#ClassicalDiscoveries: The Podcast. Episode 001 - Jeanne d’Arc & Walter Braunfels

Welcome to #ClassicalDiscoveries. There is a little introduction to who we are and what we would like to achive at the first (or rather "double-zeroëth" episode). It still bears mentioning every time that your comments, criticism, and suggestions are most welcome, of whatever nature they may be. Now here’s Episode 001, where we’re talking about Walter Braunfels and his opera Jeanne d’Arc on the occasion of Capriccio having released the 2013 Salzburg performance which I reviewed for ionarts. (I also reviewed the fab Decca recording of this opera, here.) And now unto the thing itself, if you are intrigued:

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Dip Your Ears, No. 242 (Not Surprised by Beauty - Braunfels Piano Concerto)

Walter Braunfels Piano Concerto, Ariel’s Song, Scottish Fantasy Victor Sangiorgio (piano), Sarah-Jane Bradley (viola) BBC Concert Orchestra Johannes Wildner (conductor) (Dutton)

Walter Braunfels’s greatness is being further reestablished with this release, by adding his Piano Concerto (1911), a large quasi-Viola Concerto—the Scottish Rhapsody (1932)—to the catalog. It’s not surprising that the music is luscious and gorgeous; if anything it’s surprising that it took this long to be recorded. Nods to Wagner, whiffs of Richard Strauss, toying with Berlioz, Variations on “For He's a Jolly Good Fellow”, and lots of Braunfels are all present. Sarah-Jane Bradley has latched upon a wonderful, rare viola concerto and matches it with her playing; Victor Sangiorgio plays his piano part to the hilt. The BBC Concert Orchestra under Johannes Wildner delivers the goods, with these world premiere recordings of wrongfully neglected romantic 20th century music.

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Forbes Classical CD of the Week

#CDoftheWeek on @ForbesOpinion: https://t.co/nzawFlZA5Z @BR_Klassik #Braunfels magnificen… https://t.co/V9RB8L53jP pic.twitter.com/zb2LJ2jsrS

— Jens F. Laurson (@ClassicalCritic) May 4, 2016

Alongside Mieczysław Weinberg (Passenger and especially Idiot), Walter Braunfels is the greatest among least known opera composers. (Needless to say, he was given an overdue chapter in the new, second edition of Surprised by Beauty, Robert Reilly’s “Listener’s Guide to the Recovery of Modern Music” for which it was my privilege to contribute this particular chapter.) Recordings of Jeanne D’Arc and at last a new recording of The Annunciation show Braunfels at his best…

-> Classical CD of the Week: Revelation Of A Mystery Play

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CD Review: Braunfels Lieder

W. Braunfels, Lieder, M. Petersen, K. Jarnot, E. Schneider (released on February 12, 2016) Capriccio C5251 | 55'40"

Charles T. Downey, CD review: The forgotten bird songs of a ‘degenerate’ composer (Washington Post, April 24)

In the 1930s, Walter Braunfels (1882-1954) ran afoul of the Nazi party in his native Germany. His music was condemned as “degenerate” because his father was Jewish, even though the composer was raised a Protestant and later converted to Catholicism. After World War II, Braunfels returned to his teaching post at the Hochschule für Musik in Cologne, but the moment for his largely tonal style of music had come and gone. Since his opera “Die Vögel,” based on Aristophanes’s “The Birds,” was revived in the 1990s, his music has enjoyed a rebirth, helped by the advocacy of his grandson Stephan Braunfels, a prominent architect in Germany. Conductors James Conlon, of the Los Angeles Opera, and Manfred Honeck, of the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, are among his champions.

In addition to his operas, string quartets and symphonic music, there is now a recording of some of Braunfels’s songs, all composed before he was condemned by the Nazis, released earlier this year by Capriccio. No surprise to anyone who has already discovered the music of Braunfels, this disc, recorded for Deutschlandradio in 2011, is a winner. German soprano Marlis Petersen, who recorded one of the Braunfels songs on her outstanding disc of Goethe Lieder a few years ago, sparkles with irrepressible energy in the high-flying treble songs, but she’s also calm as a pool of silvered water in the charming “Die Nachtigall.” That song is part of the “Fragmente eines Federspiels,” or “Fragments of a Feather Play,” a set of eight songs devoted to different birds. Braunfels made a set of nine further bird songs, the “Neues Federspiel,” as a companion piece, also recorded by Petersen to the same beautiful effect.

