Steffen Schleiermacher - Viennese School: Teachers and Followers: Anton Webern (2005)

Composer and pianist Steffen Schleiermacher has delivered a number of useful surveys on CD of twentieth century musical "schools" and sub-genres for various labels since the first one, The Bad Boys!, appeared on Hat Hut in 1994. The title for MDG's The Viennese School -- Teachers and Followers: Anton Webern is a little confusing. As a study of composers who directly studied with Webern, Webern is presumably the only "teacher" involved. Additionally, what this makes clear is that despite the slavish adulation serial composers of the 1950s held for what they perceived as Webern's approach, those who studied under Webern only absorbed it in varying degrees and, as in the case of the Roland Leich piece heard here, not at all. So the designation "followers" does not exactly fit either -- perhaps Boulez and Stockhausen, neither of whom directly studied with Webern, should be viewed as Webern's "followers"; his students clearly went in their own directions.

The most valuable aspect of these collections is Schleiermacher's determined and dogged research into little-known composers who figured in such movements. Some might feel that one name conspicuously missing is that of Luigi Dallapiccola. This owes to the common misconception that Dallapiccola directly studied with Webern. While they met, briefly in Vienna in 1942, Dallapiccola had already forged his particular assimilation of serial technique and the contact made then was more of a courtesy call. These composers -- Stefan Wolpe, Romanian Philipp Herscovici, Austrian-born British composer Leopold Spinner, Dutchman Fré Focke, Americans Arnold Elston and Roland Leich, and another Briton, Humphrey Searle -- all actually studied with Webern, though some for as little as a few weeks. Of this group, Herscovici and Spinner seem to have derived the strongest example from Webern's own music, with the Frühlingsblumen and Klavierstücke of the perpetually hounded Herscovici representing the more impressive absorption of the two. Very little of Herscovici's music appears to have survived as he was constantly trying to elude capture from fascist forces in Europe; ironically, he spent most of his career working in the Soviet Union. Focké's Tombeau de Vincent van Gogh demonstrates that the Dutch composer did absorb Webern's love for concision -- none of its 20 pieces exceed 1:20 in length, and most last under a minute -- but stylistically his music is closer to the expressionist language of Schoenberg. Arnold Elston's Rondo (1937) is a standout -- it applies the style of Webern to the swinging rhythms of jazz, and as such, is very successful; Elston certainly would not be the last to try his hand at such a hybrid! The most original sounding of the works here, other than Webern's own familiar Variations, Op. 27, included as example, are those by Humphrey Searle and Stefan Wolpe. Searle's Threnos and Toccata (1948) apply atonal systemization to a Lisztian texture (in the Threnos) and to a steely, Prokofiev-like Toccata. Both are very good pieces, but the Toccata is too short. Wolpe studied with Webern in 1934, though like Dallapiccola his musical identity was already a known quantity by that time. Wolpe's Zemach Suite (1939), the principal piano piece of his Palestinian period, is certainly a great work, though its performance here is a little underpowered compared to that of David Holzman on Bridge; one wonders why it is included in the context of Webern.

Like all of Schleiermacher's compilations of this kind, MDG's The Viennese School -- Teachers and Followers: Anton Webern is a mixed bag and this one particularly so as the pilot work -- Variations, Op. 27 -- is rather sloppily played. MDG's recording doesn't seem to help much there, as it falls below comfortable listening levels in sections marked pianissimo though it seems all right elsewhere. For the obscure composers other than Webern, this is a good resource -- perhaps the choice of a shorter Wolpe composition would have left more room for them.