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Continental Britons: The Émigré Composers and Trails of Creativity , Vienna – Berlin – London , 1918–1938: Music from between the Wars
Reviewed by Michael Eagleton
posted 13 Nov 2005

Continental Britons: The Émigré Composers
Nimbus NI 5730/1 (2 CDs)
Ensemble Modern
CD1
Wellesz Octet, Op. 67; Geistliches Lied, Op. 23, for medium voice, violin, viola and piano; Kirschblütenlieder, Op. 8, for voice and piano
Spinner Zwei Kleine Stücke for violin and piano
Goldschmidt Fantasy for oboe, cello and harp
Gellhorn Intermezzo for violin and piano
Tauský Coventry: A Meditation for string quartet
CD2
Gál Sonata in B flat major, Op. 17, for violin and piano; Fünf Melodien, Op. 33, for medium voice and piano
Goldschmidt The Old Ships for voice and piano
Seiber Sonata for violin and piano, Op. 17
Reizenstein Quintet for flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon and horn
Rankl War, Op. 10: No. 4, 'They', and No. 7, 'Böhmisches Rekruntenlied'; Sieben Lieder für Baritone, Op. 6, No. 6, 'The Whim'
To purchase this double CD for the special introductory price of £18.99 (plus postage and packing), please e-mail continentalbrits[at]jmi.org.uk.

Trails of Creativity , Vienna – Berlin – London , 1918–1938: Music from between the Wars
David Frühwirth (violin), Henri Sigfridsson (piano)
Avie Records AV0009 (2CDs)
CD1
Gál Sonata for Violin and Piano in D
Rathaus Suite, Op. 27
Rosse arr. Sammons Suite: The Merchant of Venice
Korngold Suite: Much Ado about Nothing , Op.11
CD2
Walton Toccata for Violin and Piano
Busch Suite for Violin and Piano in G minor. Op. 38
Wellesz Suite for Violin and Piano, Op. 56
Weill arr. Frenkel Seven Pieces from The Threepenny Opera
Gurney The Apple Orchard; Scherzo

Two fascinating double-CD albums which have been passed to me for comment have given me much pleasure. The first album, on the Nimbus label, is entitled Continental Britons: The Émigré Composers and was recorded at the IFSM concerts at the Wigmore Hall in June 2002, when the Ensemble Modern from Frankfurt and a group of soloists gave a varied programme of music from composers who had made their home here in refuge from Nazi Germany. The other, from Avie, is entitled Trails of Creativity and is a collection of music for violin and piano from between the wars, from such disparate sources as Ivor Gurney and Kurt Weill. The players are David Frühwirth and Henri Sigfridsson.

Two composers appear on both – Hans Gál and Egon Wellesz – though there is no duplication of works, and these two composers provide the most substantial offerings in both sets. The Ensemble Modern open with Wellesz’s 1948 Octet, written in response to a request from the Vienna Octet for a piece to accompany the Schubert Octet. It is surely not too fanciful to hear echoes of the composer’s Vienna days in the introductory Andante, reminiscent of the opening of the Schoenberg First Chamber Symphony, and the beautiful string writing in the second Adagio movement showing that in a few years after making Oxford his home Wellesz knew his Vaughan Williams! The overall shape of the piece is that of a divertimento in five characterful movements, alternating fast and slow, with none of the eight players losing out on a chance to shine as you will hear from this infectious performance. It is a worthy companion piece to its illustrious namesake, but how often, I wonder, have they appeared together since that 1949 Salzburg Festival?

Next in the Nimbus box comes vocal music from the cauldron of post fin-de-siècle Vienna , when Wellesz was in his twenties, sung by the baritone Christian Immler. The Op. 23 Geistliches Lied of 1919 is an extended setting of a text by the French poet Francis Jammes from his Prayers of Humility (German translation by Ernst Stadler), in which the world-weary poet questions even his faith, but is reconciled in the final bars. The accompaniment is for violin, and viola as well as piano, and has a feeling of restraint.

Then, from even earlier, 1911, come the Op. 8 Cherry Blossom Songs. These simple, brief verses are translations from Chinese by Hans Bethge, who came to prominence when Gustav Mahler set texts from an earlier collection of Chinese poetry, Die chinesische Flöte in Das Lied von der Erde. When published as a collection in 1922, Bethge dedicated Cherry Blossom to Mahler.

In the Avie box, Frühwirth and Sigfridsson play Wellesz’ Suite for Violin and Piano Op. 56, which was given its first performance in Vienna in January 1938, only weeks before the composer left Austria for good. In January 1939 he was teaching at Lincoln College , Oxford . There is a stark intensity in the writing in this piece, which the players here are more than equal to. Tough, but rewarding.

