TYBERG, M.: Symphony No. 3 / Piano Trio (M. Ludwig, Mekinulov, Ya-Fei Chuang, Buffalo Philharmonic, Falletta) CD reviews

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ClassicsOnline Home » TYBERG, M.: Symphony No. 3 / Piano Trio (M. Ludwig, Mekinulov, Ya-Fei Chuang, Buffalo Philharmonic, Falletta) > Review List

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TYBERG, M.: Symphony No. 3 / Piano Trio (M. Ludwig, Mekinulov, Ya-Fei Chuang, Buffalo Philharmonic, Falletta)

Composer(s):	Tyberg, Marcel
Artist(s)	Show list Mekinulov, Roman, cello • Falletta, JoAnn, Conductor • Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra • Chuang, Ya-Fei, piano • Ludwig, Michael, violin
Period(s)	20th Century
Genre	Classical Music
Category	Chamber Music • Orchestral
Catalogue	8.572236
Label	Naxos
Quality	320kbps
Album Price	MP3 USD 6.99

Rescued from oblivion before his tragic death in Auschwitz in 1944, Marcel Tyberg’s Symphony No. 3 sets out on a poetic journey with shades of Schumann and Brahms, Bruckner and Mahler, playful instrumental filigrees, colourful counterpoint and captivating harmonies. This sweeping work for large orchestra received its première performances by the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by JoAnn Falletta, finally giving voice to a composer who never heard his masterpiece performed. Tyberg’s chamber music also demonstrates his deep respect for 19thcentury musical modes and manners; imbued with the spirit of Beethoven and Mendelssohn, his Piano Trio brims with a richly Romantic esprit.

Review By Robert Markow,Fanfare,November 2011

…Marcel Tyberg (1893–1944) wrote richly romantic music with strong echoes of Bruckner, Mahler, Zemlinsky, and Szymanowski in his Third Symphony. …the symphony unfolds in bold colors and sweeping gestures. The Piano Trio of 1936 is, if anything, even more engaging, filled as it is with big-boned, sumptuous themes and rich textures right out of Schumann, Brahms, Franck, and Tchaikovsky. Performances are first-rate.

Review By Bruce Hodges,The Juilliard Journal Online,October 2011

…the fruits of [Falletta’s] work are audible on this valuable new recording, shedding light on a composer who—like others who perished similarly—is only being recognized decades after his death.

Sensitive work from violinist Michael Ludwig…cellist Roman Mekinulov…and pianist Ya-Fei Chuang make Tyberg’s lyric gifts come to life, in a reading perhaps tinged with a slight sadness, given how that life would end. © 2012 The Juilliard Journal Online Read complete review

Review By Robert Markow ,Fanfare,May 2011

About half a dozen years ago, Tyberg’s scores caught the attention of JoAnn Falletta, and she programmed the Third Symphony with her Buffalo Philharmonic. The Tyberg Legacy Foundation was established in Buffalo at the Foundation for Jewish Philanthropies, and funding therefrom helped bring forth the Naxos recording we now have.

The Third Symphony, composed in the 1930s, received its world premiere by the BPO and Falletta on May 10, 2008, and the recording soon followed. (Falletta has also programmed Tyberg’s Second Symphony for performances on April 30 and May 1 of this year to coincide with Holocaust Memorial Day.)

The score is richly romantic, with strong echoes of Bruckner, Mahler, Zemlinsky, and Szymanowski. The huge orchestra requires quadruple woodwinds, heckelphone, eight horns (four doubling on tenor tubas), bass trumpet, contrabass trombone, two timpanists, and much more. It opens with a portentous call from a tenor horn heralding music of dark, Mahlerian angst (comparison with the opening of Mahler’s Seventh cannot be ignored). One almost immediately becomes aware that, like Mahler, Tyberg is going to use his orchestra as a vast palette of colors to play with. The second subject is as warmly romantic and gracious as the first was menacing and tortured. The D-Minor Scherzo has a Brucknerian drive and energy, thickly yet brilliantly orchestrated and with a virtuosic edge that recalls Dukas’s Sorcerer’s Apprentice as well. Shades of Bruckner hover also over the Adagio, which moves slowly and inexorably to its main climax. Its somber colors would have benefited from a warmer recording acoustic, but what is a small defect in this movement becomes an asset in the finale, a rollicking rondo whose main theme has the flavor of a saucy British sea shanty, tossed off in its initial presentation with virtuosic abandon by the Buffalo Philharmonic horns. The Philharmonic sustains the sense of high spirits and energy throughout the movement, indeed, throughout the entire symphony, though one cannot avoid the feeling that Tyberg might have left us a more convincing conclusion—the ending is simply too abrupt and unexpected.

