Jerzy Fitelberg - Chamber Works (ARC Ensemble)

Information

Composer: Jerzy Fitelberg

• (01) String Quartet No. 1
• (06) Serenade for Viola and Piano
• (07) Sonatine for Two Violins
• (13) String Quartet No. 2
• (16) Nachtmusik, Op. 9 "Fisches Nachtgesang"

ARC Ensemble

Joaquin Valdepeñas, clarinet (16)

Erika Raum, violin I (1-5, 13-15) & violin II (7-12)

Marie Bérard, violin II (1-5, 13-15)

Benjamin Bowman, violin I (7-12)

Steven Dann, viola (1-6, 13-15)

Bryan Epperson, cello (1-5, 13-16)

with

Kara Huber, piano (6) & celeste (16)

Date: 2015

Label: Chandos

https://www.chandos.net/products/catalogue/CHAN%2010877

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Review

The Fitelberg you may have heard of is Grzegorz, also a composer but better-known as conductor and transcriber of Szymanowski, and orchestrator of Karowicz. Jerzy was his son, who predeceased his father in 1951, having studied in Berlin, fled from the Nazis to Paris and finally settled in New York from 1940.

The chamber works recorded here reveal a composer of broadly neo-classical orientation, who places no obstacles before the listener, but without descending into triviality. The First String Quartet (1926) is pungently Stravinskian, with some clear lifts from The Soldier’s Tale. Seven years on the Second Quartet – later scored for string orchestra – was awarded a prize by the Association des Jeunes Musiciens Polonaise, and it’s not hard to see why its more lyrical, Gallic poise, with a touch of Bartók-lite, should have appealed to a jury comprising Ravel, Schmitt, Roussel and Honegger.

The Sonatine for two violins of 1939 is less technically demanding and has no pretentions to the kind of substance of, say, Prokofiev and Weinberg’s works in this medium. Equally unpretentious is the wartime Serenade for viola and piano. Finally, the five-minute Nachtmusik, hauntingly scored for high cello, clarinet and celesta, shows the more mystical side of Fitelberg as a teenager – could he have heard Schoenberg’s Herzgewächse?

Together these pieces, all claimed as first recordings, make for an appealing introduction to a modest but gifted composer, especially in these refined performances by the Royal Conservatoire of Toronto’s adventurous in-house ensemble, all beautifully recorded.

-- David Fanning, Gramophone

More reviews:
http://www.musicweb-international.com/classrev/2015/Nov/Fitelberg_chamber_CHAN10877.htm

http://www.musicweb-international.com/classRev/2015/Dec/Fitelberg_chamber_CHAN10877.htm

https://www.thestrad.com/fitelberg-string-quartets-nos1-and-2-serenade-sonatine-nachtmusik/2222.article

https://www.allmusic.com/album/music-in-exile-chamber-works-by-jerzy-fitelberg-mw0002876341

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Jerzy Fitelberg (May 20, 1903 – April 25, 1951) was a Polish-American composer, son of famous Polish conductor, violinist and composer Grzegorz Fitelberg. He first studied music with his father, and subsequently in Moscow. From 1922–1926 he studied composition with Walter Gmeindl and Franz Schreker at the Berlin University of the Arts. Escaping the Nazis, he first traveled to Paris in 1933, then emigrated to New York in 1940. Among his compositions, the String Quartets Nos. 2, 4 & 5 won prizes, while the first violin concerto made a major impression on the 1929 International Society for Contemporary Music concert.

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

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The ARC (Artists of the Royal Conservatory) Ensemble is a group group led by Simon Wynberg and made up of faculty members of the Glenn Gould School at the Royal Conservatory of Music. The ensemble was founded in 2002 to showcase the considerable pool of talent resident at the Glenn Gould School. They are singularly devoted to reviving unjustly neglected repertoire: music of marginalized historical figures of music such as Mieczyslaw Weinberg, Julius Röntgen, Philipp Jarnach, and Alexandre Tansman; and the lesser-known legacies of well-known composers such as Richard Strauss and Johannes Brahms.
https://www.allmusic.com/artist/arc-ensemble-mn0001701400
http://www.arcensemble.com/

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