fled to the Soviet Union to get away from the Nazis, only to find that he was now persecuted by his new country, he refused to become a member of the Communist Party and thus worked almost completely outside the system. His good friend Shostakovich had to send a letter to the head of the secret police to save Weinberg’s skin at one point, so the composer was never executed or sent to a Gulag, but he didn’t have an easy life; and, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, he was so little known except by a few musicians who were friends and confidantes of Shostakovich that he was still pretty much ignored even within the New Russia.


Since the opening disc pairs an early quartet and his last one, we come to appreciate his stylistic differences between the early and late Weinberg. In a nutshell, he was able to internalize much of his angst as he grew older and reflect on what had passed in a way that was less emotionally intense but no less personally meaningful. Thus in the Quartet No. 4 (op. 20), we hear a Weinberg who is still very strongly and emotionally scarred by the brutalities of the Nazi regime which he fled (similar angst maybe heard in his piano trio, which I review elsewhere in this issue), while the last quartet, dedicated to his sister Ester, who died in the camps, is more quiet and reflective if no less deeply felt. Structurally, however, it is the most conventional of all his works I have yet heard. The really fascinating thing about Weinberg in general is that no matter what the emotional stimulus of any given work, he was able to transform it into a musical statement that could be felt by others, his personal grief and angst thus becoming more universal in its message. In this respect, and in these particular works, Weinberg was Beethoven’s spiritual successor. One can very easily move from the late Beethoven quartets to Weinberg’s with no loss in musical interest and certainly no loss in emotional impact.


Curiously, the Quartet No. 7 that opens Vol. 2 is also a relatively quiet work, as the composer was apparently trying to placate the hostile Soviet authorities (his Quartet No. 6 was banned for a time by Stalin, though ironically, at another time, his music was praised by the Soviets “for depicting the shining, free working life of the Jewish people in the land of Socialism”). In terms of musical construction, however, it is less formal or conventional than the last quartet, the sustained invention of the work continually fascinating despite the low-key dynamics and often muted strings, though the music virtually explodes in the last movement.


The 11th Quartet (1966) is played almost entirely muted, with only large sections of the Adagio semplice (third movement) unmuted, played by individual members of the quartet as solos. This was yet another example of Weinberg’s originality of design, yet as usual with this composer one should not put too much stress on the structure; it is the musical progression, and the stories his music tells, that are one’s primary focus. Indeed, aside from the effects just noted, the overriding feeling one gets from this quartet is of an almost perpetual motion. One must praise the members of Quatuor Danel for their ability to play in different styles and moods throughout these quartets. In addition to the unusual string of solos in Quartet No. 11, Weinberg sometimes wrote for the strings to play off one another and sometimes to play as a unified group, and the unusual shape and textures of his music with its unusually varied attacks (not to mention extraordinarily fine shadings of dynamics, which are in constant flux from moment to moment) are not easy to play properly. I’m sure that many, many hours of rehearsal time went into these pieces.


The one-movement 13th Quartet, written shortly after the death of Shostakovich, is a structurally broken work in which, as the notes say, the “scherzo, slow movement and finale sections are weakly articulated and blurred by references back to the opening theme and by developmental recombination of ideas.” In terms of mood, however, Weinberg seems as upset about the unjust persecution his friend suffered as he was sad about his passing, as there are several angry-sounding passages in it, and its generally consonant harmonic base is at times disrupted by tense, edgy tone clusters.


Vol. 3 opens with the Quartet No. 6 from 1946, the one banned by Andrey Zhdanov for formalism. Although it bears Weinberg’s unmistakable stamp, particularly in his varied use of the strings at different points throughout the work, in melodic and harmonic terms it sounds, to me, the closest to Shostakovich. Still, one is constantly kept on one’s toes by its constant shifting of mood and rhythm (perhaps Zhdanov banned it because he couldn’t follow it!). I was particularly struck by the third movement, Allegro con fuoco, with its almost ferocious use of pizzicato effects, as well as by the canon used in the fourth movement ( Adagio ).