The Piano Trio of 1936 is, if anything, even more engaging, filled as it is with big-boned, sumptuous themes and rich textures right out of Schumann, Brahms, Franck, and Tchaikovsky. Themes are masterfully worked out. One listens in disbelief to music composed in the age of Stravinsky and Satie, of Schoenberg and Berg, of Bartók and Messiaen, that is as accomplished as Tyberg’s yet so untouched by the fast-changing world around him—“as if he had truly lived a century before,” as Buffalo Philharmonic archivist Edward Yadzinski puts it in his fine booklet notes. Concertmaster Michael Ludwig and principal cellist Roman Mekinulov, joined by pianist Ya-Fei Chuang, deliver a performance that glows with passion and power. This disc is worth acquiring for either the symphony or the trio alone. Together they constitute an irresistible combinmore....

Review By Musique pour tous,April 2011

Pouvait-on revenir d’Auschwitz? Oui, car quelques-uns réussirent cet exploit. Bénis de la Providence, ou de la chance, furent-ils! Mais plus extraordinaire encore : peut-on en ressusciter? C’est apparemment le miracle que parvient à réaliser la musique de Marcel Tyberg, compositeur autrichien dont la 2e symphonie fut crée dans les années 30’ par un jeune Rafael Kubelik! L’histoire des manuscrits de Tyberg est édifiante. Peu avant d’être arrêté pour ses origines partiellement juives, puis déporté vers les camps de la mort, Marcel Tyberg confia ses partitions à un ami de longue date, un physicien italien du nom de Milan Mihich. Les manuscrits ont été

L’initiative est absolument heureuse. La musique de Tyberg est d’une grande beauté. Le langage est résolument romantique, et offre à l’auditeur attentif des échos plus que satisfaisants de Schumann et de Brahms, avec quelques teintes de Bruckner ici et là. Le 1er mouvement est affirmatif avec son thème héroïque et cuivré, le 2e est un scherzo allègre où la patte schumanienne se fait plus évidente, le 3e est un adagio lyrique et mélancolique somptueusement écrit pour les cordes alors que le 4e et dernier mouvement est un rondo dynamique qui propulse l’auditeur en territoire de robuste espièglerie.

Le Trio en fa majeur fut créé en 1936 et ne porte que très peu la marque de son époque troublée, ni de sa personnalité stylistique. La plume et le canevas utilisés sont éminemment romantiques, encore plus que dans la symphonie. On songe à Schumann, mais aussi à Mendelssohn, avec un lyrisme à fleur de peau qui ramène à l’écriture des nationalistes est-européens et nordiques. Le premier mouvement révèle une mélodie poignante et rhapsodique, qui mérite certainement à elle seule la redécouverte de cette partition. L’adagio central est empreint de tendresse et de nostalgie. Le rondo final, bien qu’allant, est tendu et sombre, ce qui constitue la première manifestation de la conscience que devait avoir le compositeur de l’orage maléfique qui grondait autour de lui en ces années.

Le mélomane découvrira en Marcel Tyberg un mélodiste inspiré et un orchestrateur de premier rang qui sait toucher le cœur et l’esprit. Son esthétique devait paraître archaïque au moment de ces compositions, mais la qualit&emore....

Review By Guy Wagner,Pizzicato,March 2011

Ein weiteres der unzähligen tragischen Schicksale aus der Zeit des Dritten Reichs! Auch der weithin unbekannte Komponist Marcel Tyberg, Sohn von zwei ausgezeichneten Musikern, wurde Opfer der Judenverfolgung. Geboren in Wien am 27. Januar 1893, Mozarts Geburtstag, schloss er dort sein Musikstudium ab und begann zu komponieren, zog jedoch nach dem Tode des Vaters 1927 mit der Mutter nach Italien. Nachdem diese 1943 gestorben war, kam er in ein italienisches KZ, wurde nach Auschwitz transportiert und starb dort Ende 1944.

Ironie des Schicksals: Sein Vater entstammte der polnischen Ortschaft Oswiecim, zu Deutsch Auschwitz, dem Ort, an dem die Nazis ihre Vernichtungslager 1941 errichteten.

more....

