Customer Reviews

Chamber Music From Theresienstadt 1941-1945

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I'm pretty biased; I've been studying chamber music from Theresienstadt for a year now. However, I would say that ANYONE ANYWHERE will enjoy Gideon Klein's String Trio. It is sincerely beautiful music that expresses a genuine passion for the Czech Republic. It reminded me of Smetana a lot. Some other stuff on this CD is quite atonal. My ears did not enjoy Ullmann's string quartet at all; I know it is all important music to listen to to learn about the holocaust, but I think Ullmann's opera "Der Kaiser" is much less atonally grating to the ears. Klein is a wonderful composer, and I enjoyed his atonal sonata on here much more than Ullmann's atonal string quartet. However, overall, I would say buy this cd for Klein's String Trio and YOU WILL NOT BE SORRY. I really think that Klein needs to be recognized for his personal genius as a composer, not simply for being a composer who died in the holocaust.

This CD dates from around the time when works by composers who died in the Holocaust were beginning to achieve greater recognition, around the time of Decca's great series "Entartete Musik". This CD on the Dutch label Channel Classics is a worthy pendant to that series, as I do not think that any of these compositions were covered in any of the Decca recording in the "Entartete Musik" series, although certainly other works by Ullmann were, for example.

The lion's share of the music on the CD is by Gideon Klein, who gets 4 works on this CD, his String Trio, his "Fantasie & Fugue" for string quartet, his piano sonata, and his String Quartet, op. 2. Viktor Ullmann is represented by his String Quartet, op. 46, no. 3. While Klein and Ullmann, to varying extents, incorporated tone rows or twelve-tone technique in their compositions, the works are in no way "atonal" in the casual Schoenbergian sense. There is certainly quite a bit of chromatic bite to their respective idioms and musical expression, with moments in the Ullmann that sound a bit like Shostakovich, for example, although I am not aware if Ullmann knew DSCH's music at all. The chromaticism in Klein's work, and to a lesser extent in Ullmann's, may be closer to Bartok, who was never "atonal" in the strict Second Viennese School sense. If anything, I personally find Ullmann's quartet slightly more "accessible" in tone compared to Klein's, so I respectfully dissent from the previous reviewer. I do not want anyone to be put off by what I considered to be an exaggerated characterization of Ullmann or Klein as "atonal", which is simply not the case, to me.

The Hawthorne String Quartet and pianist Virginia Eskin give very fine performances of the works on this CD. At the time of this recording, all of the members of the Hawthorne Quartet were from the Boston Symphony Orchestra. As of November 2011, 3 of those musicians on this recording are still with the BSO, Ronan Lefkowitz, Mark Ludwig and Sato Knudsen. Virginia Eskin teaches at Boston University, continuing the Boston connection of the musicians in this recording.