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Silenced Voices / Black Oak Ensemble
Cedille

Silenced Voices / Black Oak Ensemble

$19.99

Details

Composer
VARIOUS
Artist
BLACK OAK ENSEMBLE
Format
CD
Label
Cedille
Released
Jul 26, 2019
Catalog #
CDR 189
UPC
735131918923

About

Black Oak Ensemble, a string trio boasting three of Chicago’s most enterprising and dynamic chamber musicians, makes its recording debut with Silenced Voices, an album of intriguing works by six promising, early 20th century Jewish composers originally from Austria-Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and the Netherlands. One survived World War II as a member of the Dutch resistance, the others perished in concentration camps and elsewhere in Nazi-occupied Europe.

Silenced Voices includes the world premiere recording of wartime survivor Geza Frid’s early Trio a cordes, Op. 1, an inventive work infused with Hungarian folk music influences. Composer-cellist Paul Hermann’s Strijktrio, a forward-looking, cosmopolitan work from the early 1920s, shares its melodies among all three instruments. Dick Kattenburg’s youthful Trio a cordes was praised in a 1938 concert review for its “remarkable mastery and a very personal style.” Gideon Klein’s Trio for violin, viola and cello is notable for its treatment of a Moravian folk song that serves as the theme of its middle movement. Hans Krasa’s Tanec (“Dance”) is a five-minute whirl of dancelike episodes framed by the sonic evocation of trains. His Passagalia is more somber, with its own train motifs, while its companion Fuga bears shades of Germanic and Czech influences and occasional grotesque touches. Sandor Kuti’s Serenade for String Trio brims with Hungarian folk music and piquant chord clusters. His Franz Liszt Academy classmate, conductor Sir Georg Solti, later proclaimed that Kuti “would have become one of Hungary’s greatest composers.” Praised for its “flamboyant vitality” and “expert performances” (Chicago Tribune), the Black Oak Ensemble comprises Swiss-American violinist Desiree Ruhstrat and British-born cellist David Cunliffe of the acclaimed, Grammy-nominated Lincoln Trio and French-born violist Aurelien Fort Pederzoli, a founding member of the groundbreaking, Grammy-nominated Spektral Quartet. Silenced Voices was inspired, in part, by the educational efforts of violist Pederzoli’s mother, a history teacher of Sephardic Jewish descent who led annual student field trips to locations such as Prague, Budapest, Auschwitz, Treblinka, and Terezin.

REVIEW:

None of these works in any sense identifies with the carefree café scene, nor strikes the fave licks of the waltzing salon partiers of the 1920s and ’30s. This is serious music that bristles and singes and sings, whose creators know strings and how to make three voices into the proverbial sum greater than its parts. And before I forget, the three members of Black Oak Ensemble—Desirée Ruhstrat (violin); David Cunliffe (cello); Aurélien Fort Pederzoli (viola)—are ideal advocates for this music, a threesome that often sounds like six, or like one, and makes the most of melody and makes magic of irregular rhythm and phrasing, of beautiful lines and jazzy utterances, reveling in the gritty groan of bows digging into strings, and finding the joy in rich harmony and an occasional raucous dance. Thanks to such insightful, committed, and masterful performances, those composers, though dead, are still speaking.

– ClassicsToday.com (10/10; David Vernier)

Tracklist 14 tracks

  1. 1 Trio à cordes 04:50
    Track
    1
    Title
    Trio à cordes
    Duration
    04:50
    Composer
    Dick Kattenburg
    Ensemble
    Black Oak Ensemble
  2. 2 I. Allegro giocoso 04:12
    Track
    2
    Title
    I. Allegro giocoso
    Duration
    04:12
    Composer
    Sandor Kuti
    Ensemble
    Black Oak Ensemble
  3. 3 II. Scherzando 01:54
    Track
    3
    Title
    II. Scherzando
    Duration
    01:54
    Composer
    Sandor Kuti
    Ensemble
    Black Oak Ensemble
  4. 4 III. Adagio ma non troppo 04:05
    Track
    4
    Title
    III. Adagio ma non troppo
    Duration
    04:05
    Composer
    Sandor Kuti
    Ensemble
    Black Oak Ensemble
  5. 5 Passacaglia 06:09
    Track
    5
    Title
    Passacaglia
    Duration
    06:09
    Composer
    Hans Krása
    Ensemble
    Black Oak Ensemble
  6. 6 Fugue 02:41
    Track
    6
    Title
    Fugue
    Duration
    02:41
    Composer
    Hans Krása
    Ensemble
    Black Oak Ensemble
  7. 7 Tánec 05:09
    Track
    7
    Title
    Tánec
    Duration
    05:09
    Composer
    Hans Krása
    Ensemble
    Black Oak Ensemble
  8. 8 I. Allegro 02:31
    Track
    8
    Title
    I. Allegro
    Duration
    02:31
    Composer
    Gideon Klein
    Ensemble
    Black Oak Ensemble
  9. 9 II. Lento 07:52
    Track
    9
    Title
    II. Lento
    Duration
    07:52
    Composer
    Gideon Klein
    Ensemble
    Black Oak Ensemble
  10. 10 III. Molto vivace 02:50
    Track
    10
    Title
    III. Molto vivace
    Duration
    02:50
    Composer
    Gideon Klein
    Ensemble
    Black Oak Ensemble
  11. 11 Strijktrio (String Trio) 07:48
    Track
    11
    Title
    Strijktrio (String Trio)
    Duration
    07:48
    Composer
    Paul Hermann
    Ensemble
    Black Oak Ensemble
  12. 12 I. Allegretto 05:15
    Track
    12
    Title
    I. Allegretto
    Duration
    05:15
    Composer
    Géza Frid
    Ensemble
    Black Oak Ensemble
  13. 13 II. Andante cantabile 05:02
    Track
    13
    Title
    II. Andante cantabile
    Duration
    05:02
    Composer
    Géza Frid
    Ensemble
    Black Oak Ensemble
  14. 14 III. Allegro giocoso all'ungherese 05:43
    Track
    14
    Title
    III. Allegro giocoso all'ungherese
    Duration
    05:43
    Composer
    Géza Frid
    Ensemble
    Black Oak Ensemble