Review By Bangkok Post,January 2011

What would our concert programmes be like today if the Nazis had not murdered so many European Jewish composers and performing artists who might have drawn attention to their work? Over the past decades new names and works keep emerging. For a while, the Decca label was issuing an entire series of what the fascists called entartete Musik (“degenerate music”), which included both pieces that were labelled as degenerate because they were composed by Jews, and those that were to be despised because of their Modernist tendencies.

Most of the music that appeared on those Decca discs was by composers who were already known, and much of it had been recorded before. But here we have a Naxos release of music by a composer whose name was probably unknown to almost all listeners until now.

Marcel Tyberg was a partly Jewish Austrian pianist and composer who is thought to have died in Auschwitz on New Year’s Eve in 1944. The two works on this recent Naxos release survived purely by chance under interesting circumstances.

According to Edward Yadzinski’s liner notes to this recording, Tyberg was a close friend of an Italian physician and music lover named Dr Milan Mihich who lived in Abbazia, then part of Italy. When the German occupiers moved in the composer knew that he would probably be arrested and gave his manuscript scores to the doctor for safe keeping. These eventually came into the possession of Mihich’s son Enrico, a cancer specialist who now works in Buffalo, New York. In 2005 he brought them to the attention of the conductor JoAnn Falletta, who premiered the Third Symphony with the Buffalo Philharmonic and has given the work its first recording on this disc.

It is clear that the Nazi cultural police could have had no quarrel with either of the pieces recorded here on the basis of Modernist tendencies. One of the most interesting features of the music is its composer’s seemingly complete lack of interest in any of the developments that were changing music so radically during the opening decades of the last century. Most of the Third Symphony and all of the piano trio could easily have been written before 1910, and by a composer who had no idea what Schoenberg, Debussy and other innovative composers were up to.

Annotator Yadzinski mentions the “shades of Bruckner and reflecting glances at Mahler” that can be heard in the music, and it is certainly true that echoes of those composers will be clear to most listener before they have heard even five minutes of the Third Symphony’s first movement. The similarity to Mahler is almost too close for comfort in the second, Scherzo movement, and it also seems likely that Tyberg was an admirer of Suk’s Asrael Symphony.

But coming through all of these influences is a personal voice, and one that is expressing deep feelings. Listening to the symphony for the first time, some listeners may be distracted by the debts to other composers that keep surfacing. But in my own case I found that with repeated hearmore....

Review By Jerry Dubins ,Fanfare,January 2011

Turnaround time these days seems to grow shorter and shorter. Just one issue back (Fanfare 34:2), in an interview with JoAnn Falletta, music director of the Buffalo Philharmonic, and Ed Yadzinski, the orchestra’s official archivist, I noted that one of the projects in the pipeline was a disc of works by Marcel Tyberg (1893–1944). And here it is, barely two months later.

To recap: Tyberg (pronounced TEE-berg) was a Viennese composer, conductor, and pianist who, despite being only one-16th Jewish, perished, along with his music, or so it was thought, at the hands of the Nazis during the Holocaust. Then in 2005, many if not all of his works were uncovered in the basement of a Buffalo doctor, Enrico Mihich. A lengthy and detailed article about Tyberg on Wikipedia states that “The Foundation for Jewish Philanthropies, in conjunction with Dr. Mihich and JoAnn Falletta of the Buffalo Philharmonic, have funded a performance of three lieder, two piano sonatas, and the copying of his Trio, Sextet and Third Symphony.” Before the war Tyberg was not exactly unknown. He wrote a considerable volume of music, including three symphonies that are said to be on the scale of Mahler, and some of his works were performed by Rafael Kubelík in Prague and Italy.

To this Falletta added, “The music of Marcel Tyberg has been an extraordinary discovery for the BPO. I remember clearly the day when Dr. Henry Mihich visited me at Kleinhans, carrying a bulging shopping bag filled with hand-written scores of his former teacher, who had entrusted the music to his father before he was taken to Auschwitz and killed. It took a great deal of time trying to decipher the handwriting and much more to get to the heart of the music, but it was so worth the effort! This is extraordinarily beautiful music, filled with echoes of Mahler, Bruckner, Schumann, and Mendelssohn, yet emerging as a truly individual voice. Bringing the Third Symphony to life for the first time was a real community effort for the BPO; all of our musicians became musical detectives in examining their parts for inconsistencies and errors, and drawing on all their musical knowledge and imagination in interpreting the music. Our concertmaster, Michael Ludwig, and principal cellist, Roman Mekinulov, were heroic in their scholarship and dedication in creating compelling performances and recording of Tyberg’s trio with pianist colleague Ya-fei Chuang.”