The Quartet No. 8, from 1959, is a one-movement work, but this time with three clear-cut sections to subdivide it. Despite this nod to conventional form, however, it is still music by Weinberg, which means that it is fascinating and diverse in its use of themes and development. Among these are his use of “sighing figures,” as the notes describe them, overlaid on the C-Major triad in the first movement, and the rondo-like Allegretto which forms itself into a second movement, with klezmer-like intonations used underneath. Occasionally, Weinberg strikes up a regular rhythm, but then slowly increases its pace until it becomes a sort of “whirling dervish” dance, with the string attacks becoming more intense as it changes from a dance to an insistent, driving rhythm. He solves his own musical puzzle, at last, by combining the opening section’s Adagio with a new phrase in which earlier themes are thrown into the musical blender with it, eventually putting its varied parts together.


The 15th Quartet (1980) is one of his strangest and most original, split into nine movements with metronome markings but no titles or expressive directions. Once again Weinberg uses mutes on the strings, in this case producing a murmuring, undulating effect that keeps trying to coalesce into a theme but never quite makes it. The music has an elusive quality, like trying to grab a handful of mist; you come close but never quite succeed in your quest. Here is a musical story told by allusion and innuendo, with nothing stated clearly and very little in the way of signposts for the listener to hold onto—at least, not until the surprisingly vivid, violent fourth movement, where the mutes are finally removed and the attacks are ferocious. From this point, the next three movements retain a constant level of loudness, even through a canon played by the two violins in minor seconds, eventually intruded upon by the other instruments as the music deconstructs. More than a vague hint of Beethoven is heard in the sixth movement as a snippet of the opening theme of one of his “Razumovsky” Quartets is tossed around between the strings. Weinberg brings back the mutes for the eight movement, a Bartók-like piece played in pizzicato, with ambiguous melodies again trying to form themselves. Eventually we reach the ninth and final movement, in which a sad, lyrical, yet broken melody again fails to coalesce.


Vol. 4 opens with Quartet No. 5 (1945), the opening tune of which—playing by solo violin—is one of the loveliest things Weinberg ever wrote, a piece he could easily have turned into a song. Indeed, even after the other instruments enter, one at a time, he continues to develop and evolve this gorgeous melody to almost Bellinian or Wagnerian proportions (tune-wise, not in terms of Wagnerian texture). Moreover, as the melody continues to morph, it becomes even more eloquent and touching. Here, again, we have a different approach from Weinberg, yet he is able to convince us, for the duration of this quartet, that it is right and meaningful. The second movement “Humoreska” is, for once, really a humorous tune, ambling along in its quirky, syncopated way like a tipsy hobo who thinks he’s walking a straight line but isn’t. In the development section of this movement, Weinberg ejects the syncopations and turns the melody into a more lyrical tune played by second violin and viola, while the first violin plays odd pizzicato figures above it; then, returning to the syncopations (now played by viola), the other three instruments lightly embroider its melody with pizzicato of their own. After a similarly wacky scherzo and an ethereal slow movement “Improvisation,” the quartet ends with a “Serenata” that sounds a bit like Haydn, or at least Prokofiev in a Haydnesque mood.


The Ninth Quartet (1963) reveals Weinberg attempting a slightly different format. The work is divided into four discrete movements, marked Allegro–attacca, Allegretto–attacca, Andante–attacca, and Allegro moderato . Moreover, he seems to have taken up the task of reinventing the “Classical” model of a quartet, its extremely dense and complex sonata form repeating both expositions and development sections. Rhythmically, this quartet follows more standard Classical rhythms, almost Stravinskian in their rigor and stiffness, the harmony often bitonal and constantly shifting sideways in and out of different keys. By this time one will have noted that one of Weinberg’s traits is to let the listener expect certain things, but then to pull the rug out from underneath. Themes are sometimes juxtaposed in strange and quirky ways, there are inspired leaps into strange realms, yet in the end he always seems able to pull it all together.


