Gideon Klein

Today is Holocaust Memorial Day. I want to mark it by posting a memorial to one of the composers killed in the Nazi concentration camps, the Czech-Jewish composer, Gideon Klein (1919-1945).

Many of you will know what went on at the Terezín concentration camp - a brutal work camp exclusively for Jews which the Nazis tried to hoax the world into believing was a humane and happy place. Culture certainly did go on at Terezín, but so did around 33,000 deaths from overwork, disease and so on. Some 88,000 people were later deported to extermination camps. Gideon Klein was forced to go there in 1941 and then deported to Auschwitz in late 1944, dying (in unclear circumstances) during the attempt by the Nazis to wipe out all the remaining prisoners at the Fürstengrube camp in early 1945. He was aged 25. The Orel Foundation provides a biography of Klein, showing his determination to keep culture and hope alive at Terezín during his three years there. 

Like the wonderful Pavel Haas, subject of another post of mine, Klein's music is far from being merely of historical importance. 

Two weeks before his deportation to Auschwitz, the young man finished his splendid String Trio, whose short, purposeful opening Allegro positively abounds in fresh ideas - one strongly folk-flavoured, another reflecting the composer's roots in his Moravian compatriot Janáček. The central Lento is a theme and variations on a sad Moravian folksong, where the depth of feeling is clear to hear. Klein is had a keen interest in modernist music (as we shall hear), with Berg as a particular influence. Hints of Berg (the earlyish Berg of the String Quartet Op.3) are heard in this Lento - though not too strongly. With the finale we enter another folk-dance-inspired movement, albeit one crafted with touches of counterpoint and with a harmonic and colouristic range which admirers of the music of Shostakovich will, perhaps, find familiar. 

The Bergian element is stronger in another piece composed at Terezín - the virtuoso Piano Sonata of 1943 (Klein was a pianist himself). Again it's earlyish Berg - his Piano Sonata, Op.1 - which mainly springs to (my) mind, though the opening of the central Adagio perhaps suggests an echo of the late Berg of the Violin Concerto. We are in the world of rich, almost Scriabinesque extended tonality shading towards atonality (but not getting there). The exciting third movement has some decidedly Scriabin-like flourishes. It's a full-on piece, flooding the piano with colour most beautifully. As you may have noticed, I'm a great admirer of both Berg and Scriabin so this is right up my street!

The soundworld of Berg's String Quartet, Op.3 is certainly present in Gideon Klein's expressive (and somewhat expressionistic) String Quartet No.2 of 1939-1941 (mvts. 2 and 3). You will find it a tougher listen than the two later works, but far from an unrewarding one. Its structure is quite unusual one with a lighter, shorter central fast movement framed by two more substantial, slower movements. The opening movement is dramatic in character, at times rather like an operatic scena complete with recitative-like passage. The central scherzo is a sort of danse macabre with a striking main theme, flourishes from the ghostly violinist, lots of pizzicato and and a folk-like secondary theme. The closing Andante cantabile is deeply lyrical and full of yearning, melancholy harmonies. If you enjoyed that then I'm sure you'll also appreciate the unfinished Duo for Violin and Cello (1941). 

His Op.1 from 1940 was a set of songs. The high-lying vocal writing will be recognisable to anyone who knows their Schoenberg and Webern, with the lyrical qualities of Berg again to the fore (including in the piano writing). This really does sound like Second Viennese School-style music. The first song, The Fountain, sets the 17th Century composer Johann Klaj. The second one, In the Midst of Life, sets Hölderlin). The third, Darkness Descending, sets Goethe. All three are lovely. That this high-lying vocal writing seems to have been about to become a feature of his individual style is suggested by the delightful (tonal) arrangement he made of a Lullaby by (I think) the Ukranian rabbi Sholom Charitonov. 

The delightful Divertimento for Eight Wind Instruments of 1940 shows him experimenting with Neo-Classicism (listen out for the fugue in the opening March), with added touches of Janáček (especially in the Adagio) and further symptoms of Schoenbergian influence.

