The 1930s Club of Defiance: Soviet Harmonies

The 1930s Club of Defiance: Soviet Harmonies

In Soviet music—itself the result of the grim politico-cultural reality of the 20th century—Dmitry Shostakovich was the towering figure that no composer could easily escape. Looming was also the state and with it the constrictions on what could be written and what could not be written. No important composers from that period could avoid becoming a victim of censorship, or self-censorship, our outright suppression. Among them are Sofia Gubaidulina (1931, Christopol), Alfred Schnittke (1934, Engels near Saratov), Giya Kancheli (1935, Tbilisi), Arvo Pärt (1935, Paide), Valentin Silvestrov (1937, Kiev), and Tigran Mansurian (1939, Beirut).

Religion played a role in their various turns from the musical avant-garde to a language more consonant with most audiences’ idea of beauty. Faith provided meaning in a state that had systematically undermined concepts like truth, value, and indeed ‘meaning’, and it provided courage. That, and doubtlessly a sense of estrangement in a Russia-centric state that forcefully tried to downplay cultural heterogeneity, factored in. It isn’t likely mere coincidence that all the above named composers were minorities in Soviet Russia: Gubaidulina is of Tartar descent, Alfred Schnittke had Jewish-German-Russian background, Giya Kancheli is Georgian, Arvo Pärt Estonian, Valentin Silvestrov Ukrainian, and Tigran Mansurian Armenian.

Eventually these composers found their way out of the politico-cultural trap—either through ‘inner immigration’, actual immigration, musical sublimation, or quiet defiance, or any combination thereof. Their musical styles are wildly different from each other, but they have in common a rejection (explicit or not) of both, Western avant-garde and ‘Soviet socialist realist’ music – the latter in any case a deliberately vague political tool more than a stylistic guide. This undercurrent of defiance and beauty is the unifying force as each answered the challenges they encountered in their very different ways.

Sofia Gubaidulina answered with much silence, Bach, and rocky, craggy shreds and scraps of sound—deeply spiritual in her own way, but for the most part thorny for the uninitiated ears. Her music is howling, harsh, and yet serene.

Schnittke answered with absurdity, humor (irony), mischief, seduction, and complete independence. “Polystylistics” is what Schnittke called his style of wild and rambunctious neo-everything. A professor at Juilliard said so much differently, sneering at the mere mention of the name: “Schnittke, that trash can of music”. It could also have been a compliment. Schnittke picks up all that interests him on the cutting room floor of Western music and reassembles it in his image. It’s as if a waxen mold of a familiar shape had been sitting on a still-hot stove top, and become not so much molten but oddly, subversively askew now. Or as he said of himself: “I set down a beautiful chord, and it rusts.” He first raises, then defies your expectations… a technique Joseph Haydn was a grandmaster in, in his time. Among the best examples of Schnittke’s keen sense for combining ancient structures and harmonies with everything that has sounded between Monteverdi and now, are his six Concerti Grossi—a form not served since the high baroque.

Arvo Pärt answered with the most ostensibly religious defiance (“Credo in Jesum Christum”, 1968). His superficially simple, very simply gorgeous, spiritual minimalist music struck, as it were, a chord with audiences, especially in the West, where the inventive Munich record label ECM devoted itself to his music and was rewarded with a sales second only to when they hit gold with their Keith Jarrett recordings.

Silvestrov was considered a leading representative of the „Kiev avant-garde," completely at odds with the prevalent Soviet musical aesthetic and therefore the officials. Successful performances in the West – and honorable mention in Ulrich Dibelius’ German standard on modern music “Moderne Musik Nach 1945”– didn’t help to endear the young composer to the apparatchiks.

When Silvestrov gradually yet radically switched styles—from conventional dodecaphony via avant-gardism to his ‘metaphorical style’ with a strong mystic bent, also dubbed “new traditionalism” or “neo-romantic”—that too didn’t sit well with the official guardians of musical style. Said Dibelius, in a later revision of his book, slagged Silvestrov off as a “regressive ‘mystical’ poet” when only a few years earlier he had still been a promising “serial-progressive”. (It is not known, but reasonable to assume, that Dibelius got ekzema at the mere thought of C Major or B Minor.) In the Western musicological world his turn from avant-gardism was considered a turn from art to tosh.

