September 14, 2018

  • New Series Explores Music of Exiled Jewish Composers

     

    Reizenstein/Goldschmidt: Cello Concertos
    Rafael Wallfisch, cello.
    Konzerthausorchester Berlin/Nicholas Milton
    CPO 555 109
    Total Time: 56:06
    Recording:   ****/****
    Performance: ****/****

    Raphael Wallfisch has embarked on a series of recordings for CPO called “Voices in the Wilderness”.  The project is focused on bringing to light music for cello and orchestra by Jewish composers silenced by the Third Reich.  Wallfisch’s own parents were survivors of the Holocaust (his mother is one of the surviving members of the Women’s Orchestra of Auschwitz, where she had been sent) and eventually settled in England.  They knew both the composers represented on this new release, Franz Reizenstein (1911-1968) and Berthold Goldschmidt (1903-1996).  Both escaped Berlin before the Nazis imposed immigration restrictions.  They were two of many Jewish refugees who ended up in England.

    As is the case with many of the emigre composers of WWII, age and experience was everything.  Goldschmidt was already a mature composer in 1935 with compositional successes and with professional experiences of note (he was Erich Kleiber’s assistant in the premiere of Berg’s Wozzeck).  Reizenstein left in 1934 at the age of 22 and was still developing his own musical voice and connections.  He would study with both Hindemith (in Berlin) and Vaughan Williams.  Both composer’s work would be premiered by cellist William Pleeth, but both also had the playing of the great Emanuel Feuermann very much in mind.  Goldschmidt had written a sonata for Feuermann and Reizenstein’s work was dedicated to one of the great cellist’s students, Mosa Havivi, who never played it.  Both composers were also caught in that intriguing musical transition that was struggling to avoid completely atonal style with outh being overtly Romantic or Expressionistic.  But, Goldschmidt’s career sort of wallowed in the background of British musical life while the younger Reizenstein was able to secure a teaching post and numerous commissions.  There stories are parallel versions of so many emigrant realities of the time, and in the present day.

    Reizenstein’s work was completed in 1936 but went through several revisions before its final premiere with Charles Groves conducting the BBC Norther Orchestra in 1951.  The opening certainly has distant echoes of Hindemith, but most interestingly recalls the opening of Holst’s “Mars” from The Planets.  It is the driving, martial rhythmic material here that perhaps brings this to mind.  The cello enters with passion and then begins the outline of the primary thematic thread.  Most fascinating is the way the soloist and orchestra must interact.  It is almost like a person up against the world but the finale is an exhilarating major mode victory.  Michael Haas’ fine notes liken the moving slow movement as a node to Hindemith’s Trauermusik.  One can certainly hear this in its somber opening and plaintive solo line.  The emotional quality of the music is quite engaging.  After this pause, we enter into a somewhat dramatic and episodic finale.  A dance-like quality eventually appears with a Hindemith-like harmonic style and linear outlines that shift fascinatingly between soloist and orchestra.  There is plenty for the soloist to do here to pull the music forward with ever-increasing energy and excitement.

    Goldschmidt’s concerto (1932) seems to appear every once in a while but has not quite gained a repertoire foothold.  The piece was one of his last before he left for England.  Cast in four movements, the music has a decidedly more modernist quality at times.  You can hear this in the resulting harmonies from the polyphonic harmonies that flit a long against the cello’s line.  There is a sense here as well of Baroque-like connections that will carry forward in the second movement’s interesting dialogue between soloist and sections of the orchestra in a caprice that is essentially a motif and variations form.  The third movement is a “Quasi Sarabande” allowing more interaction between woodwinds and soloist with a finale that brings us a “Tarantella”.  Within the work itself we move to a more intellectual-like style that is a series of dialogues within an almost chamber music-like orchestral quality closer to the likes of Berg with a slight touch of the modernist Prokofiev of the 1920s-1930s.  It makes this an equally fascinating contrast to the opening work on the album.

    A couple of decades ago, Decca/London’s own “banned composers” series featured an excellent collection of Goldschmidt concerti with the Montreal Symphony.  Yo-Yo Ma was the soloist there and that is an equally fine performance.  Another recording explores equally rare works so one is bound to be able to compare all three if interest in the period and this work are part of one’s musical taste.  In the present recording, there is a different historic sense at play with Wallfisch’s own personal connections to these works lending it a different aura of authenticity.  He tackles these works with a sort of committed dedication that shows a real appreciation and understanding of these important 20th-Century works.  The orchestra too makes for an apt accompaniment here achieving the rich textures and sudden shifts of tone so perfectly shaped.  The Reizenstein is the real find here in what appears to be a premiere recording, at least it is the only one currently in the catalogue.  I would be fascinating to hear Pleeth’s original performances if the BBC happened to record them in the day.  Still, anyone interested in 20th-Century music will want to consider this excellent new release.