Erwin Schulhoff - Landschaften; Menschheit (Gerd Albrecht)

Information

Composer: Erwin Schulhoff

• (01) Landschaften, Op. 26
• (06) Menschheit, Op. 28
• (11) Music for Molière's 'Le bourgeois gentilhomme'

Doris Soffel, mezzo-soprano (1-10)
Michael Rische, piano (11-14)

Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin
Gerd Albrecht, conductor

Date: 2003
Label: Orfeo
https://www.orfeo-international.de/pages/cd_c056031a_e.html

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Review

ARTISTIC QUALITY: 8 / SOUND QUALITY: 9

Long thought lost and apparently only recently rediscovered, the two song-symphonies Landschaften and Menschheit have much in common. In a conceptual sense, both clearly are the spawn of Das Lied von der Erde. Both are scored for alto (or mezzo) solo and chamber orchestra and date from the years just before 1920. Both take ripe, somewhat over-the-top poetry as an excuse to explore the outer regions of fin-de-siècle decadence (the actual words almost don’t matter), and both are simply gorgeous, full of the sounds of sultry muted brass, sensual harp glissandos at every turn, and lazily impressionistic harmonies. In five movements each, and lasting only 16 and 26 minutes respectively, they would make a wonderful addition to any concert program, and it’s delightful to meet them here.

By contrast, the concert suite of incidental music from Der Burger als Edelmann (a.k.a. Le bourgeois gentilhomme) glitters with the hard sonorities of piano, percussion, and seven winds, and comes from the mid-1920s when the composer had discovered that personal combination of folk-music and Les Six-type “Dadaism” by which he is best known. All three works are beautifully played under Gerd Albrecht, the vocal works swooning and luscious, the incidental music bright, pungent, and rhythmically snappy (there’s another fine performance on Channel Classics featuring the Ebony Band, by the way, but the two vocal symphonies are premieres). Doris Soffel sings with intelligence and deserves credit for learning the music, but she lacks the one quality that the music ideally requires: a truly beautiful voice. Still and all, with excellent sound, these pieces are wonderful souvenirs of their time and place by a marvelously talented composer. Easily recommended to the curious.

-- David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday

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Erwin Schulhoff (8 June 1894 in Prague – 18 August 1942 at the Wülzburg concentration camp, Bavaria) was a Czech composer and pianist. Schulhoff's teachers teachers included Claude Debussy, Max Reger, Fritz Steinbach, and Willi Thern. He was one of the figures in the generation of European musicians whose successful careers were prematurely terminated by the rise of the Nazi regime in Germany and whose works have been rarely noted or performed. Schulhoff's music went through a number of stylistic periods, and was one of the first generation of classical composers to find inspiration in jazz.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erwin_Schulhoff

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Gerd Albrecht (19 July 1935 – 2 February 2014) was a German conductor. He was the first non-Czech principal conductor of the Czech Philharmonic. In 1994, Albrecht refuse the invitation from Vatican to let the orchestra plays in a concert celebrating reconciliation between Roman Catholics and Jews, cause a controversy let to his resignation. He also held posts at the Deutsche Oper Berlin, the Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich, the Hamburg State Opera and Danish National Symphony Orchestra, made commercial recordings for such labels as Capriccio and Chandos.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerd_Albrecht

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