Silvestrov started composing in a style saturated with musical reminiscence. One of his foremost tools is simplicity but not (though the accusation has been made,) banality. The style certainly resonated with audiences. Sofia Gubaidulina wrote about Silvestrov: “People will say his musical language is too simple. But this simplicity is deceiving. It contains a wonderful depth. And this simplicity is truly new – it is a new musical language.” The record company ECM (again) thought so too, and recordings of Silvestrov’s music have done the label well and spread Silvestrov’s music near and far… perhaps nearly as much as did Gidon Kremer. Also not a Russian but a Latvian and also forced to seek exile in Germany (like Pärt, Schnittke, Gubaidulina)—his importance for all these composers cannot be overstated. Many of Silvestrov’s works are dedicated to Kremer and/or were premiered, recorded, and continuously championed by him.

Paradisi gloria

Paradisi gloria (Cruxient, Doderer, Kühr, Wozny) U.Schirmer / MRSO, BR Chorus BR Klassik Silvestrov, Bagatellen & Serenaden, A.Lubimov ECM Silvestrov, Requiem for Larissa, V.Sirenko / Ukrainian NSO ECM Silvestrov, Dedication, Post scriptum, G.Kremer, R.Kaufman, V.Sacharov / MPhil Apex Silvestrov, "Nosthalgia" (Piano Works), Jenny Lin Hässler

The Munich Radio Symphony Orchestra, not to be mistaken for either the Bavarian RSO (Mariss Jansons) or the Munich Symphonic Orchestra (Georg Schmöhe / Philippe Entremont), is easily overlooked in Munich, being the fifth among the six professional, proper-sized orchestras of the Bavarian capital. (The MPhil, Bavarian State Orchestra [the opera orchestra], and the Munich Chamber Orchestra [MKO] are the others.) The key to making a mark in an increasingly tough culture market as a second tier organization is to be different, more intelligent, more daring, and more flexible than the big boys in town. The MKO has created the local template for that, and the Munich RSO is doing that, too, branching out into both the educational and ‘rarified’ direction. The latter is exemplified by their series “Paradisi gloria”, which consists of secular music of the 20^th and 21^st century, performed in the wonderful, fittingly modern, catholic Herz-Jesu (of the Sacred Heart) Church—one of Munich’s few modern architecture gems.

The programmed music is often challenging, but with the prevalent conservative musical taste in Munich well covered by other bands, those in search of wider musical horizons eventually find the MRSO’s series. The response to Paradisi gloria, in any case, is enthusiastic and loyal. Peteris Vasks, Arvo Pärt, John Taverner, Morton Feldman, Alan Hovhaness, Tōru Takemitsu and the like are already the traditional elements on these programs, enriched by commissioned contemporary, or otherwise less well known works. A CD with these new commissions from the 2009/10 season was issued by BR Klassik late in 2010.

Silvestrov in Concert

The program on June 17^th (2011) consisted of Valentin Silvestrov (hence the lengthy introduction above), featuring “Two Dialogues with Epilogue” and the “Requiem for Larissa”, written after the death of his wife. “Two Dialogues”–between Schubert and Wagner—is first a gorgeous, melancholic meditation on the “Kupelwieser-Walzer”, said to be by Schubert, but only orally passed on until finally written down by Richard Strauss in 1943. In the second part it works off a theme in A-flat that Wagner jotted down around 1858 (WWV 93). The strings heave throughout to the strung-along Wagner theme, swelling and receding like the sea visiting and leaving the shore. The whole string apparatus is eventually interrupted by (possibly ominous) tremolos played by the pianist directly—with two fingers of each hand—on the strings of his instrument. The Epilogue, dedicated to Pärt, alludes to something that must have been, or happened, before the music even started – and thus pre-flects a sense of ambiguity on the beginning of the entire work. Emblematic of Silvestrov’s music, and particularly notable here, is his focus reflection, harmonic vibration; response and reaction; the shadow or impression or echo of a thing, a theme, a topic, but never the thing itself.

A short but pretentious reading of Rainer Maria Rilke’s “Requiem für eine Freundin” bridged (or rather: interrupted) the concert before it continued with the “Requiem for Larissa”. The requiem consists of music itself consisting of echos and fragments, blocks, bleakness, entrancing sameness and timeless calm. Artificial reverb from the synthesizer creates a feeling of distance (Silvestrov’s audialization of memory) that mingles with the already reverberant brass and lulls the senses. The ever-impeccable BR Chorus, occasionally instructed just to hum, provided a tapestry above which soloists from within its ranks emerged and receded. The Requiem has much going for itself, just not brevity. Repetitiveness, even of beauty, can become tiresome, and while certain minimalist pieces might require the run-up and sheer length to establish the desired effect (think Einstein on the Beach), there is nothing in this music that suggests that the Requiem couldn’t be as (or more) effective and touching if it were a little shorter. (Unless, of course, the desired effect were fatigue.) In that sense the work is better suited for private listening with a Scotch and Soda nearby and a comfortable chair, rather than hard church benches, to sit in.

