Ernst Krenek, such a discovery!

[springrite]

To get a large discount my friend!

With the size of your orders, you should get wholesale prices. I should tag my order on your coat tail. Even with shipping it should be better than what I usually get.

[Harry]

With the size of your orders, you should get wholesale prices. I should tag my order on your coat tail. Even with shipping it should be better than what I usually get.

Well said dear friend, from the big country were is enough room for me and my cd's!
Although there is no tail on my coat!
But its true, I get all my orders with big discounts, as being a very good customer.

[Thom]

I just wonder Harry, when you order that much cd's and they start coming in, is there enough time to listen to them seriously, and do you listen to them more than once? I do not own that much cd's - perhaps 1100 or 1200 - but I have listened to them all and i keep coming back to mnany of them. By the way I do not want to pry, just being curious.

X

[Harry]

I just wonder Harry, when you order that much cd's and they start coming in, is there enough time to listen to them seriously, and do you listen to them more than once? I do not own that much cd's - perhaps 1100 or 1200 - but I have listened to them all and i keep coming back to many of them. By the way I do not want to pry, just being curious.

X

Well I told it many times, but for you I do it again my friend.
I listen to all cd's at least four times seriously, that 's the only way I can listen
I keep coming back to a lot of them, but I am not bothered by the fact, that maybe some of them will never see the inside of my player again.
I love new discoveries, and that is one of the reasons why I buy that many cd's.

[Thom]

Thank you Harry, sorry but I didn't read it before. I agree that one of the joys of music is sailing into uncharted waters and discovering new wonders. Another is deepening one's understanding by coming back over and over again to the same music. It never ends really.

X

[Harry]

Well I will certainly do that with Pettersson!

[Thom]

and again I concur. Pettersson's 7th is to me one of the most moving pieces of music I know.

X

[Harry]

and again I concur. Pettersson's 7th is to me one of the most moving pieces of music I know.

X

Yes, you could say that aloud, devastatingly so!
With every symphony my addiction gets worse.

[Varg]

Harry, could you tell me more about the Krenek symphonies? I know you are, like me, much addicted to Pettersson; any similarities between these two?

[Harry]

Harry, could you tell me more about the Krenek symphonies? I know you are, like me, much addicted to Pettersson; any similarities between these two?

In Symphonic structure they are yes. Krenek has the same message, but in a totally different way, but not less in quality or attraction.
If you love Pettersson, my guess is, you will like Krenek also. And they are coming cheap from CPO.
Krenek is a very good orchestrator, and writes in a very economic way, something I heard recently again in his complete SQ, tonal and very intense like Pettersson, and as rewarding.

[Varg]

In Symphonic structure they are yes. Krenek has the same message, but in a totally different way, but not less in quality or attraction.
If you love Pettersson, my guess is, you will like Krenek also. And they are coming cheap from CPO.
Krenek is a very good orchestrator, and writes in a very economic way, something I heard recently again in his complete SQ, tonal and very intense like Pettersson, and as rewarding.

Then i must give him a listen. I'll come back to you about it. Thanks!

[The new erato]

Investigate without delay the Lamentations of Jeremiah (on Globe eg). There are other admirers of this mighty choral work on the board.

[bhodges]

Investigate without delay the Lamentations of Jeremiah (on Globe eg). There are other admirers of this mighty choral work on the board.

Absolutely an amazing work.  I was going to recommend the Harmonia Mundi recording with the Berlin RIAS Kammerchor and Marcus Creed, but it's out of print and the asking prices are a little on the high side.  I have heard the piece live, but no other recordings. 

--Bruce

[mjwal]

Krenek is a great composer - as Glenn Gould always insisted - whose work is however so large that it is inevitably uneven. Apart from the piano sonatas, there are wonderful piano pieces by Madge (hilarious George Washington Variations) & chamber works by the Trio Recherche on CPO, very recommendable. Then there is Krenek himself conducting the NDR symphony orchestra in various fascinating works on EMI. Essential  is the Reisebuch aus den österreichischen Alpen, preferably in the historical recording by Patzak, but there are others more recent: it is a kind of socio-political Winterreise of the 1930s, if you can imagine that. I still have to discover his Lieder in all their vast range. One amazing work, which I think has still not made it to CD, is his Instant Remembered, settings for soprano & chamber orchestra of various poems interspersed with texts  (by Wittgenstein & Rilke, for instance) spoken by Krenek himself on tape. I attended a concert by the Ensemble Modern in Frankfurt with this years ago, unforgettable, so if it ever gets recorded...

[Cato]

Allow me to introduce the First Symphony to you!

It has 9 movements (?!?) played without a break, and the orchestra has a Hindemithian flavor to it.  The opening 2 movements offer a swift wandering theme which leads to much Sturm und Drang.  But there is an ironical inconclusiveness about it all, and it finally winds down to a gloomy thrid section, which might remind one of the opening of Schoenberg's Pelleas und Melisande.  Eventually this gives way to 2 rather spritely galloping movements, humorous, but heavily humorous in a stereotypically Teutonic fashion. 

