Life is a indeed a cabaret! by CMSCVA Artistic Director James Wilson
I draw inspiration for concert programming from a lot of sources – concerts, recordings, books, film, TV and news sources. A famous film, Bob Fosse’s 1972 screen adaptation of the musical “Cabaret”, inspired tonight’s concert in our "Revolutionary and Banned" Festival.
There are a lot of things I love about this movie. It’s amazingly stylish and yet touching. The music is fabulous of course, and Joel Grey as the Emcee is a force of nature and irresistibly chilling. I also love the ways it tells the story of Weimar Berlin’s brilliance, tolerance, and decadence all standing bravely in the face of rising Nazi-ism, but finally crumbling and vanishing. The opening shot of the movie is a reflection a mirror of the cabaret where we see a colorful scene of people laughing and having a great time on the town. The closing shot is the same mirror, but the cabaret audience is quiet and grave, the colors are muted and the scene is peppered with Swastika-clad officers.
Classical music during this inter-war period of history has a similar story, and this is what I try to tell in tonight’s concert. Four cabaret songs, starting with one that extols the virtues of love and passion and ending with one mocking Hitler, frame a trio of classical pieces written in these heady and turbulent years. The wonderful mezzo Tracy Cowart acts as the Emcee and Rieko Aizawa as her back up band.
Friedrich Hollaender’s song “Ich bin von Kopf bis Fuss auf Lieber eingestellt” opens the program. Most listeners will recognize it from the famous German movie “The Blue Angel” in which the astonishing Marlene Dietrich sings it dressed in undergarments and top hat, backed by a beer swilling girl band. The literal translation of the Germany is more risqué than the “Falling in Love Again” title most Americans know it by: “I am from head to toe energized for love”…enough said.
The Waltz from Korngold’s Suite for two violins, cello and piano-left-hand is a rarely heard musical gem. It was written for the famous pianist Paul Wittgenstein, whose right arm was amputated in World War One. Originally from Brno (now a part of the Czech Republic) Korngold was a child prodigy admired by Richard Strauss, and who studied with Zemlinsky. Although he had an immensely successful career in Austria, he came to Los Angeles to at the invitation to write music for films, and because of the escalation of anti-Jewish sentiment in the late 1930’s, never went back to Austria. Korngold wrote about those years: "We thought of ourselves as Viennese; Hitler made us Jewish."
Johannes Brahms admired the work of Viennese composer Alexander von Zemlinsky. Among Zemlinsky’s works of popular music is a cabaret song “Herr Bombardil,” a delightfully comic (and rather Monty Pythonesque) song about a man who was so gluttonous, he exploded. It provides a frame for Franz Hasenohrl’s amazing transcription of “Til Eulenspiegel’s Merry Pranks,” perhaps the most popular tone poem by Richard Strauss. This too is a comic story about a boy whose practical jokes lead to his doom.
Moving on to Berlin, we come to a song by the iconic German composer Kurt Weill. A member of the ‘Novembergruppe,’ a group of advent-garde artists that also including Stefan Wolpe, Weill had no choice but to flee Nazi Germany when he was denounced by authorities. He immigrated to Paris and then later to New York, where he became integral in the development of the Broadway musical. His love song to the city of Berlin, “Berlin im Licht,” is in the form of a slow fox trot and was written for an art exhibit with the same title in 1928,
Like Korngold, Erwin Schulhoff was from the area now known as the Czech Republic. One of his early proponents was Dvorak, and he studied with Debussy. He is considered one of the rising starts of classical music whose careers were literally terminated by the rise of the Nazi Party. In the 1930s, Schulhoff faced increasing personal and professional difficulties because of his Jewish descent and his socialist politics. His works were labeled degenerate, blacklisted by the Nazi regime, and could no longer be performed publicly. In June 1941, Schulhoff was deported to the Wülzburg concentration camp where he died a year later from tuberculoses. Luckily, his music is seeing a resurgence. The wonderful Concertino for the bizarre combination of flute/piccolo, viol and double bass draws on many influences including Czech folk music, Asian music and American jazz.
Perhaps the most radical of all these composers, Stefan Wolpe, was born in Berlin and studied with Franz Schreker (whose music was featured on our first concert of this Festival). Both a Jew and a communist, Wolpe fled Nazi controlled Germany for Austria, where he studied with Anton Webern, then to Palestine and then to New York. His cabaret song “Hitler” is a mocking, comic strip characterization, making fun of the “little man.”