Quartet No. 14 (1978) is another of those with only metronome markings, no movement descriptions, and a furtive, almost mysterious method of composition and mood. The first movement’s almost ostinato rhythm tends towards Minimalism, at that time pretty much a new style, but Weinberg wasn’t interested in endless repetition of short thematic fragments. Here the intensity of his expression almost sounds like a howl of despair or anger, or both. There is also angst (and sorrow) in the slow movement, which almost sounds tonally based at first but soon veers off into strange harmonic territory. The third movement has a scherzo-like rhythm, but is subdued in mood and, again, sounds almost fragmented in its direction but is really quite well constructed. The slower fourth movement is also melancholy and despondent. The fifth and last movement seems to coalesce its musical materials more concisely, but eventually shifts feeling and focus, ending quietly—as the booklet says, “in unresolved thematic oppositions, tinged with fragile harmonics … and in a final inscrutable, white-note cadence.”


The opening of Weinberg’s very first quartet (Vol. 5), written in 1937 but revised in 1985, opens in such a way that it sounds as if you are already in the middle of the movement (a bit like the opening of the Mahler Sixth Symphony, only much quieter). Because the years of its initial composition and revision were so far apart, Weinberg assigned the quartet two opus numbers (2 and 141). The booklet explains that Weinberg left the quartet’s formal design and harmonies intact, but in 1985 was “recasting and clarifying the texture.” Even if you consider both this later maturity of texture and that some passages may indeed have been changed, this product of the 18-year-old composer is already a mature work, interesting and involving to hear. Although the notes throughout this series persistently compare Weinberg’s quartets to those of Shostakovich—a comparison I find unfair to both composers—for this one the annotator instead mentions its resemblance to some of Bartók’s and Szymanowski’s music. I, however, hear no real stylistic difference between this quartet and the later ones other than Weinberg’s own maturity and willingness to explore different forms of construction. In other words, I felt all along that Bartók was his real model, and the constant comparisons with Shostakovich are superficial and peripheral. Thus I hear some elements of Bartók not only in this First Quartet, but also in the Third Quartet which follows on this disc, although the Third is a bit more assertive. Weinberg was, simply, an excellent composer from about age 18 onward, and although he himself dismissed some of his early works in later life, there are some really fine pieces in his early oeuvre, as the early Aria (op. 9) and Capriccio (op. 11) that close this disc illustrate.


Between the First Quartet and these shorter pieces, however, is the Third Quartet (1944), and it is much the same as the Quartet No. 4 which followed, and if a shade less angst-ridden still on the “edgy” side. It’s a shame that so many younger listeners of “classical” music nowadays want soft, relaxing music, something to sip wine to and slip into a semiconscious state—“Mellow with Mozart” or “Zone Out with Zemlinsky.” Yes, that is certainly part of what classical music is about, too, but the music is also designed to project edgier, more intense emotions, and I for one can’t really imagine modern-day “nocturnivores” (as they describe themselves in a fast-food chain’s radio advertising) listening to many of these Weinberg quartets. What a pity.


The Tenth Quartet (1964) divides its four movements up into slow-fast-slow-fast, but once again Weinberg treats the whole quartet as if it were one continuous movement with different moods. The cello employs an unusually strong vibrato to lead into the first movement, but note here, again, how Weinberg leads the listener into thinking this opening melodic statement will develop into a broad, half-tone melody before breaking it up with strong accents on each of the four beats for several measures. As usual with this composer, the music continues to morph in its progression, becoming ever more melancholy as it simplifies the rhythm and indeed does become a succession of half notes, then whole notes. The second movement, with its broken, asymmetric rhythm, sort of sneaks up on the listener, in part because it is played softly with muted strings (another Weinberg trademark). By contrast to this scherzo, the third movement Adagio is played loudly and passionately on open strings—yet another twist for the listener. A long-held D? on the cello eventually morphs into the last movement’s opening, again quiet and almost calm in mood, but a semi-lively syncopated rhythm is set up which then leads into other themes, including a somewhat simple waltz, before winding its way in roundabout fashion to another cryptic finale, another tale told via allusion and musical metaphor. The early capriccio is, to my ears, very strongly influenced by Prokofiev’s “Classical” Symphony, the aria influenced by—Gabriel Fauré? That’s what it sounded like to me, and I was happy that the liner notes agreed with my assessment.


