Silenced: Unsung Voices of the 20th Century
Ian Koziara (tenor), Bradley Moore (piano)
rec. 2023, Mary Patricia Gannon Concert Hall, DePaul University, Chicago, USA
Notes, texts and translations included
Cedille CDR90000231 [68]
Back in 2019, my colleague Gary Higginson reviewed Silenced, Cedille’s album of string trios composed by six composers, five of whom perished in the War. ‘Silenced: unsung voices of the 20th century’, their latest album, is different. It’s a song disc, with music by four composers of whom one, Vitězslava Kaprálová, died wretchedly young, and another, Victor Ullmann, was a war victim, dying in 1944. As for Schreker and Zemlinsky, the former began to suffer the brunt of antisemitism in September 1933 and died the following year at the early age of not quite 56, whilst Zemlinsky escaped to America in 1938. ‘Silenced’, then, is quite a loose descriptor, not least for Kaprálová, who was not given much time to be silenced, but it serves as a general overview of song from Austria, Germany and Czechoslovakia in the first half of the twentieth-century.
Schreker’s Five Songs, Op.4, from which tenor Ian Koziara and pianist Bradley Moore perform the first three, offer concise fin de siècle ardour from a young man of about 21. The first two are compressed in size, the third rather more expansive. The piano writing is deft in all three, the melody lines mellifluous and warmly sympathetic. These three songs, lasting seven minutes, are all we hear from Schreker. Zemlinsky offers a rather more imposing presence and is represented here by his Four Songs, Op. 8, though the track listing has this set as Fünf Gesänge. This set was composed for a leading baritone of the time – Koziara is a tenor – and cast on quite a grand scale with a rich array of late romanticism in both the sometimes-florid piano writing and in the rich vocal line. Whether reflective and gentle or employing a military march or reflecting a compelling narrative of a dying soldier, these are robust settings in the authentic Lied lineage – and the piano postludes add to their stature even if they are not as harmonically sophisticated as some of his other songs of the time. They date from the same period as Schreker’s more concise settings.
Vitězslava Kaprálová’s talent at 17 was, as the song goes, bustin’ out all over. She was excellently trained, had a perceptive ear, and was a fine pianist. Her Two Songs of 1932 offer contrasting sides of her; the first richly evocative with dappled piano writing and the second full of refined teenage melancholy but framed in a more extrovert way. Her four-song cycle Jablko s klína followed three years later – compact, stylish with some refined piano sonorities and subtle lyric lines. I tend to favour the recording of Dana Burešová and Timothy Cheek in their all- Kaprálová disc on Supraphon in these songs. Navzdy, Op. 12 consists of three songs from 1936-37 and again there is much colouristic pleasure to be taken not only from the piano writing but from her clever contrasts in mood and texture. A longer setting is the song Sbohem a šáteček or ‘Waving Farewell’, a passionate declamation that gently subsides.
The songs of Victor Ullmann here date from the war years. He responds with vivid pictorial intensity to the Donner und Blitzen element in a song about corn reapers caught in a storm, an element that takes some of his music closer to cabaret style than formal ‘art song’ (whatever that is – it’s a phrase, in my experience, beloved by snobs). Ullmann can spin a lullaby with superb eloquence and can turn on (deliberately) gawky piano accompaniment to a confident vocal line in the last of these three settings. His Hölderlin-Lieder are possibly the most depth-laden of his settings here, eager but full of lyrical depth, death-haunted though the poetry may sometimes be. However, a song like the standalone Schwer ist’s, das Schöne zu lassen shows how strenuous writing coupled with an unsettled line can resolve harmonically only at the very end – and even then, in the context of the music as a whole, deliberately unconvincingly. Ullmann wrote memorably for the voice.
Koziara sings in German and Czech, in the Kaprálová settings, and to assist there is a booklet with the texts in the original language and translations into English. There is also a separate booklet with notes written by Roger Pines and biographies of the two artists presented in a gatefold production. This is a splendid solution to the persistent problem of including texts where they might cause a booklet to unhinge, fall apart or otherwise disintegrate. Why can’t other labels do what Cedille does?
Koziara sings with considerable sensitivity. His voice is warm and focused and Moore – an eminent name for an assisting artist – proves to be an equally sympathetic and stylistically apt colleague.
Jonathan Woolf
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Contents
Franz Schreker (1878-1934)
From Fünf Lieder, Op. 4 (c. 1899)
I. Unendliche Liebe
II. Frühling
III. Wohl fühl ich wie das Leben rinnt
Vitězslava Kaprálová (1915-1940)
Dvě písně, Op. 4 (1932)
I. Jitro
II. Osiřelý
Jablko s klína, Op.10 (1935)
I. Píseň na vrbovou píšťalku
II. Ukolébavka
III. Bezvětří
IV. Jarní pout
Navzdy, Op. 12 (1936-37)
I. Navždy
II. Čím je můj žal
III. Ruce
Sbohem a šáteček Op. 14 (1937)
Viktor Ullmann (1898-1944)
Drei Lieder, Op. 37 (1942)
I. Schnitterlied
II. Säerspruch
III. Die Schweizer
Schwer ist’s, das Schöne zu lassen
Hölderlin-Lieder (1943-44)
I. Sonnenuntergang
II. Der Frühling
III. Abendphantasie
Alexander von Zemlinsky (1871-1942)
4 Gesänge, Op. 8 (1899)
I. Turmwächterlied
II. Und hat der Tag all seine Qual
III. Mit Trommeln und Pfeifen
IV. Tod in Aehren
Herbsten
