Anything that brings to more listeners’ attention the works of such composers as Hans Krasa, Pavel Haas, and Viktor Ullmann is a good thing. And in that regard, this recording is certainly a very good thing. There’s some first-rate singing and playing here, and the repertoire certainly deserves the big-name treatment and serious artistic consideration it receives from all concerned (Haas’ Four Songs on Chinese Poetry are unqualified masterpieces.) As for the singers, baritone Christian Gerhaher is the true star; he really “gets” the style of the cabaret songs while also conveying the wide-ranging emotion and meaning of the Haas set (in decent Czech) with the requisite refined lieder technique. (I still recommend as a first choice Terezín survivor Karel Berman’s performances on Channel Classics–a recording that also contains some of Berman’s own works–for their inimitable, deeply personal character and strong, captivating vocal style.) Gerhaher’s sadly resigned, soulful rendition of Ilse Weber’s “Ade, Kamerad!” is a highlight of the disc.
Although Anne Sofie von Otter has a beautiful voice and excellent technique for opera and lieder, her effort to sing in a less formal, “lighter” style in the cabaret songs is not that successful. It’s just the same as with most highly trained classical singers attempting to sing pop or jazz: the song is very well-sung, but the techniques and effects and even the vocal quality that they invoke in order to sound pop- or jazz-like come across as unnatural. And speaking of unnatural–Otter’s Czech is too practiced, too self-conscious; we know she’s not a native speaker, but her mannered pronunciation calls attention away from the song itself.
Finally, this recording follows the example of most other relatively recent projects featuring music from composers interred at the Terezín concentration camp: the publicity and notes sadly omit important references to facts, people, and events that complete the remarkable story of the music and those who originally wrote and performed it. This could be corrected simply by crediting one critical source: Music in Terezín, 1941-1945 (Pendragon Press), a book published in 1985 by Czech-American Josza Karas, whose more than two decades of research has turned up many previously unknown manuscripts and whose dogged efforts to locate and personally interview survivors and the relatives of those who perished produced the abovementioned book, enabling us to read the stories of many individuals and to know invaluable details of musical life in the Terezín ghetto that without his effort would have forever been lost.
He continues to work on this project, and besides organizing an indispensable catalog of works, his notable contributions include many performing editions and translations as well as serving as a performer and advisor for Channel Classics on its Composers in Theresienstadt series released in the early 1990s. No one has done as much to bring light and renewed life to these composers and their music, and any “Music in Terezín” project owes Karas at least a mention. And anyone interested in the music on this CD should certainly check out his published work and should hear those pioneering and authoritative Channel Classics recordings.
One last point: Although Daniel Hope’s performance of Erwin Schulhoff’s extraordinary Sonata for Solo Violin (written many years before the war) is a real tour de force (he has recorded this before for Nimbus—see reviews archive), I wonder what it’s doing on this program. Schulhoff was not a Terezín composer, and there are many more songs—especially by Ullmann and Weber—that could have more appropriately rounded out this vocal recital. As I said above, this recording is definitely a very good thing; it just could have been better. [4/18/2008]