CD 6 begins with Quartet No. 2, another piece (like Quartet No. 1) that he revised much later in life, thus it bears the dual opus number of 3/145. Once again, I hear in this earlier work a lot of Prokofiev in his tongue-in-cheek Neoclassical style, but again filtered through Weinberg’s extraordinarily inventive mind. It almost boggles the imagination that, as Alex Ross put it in one of his New Yorker articles, Weinberg thought very little of his music and even gave up on getting his works published, let alone performed, during the last decade or more of his life. In the liner notes by Elisaveta Blumina for the CPO disc of Weinberg chamber works (reviewed elsewhere in this issue), the pianist mentions that his one claim to fame within Russia was that he wrote the music for Winnie the Pooh cartoons! (In fact, you can find some of those Russian Winnie cartoons from the late 1960s-early 70s on YouTube with Weinberg’s music in them.) It’s a bit like imagining a major figure such as Stravinsky giving up on himself, writing background music for George of the Jungle cartoons, then later not caring if his music was published or performed. I found this Second Quartet to be one of Weinberg’s lightest and wittiest; one might be forgiven for thinking it was written before the Nazi horrors, but in fact it was composed between November 1939 and March 1940, the period during which he abandoned Poland (where his mother and sister were murdered) for Belarus.


The 13th Quartet (1969–70) is very much in the Bartók mold, even though the opening section smacks of serial music (and, in fact, the notes point out that these bars are “loosely based on a 12-tone aggregate”). It’s not so much an angry or angst-ridden quartet as it is one informed by a great deal of internal pain and confusion. To me, this music seems to say, “Why am I so alone? Why is no one on my side?” Believe me, I can relate. As usual, Weinberg never resorts to cheap effects, to heart-on-the-sleeve weeping. All of the emotions are internalized, all of his pain transformed into quiet yet meaningful musical statements. And, believe it or not, this quartet just gets stranger and stranger as it goes along, until you feel that Weinberg has completely wrapped himself up in his own private musical cocoon.


The 17th and last Quartet, ironically, returns us to the more playful, carefree Weinberg of his youth. Written in 1986 for the Borodin Quartet’s 40th anniversary, it is a joyful piece, quite different from the sad lament of the Quartet No. 16. Weinberg, at least quartet-wise, thus leaves us not with a bang or a whimper but with a smile.


At first, the recorded sound of this set didn’t seem to me as clear and crisp as the Blumina disc (CPO 777804), but as the music progressed I was pleased to discover that one could still hear the bite of the strings and that the visceral impact of this music was not dulled by mushy, gooshy sonics. This is, quite simply, a great set.


FANFARE: Lynn René Bayley

FALL Madame Pompadour • Andreas Schüller, cond; Annette Dasch ( Madame Pompadour ); Heinz Zednik ( King ); Mirko Roschkowski ( Count René d’Estrades ); Elvira Soukop ( Madeleine ); Beate Ritter ( Belotte ); Boris Pfeifer ( Joseph Calicot ); Gerhard Ernst ( Maurepas ); Vienna Volksoper Ch & O • CPO 777795-2 (77:24) Live: Vienna 6/8/2012


What a delightful operetta this is! Bouncy, tuneful, witty, and extremely well written (as coincidence would have it, I followed Weinberger’s awful Schwanda the Bagpiper with this recording), it is one of those quintessential Viennese operettas that thrilled the masses in the last days of such entertainments, just before the Nazis and other fun hate groups descended like a cloud of doom on Austro-German culture and politics. It was a star vehicle for the popular and charismatic Fritzi Massary, Western Europe’s Queen of Operetta from the mid-1910s through the 1920s. Like so many such operettas, it is as much about nuance and charm of delivery as it is about voice, and in this respect Annette Dasch, in the title role, is lacking in both vocal control and charm. Oh, yes, she sings with energy and a certain amount of humor, but both her voice and the humor sound forced, particularly the former, which flutters wildly out of control on every sustained note.


As luck would have it, you can hear Massary’s own recording of the first-act aria “Heut’ könnt einer sein Gluck bei mir machen” on YouTube, and there is an almost seismic canyon in both voice and style (but mostly voice) between her and Dasch. Whereas the latter is fruity, with an overripe vibrato, and a certain amount of energy but no wit, Massary is all sparkle and charm. She makes you smile even though you don’t understand a word of what she’s singing.