A contrapuntal fantasy of sorts with attempts at climaxes follows: snare drums roar in and one feels that a huge, dramatic climax is about to occur, but it doesn't!  Krenek teases the listener constantly with these witty "almosts" and brings back a memory of the opening swirling theme.  The humor again seems to disappear into an even deeper gloom than before, with anxious conversations among the strings, clarinets, and other woodwinds.  A new dialogue in the woodwinds attempts to lighten the atmosphere but fails.  There is another build-up to a minor proclamation, but that also fades away into a very beautiful and mysterious part where the woodwinds sound very wistful.

This brings us to the 8th movement where the lower strings debate with bassoons and clarinets about snapping out of the gloom and mystery, and you think new energy is about to assert itself...but it doesn't!  The "wandering" opening re-appears full circle and starts a fugue which brings back the light-heartedness heard earlier.  Finally the orchestra proclaims a mighty ending in the 9th movement...but not quite!  The mysterious whimsy pops up again, and the work ends like Elmer Fudd: vewy vewy quietly!

All of this in 30 minutes     Krenek composed it at age 21 this while under the "guidance" of Franz Schreker.  A fun work, but also with its deeper moments.

[Dundonnell]

Um, Krenek! I don't quite know what to think about his music. He lived to be 91 and wrote a considerable amount of music in a variety of styles. I am afraid that I do find some of his later, serial works somewhat arid but the early symphonies from the 1920s(Nos.1-3) are certainly interesting exercises in a young man attempting to develop the symphonic concept in a post-Mahler Central European setting.

CPO performed a useful service in recording those three symphonies together with No.5 from 1949 but it is very odd that the company never got around to recording No.4 from 1947. CPO is a company which excels in presenting cycles of composers' works and the symphonies they have issued were recorded over ten years ago now!

(Oh, one other thing-how many people who live to be 91 publish an autobiography of 1,000 pages at the age of 52?? Apparently Krenek could be quite a difficult customer!)

[Cato]

I have just relistened to Krenek's Symphony #2 and would like to give you some thoughts on it.

I have two CD's, one on cpo with Takao Ukigaya conducting the Hannover Radio Orchestra (NDR) and one on Decca with the Leipzig Gewandhaus under Lothar Zagrosek.

Of interest are the notes to each: the Decca claims that in contrast to the "atonal" First Symphony ( a complete misnomer), the Second is "more convincing...and coherent in form."  Whereas the cpo musicologist claims the Second is "atonal" (again, a complete misnomer) and "so complex in form that it creates the auditory impression of amorphousness" defying analysis!

Krenek himself is quoted in both booklets, one from his notes for the American premiere in the 1940's (Decca) and one from Krenek's memoirs (cpo).  The composer has some slightly contradictory things to say about the work: in the notes for the American performance, he calls the work basically a Man vs. Nature conception: the opening "reminds me of the brewing mist at dawn, high in the mountains..."  with "the human element" represented as small in contrast.  "...(the) climaxes suggest... elemental energies."

However, in the memoirs we read that the symphony, at least in the first 2 movements, evokes "the image of a giant circling in his cage or cave...the first movement is full of his dreadful exertions to break through the walls..."  The afore-mentioned climaxes are now called "the cries of the poor souls in purgatory."

Certainly the work is not atonal any more than the Prokofiev Second or Third Symphonies: both booklets imply that the work is almost a Mahler Eleventh Symphony for three reasons: the Scherzo has a faint echo now and then of the scherzos of the Mahler Tenth, the last movement has two sections evoking the wandering motto theme which opens that work, and Krenek was about to marry Mahler's daughter when he composed this work.

The Hindemithian sound of the First Symphony is here replaced by a more traditional, large, post-Romantic sound, but via the modernism of the 1920's.  I occasionally hear whiffs of Busoni, and the second wandering unison theme mentioned in the last movement reminds me more of the finale to Schoenberg's Jacob's Ladder, a work however that Krenek could not have known.

Well worth your time is the Second Symphony: it is never boring, and you can never be sure where Krenek will take you next in his drama.

[Harry]

Thank you Cato, for this fine review!

[Cato]

Thank you Cato, for this fine review!

Certainly!  Anything to further interest in Krenek!

Coming soon: a translation of something highly interesting in Stockhausen's Spaceship!

[Dundonnell]

Members might be interested to know that on his website the conductor Alun Francis has a discography and that amongst the recordings he has made for CPO he lists-

Krenek's Symphony No.4 and the Concerto Grosso-recorded with the North German Radio Philharmonic, Hanover.

This is the missing so far unrecorded Krenek symphony

I wonder when CPO intend to release this recording?? Harry, do you know?

Also listed by Alun Francis is another CPO recording of Alfredo Casella's Symphony No.3 with the Cologne Radio Symphony Orchestra; also, so far, unreleased.