Prinz Methusalem is now the 3rd discovery of an unknown operetta by Strauss on cpo. Strauss deliberately designed his Methusalem for the Paris stage. After a French version of Die Fledermaus was already in preparation, he set his hopes on his very first Paris premiere, but the contract was never signed, with the result that this operetta first saw the light of the stage world in Vienna.

What is one to make of a composition that goes by the name of "Work"? Above all, how can one make such a work palatable, how can one convince somebody beside oneself that an incredibly complex, breathtakingly suspenseful piece of music lies in store behind this title, which is certainly the simplest and most repellent heading imaginable? The facts are very clear: Heinrich Kaminski premiered his String Quintet in F sharp minor in Munich in 1917. Ten years after its premiere he returned to his quintet, relaxing its polyphonic interweaves. At almost the same time his publisher encouraged him to produce a string orchestra version of his symphonically dimensioned music. Kaminski assigned this task to his pupil Reinhard Schwarz-Schilling, who completed it to the contentment of all those concerned.

The reworking experienced its premiere as the "Work for String Orchestra" in 1929. An apparently clairvoyant reviewer wrote already after a first hearing, "The whole musical body supplied the radiant colors to the pictures. Behind this iridescent façade there stands the strong musical personality of the composer, there stands the same ecstatic individual in an otherworldly state of transport, for whom music is spontaneous chance expression: genuinely and truly born of innermost conviction."

- CPO

GILSE Symphony No. 3, “Elevation” • David Porcelijn, cond; Aile Asszonyi (sop); Netherlands SO • CPO 777518 (63:02 Text and Translation)


This is only my second encounter with the music of Jan van Gilse (1881–1944). His First and Second symphonies, recorded by these same forces and reviewed by James H. North in Fanfare 32:2, didn’t leave me with a lasting impression of the composer’s musical profile, so in requesting this release of his Third Symphony, I thought I’d give Gilse another shot.


Though he was Dutch by birth, Gilse was the product of German training, one of his teachers having been Humperdinck. Upon completing his studies, he secured conducting appointments in Bremen and Munich, but after the outbreak of World War I, he returned to the Netherlands, where he led the Utrecht Municipal Orchestra from 1917 to 1922. Apparently, his tenure was a stormy one in which a vitriolic dispute between Gilse and composer and critic Willem Pijper eventually led to Gilse’s resignation and the penning of a 350,000-word autobiography in which he heaped scorn on the heads of all those who had made his life in Utrecht miserable.


But Gilse was not all bitterness and payback. During the Second World War, he and his two sons joined the resistance movement against the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands. His life, however, ended in tragedy, as he saw both sons killed by German troops and then succumbed himself, probably to pneumonia, soon after, not living long enough to see the war’s end.


Gilse completed his Third Symphony in 1907 while still in Bremen, including in its third and fifth movements a part for soprano soloist. Unfortunately, the English translation of John Smit’s album note by Susan Marie Praeder gives no explanation for the work’s title, “Elevation” ( Erhebung in its German publication), or its connection, if any, to the score’s verses.


The third-movement text appears to be a free verse poem by Gilse himself, dedicated in gratitude to Dina Mollinger-Hooijer, wife of the director of the Netherlands National Insurance Company. The love poem, which makes no attempt to hide its erotically charged imagery, leads one to read between the lines as to the reason for Gilse’s gratitude.


The fifth-movement text draws three stanzas from the equally suggestive erotic poetry of Solomon’s Song of Songs , though the particular verses Gilse selects don’t contain some of the text’s more explicit references.


If Gilse’s Second Symphony hints at Strauss, Elgar, and perhaps a touch of Mahler, as North noted in his review of that earlier work, the opening slow movement to his Third Symphony is almost pure Wagner in Tristan und Isolde mode; one waits for the face of the famous Liebestod to emerge at any moment from the granite slab Gilse is chiseling.


The second movement tosses us right into the middle of Strauss’s Don Juan . There are moments of resemblance so close they border on plagiarism.


