B (S20) LISTENING LOG: E—L PETER EBEN Laudes Earliest Work
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20 B♭ (S ) LISTENING LOG: E—L PETER EBEN Laudes Earliest work on the CD by Czech avant garde organist. Atonal, dissonant, but deals with recognizable motives and gestures. Somewhere there’s a Gregorian theme. There are four movements, the first is agitato. The second begins with extreme low and high pitches, loud rhythmic middle. The third has a weird mute stop. The fourth begins pianissimo, isolated notes on lowest pedals. (Mh17) Hommage à Buxtehude Good-humored toccata, then fantasy on a repeated note motif. Dissonant but light. (Mh17) Job Mammoth 43`organ work in 8 movements, each headed by a verse from Job. The strategy resembles Messiaen`s, but the music is craggier and I suspect less tightly organized. (1) Destiny: Job is stricken. Deep pedals for terror, toccata for agitation. (2) Faith: The Lord gives and takes away: Flutes sound the Gregorian Exsultet interrupted by terrible loud dissonance – agitation has turned to trudging, but ends, after another interruption, with muted Gloria. (3) Acceptance: After another outcry, Job is given a Bach chorale tune, “Wer nur den lieben Gott,” a hymn of faith – wild dissonances followed again by chorale. (4) Longing for Death: a passacaglia builds to climax and ends in whimpering ppp. (5) Despair and Resignation: Job`s questioning and outbursts of anger, followed by legato line of submission. (6) Mystery of Creation: eerie quiet chords and flutings, crescendo – rapid staccato chords, accelerando as if building anger – block chords fortissimo – solo flute question. (7) Penitance and Realization: Solo reed with ponderous pedal – chattering, hardly abject! – final bit based on Veni Creator. (8) Chorale Variations on Bohemian tune “Christ is all humility: the icon of innocent suffering. Impressive piece but I worry that the style is too free, merely gestural – I suppose it`s not as easy as it appears. The style gradually becomes more tonal and consonant. (Ap17) JOHANNES EBERLIN 5 Motets A cappella motets in the old Renaissance manner for the church, but harmonically richer than, say, Josquin. Cum Sancto Spiritu has a baroquish feel, with marked beat. (Ja11) Mass in A minor For choir and organ, highly contrapuntal and chromatic, but concise in the Salzburg way. The music is beautifully intricate but lacks an identifying hook (cx Mozart’s Sparrow Mass), or really much expressiveness, like skilled school exercises. (Ja11) Tonus Secundus; Tonus Octavus Mysteriously named pieces turn out to be organ exercises, a mini Art of the Fugue. (Ja11) Mass in C Much like the A minor, less chromatic of course. The Rudolfus Choir is here much reduced, just a few voices on a part, and they sound much less polished than in the ravishing Bax / Villette disc. A disappointment. (Ja11) JOHN ECCLES The Judgement of Paris Utterly charming, refined music, just as attractive as when we heard the Toronto group do it in Wolf Hall. As a Masque, it lacks, let’s say, dramatic urgency, but it makes up in beautiful singing, swift motion, with a glint of Congreve’s wit. Juno’s Aria with the offbeats is extraordinary, though the recording treats it pesante, where the Toronto ensemble made it seductive as I prefer. Style is pure Purcell, or maybe “purified.” (D09) Three Mad Songs Filler for the CD. The song for The Way of the World is remarkable to have. (D09) SONIA ECKHARDT-GRAMMATTÉ February Suite, violin & piano Surprise and shock. This is neo-baroquish retro stuff, technically simple. I’d guess the work of a talented self-taught amateur. (Ja09) CECIL EFFINGER Little Symphony No 1 I’m surprised that the opening rings a bell, but this is attractive, modest writing, unmistakably American in the Harris/Copland mode. I’m glad to have it back. (Ja09) KLAUS EGGE Piano Concerto No 2, op 2 With string orchestra, Symphonic Variations on a Norwegian Folktune. I’ve been curious about this Norwegian composer very little recorded. The folksong is first stated in Grieg’s gorgeous version. Egge’s manner is mildly pandiatonic, neo-classical. The variations keep the theme to the fore, and the piano solo is not flashy until the very end. A modest composition, but the variations maintain a sense of a single whole, with middle numbers forming a slow movement. Yes there is a flavor of Bartok in all the dissonant counterpoint. The final fugue is topped by restatement of the theme in augmentation. Very well made piece, super. (Ag17) Halling Fantasy, op 12/1 Short piano piece based on Hardanger fiddle style, tunes given contrapuntal treatment as a two-part invention. (Ag17) Piano Sonata No 1, op 4 “Draumkvædet” Four movements, 23’. Grave intro low on keyboard states folklike theme before Moderato. Arpeggiated texture keeps folk feeling, much more technical pianism (I think) than the Concerto. Adagio is more in keeping with the dream-ballad mood, but there’s a turbulent bit midway. Is