But the rest of the cast, particularly Roschkowski and Zednik (who must surely be the German equivalent of Angelo Bada—he’s been singing for at least 40 years now), are simply splendid and hold up their end of the operetta splendidly. Thus there is enough sparkle here to compensate for Dasch’s problems, but since she is the character around which everything revolves, you wish that she had a better voice and style. A pity, really, because if the soprano on this performance had been as good as Cornelia Zink in the recent DVD of Carl Millöcker’s Der Bettelstudent, this would have been a fabulous performance and possibly a reference recording. As it is, it’s quite good but disturbs the ear every time Dasch opens up, particularly in the high range where she also goes a bit flat as well as tight and fluttery. Recommended, then, with that reservation.


FANFARE: Lynn René Bayley

HINDEMITH Das Marienleben (1948 revision) • Maya Boog (sop); Michael Lakner (pn) • CPO 777 817-2 (65:12)


I have always been convinced that Hindemith’s late-life revisions of some of his (successful) early works were misguided; in attempting to make some avant-garde works more palatable—more musical, if you will—he often sacrificed much of their original spontaneity. This was clearly the case with the opera Cardillac , and to a lesser extent with the clarinet quintet. There were many versions of Das Marienleben to confuse the issue, three of which were published; I have been particularly taken with the (shortened) orchestral version, which may have distracted my attention from this 1948 revision of the 1922–23 original song cycle.


Wilhelm Sinkovics’s booklet notes make a strong case for this revision, although he goes too far in damning the original: “its aggressive harmonic tonal idiom full of shrill dissonances” pretty much defines Sinkovics’s musical tastes. “A female vocalist who is not blessed with perfect pitch and fully developed self-assertive capabilities [OK, this is another person’s translation] can hardly hold her own in a part maintaining a fiercely dissonant stance toward the polyphonic lines of the piano accompaniment.” Well, many have done so. “The blasphemy of a work like Sancta Susanna was thus a marginal phenomenon in Hindemith’s career and owed to the spirit of the times.” In truth, it contributed to the spirit of the times. “The Mother of God could not be served with bold expressionistic gestures committed to paper without an organizing system.” Of course Hindemith’s 1922–23 music had an organizing system; it was just one that doesn’t suit Sinkovics. He does have the grace to note that the premiere of the “more spontaneous first version” was a great success.


But Sinkovics is convincing in his analysis of the changes that Hindemith made. One song was left as is, another was rewritten from scratch, and the other 13 represent a wide spectrum of revisions. Hindemith’s late mastery of structural tonal elements has made the cycle of songs more consistent: “Structural plans of this sort do indeed convey themselves to completely impartial listeners [have there ever been any?], who perhaps are not at all aware of a blueprint of this nature.” In other words, even we unenlightened peasants should appreciate this music.


The proof is in the performance, and this is a compelling one, from a vocal standpoint as well as a musical one. Maya Boog’s voice is not particularly beautiful, but she uses it expressively, conserving resources as needed. No. 9 “The Wedding at Cana,” may be the unchanged song (no scores were available to me). Sparkling dissonances energize the music, and huge leaps dot the vocal line, providing color and excitement not heard elsewhere. Boog more than holds her own, seeming to revel in the difficulties (she has a bit of trouble sustaining extended pitches in the slower songs). Hindemith was wise to leave everything be, perhaps wiser still to make it a singular occurrence. Michel Lakner is with Boog at all times, in an accompaniment which supports and shadows the vocal line, whereas in the original it emphasized contrast, contributing more of its own. The recorded sound is quite reverberant, even suggesting an echo at one point, yet it is also intimate—a paradox that suits the music well.


Hindemith was not a religious person, much less a Catholic (he wrote a Mass late in life just to try out yet another musical form). He claimed to be “a Protestant, perhaps not a good one but a loyal one.” The Life of Mary may have appealed to him primarily for Rainer Maria Rilke’s sensitive, lyrical poetry—which retains its power in translation—rather than for its theological values. Yet his work moved (and moves) audiences on many levels, as do religious works by true believers such as Haydn or Bruckner. While I can’t speak to its religious effect, I have always found the songs mesmerizing, in all three versions. This 1948 revision is more beautiful but less colorful than the original. It certainly pays to know both, and this CD is recommended toward that end.