For the third movement, we’re back to Wagner. Without benefit of a score, I can’t be sure, but on one of the soprano’s climactic notes at 3:43, Gilse’s underlying harmony sounds darn close to Wagner’s augmented ninth “Tristan” chord.


Improbable as it may seem, the fourth movement opens with what sounds like a pre-echo of Ravel’s La Valse , and then we’re back to part Richard Strauss and part parody of the waltzing Strausses.


The fifth and final movement, at almost 22 minutes in length, dwarfs all the others. Here’s the Elgar North mentioned that’s been missing up to this point. What a gorgeous ceremonial opening. Though it lacks the same striding gait, the music recalls to no small degree the magnificent processional that leads off Elgar’s First Symphony. Patience is advised, for the soprano doesn’t make her first entrance until the movement is more than half over. When she finally does, it’s Isolde’s soliloquy leading up to the final Liebestod.


Clearly, Gilse’s score is largely derivative and, as North put it, “pure high Romanticism.” But that’s exactly what should appeal about it to those who love to laze in luxuriant orchestral scores. Gilse may not have had an original idea in his head for this symphony—I can’t speak to any of his later works or to his opera, Thijl , reputedly his crowning achievement—but he demonstrates a sure hand when it comes to the craft of orchestration and of weaving a colorful, vibrant musical tapestry. Gilse’s Third Symphony displays the talent of a composer who could write wonderfully effective music, even if it was someone else’s.


As usual, CPO’s recording is up to the highest industry standards, and David Porcelijn, who has been delivering the goods for the label’s Röntgen project, here leads the Netherlands Symphony Orchestra in what seems to be a perfectly paced performance. Estonian soprano Aile Asszonyi, who has a high-lying, lighter-than-usual, but exceptionally focused voice, beams right in on the notes with laser-like precision. Gilse’s writing, which exploits the voice’s upper range, seems ideally suited to Asszonyi, and she repays the composer with beautifully sung performances in the two vocal movements.


If you love the music of Wagner and Strauss with a serving of Elgar on the side, you are guaranteed to enjoy this CD.


FANFARE: Jerry Dubins

In 1929, Schreker was in the midst of a creative crisis: his publisher and the public had rejected his 2 most recent operas. The public demanded sensational successes like Krenek’s Jonny spielt auf, and his publisher was pressuring him to produce a box-office hit. Instead of making concessions, Schreker decided to pursue a different path and set out on a quest to write music for an ideal, unspoiled public: the everyday man.

Simplicity, purity and clarity.

This music was composed early in Josquin’s career when he was singing in the Sistine Chapel and while the cult of devotion to the Blessed Mother was at its height.

The simplicity, purity and clarity of the singing here is immediately apparent from the opening track, in which four of the eight singers used throughout sing the Vespers motet “Ave Maria” from which the themes of this paraphrase Mass are derived. Tuning is exquisite and the blend of voices unimpeachable. The difference in texture between the motets, when four or five singers are employed to sing each part, and the Ordinary of the Mass when two voices double up each of the four lines, creates a welcome variety in the density of sound. Special mention must be made of the lead Diskant (countertenor) Franz Vitzthum who soars without strain. If I have any criticism of the singing here, it is that the bass Ulfried Staber has a touch of the groaner - I could do with a little more sap in his tone - but in general Manfred Cordes has gathered here some of the finest exponents of European Early Music.

I usually prefer a deployment of voices currently frowned upon by the purists such as the Tallis Scholars employ, whereby there are more voices, some women, per part, singing at a higher pitch - but in this case, the warmth, phrasing and musicality of the vocalists here entirely convinces me.

The musical forms employed by Josquin are surprisingly varied: there are homophonic passages of stark simplicity alternating with complex polyrhythmic patterns and intricate melismata. Despite this complexity, the singers’ exemplary diction permits the liturgical text to emerge clearly. Cordes’ direction is free, flexible and fluid; no heavy-handed bar-beating here.

Lovely though the Mass is, my favourite track here remains the first motet: the upward sweep of the opening phrase and the ensuing canon are enchanting in their simplicity, then the heavenly Ur-melody is sustained right through to the transcendent close, “O mater Dei, memento mei. Amen”.