Despite the humor, Wolpe’s musical style teeters between the popular and the avant-garde and hints at a more serious assessment of Germany’s political situation. The reality was that he and all of the other composers featured on this half of tonight’s concert would have to either flee their homelands or face imprisonment or extermination. The final word of the song, “ Heil,” is at once mocking and terrifying.
Sunday, May 19, 2013
Wednesday, May 15, 2013
Thoughts on the Music in our upcoming
"Visionaries" concert, May 16
- by CMSCVA Artistic Director James Wilson
We all want to make our mark on the world! Strangely enough this lofty sounding goal is easily achieved whether by an act of kindness, raising children well, constructing a building or creating something of beauty. Unfortunately, making one’s mark as a composer seems more difficult since time filters out all by the best and perhaps the most infamous of musical works. The works on tonight’s program serve to illustrate four different struggles - four composers straining at the reins of musical convention, and attempting to make their mark on musical history.
Robert Schumann was a brilliant composer, writer and proponent of the ideals of the Romantic era. He struggled with mental illness for much of his life, and often found ways to express his complicated character in artistic ways. He had names for both sides of his bipolar character: Florestan and Eusebious, the extroverted and inverted aspect of his personality.
His Piano Trio in D minor represents one of his first tries at writing music for small ensemble. From the start, it’s clear that this is no ordinary piece of chamber music - it is an invasion of the Big into the world of chamber music. With yearning string lines interwoven over a thrumming, churning piano part, this piece poses more like a symphony than a trio. The rhythmic drive is constantly propulsive throughout most of the trio even if the music seems expansive. A galloping scherzo pit unison strings against the piano in imitation, while the contrasting section divides the imitation further into three parts of elegantly scalar material. The only part of this trio that counteracts all of the frenetic, overt action is the third movement, basically a written-out improvisation fore the three instruments. It’s with this movement that we hear the dreamy Eusebious making a stunning appearance before Florestan wins out in a finale reminiscent of Schumann’s own “Spring” Symphony.
Similar struggles against the small scope of chamber music come out in George Frederic Handel’s cantata “La Lucezia.”
Lucretia is a semi-legendary Revolutionary figure in the history of the Roman Republic. According to legend, her rape by the Etruscan king's son and consequent suicide were the immediate cause of the revolution that overthrew the monarchy and established the Roman Republic.
Handel’s setting of the text is equally revolutionary. In essence, it is a pocket opera, involving only one voice and continuo, and the dramatic scope Handel can squeeze from such meager resources is amazing. Part of what makes this piece work is the dramatic quality of the bass and vocal lines. When Lucrezia rages, the bass part cascades and leaps chaotically. When the singer is more contemplative, the bass line moves in logical step. The ending is classic – Lucrezia’s “see you in Hell” moment is supported by aggressive, fist shaking tremolos in a low register bass.
Arnold Schoenberg had more impact on the trajectory of modern music than any other composer by inventing new ways to organize the 12 pitches of the musical scale, thus breaking hundreds of years of musicial tradition and divorcing harmonies from the tonal major/minor system. His Chamber Symphony uses quartal harmony, a harmonic system relying on fourths for organization. Written in 1905, the piece was arranged in 1922 for the combination you hear on tonight’s program. This is indeed a revolutionary piece – a one movement symphony for five players at once shockingly modern and exquisitely romantic. The quartal harmony is laid bare in the opening bars, then all hell breaks loose. Although written in one continuous movement, the piece can be broken down into several traditional symphonic sections: Allegro, Scherzo, (development), Adagio and Finale. The real treat of this piece is listening to the heart-racing music and enjoying the musicians’ attempts to master it.
Viennese composer Franz Schreker’s attempt to mark his on musical history was interrupted by the wider history of world events. Born in Monaco, Schreker attended the conservatory in Vienna and proved to be brilliant, composing music with an individually chromatic tonal language. Working primarily in the genre of opera, his pieces were very popular in the years leading up to and including World War 1. During the Weimar years between World Wars, he was the second most performed living composer of opera in the world (after Richard Strauss). But his popularity was marred as anti-Semitic views and policies swept Europe. In the last 5 years of his lifetime he went from a top composer of German opera to a shunned position of irrelevance.
Schreker’s music is only now being rescued from obscurity. The work on tonight’s program “Der Wind” was written as music for a dance piece by Grete Weisenthal. The abstract plot concerns a storm and its aftermath. Even in this incidental music, we can hear that Schreker’s musical language is sensitive and beautiful, but also jagged and intense.
