HUGO DISTLER CD REVIEW
posted by James Reel
Written for Fanfare magazine:
DISTLER Harpsichord Concerto; Music for Knight Bluebeard * Huguette Dreyfus (hc); Martin Stephani, cond; German Bach Soloists; Stefan Malzew, cond; New Brandenburg Phil; Katharina Wingen (sop); Stefan Livland (ten) * MUSICAPHON 56860 (hybrid multichannel SACD)
Hugo Distler was a very accessible and important composer of German choral music and organ music from the early 1930s to the early 1940s; war-related despair led him to suicide in 1942, at age 34. His professional positions involved choral conducting and the teaching of that practice, so he had little motivation or opportunity to write purely instrumental music, other than organ works for church use. The Harpsichord Concerto that occupies the first half of this disc suggests that he might have become a compelling though not original voice in midcentury German orchestral music.
Its first movement is a typical example of the period’s Neoclassicism, more motororic and percussive than, say, Frank Martin’s spidery Harpsichord Concerto. The slow movement is particularly redolent of Hindemith in its harmonic structure and melodic intervals. The third, variations on a theme by Samuel Scheidt, begins in a gently piquant style that would later be associated with Rodrigo’s Fantasia para un gentilhombre, but soon reverts to the engaging sewing-machine manner of the first movement.
The string orchestra, as recorded, is large enough to swamp the soloist occasionally, and its tone is unnecessarily harsh at times, especially at the beginning of the second movement. The reason is something found only in the small print: This is a DSD surround-sound remastering of a recording made in 1964, and while there’s no obvious gimmickry going on in the rear channels, the basic sonics remain hampered by the limitations of the original production (not exactly state-of-the-art in its time). That said, this remains a performance of commitment and vitality, though not perfect instrumental balance.
The incidental music for the play Knight Bluebeard comes from a 2002 concert performance, and includes scattered applause at the ends of a couple of internal tracks, plus a small amount of ambient audience noise between numbers. Distler wrote the score for an ill-fated 1940 production of Ludwig Tieck’s happily nonsensical 1797 treatment of Perrault’s Bluebeard tale, and gave the harpsichord a constant role in the proceedings. Partly, that’s because Distler recycled a few bits and pieces of the concerto into the new score, which involves winds as well as strings, plus vocalists in a couple of brief numbers. The movements are of variable interest, but the slow music again shows the greatest debt to Hindemith. The performance is certainly able, but not enough to persuade anyone that this is a neglected masterpiece. Here, the ensemble is recorded in an over-resonant space that slightly dulls the impact of the wide frequency range (at least we get all the overtones of the harpsichord and triangle).
This disc is strongly recommended for the concerto. James Reel