FANFARE: James H. North

• In 1882 Elisabeth von Herzogenberg, who actually was active only as an interpreting pianist, composed eight truly virtuosic piano pieces that her husband would publish after her much too early death. Heinrich’s own piano pieces, now recorded in highly poetic style for the first time on three CDs by Natasa Veljkovic, a Vienna-based pianist , show that Herzogenberg had what was very much his own independent voice and truly meriting its own hearing – especially in this enthralling interpretation!

• Carl Reinthaler's (1822-1896) song cycles are distinguished by great mastery and expertise. For each poem, Reinthaler finds the appropriate tone, and in the accompaniment draws on the characteristic textual elements. His songs are of great intensity but often strike a strangely familiar and almost simple tone. Reinthaler’s great wealth of melodic invention is impressive. The many years of productive cooperation between Peter Schöne and Günther Albers reach a high point on the present recording.

EBERL Piano Sonata in g, op. 27 . 12 Variations in D. 10 Variations in E? • Marie-Luise Hinrichs (pn) • CPO 7776052 (53:27)


Present-day appreciation of the music of the prolific Viennese composer Anton Eberl (1765–1807) probably lags behind our awareness of his friendship and musical association with Mozart, and, for a time, his public rivalry with Beethoven. Eberl’s Symphony in E? was favorably compared by at least one Vienna critic to the “Eroica,” which was composed around the same time, and premiered on the same concert.


Eberl’s Grand Sonata in G Minor, op. 27, was published in 1805, a few months prior to Beethoven’s “Waldstein,” and dedicated to Cherubini. It’s an ambitious work whose first movement sounds almost nothing like Mozart‘s keyboard music—though its key and dramatic mood show the influence of the 40th Symphony—and not essentially like Beethoven’s, though each movement’s large dimensions may reflect his influence. Rather, the sonata’s textures, which are thicker than Mozart’s, along with its frequent, quick changes between major and minor, and its overall lyrical impulse, remind me a great deal of Schubert’s early piano sonatas, which it predates, as well as the more harmonically experimental passages in some of Dussek’s. In fact, it’s a better piece than the sonatas that Schubert composed before 1817, operating on a grander scale, and holding consistent interest throughout its three movements. The second movement operates like an early Beethoven slow movement, with florid lines that look toward Weber. The work’s high quality is maintained in its third movement, a large form, one of whose motives echoes the Haydn B-Minor Sonata, but whose sweep looks forward to Mendelssohn, with a dose of Beethovenian humor at the close. This is not to say that the music feels derivative. Repeated hearing of the piece has increased my respect for it, and especially in the first movement, Eberl is a composer with something of emotional import to impart, in a voice that’s his own.


The Variations recorded here are a set of 12 in D, based on an appealing theme by Carl Ditters von Dittersdorf, the Arietta Freudin sanfter Herzenstriebe , and a set of 10 in E? based on a similarly good-natured theme by the Singspiel composer Ignaz Umlauf, Zu Steffen sprach im Traume , the latter set supposedly held in great esteem by Mozart, and attributed to him many early editions. Here Eberl’s assured keyboard writing might be mistaken for Beethoven’s in many of his early variation sets. Eberl’s variations stick close to the original themes. The music is cheerful, workmanlike, but not terribly interesting. (Come to think of it, that description fits most of Haydn’s keyboard variations, excepting the F-Minor set, the majority of Mozart’s, and Beethoven’s, before he began to experiment with thematic transformation.)


The advocacy of a pianist who plays as well as Marie-Luise Hinrichs is just what is needed to elevate a second-rank composer like Eberl into the category of one whose music should be heard. Her playing is flexible, sensitive, tasteful, and persuasive in every way. She has the ability to communicate warmth of feeling, and if there are other Eberl works that are on the same high level as the G-Minor Sonata, I would enjoy hearing her play them. There’s a 3-CD set of Eberl’s keyboard music that includes the G-Minor Sonata, played by John Khouri on Music and Arts, the recorded sound of whose fortepiano does the music no favors. CPO provides Hinrichs’s modern instrument with flattering sound.