Andres Mustonen from Tallinn, founder of Hortus Musicus, is especially at home in early and contemporary music, and while he looked like he had just come from a yoga seminar—with his red scarf, long gray hair put up in a tulip bun on his head, and a fluffy black smock that could have doubled as sweatpants—he was truly the spiritus rector of the excellent performance.

Grażyna Bacewicz – 100th Anniversary

Grażina Bacewicz was born 100 years ago today in Łódź, to a Polish mother and a Lithuanian father from whom she received her first musical training. Her prodigious talent became soon obvious and she gave her fist public performances at the age of seven. Her first composition followed at thirteen. At 19 she began to study philosophy at the University of Warsaw, but after just over a year she decided to focus more on music and enrolled in the Warsaw Conservatoire where she studied violin with Józef Jarzębski, piano with Jan Turczyński, and composition with Kazimierz Sikorski.

During her time at the Conservatoire, Karol Szymanowski recommended she study at the École Normale de Musique with Nadia Boulanger in Paris, which she did in the 1930s, thanks to a scholarship from Paderewski. In Paris, she also studied with André Touret and, after touring Spain as a performer and teaching harmony in Łódz, with Carl Flesch. Part of her graduation concert was the neo-classical Wind Quintet from 1932 which won her the First Prize at the Competition of the ‘Société “Aide aux femmes de professions libres”.

She became the principle violinist of the newly established Polish Radio Orchestra in Katowice where she was able to perform some of her own compositions – including the First Violin Concerto. Several more prestigious prizes followed, including the Second Prize at the Chopin Competition in Warsaw (1949, for her Concerto for Piano and Orchestra) and the Gold Medal at the Queen Elisabeth Competition in 1965 for her Seventh Violin Concerto. A capable pianist as well as a violinist, she also premiered her Second Piano Sonata from 1953, which remains one of her more commonly performed compositions. It was the last composition she would perform herself, after a car accident in 1954 – at age 45 – prohibited a continuation of her professional performing career.

One of the most prolific female composers, she managed to produce over two hundred works which include four symphonies, seven violin concertos, a piano concerto, a concerto for two pianos, a double concerto for viola and cello, and numerous chamber works which include seven string quartets and five violin sonatas. Her style, although she tried to eschew the classification, is largely neo-classical. The 1948 “Concerto for Strings” being a prime exponent of this pervasive element in Bacewicz’ style. It was given its world premiere by the Washington NSO in 1950 under its second music director, Howard Mitchell. Milton Berliner, reviewing for the Washington Daily News, reported: “Actually, there was nothing feminine about Miss Bacewicz’s piece. It was vigorous, even virile, with a pulsing, throbbing rhythm and bold thematic material [in the first movement]. It was either conservatively modern or radically classical. In any case it was worth listening to…” It might sound somewhat patronizing to us, half a century later, but it’s obvious he meant well and was genuinely impressed.

The prescriptions of the Polish cultural apparatchiks after the war were such that much of her music tried to appease the censors (always on the lookout for “formalistic” music) with the recommended integration of Polish folk elements into their music. Her Third Violin Concerto from1948 is a good example of this – with a tone that unmistakably places Bartók at the origin of the inspiration. In the last fifteen years of her live her style didn’t so much change as it amalgamated pantonal influences of which her late string quartets speak.

G.Bacewicz, String Quartet No.4, Szymanowski String Quartet Avie 2092 UK | DE | FR G.Bacewicz et al., Concerto for String Orchestra, Beethoven Academy Orchestra / Pawel Przytocki DUX RECORDS 0524 UK | DE | FR G.Bacewicz, Works for Violin & Piano, J.Kurkowicz, G.Chien Chandos 10250 UK | DE | FR G.Bacewicz & Enescu,Sonatas for Violin & Piano, L.Mordkovitch / I.Fountain Chandos 10476 UK | DE | FR

Krystian Zimerman is an ardent champion of Grażina Bacewicz’ music and at his recital at Shriver Hall, in April of 2006, he played her Sonata no. 2. The work, of which there used to exist a recording with Zimerman (onOlympia from1977, also containing Sonata No.4 for Violin & Piano, the Concerto for String Orchestra, and the Violin Concerto No.7), has its home in a black pool of deep sounds all the way on the left of the keyboard from where it jumps to life, repeatedly, into the higher register. Every one of its three movements ends contemplatively. Under Zimerman’s hands it was clear that this is a work close to his heart. The good news is that today, Zimerman will embark on a Bacewicz-tour through Łodz, Warsaw, Poznan, Krakow and Katowice where he will perform this sonata as well as the First and Second Piano Quintets–all to be recorded and then issued later in the year by Deutsche Grammophon.

