Fom Mahler to 1933, Part II.

This Week in Classical Music: January 16, 2023. German and Austrian (Jewish) Music from Mahler to 1933, Part II. In our previous post, we promised to play some music of the Austrian-German, mostly Jewish composers whose careers flourished during the first third of the 20^th century and then were completely upended by the Nazis. There were nine of them, not counting Mahler himself, and we selected three for this entry: Franz Schreker, Egon Wellesz, and Erich Wolfgang Korngold. All three, while modern in the musical idiom, didn’t accept Schoenberg’s atonality and wrote in a somewhat flowery, Romantic style. We’ll start with two excerpts from Schreker’s opera Der ferne Klang, which premiered in Frankfurt in 1912. This was Schreker’s breakthrough opera, staged in Germany hundreds of times. Schreker’s popularity waned in the mid-20s, as new operas in the zeitoper style, an angular German version of Italian verismo, became fashionable. Still, he was a highly esteemed composer and teacher when the Nazis came to power in 1933. Then, practically overnight, his music was banned, and he was dismissed from the Prussian Academy of Arts. Without means to support himself (his greatest triumphs happened during the period of hyperinflation), he suffered a stroke in December of 1933 and died in March of 1934, two days before his 56^th birthday. Egon Wellesz, by Oskar Kokoschka Michael Haas rightly calls him the first victim of Nazism. Here’s Nachtstück, an interlude from Act 3 of Der ferne Klang. It’s performed by the Royal Swedish Orchestra under the direction of Lawrence Renes. And here is the final scene, Grete! Horst Du den Ton? (Do you hear the sound?) with the tenor Thomas Moser and soprano Gabriele Schnaut. The scream at the end reminds one of the final moments of Puccini’s Tosca, written 12 years earlier. Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra is conducted by Gerd Albrecht.

Next, we’ll turn to Egon Wellesz, whose life, fortunately, was not as tragic as that of many of his Jewish contemporaries: he stayed in Vienna till Anschluss and then emigrated to England, where his life wasn’t easy (he was interned for a while as an “enemy alien”) but where he eventually built a career as an expert in Byzantine music and teacher. However, he was forgotten as a composer, which is a pity, as you can judge for yourself. Here’s Wellesz’s Idyllen, op.21, five short pieces for piano in the impressionistic style, written after poems by Stefan George. It’s performed by Margarete Babinsky. And here is his String Quartet no. 6, op.64, composed in England in 1947. The first several bars remind us of the famous 4^th movement of Shostakovich’s Quartet no. 8 from 1960. It’s performed by Artis-Quartett Wien.

Finally, probably the most famous of the three, Erich Wolfgang Korngold. Even though he’s better known than many of his contemporaries, he also suffered greatly from Nazism. A child prodigy and the most famous composer of the pre-1933 Austro-German music world, he’s now mostly remembered for the music he wrote for Hollywood films, creating the so-called “Hollywood sound.” During the 20 years leading to the Nazi takeover, the German-speaking world was mad about operas and the young Korngold was at the top of the field. Operas by Zemlinksy, Schreker, Wellesz, Krenek’s Jonny spielt auf, and d’Albert’s Tiefland were staged hundreds of times a year all across Germany. Korngold’s Die tote Stadt, written when the composer was 23, was the most successful opera of its time. Following his earlier successes, Die tote Stadt was so anticipated that it had two simultaneous premieres, one in Hamburg and another in Cologne, where Otto Klemperer was the conductor. Here is Elisabeth Schwarzkopf singing the aria Glück das mir verb lie (Happiness that remained) from Die tote Stadt. Hamburg Rundfunkorchester is conducted by Wilhelm Schüchter. And here Renée Fleming is doing at least as good a job in the aria Ich ging zu ihm (I went to him) from Das Wunder der Heliane, from 1927, which Korngold considered his best composition. The BBC Philharmonic Orchestra is conducted by Gianandrea Noseda.

Music from Mahler to 1933, 2023

This Week in Classical Music: January 9, 2023. German and Austrian (Jewish) Music from Mahler to 1933. Since about a month ago, when we published an entry dedicated to the Austrian Gustav Mahler Jewish composer Ernst Toch, we’ve been preoccupied with that tragic but remarkably fecund period of European art of the period. We must give credit to Michael Haas, whose book Forbidden Music and his eponymous blog have guided us in our search. Haas brilliantly explores the history of Austro-Hungarian and German Jewry starting with the Congress of Vienna in 1814 through the midcentury and Wagner’s antisemitism; the Austrian Constitution of 1867 proclaimed by the emperor Franz Joseph I, which emancipated the Jews of much of the Empire and helped to liberate the talents of the country’s Jewry, especially in arts; the underlying antisemitism of the society and first antisemitic political movements, relatively innocuous back then but eventually murderous and later catastrophic; Zemlinsky and Schoenberg the problems of the German minority of the Empire, and so much more.