If all of this is making Gideon Klein sound like a composer writing music derived from the composers who most influenced him (i.e. 'derivative'), well, firstly, that's not a problem if the composer can (as Klein does) write convincingly in those veins and, secondly, that's simply the inevitable consequence of the fact that Klein was a young man  and a young composer when he wrote all of these pieces. He was around the age of 20, for example, when he wrote his Second String Quartet. So what an achievement that piece is! It was only his Op.2. In comparison, Beethoven's Op.18 quartets (often betraying the influence of Haydn and Mozart) were only begun when he was 28 - and he had decades more to write greater, wholly individual pieces. Nearly all young composers show their influences in their youthful works - especially if, like Klein, they are largely self-taught - as they make their way towards a long maturity where their own individual voice is full achieved. It's just the way things are. What's remarkable about Gideon Klein is how mature his pieces sound at such a young age. He was, of course,  denied the opportunity Beethoven had to become an original. Like millions of others. Hence Holocaust Memorial Day. 

I'll end with a particularly beautiful piece that combines the two main strains in the composer's art. The First Sin, for tenor and male voice choir, comes from 1942 and shows the composer digging into his Czech roots, as he was to do again in his String Trio. Janáček is a presence. The manner, however, also shows touches of Schoenbergian influence. (If you know Schoenberg's choruses you will appreciate the truth of this more than if you don't!). If he had continued fusing Janáček with Schoenberg/Berg what beautiful and original works could have flowed. 

Fantastic Symphonies

I am very fond of the six symphonies of the Czech Bohuslav Martinu (1890-1959). They comprise the most consistently uplifting cycle of modern symphonies, being full of hope and warmth of feeling. The first five came at yearly intervals beginning in the darkest days of the Second World War (1941), just after the composer had emigrated to America, and all ache with longing for his Czech homeland. 

The whole cycle (which ended in 1953) does feel remarkably homogeneous. The symphonies may take many an unexpected harmonic turn and can, especially in the Third Symphony, venture far into chromaticism, but they remain strongly tonal in orientation and have a delightful habit of breaking into Bohemian/Moravian-style folk melody and/or into radiant lyricism. They tend to grow from small motifs (or cells) which are then evolved into broad symphonic paragraphs. They also share motifs associated with the Czech lands - phrases drawn from the St. Wenceslas Chorale and Dvorak's Requiem (the opening notes) and, most obviously, an 'Amen'-like cadence called the 'Moravian cadence' (a variant of the plagal cadence) which was invented by Janacek in his glorious Taras Bulba (you can hear a sequence of them in the great passage beginning at 5.04 in the linked video) but which Martinu very much made his own. The symphonies are full of the composer's trademark syncopated 'sprung' rhythms. These give the works a real spring in their step. They mix (in their own individual ways) tension and hope and the time-honoured symphonic struggle between darkness and light is fought (in their own individual ways) throughout all of the symphonies. The even-numbered symphonies are generally brighter in mood, with the odd-numbered ones pursuing more troubled paths towards resolution - though the Sixth seems to unite the best of them all. The works are all scored in a way that can only be described as luminous. Only the Sixth Symphony - excludes the use of a solo piano. 

I hope you will enjoy exploring these delightful symphonies.

Symphony No.1
Symphony No.2
Symphony No.3
Symphony No.4
Symphony No.5 (Mts.2,3,4) 
Symphony No.6 (Fantaisies Symphoniques)

Scherzo triste - The Music of Pavel Haas

Though also born in Brno and Jewish, Pavel Haas's life followed a tragically different trajectory from that of Erich Korngold's. It's distressing to tell of it, but Haas (b1899) was one of those composers imprisoned by the Nazis in the Terezin concentration camp before being sent in 1944 to Auschwitz-Birkenau where he was murdered. Haas was a well-known Czech composer living his life and writing his music before the Nazis invaded his life. He composed in Terezin and some of the scores written there survived or were reconstructed. It raises a gulp in the throat when you begin listening to these pieces, but listen you should - partly to preserve his memory, but even more so because his works are absolutely superb and will enrich your life. We are not talking about a minor composer here, as I'm sure you'll soon agree if you take a listen to the following survey of the works of the great Pavel Haas. His works must enter the mainstream.

Pavel Haas was a pupil of Leoš Janáček and something of his influence stayed with Haas throughout his life. You can certainly hear the Janáček of Taras Bulba - and even the still-being-composed Cunning Little Vixen - in the several sections of the Scherzo triste, Op.5 of 1921. If you love Janáček's music (and I certainly do) then you will treasure this delightful, skilfully-scored orchestral piece. There's no reason why a work of such colour, melodic attractiveness and (ultimately) deep beauty shouldn't become a much-loved classic.