Pianist Eric Schneider, last heard in Washington accompanying the soprano Christine Schäfer’s unforgettable “Winterreise,” is a versatile, sensitive and accomplished partner. English baritone Konrad Jarnot pales by comparison in the less exciting lower-voice songs; he’s at his best in the suave, subtle songs of Braunfels’s Op. 1 set. Next to Petersen’s exquisite native pronunciation, Jarnot’s German is still fine, with a chance to recite some English lines from Shakespeare (“If music be the food of love, play on”) in the introduction to “Was ihr wollt,” the Braunfels setting of the song texts from “Twelfth Night, or What You Will.” Unfortunately, while the Shakespeare lines receive a German translation, the booklet has only the German texts of the 40 other songs, without an English translation — the only negative about this excellent disc.

#morninglistening: Braunfels Annunciation - #SurprisedByBeauty

#morninglistening #Braunfels, The Annunciation. One of his great Operas, at last reissued.… http://t.co/pkViXyvEuU pic.twitter.com/C23Il8XVsh

— Jens F. Laurson (@ClassicalCritic) March 6, 2015

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Notes from the 2013 Salzburg Festival ( 5 ) Jeanne D'Arc • Walter Braunfels

Walter Braunfels • Jeanne D'Arc

The Would-Be Future of Opera at Stake

Jeanne d'Arc, signature

There is a special pleasure when an anticipated highlight turns into an experienced highlight. Walter Braunfels’ opera Jeanne D’Arc, Scenes from the Life of Saint Joan, one of the initial reasons not to miss this year’s Salzburg Festival (the other having been the hindsight-makes-you-smarter Gawain) was just such a pleasure. And indeed “pleasure” is the best-fitting description for the experience.

Happily a full Felsenreitschule greeted Jeanne D’Arc with the ORF Radio Symphony Orchestra under Manfred Honeck. Honeck is one of the few and necessary Braunfels-champions ever since he discovered this opera for a performance with the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra in Munich. He also went on to perform it with the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra in Stockholm which yielded a splendid recording that Decca eventually, grudgingly, generously released.

From this recording we know just how beautiful an opera Jeanne D’Arc is. There were doubts if the ORF RSO—not an orchestra that specializes in the lush and melodious, whereas opera and conductor do—would pull it off. While the performance was noticeably different from the recording, no such qualms turned out necessary. The orchestra, the Salzburg Bach Chorus, and especially the singers put on a show that made for a wholly, soundly gratifying night out at the theater. Even possible, perfectly understandable carping about the lack of

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Briefly Noted: Marlis Petersen Eternally Feminine

Das Ewig-Weibliche (Goethe-Lieder), M. Petersen, J. Springer (released on March 13, 2012) HMC 902904 | 58'52"

About the time that this disc was released in the United States, I listened to a live recital by the artists, soprano Marlis Petersen and pianist Jendrik Springer, from the Mozart-Saal of the Wiener Konzerthaus, through the Web site of Austrian radio (Österreichischer Rundfunk). Countless composers have set Goethe's words to song, and Petersen and Springer get top marks here for not selecting any of the expected choices, the songs that get performed all the time. This is true even for some of the most familiar poetry: Gretchen's spinning song is presented in the setting of Richard Wagner, and Mignon's Kennst du das Land in that of Alphons Diepenbrock (1862-1921). Six settings of the poem Wandrers Nachtlied II ("Ein Gleiches") -- which Goethe wrote on the wall of a Thuringian hunting-lodge near Ilmenau on a visit to the Kickelhahn -- punctuate the recital, and apart from the first, by Robert Schumann, none is particularly familiar.

