Blitzstein’s Chamber Music from Other Minds

from the Amazon.com Web page for this recording

A little less than a month ago, when I went over to attend the two-piano recital given by Maki Namekawa and Dennis Russell Davies and presented by Other Minds, I found myself fingering one of the Other Minds CDs being sold. The title of the album was First Life and it was devoted entirely to early chamber music composed by Marc Blitzstein. While this album had been released back in May of 2009, it piqued my curiosity enough to make its way onto the queue I maintain for articles about recordings that I plan to write.

The description of the album on the Amazon.com Web page is a bit on the gratuitous side. It begins by framing Blitzstein in terms of “his legendary political musical The Cradle Will Rock and his famous opera Regina,” and then goes on to cite him as “the only American to study composition with both Arnold Schoenberg and Nadia Boulanger.” While I do not dispute any of these claims, I feel it fair to note that my own generation probably knew him best for translating Bertolt Brecht’s libretto for Kurt Weill’s The Threepenny Opera. While Blitzstein’s translation smoothed over many of Brecht’s rough edges, its Off-Broadway performance during the late Fifties at the Theater de Lys in Greenwich Village was an undisputed smash hit, in the wake of which “Mack the Knife” (Blitzstein’s translation of the opening song, “Die Moritat von Mackie Messer”), achieved its own hit status through recordings made by Louis Armstrong, Ella Fitzgerald, and (shudder) Bobby Darin.

Ironically, the Selected works list of compositions on Blitzstein’s Wikipedia page does not list anything composed prior to 1928. First Life, on the other hand, presents an account of pieces composed between 1927 and 1932, none of which show up at all on the Wikipedia page. Interestingly, the chronological order respects the two genres included on the album. The first three are solo piano compositions played by Sarah Cahill: the 1927 sonata, a piece called “Piano Percussion Music,” composed in 1929, and a scherzo composed in 1930. The remainder of the album has the Del Sol String Quartet performing two pieces, the 1930 string quartet and the 1932 serenade.

None of these pieces deserve to languish in oblivion. They are all technically adept and frequently witty. There are any number of ways (both political and sexual) that would identify Blitzstein as an “outsider.” Nevertheless, the prevailing rhetoric on this album is one of sociable geniality. It is not enough that this album deserves more circulation. It is long time that people like yours truly should have an opportunity to listen to this music played in recital!