Paul von Klenau (1883-1946)
Violin Concerto (1941)
Piano Concerto (1944)
Symphony No.8 In Olden Style (1942)
Ziyu He (violin)
Søren Rastogi (piano)
Singapore Symphony Orchestra/Hans Graf
rec. 2021/22, Esplanade Concert Hall, Singapore
Dacapo 8.224744 [78]
Dacapo continues its allegiance to the music of the Dane, Paul von Klenau. Previous releases have included discs devoted to the string quartets, a Rilke setting and Symphonies 1 and 5 (review review), 7 (review) and 9 (review). Now it’s the turn of the Eighth and two concertos, the product of a three-year period of worsening health and withdrawal. The three works were never performed in his lifetime and were found amongst his papers in the Royal Danish Library.
For a largely impressionistic composer, von Klenau was obsessed by twelve-tone procedure – his so-called ‘key-determined twelve-tone system’, whatever that is, or was. Scrupulously demarcating his works into twelve-tone or non-twelve-tone will seem bizarre to us, as he marked
the 1941 Violin Concerto ‘twelve-tone’ – and this is a work that opens in an idyllic Delian landscape and maintains a rich, verdant lyricism for much of its length. The exchanges between the decisive solo violin and the orchestral support are atmospheric; wind writing is rich and plays against the violin, which spins a seductive (yet none-too memorable) line. A cadenza in the first movement lasts from 7:15 to 11:30 and well, one doesn’t want to be too headmasterly about this, but it feels unearned, arriving so early, and goes on for an absurd amount of time advancing, or reflecting on, the musical argument unconvincingly. The slow movement is graceful, inward and pertly lyric by turns and von Klenau is good with a rising scale. He’s also good at high spirits where the plangent chordal soloing contrasts with the big band orchestration; there is a certain boldness of conception about all this. Another cadenza – shorter this time at two-and-a-half minutes – is more apposite. I think it’s best to ignore von Klenau’s own conception of this work and simply to enjoy it for what it is – an avian, sometimes naïve, not altogether successfully structured work that could have, after initial performances (of which, of course, there were none), been trimmed for its improvement.
The Piano Concerto is a far less ingratiating work and is almost antagonistically opposed to development. Classical in feel, the piano enters quickly and decisively at around the 30-second mark, but the choppy writing is pulsating yet undynamic. In his fine notes Steen Chr. Steensen uses the word ‘bombastic’ and that will certainly do. The slow movement is earnest but inclined to be gauche – the wind writing especially – though the finale finally unleashes itself, light-hearted, before a heavy-handed, doughty feel reappears; it feels bogus. This is a much less attractive work than the lyrical violin concerto but perhaps it had to be written thus.
None of which quite prepares one for the Eighth Symphony ‘In olden style’ of 1942, a thirteen-minute work of heroic, almost Langgaard-like nostalgia for the past. Its classicism sounds like a retreat from the contemporary world, the grazioso lyricism of the four-minute slow movement and the French Menuet (all over in two minutes) and the Rondo finale – very charming – seemingly standing as a final musical statement – or reckoning, perhaps. He was to die two years later. It doesn’t really function in an analogous way to Prokofiev’s Classical Symphony. It operates in a world of its own, a liminal space between the past and the present.
Danacord has selected the Singapore Symphony for this project with two admirable and hard-working soloists, both excellent and accomplished. Hans Graf, the orchestra’s chief conductor, directs and it’s hard to tell – these are, of course, all premiere recordings – whether he is projecting von Klenau’s orchestral writing in the Piano Concerto accurately, as there is no performance tradition on which to call. I suspect he is doing so only too faithfully.
The recording quality in Singapore is up to the label’s high standard. This is a wildly disconcerting disc. I liked the Violin Concerto (despite its weaknesses), hated the Piano Concerto, and was amused but ultimately indifferent to the Symphony.
Jonathan Woolf
Help us financially by purchasing from