it variations— Brief Scherzo “infernale” plays over dark bass ostinato. Allegro im halling turns to bright fiddle tune dance. Masterpiece of its kind. I want more. (Ag17) WERNER EGK Geigenmusik mit Orchester Music history is not kind to ironists, especially when they consort with Nazis. At times this sounds like a musical joke, but it’s more a German offshoot of Les Six, only in the mid-1930s. A Concerto in 3 movements: jolly rondo with cadenza, affecting romance over an absurd accompaniment. Finale parodies a carousel waltz with a broken spring, very funny and wonderful. Terrific piece. Maile plays acceptably, but not with easy technique, not always in tune. (Mh11) PHILIPP HEINRICH EHRLEBACH 6 Sonatas Enchanting disc. These are not melody/accompaniment solo sonatas but contrapuntal chamber pieces. Does the gamba have an independent line? More like Lawes or Monteverdi than Corelli or Handel. Performances vary the continuo, using theorbo or organ and different combinations, not just harpsichord. Gorgeous. (Ap09) GOTTFRIED von EINEM Dantons Tod – Suite, op 6a; Wandlungen Four bits of the opera, surprisingly light in tone à la Les Six or Constant Lambert. Von Einem emerged in 1947 and seemed to signal the continuity of German music, but he was soon surpassed by Henze, Stockhausen, later Hartmann, Zimmermann . and tagged “Von Mehrerem.” Unfairly? The short piece is distantly based on “Mädchen oder Weibchen” from Zauberflöte. Light neo-classic-romantic Schtick. (Jy10) Piano Concerto, op 20 In standard 3 movements: Moderato pits assertive orchestra against passive piano. Very traditional harmony, touches of bitonalism, neo-classic staccato, piano glittery, not thumpy. Adagio spins out over an objective 3 beat. Finale has Les Six feel, flitty, displaced accents. (Jy10) Nachtstück, op 29 Generic 14' tone poem written to commission for a quiet piece: some bits seem to recall Strauss’s Metamorphosen, but it never gets that inward and profound. Wanders. (Jy10) Medusa Ballet Suite, op 24 This tries to be more dramatic, more primitive perhaps? But it doesn’t have the Stravinsky magic. I’m afraid Joe McSpadden was right – Von Mehrerem it is. (Jy10) RICHARD EINHORN Voices of Light Carl Orff meets Hildegard of Bingen. Bid to create a new Carmina Burana: medieval subject, gambas, chant, minimalist treatment, big chorus in triadic block chords, repetitiveness, varied textures, all wrapped in an odor of mysticism and Catholic piety. Alas, it lacks Orff’s rhythmic drive and sense of a good tune. (O09) HANNS EISLER Der deutsche Symphonie Apotheosis of agitprop: an hour-long Cantata on Brecht’s poems denouncing Nazism, an intriguing contrast to Pfitzner’s Vom deutsche Seele. There are orchestral sections, but mostly given to declamatory voices, speaking, half-singing, with choir kept in background. There are serial elements, but nothing of Schönbergian expressionism. The tone is too rational, too angry, for that; but there are elements of grotesquerie and irony. Very text dependent music. (Je10) Piano Sonata, op 1 In three movements, fast-slow-fast, very much in the mode of his teacher Schoenberg’s piano music, but I don’t think it’s 12-tone. Transparent and airy. Passacaglia works a sinister theme in the bass. Finale playful. Good piece, not yet characteristic Eisler. (F13) Vier Klavierstücke, op 3 Here too Eisler writes in Schoenbergian mode, in the same year as the Sonata, 1923, but now decidedly twelve-tone. (Mh13) String Quartet, op 73 Surprisingly objective, a later reversion to the pupil of Schoenberg, not the agitprop artist. Short at 14’ and just two movements, Variations and Finale. The serialism is lucid enough for a demonstration piece, suggestions of Schoenberg’s neo-classicism with great expressive power. Allegretto continues with the same row, sounding like a further variation. But if this is a fault, it’s the only one in a great quartet. (Ag13) HALIM EL-DABH Leyla and the Poet "One of the less recognised figures in the genre outside the inner circle of electro- acoustic pioneers, Halim el-Dabh was in the vanguard of the using the emerging electronic equipment and instruments such as the synthesiser. In the mid Forties he experimented with, and composed on, tape which he manipulated to create the cornerstone piece The Expression of Zaar which included a street recording of a ceremony which he then manipulated through reverb and such. It was much acclaimed and opened the door for hm to leave Cairo and move to the States in '50 on a Fulbright Scholarship where he continued his work in New York. He composed pieces for ballets and was integral to the scene around John Cage and Edgard Varese." I've known the name ever since it leapt out at me from that early Schwann catalogue, but I've never heard a note until now. Leyla and the Poet dates from later in the decade when El-Dabh worked at the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Centre and had access to considerable equipment.