If you were impressed by that then wait until you try Haas's String Quartet No. 2, 'From the Monkey Mountains', Op.7 of 1925, where the undoubted traces of Janáček's two great string quartets (The Kreutzer Sonata and Intimate Letters) don't in any way detract from a remarkable achievement. There are four movements, of which the first, Landscape, is closest throughout to the teacher's idiom. The second, Coach, Coachman And Horse, however, has a remarkably original main section that will surely get you pricking up your ears! The slow movement, The Moon And I..., is certainly mysterious - and very beautiful. As for the final movement, Wild Night, well that holds a surprise which I won't divulge. (It's a musical first too, historically-speaking). I'll just say that if you were in any doubt about the Chinese inspiration behind the piece, you won't be after hearing this part of it! Yes, Haas certainly had a sense of humour. (There's more evidence for that in the rather inebriated-sounding second movement of the Wind Quintet, Op.10 of 1929). This superb work should be in the repertory of most quartets, though I suspect I can guess why it probably won't be (as I'm sure you can too).

By the time of the delightfully quirky Radio Overture, Op.11 (1931, written in praise of radio and Marconi!), Haas's musical language had  clearly fully taken on board the neo-Classical spirit of the age. Anyone familiar with Stravinsky's works of the late 1920s and early 1930s will recognise a kinship here (especially when the voices enter) and the use of Stravinskyan motor rhythms, a small orchestra with piano and jazz elements also reminds me of Haas's countryman, Bohuslav Martinů. However, the folk-elements derived from Janáček can still be heard and so can elements of Jewish traditional music - especially as the piece proceeds. All these influences cohere into a single, individual style that is highly winning. The piece is good-natured, elegant and full of memorable ideas. (For a further taste of Pavel Haas writing in this neo-Classical style, there's also his Suite for Piano, 0p.13 (1935)).

In the years just prior to Nazi Germany's invasion of his country, Haas hit the big time with his 1936 tragicomic opera, The Charlatan, Op.14. The appeal of this music can be heard from the six-movement orchestral suite devised in advance to draw in the punters. The music again integrates Janáček-style repetition and re-orientation of short folk-like phrases with Stravinsky-style neo-Classical cool - a winning combination that is unique to the music of Pavel Haas. The score abounds in sharply-defined, clearly-scored ideas. My favourite movements of the suite are the Con moto third movement and the Gaiamente fourth movement, where folk-melodies are repeated against a changing background (continuing the line of descent from our old friend, Glinka!), and the mysterious nocturne that is the Andante con moto fifth movement. The Gaiamente movement is also wonderful for conjuring up all the fun of the fair. I can see no reason why this suite shouldn't become popular with enough exposure.

In the year the Nazis completed their takeover of Czechoslovakia, Pavel Haas completed his masterly Suite for oboe and piano, Op.17. The high jinx of of the finale of the Second String Quartet, the Radio Overture and the opera suite have vanished, understandably. The three movements are marked Furioso, Con fuoco and Moderato. The first two markings might suggest a protesting spirit though the Furioso, in particular, is not what you would expect from such a marking, instead striking a dignified tone of sadness. The melodic material seems to draw strongly on the composer's Czech Jewish roots. The elegance, beauty and deep feeling of such writing is moving. The Con fuoco movement is just as exceptional, with its sudden and dramatic shifts of mood, its fine melodies for the oboe and its richly imagined piano writing. The closing Moderato sounds deeply sad for all the grace of its expression. It is very beautiful. Though direct in its emotional effect, this is subtle music that repays close listening. It's hard though not to associate the anguish and sorrow with how the composer must have felt at the turn of events at the time. This work should be a regular item in chamber recitals.

In 1940 Haas began writing a symphony. He didn't, however, manage to complete it as he was seized by the Nazis in 1941. The Czech musicologist Zdeněk Zouhar made a realisation of the Symphony  in the 1970s from what seems to have been a largely complete first movement, a sketch of the second movement and a fragment of the third. Had he lived, this supreme craftsman would have made added what only a true composer can add, but Zouhar's realisation is a fine attempt and reveals what a powerful piece the Symphony was about to be. It is hardly surprising that the gripping first movement - a sombre meditation on the fate of his nation - makes considerable use of Czech chorales and synagogue chants. The second movement is a dark scherzo which draws on that side of Haas's music that was formerly humorous and parodic and turns it into bitter satire. The Nazi Horst Wessel Song and (for mysterious reasons) Chopin's Funeral March are distorted sarcastically. The third movement begins heavy with foreboding and sadness as a chant-like melody unfolds against a mysterious, twinkling background before building towards a cry of agony...at which point it breaks off...