For the Jews, the way to become accepted in society, formally free but practically still antisemitic, was through the arts, especially music. The flourishing that followed was quite unprecedented. We’re not even talking about the performing artists or conducting, where Jewish musicians came to occupy very prominent positions – we’re focusing on the composers who changed the music scene of the German-speaking world. Gustav Mahler, born in 1860, was the oldest of this Franz Schreker group. Alexander von Zemlinsky, who fell in love with Alma Schindler before Mahler convinced her to marry him, was 11 years younger but still one of the most celebrated composers of the early 20^th century, right there after Mahler and Richard Strauss (Strauss, born in 1864, wasn’t Jewish). Arnold Schoenberg, who changed the way we listen to music and even what we consider music, was born in 1874 (you may want to check our three entries here, here, and here). Franz Schreker, for a while more famous than all of the above, was the most popular opera composer in Austria and Germany. He was born in 1878.

Then there were three composers who are practically forgotten these days. Who remembers Karl Weigl, even though his music was praised by Mahler, Schoenberg, and Strauss? Weigl was born in 1881. Egon Wellesz, born in 1885, was one of the most successful pupils of Arnold Schoenberg: his music was published by Universal Edition, the most prestigious music publishing house in Europe, before Berg’s or Webern’s. He was also a noted scholar of Byzantine music. Ernst Toch, to whom we dedicated a recent entry, was born in 1887; his music was admired by Mahler and widely performed, till the Nazis banned it after assuming power.

Erich Wolfgang Korngold, an amazing child prodigy (many compared him to Mozart), was born in 1897 and wrote a ballet (Der Schneemann) at the age of 11, before the much older Zemlinksy composed the bulk of his work. Korngold became one of the most celebrated (and rich) composers of the time. Hanns Eisler, also Schoenberg’s student, was born in 1898 and became famous for his communist sympathies and for composing the national hymn of the German Democratic Republic. And Berthold Goldschmidt, the youngest of this group, was born in 1903. Franz Schreker’s student and a successful composer, he was considered by many to be the brightest star of his generation.

By 1933, when the Nazis took power, Mahler had been dead for 22 years, but everybody else’s careers and personal lives were brutally upended. Their music was declared “degenerate,” and their livelihoods destroyed. Franz Schreker suffered a stroke in December of 1933 and died three months later. Everybody else was forced to emigrate. Most of them never regained the fame they had in Europe. We’ll talk about the aftermath of the Nazi takeover and listen to some of the music in our next post.

Scriabin, Poulenc, Happy new year 2023

This Week in Classical Music: January 2, 2023. Yes, 2023! The first week of the year is rich in pianistic talent: January 5^th alone is the birthday of three tremendously gifted pianists, Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli (born in 1920) Alfred Brendel (1931), and Maurizio Pollini (1942). Alexander Scriabin The Russian composer Alexander Scriabin was also born this week, on January 6^th of 1872. Scriabin, himself a piano virtuoso, wrote many pieces for the instrument: numerous preludes, etudes, impromptus, mazurkas, poèmes, and ten numbered sonatas, not counting two early piano pieces in that form. We thought that we would find some Scriabin recordings by our pianists to celebrate both their art and that of the composer, but alas, there were none. Michelangeli had a rather limited repertoire, Brendel’s was much broader but even though he did play some 20th-century music, he mostly concentrated on German classics. What surprised us the most was the absence of Scriabin’s recordings in Pollini’s discography. Pollini played so many composers, from Bach to Luigi Nono, that we thought he would’ve recorded some Scriabin along the way, but we were mistaken: not a single record exists. Whether Pollini played Scriabin in concerts we don’t know, so we had to turn to a great interpreter of Scriabin’s music, Sviatoslav Richter. Here’s Sonata no. 5 in F sharp major, Op 53, recorded by Richter in Prague on September 24, 1972. Francis Poulenc

The wonderful French composer Francis Poulenc was also born this week, on January 7^th of 1899. Soirées de Nazelles (Nazelles evenings) is a set of variations that Poulenc composed between 1930 and 1936 (Nazelles is a small town on the Loire not far from Tours). Here’s the description at the top of the score, written by Poulenc himself: “The variations that form the center of this work were improvised at Nazelles during long country evenings wherein the composer played "portraits" for friends gathered around his piano. We hope that these variations, each one somewhere between a first draft and a finished work, will have the power to evoke this game in the spirit of a Touraine region living room – with a window open to the night.” Here’s Soirées de Nazelles performed by the French pianist Pascal Rogé.