Sony’s Fromm Collection: Ernst Krenek

Fritz Eschen’s photograph of Ernst Krenek for the original cover of the recording being discussed

The fifth CD in Sony Classical’s ten-CD box set of the Twentieth Century Composers Series of recordings presents two compositions by Ernst Krenek. The first of these is his Opus 161 “Sestina,” composed in 1957 for soprano and eight instruments. The soprano is Bethany Beardslee, and Krenek himself conducts. This is followed by Opus 93, settings of excerpts from the Latin text of the Book of Lamentations, performed by the Dresdner Kreuzchor, the boys’ choir of the Kreuzkirche in Dresden, Germany, conducted by Martin Flämig. Both of these compositions last a little less than twenty minutes.

Writing about Krenek is no easy matter. I always seem to begin with a sentence that I have been repeating ever since my Examiner.com days:

Krenek may have the questionable honor of being the most prolific composer in history whose name is unrecognized by just about everyone.

Indeed, in spite of the size of his catalog (suggested by the above opus numbers), Krenek may be best remembered as the first person approached by Alma Mahler to prepare the material for her late husband’s tenth symphony for performance. The symphony had five movements, and Krenek limited himself to the first and third movements.

My experiences with Krenek’s music in performance have been limited but somewhat fortuitous. When I lived in Santa Barbara, my piano teacher was married to a baritone with a great interest in performing Krenek’s art songs. During a later stint in Los Angeles, I had the good fortune to see the Long Beach Opera perform Jonny spielt auf (Jonny plays), whose title character is a black jazz fiddler. The good news is that all of these were engaging beyond my expectations. (As if to underscore my self-quote, that performance is not mentioned on the Wikipedia pages for either Long Beach Opera or Jonny spielt auf!)

The bad news is that the Krenek selections in the Sony collection are nowhere near as engaging. Sadly, Sony itself may be at the heart of the problem. These are settings in which the text can only be apprehended with printed assistance, and no such printed content has been provided by Sony. My guess is that Biblical scholars would be able to fend for themselves with the excerpts from Lamentations, but there is absolutely no information about the source text for “Sestina.” Indeed, it takes very focused listening simply to recognize that the text probably is in German.

Both of the pieces were composed after Krenek took an interest in Arnold Schoenberg’s twelve-tone technique. Unfortunately, there are signs that Krenek was more drawn to the mathematics of the technique than to Schoenberg’s approaches to making music. (Those familiar with the technique are probably also familiar with the twelve-by-twelve “magic square” of the integers from 1 to 12 that represent all “permissible” forms of a given twelve-tone row.) Later in life Krenek would take a similar interest in Fibonacci numbers.

At best one can say that both compositions on this CD are performed with a pristine sense of abstraction. However, even when Krenek himself is conducting, there is little, if any, sense of musical expressiveness emerging from that abstraction. To be fair, however, this album need not be taken as representative of Krenek’s work. As I observed back in May of 2017, there is no shortage of expressiveness in the serial approaches to his later piano concertos; and, when it comes to the rhythms of old Vienna, Krenek’s nostalgia is as convincing as Schoenberg’s.