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Contents:
DDD 57:42 - Recorded: The Organ of the Reformierte Evanglische Kirche Küsnacht/Zurich, Switzerland
The composer Max Kuhn was born on 28 April 1896 – the year of Bruckner’s death, the year before Brahms’s – in Zurich, and he lived almost the whole of a long and active life in the vicinity of the city. After his school education he studied piano with Peter Fassbänder and organ with Fridolin Roth, and then from 1920 to 1921 was a student at the Zurich Conservatory. The influence of Ferruccio Busoni, who had spent a self-imposed exile in Zurich during World War I, was palpable at the Conservatory at this time. Kuhn studied conducting with Volkmar Andreae, a close friend of Busoni; counterpoint with Busoni’s pupil Philipp Jarnach; and composition with another Busoni pupil, Reinhold Laquai. Kuhn then spent five years, until 1926, in further studies in Vienna – becoming a pupil of Josef Hoffmann for piano, and of Richard Stöhr for counterpoint. By the time he returned to Switzerland, therefore, Kuhn was a highly qualified musician in several spheres; even so he went on in 1929 to take some conducting lessons from Felix Weingartner in Basel. From the 1920s onward, Kuhn was based in Küsnacht, near Zurich, as organist and choir director at the Catholic church. In 1928 he founded the ‘Choir for modern Music’ – later to be known, under its subsequent conductor, as the Zurich Chamber Choir. In 1940 Max Kuhn helped to found the Mozart Society of Zurich, and he remained working in Zurich for many years as a conductor, pianist and organist. He also taught piano and music theory, not only privately but, from 1956 to until his retirement in 1972, at the Zurich Music Academy. Kuhn was spoken of as one of those Swiss composers who made a bridge in their work between Spanish and Swiss music, and between the Protestant North and the Mediterranean warmth of the South. He certainly had an attachment to the music of Spain, and especially the Canary Islands, which gave rise to his Piano Variations (1967) and the piano concerto entitled Concierto de Tenerife (1962), both available on other Guild recordings. In 1991, at the venerable age of 94, Kuhn moved to Ascona, on the Swiss shore of Lake Maggiore, where he died three years later. According to the noted Swiss critic Willi Schuh, Kuhn’s was a ‘pronouncedly lyrical talent’, with songs and choral music occupying a place of importance in his output. Nevertheless he composed prolifically in a wide spectrum of genres, from operas to small piano pieces. Chris Walton has remarked that Kuhn ‘was rooted in the Swiss Protestant tradition’, but his musical language is an urbane synthesis of several 20th-century tendencies. Kuhn himself, in 1973, described the evolution of his musical language thus: ‘Before 1921, my works were rooted in traditional influences (Bach, Schubert, Wolf). The confrontation with Impressionism and the Second Viennese School and my encounter with Hindemith broadened my means of expression in matters of harmony and formal technique, and enabled me to go my own way (the use of extended tonality, polyphony, and linear counterpoint that takes into account the extended harmonic context)’. This CD concentrates on Kuhn’s instrumental music and songs; the instrumental works show his penchant for baroque stylization, often manifested in the genres of prelude and fugue or suite-like successions of pieces. They also demonstrate his resourcefulness and concision in mainly miniature forms. The Introduktion und Allegro (Rondo) for oboe and piano, composed in April 1959, is however a comparatively substantial diptych. The Introduktion evolves from a canonic dialogue of oboe and piano into a florid arioso, rising eventually to an impassioned climax. From here a short unaccompanied cadenza for the oboe leads into the Allegro, which is in the jig rhythm that Kuhn often favoured for finales. This, though, is more than a finale – it is the principal part of the work, a cheerful, elegant discourse enlivened by contrasting episodes, canonic writing and touches of fugato. In its continuous display of contrapuntal dexterity, its neo-classic wit and occasional crepuscular harmonic shading, this composition shows very clearly that Busoni – though not mentioned by Kuhn in the quotation above – must have remained a potent example for him. The selection of 11 songs by Kuhn are mostly undated, but seem to have been written at various times from the 1920s to the 1950s. They show the range of expression he could command in a post-Romantic Lied style open to many more modern (and also older) influences. No less than eight of the songs here are settings of the Zurich-born lyric poet Albert Ehrismann (1908-1998), a prolific writer with a clear, direct manner of expression. Ehrismann, who was compared in his lifetime to Francois Villon, was interested in cabaret song and wrote many texts for musical accompaniment, and it is clear that Kuhn found his verse highly congenial. Several of the poems are drawn from Ehrismann’s 1932 collection Schiffern und Kapitänen (Sailors and Captains), including the title poem. His inspiration for these ‘nautical’ poems was found in the shipping of Lake Zurich, which is evoked in stormy weather in See (Lake). Both of these songs, and also Stille Stunde (Quiet Hour), reflect the influence of Debussian impressionism, whereas