Hans Gál, like Wellesz from Vienna though five years younger, also arrived in England in 1938, and eventually settled in Edinburgh with a university teaching post. His two Violin Sonatas are here, both substantial works, though quite different in character. The first, dating from 1920, on the Nimbus set, is a grand affair, Brahmsian in its scale and range of contrast, but very much of its time, as the chromaticism in the opening piano chords immediately demonstrates. Here the violinist occasionally seems tentative, not quite the match of the gutsy pianist. But in the second sonata, from 1933, Frühwirth and Sigfridsson on the Avie disc give a lovely performance of a lyrical work which has a beguiling simplicity, even though it was written during a family holiday in the Black Forest during which the Gáls contemplated their future following his dismissal in March of that year from the Mainz Conservatory.

For Nimbus, Christian Immler sings five songs which Gál wrote between 1917 and 1921, though they were not published until 1929. While in his twenties Gál composed something approaching a hundred songs but all were discarded save this group of five, settings of Hoffmannswaldau, Morgenstern, and two Chinese poems again in translations by Hans Bethge.

Any regular listener to the BBC, certainly in the 1960s and ’70s, would surely be familiar with the words ‘…chorus master Peter Gellhorn’ or ‘…conducted by Vilém Tauský’, both of whom died only last year. The Nimbus box includes an Intermezzo for violin and piano which Gellhorn wrote soon after arriving in London in 1935, to play with his duet partner, the violinist Maria Lidka. It is a short, lyrical piece with a spiky middle section, charming but of little consequence. In contrast, it is followed by a work for string quartet by Vilém Tauský, Coventry: A Meditation, a nine-minute elegy written in response to his experiences and memories when called upon to assist in the aftermath of the bombing of Coventry in November 1940. Through the anguish can be discerned the Wenceslas chorale, reminding us of the part played in the war by the Free Czech Forces with which Tauský served. This piece is, surely, one of the gems of this CD set.

Erich Wolfgang Korngold’s Much Ado about Nothing, Op. 11, has an interesting history. It was written during the latter half of 1919, when Korngold was enjoying huge success in Vienna . As he reached the ripe old age of 22, he conducted his two one-act operas, Violanta and Der Ring des Polykrates, which were already a couple of years old and had received nearly a dozen productions in Germany, at a gala performance at the Staatsoper (another ‘trail’ could be the perceptive review which Egon Wellesz wrote in Neuen Tag of 2 June), and Die tote Stadt was in the last stages of orchestration. Much Ado was written for a production of Shakespeare’s play which opened at Schönbrunn in May 1920, though three of its movements had already been given in an all-Korngold concert conducted by the composer in January of that year (and had to be encored). The music was scored for a chamber orchestra – and it was with members of the Vienna Philharmonic that the production opened. So popular was the production – with the music playing no small part in its success – that it was still running in October and had to transfer to the Burgtheater. To release the players for their ‘proper’ duties, Korngold made the arrangement for violin and piano which was used for most of the run, and has remained popular with many fiddlers ever since (though it seems that the Vienna Philharmonic’s principal horn would often join the two players at the Burgtheater when time allowed, to join in the Hornpipe).

To see the names of Karl Rankl and Berthold Goldschmidt together is to be reminded of the Festival of Britain opera competition saga. Rankl, of course, was Musical Director at Covent Garden between 1947 and 1951, but, arriving in England in 1939, and on release from internment, he spent most of the war years in Oxford, writing a good deal of music, mostly for voice and piano, mixing English and German texts almost at will. This industry is represented on the Nimbus set by three songs, two taken from the cycle War, Op. 10, and one from Seven Songs Op. 6. It is interesting to compare the setting of the German Böhmisches Rekrutenlied, with its march-rhythms, with the much more subtle Siegfried Sassoon They and Thomas Flatman’s The Whim. His response to the English language makes the establishment’s failure over Deirdre of the Sorrows that bit more reprehensible.

At least Bertold Goldschmidt, although forty years later, was able to see his opera Beatrice Cenci on the stage – in Magdeburg rather than, say, the Coliseum. But the lack of interest in his work led to him abandoning composition for more than twenty years. Two works are included on the Nimbus set, one written immediately before, and one after, this silent period. From 1952 comes a setting of James Elroy Flecker’s The Old Ships, which a few years later was orchestrated and joined by Shelley, Byron, Durrell, Bernard Spencer and James Stephens to form the Mediterranean Songs. The opening phrase,’I have seen old ships…’ seems to be typical of the best of English song, and with each repetition it draws the listener into a very personal response to Flecker’s vision of ships heading for ancient Troy . Another gem.

