A special eight-page section focusing on recent recordings from the US and Canada
Kaufmann . Rubin . Ta l ‘Exodus’ Kaufmann Indian Symphony Rubin Symphony No 4, ‘Dies irae’ Ta l Exodusa a Noam Heinz bar The Orchestra Now / Leon Botstein Avie (AV2713 • 75’ • T)
The diaspora of Jewish composers from Hitler’s Reich was wider and deeper than just to the USA (eg Korngold, Schoenberg, Toch) or Britain (Gál, Goldschmidt and Wellesz, for example). The three composers featured on Leon Botstein’s strongly played new album went elsewhere: Josef Tal (1910-2008) to Jerusalem, Marcel Rubin (1905-95) to Mexico City via Paris and Walter Kaufmann (1907-84) to what is now Mumbai, in which havens they composed these three works.
Tal is the best known and most modernist in outlook, though Exodus (1946-47) is not especially radical in idiom. Its tense atmosphere perhaps reflects the political instability ahead of Israel’s independence the next year (indeed, the premiere in December 1947 was impacted by the unrest, and the baritone soloist had to be replaced by a speaker, necessitating some last-minute recasting of the vocal lines to the orchestra). A symphonic poem in five sections, the work follows the Israelites’ servitude in Egypt, escape and ‘The Passage of the Red Sea’ (with the briefest of codas lamenting the pursuing Egyptian dead), to the celebratory final ‘Miriam’s Dance’. A colourful, approachable work, Exodus – which started life as a ballet – is not Tal’s finest work and eventually found its final form in 1958 as an electronic score.
Kaufmann’s attractive Indian Symphony dates from 1943 with the Second World War in full spate, not that one would know from the music. More travelogue (‘An Austrian in Bombay’) than symphony, the overuse of pentatonic themes may provide a generically ‘folky’ feel but curiously nothing of the traditional Indian music that Kaufmann had moved to India to study. Vienna-born Rubin, a pupil of Franz Schmidt and – in Paris – Milhaud, also ignored local traditions and remained steadfastly Viennese in style (he returned home in the late 1940s), and his Fourth Symphony (1943-45) is Austrian through and through. Originally titled War and Peace (no Tolstoy connection) and in four movements, in 1972 Kaufmann replaced the final two movements with a subtler, more ambivalent final ‘Pastorale’ based on the ‘Dies irae’ plainsong. A not insignificant utterance, Peter Laki’s drawing of parallels in the booklet with the war symphonies of Shostakovich does Kaufmann’s music no favours. There is much to admire in the first movement, inspired by Brecht’s Kinderkreuzzug 1939, and finale, but the central ‘Dies irae’ is overlong. The Orchestra Now’s performance is nonetheless well executed, and Avie’s recording is splendid. Guy Rickards.
Simon The Block. Concerto for Orchestra, ‘Wake Up!’. Song of Separationa. Tales: A Folklore Symphonyb a J’Nai Bridges mez National Symphony Orchestra, Washington DC / Gianandrea Noseda National Symphony Orchestra (NSO0018 Í • 67’ • T) Recorded live at the Kennedy Center Concert Hall, Washington DC, 2021 24 b From D NSO0014D (4/24US)
I reviewed this recording of Carlos Simon’s Tales: A Folklore Symphony
(2021) when Noseda and the NSO released it as a ‘single’ some months ago. Returning to this richly evocative score, I was impressed yet again by the composer’s ability to write music of serious heft that’s still broadly accessible.
The Block (2017) is a brief, propulsive and kaleidoscopic curtain-raiser inspired by a series of six collages/paintings by the black artist/musician Romare Bearden (1911-88) depicting the vibrancy of one of Harlem’s city blocks. Simon packs quite a lot of variety into six and a half minutes, and he navigates the myriad hairpin turns deftly, even if The Block lacks the dramatic assurance and clear sense of direction one hears in every movement of Tales.
The texts for the four Songs of Separation (2023) – composed for mezzo-soprano J’Nai Bridges in response to the Covid-19 pandemic – come from poems by Rumi, the 13th-century Persian Sufi mystic. I wasn’t surprised by the faintest whiff of exoticism in the opening number, ‘The Garden’, but I certainly wasn’t expecting such big, bold orchestral writing. Indeed, although the lyrical impulse is steadfast, none of these songs is delicately perfumed or intimate. ‘Burning Hell’, the second number, conjures images out of Dante’s Inferno, with Bridges repeating the title phrase over and over in her lower register; it’s not pretty, and clearly not intended to be. ‘Dance’, the third song, is an off-kilter waltz with a popular flavour, while ‘We Are All the Same’ glances back to a mid-century American brand of harmonic optimism. Bridges sings them all fervently. Wake Up! (2023) takes its cue from a poem by the Nepali poet Rajendra Bhandari. In it, Simon says he wants us to ask ourselves, ‘Are we asleep?’ A snappy two-note ‘wake up!’ motif serves as a frequent reminder, while dreamy sections often take on a nightmarish character – though not the gorgeous central section starting around 7'18". This Concerto for Orchestra is yet another example of Simon’s finely honed dramatic sense, which sustains and builds tension until the unexpectedly neat ending.
Aside from some unsteady ensemble in The Block, Noseda and the NSO play Simon’s music with panache and understanding, and the recorded sound is top-notch. Now will they please give us a recording of Simon’s Amen!? Andrew Farach-Colton gramophone.co.uk
GRAMOPHONE AWARDS 2024 I