Von den gerechten Dingen (Of the just Things) is deliberately archaic and un-barred, the long phrases recalling an ancient Minnelied. Here, as also in Mädchen in den schwarzen Schälen (Girl dressed in black), the vocal line is utterly predominant in an idiom of complete clarity, whereas Die Schiffe sind Heute in den Hafen gekommen (The ship has arrived in harbour today) boasts a more elaborate piano part that reinforces the lilting main idea and carries it to a triumphant close. Der Einsame (The Lonely One) sets a translation from the Chinese by Hans Bethge, from the same collection that gave rise to Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde. Kuhn’s treatment is highly expressive, in richer, more plangent harmony than most of his other songs. The anonymous Persisches Liebeslied (Persian Love Song), first of three settings of unidentified poets and one of the earliest songs recorded here, shows Kuhn’s complete command of an elegant late-Romantic style, with elements of Schubert and Wolf, even in his student years. Wittier and more varied is Die Macht der Schönheit (The Power of Beauty), which concludes with a scintillating, extended piano postlude. Bild der Freundin (Picture of the lady-friend) is dated 1944 and is a quietly ecstatic lyric effusion, notable for the subtle touches of canonic imitation between the voice and the pianist’s right hand. As in many of Kuhn’s instrumental works an initial motif (here a descending figure of four notes) becomes the focus of development throughout. Finally another setting of Ehrismann, Lied der Drehorgelfrau (Song of the Barrel-Organ lady), sets a folk-like tune to a circling, repetitive accompaniment, but with dark harmonic shadings as the speaker tells her pathetic story and her vision of transcendence, when her useless right hand will once more come into its own. The Suite for Oboe Solo is a kind of modern reminiscence of the Baroque suite of J.S. Bach’s time. Dated 22 June 1965, it is dedicated to the singer Elisabeth Salzmann. From the ‘musical’ letters of the name ‘Elisabeth’, Kuhn derived a principal theme or rather motif which is developed throughout the work, using the pitches E, A, B flat, E, B natural, with a cadential A and F. This motif encompasses six of the 12 pitches of the chromatic scale, and in the opening ‘Passacaglia’, Kuhn provides it with a matching second limb which covers five of the six remaining pitches, creating a passacaglia theme that spans 11 different pitches, with only E and E flat (or D sharp) being repeated. While in the classical passacaglia the theme is always present in its original form in the bass, this is not possible with a single melody instrument: instead the oboe pogressively decorates the theme in ever-shorter note-values, stressing the salient pitches so the listener is never unaware of the original form ‘in the background’. The theme of the Fuga, which follows immediately in the same tempo, uses the three-note figure E-A-B flat as a Hauptmotif, with a chromatic continuation. Here again Kuhn shows himself resourceful in conveying the impression of two simultaneous voices in different parts of the oboe’s register. The shapely, expressive Aria is a three-part form of two contrasting strains and a coda. While the ‘Elisabeth’ theme is less prominent in the free melodic invention of this movement, it is once again apparent in the concluding Rondo, whose main theme is in fact a close variant, in jig time, of the 11-pitch theme of the Passacaglia. This is the longest and most developed movement. The theme is varied at each appearance and interspersed with spritely and diverting episodes, concluding with a forceful statement of the passacaglia theme. The Three Preludes for piano were composed in 1976 and revised in 1980. The first, Con anima, is based on a chromatic nine-note pattern that appears as an ostinato in the left hand; the whole piece has a floating, ecstatic, Scriabinesque quality, only resolving out at the very end onto an A minor triad. The second piece, marked Adagio, suggests a clouded E flat tonality. It plays off drooping, melancholic, involuted figures in the right hand against a dragging, regular four-in-a-bar rhythm in the left. An attempted ascent in the middle of the piece leads only to further descent into the depths. The final Prelude (Allegro at revision; originally Presto) is a bizarre, capricious dance, whose jabbed keyboard clusters and scrunches, and dizzying staircases of chromatic scales, seem faintly to foreshadow one of the Etudes of Ligeti. Like the slightly later Suite for Oboe Solo, the Three Piano Pieces of 1963 are based on a single theme or sequence of notes, in this case the figure A, B flat, E, G, B flat, A. The ‘Praeludium’, marked Adagio, unfolds this theme in a gravely flowing three-part counterpoint, neo-Baroque in tone, whose subtle shading recalls the Abumblätter of Busoni. The ensuing ‘Gigue’ is a spikily energetic two-part invention until it arrives at its closing bars. The concluding ‘Fuge’ turns the theme into an acceptable fugue subject and is the most exhaustively worked-out of the three movements, as well as the most chromatic in harmony: here again there is a hint of Busoni’s late piano pieces in Kuhn’s questing, mysterious counterpoint. Notes © copyright Malcolm MacDonald Page revised Monday August 24 2009 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