The other Goldschmidt piece is the Fantasy for oboe, cello and harp of 1991, written to a commission from the Jewish Museum in Rendsburg. It is in one movement, as with all his late chamber works (and as with much British chamber music written under the same title following the Cobbett competition), opening with a questioning oboe theme. The textures are transparent, but there is a restless unease throughout, and a particularly eerie brief central slow section. At the end, the oboe motive returns, to be dismissed by a final harp glissando.

Leopold Spinner is probably the least-known name on either of these sets. Born in 1906 in what is now Lwów , Poland , he studied in Vienna from 1926 to 1930, and then though already achieving success, opted for a further period of study with Anton Webern. He spent the war years as a machinist in Bradford , resuming a musical career with Boosey & Hawkes in 1958. The Nimbus box contains Two Short Pieces for violin and piano from 1934, and though written according to the twelve-note method they have an expressive quality more akin to Alban Berg than the more radical serialism which his later work displays.

Franz Reizenstein, born in Nürnberg in 1911, was one of the younger émigrés, and one of the first to arrive, settling in London in 1934. He was from a different musical background, too, having studied with Paul Hindemith, and went yet further by undertaking another period of study, with Vaughan Williams. But the Wind Quintet in four brief movements which the Ensemble Modern contributes to the Nimbus set dates from 1934, and was performed and published quite quickly. Not surprisingly, Hindemith is in the background, but there is a sense of fun here, too, and this is still a worthy achievement for one so young and in a foreign land.

The remaining piece on the Nimbus set is the Violin Sonata by Mátyás Seiber, written for the 1960 Cheltenham Festival. Hungarian by birth, Seiber was also an early arrival, emigrating via Russia to England in 1935. He was an accomplished musician in just about every field, and one of the most successful, until his death in a car accident in September of that year. The Sonata played here is at the serious end of his wide vocabulary, with three movements winding down from an unruly passion to a contemplative serenity.

The Avie box contains another Suite for violin and piano, the Op. 27 by Karol Rathaus. Originally from Poland , Rathaus was a Schreker pupil, like Goldschmidt, in both Vienna and Berlin , and left Germany as early as 1932, first for Paris , then London . Then, as others were arriving in England he left for New York . His major success was the opera Fremde Erde, premiered in Berlin under Erich Kleiber in 1930, but its revival in Bielefeld in 1992 went all but unnoticed. It was the recording of the First Symphony in 1996 (the first performance since the 1926 première) in the Decca ‘ Entartete Musik’ series which prompted a renewed interest in his work. The Suite dates from 1929, originally for violin and chamber orchestra, and was played by, and dedicated to, the violinist Stefan Frenkel, a fellow student at the Berlin Hochschule whose teacher was Carl Flesch. Frenkel also had to leave Germany , and was appointed concertmaster at the Metropolitan Opera. This is powerful music, with a severity relaxed only slightly in the third movement entitled Capriccio – actually a polonaise. At the very end, both instruments gallop to a conclusion which is suddenly dissipated in an odd chord.

A ‘trail’ leads from Rathaus to Kurt Weill, for it was Stefan Frenkel who arranged seven pieces from Die Dreigroschenoper for violin and piano. He regularly performed the Weill Concerto for Violin and Wind Instruments and had been promised a second Concerto, which did not, however materialise (some sketches found their way into Der neue Orpheus). Weill was never keen to endorse the many arrangements which appeared of this huge success, but fully approved Frenkel’s, commending them to UE for publication. Although obviously not able to match the astringency of Weill’s original orchestration, this arrangement, especially as played by Früwirth and Sigfrisson has its own smoky Berlin-cabaret atmosphere.

Three items in the Avie box have not yet been mentioned. Albert Sammons’ arrangement of Frederick Rosse’s incidental music for The Merchant of Venice provides light relief from what has gone before; this is salon music, and reminds me of the music to be heard in Lyons Corner Houses when I was (very) much younger – but none the worse for that. Two short but charming pieces by Ivor Gurney are also included – Gurney, of course, also a victim of war, never recovering from having been gassed on the western front. Then there is William Walton, with theToccata for violin and piano of 1922–23, which was withdrawn from publication and performance during his lifetime, and has just been reissued by OUP.

As I said at the beginning, these four CDs have give me much pleasure. Only a few of the items contained therein I knew; there were more that I knew of, but had not heard, and yet more that I had not heard of. I have not gone into detail as regards the actual performances, but rest assured that they are all idiomatically played, and most a good deal more than that. The sound in both sets is open and honest, and there are good notes, especially in the Nimbus set, though they do not always make it clear as to who plays which item.

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