George Hunka

Tales of two cities: Vienna / Philadelphia

Category: Music

  • Wallets out

    It is a rare day that I can solicit donations to organizations in both Vienna and Philadelphia, and this is the day.

    The staff of radio klassik Stephansdom.

    Tomorrow, March 13, radio klassik Stephansdom will be holding its second fundraising drive of the year — and this month the theme is spring, the season. The Vienna-based station is going all out tomorrow with special offers and programming (Beethoven’s Pastoral symphony and Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring will be shoehorned in there, I’m sure), along with a chance for you to call in to your favorite hosts, not to mention a report from Christoph Wellner and the ongoing success of the campaign. I’ve written about radio klassik Stephansdom before, so I hope you’ll step up and donate here. (Though if you don’t subscribe to international calling or don’t know German, you may want to forego the call-in.)

    The Pen & Pencil Club of Philadelphia.

    Closer to home, the Pen & Pencil Club of Philadelphia, one of the nation’s oldest private press associations, has launched a GoFundMe page to cover a few pressing bills. In addition to this, the Club is seeking new members, and don’t let the fact that you don’t live in Philadelphia deter you — you’ll always be welcome when you drop by the city for a few days and want to enjoy a comfortable, gregarious drink with the gentlepeople of the press. You can donate here and learn more about the club here. I’ve written briefly about the Club before too.

  • Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen

    Gustav Mahler.

    In a passage that I quoted yesterday from his book Germania, Simon Winder mentions Gustav Mahler’s song “Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen” (1901-1902), based on the poem by Friedrich Rückert. He called it “the greatest” of 19th century German songs, “a work of such richness that it can only be listened to under highly controlled circumstances.” He is off by a year or two, but let’s be open-minded. It won’t hurt.

    It would be chary of me not to post it here today, so control (highly) your circumstances and enjoy this 1989 performance of the song by Jessye Norman, accompanied by Zubin Mehta and the New York Philharmonic. The original poem and a translation follows the video.

    Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen
    Friedrich Rückert

    Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen,
    Mit der ich sonst viele Zeit verdorben,
    Sie hat so lange nichts von mir vernommen,
    Sie mag wohl glauben, ich sei gestorben!
    Es ist mir auch gar nichts daran gelegen,
    Ob sie mich für gestorben hält,
    Ich kann auch gar nichts sagen dagegen,
    Denn wirklich bin ich gestorben der Welt.
    Ich bin gestorben dem Weltgetümmel,
    Und ruh’ in einem stillen Gebiet!
    Ich leb’ allein in meinem Himmel,
    In meinem Lieben, in meinem Lied!

    I am lost to the world
    English translation by Richard Stokes

    I am lost to the world
    With which I used to waste much time;
    It has for so long known nothing of me,
    It may well believe that I am dead.
    Nor am I at all concerned
    If it should think that I am dead.
    Nor can I deny it,
    For truly I am dead to the world.
    I am dead to the world’s tumult
    And rest in a quiet realm!
    I live alone in my heaven,
    In my love, in my song!

    Translation © Richard Stokes, author of The Book of Lieder (Faber, 2005)

  • Dufourt / Nonken

    Hitting the streets tomorrow, Hugues Dufourt: L’Origine du monde, a new album of piano and percussion works by the French composer, is already garnering rave reviews. In the March issue of Gramophone, Arnold Whittall calls the performance of the title work, inspired by Gustave Courbet’s controversial 1866 painting now at the Musée d’Orsay, “an exceptionally assured and spellbinding demonstration of Dufourt’s uncompromising creative ambitions. … While Marilyn Nonken is the tirelessly resourceful pianist throughout, there are also vital contributions from the New York University Contemporary Music Ensemble, conducted by Jonathan Haas.” Andy Hamilton in the British music magazine The Wire called it “a superb release. … In the works assembled here, physicality of performance is inseparable from musical sensuousness.”

    Divine Art’s release completes Marilyn’s informal, indeed unintended, trilogy of spectral music for piano, following her 2005 double-CD Tristan Murail: The Complete Piano Music and her 2012 Voix Voilées (this latter also includes her extraordinary performance of Dufourt’s Erlkönig), all of which garnered top-flight reviews. After all, she did write the book on the subject. The CD booklet contains an excellent essay by Will Mason on this music to get you up to speed, and the album will be available tomorrow on CD from Amazon, as well as streaming on a variety of outlets, including Apple Classical. Bon appétit!

  • Sunday CD: Seelentrost

    Among my recent enthusiasms has been the music of Heinrich Schütz, a prolific composer of primarily church music who flourished in German lands in the 17th century, during and just after the Thirty Years’ War. (As his career progressed, he was forced to compose for smaller and smaller ensembles — the result of the war’s decimation of the local population.)

    There’s no shortage of recordings of his work, despite his relative marginalization anywhere but in early music circles. But in its February issue Gramophone bestows a laurel or two on Seelentrost (Perfect Noise), the debut album by soprano Isabel Schicketanz. Subtitled “The sound of inner life in Heinrich Schütz’ time,” her program features work not only by Schütz but also by many of his students, including the recovery of some fine work by Sophie Elisabeth (1613-1676).

    Schicketanz plumbs the spiritual depths exemplified by these composers’ immersion in the Christian religion and in early Baroque practice with intent and unerring focus and power (as products of a Protestant theology, the language here is a Lutheran German rather than a Catholic Latin — without this, no German Enlightenment as I described the other day); her coda in the final minute of Adam Krueger’s “Der Liebe Macht herrscht Tag und Nacht” sends shivers down my spine.  Her accompanists are themselves subtle and precise, and Dr. Oliver Geisler’s liner notes provide an incisive and informative introduction to this obscure work:

    Speaking of programme conception: with the works on this recording, Isabel Schicketanz takes a path that first leads us listeners into darkness, letting us explore the shadow regions of the soul. A second group of works, from Heinrich Schütz’s “Ich harrete des Herren” (“I waited patiently for the Lord”), portrays a person who lives and loves, who has tasted all aspects of life and can pass on these experiences (of life and faith). The third and final part begins with Heinrich Alberts “Dass alle Menschen sterben” (“That all people die”). The certainty of death is expressed, however, with the promise of coming salvation. A certain serenity can be heard, an inner smile and light that is built on deeper insights into life and the soul.

    You can listen to the album through many streaming services, including Apple Classical; you can also hear it on YouTube, but for cryin’ out loud, the delicate work of Schicketanz and her colleagues demands better reproduction than your MacBook will provide. The CD is available from Challenge Records or perhaps an e-tailer near you.

    For a deeper dive, the New York Times‘ Anthony Rommasini has more on Schütz here.

  • Sound all around

    Marilyn Nonken. Photo: Ventiko.

    This Friday night, November 15, at 7:30 pm, my lovely wife Marilyn Nonken will take to the stage at the DiMenna Center for Classical Music and present Piano 360, a program of new and recent immersive musical works “surrounding the audience with a spatial audio ring of speakers,” according to the DiMenna Center’s page for this event. On the program are new compositions by Elizabeth Hoffman (which includes a few texts by yours truly), Ellen Fishman, and Natasha Barrett, as well as contemporary masterpieces by Alvin Lucier, Hugues Dufourt, and Jonathan Harvey.

    Tickets for this event are available here; the DiMenna Center is at 450 West 37th Street here in New York. We’ll hope to see you there.