Haas was taken to the Nazi concentration camp of Terezin. When the Nazis made their notorious propaganda film to try and fool the world about conditions in the camp, one of the scenes showed prisoners performing a piece that Pavel Haas had composed there. He wrote several pieces in Terezin, some of which have been lost, others rescued. The man's ability to continue to write great music whilst living in one of the circles of Hell is remarkable - and the two pieces I'm about to introduce are certainly great pieces. One of them is that very piece from the propaganda film: Study for String Orchestra (1943). This piece begins full of the dancing rhythms of Czech symphonic music and shows a fresh command of the art of counterpoint. Suddenly though the vigour stops...a painful moment...and music full of poignant harmonies wanders in, as if lost in grief. It is a deeply haunting passage and Haas builds on it impressively as he cleverly begins the dance again, initially still troubled by the experiences of the preceding passage. The dance gradually regains the life-affirming energy of its former self but refuses to end on a major-key chord. Haas must have still had hope in is heart, which makes his ultimate fate all the more painful. Still, this Study lives on and if is life-affirming and it is Pavel Haas.

The other piece is the Four Songs on Chinese Poetry, composed in 1944 - the year of Haas's death in the gas chamber. The songs are I Heard the Wild Geese, In the Bamboo Grove, The Moon Is Far from Home and A Sleepless Night. Here the composer goes back to his roots in Janáček - with the style of vocal writing (for baritone) and the use of ostinatos in the piano part strongly recalling his teacher. These are among the greatest of Czech songs, very inward-looking and full of poignant yearning for home. You may spot the discreet use of ones of the Czech chorales also used in the Symphony.

The growth of interest in the music of Pavel Haas is sure to continue as more and more people grasp the power of his work.

From Bohemia's woods and fields

For a composer so widely known as Dvorak, it's surprisingly how unfamiliar much of his extensive output is. Even a work as fresh and likeable as the Symphony No.5 in F major, Op.76 is something of a rarity these days in concert halls and on the airwaves. 

This symphony has one of the most magical openings of any symphony. The first movement gets under way with the orchestra imitating the sound of Czech bagpipes - two clarinets playing the folk-like, triad-based tune, supported by horns and low strings. Violins enter like a warm breeze then shimmer away while flutes take over the tune. It creates an idyllic pastoral vision. Into it, wearing sturdy boots, strides a bold, dancing tune with something of the character of one of the composer's robust Slavonic Dances. With this theme Dvorak builds a satisfying transition to the second subject, which is a lyrical, rather Schumann-like string melody. This new theme then alternates with loveable tripping scale figures on woodwinds and dramatic chords before the exposition ends in a romantic glow. The development section doesn't seem to me to dip in quality. Its Schubert-like use of beautiful modulations to bear the main subject on a glowing journey is attractive, as are the many new colours that bring fresh magic to this section. An extra-special moment comes when the horns initiate the recapitulation above pulsing woodwinds and warm strings and restore the Idyllic. The climax that crowns the recapitulation is also superb.

The two central movements are somewhat lighter. The Andante is chiefly concerned with the singing of its wistful main melody - a gentle, romantic theme to which Dvorak keeps bringing fresh harmonies and changing colours. Winds and pizzicato strings start the charming, smiling middle section, whose tune is a variant of the main theme. The reprise of the first section is brought to an impressive climax. A bridge passage then carries us into...

...the thoroughly enjoyable and light-spirited Scherzo - a colourful and lively Slavonic dance with a romantic climax. The Trio section is a Schumann-like exchange between winds and strings. 

The fine sonata-form Finale is where most of the really serious business of the symphony is done. It largely forsakes the pastoral for the dramatic. The main theme strides in sternly and purposefully and begins to shape the movement. A strange and fascinating tolling passage and a lyrical second subject provide points of contrast but it is the motifs drawn from the main theme - both melodic and rhythmic - that power most of the action. The development section creates a tense atmosphere before a tragic climax brings us to the point of recapitulation. The ending, however, is a mellow sunset followed by a heroic sprint to the finish. 

I vote for more outings for this symphony!