Jewish Vienna
Chen Reiss (soprano)
Jewish Chamber Orchestra, Munich/Daniel Grossmann
rec. 2024, Bavaria Studio, Munich, Germany
Sung texts enclosed with English translations of the German texts
Reviewed as download
Onyx 4253 [56]
Around 1900 a contingent of Jewish composers living in Vienna shared the common denominator of knowing, co-operating with and being influenced by Gustav Mahler. It is thus logical to place his ultimate masterpiece centre-stage, as it were, in this compilation.
Mahler conducted the premiere of Zemlinsky’s opera Es war einmal at the Vienna Court Operain 1900. That same year, Zemlinsky began a passionate love affair with Alma Schindler, but that ended the following year when she met and married Mahler, obviously resulting in placing a strain on their relationship. Mahler heard the precocious Korngold early on and declared him a genius, which certainly catapulting the young boy to stardom. The other two composers are practically forgotten today. Josefine Winter and her second husband were deeply involved in the cultural life in Vienna, and they met Mahler several times, and heard the premiere of his eighth symphony. Being Jewish, she suffered a lot after the Anschluss in 1938. She was deported to Theresienstadt in 1942, where she died the following year. Alfred Grünfeld was born in Prague, where he took piano lessons with Bedřich Smetana. After studies in Berlin he moved to Vienna and became a successful pianist who toured Europe and North America. As a composer, he was known for his concert paraphrases of Johann Strauss Waltzes. He even knew the composer personally. The young Gustav Mahler was sent by his father to study in Prague and during that period he found accommodation with the Grünfelds, where one night he involuntarily witnessed a wild love scene between Alfred and a servant which shocked and disgusted him, making him despise Alfred for ever.
Musically this disc is deeply attractive. Israeli soprano Chen Reiss, now in her mid-forties, has been a leading singer in the international circle for close to twenty years. I first encountered her when I reviewed a disc with arias by Mozart and his contemporaries titled Liaisons, which was my Recording of the Month (review) and it also received a Diapason d’Or and was lavishly hailed by Gramophone. Several discs have followed, and she has retained her technical brilliance and her beautiful tone as well as her deep understanding of the texts.
Zemlinsky’s early Waltz songs are short, simple and very beautiful and sung with the simplicity that suits folk songs. Josefine Winter’s Im Buchenwald is beautiful and melancholy, emotionally charged and makes me want to hear more of this sadly forgotten composer.
However, the real favourites – and I don’t hesitate to call them masterworks – are the Korngold songs, all of them to Shakespeare texts. These are songs by the mature Korngold, composed during his Hollywood years in the late 1930s and early 1940s, when he also won two Academy Awards (Anthony Adverse, 1936 and The Adventures of Robin Hood, 1938) and two nominations (The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex, 1939 and The Sea Hawk, 1940).
Of the Four Shakespeare Songs, Op. 31, Desdemona’s Song, deeply melancholic and enormously beautiful, is of course from Othello, to be exact Act IV, Scene 3. Comparisons with Verdi’s version in the opera Otello are unavoidable, and the outcome is that both catch the mood admirably in their respective ways, and that Korngold in no way comes off second best. The remaining three songs are from As You Like It, the pastoral comedy, supposedly presented in 1599. It can also be labelled as musical comedy, since no other Shakespeare play has so many songs incorporated. Thomas Morley’s It was a lover and his lass is one of few contemporary settings of a Shakespeare text, and since it was published in 1600 it is speculated – though there is no evidence – that it was performed in actual performances during Shakespeare’s lifetime. The mind boggles! Korngold’s version – here titled When Birds Do Sing – could with honour qualify for a present-day performance of the play. That also goes for Under The Greenwood Tree and Blow, Blow, Thou Winter Wind.
Songs of the Clown, Op. 29 consists of five songs from Twelfth Night, another romantic comedy, probably first seen in 1601 – 1602, and since it was published on 2 February 1602. If anything, these songs are even more masterly than the Opus 31 group. Come Away, Death is also melancholy but so beautiful, and so is O Mistress Mine. Adieu, Good Man Devil is short and humoristic, Hey, Robin jolly, and For the Rain, It Raineth Every Day more macabre. Chen Reiss is throughout a superb interpreter, alert to the texts and nuanced. It is worth noting that Thomas Morley had a finger in the pie here, too. His setting of O Mistress Mine is another of his famous songs, and since he dies in 1602 this was probably one of his last compositions. Both It was a lover … and O Mistress Mine were famously recorded in the early 1950s by the legendary counter-tenor Alfred Deller, and they are still, after all these years, highly attractive. As a matter of curiosity it is worth mentioning that Korngold as a young man composed incidental music for a production of Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing at the Schönbrunn Palace in Vienna, which he reworked to an orchestral suite and a suite for violin and piano.
It remains to comment on the two orchestral pieces. The central work is the Adagio from Mahler’s unfinished symphony no 10. It is probably his most personal, autobiographical composition which he wrote when he was already mortally ill. Here, it is played in a very fine arrangement for chamber orchestra by Cliff Colnot, and one can feel the mental pain. The playing of the Jewish Chamber Orchestra under Daniel Grossmann is excellent – as it is throughout the programme. As a kind of encore, we are also treated to Alfred Grünfeld’s Kleine Serenade with a catchy theme that remains in the memory. It makes a nice finale to a fascinating programme.
Göran Forsling
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Contents
Alexander Zemlinsky 1871–1942
from Walzer-Gesänge nach toskanischen Volksliedern
von Ferdinand Gregorovius Op.6
1. Liebe Schwalbe 1.26
2. Fensterlein, nachts bist du zu 1.12
3. Blaues Sternlein 1.36
4. Briefchen schrieb ich 0.59
Josefine Winter, Edle Von Wigmar 1873–1943
5. Im Buchenwald 2.35
Erich Wolfgang Korngold 1897–1957
4 Lieder nach Shakespeare (Four Shakespeare Songs) Op.31
6. Desdemona’s Song ‘The poor soul sat sighing by a sycamore tree’ 2.44
7. Under the Greenwood Tree 2.22
8. Blow, Blow, Thou Winter Wind 2.29
9. When Birds Do Sing 3.01
Gustav Mahler 1860–1911
Symphony No.10 in F sharp
10 I. Adagio (arr. Cliff Colnot) 24.22
Erich Wolfgang Korngold
Songs of the Clown Op.29
11. Come Away, Death 2.25
12. O Mistress Mine 2.15
13. Adieu, Good Man Devil 0.51
14. Hey, Robin 0.53
15. For the Rain, It Raineth Every Day 3.28
Alfred Grünfeld 1852–1924
16. Kleine Serenade (arr. Nicholas Hersh) 4.03
(all songs arranged by Tal-Haim Samnon)