Grażina Bacewicz died, not quite sixty, in 1969.


You can find a lovely and informative essay on the life and works of Grażina Bacewicz – very helpful in writing this appreciation – by Judith Rosen (originally part of Vol. 2 of the “Polish Music History Series”) online.

Recommended recordings are listed on the right: TheSzymanowski Quartet plays the Fourth String Quartet, a wonderful romantic work that is nicely placed between Haydn (op.54/2) and Dvořák (No.14 in A) on the Avie label. It’s the debut recording of the quartet on that label, and it’s very well played and well recorded. Acquiring it for either Haydn or Dvořák alone might not make sense, but I think of those quartets as setting the stage—beautifully, at that!—for the Bacewicz quartet. And as such, it might well be a first recommendation for anyone’s Bacewicz-exploration.

Her Washington-premiered Concerto for Strings can be had on a DUX release from 2006 where it shares space with her countrymen Wienawski (d-minor Violin Concerto) and Penderecki (Angus Dei, arr. for string orchestra). I also liked Chandos disc devoted to Bacewicz’ works for Violin and Piano. Joanna Kurkowicz (violin) and Gloria Chien’s take on the Fourth and Fifth Sonata, the rambunctious ditty “Oberek”, the earnest Partita, and the Capriccio (the earliest work on this disc, composed in 1946). The Polish Capriccio and the Sonata No.2 for Solo Violin (the latest, from 1958) are also included. I especially like the two Violin Sonatas and the Partita—the other works are under three minutes each, except for the 12-minute solo sonata which takes more than a couple listenings to reveal its beauty.

The Partita is also included on Chandos’ latest Bacewicz release, again with works for Violin and Piano. This time Lydia Mordkovitch and Ian Fountain play three Bacewicz works imaginatively coupled with Enescu’s Violin Sonata No.2. Bacewicz’ Sonata da camera (1945), effectively Violin Sonata No.1, is a charmer with a devil-may-care fast movement that hides its knottiness beneath the most pleasant of neoclassical veneers. Violin Sonata No.3 (1948), stormy, puckish, and contemplative in turns, could just as well have been written by Szymanowski. Perhaps an even better introduction than the all-Bacewicz disc.

Korngold Sr. & Jr. – Cliché, Critic and Composer

The music of Erich Wolfgang Korngold has enjoyed a little renaissance over the last decade or two. He is no longer the neglected, unknown master; the hidden Wunderkind of 20^th century classical music. The point is proven by the pleasant fact that his entire œvre is available on commercial recordings – from eighth different versions of the Violin Concerto (Heifetz, Perlman, Shaham (!), Mutter, to name only the most prominent accounts – Kavakos and Hahn offer it on DVD) to a proud rendition of “The Goose-liver at the Durschnitz-residency” (a song for baritone taken on by Dietrich Henschel).

“Korngold 101” is easily encapsulated in: Precocious teen and Wunderkind who composed too-beautiful music to be taken seriously at a time when modernism swept the cultural stage. Composer of highly successful film music in his years in Hollywood – and consequently snubbed by the “real classical music” ‘elite’.

That’s good enough for the start – but just how much more complicated, conflicted, twisted, and interesting Korngold’s story is can be experienced at an exhibition at the Jewish Museum in Vienna that will run through May 18^th.

The first point is made by the exhibition’s title: “The Korngolds”. This is not about Erich Wolfgang Korngold alone, but in almost equal measure about his father, Julius Leopold, too. (Little Erich was given his middle name in honor of Mozart – considering his father’s middle name and the path that Erich should take a touching bit of irony.)

In order to understand Erich Korngold’s situation as a composer in Vienna, it is essential to have a grasp of just how dominant a figure his father was. Chief music critic for the Neue Freie Presse as successor to Eduard Hanslick, he commanded not just the most important music criticism position in Vienna, he was the arbiter of what is good and bad: in essence he was the pope of musical taste. Not quite able to speak ex cathedra, perhaps, but his word carried weight. So much weight, indeed, that his word could make artistic life in Vienna impossible for all those who aroused his fervent ire. In that sense, Julius Korngold not only shaped the musical life of Vienna but also of Berlin – whereto all those fled that could not get a leg on the ground in hostile Vienna.