Beyond those few obvious choices, the texts are hardly familiar either, words spoken by or about several Goethe characters: in addition to Gretchen and Mignon, Stella from the 1775 play Stella, Klärchen from Egmont, Suleika from Marianne von Millemer, Philine (also from Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre), and Helena in Faust. The composers represented include, besides the expected ones like Robert Schumann, Hugo Wolf, Franz Schubert, and Franz Liszt, names like Ernst Krenek, Walter Braunfels, Wilhelm Kempff, Hans Sommer, Charles Ives, Nicolay Medtner, and Manfred Trojahn. Petersen came onto many American listeners' radar when she served as a whirlwind replacement for Natalie Dessay as Ophélie in Hamlet at the Metropolitan Opera in 2010, but she deserves your attention on her own artistic merits. It is not a voice of infinite warmth and largesse, noteworthy more for its clarity and piercing qualities than being the sort of voice you just want to wrap yourself up in, paired here with the sensitive accompanying of Jendrik Springer.

A faultless sense of intonation and a certain adventurousness make her a natural fit for the challenging music of Manfred Trojahn, which Petersen has championed a number of times. His substantial monologue on the Helen of Troy texts from Faust, composed in 2008 and recorded here for the first time, is a fine contribution to this body of music. It makes a good pairing with the Stella monologue by Krenek that opens the disc, also receiving its first recording along with the Braunfels song Der Trommel gerühret and two of the Wandrers Nachtlied songs. Marlis Petersen will give a version of this recital at Carnegie Hall on October 26, an event unfortunately not being replicated by Vocal Arts D.C. At least not yet.

Listen What the Cat Dragged In: Walter Braunfels, Jeanne d'Arc

Walter Braunfels, Jeanne d'Arc - Szenen aus dem Leben der heiligen Johanna, M.Honeck / Swedish RSO / Banse Stensvold et al. Decca

Not yet available in the U.S. -- but hopefully soon: This is the first recording of Walter Braunfels' penultimate opera, "Szenen aus dem Leben der heiligen Johanna". The recording was made at the belated world premiere of the work in Stockholm in 2001. Manfred Honeck [read my interview with him about Braunfels here: "Braunfels Is an Obligation for Me"] conducted the Swedish RSO & Choir, the Eric Ericson Chamber Choir, and a cast that includes Juliane Banse as Johanna, Monika Mannerström as St. Catherine, Katarina Böhm-Altéus as St. Margaret, Terje Stensvold as Gilles de Rais (= Bluebeard, fyi), and Per-Arne Wahlgren as Chevalier de Baudricourt.

The fact that Decca took to publishing this recording is a heartening step in the right direction for the company; away from predictable schlock and classic-pop toward something worthy of a label that once called itself "The Opera Company".

Braunfels Is an Obligation for Me

Walter Braunfels at the Piano (click for full picture)

Walter Braunfels is a composer whose music died twice. Once when the Nazis declared his music “degenerate art”. And then again when post-war Germany—and the art-subsidizing powers that were—had little use for the various schools of tonal music; when the arbiters of taste considered any form of romantic music—almost the whole pre-war aesthetic—to be tainted.

Before the war, Braunfels was the second most performed opera composer in Germany behind Richard Strauss. During the war, Braunfels—a ‘half-Jew’ by the Nuremburg laws but a Protestant who converted to Catholicism—went into ‘inner exile’. His works were banned. After the war, performances of his music were few and far between, and even now there are just a handful of recordings of his music. So the re-premiere of his Great Mass in Stuttgart—the first performance since its actual premiere in 1927 under Hermann Abendroth—was a big Braunfels event. Even his octogenarian son attended, greatly moved to finally hear the vast work in concert, a work he remembered well from listening to the singers’ rehearsals at home while hiding beneath the grand piano.

Finally on April 18^th 2010, the Mass unfolded again in its humble, almost 100-minute glory when Manfred Honeck and his Stuttgart State Orchestra performed it at the Stuttgart Liederhalle—the crowning part of Honeck’s three-year focus on Braunfels during his time in Stuttgart. The Mass is in eight parts: an Offertorium is placed before the Sanctus and an Interludium before the Benedictus. Not only its dynamic and emotional scope, but its length too, is of Mahlerian proportions. Talking with Manfred Honeck right after the performance, we wondered why it had taken so long for the second performance of such an important work, especially considering that the work hadn’t been lost.