The sound engineering is admirable; just the right amount of air and space around the voices. The gold packaging is very attractive. The booklet provides Latin texts with German and English translations and a code to permit identification of which singers are singing what; unfortunately the notes tell you nothing about the music, only about the history and development of the Marian cult.

-- Ralph Moore, MusicWeb International

Busoni was a musician of rare versatility – a pianist, composer, writer and editor. His deep study of Bach and Mozart was essential to his own thoughts and creativity. It also bore much compositional fruit in the form of transcriptions and adaptations. The most famous transcription surely is his piano arrangement of the Chaconne from Bach's D-minor Partita for unaccompanied violin.

There were 2 Herzogenbergs: the young, wild Herzogenberg of his early years, inspired by Wagner and Liszt, and the classicistic Herzogenberg of his later years, under the spell of his venerated Brahms. Signs of this duality are found in all the works for violin and piano on this release.

“Venzago amazes us with his idiosyncratic and wholly novel performances of Bruckner. The sound of his Bruckner is thrillingly lean...His intelligent conducting focuses our attention on the chamber-music aspect of Bruckner's music.” –Pizzicato. In this Vol.2, Venzago devotes himself to the beginnings of Bruckner's symphonic output, the so-called “No. 0” and the 1st.

WETZ Christmas Oratorio • George Alexander Albrecht, cond; Marietta Zumbült (sop); Máté Sólyom-Nagy (bar); Thuringian CO; Erfurt P Ch; Dombergchor Erfurt • CPO 777 638-2 (70:02 Text and Translation)


In Fanfare . 20:5, William Zagorski reviewed cpo’s release of the Requiem by Richard Wetz (1875–1935). His enthusiastic appraisal of the work is more or less identical to my reaction to this Christmas Oratorio, a later Wetz work completed in 1928. Zagorski’s concluding endorsement well applies to this new recording: “Does this obscure offering by an obscure composer belong in the international standard repertoire? After listening to this fine and illuminating performance, I can answer that question in a single word: absolutely.”


The Christmas Oratorio—powerful at times, artfully composed in a way that sustains interest over its considerable length, and often affecting—is a significant discovery. Cpo does the music a great service by issuing it in such a fine, polished performance. Unfortunately, listeners eager to learn about this inexplicably neglected composer are shortchanged by the absence of a basic biography of Wetz in the booklet notes. Zagorski had the same complaint, and I refer subscribers to his review in the Fanfare Archive. It provides biographical background originally found on the website Len@musicweb-international.com.


The oratorio has a three-part structure comparable to that of L’Enfance du Christ, though it’s less of a dramatic narrative, and lacks Berlioz’s moments of exoticism. The titles of the work’s three sections are “Expectation and Annunciation,” “The Birth of Christ,” and “The Three Kings.” Wetz’s text is made up of a sequence of old German folk poems and his musical setting effectively interweaves folk-like material into a more complex chromatic style. Part II builds to a grand finale and part III ends with a big, jubilant double fugue, a contrapuntal tour de force , but much of the oratorio maintains a consoling tone that steers clear of sentimentality or bombast. The overall effect is not unlike that of the Brahms Requiem.


Wetz’s three symphonies composed in the manner of Bruckner have been issued by cpo and praised by three Fanfare critics. There are some Brucknerian climaxes in the Christmas Oratorio, but its overall feeling has more of a kinship with the tuneful, evocative music of Hansel and Gretel . Wetz’s melodic lines have some of the character of Parsifal’s simpler leitmotifs, and his adherence to tonality has something in common with the music of his Austrian contemporary Franz Schmidt. But in re-listening to Schmidt’s 1935–37 oratorio The Book of the Seven Seals , its eclectic, more operatic striving for effect strikes me as more effortful than Wetz’s approach. Of course, the Book of Revelation calls for something less gentle than the Nativity story.