It is one of the most beautiful ironies in music criticism that there were never before nor ever thereafter classical music critics who prepared themselves more diligently for their reviews than Hanslick and Korngold, who were more knowledgeable about music, music theory, and the work they were going to review. Whenever possible, every new work played through – several times – on the piano and painstakingly analyzed before being reviewed. Yet, despite this profundity and seriousness in preparation and self-perception, not Hanslick or Korngold nor most of their erudite contemporaries were – amid much very perceptive criticism – able to overcome polemical and ideologically tainted attacks on what they thought “should not be”. Those of Hanslick’s judgments that now seem ill-considered (Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto, Wagner, etc.) are more famous than his ample insight. Korngold loved everything that was in any way related to Gustav Mahler and otherwise more or less hated everything that Hanslick would not have liked, either.

That it was to the main music critic of the most important city for classical music that a son was born who should turn out one of the greatest composing prodigies in music history is another cute twist of fate. Korngold Sr. didn’t trust his potential bias at first and sought the opinion of 40 leading critics everywhere but in Vienna to judge his 11-year old son’s ballet piano score to “The Snowman”. The response ranged from baffled enthusiasm to bewilderment. One critic in Budapest was so enthused that he went public with his ‘finding’ – and before long (against the will of Papa Korngold), the “Snowman” was given a big premiere in a gala performance honoring the Emperor’s name day (October 4^th, 1910).

The Korngold exhibit, based on a concept of Michael Haas (known to classical music aficionados who read the small print in liner notes as the producer of Decca’s “Entartete Musik” series), shows us the life of Korngold and his father from the earliest days until Korngold’s death in 1957, dividing it more or less into seven stages and eight rooms. The influence and power of Julius is illustrated with facsimiles of the Neue Freie Presse” (where Korngold had the lower third of the first three pages (!) to write about whatever he wanted to) and loud interjections of some of Korngold’s pointedly phrased, strong opinions via speaker that interrupt everything you might try to do. Even three rooms further you can still hear his cantankerous howling about atonal music. That you can’t escape his opinions and ideas – not in Vienna of the time, at any rate – is the deliberate, unsubtle, well-made point.

Korngold’s (greatest, at least biggest) opera “Das Wunder der Heliane” (Decca’s re-issue of which I recently reviewed) gets its own room – which might seem much to us, if we don’t know the work or how important it was at its time. It was given 45 performances between the two opera houses in Hamburg and Vienna. Posterity has obscured our view a little by the contemporary and greater success of Krenek’s “Jonny spielt auf”, but the two operas were pitched against each other as equals. The monopolist manufacturer Austrian Tabacco issued two cigarette brands: An unfiltered brand named “Jonny” – and nicely packaged, filtered and perfumed cigarettes called “Heliane”. (With the economics of smoking mimicking art, “Jonny” is still available, “Heliane”, not.)

Not the least to – temporarily – escape his unbearably overbearing father, Korngold ‘fled’ to Hollywood for one season where Max Reinhardt, his collaborator on many Strauss-Operetta projects, persuaded Korngold to work with him on Warner Brother’s “Midsummer Night’s Dream”. Once Hollywood had noticed Korngold, at his arrival easily the most talented musician to work in film, his future options looked bright when he had to leave Vienna not to escape his father’s influence (Julius joined Korngold and his wife, Luzi at the last possible moment), but Hitler. His career for film is well known and well documented in the exhibit. Sea Hawk, Captain Blood, Robin Hood are all there – as is Kings Row which was of course the break-through hit for the 40^th President of the United States.

A myriad of interesting information can be found in this lovingly presented exhibit as well as the thorough 200 page catalog that comes with a CD of important or personal excerpts of Korngold’s music and playing. Curious factoids emerge: Korngold’s Cello Concerto, for example, was premiered by the Hollywood String Quartet’s Eleanor Slatkin – while she was pregnant with Leonard Slatkin's little brother Fred (Zlotkin).

When Korngold died on November 29^th in 1957 the program of the memorial concert at Schoenberg Hall, University of California (one of several items lent by the Library of Congress’ Music Division) lists Louis Kaufman as the participating violinist. Kaufman played violin in many of Korngold's movies, but his claim to fame is having been the first violinist to record the Four Seasons.

The exhibition and catalogue are presented in German and English throughout and runs through May 18^th.

Picture Credits:

1.) Erich Wolfgang Korngold age 12

2.) Julius Korngold in Los Angeles 1942

3.) Korngold at the piano, approx. 1940

4.) Erich Wolfgang Korngold conducting, Hollywood 1944

All pictures © Korngold Family Estate

A small survey of Korngold recordings can be found here: The Sounds of Korngold.

A review of his opera "Das Wunder der Heliane" can be read here: Korngold and Sock Monkeys.

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