New Monteiro Album Showcases Korngold

Cover of the album being discussed (courtesy of violinist Bruno Monteiro)

Those that have been following this site for some time probably know by now of recordings released by Etcetera Records that present the efforts of violinist Bruno Monteiro. He has cultivated an engaging interest in both composers and compositions that have received relatively little attention. His discography now yields a generous number of albums discussed on this site, all of which he has recorded with two “partners in crime,” pianist João Paulo Santos and cellist Miguel Rocha. They have enabled his preparing “programs” for his albums that accommodate both trio and duo performances.

This was the case for his most recent prior release, which presented seldom recorded (and performed?) compositions by Ernest Chausson and Eugène Ysaÿe. However, for all the virtues of the content he has presented, the distribution of the albums themselves have often involved “speed bumps.” On the occasion of that album’s release, I informed readers that the Etcetera Web page provided the most reliable source for acquiring the album. However, that source applied only to a physical CD, which had to be shipped from Belgium after payment in euros.

Monteiro has now produced his next album since that past release. This one is devoted entirely to the music of Erich Wolfgang Korngold, a composer that has sustained my curiosity and attention for as long as I have been writing these articles about making music and the act of listening to it. Those interested in possessing this new release, however, will find that their options are limited. As of this writing, the only site taking orders is another Belgian source, La Boîte à la Musique, whose Web page again requires payment in euros. Ironically, at least one site, Presto Music, has a Web page that is only processing pre-orders for a release due for this coming September 29!

Mind you, this site tries to prioritize the music itself over any of the obstacles of marketing. As is the case with most of the past releases by Monteiro, this new album presents a trio performance along with duo compositions for piano performing with either violin or cello. The trio is of particular importance, because it is Korngold’s Opus 1.

What is important is that the trio is far from his first major undertaking, even though he was twelve years old when he completed it in 1910. The previous year he had played his cantata Gold for Gustav Mahler, who declared him a “musical genius.” Furthermore, when he was still eleven, he composed a ballet, Der Schneemann (the snowman), which had a successful performance at the Vienna Court Opera. The trio was also preceded by his first piano sonata in D minor, whose final movement was a passacaglia.

One might think that, with such a track record, Opus 1 would emerge as “show-off” music. However, the attentive listener is likely to be impressed by the discipline engaged by the composer in each of the four movements. Granted, the Scherzo (second movement) is playful; but Korngold establishes a playful rhetoric that is consistently disciplined. Similarly, the following Larghetto is poignant without venturing into the more excessive darker regions that one might encounter in one of Mahler’s slow movements. Indeed, this is a trio that could share a full program with one (if not two) of the piano trios composed by Ludwig van Beethoven.

Of the two duos, I have to confess that my favorite is the one for cello, which is the final track. This is actually an arrangement of a baritone solo aria in Korngold’s Opus 12 opera Die Tote Stadt (the dead city). Unless I am mistaken, I have seen this opera once on television and once on the stage; and I was captivated by both of those performances. What fascinated me was how roughly half of this three-act opera could take place in a dreamworld, as if the overall narrative amounts to escape from reality.

Central to that narrative is an aria (also known as the “Tanslied des Pierrot”) sung by Fritz, who is basically a Pierrot character, almost as if he has one foot in the dreamworld and the other in reality. The text of the song begins “Mein Sehnen, mein Wähnen” (my yearning, my dreaming), whose nouns reflect those two opposing “worlds.” I sometimes wonder whether the character of Fritz may have been inspired by the Harlequin character in Richard Strauss’ Opus 60 opera Ariadne auf Naxos, in which the dreamworld of Harlequin confronts the reality of the “bourgeois gentilhomme” that financed the performance of the Ariadne story.

Sadly, the booklet does not account for who arranged Korngold’s aria for cello and piano. The one copy of the score provided by IMSLP states “Transcribed for Cello & Piano by Orfeo Mandozzi after the Korngold and Kreisler version for the 9th of Nov. Vienna 2014.” (Presumably, Kreisler arranged the vocal line for violin, and Korngold then reworked it for cello.) With such a “pedigree” it would be reasonable to believe that, even in this cello-piano version, the impact of this music resides in the narrative behind it. As a result I was more than a little disappointed that the booklet notes for this new Korngold album paid so little attention to this brief but thoroughly engaging episode from such an extraordinary opera.

The other duo is far more substantial, the Opus 6 sonata for violin and piano. From a structural point of view, one might view this sonata as a “response” to the “call” of the Opus 1 trio. Both are four-movement compositions. Both provide convincing accounts of Korngold’s richly expressive rhetoric. What may be of greatest interest is the extended approach to the Scherzo movement, which may have been inspired by some of Mahler’s more adventurous scherzo structures.