“Yes, it sat there, bid its time,” Honeck muses, “unrecognized for its greatness, underestimated, and perhaps a couple times someone got as far as the second page, saw what lineup it required, and quietly put it back. ‘We can’t sell that, it’s a whole evening’s worth of music, it would need a special occasion.’ And I suppose that special occasion never came up. Even anniversaries of his birth [his hundredth in 1982] or his death [50^th in 2004] weren’t considered, which is too bad. But if a work is good, its time will come. And the time has come. And it really was about time.”

Honeck became a Braunfels devotee when he was asked by the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra to conduct Braunsfels’ opera Scenes from the Life of St. Jean, composed during the war. “That was my first encounter with Braunfels and I was a little hesitant at first and asked for a score. But the deeper I went into the score, and the more I got to know this music, the more I was convinced. And I was even more moved when I heard his story, which touched me a lot.”

W.Braunfels, Te Deum, M.Honeck / Sjönberg, Jonsson / Swedish RSO Orfeo 679071 W.Braunfels, Te Deum et al., G.Wand / Rysanek, Melchert / Cologne RSO (WDRSO) Profil 6002 [mp3]

The BRSO performance had to be postponed, but with Braunfels now on his mind and the score studied, he performed “Scenes” with the Swedish Radio Orchestra, which played the world premiere. (The performance has since been issued by Decca.). “It was a great experience and I thought, ‘This is a great opera’. And while preparing that opera, I got to know more and more about Braunfels and I told the family that I wanted to get yet more—and they sent me scores. Small pieces, large pieces… and I was amazed by the Te Deum that was among those scores. It’s a great Te Deum; I love Bruckner’s Te Deum, and I saw Braunfels’ in that line. And in some ways it’s perhaps even a greater piece. And I was really amazed. So I performed it in Stockholm and we recorded it, because at the time there wasn’t a CD of it available. Since then the Profil-Hänssler label has found, cleaned up, and released an old recording of it with Günter Wand which I must say is wonderful, too. You feel the spirit in the interpretation. And not only do you have the Bruckner connection here, but Günter Wand was a student of Walter Braunfels in Cologne, too.”

(The 1952 sound of the Wand can’t hamper the emotional quality of the performance, but Honeck’s grasp and Orfeo’s crisp sound make it the obvious first choice; the Wand is the disciple’s pick.)

I must confess, it took me a while to grasp the Te Deum in either recording—the music should be straight forward, but the ears had to get used to it, anyway. (And while I’m in confession mode, I’ll add that the Bruckner Te Deum has so far failed to touch me in any performance, too.) By now I’ve listened to the Braunfels a couple dozen times, though, and the investment of time has paid great dividends. The Pittsburgh audience and chorus were apparently quicker on the uptake: When Honeck performed the first movement of the Te Deum with them, Honeck was amazed (a favorite word of his) with the reaction of the people to Braunfels’ music. “The choir, they fell in love with that movement. Of course, it’s a very romantic movement, it’s a Lohengrin-moment in music…” “But it is great” he hastens to add, as if the Lohengrin reference had cast that into doubt.

I don’t, in any case, hear a clear Lohengrin in the Te Deum until the third movement (about three minutes in), but instead I hear Braunfels’ own densely beautiful romantic music in that first movement, along with a few moments that could remind of other composers, notably a brief Orff resemblance toward the end of the massive 20-minute first movement.

