Achtung, Aufnahme!! - A short opera by Wilhelm Grosz - and works by Walter Goehr and Mátyás Seiber
CCS46823 (Channel Classics, CD)
FIRST RELEASE (7 July 2023)
Playing time: 68'39"
Tracks: 3
Booklet pages: 32
℗ 2023 Channel Classics
© 2023 Channel Classics
Main country of recording: Netherlands
Reviewer: Geoff Pearce
Review of Achtung, Aufnahme!! - A short opera by Wilhelm Grosz - and works by Walter Goehr and Mátyás Seiber published on 6 June 2023
Ebony Band
Werner Herbers, conductor
Cappella Amsterdam
Daniel Reuss, conductor
Wilhelm Grosz (1894-1939):
1 Achtung, Aufnahme!!
Walter Goehr (1903-1960):
2 Komödien in Europa (Potpourri)
Mátyás Seiber (1905-1960):
3 Die vertauschten Manuskripte (Potpourri)
Conductor, oboist and researcher Werner Herbers (1940-2023) has left behind a legacy of discovering, performing and recording works of 'forgotten' composers. Werner Herbers spent his life discovering, performing and recording works of 'forgotten' composers from the interwar period, many of whom had to flee from the Nazis or were killed in concentration camps. Achtung, Aufnahme!! is the last album on which the Ebony Band will be heard. Over a period of thirty-two years, Werner Herbers and the Ebony Band have given over two hundred concerts around the world, promoting the compositions of that time: often absurdist, dadaistic, jazz-infused - styles and influences that the Nazis labelled as 'perverse'. The resulting archive of the Ebony Band's information and music is transferred to the Netherlands Music Institute in The Hague, where Werner Herbers' life's work will remain accessible for musicians, musicologists and programmers for generations to come. Werner Herbers hoped that the music of 'Grosz, Goehr and Seiber will be rediscovered, recorded, performed and enjoyed. Just like the other one-hundred-and-twenty-five1 composers from the interwar period whose 'lost' works I have dug up and archived over the past fifty years. Now that I won't be here for much longer, I am truly grateful to the Netherlands Music Institute in The Hague that they have taken on the responsibility to preserve my enormous archive, and keep it accessible to all.' All the pieces on this new album were written around 1930, have rarely been heard live and are first recordings: Achtung, Aufnahme!! by Wilhelm Grosz, Komödien in Europa by Walter Goehr and Die vertauschten Manuskripte by Mátyás Seiber.
These are first recordings, made on 26 March 2005 at Concertgebouw Amsterdam, Netherlands (track 1, recorded for radio), 23 November 1999 at Paradiso, Amsterdam, Netherlands (track 2) and on 19 February 2002 at Paradiso, Amsterdam, Netherlands (track 3).