FANFARE: Paul Orgel

• Miriways met with enthusiasm when rediscovered after 284 years in 2012. “That the score of Miriways...is such a...delight to hear owes...to the Austrian conductor Michi Gaigg and her L’Orfeo Baroque Orchestra...” (J. Gahre in Das Opernglas). Mir Wais was an Afghan tribal prince who led several revolts to liberate Kandahar from Persian rule, a very current political subject when staged in Hamburg in 1728, and now. Telemann’s music is colorful, lavishly instrumented, and richly Oriental in color.

CPO presents Northern German Baroque Organ Works for March. This release features the complete extant organ works of Delphin Strunck and his son Nicolaus Adam Strunck.

• Now available as LP (2 LPs)
• Matthias Kirschnereit, piano, joins the Deutsche Kammerakademie Neuss am Rhein, directed by Lavard Skou Larsen
• Handel’s op. 4 was published in London as the »Six Concertos for the Organ and Harpsichord.
• Although the harpsichord is named in the title, these concertos are regarded as proven organ concertos; Handel himself performed all of them on the organ as instrumental intermezzi in his oratorios.

• Johann Steffens (ca. 1560-1616) was an eminent and esteemed choirmaster and organist in his day.
• Steffens's secular vocal compositions display the influence of Hans Leo Hassler and the Italian madrigalists.
• Simone Eckert leads the Himlische Cantorey and Hamburger Ratsmusik

The Koelner Akademie under the conductor Michael Alexander Willens presents a compelling interpretation of the Christmas Oratorio by Johann Wilhelm Hertel. The former “Court and Chapel Composer” at the court of Duke Friedrich von Mecklenburg-Schwerin, Hertel composed this cantata between 1777 and 1783 for its sacred concerts. The oratorio came across well and in the introduction by Franziska Seils to the score published by the ortus musikverlag, we read: “Along with the harmonically highly expressive opening chorus and the simply set chorales on familiar melodies from Christmas songs, the angelic proclamation radiating in trumpet splendor and the fully dimensioned, eight-part concluding chorus certainly also contributed to the popularity of the work […] areas of influence interact in Hertel’s Christmas cantata: the tradition of the popular lyrical pastoral idyll and the dramatic oratorio, the baroque philosophy of the emotions and the will to symphonic design.”

CPO’s series featuring productions by the Dresden State Operetta has quickly gained renown with its discoveries of unknown works by Johann Strauss. When the same theater presented an extremely successful new production of Jacques Offenbach’s rarely staged La Périchole during the 2008 season, cpo immediately decided to produce this masterpiece in the studio. The State Operetta had commissioned the cabaret performer and author Peter Ensikat to supply a new translation, and it was with superb wit that he accomplished the task of updating the satirical double meanings in Offenbach’s libretto and the references to current events of the composer’s times without losing the charm of the original. In musical matters the production oriented itself by the three-act second version of this masterpiece set in faraway Lima; it was written for Vienna in 1874 and is filled to overflowing with original melodies. CPO included the numbers written especially for Vienna and its then operetta diva Marie Geistinger as special bonuses. The result: an all-around successful operetta production and spirited listening fun!

F. E. FESCA String Quartets: No. 1 in E?, op. 1/1; No. 2 in F?, op. 1/2; No. 3 in B?, op. 1/3; No. 7 in a, op. 3/1; No. 8 in D, op. 3/2; No. 9 in E?, op. 3/3; No. 13 in d, op. 12; No, 15 in D, op. 34. Potpourri No. 2 B? for String Quartet, op. 11 • Diogenes Qrt • CPO 777482 (3 CDs: 207:02)


Reviewing a release (CPO 999869) of two symphonies by Friedrich Ernst Fesca in Fanfare 31:6, Patrick Rucker described him as a “symphonist,” and came to the conclusion that “though it’s doubtful that anyone would argue for an elevation of Fesca’s status above that of a Kleinemeister , this is music of considerable skill and charm.” I think something important wasn’t stated, there—namely, that Fesca wasn’t a symphonist. He was a concertmaster and first violinist by profession in court orchestras and chapels, but his compositional métier was chamber music, and especially the string quartet. As compared to the three symphonies he wrote very early in a highly successful career cut short by tuberculosis, he composed a total of 16 string quartets, not to mention four string quintets, four flute quartets, and a Flute Quintet.