It’s tempting to see this storm image as a parable of music during the composer’s lifetime – in the decades after “Der Wind” was composed, all of Romantic musical culture would be swept aside by powerful forces and replaced with new attitudes and aesthetics.
"Visionaries" concert, May 16
- by CMSCVA Artistic Director James Wilson
We all want to make our mark on the world! Strangely enough this lofty sounding goal is easily achieved whether by an act of kindness, raising children well, constructing a building or creating something of beauty. Unfortunately, making one’s mark as a composer seems more difficult since time filters out all by the best and perhaps the most infamous of musical works. The works on tonight’s program serve to illustrate four different struggles - four composers straining at the reins of musical convention, and attempting to make their mark on musical history.
Robert Schumann was a brilliant composer, writer and proponent of the ideals of the Romantic era. He struggled with mental illness for much of his life, and often found ways to express his complicated character in artistic ways. He had names for both sides of his bipolar character: Florestan and Eusebious, the extroverted and inverted aspect of his personality.
His Piano Trio in D minor represents one of his first tries at writing music for small ensemble. From the start, it’s clear that this is no ordinary piece of chamber music - it is an invasion of the Big into the world of chamber music. With yearning string lines interwoven over a thrumming, churning piano part, this piece poses more like a symphony than a trio. The rhythmic drive is constantly propulsive throughout most of the trio even if the music seems expansive. A galloping scherzo pit unison strings against the piano in imitation, while the contrasting section divides the imitation further into three parts of elegantly scalar material. The only part of this trio that counteracts all of the frenetic, overt action is the third movement, basically a written-out improvisation fore the three instruments. It’s with this movement that we hear the dreamy Eusebious making a stunning appearance before Florestan wins out in a finale reminiscent of Schumann’s own “Spring” Symphony.
Similar struggles against the small scope of chamber music come out in George Frederic Handel’s cantata “La Lucezia.”
Lucretia is a semi-legendary Revolutionary figure in the history of the Roman Republic. According to legend, her rape by the Etruscan king's son and consequent suicide were the immediate cause of the revolution that overthrew the monarchy and established the Roman Republic.
Handel’s setting of the text is equally revolutionary. In essence, it is a pocket opera, involving only one voice and continuo, and the dramatic scope Handel can squeeze from such meager resources is amazing. Part of what makes this piece work is the dramatic quality of the bass and vocal lines. When Lucrezia rages, the bass part cascades and leaps chaotically. When the singer is more contemplative, the bass line moves in logical step. The ending is classic – Lucrezia’s “see you in Hell” moment is supported by aggressive, fist shaking tremolos in a low register bass.
Arnold Schoenberg had more impact on the trajectory of modern music than any other composer by inventing new ways to organize the 12 pitches of the musical scale, thus breaking hundreds of years of musicial tradition and divorcing harmonies from the tonal major/minor system. His Chamber Symphony uses quartal harmony, a harmonic system relying on fourths for organization. Written in 1905, the piece was arranged in 1922 for the combination you hear on tonight’s program. This is indeed a revolutionary piece – a one movement symphony for five players at once shockingly modern and exquisitely romantic. The quartal harmony is laid bare in the opening bars, then all hell breaks loose. Although written in one continuous movement, the piece can be broken down into several traditional symphonic sections: Allegro, Scherzo, (development), Adagio and Finale. The real treat of this piece is listening to the heart-racing music and enjoying the musicians’ attempts to master it.
Viennese composer Franz Schreker’s attempt to mark his on musical history was interrupted by the wider history of world events. Born in Monaco, Schreker attended the conservatory in Vienna and proved to be brilliant, composing music with an individually chromatic tonal language. Working primarily in the genre of opera, his pieces were very popular in the years leading up to and including World War 1. During the Weimar years between World Wars, he was the second most performed living composer of opera in the world (after Richard Strauss). But his popularity was marred as anti-Semitic views and policies swept Europe. In the last 5 years of his lifetime he went from a top composer of German opera to a shunned position of irrelevance.
Schreker’s music is only now being rescued from obscurity. The work on tonight’s program “Der Wind” was written as music for a dance piece by Grete Weisenthal. The abstract plot concerns a storm and its aftermath. Even in this incidental music, we can hear that Schreker’s musical language is sensitive and beautiful, but also jagged and intense.
It’s tempting to see this storm image as a parable of music during the composer’s lifetime – in the decades after “Der Wind” was composed, all of Romantic musical culture would be swept aside by powerful forces and replaced with new attitudes and aesthetics.
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