Photograph of Ernst Krenek at the piano on the cover of the recording begin discussed (courtesy of Naxos of America)
The pace at which Toccata Classics has been recording the music of Ernst Krenek has been painstakingly slow. The British label seems to have a plan for organizing their releases according to different genres. However, as of this writing, the only genre to have been given a complete account is that of piano concertos, which required only two CDs and was completed when the second CD was released in April of 2017, about a year after the first CD was released.
The very first Krenek album from Toccata surfaced much earlier, in July of 2015, during my Examiner.com days, under the title of Ernst Krenek Piano Music, Volume One. The pianist was Stanislav Khristenko. The description of the back of the jewel case described the release as the “first extended survey of the piano music of Ernst Krenek.” This claim made me curious enough about the scope of that survey that I checked out the list of Krenek’s compositions on Grove Music Online. I discovered that he had written seven piano sonatas between 1919 (Opus 2 in E-flat major) to 1988 (Opus 240), along with twenty additional piano pieces.
At the beginning of this month, the second volume in this series was finally released. Like the first volume it includes only a single sonata, Opus 121 (the fifth), composed in 1950. (The sonata on the first volume was Opus 114, the fourth, composed about two years earlier. That volume also includes the Opus 120, entitled “George Washington Variations.”)
Most of the second volume explores Krenek’s talents as a miniaturist, both early in his career in Europe and later after he had acquired American citizenship. The earliest of these is the Opus 13a Little Suite, composed in 1922. The full title in German is Eine kleine Suite von Stücken über denselbigen Choral, verschiedenen Charakters (a little suite of pieces based on same chorale, in different characters). The “same chorale” refers to Opus 13, consisting of a toccata and a chaconne both based on the chorale theme for the hymn “Ja ich glaub’ an Jesum Christum” (yes, I believe in Jesus Christ). Taken together, Opus 13 and Opus 13a serve up a fascinatingly refracted reflection on Johann Sebastian Bach, not only in the forms of the Opus 13 movements but also in Opus 13a beginning with an allemande, a sarabande, and a gavotte. Nevertheless, Krenek’s interest in the influence of American dance bands surfaces in the final movement, which is a foxtrot.
The other early composition is the Opus 26 set of two suites composed in 1924. All of the movements of both suites are labeled only by tempo markings, rather than referring to dance forms. Like the Opus 13a suite, the movements show Krenek’s individual approach to atonality. He had not been influenced by Arnold Schoenberg but, instead, by the textbook Grundlagen des linearen Kontrapunkts (foundations of linear counterpoint) by Ernst Kurth. While these movements do not draw upon familiar forms as a point of departure, there is still a recognizable rhetoric of playfulness that distracts the listener from any concerns about the lack of a tonal center.
The final composition of this second release is the Opus 168 collection of six “Vermessene” (measurements), composed in 1958. By this time Krenek was living in Los Angeles and had cultivated a friendship with Igor Stravinsky. This was a time when Stravinsky was getting interested in serial composition; and he may have been drawn to Krenek because the latter had chosen a path different from that of Arnold Schoenberg. The Opus 168 pieces are, again, miniatures; but they reveal a voice that would not be confused with those of Schoenberg and his student Anton Webern. They also would not be confused with Stravinsky, but this was a time when Stravinsky showed little interest in writing for solo piano.
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