And it was as a composer of string quartets that Carl Maria von Weber praised him in a published article in 1818. He notes that Fesca’s models were Mozart and Haydn, that he is “careful and richly spices” his harmonies, and “often modulates sharply, and swiftly, almost like Beethoven,” which is both shrewd and wide of the mark: both Beethoven and Fesca learned this from Haydn, and beyond Haydn, likely back to the more exploratory quartets of Gossec. Unlike Beethoven, he “feels too soft to … suddenly seize us with a bold, gigantic fist,” but “a certain intelligent deliberation marks his works, and is coupled with depth of feeling, avoids dryness, and brings about an uncommonly fine bearing in the character both of the whole and of the individual parts. He develops his ideas clearly and manifoldly, the four voices are independent.…” Weber notes a tendency towards what we term the quatuor brilliant , with a flashy first violin part, but that the other instruments aren’t demoted to secondary roles.


This first volume in a projected series of Fesca’s string quartets in general confirms Weber’s comments. I find little mature Mozart in the mix. On the other hand, Haydn appears less in the shape of harmonies and themes than in distant modulations, a tendency towards regular motivic transformation, and subtle elements held in common among all four movements of each work. Fesca also has the interesting trick (for lack of a better term) of crafting beautiful galant themes that he tags, either midway or at their conclusion, with short motifs. These latter can be varied and developed at will, as well as making a perfect way to bridge back to the themes, themselves, usually with several transformed elements.


Even the earliest works, believed to date from before or around his 20th year, demonstrate a mastery at handling what were by then the quartet’s movement structures that would remain in place for over a century. There is also at times a sense of playfulness at work—figures reversed, details that suddenly loom out of proportion, bridges that don’t end up where they traditionally should, thematic content from one movement inserted slyly into the accompaniment of another, etc.—though it almost never takes the form of Haydn’s famous false endings. Weber’s comment about four independent voices is only accurate in a limited sense. True, Fesca is willing to give the lead voice at any time to any of his instruments, but his greatest fault (at least, to modern ears) is a willingness at times to fall back on a lead with simple, repetitive bass accompaniment. That, too, was very characteristic of French quartets from the mid-18th through early 19th centuries.


What Weber in turn considers with typically Romantic regard for the individual as personally expressive reticence was probably just a pragmatic matter of writing for the largest audience without compromising standards; for make no mistake, Fesca was extremely popular during his lifetime. (His quartets continued to go through multiple editions after his death and through to the mid-century.) The one stylistic kicker in this three-disc set is the String Quartet No. 13 of 1819. It stands out from the rest both for its concentration on motivic transformation, even in the central movements, and for its tonal instability. Fesca as a rule enjoys exploring distant keys and recasting thematic content with different leads and slightly altered harmonies, but here he deliberately undercuts notions of the tonic not merely in bridges but within the themes themselves, leading to several moments of precarious tonality during the opening movement. Chromatic passages abound. It’s not later Schubert, by any means, but it is a curious sidelight that indicates one direction the composer might have pursued had he lived longer.


The Diogenes Quartet is a new name for me. They are all technically proficient if not expert, but slurs in some faster passagework commendably don’t cause them to take movements marked as presto or vivace any slower. Their tone is commendably lean, and their application of vibrato on held notes, and at cadences, warm. Founded in 1998, they apparently keep to a busy concert and recording schedule. (Their first volume of the Schubert quartets has recently been released on Brilliant Classics.) I’m glad to see that none of this has meant any less attention given to this music, and they perform it with the kind of loving detail one would expect to hear in works by the Bigger Names. They make an eloquent case for this music, and for the volumes that will follow.


FANFARE: Barry Brenesal