In the Face of Great Adversity
GERALD FENECH marks the history of this music from Jewish Vienna
'... unbridled warmth and passionate subtlety ...'
Vienna at the turn of the twentieth century was at the cutting edge of artistic and musical creativity, not to mention the imminent changes that were about to turn the European social order upside down. The Vienna Secessionist movement led by Gustav Klimt had, in equal measure, shocked and fascinated the art world. Composers such as Schoenberg, Berg and Webern - the Second Viennese School - had burnished their Romantic credentials and launched a brave new twelve-tone musical world that confounded and perplexed the public. Critics were also at loggerheads with each other, some embracing the new sound world with open arms, while others considered it as the demise of musical art as they knew it.
This was a city with a sizeable and flourishing Jewish artistic community and names like Arnold Schoenberg, Gustav Mahler and Alexander Zemlinsky were starting to make headlines in no mean manner. On top of all these composers the 'wunderkind' among them all was Erich Wolfgang Korngold, who at age sixteen, was already a household name. With the onset of the Nazi regime, Korngold escaped to the States, where he made a glittering career writing for the screen. The transition from the late Romantic world to modernism in Vienna created some extraordinary art and music, and the composers on this album were at the centre of this new firmament.
This issue brings together Korngold's Shakespeare's Songs, Op 31 and Songs of the Clown, Op 29, Zemlinsky's Walzer-Gesang, Op 6 Nos 1, 3, 5 and 6, Josefine Winter's Im Buchenwald (Winter was murdered by the Nazis in 1943), Alfred Grünfeld's Klein Serenade, a real ear-worm of a tune and the haunting Adagio from Mahler's Tenth arranged for chamber orchestra by Cliff Colnot.
Listen — Mahler, arranged by Cliff Colnot: Adagio (Symphony No 10)
(ONYX4253 track 10, 4:13-5:08)
℗ 2025 Jewish Chamber Orchestra Munich & Chen Reiss :
A generation of musicians was wiped out or exiled from Vienna's history by the Holocaust; some murdered, others persecuted and their music suppressed. Research into their lives and work is ongoing without respite and, although not frequently, a disc such as this appears on the scene which deserves all the attention it can get.
Listen — Alfred Grünfeld arranged by Nicholas Hersh: Klein Serenade
(ONYX4253 track 16, 0:01-0:56)
℗ 2025 Jewish Chamber Orchestra Munich & Chen Reiss :
All the composers in this collection, except Mahler, had to face, in one way or another, the Nazi whiplash, so this music is not only a chronicle on how a new avant-garde language overtook the late Romantic era, but also a prime example of how composers embraced this challenging but revelatory new style of making music in the face of great adversity.
Listen — Korngold: When Birds Do Sing (4 Lieder nach Shakespeare)
(ONYX4253 track 9, 1:59-2:53)
℗ 2025 Jewish Chamber Orchestra Munich & Chen Reiss :
Soprano Chen Reiss, convincingly supported by Daniel Grossman's Jewish Chamber Orchestra, Munich, delivers this programme with unbridled warmth and passionate subtlety, making of this music a stark reminder of man's cruelty to man when greed for power and domination becomes the sole reason of existence.
Listen — Josefine Winter: Im Buchenwald
(ONYX4253 track 5, 1:59-2:31)
℗ 2025 Jewish Chamber Orchestra Munich & Chen Reiss :
Strongly recommended, if only for the history behind this music. Sound and booklet notes are first-rate.
Copyright © 6 April 2025
Gerald Fenech,
Gzira, Malta