There’s a recurring pattern in the Christmas Oratorio that Zagorski notes in Wetz’s Requiem, a musical movement from darkness to light, or conflict to resolution. Wetz’s careful chromatic writing, often imitative, creates a mysterious, brooding atmosphere that’s eventually dispelled by the opposite mood. We hear the former in opening orchestral prelude, among many other passages, and the latter in the first entrance of the women’s chorus with a simple diatonic folk tune. It’s a magical effect.


If the names of the provincial-sounding choruses and orchestra are unfamiliar to you, have no fear. They perform at the highest level. Conductor George Alexander Albrecht leads an inspiring, well-balanced performance and it doesn’t hurt that the baritone soloist, Máté Sólyom-Nagy, who has a large role, sounds uncannily like Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau in his prime: a pure and resonant voice with glorious diction. Marietta Zumbült is adequate, but a more radiant, secure soprano soloist would have made this a perfect performance. The recorded sound is properly resonant with a wide dynamic range.


FANFARE: Paul Orgel

G. SCHUMANN Piano Trios: Nos. 1–2 • Munich Pn Trio • CPO 777712 (71:42)


True to its mission, the German label cpo has resurrected yet another long-forgotten composer from obscurity. Georg Schumann (1866–1952), no relation to the famous composer of the same name, lived a long life—86 years—for a man with so short a biography. We learn that he studied in Leipzig under Carl Reinecke and Salomon Jadassohn and that he received the Beethoven prize in 1887. From 1896 to 1899 he conducted the Bremen Philharmonic, after which he settled in Berlin, where he was appointed conductor of the Singakademie. In 1913, he took up a post teaching master classes in composition at the Akademie der Künste, a position he remained in for the next 32 years until he retired in 1945. And that about sums up the life of Georg Schumann.


Cpo’s booklet note tells us that he composed two violin sonatas, a cello sonata, two piano quintets, one piano quartet, and the two piano trios heard on the present disc. Not mentioned is the fact, discovered in the course of my Internet research, that Schumann also wrote two symphonies, an oratorio, and other choral works with orchestra. It only stands to reason that Schumann must have written a lot more music than is cited in this short list; in fact, an ArkivMusic listing of a Guild recording containing a number of the composer’s motets includes a blurb to the effect that the bulk of his output was written for the Berlin Singakademie, with which Schumann maintained ties for 50 years. As far as I can tell, the motet CD, reviewed by David Denton in Fanfare 24:4, and this new cpo release of Schumann’s piano trios are the only recordings of his music currently available.


As can be seen from his dates, Schumann lived more of his years in the 20th century than he did in the 19th, and indeed, by the time he died in 1952, he would have witnessed two world wars, been at ground zero for the rise and fall of Hitler’s Third Reich, and surely been aware of the modernist and avant-garde movements that shook the music and art worlds to their foundations. We might therefore have reason to expect something rather different from the music of such a composer than what we get. To sum it up, how many ways can you say Brahms?


Many composers from around Brahms’s time and later—Heinrich von Herzogenberg, Waldemar Bargiel, and Charles Villiers Stanford, to name just three—were enamored enough of Brahms’s music to attempt to emulate his style. But Georg Schumann seems to have succeeded at it to a degree that’s almost frighteningly freakish. The long-spanning, arching melodies, the harmonic progressions, the rhythmic counterpoint, and the general gestural language are of a Brahmsian cast uncannily close to the real deal. Here then is another potential candidate for the anonymous composer that might have written the A-Major Piano Trio posthumously attributed to Brahms.


There’s not much else to say. If you love Brahms as much as I do, you will welcome Schumann’s two piano trios into your life without asking for a DNA test. They’re smart, adorable, beautiful children, no matter who fathered them.


The Munich Piano Trio has made a number of recordings I’m pleased to have in my collection, including an Orfeo CD of piano trios by Théodore Gouvy (1819–98), another composer who has been sorely neglected. The ensemble does these two Georg Schumann trios more than justice with really impassioned performances. Once word gets out about how gorgeous this music is, more recordings may follow, but for now, this is it, and you needn’t wait because this one is top-notch in every way. I know I promised to resist the temptation, but I feel a 2012 Want List urge coming on.


