|
Boston Chamber Music Society Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco (1895-1968) “I happened to be the ‘pioneer,’” wrote Castelnuovo-Tedesco. “My music was suddenly banished from the Italian radio and some performances of my works were cancelled. A public performance scheduled by Italian radio in Turin, in January 1938 was suddenly cancelled by a mysterious telephone order from Rome, and that happened six months before the anti-Semitic laws were issued.” A year later he and his family left for the United States to flee persecution on the European continent, stopping first in New York before settling in California. He found work in the movie industry with some of the foremost studios and gained citizenship in 1946. Amongst his students were young composers on their way to becoming household names: André Previn, Henry Mancini and John Williams to name a few. Castelnuovo-Tedesco is remembered often for his guitar compositions. In a disappointment to the composer, many of his film score works were un-credited. Like his elder countryman Ottorino Respighi (1879-1936), he took a great interest in Italian folk music of the 16th and 17th centuries. In the Piano Trio in G minor there are touches of Classical and Impressionist sounds. Together with his own compositional language free of any “isms,” the effect is a sound that is at once familiar and yet somewhat unexpected.
Hanns Eisler (1898-1962) Eisler is one of the most intriguing characters in the world of “classical” music, though he is hardly ever mentioned. He was not without controversy, which has likely contributed to the silence with which he is most often greeted in conversations about 20th century composers. In short, he was the political antagonist of his contemporary, Shostakovich. With little funds but much ambition, he became a student (at no cost) of Schoenberg from 1919 to 1923. Through the encouragement and support of his teacher he was able to secure publication and performances. The relationship would become bitter, however, with Schoenberg considering him “disloyal” and a traitor to music after Eisler embraced Marxism and became a member of the German Communist Party. As a result of his politics, his views on the avant garde music of his peers—and even his own previous works—changed drastically. Those ideals clearly clashed with his new beliefs regarding the arts. In 1937 he wrote, “‘in our new music’, one would search in vain for ‘bombast, sentimentality and mysticism’ but find instead ‘freshness, intelligence, strength and elegance.’” Music should not stir the emotions, but rather be functional, applicable, “used for the theatre, cinema, cabaret, television, public events etc.” David Blake notes Eisler’s scores “abound with such cautionary directives as ‘without sentimentality’, ‘simply’, ‘friendly’ and even ‘politely’. Eisler left Germany after his music was banned in 1933 and traveled Europe before coming to New York City to teach composition. The Mexico Conservatory gave Eisler a grant to study the “function of film music.” Through his work there he wrote the book Composing for the Films with Theodor Adorno. Returning to the United States, Eisler found work at the University of Southern California and contributed to film scores. It all came to a screeching halt when his politics landed him a meeting with The House Committee on Un-American Activities and he was subsequently “expelled.” In many ways, it was likely the best outcome for Eisler. His return after years abroad to a new Deutsche Demokratische Republik – East Germany, allowed him to practice what he had been preaching for years. The songs that comprise the so-called Hollywood Songbook are striking in their simplicity, transparency, and beauty. Given his ideals, one might presume his works would be stark and cold. That they are not gives us a unique opportunity to experience our emotional reactions to music composed from a very different philosophical point of view.
Ernst Toch (1887-1964) Artists represent through their works a reflection of the world and culture by which they are surrounded. The increasingly shrinking world ablaze with war became increasingly chaotic and seemingly absurd. Music often mirrored this. Toch began his musical life composing works “audibly indebted to Brahms.” After the horror of fighting in World War I, he underwent a creative transformation that “earned Toch a prominent place in the musical avant garde.” Any respite was rudely interrupted by Hitler’s rise to power, necessitating Toch's departure from Germany. He and his wife lived in Paris, then London, on to New York and finally California. Toch initially hoped working in the film industry might allow him to use it as a platform from which to disseminate avant garde music to the masses. Hollywood, of course, had very different ideas and needs. Sadly the war pinned Toch in an unfulfilled no man’s land creatively. Anja Oechsler notes, “He was too modern for the American public, but he had become too old-fashioned in European terms to be able to build from a position of exile on the great successes of the pre-war years.” Toch did find success, though it may not have been the same success of which he dreamed. At the end of his career (in addition to wonderful concert works and a position at the University of Southern California) he had composed 16 film scores and was nominated for three Academy Awards. The Sonata for Violin and Piano, Op. 44 was penned in 1928, during a “highly successful decade” for the composer. It opens with angular and sardonic yet playful lines that move against each other tightly in a “defiant stampede,” broadening slightly in the more traditionally lyrical second movement: a graceful dance-like interlude. A rollicking finale titled “Allegro guisto” or “just happy” concludes the piece on an avant garde upswing.
Louis Gruenberg (1884-1964) The early years of Gruenberg’s life were spent ping-ponging from Russia to New York, to Berlin to New York and back to Berlin. In Germany he became a student of the great Italian pianist Ferruccio Busoni. His successes abroad were cut short by the arrival of World War I, and Gruenberg found himself back in New York City focused more on composing than on developing a career as a pianist. In 1923 he led the United States première of Arnold Schoenberg’s seminal Pierrot Lunaire. Though his interests included exposing the American concert-going public to the newest sounds and techniques coming from Europe, compositionally Gruenberg was developing his “American idiom,” a sound he cultivated by steeping his works in the traditions of jazz and spirituals. The pinnacle of this period of his work was an opera, The Emperor Jones, a great success at the Metropolitan Opera in 1931.Gruenberg moved on to Chicago to head The Chicago Musical College, part of Roosevelt University, for three years between 1933 and 1936. He became involved in composing music for films, earning three Academy Award nominations along the way. We are accustomed to having music at our fingertips through a variety of mediums and means. There are still, however, pieces by many composers that remain elusive, rarely performed and unrecorded. One of those works is Gruenberg’s Four Indiscretions for String Quartet. Written in 1924, the piece is dedicated to the Pro Arte Quartet of Brussels. This is a truly special opportunity to hear a piece you likely have never heard before. Erich Wolfgang Korngold (1897-1957) Korngold, though sidelined in popularity after his death, was tremendously popular and was hailed as a prodigy by many of the greatest minds in Western music: Mahler, Strauss, Sibelius and Puccini amongst them. He was successful composing both “absolute music” (or “concert music”) and film scores. Korngold left Austria for California in the 1930s, where he contributed to a number of movies including The Adventures of Robin Hood starring Errol Flynn; it earned him an Academy Award. Richard Strauss’ songs about parting, Vier letzte Lieder (“Four Last Songs”), may be more widely known, but Korngold’s entrancing, beautiful and melancholic Abschiedslieder (“Songs of Farewell”) preceded the former by twenty-some years. The Abschiedslieder is based on the poetry of Christina Rossetti (“Sterbelied/Requiem”), Edith Ronsperger (“Dies eine kann mein Sehnen nimmer fassen/The one thing my desire can never grasp”) and Ernst Lothar, from whom Korngold commissioned the poems that comprise the penultimate and final movements of the set: “Mond, so gehst du wieder auf” (“Moon, you rise again”) and “Gefasster Abschied” (“Serene farewell”).
The lilting rhythm of the piano is occasionally rocked by a more violently emotional swell, punctuating the unsteady appeal for peace amidst anguish. It is heard again as the theme for the second movement of his Piano Quintet, Op. 15. Bookending the work is an opening movement that blossoms with lush full sounds coaxed from the five instruments—golden and ripe—and a Finale with an startlingly ominous opening which unexpectedly routes itself onto a more whimsical path. © Kathryn J Allwine Bacasmot | |||||||||||||||||||