Jan van Gilse (1881-1944)
Sulamith (1902)
Der Kreis des Lebens (1929)
Sumi Hwang (soprano), Denzil Delaere (tenor), Thomas Oliemans (baritone)
Elena Tsallagova (soprano), Benjamin Bruns (tenor)
Groot Omroepkoor
Radio Filharmonisch Orkest/Stanislav Kochanovsky, James Gaffigan
rec. 2018/23, TivoliVredenburg, Utrecht, The Netherlands
cpo 555 648-2 [73]
I have a few recordings on cpo of Jan van Gilse’s orchestral and concertante music, acquired long ago because of the favourable reviews on MWI (review ~ review ~ review ~ review). The two cantatas on this CPO disc, from the early and middle phases of his career, reveal just how far his style travelled. The earlier work, Sulamith, sits firmly in the Germanic symphonic cantata tradition – derivative, rooted in the Berlin/Leipzig school. The later one, Der Kreis des Leben, pushes into a more exploratory world of chromaticism and mild dissonance but never abandons tonality. It is by far the more compelling of the pair, especially if one enjoys the way chromatic sidesteps can transform an otherwise predictable melodic line. It is cast in four movements and sets a text by Rainer Maria Rilke. The composer regarded it as a symphony in all but name, and the poetry acted as a kind of philosophical scaffolding for his depiction of “The Cycle of Life”.
The opening movement, the sixteen-minute Allegro moderato, attempts to evoke the dawning of conscious will: the stage when a young child’s unformed awareness allows experiences to pass by without being fixed in memory. It begins with hesitant, questing strings; the double basses add to the unsettled atmosphere. The five-minute orchestral introduction thins away to a brief silence. The chorus enters, first the women, then the men, and articulates the opening verses with admirable clarity. Well before the midpoint of the text, the choir dissolves into wordless vocalisations. With about five minutes remaining, the soprano soloist takes over to deliver the rest. Elena Tsallagova’s voice is fresh and appealing. She projects easily without any hint of strain even when set against full choir and orchestra. The music itself is not especially memorable, but its fluid, shifting character suits the somewhat nebulous nature of the text.
The second movement, Ruhig fließend, im character einer Hymne, is the shortest. In its eight-and-a-half minutes, the chorus sings “our dreams are like marble statues which we place in temples and our words are golden busts which we carry through our days”. The underlying orchestra plays a quietly sad march-like theme, possibly to illustrate the idea of carrying our words with us through all our days whilst being “always in a state of anguish”.
The third movement, Ziemlich langsam,has a curious dream-like text. It begins with an evocation of the summer nearly gone and autumn encroaching. Next, it changes to a brief reference to Mazeppa leading a charge of “steaming (horse) backs”, which ends with the poet lying on his back looking up at the skies. The first part is set for the soprano and tenor singing with the chorus. The music gradually rise to a warm climax as the words depict ripening fruit impressing sweetness into the heavy wine. Then it changes to its nearest approach to atonality, as the tenor sings of Mazeppa leading the charge. Benjamin Bruns’s firm voice has the necessary tone of heroic military endeavour and the orchestra has a lumbering bass-heavy theme. The chorus shout out “Mazeppa” to a big thumping orchestral climax. The tenor sings of being apart of the raging advance, but the music quickly fades to represent him lying on his back.
The text in the last movement is the short “Death is Great. We are its smiling mouth.” Van Gilse pulls out the stops to produce a grinding, percussive funeral march that plays for a 2.5 minutes. The march then lapses into a strange string-dominated waltz episode lasting a further 1.5 minutes, giving way to the female chorus that leads to the five-minute finale; the words: “When we seem to stand amidst life, Death dares to weep within us.” By reintroducing the march music, van Gilse manages to bring matters to an ecstatic, if hardly triumphant, climax at the close.
And so finishes this rather strange work; I find it so because of the text. I should think that van Gilse could not have found a more difficult work to base his music around than Rilke’s poem. Perhaps I am not sufficiently aware of the subtle layers of meaning within it, whereas van Gilse, as he said, found it perfect for his means.
You will hardly walk away from this music humming its tunes, but it will certainly have made is impact, as it did on the audience, whose presence is inaudible until their enthusiastic applause at the very end. The chorus are splendid, and so are the orchestra, ably led by James Gaffigan.
The disc begins with Sulamith, a piece that van Gilse composed as a graduation work at Cologne Conservatoire. He was forced to leave the institution before finally graduating, so the performance was cancelled. He relocated to Berlin where he finished his studies under Engelbert Humperdinck. The cantata was performed in Arnhem in 1903; van Gilse, resident there for almost a year, conducted it himself.
The work came in for much adverse comment from Dutch critics, who were disappointed at its very obvious German musical antecedents. Van Gilse had been a student in Germany for years, so it is unsurprising that his compositions displayed Germanic influences before he managed to develop his own voice.
The work is a setting of a moral allegory centred on Satan’s failed attempt to prove that humans are loveless creatures. Van Gilse’s music is very Germanic in style. Humperdinck was Gilse’s teacher in the year prior to the performance; earlier, he had been in Cologne. The work, much less chromatic than Der Kreis des Lebens, sits more in the operatic style in its use of soloists and chorus.
In the story, a beggar dying by the roadside pleads for water. The passers-by ignore him. Satan watches closely, triumphant as he witnesses this proof of his thesis. A young mother passes by, takes pity on the beggar and lets him drink her own milk. Satan is defeated.
Van Gilse uses singable vocal lines and includes echoes of Wagner. How could he not do so in Germany at that time? His melodies are pleasant but not ear-tickling. Soprano Sumi Hwang and tenor Demzil Delaere acquit themselves well; the orchestra and chorus are very good indeed.
The recordings are really, really good, especially when one considers that they are live. The booklet is in German and English, with full texts and side-by-side translations. It also contains the usual biographical information about the performers and a fair amount about the music. This is a very good release.
Jim Westhead
Other review: Dominy Clements
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