FANFARE: Jerry Dubins

REVIEWS:

This disc presents a selection of music from 1650 to 1750 collected and performed in the Thuringian villages of Eschenbergen and Grossfahner. Developments in education, and rising musical standards, led to a demand for new works and the church director in Grossfahner, the composer, violinist and educator Abraham Nagel did much to propagate music new and old in his village. The works that CPO presents are Protestant cantatas for solo soprano and a small instrumental accompaniment. These attractive works are of modest forces for village church performance.
 
Johann Heinrich Buttstett was a pupil of Pachelbel, and a distinguished organist. Das ist meine Freude was composed around 1705 and is written in a sophisticated, theatrical up-to-date style. Its obsessively circling variations on the first four words of the text represent a powerfully authoritative statement. And the duetting violins add to the vibrant spirit of this startlingly dynamic, compact work. The varied nature of the accompanying string and continuo support can be appreciated when the violins drop out, and the caressing melismas offered to the soprano Maria Jonas have something gently erotic about them. The work ends as it began, with suggestive operatic hints. Jetzt ist das Mahl bereit offers pathos and colour, and warm shafts of light, in another brief but effective setting. What a pity that so few of Buttstett’s works have survived intact.
 
Georg Friedrich Kuenstel was a court organist and also widely known, it appears, as a wheeler-dealer, flogging music which he’d had copied at court expense, and pocketing the money. The notes don’t go into detail as to how posterity knows this, though it is an interesting detail. Was will mich die Suende schrecken is a most impressive work, requiring the accompanying solo violin’s dextrous virtuosity in the opening Sonata. The concertante-like division between voice, violin and continuo demonstrates a practical and assured musical mind at work. Fortunately Jonas sings splendidly and violinist Anne Schumann likewise. The other violinist in the original instrument Chursächsische Capelle Leipzig is Dorothea Vogel, and she proves expert in Pachelbel’s Mein Fleisch ist die rechte Speise with its plangent scordatura and sensitively performed answering vocal phraseology. It’s good to have an opportunity to hear organist/music director Johann Topf’s Gott, du bist mein Gott which is another attractive, melodic and well structured cantata.
 
Finally there are three Telemann cantatas. Schmecket und sehet is illuminated by a joyful dialogue between soprano and accompanying violin. Ich hoffe darauf, dass du so gnaedig bist employs in part a pre-existing melody – it’s the second movement chorale, but it’s pleasurable to hear the calcedon, as elsewhere we hear the theorbo.
 
The performances throughout are polished and effective. There are good notes, texts and translations. The music combines relatively little known composers with such as Telemann and Pachelbel, which is a representative reflection of the music performed at the time in these particular Saxon villages.

-- MusicWeb International

"My work demands all my energies, and the rehearsal of Sten’s quartet has gripped me completely. We worked like madmen out of joy in it; I perhaps with more pain than on any other occasion, for I understand the core of this piece so desperately well that I dream about it at night." - Tor Aulin

It was the violinist, string quartet leader, and composer Tor Aulin who raved with such empathy while preparing his friend Wilhelm Stenhammar’s fourth string quartet for performance. Stenhammar unfortunately even today continues to number among the group of those composers whom one might term the »great unknowns«; nearly all the works compromising his rather compact oeuvre are of pronouncedly high quality. Unlike Grieg, Nielsen, and Sibelius, Stenhammar never attained the status of a musical icon in his native country – for political and social reasons Sweden evidently had no need of such an influential personality. On its wonderfully harmonious and homogeneous new Surround recording of Stenhammar’s Quartets Nos. 3-6 the Oslo String Quartet impressively demonstrates that he merits much greater representation in today’s concert world than is currently the case.

Classical Music

This is the start of a new series dedicated to the seven String Quartets of Felix Mendelssohn in gripping interpretations by the Minguet Quartett. His second quartet was composed in 1827, the year of Beethoven’s death, and in it quite clearly drew on the tone and formal structures from the late composer’s String Quartet op. 132 without becoming his epigone. Mendelssohn’s Sixth Quartet, the highly expressive String Quartet in F minor op. 80, tells of his grief at the death of his sister.

Classical Music