Honeck gets carried away with enthusiasm, speaking about the Mass with even more superlatives in his speech than light editing has left in here: “There are a lot of composers who would all be in the repertoire today, if it hadn’t been for the Second World War and the very ideological aftermath: Braunfels, Fortner, Blacher, Hartmann—all of them. It’s too great a music, such fantastic music… I mean, in a way it’s a shame that after 80 years we are only now, finally, giving the second performance of this Great Mass. Sure, it asks for a children’s choir on top of the regular choir, and four soloists… but that isn’t in and of itself unusual for a mass. It’s got this big organ interlude, the big choir, and the orchestration! It’s fantastic. What a connection with Gustav Mahler’s music. For example, the part where the choir exclaims ‘Iudicare, iudicare’ (from the Credo: ‘Judge, judge… the living and the dead’), he uses the little drum in the exact same way Mahler does in the beginning of his Sixth Symphony. There is no Mass that uses so much percussion. Glockenspiel, tam-tam, big drum, small drum etc. And yet it’s never ostentatious and always obvious when he uses it why he uses it. It always goes with the words. And that’s his art. He takes the word first, and then he composes around it. And this inspiration for the instrumentation comes from the words. The word is first with Braunfels, always. You feel it all the time. Even in the Angus Dei: ‘dona nobis pacem’… To end a piece with a boys’ choir is really unbelievable. What is the reason to end a piece with the boys’ choir? The innocence of children, the idea of peace carried forward by children… ‘Give us peace’—children have peace, even if they are cruel, but they are innocent, you know? And just the idea is amazing. With Braunfels, it’s never about himself.”

Braunfels’ hand at drama and his careful consideration of the text betrays the opera composer, not only in the Te Deum, but also in the Great Mass. That Mass isn’t a liturgical work; in any case it wasn’t intended for a church service. But it also isn’t, minor similarities apart, like Verdi’s ‘secular’ Requiem either, because it speaks directly from a sincere spiritual urge. “The works addressed a need of my father,” Braunfels’ son said after the performance, suggesting it was far removed from being absolute music in the guise of a mass.

The music is of the kind of angular romanticism that we know from his colleagues K. A. Hartmann or Boris Blacher or Harald Genzmer (as opposed to the ‘double-cream school’ of 20^th century romantics à la Joseph Marx or Erich Korngold), and not always easy to digest. The Credo is dark and almost threatening as it begins over a low pedal point before some hope from the trumpet is shone upon it. A trombone solo follows, then the children’s choir enters. The rest of the singers join in, making it sound almost like an operatic slave-worker chorus -- until this longest of sections (25 minutes) builds up to a stunning climax on “et vitam venture saeculi.” The following Offertium offers the necessary respite and tenderness to recover. The Interludium for organ, brass, and strings leads into the longest instrumental section ahead of the Benedictus and could be sold as Zemlinsky. When the Agnus Dei finishes on “dona nobis pace”—give us peace!—it is the boys choir, after a perilous upward soprano leap (Hello Verdi!), that has the last word. The Mass ends most touchingly with “pacem” on their lips and dying away.

It would be childish to suggest that the performance, which was recorded to be broadcast and presumably published on CD, couldn’t be bettered. The soloists, for one, did not all excel. Roughly in declining order of excellence, we had dry precision and articulate accuracy, if not exactly excessive beauty, from soprano Simone Schneider; seasoned expressive ability amid occasional ambiguity from mezzo Gerhild Romberger; lots of (audible) effort and some beautiful moments from tenor Matthias Klink; and uncoordinated, indistinct wobbles from bass Attila Jun. The orchestra could probably have used a few more days in rehearsal, too, but their performance was spirited and committed enough to ensure that the work got the fastidious, warm performance it deserved.

A Performance that is important to Honeck, who has made Braunfels his personal cause. When we talked about how he wants to carefully, gently introduce Braunfels in Pittsburgh, he explains: “I want to help Braunfels wherever it is possible. And of course people might say I’m a Braunfels specialist, but other conductors are performing him also, and I hope that even more will take up performing his music.”

Moved by Braunfels’ vita as much as by his music, he adds: “It’s a shame that those artists who were banned by the Nazis have remained in obscurity. Just imagine how these artist must have felt, or Braunfels, how he must have felt when he had hoped to be performed after 1945, to continue his success, only to find out that his music was no longer wanted. And with 1945 over, it was—still, after those years of inner emigration—a disaster for him. What a story. Because the music is so good, I’d do it anyway, even without the story. But in the combination of his personal history and the quality of his work, it’s really an obligation for me.”

See also:

Best Recordings of 2010 - "Almost List" (14.1.11)
Listen What the Cat Dragged In: Walter Braunfels, Jeanne d'Arc (17.11.10)
Summer Opera: Braunfels and Grétry (11.6.05)