Scale-wise, at least, it may be a bit of a stretch to name Mahler as an antecedent to Tyberg’s Third Symphony. The score, completed in the late 1930s, plays for just under 37 minutes. Even Mahler’s shortest symphony, the No. 1, without the “Blumine” movement, plays for 20 minutes longer. Moreover, Tyberg’s orchestration, while employing large contingents of brass and winds, does not employ Mahler’s wide array of exotic percussion instruments. But this relates to only two aspects of the music, its dimensions and its imore....

Review By Juan Berberana,Ritmo,January 2011

Naxos rescata dos piezas de otro compositor víctima del fanatismo nazi (se piensa que murió en Auschwitz en 1944), el austriaco Marcel Tyberg. Compañero de generación y estudios de Rafael Kubelik desarrolló una breve carrera como pianista y compositor, huyendo a Italia a finales de los años 30 y cayendo en manos de la Gestapo tras la ocupación nazi de Italia. Amigos de Tyberg lograron salvar la partitura de esta Tercera sinfonía (completada en 1930) y 60 años después se estrena por los intérpretes de esta grabación. Tyberg, escuchada la obra, era en esencia un post-romántico. Más próximo a Mahler o a Siegfried Wagner (con quien tiene innegable connotaciones) que a

more....

Review By Herman Trotter,American Record Guide,November 2010

JoAnn Falletta and her augmented Buffalo Philharmonic play with a wonderful breadth of sound, a palpable sense of excitement, and the thrill of discovery. Naxos offers balanced and vividly transparent sound. So it’s hard to imagine this premier recording surpassed.

To read complete review, please visit American Record Guide online.

Review By Bob McQuiston,Classical Lost and Found,October 2010

RECOMMENDED

Naxos pulls another rabbit out of its hat of unknown musical treasures with these two works by a man who was a victim of the Holocaust. Austrian pianist, conductor and composer Marcel Tyberg (1893-1944) was born and studied in Vienna, before the vicissitudes of World War I (1914-18) prompted his family to move to Abbazia, Italy in 1916.

After his father's death in 1927, he continued living there, supporting himself and his mother by teaching, playing the organ in local churches, and composing ballroom dances (under the pseudonym Till Bergmar), as well as a substantial body of serious music. Although impressionism, neoclassicism and serialism were all the rage back then, he chose to ignore them and remained a dyed-in-the-wool romanticist.

Tyberg completed his four-movement third symphony in the fall of 1943. Sadly it would be his last as the times they were a-changin' with the Nazi takeover of Italy. To wit, when word got out he had a Jewish great-grandfather, he was arrested by the Gestapo, and eventually detained in Auschwitz, where on New Year's Eve of 1944 he become part of 'The Final Solution'.

Fortunately Tyberg had seen the handwriting on the wall, and entrusted all his scores to an Italian doctor friend. These were later passed on to the doctor's son, who being a resident of Buffalo, New York, showed them to conductor JoAnn Falletta, music director of the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra (BPO). The third symphony was among them, and Falletta was so impressed she and the BPO gave the first performance of it, which was soon followed by this recording.

The opening andante is fraught with sinister overcast brass passages that have more than a passing resemblance to the first movement of Gustav Mahler's (1860-1911) third symphony (1893-96, revised in 1906). There are also lilting moments reminiscent of Bruckner's (1824-1896) Romantic Symphony (No. 4, 1874, revised 1878-86) capped with manic Mahlerian bursts of sunshine for full orchestra. There's never an apathetic moment with the movement ending much like it began.

While Gustav's ghost also haunts the relatively brief scherzo, there's a 1930s dance band informality about it where the composer shows the Bergmar side of his character (see above). This and some saucy orchestration make it indigenous Tyberg, anticipating Erich Wolfgang Korngold's (1897-1957) symphony of 1951-52.

It's the perfect foil to the somber adagio that follows. This opens with the strings and brass singing a dark duet set to a mournful melody. But hope-filled solos for the violin, flute and oboe brighten the mood, and the movement ends with a warm autumnal glow.

The rollicking rondo that concludes the symphony has a recurring theme that could almost be out of a score for an American Western (see the Gallagher and Serebrier recommendations above). In that regard Jerome Moross' (1913-1983) main title for The Big Country (1958) comes to minmore....

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