Walter Kaufmann (1907-1984)
Piano Concerto No 3 (1950)
Symphony No 3 (1936)
An Indian Symphony (1943)
Six Indian Miniatures (1965)
Elisaveta Blumina (piano)
Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra/David Robert Coleman
rec. 2023, RBB, Haus des Rundfunk Kultur, Berlin
Orchestral Works Volume 1
cpo 555 631-2 [70]
Walter Kaufmann was born in Karlsbad, as it then was, in 1907 and died in Indiana in America in 1984. In between, he studied with Schreker, moved to Berlin as conducting assistant to Bruno Walter, performed as a pianist on Prague Radio between 1932-34, achieving a measure of success, and then, with the writing on the wall, left for India.
Here he must have met John Foulds though details are sketchy. What’s not sketchy is his work in the emerging Indian film industry though after the war he moved once again, this time to Halifax and to Winnipeg where he became music director of the city’s orchestra. In time he moved one last time, to the United States. This kind of peripatetic life is exhausting to read about but fortunately the programming makes things relatively clear for the listener by selecting works from three of the various phases of his life.
A selection of his chamber music has been released in Chandos’ ‘Music in Exile’ series (review).
The earliest work in CPO’s disc is the tightly-constructed three-movement Symphony No.3, composed when he was living in India, which has a spirited quality, classically-conceived but already cross-pollinated with decidedly local colour. The soft-grained flute interlude in the B section of the first movement is attractive and so, too, is the almost-defiant rhythmic vitality at the close of the movement. The hazy, languid landscape of the central movement encodes some engagingly odd, off-beat accents and Indian-styled motifs that are already filmic in effect and in intensity. The finale is a fresh, outdoorsy dancing affair, laced with – if I can put it thus – a Western Fiddle meets Indian vibe. Energetic and ably constructed, the Symphony shows Kaufmann trying to meld his Schreker-based training with the music of his temporarily adopted new homeland.
An Indian Symphony was also written when he was working for All-India Radio – for which he wrote the broadcaster’s signature tune which, I didn’t realise, was many years later ‘sampled’ by Carla Bley in Escalator over the Hill. Once again, this is a fascinating example of musical melding. It’s rather more overtly geographical and pictorial than the slightly more abstract Symphony No.3 but also shows a control of orchestral colour and sonority. The slow central movement is thinned down and exudes a lonesome quality over the hazy landscape. Elements of raga can be felt in the finale, catchy and driving, with brass and percussion to the fore; it also seems to evoke a hoe-down, a strange but fruitful series of influences. It may be that to Kaufmann, of course, a hoe-down was not his intention and that one is reading things into his musical vocabulary.
After moving to Canada, he wrote his Piano Concerto No.3 (1950) once again in his favoured three-movement form. This is a bright, neo-classical work with a certain Martinů-like confidence, extrovert with boldly conceived themes and a bravura sense of colour. It’s an excellent vehicle for an intrepid soloist, such as Elisaveta Blumina, who plays her own first movement cadenza, and who is just as attentive to the gloomier, withdrawn, ruminative qualities of the central movement. The piano chimes sparely, the music deepening and darkening incrementally, the movement ending in a funereal tread. The finale reverts to high spirits with a charming, light songfulness.
Throughout, the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra perform splendidly and – crucially – colourfully under the British-born and long-term German resident conductor (and composer), David Robert Coleman. The disc offers a splendid opportunity to get to grips with Kaufmann’s orchestral music.
Jonathan Woolf
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